[SPOILERS] My personal beef with CP77- How can we justify Johnny's terrorism? Really?

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I'm comfortable in interpreting JS as evil. JS is just not one-dimensionally evil like your stereotype villain: "He's evil because he likes doing evil things!". I think he's a sufficiently complex and interesting enough villain that a small number might genuinely side with him. It's also quite clever that the game doesn't keep bringing up that he murdered a whole heap of people, nor does V have dialog choices available to match how I assume most sane people would respond: "You're a terrorist and mass murderer, I'm not listening to a word you say or engaging you in conversation". The game steers the player and (to a degree blinkers them) to see a very specific human side of JS, to allow the option of developing a camaraderie.
Silverhand is one very fascinating character regardless if player thinks him in or outside of CP 2077 universe. The whole terrorist in our head aspect was really big deal for me because they implemented it so well. One is what is happening in the game, other is something to do with couple of cyberpunk novels I don't want spoil, one aspect is that he certain way is a city and finally he also presents something we all have.
That said, V isn't exactly your typical hero either. V's supposed to be morally-ambiguous at absolute best. But that's the nature of the CP setting.
It's indeed very faithful to notable works in original literature works.
 
Well the "collateral damage" was accident
In my personal definition of evil, acting with indifference toward the lives of others & detonating a WMD inside of a highly-populated urban area ticks all of the boxes. Indeed, it wouldn't be a stretch to point to RealWorld™ terrorism and find parallels. I don't really want to dwell on that or dive deeply down that rabbit hole though :(

(in game only, I'm unsure of other non-game canon) JS did not check that the building was clear, nor did he check the surrounding area was clear. He detonated that nuke knowing full well what it was. If there was anybody in that building, they're toast. If there was anybody near the building (he did just play a small well-attended concert, and start a small riot at the base of the tower) then they're toast too. It's only an accident to me if JS thoroughly checked and cleared the whole building, plus the full blast radius around the building, but someone still died because they were in a freight elevator and weren't found when the building was cleared (or somesuch).

Wearing my RealWorld™ morality head, JS'a actions would be an unforgivable crime which deserves whole-of-life imprisonment without possibility of parole (I don't support capital punishment so that's the most extreme punishment on the table in my mind).

But, having said of all of that - this isn't the RealWorld™ at all, it's a video game plot. For that it's pretty reasonable because we don't actually have to fully justify any of the character's actions; it's all make-believe. It's part of what makes roleplay fun, because we can put ourselves into the position of being morally ambiguous, have fun exploring the darker parts of our psyches. But, all of that is without consequence; we can continue living our day to day lives as reasonable human beings who know that mass-murder is wrong.

So, yeah. In a roundabout way, I'm still very comfortable describing JS as objectively evil.
 
The game never forces you to sympathise with Silverhand.

Also to the comment that the game doesn't question whether he's a conscious being or not, isn't that kind of the point of the vast majority of side quests in the game, and, indeed, the whole damned game?! They ask what is a soul from various different angles.

With Johnny, his nature is interrogated directly with the pacifist monks when you meet them later if you play that mission without killing anyone. It's literally a conversation of "is Johnny a soul". Alt also talks about her view of what an engram is.

One thing that's struck me with Cyberpunk is that takes on the story seem often to divide between people who want subtlety and to be allowed to decide for themselves, and people who want every thought point and story point tied up in a bow. I really, really applaud CDPR for taking the first approach but, honestly, it's not THAT subtle and I find it at times quite baffling just how much of the story people seem to have ignored in some critiques. It's like dialogue has been routinely skipped or people have played 10 per cent of the game and then complain that things aren't addressed.
 
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The "funny" thing it's a the end, if you ask help to Alt, they are also toast :D
(it seem to be dangerous to work in Arasaka tower).
Please tell me Alt is played by Amanda Lear in the French version for added mystique (you're probably the only one here who knows who that is!).
 
And above all we must take into account the "context" :)
Saburo, his first intention when he learned about the relic and yorinobu was to completely raze Night City. It was Hanako who told him to wait and talk to Yorinobu before deciding to act... So Johnny is a "little player" next to some "powerful" poeple :)
Diary (117-121/77)
121/77
I see the coastline. Strange - in my memories the city seemed larger. If I wanted to, i could wipe it off the map in under ten minutes. I shared this thought with Hanako - she thinks I shouldn't do that. I usually defer to her opinion. But if the Relic somehow fell into the wrong hands, maybe it would be better to bury it among the ashes of NC?
Until we talk to Y, I will hold off on a firm decision.
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Please tell me Alt is played by Amanda Lear in the French version for added mystique (you're probably the only one here who knows who that is!).
Oh no, it wouldn't be mystic at all :D
It's Laura Blanc who also did Liara in Mass Effect :)
 
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And above all we must take into account the "context" :)
Saburo, his first intention when he learned about the relic and yorinobu was to completely raze Night City. It was Hanako who told him to wait and talk to Yorinobu before deciding to act... So Johnny is a "little player" next to some "powerful" poeple :)
Diary (117-121/77)

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Oh no, it wouldn't be mystic at all :D
It's Laura Blanc who also did Liara in Mass Effect :)
It would be an AMAZING alt-Alt. :-D
 
As far as the JS character goes, I call bullshit on that. He assaulted the building and at very least the security staff were still present (coz he murdered a heap of them on the job). It was not unreasonable to assume that other staff would be present.

I dismissed his in-character words to the assistant as a hot-head's hollow recriminations after taking actions that they knew to be wrong at the time. I suppose there's my own personal take on that mixed in there, but everyone's going to interpret that in their own way.



I'm comfortable in interpreting JS as evil. JS is just not one-dimensionally evil like your stereotype villain: "He's evil because he likes doing evil things!". I think he's a sufficiently complex and interesting enough villain that a small number might genuinely side with him. It's also quite clever that the game doesn't keep bringing up that he murdered a whole heap of people, nor does V have dialog choices available to match how I assume most sane people would respond: "You're a terrorist and mass murderer, I'm not listening to a word you say or engaging you in conversation". The game steers the player and (to a degree blinkers them) to see a very specific human side of JS, to allow the option of developing a camaraderie.

That said, V isn't exactly your typical hero either. V's supposed to be morally-ambiguous at absolute best. But that's the nature of the CP setting.

Mini-disclosure: In the RealWorld™ I'm very much part of the corporate machine, so my own biases are going to to come into play.

Ha! So you've sold your soul to the Man. Understandable that you'd take that view then :) But to Johnny Arasaka is an evil empire - bracketing your own experience and looking at how the corporations are depicted in the game, it's hard to say who veers more towards the evil meter. After all in one way or another the corporations are responsible for far more human suffering than Johnny intended, and even accidentally accomplished (for the death toll does seem to have been unintended according to the lore link posted above).

Although I suppose the corporate view would be that without them the suffering would be even greater - e.g. at least people are being fed, even if it is poisonous sludge :)
 
Welll..by 2077 the narrative has been altered. And Johnny...is not really Johnny either. CDPR holds the 2020 timeline as canon, too, so, yes.


Whole thread is a good read.

But to summarize - the bombing of A tower was planned and executed by the US Gov and Militech and several operators, including Morgan Blackhand. Night City was an enemy-held territory on US soil. Johnny was there as part of the distraction team, Alpha, that Arasaka was supposed to chase as the main team.

The MAIN objective was the Arasaka data hoard in the basement, targetted by Strike Team Beta. Super valuable as the DataKrash was eating everything in sight.

Read the whole thing - it's quite illuminating.

Remember, though, by 2077, it's been 50 plus years since the DataKrash and the world-wide Net that existed at that time going down.

Whole lotta BS out there. Of course! The age of disinformation is very much a Cyberpunk theme.
 
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Welll..by 2077 the narrative has been altered. And Johnny...is not really Johnny either. CDPR holds the 2020 timeline as canon, too, so, yes.


Whole thread is a good read.

But to summarize - the bombing of A tower was planned and executed by the US Gov and Militech and several operators, including Morgan Blackhand. Night City was an enemy-held territory on US soil. Johnny was there as part of the distraction team, Alpha, that Arasaka was supposed to chase as the main team.

The MAIN objective was the Arasaka data hoard in the basement, targetted by Strike Team Beta. Super valuable as the DataKrash was eating everything in sight.

Read the whole thing - it's quite illuminating.

Remember, though, by 2077, it's been 50 plus years since the DataKrash and the world-wide Net that existed at that time going down.

Whole lotta BS out there. Of course! The age of disinformation is very much a Cyberpunk theme.

Fascinating stuff. But according to this it seems like the game version is a bit different again, since Johnny's doing the nuke-placing; and Johnny's blamed for the nuking by the rest of the game world historically.

So the question re. Johnny's evil or culpability still seems unresolved.

(Actually come to think of it, maybe this speaks again to the obvious - now officially denied, but who trusts CDPR now? - theory re. CDPR shoehorning a big Keanu story into the game at the last minute (last year and a half or so). If CDPR had stuck with the lore as above, the story would have been quite different (with Silverhand not being responsible for the nuke, but just causing a distraction by trying to rescue Alt). In fact, come to think of it, that would make perfect sense of the radio announcement in one of the 2018 hype vids, where it talks about Silverhand being about to retire.)
 
Fascinating stuff. But according to this it seems like the game version is a bit different again, since Johnny's doing the nuke-placing; and Johnny's blamed for the nuking by the rest of the game world historically.

So the question re. Johnny's evil or culpability still seems unresolved.

(Actually come to think of it, maybe this speaks again to the obvious - now officially denied, but who trusts CDPR now? - theory re. CDPR shoehorning a big Keanu story into the game at the last minute (last year and a half or so). If CDPR had stuck with the lore as above, the story would have been quite different (with Silverhand not being responsible for the nuke, but just causing a distraction by trying to rescue Alt). In fact, come to think of it, that would make perfect sense of the radio announcement in one of the 2018 hype vids, where it talks about Silverhand being about to retire.)
Alt tells you in game that Johnny memories are distorted after Mikoshi and you are seeing his interpretation of what happened and Rtalsorian also said its not that reliable witness
Good thing is, that if you look at CPRED and thanks to Datakrash there is a lot of information not reliable...so you can accept Johnny and Rogue and Spider as responsibles if you want or you can believe it was a raid lead by Militech with US cover support that went wrong (CPRED endorses all the theories and confirms none,save that the bomb detonated prematurely).
 
Alt tells you in game that Johnny memories are distorted after Mikoshi and you are seeing his interpretation of what happened and Rtalsorian also said its not that reliable witness
Good thing is, that if you look at CPRED and thanks to Datakrash there is a lot of information not reliable...so you can accept Johnny and Rogue and Spider as responsibles if you want or you can believe it was a raid lead by Militech with US cover support that went wrong (CPRED endorses all the theories and confirms none,save that the bomb detonated prematurely).

If the world is blaming Johnny for the nuking in the game's present day, then I don't think it's that open to interpretation. (Unless shoehorning ofc, since it's only a few people who say that - as big a change as recording a few lines here and there and ditching the news announcement of Johnny's retirement.)
 
If the world is blaming Johnny for the nuking in the game's present day, then I don't think it's that open to interpretation. (Unless shoehorning ofc, since it's only a few people who say that - as big a change as recording a few lines here and there and ditching the news announcement of Johnny's retirement.)
Psyops,propaganda and convenient scapegoat for a ceasefire? You can find in-game shard that cast doubt on the "official" version also.
 
Psyops,propaganda and convenient scapegoat for a ceasefire? You can find in-game shard that cast doubt on the "official" version also.

Yeah it's easy enough to put it all down to those factors, but the radio announcement of Johnny's retirement in one of the earlier hype vids (which would dovetail with the lore without any need for unreliable narrators or doubts about psyops) stubbornly remains ...

Oh the irony of corporate shenanigans wrt a game with lore about corporate shenanigans :)
 
Yeah it's easy enough to put it all down to those factors, but the radio announcement of Johnny's retirement in one of the earlier hype vids (which would dovetail with the lore without any need for unreliable narrators or doubts about psyops) stubbornly remains ...

Oh the irony of corporate shenanigans wrt a game with lore about corporate shenanigans :)
On hype, there were several threads. But it was known that CPRED release was being aligned with CP2077 development to align lore, so I will say that what remains is CPRED, whatever info you get in CP2077 and the book "the world of cyberpunk 2077".
There are some changes between cp2020 and cpred timelines also, for example the date were us government nationalized Militech in 4th Corpo War... its pretty common to review and rebranch a franchise timeline.
For example,originally after the nuking it was published as continuity Cyberpunk 3.0 which was a post-apocalyptic transhumanist setting,it was the canon universe till CPRED was published...now that setting is gone in the official timeline.
 
On hype, there were several threads. But it was known that CPRED release was being aligned with CP2077 development to align lore, so I will say that what remains is CPRED, whatever info you get in CP2077 and the book "the world of cyberpunk 2077".
There are some changes between cp2020 and cpred timelines also, for example the date were us government nationalized Militech in 4th Corpo War... its pretty common to review and rebranch a franchise timeline.
For example,originally after the nuking it was published as continuity Cyberpunk 3.0 which was a post-apocalyptic transhumanist setting,it was the canon universe till CPRED was published...now that setting is gone in the official timeline.

Informative conversation, thanks!
 
You are welcome, but as i said CPRED also states something like "choose your own conspiracy" so Silverhand as crazy terrorist i think also fits regardless of my preferences.
Anyway, I think it was totally intentional of CDPR not to make Johnny an all-white or all-black character, but rather "gray". Like many in Cyberpunk in fact (Yorinobu, Goro, Alt,...) Everyone is free to "choose/decide" :)
 
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