[Spoiler] I think I got the best ending. Change my mind.

+
On my first play through, I chose the Arasaka ending and rejected the contract. After some research about the other endings, let me give you a list of why I think my choice leads to the best ending.

1. Any other choice results in Soulkiller removing Johnny's engram or V dying. Now, I personally have a huge issue with using Soulkiller in my play through so it was never an option. Anytime a copy of the mind is used in fiction, it is treated as if the 'ego' survives when the copy is transferred into a vessel. It does not.

Here is a mental experiment to try and convince you: Imagine a copy of your mind/soul/whatever is made and you SURVIVE THIS PROCESS. The copy is transferred to a physical clone of you and is kept in a lab. You go on with your own business but death befalls you as you are accidentally struck by a speeding truck. The copy replaces you in society and everyone is none the wiser. In this scenario, you have experienced death and are no longer conscious. Thus, In my opinion, 'you' have not survived.

2. So you get sent back to Earth with EVERYTHING YOU STILL HAD BEFORE. That romantic relationship? Still there. No one died unnecessarily. Rogue? Alive. Still family with the Avocados? Yep. How is this ending any different to the Panam ending minus the scenery? (I do regret not going back for Takemura though)':

3. A few people mention that you should stick it to Arasaka like somehow it was your duty to do so. I feel like destroying Arasaka is a pointless exercise fueled by petulant self interest. So what if you adhere to whatever principals you had and took Arasaka down a peg? Cool? Now Militech and the other megacorps get to eat away at some of that Arasaka real estate you freed up. Great job.

I'm keen to hear what you guys think. By all means, take the discussion as seriously as you want but be civil.
 
Yeah but let the Arasakas become gods instead of destroying Mikoshi. Moreover, this means that you are a sellout and betrayed Jackie.

So this is a very selfish ending and you will still die in a few months. This is actually one of the worse endings of all, even worse than just killing yourself (if you commit suicide, you don't help Arasaka).

If you are a corpo and want a corpo ending I would rather accept the offer and become an engram, then get a new body. Even if you are just a copy, in a way your survive and you could imagine going back to work for Arasaka and be a corpo (I did that on my corpo playthrough).
 
You will find here that generally people do not take Soulkiller to be a problem. I agree with you about what it means to create a data copy of someone, but I also think fiction can assume certain answers to these questions, like in Star Trek you're meant to believe they're the same person after teleporting. That being said, I think there's plenty enough in game to suggest that Soulkiller does essentially work like you've said. There's some seriously bad writing around Soulkiller's severity, though I don't know if it's in Alt's warnings or the endings where Soulkiller is used and not addressed.
 
Yeah but let the Arasakas become gods instead of destroying Mikoshi. Moreover, this means that you are a sellout and betrayed Jackie.

So this is a very selfish ending and you will still die in a few months. This is actually one of the worse endings of all, even worse than just killing yourself (if you commit suicide, you don't help Arasaka).

If you are a corpo and want a corpo ending I would rather accept the offer and become an engram, then get a new body. Even if you are just a copy, in a way your survive and you could imagine going back to work for Arasaka and be a corpo (I did that on my corpo playthrough).
Hey, thanks for the input. We have a huge difference in opinion about betraying Jackie. What did Jackie really want? It was Johnny who wanted to destroyed Arasaka. If a claim is made about betraying Jackie, one would need to analyze what it really would have mean to do right by Jackie. I think it falls to opinions here.

You'll have to do more to convince me that that is ending is worse than the suicide option, though. That's a big claim and I don't agree with it at all.
Post automatically merged:

You will find here that generally people do not take Soulkiller to be a problem. I agree with you about what it means to create a data copy of someone, but I also think fiction can assume certain answers to these questions, like in Star Trek you're meant to believe they're the same person after teleporting. That being said, I think there's plenty enough in game to suggest that Soulkiller does essentially work like you've said. There's some seriously bad writing around Soulkiller's severity, though I don't know if it's in Alt's warnings or the endings where Soulkiller is used and not addressed.
I can tell we think very alike. The Star Trek thing also bothers me but I get around it but assuming the particles' relative position are saved and THOSE SAME PARTICLES are transmitted ftl to the receiving transporter instantaneously. It helps, but I'm still not happy.

I agree about the Soulkiller thing being glanced over. It bothers me more that it will be difficult to get this point across to the general audience.
Post automatically merged:

You still die in 6 months.
Yeah, but you get 6 months instead of 0.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, but you get 6 months instead of 0.
Well yes, everyone argues how one is better than the other but the problem is that it's still 6 months (which sadly we see none of) so in the end V either dies or is off to the sequel/expansion of CP77.
 
tell we think very alike. The Star Trek thing also bothers me but I get around it but assuming the particles' relative position are saved and THOSE SAME PARTICLES are transmitted ftl to the receiving transporter instantaneously. It helps, but I'm still not happy.

I agree about the Soulkiller thing being glanced over. It bothers me more that it will be difficult to get this point across to the general audience.
The most bitter irony for me is that I actually fall into the small optimistic camp of believing that the Space Heist ending and the Aldecaldos ending both offer a vague hope of perhaps fixing V's expiration date problem. But both endings are already soured to me before they even get that far because of Soulkiller.
 
Well yes, everyone argues how one is better than the other but the problem is that it's still 6 months (which sadly we see none of) so in the end V either dies or is off to the sequel/expansion of CP77.
I think this is a meta problem in relation to the story. We all know there will be DLC so I guess the 6 months is just setting up unfinished business for the expansions. I agree that it is unsatisfying to see the main story not wrapped up cleanly but a part of me (bigger part, tbh) wants the game to continue. That's why I'm not really fussed.
Post automatically merged:

The most bitter irony for me is that I actually fall into the small optimistic camp of believing that the Space Heist ending and the Aldecaldos ending both offer a vague hope of perhaps fixing V's expiration date problem. But both endings are already soured to me before they even get that far because of Soulkiller.
That's why I made this post. It's all soured after Soulkiller.
 
We have a huge difference in opinion about betraying Jackie.
When you choose to go see Hanako, Misty makes a comment about you betraying Jackie (Arasaka killed him). So i think that siding with the people who killed Jackie is seen as betrayal. Although I would agree with you that this is not really betrayal, we tried to steal from them after all. They just shot thieves.

Also, I agree about everything said about Soulkiller just creating a copy of yourself, and your true self being killed. However, it can also be a philosophical question because if you consider that you are the data in your brain, saving that data and putting it in another body could be considered that this is still you. It's more a matter of opinion about if only the original you is you, or if the data that makes you is you.
 
I'll just paste what I wrote in another thread.

There are two major narrative points introduced during the prologue.
  • The fate you are after through the question raised by Dex
Would you rather live in peace as Miss Nobody, die ripe, old and smellin' slightly of urine? Or go down for all times in a blaze of glory, smellin' near like posies, 'thout seein' your thirtieth?

  • Will you become Johnny because of the chip or are you going to fight to remain your own self

And there is another one introduced just shortly after which is:

  • Have things actually changed in the past 60 years, but more importantly are people even capable of change.

All the endings are a combination of these narrative choices to some extent.

There are 3 endings in which the player (an by that extent V) becomes Johnny to an extent regardless of who gets to keep the body in the end.

These are all the endings in which you assault the Araska HQ the Nomad one, the Rogue one and the "secret" one.

The assault of the Arasaka HQ is essentially a repeat of the events of 2020 when Johnny decided to assault the Araska HQ to settle a personal grievance getting some of his friends and a bunch of innocents killed.

If the player chooses to assault the Araska HQ the same thing happens, he gets his friends killed and innocents die, the bomb in 2020 and Alt's massacre in 2077.

The only ending that doesn't repeat those mistakes is the one where V decides to help/side with Hanako. This is the only one in which V does not repeats Johnny's 2020 path in 2077 showing that things truly have changed, that V did not succumb to/was influenced by Johnny's repartitioning of his brain.
In this ending you do not assault the tower, you do not get your friends killed, and you do not get innocents killed.
If you've also chosen to save Takemura you are provided with what is probably the most canonical ending if CDPR chooses to do a direct sequel.

You will leave your body. Arasaka will store your engram in Mikoshi until a way is found to transfer it to a new body.

Yet your phenotype, thanks to the chip, is unique. Arasaka cannot provide a suitable body at this time.

Unlike the other endings, and the Hellman Arasaka ending this one provides V with a more concrete promise of a new body.

The other endings are basically the player becoming Johnny and repeating the same mistakes Johnny made in 2020 with the player then being allowed to choose if they whish to go out in a blaze of glory (Rogue + V gets to keep body, Rogue/Nomad Johnny gets to keep the body) or die quietly surrounded by their loved ones and friends (Nomad + V gets to keep the body).
 
I went the same path and I totally agree with you. I think Arasaka>Back to Earth is the most logical ending. The only reasons why it feels less satsifying is because there is no closure in it like in the Panam endings.

If the game would let us go back to say goodbye to our loved ones in person and derp around in the city for the last months, I would 100% it would be the "happy ending".
 
If you've also chosen to save Takemura
I didn't even know you could save him ^^ I will have to do so in the next playthrough !

repeating the same mistakes Johnny made
I don't agree with the use of the word "mistakes". You only see Johnny as making mistake, but he fights against corpo tyrants even if it means that good people will have to die.
Do you think that people who fought dictators made a mistake because a lot of good people died ? Even if the dictator ended up winning?
I think that Johnny is more about ideals and deciding to fight against evil even if it seems impossible to win. Just like you would fight against an oppressive regime even if you're not sure that you can win.
 
I didn't even know you could save him ^^ I will have to do so in the next playthrough !


I don't agree with the use of the word "mistakes". You only see Johnny as making mistake, but he fights against corpo tyrants even if it means that good people will have to die.
Do you think that people who fought dictators made a mistake because a lot of good people died ? Even if the dictator ended up winning?
I think that Johnny is more about ideals and deciding to fight against evil even if it seems impossible to win. Just like you would fight against an oppressive regime even if you're not sure that you can win.
Except it has been proven over and over that his efforts are futile. The first segment of his story explores how even after setting off a nuke in the middle of the city and getting himself captured, nothing has changed in the city. In fact even Samurai is only really remembered by a specific group of people.
 
I have better thought experiment!
To change someones mind when they ask yoy to change theirs minds.
Scientist have yet to answer this paradox
 
I didn't even know you could save him ^^ I will have to do so in the next playthrough !


I don't agree with the use of the word "mistakes". You only see Johnny as making mistake, but he fights against corpo tyrants even if it means that good people will have to die.
Do you think that people who fought dictators made a mistake because a lot of good people died ? Even if the dictator ended up winning?

Johnny isn't fighting dictators, he is settling a personal grievance and being manipulated to do so, too much of Alt's content was cut for it to make sense to most players. Hint there is a reason why you'll hear Alt's voice if you decide to get rid of Del saying "Delamain was your guardian angel" At some point the story was more complex and somewhat more obvious, and AIs played a bigger role in it than what we got with Del just being delegated to a minor role to have the player move around the city to pickup street stories since all the fixer missions now require you to go to the POI before you even get them.

And if you bring it to the real world there are hardly ever examples of "dictators" being toppled by force without the revolutionaries becoming ones themselves, I don't see fighting dictators as some idealistic romantic cause.
Dictators appear when the institutions that allow and guarantee a non-violent transition of power collapse or don't exist in the first place.

The only successful transitions from dictatorship to democracy tend to happen over a long period of time without much violence, e.g. Spain and Greece, when things don't happen that way you get shitshows like the French revolution and the reign of terror that followed it.

I think that Johnny is more about ideals and deciding to fight against evil even if it seems impossible to win. Just like you would fight against an oppressive regime even if you're not sure that you can win.

Johnny isn't about ideals, but rather about his own ego, there is no black and white no good vs evil in Cyberpunk the corporations aren't "evil" in the sense of being true evil, Takemura expands on that when he asks V what about the billions the corporations employ and help feed, don't get me wrong the corporations aren't good or altruistic either no one is.

Johnny is more of a bargain bin undergrad socialist it somewhat represents well the 20 year old doorknobs that read Marx for the first time and think that if you just get rid of capitalism the world would somehow become a better place.

The world of Cyberpunk is a dystopia but it's not a dystopia solely because of corporations they are as much of a symptom as the cause.

As far as the more generalized "mistake" goes, V by assaulting the tower with either the nomads or rogue or by himself achieves nothing besides getting thousands of innocents killed, his friends killed, unleashing Alt to do god knows what, collapsing a corporation an event that would likely spark another corp war which would get even more people killed and then either dying or being stuck in cyberspace without any way of getting out and letting Johnny keep his body.
 
Last edited:
Except it has been proven over and over that his efforts are futile. The first segment of his story explores how even after setting off a nuke in the middle of the city and getting himself captured, nothing has changed in the city. In fact even Samurai is only really remembered by a specific group of people.

I think Johnny also wants you to think over your choices, because of what he went through.
He even more or less implied how he felt/feels after he went through with the attack on the Arasaka. Grieving over the losses of his friends and beloved.
But, here is a far reached assumption:
You may think his attempts were futile and nothing changed, but he still is kind of like a symbol AND Yorinobu might have been very inspired by him. "When a Bomb turning the Arasaka Tower is not enough, oneself has to become the bomb" (or how it went). He wanted to change the Corp and/or bring Arasaka to its knees.

Also to the ones "defending" the Arasaka Ending as a good one, because "no one really died in the events". You then have to think about the consequences of a newly "born" Saburo Arasaka, who is the head figure (also an Engram, with possible personality change) and incorporates Arasaka, and is one of the reasons of oppressed people, poverty and expanding the gap in society. (while also doing some pointed good things as told by Takemura)
 
Johnny isn't fighting dictators, he is settling a personal grievance and being manipulated to do so, too much of Alt's content was cut for it to make sense to most players. Hint there is a reason why you'll hear Alt's voice if you decide to get rid of Del saying "Delamain was your guardian angel" At some point the story was more complex and somewhat more obvious, and AIs played a bigger role in it than what we got with Del just being delegated to a minor role to have the player move around the city to pickup street stories since all the fixer missions now require you to go to the POI before you even get them.

And if you bring it to the real world there are hardly ever examples of "dictators" being toppled by force without the revolutionaries becoming ones themselves, I don't see fighting dictators as some idealistic romantic cause.
Dictators appear when the institutions that allow and guarantee a non-violent transition of power collapse or don't exist in the first place.

The only successful transitions from dictatorship to democracy tend to happen over a long period of time without much violence, e.g. Spain and Greece, when things don't happen that way you get shitshows like the French revolution and the reign of terror that followed it.



Johnny isn't about ideals, but rather about his own ego, there is black and white no good vs evil in Cyberpunk the corporations aren't "evil" in the sense of being true evil, Takemura expands on that when he asks V what about the billions the corporations employ and help feed, don't get me wrong the corporations aren't good or altruistic either no one is.

Johnny is more of a bargain bin undergrad socialist it somewhat represents well the 20 year old doorknobs that read Marx for the first time and think that if you just get rid of capitalism the world would somehow become a better place.

The world of Cyberpunk is a dystopia but it's not a dystopia solely because of corporations they are as much of a symptom as the cause.

As far as the more generalized "mistake" goes, V by assaulting the tower with either the nomads or rogue achieves nothing besides getting thousands of innocents killed, his friends killed, unleashing Alt to do god knows what, collapsing a corporation an event that would likely spark another corp war which would get even more people killed and then either dying or being stuck in cyberspace without any way of getting out and letting Johnny keep his body.
Very well said. To me Jhonny did a horrible job at selling his "ideals" and make Arasaka look bad. In my eyes Arasaka was just part of the setting. No matter what Jhonny or I do, in order to make a dent, you need at least one half of the city on your side.
 
Also to the ones "defending" the Arasaka Ending as a good one, because "no one really died in the events". You then have to think about the consequences of a newly "born" Saburo Arasaka, who is the head figure (also an Engram, with possible personality change) and incorporates Arasaka, and is one of the reasons of oppressed people, poverty and expanding the gap in society. (while also doing some pointed good things as told by Takemura)
The Arasaka ending is the good one because that's the one where you don't get clipped in the stem with Soulkiller.
 
I think Johnny also wants you to think over your choices, because of what he went through.
He even more or less implied how he felt/feels after he went through with the attack on the Arasaka. Grieving over the losses of his friends and beloved.
But, here is a far reached assumption:
You may think his attempts were futile and nothing changed, but he still is kind of like a symbol AND Yorinobu might have been very inspired by him. "When a Bomb turning the Arasaka Tower is not enough, oneself has to become the bomb" (or how it went). He wanted to change the Corp and/or bring Arasaka to its knees.

Also to the ones "defending" the Arasaka Ending as a good one, because "no one really died in the events". You then have to think about the consequences of a newly "born" Saburo Arasaka, who is the head figure (also an Engram, with possible personality change) and incorporates Arasaka, and is one of the reasons of oppressed people, poverty and expanding the gap in society. (while also doing some pointed good things as told by Takemura)
To me the immortal leader is more of a morality dilemma than about his effect on society. Many different things have failed society, it isn't solely Arasaka's doing. If anything with Saboru back, you prevented another Corpo war.
The only thing that bothers me about him becoming immortal is that noone should have that kind of privilige. But again, the game does a very poor job at exploring the topic of transhumanism.
 
I don't think some really don't even know how freaking big and influential Arasaka, Militech, Petrochem, Biatechnica etc (THE big corps) REALLY are. They are stronger than countries. Not even Amazon, Google etc would hold a candle to them, even though they're right on track.

They kind of ARE even more important than the countries who are more portrayed as being a sidenote. There were four fucking Wars happening. Not because of Terrorists or countries, BUT between Corporations!!
You can see it in the Corp-Lifepath beginning how easily he kind of kille dht EU commitee.
Mitch as well as other Nomads tell about being soldiers and veterans from the last Corp-Wars on the Side of Militech, being pumped full of Chemicals to erase their fear of death and make them stronger, even though it was banished from using.
 
Top Bottom