[STORY SPOILERS] The Gripes and Problems with the Story

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What options should be explored // should have been explored?


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I know that this is a huge wall of text (bigger than the black wall hur hur hur hur) so if you want to skip to the end where I mention how I would have ended the game then by all means!

I beat the game & saw every possible ending. I want to say that I loved the middle 80%. The start was kind of meh and the ending was a let down but everything in between was fantastic. I completed all of the side quests and open world missions and consumed every piece of in game content. I mention this not as a lowkey flex but to say that I put in the effort to absorb as much of the story as possible and even with that due diligence the endings were still so random/generic.

I don't care that V dies. There's a certain other big well known game series where the protagonist dies and it feels surprising and significant.

To me there are two clear reasons why the ending was unsatisfying:

1. V's death isn't revelatory or significant. The death of V does not affect the world at large in any significant way. You dying does not bring down Arasaka nor does it shift night city. There is no grand effigy erected in your honor. The world goes on with or without you... your dent, more like a bump.

It's clear that the writers in the late stage were inspired by West World. From the music selection to the ending with Yori witnessing the Arasaka empire crumble on screen as he says "Violent delights have violent ends". Then there's the ending where you're James Delo's under going repetitive scrutiny in your hermetically sealed room. These threads worked in Westworld which established nuanced themes across several seasons. Good storytelling is the result of simple math 2+2 = x where X is an unexpected but reasonable outcome. This leads me to my second criticism which is that not only was X unsatisfactory but the 2+2 part needed some love as well.

2. For a world built on a cyberpunk foundation, established by one of the founders (Mike Pondsmith) the integration of cyberspace was severely lacking. Here in lies my suggestion for the bridge to a better story arc...

When I was taken to the voodoo boys metro tunnel i thought, "awww yes, here we go... here's where we get into the meat of the cyberpunk threads". I've got the world's best netrunner gang about to dunk me into the "real world" matrix style... got me really excited. We jacked in and as I stood in front of the black wall... this mythical thing that i had read so much about from datashards... I thought... holy crap that's it? That's the fabled black wall? It could have been an awesome moment like looking over the cliffside at nightcity for the first time. It looked insignificant. It indicated to me that not enough effort was placed upon establishing the core pillar of the cyberpunk genre - cyberspace.

Had they really put more effort into fleshing out cyberspace as an entire inner world they would have tee'd themselves up nicely for a far more satisfying and relevant final conflict. Instead we got endings that felt kind of generic. I want you to imagine this game released under the title GTA2077... this is how I would have imagined the endings to have been:

- future thug wakes up in bed... rich.
- future thug walks away from it all... takes the bus
- future thug drives off into the distance with his nomad waifu

Where's the ending that ties in cyberspace in a meaningful way? Where's netrunner IceT and mr Cyber Dolphin?

I wanted to see more of Alt and her world. I wanted to see all of the souls that she reaped from soulkiller (ending of evagelion?)... what does the world beyond the blackwall look like? So much effort was put into establishing the great wars between Arasaka, Militech, and the rebels but the real war would be in cyberspace. It would be terrifying to witness mass death through AI driven cyber attacks, you know world building... Why does cyberspace look like voxel matrix? Make alt more significant and integrated in the story instead of a mcguffin... Make the true war waged between massive corporations in cyberspace and we're the rebellion guided by the OG rebel himself - Johnny Silverhand.

TL;DR: Final thought... to reiterate we needed the end to feel significant or revelatory. We got neither... you die.. so what... night city goes on without you. I would have made the end about the bigger struggle for control of cyberspace. The corps used it as their ultimate weapon to reign in the world. The black wall is the fragile pact that ended the corpo wars to keep everyone in check... if the corporations overstep then the flood gates open... recent events edge us closer to that possibility. Alt Cunningham has spent the last 50 years as the guardian of the black wall... the all powerful AI with the power to destroy the world. You have progressed through the story of cyberpunk2077 and are given the ultimate choice. Do you bring down the wall or do you sacrifice yourself or johnny to ensure that the wall continues for the next millenia?
 

Guest 4406876

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Idk I liked the 2 endings I got no matter the other options. The only reason I didn't refund the game is that I liked the endings and the city that's amazing , and shows basic knowledge of Dystopian themes.

Doesn't have to be happy.
 
Bottom line - V needs a way to kill Alt, who is the real villain of the story.

I don't know if Alt is the "real villain" but there is a lot left out of that part of the story. Like why everyone, including V, just glosses over the fact that her soul is going to get destroyed? Shouldn't a soul mean something, isn't that a major theme in cyberpunk?

At that point V should be able to go "wow, hold the fuck up, we're not destroying my soul" and maybe you have to choose between survival at all as a construct, or keeping your true soul but dying six months later. Tough choice, but it would be an actual choice to make. Instead of dying, dying, or dying.
 

Guest 4406876

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I don't know if Alt is the "real villain" but there is a lot left out of that part of the story. Like why everyone, including V, just glosses over the fact that her soul is going to get destroyed? Shouldn't a soul mean something, isn't that a major theme in cyberpunk?

At that point V should be able to go "wow, hold the fuck up, we're not destroying my soul" and maybe you have to choose between survival at all as a construct, or keeping your true soul but dying six months later. Tough choice, but it would be an actual choice to make. Instead of dying, dying, or dying.
Because they are not sure of it, plus not even Johnny that's a construct wants to believe this and this raises even more questions. This is the only thing to really appreciate about the story. The ending.
There's no way you can be sure of what is what, and all that is left to do is to keep going no matter what, or else what can you do? Commit suicide.
The end is inevitable, all the time, and CP77 does a really good job in making this clear.
That is , besides the city, the only real good thing about this game.
Plus I'm not even sure V is still V in the endings I got, even before who-did-it-knows-what.

Btw ALT behaviour just suggests what is obvious during the process. "Johnny" might have a different perspective or just choosed to not believe that because of the behaviour his real counterpart had in life, that reflects in the engram.
 
I felt that the endings made everything pointless. No choice you made ever had a real impact on the ending. Had V just sat down and taken the medicine, he would've lived almost as much. Or had he taken the other medicine Jhonny would've take over the body and that would be it. The ending was so depressing, and having no way to avoid that is just sad to see in a game like this. I'm really wishing they see that and release DLC's where you can have other options. Right now I'm having the same feelings I had with Mass Effect 3 ending, and we all know how that went down.
 
Absolutely. After all, I think the outcome of what is "correct" largely depends on what the ideals of V are, or even the state V has found himself // herself in. If V is that desperate for survival, it makes sense, especially if V has something he // she really doesn't want to lose. Say, fear of never being able to see a loved one, for example. The risk of merging with Johnny at that point is suddenly a considerable price to pay.

But if the right cards are in hand, suddenly ousting Johnny seems much more appealing, should V be in the position to do so.

At the end of the day, the utter bleakness of the story's ending simply became too overbearing and gave us an extremely unsatisfactory ending.
Technically this "merging" has already happened according to the dialogue I got with Johnny when I did the Arasaka ending last night. He said that the parts of V that made her V and parts of him that made him Johnny don't exist anymore, they are one and the same.
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I felt that the endings made everything pointless. No choice you made ever had a real impact on the ending. Had V just sat down and taken the medicine, he would've lived almost as much. Or had he taken the other medicine Jhonny would've take over the body and that would be it. The ending was so depressing, and having no way to avoid that is just sad to see in a game like this. I'm really wishing they see that and release DLC's where you can have other options. Right now I'm having the same feelings I had with Mass Effect 3 ending, and we all know how that went down.
I feel that the suicide ending is actually the best solution. Only choice where your not putting anyone else in danger, and really it feels like the only ending after Nomad where V has any real agency with her choice......Its a shitty choice, but it "feels" like the right one to me. She was outta options,but she didn't die alone, she had her best friend go into the void with her. Kinda poetic when you think about it.
 
My gripe is that they made the game pretty much about V trying to hit it big and becoming rich, but then go a d kill him very fast making everything you do pretty effin irrelevant. The main story wanted to convey a message ? Fine, but it made the rest of the game irrelevant and and pretty much unreplayable. Considering this was supposed to have high replayability value, it was pretty big freakin mistake.
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They killed main char in Mass Effect, Dragon Age, RDR, and even Shadow of the Colossus, but those games story were not all about the main charcter trying to survive.

I guess some people do have a twisted sense of taste, but like you said, to each their own.
They did but Mass Effect killed the character in the 3rd game. DAO killed the character, I do not remember DAI killing the Inquisitor off (maybe different ending than i got) RDR and Shadow are action adventure games so its more expected since those games are supposed to be more linear.

The problem also is, this game dumps you back into the world after you die and is like go finish up your side missions. That is a major issue.
 
Because they are not sure of it,.

Alt literally says she is not Alt anymore, she is just data and processes.

And no, the theme of this game is definitely not nihilism or that everything is inevitable. I think it might actually be impossible for a videogame to be about nihilism, since the very nature of videogames depends on the player being proactive.
 
I finished the game and tried two endings.

I 100% understand why CDPR would make it so there is no real positive ending in the game... but at the same time, sure, while having only bad or bittersweet endings available is interesting, it honestly just fucking sucks, let's be real here.

With games like this, we want to have some satisfaction and conclusion. To us (or me at least), V dying no matter what (which, I firmly believe happens right when Soulkiller is used -- a copy of your consciousness is not you, it is a separate being that emulates you. Your consciousness dies. In other terms, if you cloned yourself perfectly, you do not simultaneously experience your consciousness and your clones, and thereby, an engram is a copy, and you area dead) kind of defeats the whole purpose. V his/her/theirself sums it up at the very end, "Everything. All we did -- it was pointless".

At the same time, part of it makes sense -- Johnny response later to V wondering about "a happier ending for everyone involved" is to say "for folks like us? Wrong city, wrong people."

I really do feel like there needs to be some option in the game to actually save V, and I feel like such an option in a way would be fitting for the game, because such an option would be the only possible win condition -- every other outcome is Night City "winning", essentially. In other terms, I feel that many players, myself included, feel that, since we're playing a game where we seek, in some way, to be empowered, that it would be satisfying to have some way to actually become empowered to break the chains of Night City and of the Relic. Whether this means peaceful cohabitation between V and Johnny, be it successfully splitting Johnny from V without killing the actual, real V, or otherwise, I think doesn't matter in the end. What I think is deserved is some ending that doesn't feel pointless, and some ending whereby we can fully claim that we are the "right people" to survive, leave, and give a "fuck you" to Night City.

For the time being, I think the only real happy ending is leaving with Panam, either with Panam romance as male V or with Judy romance as female V. The other options (become prisoner to Arasaka, let Johnny take control of your body, become a legendary merc, or commit suicide) all, to me at least, seem incredibly toxic and depressing, and even then the Panam ending is incredibly toxic and depressing even if there is some temporary happiness because V doesn't exist any more, only a copy of him/her/them, which is fundamentally not the same.

I really love the game's story and narrative, and I find the endings all heavily impactful emotionally, but god damn if it doesn't feel frustrating and unfulfilling to not be able to actually achieve any ending with any positive results without head-canoning some miracle that miraculously saves V.
 
They did but Mass Effect killed the character in the 3rd game. DAO killed the character, I do not remember DAI killing the Inquisitor off (maybe different ending than i got) RDR and Shadow are action adventure games so its more expected since those games are supposed to be more linear.

The problem also is, this game dumps you back into the world after you die and is like go finish up your side missions. That is a major issue.
DAO character can die, but that's just one of the endings.
 
For the time being, I think the only real happy ending is leaving with Panam, either with Panam romance as male V or with Judy romance as female V. The other options (become prisoner to Arasaka, let Johnny take control of your body, become a legendary merc, or commit suicide) all, to me at least, seem incredibly toxic and depressing, and even then the Panam ending is incredibly toxic and depressing even if there is some temporary happiness because V doesn't exist any more, only a copy of him/her/them, which is fundamentally not the same.
In the Arasaka ending, you can choose to go back to Earth instead of being uploaded to the mind prison, but you still die in six months, and this time it's as someone who has suffered so badly from the surgery you can't even solve a 2x2 Rubik's cube.

I think the Arasaka ending kinda shows a fundamental problem I have with the endings: in any other game, siding with Arasaka would be how you live -- you work with the "bad guys", and help bring the old man back, undoing any damage done to Arasaka throughout the whole game. This should be the price you pay for living, but the endings of this game don't feel like consequences, they feel like punishments; you didn't choose the ending we wanted you to? Fine, fuck you, the bad guys win and V still dies anyway, but an even more miserable death than the other endings.

Edit: I also appreciate any post that points out the implications of Soulkiller. it's use doesn't get taken seriously enough by the plot or the players.
 
I think I can understand the gripe a lot of people have with this narrative and the endings. I myself like good and happy endings (maybe thats why I was able to get my Nomad Panam/Judy ending <3).

But aside from that, I wonder if anyone really appreciated and THOUGHT about the process, the "missions", the experience, knowledge and dilemmas you had on your way towards the ending.
I won't deny most topics were handled rather short or maybe too little to fully "immerse" into that one. But you got snippets of a lot of things you can talk and discuss about.
Take for example the Storyline with the detective,
where you have to find the hidden webpage of the piper.. the one who "seduces" teenagers to come to the farm just to end up as things. ... well, what I wanted to point out is, if anyone looked through the pages in the computer and the several pages, where the users talk about different opinions and topics. in every topic one or two take kind of several stances, give elaborate hindsight, just to see them troll or flame horribly in another post on another topic. This was just so.. interesting to see, because i think this might be a hint towards "the internet culture" with each one living in their own bubble (or something like that)

Lots of times there is also the question in the air which talks about ones own opinion about several things. Forgiveness, what is humanity, beliefs, religion and existence of something which you can't describe. also hope, struggling, surviving. AIs finding and searching for humanity, humans abandoning, forgetting and losing humanity due to several reasons.

This all leads to a question of the ending:
What if Alt didn't tell you, that you were already soulkilled?
I mean of course we know it, because she told us. But if you didn't know, that you are just an Engramm of your former self... do you believe yourself to be dead or still alive? Are you able to acknowledge yourself to be you in this state?

Then talking from my nomad/panam/judy playthrough where I left of into the sunset, where I was told by lt that "probably" have only 6 more months to live and I am still searching... there now comes also the Tarot from Misty into the picture, where she lays her cards a last time and if you believe or doubt the premonition of the cards or not.

I know there might be a need for more explorable endings, and I also think just getting dumped to the last save from before isn't really the way to go, I still think the endings in itself are just oozing the theme of the game and "cyberpunk". (even if it's not really a happy/sappy/satisfying end)

My opinion is also, that not V, nor Johnny is the MC of this game. It's Night City.
Someone said something similar before, but: The outcome and actions of V are just a bump/dent in the time of NC.

This is just seen from the story/progression/end side of things and didn't want to disregard anyone in the process.
(hope my english is good enough, because non native speaker)
 
I hate the endings. No need to belabor why, since your write up is very good.

It's almost as bad as the star child + red/green/blue ending originally in Mass Effect 3. I say "almost", only because that lazy disaster of a conclusion was at the end of three long games building up a character, rather than a single short one.
 
Oh, I can totally understand that. I played ME too and at the end I was like "FUCK" which way do I go, struggled and then decided and was rather confused (sad) that everything was the same no matter what. But I still liked the later added epilogue for the endings which saved this at last.
 
I played a character across three games, watched her die at the end of the third game and then got the worst send off in video game history. :LOL:

I'm okay with V's and Cyberpunk's ending.

Sorry you didn't like it, but to each their own. Have a good day.
I agree completely with the first part of your post. But that doesn't keep me from also hating the way CP2077 ends. Just because it isn't ME3 bad, doesn't mean it isn't bad.
 
I've literally lost sleep over this decision because there's no good option. The seemingly best option is to let Johnny have your body and live a long life since the "damage" is an alteration to make the body suitable for Johnny. What about the romances then? Not fair to V either. I've decided that I'm just going to pretend that V was cured completely and goes on to live a long life with his love. S#### cdpr's crappy storytelling.
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I don't wanna sound like a jerk but CD Projekt Red telling us we get different endings is kinda like a joke now.

Different in what way exactly? The narration? V dies in all of them. Reminds me of the Mass Effect 3 clusterfuck. Game is great and all but sorry CD Projekt Red.
The fact i can't save V no matter what i do makes all endings the same. Pointless.

And before someone gets me wrong. Sure you should have Endings where V dies as Night City is that kind of place. But not all of them. If you tell me a game has 10 endings (just an example) all 10 of them have to end different. If all 10 of them end the same way you have 1 ending and 10 different narrations of it. But it stays the same ending. So Cyberpunk has 2 Endings. V dying and Johnny going into cyberspace or Johnny taking over and V dying (going into cyberspace is the same as dying)
And if you want to be specific it has only one ending. V dying. Cause the moment soulkiller activates V is dead and only his copy can either go to cyberspace and give johnny the body or the copy of V goes to the corpse of the original V and dying 6 months later. Awesome options.

But before you think i just bash this game.
I really love 99% the game.
The atmosphere, the quests, The fact you can romance ppl and that even some are out for you if you have the wrong gender (like in real life when u hit on a lesbian, fail and then become best buddys with her), the combat system, the quickhacks (I am the master of killing without being in the room) the cars and motorcycles you can buy, the street races, the MUSIC (GOD DAMN THE MUSIC IS AWESOME) the sheer visuals you get when u stand on a roof and just watch the city being alive is breathtaking and i dont have a graphic card that can do raytracing so it could look way better i assume which is mind blowing,
The fact that many different languages are spoken and you can understand them with translation and literally learn some words or sentences while playing the game. The interior of cars, The side quest with judy diving in a sunken city was awesome, The amount of time i spent just driving around the city, The fact you can operate yourself to an absolute machine (yet i wished some of us could have gone overboard like maelstrom ppl do)

Stuff i missed but should be in the game.
- A faction that hates implants of any kind and wants pure human flesh untouched.
- Why can't i remove body parts and replace them? You know like a metal arm or something?
- Maybe i am dumb but how do you do a wheelie with the motorcycle? For the love of god i can't figure it out.
- Tuning cars. This has to be added.
- Getting rich without glitching or abusing the system. Don't tell me the odds tell me how much i get before i do the job.
- Way more and i mean way more money making ways.
- Street races should not end with the questline i want to continue to race till someone dies. Hopefully not me.
- An Option to toggle walking on and off.
- More romance options for everyone.
- More endings for everyone. Idc if i need 100 hours+ to get a happy ending. Just give me one i can grind towards.
- A weapon craft system overhaul where i can switch or replace parts.
- More stuff to do in our apartments, I don't know why cant my GF/BF not come over?
- Night City is the city that never sleeps so where i can i do that party with drugs and stuff till my head explodes? Exactly.
- The option to get so hammered you wake up naked somewhere the next day having no idea what happend.

I could go on but the post is already way longer then i wanted to. Point is the game is great but there are many things missing and the endings need to be adressed. Cause after playing the game i feel depressed about the story and i never had a CD Projekt Red game where i didnt have multiple playthroughs. But as for now the motivation to play it again is literally 0.
I'm guessing this game will be one of those that gets stuff added regularly to make it better and better. The endings are the most important imo but just random fun side-activities would be great too
 
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Most AAA games only have one ending with numerous variations upon that ending. I'll use Mass Effect 3 as an example again. BW advertised numerous endings, but when the game was done people complained how there were only three endings. Fact, ME3 had one ending. Shepard defeated the Reapers. Everything else was just a variation on that theme. In Cyberpunk 2077, V dies (or will die) at the end no matter what. Everything else was a variation on that ending.

Here's my unpopular opinion. Devs need to stop advertising multiple endings. Just have one ending w/ a multitude of variations on that ending. Y'know what, that's okay. Cyberpunk 2077 takes a number of divergent paths to V's death, far more than most games I've played.
 
I asked in another thread but i'll ask here again.

Did anyone not allow johnny to take over V? I ask because in the menu screen you have 3 tarot cards with percentages at the bottom representing V, Johnny and Death (i think) and im wondering if they make a difference
How you treat Johnny really only makes a difference if you want to go for the secret endings, I believe.
 
The whole game is about the unforgiving nature of the city you live in, and you want a sugarcoated ending? They use you for their own purposes and this is what you get. Plus they tell you in the beginning that you are a fool...
 
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