Did Alt know the difference between the new version and the old one? Her statements on Mikoshi (when you meet for the first time) seem like conjecture, and don't line up with her original understanding of the SK AI and what her original plans were (escape back into her body where her consciousness was preserved).
It sounds like a logistics thing tbh. Easier to copy engrams onto a disposable chip and distribute that rather than having to invest into a bunch of conduits connected to the Soulkiller AI or whatever.
To add some stuff to the Soulkiller thing.
Brainware Blowout p.87 goes:
"(...) this program drains the memories of the target into a special data matrix, turning the target into a vegetable and storing his/her intellect, memories and personality in the matrix prison, where it can later be interogated as will."
But then again in the 2020 Sourcebook 2.ed - it's not Johnny pulling the plug on Alt. So there's some vagueness?
What's wierd here again - she knows there's a specific program version in Mikoshi. But when Hanako talks to you in the Point of no turnback - she ask you if you brought Soulkiller? (Saddly i don't remember the earlier meeting with her, and what she could mean exactly there.).
Brainware Blowout p.87 goes:
"(...) this program drains the memories of the target into a special data matrix, turning the target into a vegetable and storing his/her intellect, memories and personality in the matrix prison, where it can later be interogated as will."
But then again in the 2020 Sourcebook 2.ed - it's not Johnny pulling the plug on Alt. So there's some vagueness?
Couldn't say, don't remember her specifically saying anything about it.
What's wierd here again - she knows there's a specific program version in Mikoshi. But when Hanako talks to you in the Point of no turnback - she ask you if you brought Soulkiller? (Saddly i don't remember the earlier meeting with her, and what she could mean exactly there.).
Well yes and no - i mean if you can pull the engram out of Soukiller and have it interact, why even bother with a centralized storing system without air gaps? But at least that's some idea as to the why
Well in the old 2020 sourcebook the Soulkiller program is run on her. But she included a backdoor, making her able to actually control it. Meaning she became a somewhat independent "construct" in the computer, which wanted to re-enter her dormant body. But in that sourcebook story, Toshiro Arasaka topples (because of Johnnys attack) her Cyberdeck and breaks the connection.
After that she lived on as an AI or "construct" or how you'd name it, within the comptuer system. But got free'd in a second attack. Though i wouldn't know in which story and book that exactly happens. But i think it was the nuking?
I actually misremembered the details. From their countdown twitter posts:
The previous post also implicates Johnny as responsible, at least it's how it sounds.
I have played through this part 3 times and I just have no clue what she is referring to. Unless she means Alt Cunningham because Alt was going to give V a subnet address for Alt to use as a backdoor.
This could also imply that the plot originally revolved around stealing the actual soulkiller AI, and when they recorded the dialogue it was too late to get the actress back into the studio for a redo.
The thing with Relic is that the public version of it is solely the version 1.0, and its own use as a "tool of immortality" and "comunicating with the construct" is a massive PR stunt to lure those wealthy and powerful across the board to be willingly subjected to Soulkiller AI, having their mind essentially extracted to Mikoshi and to Arasaka servers. The thing is, if I remember correctly, Arasaka normally uses Soulkiller to extract data and minds of people, including competitors and those whose talent is too valuable to suffer death, for the corp's own use. AFAIK they get the person (either through Net, or physically into the same rig they put Johnny into), then hit them with Soulkiller, and then they dispose of the body. When they go for the Relic and "Secure your Soul" program, the real reason behind it (at least acording to Mike Pondsmith's ingame alter-ego, Mike from Morro Rock) is to learn all secrets and leverage they can from people they normally wouldn't be able to touch. Basically, they would store engram through Mikoshi, then copy it on the relic chip so their client get their loved one to converse with, and then they interrogate the copy (or more precisely, they get into its memory). Relic 1.0 can't rewrite consciousness.
The version 2.0 of Relic, the biochip, though... that was Saburo Arasaka's pet project. It wasn't intended to be given to masses, Hellman himself says it. From what the game tells you, it was developed to allow one man, "the Emperor" himself, Saburo Arasaka, to become immortal by transfering his engram into a new body by rewriting its brain, and what you get ingame into V's head is a testing version with the most disposable engram that Arasaka has on it, that being one Johnny Silverhand, and V is actually the first one on whom it succeeds to even start to rewrite the brain without killing the body outright. That biochip is, in a way, unique, or at least it is of a very, very limited production.
Now the murky, theory part:
As for the DNA problem, I bet it wasn't supposed to be used on a body with much different DNA... the game doesn't specify it, but I guess those original failed attempts were using a cloned body (even if in the "Devil" ending, the one in which you side with Arasaka, it is discovered that a direct relative can be used for this... which leads me to a theory that Arasaka had to clone Johnny's body for those tests). The biochip uses nanites to rewrite host's brain while being pretty agressive about that, and the DNA compatibility is there probably to assure that immune system of the body won't reject those changes.
And now full-on theory time:
Dunno about the copy vs. tranfer aspect, but from what I was able to gather, Soulkiller, in its current form, leaves body of its victim seemingly braindead, with blank mind, as in the process of forcibly extracting all the data from one's brain essentially destroys what is written in it. The version of 2077 (or 2023, for that matter) might not be the same as what Alt was forced to write for Arasaka back in 2013, as Arasaka had time to tinker with it, but it might not be that of a big deal.
Alt made a backdoor in the system, allowing her to return to her body if necessary (in a way reversing the process that Soulkiller uses to extract the data). The only weak point of that was that back then, the body had to be connected directly to the mainframe (Mikoshi wasn't a thing back then), and for the backdoor to work, this connection had to remain. But when Johnny made his rescue attempt and Arasaka used the program on her as she predicted they would, Alt's disembodied engram (copy, consciousness, whatever, the result was, in a way, the same...) got held up in her own escape attempt, so she was unable to start the process when her body got disconnected.
So, what happens to V during the three endings in which you storm Mikoshi (or four if we count the secret one and the one with Rogue as separate) is that the new, AI Alt gets access to the Mikoshi and then V connects to Mikoshi mainframe, and Alt hits him with the program, and then untangles the two personalities, creating a distinct engram of V (a copy of his consciousness, or personality construct, or whatever), and then makes the path through the backdoor in Soulkiller, writing back V (or copy of V, at this point it doesn't matter, because his body got scrubbed of any mind by the Soulkiller) or Johnny into the brain, possibly by recreating the synaptic map of the brain in the moment it got hit by the program, plus adding the few memories from Mikoshi. However, there is the problem with Relic 2.0... it was rewriting V's brain and body with Johnny's DNA and it succeeded. So when Alt's backdoor (oh, damn, that might come out wrong on so many levels) returns V's mind into the body, once again starting Relic's writing process, the autoimmune disorder caused by this begins anew in a body already ravaged by one. So even if the consciousness of V gets back, he still returns to a body in which the brain is being attacked by the immune system, a sort of extremely violent case of multiple sclerosis (and that is actually interesting, because by 2077, there is an ad for a brand new, very costly treatment for multiple sclerosis, AFAIK by Biotechnica, so V's condition might be cureable, something that writers could have put ingame for a purpose).
And for the philosophy, if V is the real V, if engram is just a copy, that is a question for word's religions... From my point of view, the best way it is descried would be after you save the monk... it doesn't depend on what the body is, but if the consciousness on it is able to experience suffering, it is indeed alive and thus it posesses a soul. And the body is a key.
Sorry for a lenghy post.
this post just ...
cdpr even didn't want to show us how really SK works
i'm tired
wiki is not a lore, it just can help you to find smth, not to prove
also logical way is way of speculations, there isn't any logic in broken story with no future
Copy/Real is subjective I think and there are things from the lore that could support both.
Interestingly enough there are a couple of monks in the game you can have a very interesting conversation about the topic of engrams with. If you haven't yet I would recommend it.
It is worth noting that had Alt employed the real Soulkiller process on V as Soulkiller is described in the game V's brain would have been destroyed by the process. So it is safe to assume the real SoulKiller was not in fact used on V or if it was Alt altered it before using it on V.
The way I interpreted it from the game only is this...
When V jacks in at Mikoshi Alt uses "Soulkiller" to separated V from their body along with Johnny. In a way it is much like what Johnny did to Alt by accident when he tried to rescue her from Arasaka Tower. Alt then separates V and Johnny. Then if V choices to enter the Well Alt then reconnects V to their body. That is how I interpreted that event. So from this interpretation of events V is their true self and not a copy.
Just my thoughts no need to go spreading them around
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You did steal it. It is on the Relic.This could also imply that the plot originally revolved around stealing the actual soulkiller AI, and when they recorded the dialogue it was too late to get the actress back into the studio for a redo.
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Yes, but as i quoted, Hellmann isn't making a statement about the function of Soulkiller in the Hotel. He simply calls it an Engram and point out that one was just a communication version (so to say) - 1.0. Whereas the other was the "it will rewrite a brain" version.
So nothing about what the brain gets overwritten with.
Well... a broken story isn't logical, sure. But that doesn't indicate that therefore there can be no broken story.wiki is not a lore, it just can help you to find smth, not to prove
also logical way is way of speculations, there isn't any logic in broken story with no future
In the end it wouldn't really matter, given that we as a player can play V before and after and even hear voice mail, when we're presumably dead.
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Again i think the writing suffers from Alt suprisingly mentioning that ones soul gets killed.
And further by them trying too hard to techno-babble the actual procedure, while wanting to update the lingo to make use of engram and co. Including nano robot magic to rewire a brain, as today it sounds less good to have something simply upload/download a mind or something - but then it still crashes with it's face into that brick wall, when Alt actually needs to do that. Not to mention the "DNA rewrite" - for what, besides having a failing techno babble to explain why V will die??
In at least one ending this is definitively false. There is one person leaving V a voice mail while saying V is walking into the room they are in while they are recording it. So at least in one ending V is clearly still quite alive.
My current take would be, that we're alive in all but "2" endings - Going with Alt; Dying on the roof/when storming Arasaka alone.
But even when we're dead, we get to see the voice mails. So yeah, we're not dead in each ending, but we're definately getting to see voice mails, when the game implicates (as the Devs still could pull a "Oh Johnny moved the hand; Araska just captured V" writing out of the hat to explain it) that V is dead.
Isn't there a difference between Johnny and the SK AI?
Doesn't Victor Vector (the ripperdoc) tell you after The Heist what the biochip does? That it uses nanites to basically replace the structure of your brain with the one saved by the construct on a chip? At least that is from where I have this particular part of the info...
Since we never get to interact with SK I really don't have an answer for you on that. Interesting to think about though.
Yes that's what is said in different parts of the game, for one Victor Vector.
There were actually several versions of the Soulkiller programm....
OFFTOPIC: Actually, that was AFAIK also reinforced by Anders Hellman, who stated that biochip 2.0 was intended to use with already brain-dead body.
