[STORY SPOILERS] The Gripes and Problems with the Story

[Witzzard]

@ArvGuy
Let me thank you for your post and the thought you put into it, but i simply think you're post is more about you not liking the story they're telling, than about the story having problems. But there's still enough truth to it imo.

It's, to my uneducated hobby philosopher mind, an excercise in Zazen. As it simply tells you - you're born, you will die. What does all inbetween mean for you? How will you go down, when it no longer is a distant possibility but you really have to think about it.
So the big failure doesn't lie in representing these endings imo, but in not having different ways of living out the remainder of your time.
If you look at what Misty, the (maybe) wise prophet in this game, tells you, it's all about how you react towards this truth. And as far as i've read are all endings touching on how V touched upon the lifes of others - so not having changed things, isn't totally true, though not hugely part here.

They include all the questions you allude to, with Soulkiller, Arasaka the hyber consumerism ads and all that - and they leave yourself to answer the question about how right all that feels to you.

The main question asked - "What does it all matter when we die?" - is repeated by yourself in your post. And the game heavily implies for many people, as you can see in the post discussing endings, that family and friends are more important than becoming the legend.

But i gotta agree, as i've done before, i also would have preferred another story.
And the biggest flaw for me, is that with the Construct idea, you could have witnessed the whole message, as a side note to Johnnies story, while making another point about V learning from Johnny, actually searching own answers and not dying.
Honestly - the flashbacks as parallels towards V's story, as possible contrast with choices to be made, would have been imo a lot better than what we got.

 

[Techno_Core]

A lot of thing about the story, gameplay and how it all ended makes me think that it's possible that Johnny's story was originally intended to be DLC or a side story.

 

[Qeshen]

Exactly as you say, I could have pretended that V was someone noble, with good intentions and love for others and a strong sense of what is right and what is wrong but that just isn't in the story, someone with the personality of V would INSTANTLY sell their souls to the literal devil in exchange for immortality.. he may realize the mistake after the agreement, but nonetheless he's too short sighted and selfish to realize it in time

Post automatically merged: Dec 28, 2020

My only doubt is if CDPR actually intended this kind of bleakness and strong philosophical points, or if it's just the result of wonky writing and cuts in the story and choice systems. WHat I gathered from the bad ending is that if you live in a horrible world and you want to be the "best" in it, the only result is that you will become the best horrible person that you can be, instead you should have focused on either changing the world (likely dying doing so) or reform your life in some other way, so that you can restrict your aims and maybe not achieve legend status, but do genuine good for you an the people you love, create something pure in an impure and fucked world. The only ending that hints at this is the one with the nomads and I'm glad it's there, but ultimately nomads don't create anything either.. they might be the group with the most humanity left, but they're kind of dying too, unable to settle down and mostly scavenging to live.
The world they created is incredibly depressing and all the bad endings reflect this perfectly, I have no problem with this and I cherish the intentions behind it, but we should have been given the choice to live differently if we wanted to.. it would reinforce the bleakness, show that if the world is fucked beyond belief we cannot play by its crazy rules anymore and must make a stand, even at the cost of our life. This possibility doesn't even cross V's mind, and no doing a suicide mission trying to destroy Arasaka is pointless and evil.. there are dozens of megacorporations ready to take its place, it's useless

My fix? a 4th lifepath or a correction of the nomad one (as meaningless as they are now it shouldn't be too much of a problem) to give us the chance to approach this world from the perspective of someone untainted by it, without implants and with their intact humanity and morality, a perfect representation of the PLAYER, after all..

An escaped futuristic Mormon, who flees his perceived oppression and frugal lifestyle to escape in night city, naive and pure. Then he's tempted by a miriad of things, and the player has the choice to give in or to maintain their humanity, and come to the conclusion that in night city you can't be pure, so you either die or flee, closing the circle and reinforcing the basic premise of the game

.. or are we seriously hinting that the world of cyberpunk is a desirable one, and that it is completely normal and desirable to replace your eyes with an electronic tool, as cool as having an internal scanner and zoom is, I think I will stick to binoculars and thermal cameras (we don't even have thermal vision in the game )

"Bleakness" is not being conveyed here, but despair. Of the two, the bleakness of a world can be properly established to allow a character (and the player) to approach a point of despair, while presenting a no win scenario like the one currently in Cyberpunk is pushing the player's nose into despair.

Despair is paralyzing. It's demoralizing. It's finishing every ending (Including the Star) knowing that V WILL die, regardless, and ending the game not in any triumphant note, not in any satisfied note, not in any fulfilled note, but one of severe disappointment because there is no way to accomplish what the game tells you is your goal, what the lowest bar is: Survive.

Bleakness is not paralyzing, it's a challenge. Bleakness isn't hope, but the absence of fatal failure. Bleakness is counting the cost, looking at everything you might have achieved, all your dreams and hopes, and deciding that all those goals are worthless in the face of thriving in this one field, or just simply surviving. The game tries to cut this fine line, it presents us the question (falsely) of being a legend, or dying as a nobody. They had a thematic element, there, one that was perfect to capitalize on - The legend who crippled Arasaka with the help of Ghosts and AI and the "best" night city has to offer, or the nobody who survived Arasaka and faded into obscurity. They could have easily built the entire game with that thematic duality in mind. Instead, they threw lip service at it.

To add my two cents into the larger conversation, I want to put forward that any future DLC or content should be made exclusively without Johnny in mind. As much of a stand up guy as Keanu is, it felt way too much like the content of the game was shifted to properly accommodate him and the legendary "Johnny Silverhand" when this was not Johnny's story. It felt as though we were meant to be in awe of these legacy characters from a bygone age that I never felt anything for beyond some mild annoyance at being a pawn to an author's darlings. It felt as though V's, and by my extension my, Autonomy rested on these character's say so.

What's sad about that is all the characters that aren't these legacy inserts? They're awesome! The only one I really want a serious change to is Panam's sexuality being Bi instead of straight, but that's only because she's tied to an ending and there's no actual bi option (If you want an Analogue, she should be Cyberpunk's Liara), but beyond that, all of them are awesome. Jackie, Evelyn, T-Bug, Misty, River, they're all engaging characters and I enjoyed my time with them because the story had no legend of theirs to shove down my throat.

 

[Kikinho]

They had a thematic element, there, one that was perfect to capitalize on - The legend who crippled Arasaka with the help of Ghosts and AI and the "best" night city has to offer, or the nobody who survived Arasaka and faded into obscurity. They could have easily built the entire game with that thematic duality in mind. Instead, they threw lip service at it.

You put it perfectly what I was trying to form in my head. Because the whole die as a legend or nobody question definitely wasn't presented the way I assumed it would be.

I would also add that imo Kerry needs a bit more work to be en par with the rest of the love interests. Or better! Make Mateo an actual story character with bi tendencies. I beg you CDPR.

 

[JuanEvil]

You put it perfectly what I was trying to form in my head. Because the whole die as a legend or nobody question definitely wasn't presented the way I assumed it would be.

I would also add that imo Kerry needs a bit more work to be en par with the rest of the love interests. Or better! Make Mateo an actual story character with bi tendencies. I beg you CDPR.

It's a crime that they made Mateo look like THAT and we can't even flirt with him! They need to fix this asap!

 

[Kikinho]

It's a crime that they made Mateo look like THAT and we can't even flirt with him! They need to fix this asap!

I agree. if Mateo would be a bi love interest, the game would become so much better for me in an instance!

 

[CitizenMigraine]

I think Judy has the most wasted potential in resolving V's problem. She figured out how to program a human body to perform Kung Fu through a biochip program and how to merge two consciousnesses onto a single Brain Dance. It's a good set up to reverse engineer the biochip in V's head. She could end up as brilliant as Alt Cunningham, if not smarter.

 

[Felipe_Anargyrou]

My understanding from what Alt said is that the 6 months deadline is more of an estimate and (at least in my ending) V is actively looking for a cure and it looked like she was very positive about finding one in fact.

I felt that CDPR left that open ended and up to the player's imagination. Did V manage to find a cure? It is never stated for sure that V dies after 6 months, not even in the credits.

 

[ArvGuy]

@Witzzard
You are no doubt correct that my previous comment was shadowed by the fact that I really don't like the story. And you are correct that the story indeed sort of hints at all the issues I mention, but rather than really diving into them, it simply lets the player ask those questions and maybe ponder over them, without really providing a proper treatment of any particular issue.

You mention Arasaka as one example of a difficult question asked by the game, and I do not disagree, but that only provides a one-dimensional picture of the issue. That is not a good way to really treat a difficult question. We can ponder it for ourselves, but the game really only points in one direction for an answer. Arasaka bad, Arakasaka is hyper-consumerism and ultra-capitalism, therefore ultra-capitalism bad.

But what do those words even mean? Where is the line where consumerism becomes "hyper", where capitalism becomes "ultra"? Is there such a line? Can capitalism and consumerism be used responsibly? Are there upsides? Is all corporatim necessarily a force for exploitation and evil? Is there potential for good in Arasaka? Is there a potential for more values than just "profit"?

But the story does not go there. It does not nuance the problem, it does not explore any other vantage points, it does not really provide much food for thought, even though I imagine that the writers themselves would probably have loved to go way, way deeper down the rabbit hole.

You mention Zazen. Meditation focused around the meaning of existence? Well, that question is certainly asked by the game, more than a few times too, but the story does not really let one delve into finding an answer, does it? Perhaps one could argue that the "legend" status Jackie wants is a metaphor for blind ambition, but is there any alternative perspective offered by the game? Yes, "family and friends" is nice, and the game stresses this a few times, but "family and friends" ultimately leads to the same outcome as unconditional surrender to Johnny or going corpo or simply eating a bullet. Or falling off the radio tower in the nomad start, barely surviving, and then sprinting into a cactus.

 

[follow_the_song]

I despise the ending. Note the singular there. Ending.

I hate it not necessarily because it's sad or even that it's meaningless (although I find it bizarre to consider the value of selling Kafka's Metamorphosis as a AAA "role playing" game), but because it isn't coherent. The story presents a Problem. You have a chip in your head that is slowly killing you. The whole driving purpose of the story is dealing with that Problem. The end of the game drops that unresolved problem in your lap like a rotting fish. There's no resolution. There's no movement to the story. Just a build up, a wet plop, and a rancid stench of something that should have been digested long ago.

The closest thing to character development and story progression is the "temperance" ending, where you give your body to Johnny and dissolve into cyberspace. And what does *that* ending look like? You die, but in the worst possible way. V the person still exists, but Johnny is now doing the driving. All this to support a contrived narrative where Johnny quits smoking and gives a guy a guitar. This meager, insipid redemption is the best you can hope for in this game in terms of character movement and story resolution. And oh, by the way, it's not you. You are a pendant in a box your friends and family don't even know to visit. You were never the main character in this story. It was the Johnny Silverhand show from the start. You didn't accomplish your stated goal of survival. You didn't even get anything along the way in the process of failing to do so. No meaningful sacrifice. Not even serenity. You remain the same acidic, childish V right through until the end of the story. You don't give your life to save the world. You don't even save yourself. If you're going to kill my character, fine - give me a reason to make it matter, even if only to myself.

Instead... just... plop. Dead fish.

 

[CitizenMigraine]

I would also add that nowhere in the story did I feel like I was becoming a legend of Night City, apart from the scripted dialogue telling me that I was. No reputation gains, business investments, citizen interaction. Hell, the most interaction with a citizen was with a joytoy on Jig-Jig Street that looked and sounded just like Maiko.

 

[maxzorazon]

I will dig this topic, but I discovered today the suicide ending, and was sad to realize it is the best to me.

 

[I_Willenbrock_I]

I will dig this topic, but I discovered today the suicide ending, and was sad to realize it is the best to me.

Yeah. When you rather blow your brains out than to play the endings. Oof.

Commander Shepard would have loved to have the options.

 

[Codecypher]

Sounds to me like you guys are salty cause Mike Pondsmith once again killed your cyberpunk character.

Suck it up choomba cyberpunk is not about happy endings. It's about bad people in a bad place in a bad world doing bad things to bad people. These endings are perfect and I love the game.

Direct quote from Pondsmith: You cant save the world, only yourself.
The fact that you can become alive as v after soul killer is the price you pay in a fucked up world to have a second chance. Copy paste is a copy paste if you copy my text and paste it somewhere it's still my damn text nothing changes about it except the place it's currently pasted at.

Also V already died when Dex shot you. You are pretty much a dead character who dies again unless you wont. Getting to exist as someone is the best you can hope for cause no one in NC cares about your survival and you are insignificant besides your little story. That sells me cyberpunk perfectly.

The game is not here to 'normalize' or 'Happify' the dystopian setting. Hell everything goes wrong from the start basically and that's what I'd expect.

 

[I_Willenbrock_I]

Yeah.
If that is the case, screw any dlc incoming. If the writers want to kill me, I am killing their dlc revenue.

 

[Barsenthor]

Sounds to me like you guys are salty cause Mike Pondsmith once again killed your cyberpunk character.

Suck it up choomba cyberpunk is not about happy endings. It's about bad people in a bad place in a bad world doing bad things to bad people. These endings are perfect and I love the game.

Direct quote from Pondsmith: You cant save the world, only yourself.
The fact that you can become alive as v after soul killer is the price you pay in a fucked up world to have a second chance. Copy paste is a copy paste if you copy my text and paste it somewhere it's still my damn text nothing changes about it except the place it's currently pasted at.

Also V already died when Dex shot you. You are pretty much a dead character who dies again unless you wont. Getting to exist as someone is the best you can hope for cause no one in NC cares about your survival and you are insignificant besides your little story. That sells me cyberpunk perfectly.

The game is not here to 'normalize' or 'Happify' the dystopian setting. Hell everything goes wrong from the start basically and that's what I'd expect.

there is a more profound problem than lack of happy ending.

if you are writing a fiction you are making a pact with the viewer, player, reader. You are going to entertain him/her, they will in exchange pay you give you their time and especially switch off some part of logical thinking.

yet only some part. Game must have rules that both sides follow.
Rules are set at the beginning of the play.
They constraints both viewers and writer.

The rules are as old as story telling it self. You cannot change them if you are aiming for general audience and even for indie play it’s something extremely risky and you need to be skilled to pull this off.

game here is making several mistakes.

- At first it says that you have a choice. You don’t
- It says that you can shape your (this is PC) history - you can’t.
Many crucial things in game are being explained, even technological things. Your problem is not: you are going to die.
It is placed in hyper advanced world. It isn’t, since your character is dying from the disease that could theoretically treated today.

Above all there are more smaller mistakes like for
ex killing characters for the sake of killing them practically off screen. Dex shoot you in the face. Want revenge? Sorry Takamura will flatlined him before you very eyes.
Jacki is your best friend. Why is this we explain in the backstory ad show you in 30 sec montage.
Jacki is also dying in the why you can’t do anything. 30 packs of air hypo? No good. They can treat you tho when you are taking solo a whole Arasaka security.

and the list goes on. And problems compound. The more problems with the story you have to more your logic kicks in and immersion is crumbling.
the more problems you get along the way to more you are disappointed with the pact you sign. The game didn’t stops there since there is a problem with endings that are out of place.
Disappointed for some people will go into disgust.

for many it will leave bad taste.
They won’t be so eager to sign another pact with those people is any ever.

 

[I_Willenbrock_I]

there is a more profound problem than lack of happy ending.

if you are writing a fiction you are making a pact with the viewer, player, reader. You are going to entertain him/her, they will in exchange pay you give you their time and especially switch off some part of logical thinking.

yet only some part. Game must have rules that both sides follow.
Rules are set at the beginning of the play.
They constraints both viewers and writer.

The rules are as old as story telling it self. You cannot change them if you are aiming for general audience and even for indie play it’s something extremely risky and you need to be skilled to pull this off.

game here is making several mistakes.

- At first it says that you have a choice. You don’t
- It says that you can shape your (this is PC) history - you can’t.
Many crucial things in game are being explained, even technological things. Your problem is not: you are going to die.
It is placed in hyper advanced world. It isn’t, since your character is dying from the disease that could theoretically treated today.

Above all there are more smaller mistakes like for
ex killing characters for the sake of killing them practically off screen. Dex shoot you in the face. Want revenge? Sorry Takamura will flatlined him before you very eyes.
Jacki is your best friend. Why is this we explain in the backstory ad show you in 30 sec montage.
Jacki is also dying in the why you can’t do anything. 30 packs of air hypo? No good. They can treat you tho when you are taking solo a whole Arasaka security.

and the list goes on. And problems compound. The more problems with the story you have to more your logic kicks in and immersion is crumbling.
the more problems you get along the way to more you are disappointed with the pact you sign. The game didn’t stops there since there is a problem with endings that are out of place.
Disappointed for some people will go into disgust.

for many it will leave bad taste.
They won’t be so eager to sign another pact with those people is any ever.

The thing is.
People can let a lot of things slide but the point of no return will come. At some point, the immersion breaks and even the smallest logical error becomes visible.

My immersion broke when I realise that doing everything to get a "better ending" will still result in plot-cancer that does it even male sense with in the lore of the epilogue itself.

 

[Witzzard]

@ArvGuy
Thanks for your answer

@Witzzard
You are no doubt correct that my previous comment was shadowed by the fact that I really don't like the story. And you are correct that the story indeed sort of hints at all the issues I mention, but rather than really diving into them, it simply lets the player ask those questions and maybe ponder over them, without really providing a proper treatment of any particular issue.

You mention Arasaka as one example of a difficult question asked by the game, and I do not disagree, but that only provides a one-dimensional picture of the issue. That is not a good way to really treat a difficult question. We can ponder it for ourselves, but the game really only points in one direction for an answer. Arasaka bad, Arakasaka is hyper-consumerism and ultra-capitalism, therefore ultra-capitalism bad.

Yes... it doesn't deliver an answer to the questions and certainly isn't a social analysis of those problems.
But then, what specific work in the Cyberpunk genre have you experienced that actually goes into real depth? As much as i like Bladerunner / Do androids dream of electirc sheep or Neuromancer - i don't see them actually doing what you describe.
That doesn't mean, newer works shouldn't try to extend what they do. But still..
In specific regards towards Arasakas role - see the next answer

But what do those words even mean? Where is the line where consumerism becomes "hyper", where capitalism becomes "ultra"? Is there such a line? Can capitalism and consumerism be used responsibly? Are there upsides? Is all corporatim necessarily a force for exploitation and evil? Is there potential for good in Arasaka? Is there a potential for more values than just "profit"?

You're mirroring to an extend what Goro asks V, when they're discussing Arasaka and what Corps do towards the world.
-> Yes Corporations do bad stuff, but they also employ people who making a living with that.

As to actual lines - i'd have again to ask, what answer do you think a game could actually provide?

And if you look at Johnny Silverhands lifestyle - that's a lifestyle most old soviet states would have deemed evil consumerism and capitalism (at least i've gathered that by descriptions of musicians from the former German Democratic Republic). Yet he's displayed as the poster rebel against the evil corporations, who nearly beat one down and survived.
So the authors clearly implicate a line. But as with most works - the question how much freedom is possible/enough is there even such a think as limited freedom - is rarely deeply and insightfully discussed. What most do, as Cyberpunk 2077 imo does - is pointing out that temperance and day to day evaluation of what might be right and good is something we should do.

But the story does not go there. It does not nuance the problem, it does not explore any other vantage points, it does not really provide much food for thought, even though I imagine that the writers themselves would probably have loved to go way, way deeper down the rabbit hole.

Again i completly understand that you'd have liked a more detailed, more mental experience.
But it's PUNK. And maybe me not being part of the culture might no speak from me, but i've never experienced punk as something mentally fullfilling that takes time to make nuanced critique.
Then again, there's also a point where we all start in terms of where we stand on these paths of thought. And because Cyberpunk works are quite generally treating the same path, it's hard to reach new insights. We're all standing more or less directly in front of the wall and don't be lead to it any longer. Therefore CDPR going from Braindances, over edited braindances, towards mind copies, towards mind melting, AI and so on - doesn't seem like a journey any longer to most.

You mention Zazen. Meditation focused around the meaning of existence? Well, that question is certainly asked by the game, more than a few times too, but the story does not really let one delve into finding an answer, does it? Perhaps one could argue that the "legend" status Jackie wants is a metaphor for blind ambition, but is there any alternative perspective offered by the game? Yes, "family and friends" is nice, and the game stresses this a few times, but "family and friends" ultimately leads to the same outcome as unconditional surrender to Johnny or going corpo or simply eating a bullet. Or falling off the radio tower in the nomad start, barely surviving, and then sprinting into a cactus.

Yes medition in relation towards the meaning of existance. Whereas one mayor point is always that it's passing and changing.
Now a lot of religions are going into how your behaviour before death will earn you a reward after the passing. In other philosophies, that's simply less the case. Meaning if you choose family over legend - such a choice isn't rewarded by the universe. The reward has to lie in itself. And therefore it's a personal answer. But again, i think the game is quite honestly telling you that glory and revange aren't great things... therefore presenting their answer to a degree.

So again as far as i can tell - everyone tells V what is going to happen. Death. And we're shown a character that's clinging to the hope of it not arriving. And i'd describe a lot of characters not actually believing when they say there might be hope, but rather not wanting to destroy Vs hopes. Well ... besides Alt as an AI and some others who want to abuses V hope for their own good.
And i've become more and more certain that the devs were to a degree treating this zazen path, given how we actually have a sidequest with meditation. With the tarot cards and mistys description of what paths there are.

But then again i think there's a lot that could have been done better. A lot is muddy. And if they're shifting towards giving happy endings - which i wouldn't even be against - then that whole thing would be even less there.

So i've to agree, even though it likely didn't sound a lot like it.
I would have also liked a game with a different story, maybe less therefore more nuanced outlooks. And i certainly think there's somewhat of a split between the story wanting some concilation of V and Silverhand and making 50% about that, while on the other hand wanting the universal truth of death and how it's inevitable, without letting you off the hook with your try to fight against that - which is odd.

 

[CTPhipps]

I'm like 90% sure that the Casino will be one of the DLC and the point will be going there to get your body fixed.

 

[Aasimar-X]

Dunno...
Silverhand tells you that Soulkiller isnt there at the end...
If you give the Body back to V. he/she whents into space on a mission send by... well Mr. Blue eyes..

Mr. Blue Eyes

Mr. Blue Eyes is a mysterious figure involved in the politics and life of Night City. Through the tasks given to V by Elizabeth and Jefferson Peralez, it is possible to find that a certain "shady" organization has inserted itself into the life of the up and coming mayoral candidate. By the time...

cyberpunk.fandom.com

Blue Eyes holds his side of the bargain if V will succeed on the mission...

Dunno who Mr. Blue Eyes is... but i guess hes also an AI like Art Cunningham...
and maybe he can help him/her...

my guess, we will find out in a DLC
and iam super exited