[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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Hmm... I think that the "bad" ending as everyone keeps referring to it as, is actually the default one and I appreciate it for what it is. V, struggling against techno corps, raging against it with ghosts of the past, still ends up dead to it. I like it actually but not being able to cut the head off at the opportunity made me cry as did the "phone a friend" moments.

The Panam endings seem a little bog standard and a lot of what people seem to want - a concept of merging - has been done, already (just saying).

The Rogue one is almost predictable in its presence. Isn't this the "good" ending everyone keeps asking for anyway, if you look at it? You can't have so many ending options where our hero dies to have one where he doesn't. Breaks continuity for sequels. Besides, I love tales in which everyone dies.

I really wanted to see more involvement of completed aspects and background as variations or segue in the endings. I wanted to be able to screw over Arasaka while trying to stop soulkiller or something.
 
First ending I did was Johnnys way and Judy leave at the end plus the, obvious, place of glory suicide in space were a really depressing ending of 50 hours of game time.

I do concure with most of what is said here but I have a slightly different thought about the Soulkiller.

It does kill V, yes, however Soulkiller is meant to copy the mind of the host to transfer it to the Relic / Mikoshi, or a new body ( yes, looking at you Saburo), which give it its name as it does not copy ones soul.

Now if we think in technical ways, its the similar as to copying an operating system to a new machine. To do so the running system has to be stopped, or suspended ( flatlined V ), to have access to one fixed state of it and not having to deal with ongoing thought processes or memories being formed.

If V decides to return to their body its not a new body, its still the original and their old mind / brain is still there, just suspended by the Soulkiller processes. Alt uploads the engram to the cybernatic part and may that what the nanites had affected, thus V knows what had transpired in Mikoshi, and reanimates the body again thus restarting the brain as well, just like the nanites did when Dex shot them.

Given this it does shine a different light on the endings based on what Hellman says during the Arisaka ending "Well, you don't have a whole team and facility dedicated to just you.", meaning that there would be a possible way to fix the damage of the Relic if they would want to.

So based on that the endings feel like:

Suicide = End of the line.

All Johnny take over = Basicly the same as suicide for V, not sure if I should feel happy for Johnny to get a new chance, one which he didn't really deserves.

Arisaka Ending = They don't want to spend money on V, thus going the easy way of offering to store them on Mikoshi or sending them off as a vegetable.

Johnnys Way / Fear the Reaper = Though V may have a romance (if you choose to) at their side they are still alone and stuck in their old ways, possibly blind to other options too as they are still the Lone Wolf. They have lots of money and connection but noone is really supporting their search and Night City is a dead end as Arisaka is left in ruins.

Panam = V is no longer alone, not the Lone Wolf caged in a city of neon anymore. Its one of the reasons Atlanta (Streetkid) or Arisaka Security (Corpo) didn't work, V had noone there either. They have a family now, a close and supporting friend (possibly their romance option at their side) plus all the nomands connections outside the city. Going back on Hellmans remark, here V has one of the 2 requirements to survive already, and from ingame commentaries and the Cyberpunk Wiki a very good bet for the 2nd would be the medical facilities in Sweden.
 
First ending I did was Johnnys way and Judy leave at the end plus the, obvious, place of glory suicide in space were a really depressing ending of 50 hours of game time.

I do concure with most of what is said here but I have a slightly different thought about the Soulkiller.

It does kill V, yes, however Soulkiller is meant to copy the mind of the host to transfer it to the Relic / Mikoshi, or a new body ( yes, looking at you Saburo), which give it its name as it does not copy ones soul.

Now if we think in technical ways, its the similar as to copying an operating system to a new machine. To do so the running system has to be stopped, or suspended ( flatlined V ), to have access to one fixed state of it and not having to deal with ongoing thought processes or memories being formed.

If V decides to return to their body its not a new body, its still the original and their old mind / brain is still there, just suspended by the Soulkiller processes. Alt uploads the engram to the cybernatic part and may that what the nanites had affected, thus V knows what had transpired in Mikoshi, and reanimates the body again thus restarting the brain as well, just like the nanites did when Dex shot them.

Given this it does shine a different light on the endings based on what Hellman says during the Arisaka ending "Well, you don't have a whole team and facility dedicated to just you.", meaning that there would be a possible way to fix the damage of the Relic if they would want to.

So based on that the endings feel like:

Suicide = End of the line.

All Johnny take over = Basicly the same as suicide for V, not sure if I should feel happy for Johnny to get a new chance, one which he didn't really deserves.

Arisaka Ending = They don't want to spend money on V, thus going the easy way of offering to store them on Mikoshi or sending them off as a vegetable.

Johnnys Way / Fear the Reaper = Though V may have a romance (if you choose to) at their side they are still alone and stuck in their old ways, possibly blind to other options too as they are still the Lone Wolf. They have lots of money and connection but noone is really supporting their search and Night City is a dead end as Arisaka is left in ruins.

Panam = V is no longer alone, not the Lone Wolf caged in a city of neon anymore. Its one of the reasons Atlanta (Streetkid) or Arisaka Security (Corpo) didn't work, V had noone there either. They have a family now, a close and supporting friend (possibly their romance option at their side) plus all the nomands connections outside the city. Going back on Hellmans remark, here V has one of the 2 requirements to survive already, and from ingame commentaries and the Cyberpunk Wiki a very good bet for the 2nd would be the medical facilities in Sweden.

So an alternative form of defibrillation? If we died from Dex and came back, how is any different at Mikoshi?

I actually really like this perspective!
 
Personally i got no problem with the overall theme of what they're doing. Because Death is the inevitable, which a lot of technological ideas are trying to tackle. So tackling what it all means, is quite the norm of cyberpunk.
I just would have preferred a different story, one more grounded in the you can't win against humanities greedy nature which fuels the mega corps. So you battling of Arisaka bulldozing your neighbourhood only in the end to have a newscaster talk about how Miltech now sees a good chance to grow in the zone that Arisaka wasn't able to - is more what i'd like to get.
 
First ending I did was Johnnys way and Judy leave at the end plus the, obvious, place of glory suicide in space were a really depressing ending of 50 hours of game time.

I do concure with most of what is said here but I have a slightly different thought about the Soulkiller.

It does kill V, yes, however Soulkiller is meant to copy the mind of the host to transfer it to the Relic / Mikoshi, or a new body ( yes, looking at you Saburo), which give it its name as it does not copy ones soul.

Now if we think in technical ways, its the similar as to copying an operating system to a new machine. To do so the running system has to be stopped, or suspended ( flatlined V ), to have access to one fixed state of it and not having to deal with ongoing thought processes or memories being formed.

If V decides to return to their body its not a new body, its still the original and their old mind / brain is still there, just suspended by the Soulkiller processes. Alt uploads the engram to the cybernatic part and may that what the nanites had affected, thus V knows what had transpired in Mikoshi, and reanimates the body again thus restarting the brain as well, just like the nanites did when Dex shot them.

Given this it does shine a different light on the endings based on what Hellman says during the Arisaka ending "Well, you don't have a whole team and facility dedicated to just you.", meaning that there would be a possible way to fix the damage of the Relic if they would want to.

So based on that the endings feel like:

Suicide = End of the line.

All Johnny take over = Basicly the same as suicide for V, not sure if I should feel happy for Johnny to get a new chance, one which he didn't really deserves.

Arisaka Ending = They don't want to spend money on V, thus going the easy way of offering to store them on Mikoshi or sending them off as a vegetable.

Johnnys Way / Fear the Reaper = Though V may have a romance (if you choose to) at their side they are still alone and stuck in their old ways, possibly blind to other options too as they are still the Lone Wolf. They have lots of money and connection but noone is really supporting their search and Night City is a dead end as Arisaka is left in ruins.

Panam = V is no longer alone, not the Lone Wolf caged in a city of neon anymore. Its one of the reasons Atlanta (Streetkid) or Arisaka Security (Corpo) didn't work, V had noone there either. They have a family now, a close and supporting friend (possibly their romance option at their side) plus all the nomands connections outside the city. Going back on Hellmans remark, here V has one of the 2 requirements to survive already, and from ingame commentaries and the Cyberpunk Wiki a very good bet for the 2nd would be the medical facilities in Sweden.

This point of view is actually mindblowing.
However, if this turns out to be true, who's in control of V's body? Both Original V and Fake V? Does the Relic somehow enters on a "make - peace" mode with Original V? We all know that before Mikoshi, the Relic was actually trying to kill V to favor Johnny, even with Johnny not wanting V dead.
It's not very clear how Relic its suppose to work, not even Arasaka are sure how Relic operates in V's case.
It's a very open ending, you can't point fingers on what's right or wrong, which makes the ending of cyberpunk overall very cleaver on a writing standpoint.
In the end, we will never know if the Original V is there or not after Mikoshi. I hope CDPR can answer this philanthropic discussion arround V's soul on future DLC's.
 
This point of view is actually mindblowing.
However, if this turns out to be true, who's in control of V's body? Both Original V and Fake V? Does the Relic somehow enters on a "make - peace" mode with Original V? We all know that before Mikoshi, the Relic was actually trying to kill V to favor Johnny, even with Johnny not wanting V dead.
It's not very clear how Relic its suppose to work, not even Arasaka are sure how Relic operates in V's case.
It's a very open ending, you can't point fingers on what's right or wrong, which makes the ending of cyberpunk overall very cleaver on a writing standpoint.
In the end, we will never know if the Original V is there or not after Mikoshi. I hope CDPR can answer this philanthropic discussion arround V's soul on future DLC's.

I'd say V, shouldn't the relic be deactivated by then? At least thats how I understood Alts plan.

Furthermore, if you pay attention to the news playing on TV there is mention of a treatment for Multiple Sclerosis which is the "only" illness that can not be treated by replacing the effected tissue with cyberware (sounds familiar? I think it was Vik who said that the brain can also not be fully replaced) by injecting... *pause for dramatic music*... Nanites!

Things like this are not just randomly ingame, the Devs have to put them there. Its either a red hering that lead nowhere, a path of restoring V that was dropped somewhere in development or something for a DLC that comes later.



Also also.. when you down the AV with Hellman the overcharging of the station alone is already enough to effect the Relic with little effect on V though I don't think that will do much as theres plenty of EMP granates around and Johnny never complained being hit by them.
 
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?

Well I for one cannot accept the dying ending. You may be fine with it but not me, I don't want to play another freakenm Red Dead Redemption Game, To me I feel the Next Red Dead 3 the main character dies, Come on it gets old when now every main character dies. Why is it wrong for the main character to live.

My logic on how games work is if the Protag dies the game ends, You are dead and as a dead protag you cannot do DLCs or any story, The Game in my logic cannot move on without a Protag that's how my world works, The Dead does not come back after 6 months to do story in a DLC it breaks the narrative completely. When Commander Shepard died in 3 that's it there is no continuing without the main character and sense Cyberpunk has no successor main character the game should not be continuing with DLCs at all, Johnny is not the main Protag as he died already the first time so that does not count.

All Main Characters have plot armor that suggest that they cannot die regardless what happens to them until the end, If it's a RPG it depends on the player's choices. A Main Protag does not have to die to have a good ending of a games final moments to close a story.

I see things logically and only by pure logic when it comes to video game story. I can only see it logically and by my logic V cannot do dlcs if hes dead in 6 months. And if you think a main character has to die to make a good story then you are wrong.
 
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The topic is called "gripes and problems with the story", but is only concerned with the ending. Frankly I have rather more gripes than just the ending. Or endings. But the endings are a problem.

You basically choose between dying outright, dying outright and having a very good copy of yourself die slowly from incurable disease, dying outright and having your digital copy become the property of some corpo slime, or dying outright and having your digital copy sodding off into the digital darkness while some jackass gets to have a second chance in your body. So basically, you just die.

What does any of it mean? Where's the character progression in the protagonist? There's pretty much none at all. Everything we do is all for nothing. Every hope, every belief, every shred of faith, every dream is just wiped out. Now, there are stories where this happens, where the end cannot be helped but what matters is the journey but Cyberpunk 77 is not such a story.

Nothing new is learned by V, no new realization is achieved, no wrongs are made right, and unless simply becoming a "celebrity" was V's only goal in life then jumping off that radio tower in the Nomad intro literally achieves exactly the same thing, except Jackie and T-Bug probably get to live a bit longer.

From a meta perspective, the reader of the story doesn't really learn anything either, and there's no hard and difficult topic being worked over, even though options for doing so abound. Spirituality, souls, what does it mean to be alive, are we dead if our brains live on in a jar, what is the worth of survival, corporatism, capitalism, solidarity, frankly there's no end to difficult questions that could have been given some serious thought. But none of that is really important. There are no ramifications, just pick an option and a way to flatline and that's that.

And the endings are really not being done any favors by how obviously forced every course of action up to the ending is. We can't avoid teaming up with Jackie, and right afterwards we essentially get railroaded into that harebrained Heist scheme. We have no agency on whether we go for the Heist or how it is executed. And then Dex happens, again with no agency. From that point in the story, V is essentially reduced to being a passenger in a crashing plane, just staring at the rapidly approaching ground. Will they shoot themself before the crash? Scream the entire way, maybe even with flailing arms? Just accept the inevitable death? Does it really matter?

If I view the story of this game as a book then it's not a particularly interesting book. The protagonist doesn't ever really progress, the side characters dominate, the one character that was likeable and interesting is killed off two chapters in, and everything seems fake bleak rather than convincing bleak. Everything seems to be bleak because the writers want it but not because the story requires it, which means the consequences of the bleakness isn't emotionally satisfying and really just feels like bad authors trying to force "drama".

To put this into perspective, think back on what Bethesda did to Morrowind. You spend all of TES3 doing this or that, learning about people, doing stuff. Then in TES4 they nuke the whole damn thing. Plot twist!! Blammo, everything is gone and suddenly the lizardpeople have more armies than everybody else combined and stuff. Was that emotionally satisfying? Did it even warrant any emotional response other than frustration? And they did exactly the same to Cyrodiil in TES5, after you spent all of TES4 getting to know the place.

This approach is what I feel CDPR did with V. They just nuke for the sake of nuking, not because the plot requires it, but because they could not give enough of a damn to actually write out any endings beyond the flatline.
 
The topic is called "gripes and problems with the story", but is only concerned with the ending. Frankly I have rather more gripes than just the ending. Or endings. But the endings are a problem.

You basically choose between dying outright, dying outright and having a very good copy of yourself die slowly from incurable disease, dying outright and having your digital copy become the property of some corpo slime, or dying outright and having your digital copy sodding off into the digital darkness while some jackass gets to have a second chance in your body. So basically, you just die.

What does any of it mean? Where's the character progression in the protagonist? There's pretty much none at all. Everything we do is all for nothing. Every hope, every belief, every shred of faith, every dream is just wiped out. Now, there are stories where this happens, where the end cannot be helped but what matters is the journey but Cyberpunk 77 is not such a story.

Nothing new is learned by V, no new realization is achieved, no wrongs are made right, and unless simply becoming a "celebrity" was V's only goal in life then jumping off that radio tower in the Nomad intro literally achieves exactly the same thing, except Jackie and T-Bug probably get to live a bit longer.

From a meta perspective, the reader of the story doesn't really learn anything either, and there's no hard and difficult topic being worked over, even though options for doing so abound. Spirituality, souls, what does it mean to be alive, are we dead if our brains live on in a jar, what is the worth of survival, corporatism, capitalism, solidarity, frankly there's no end to difficult questions that could have been given some serious thought. But none of that is really important. There are no ramifications, just pick an option and a way to flatline and that's that.

And the endings are really not being done any favors by how obviously forced every course of action up to the ending is. We can't avoid teaming up with Jackie, and right afterwards we essentially get railroaded into that harebrained Heist scheme. We have no agency on whether we go for the Heist or how it is executed. And then Dex happens, again with no agency. From that point in the story, V is essentially reduced to being a passenger in a crashing plane, just staring at the rapidly approaching ground. Will they shoot themself before the crash? Scream the entire way, maybe even with flailing arms? Just accept the inevitable death? Does it really matter?

If I view the story of this game as a book then it's not a particularly interesting book. The protagonist doesn't ever really progress, the side characters dominate, the one character that was likeable and interesting is killed off two chapters in, and everything seems fake bleak rather than convincing bleak. Everything seems to be bleak because the writers want it but not because the story requires it, which means the consequences of the bleakness isn't emotionally satisfying and really just feels like bad authors trying to force "drama".

To put this into perspective, think back on what Bethesda did to Morrowind. You spend all of TES3 doing this or that, learning about people, doing stuff. Then in TES4 they nuke the whole damn thing. Plot twist!! Blammo, everything is gone and suddenly the lizardpeople have more armies than everybody else combined and stuff. Was that emotionally satisfying? Did it even warrant any emotional response other than frustration? And they did exactly the same to Cyrodiil in TES5, after you spent all of TES4 getting to know the place.

This approach is what I feel CDPR did with V. They just nuke for the sake of nuking, not because the plot requires it, but because they could not give enough of a damn to actually write out any endings beyond the flatline.
I think you described how I feel perfectly. The story as it is, just meaningless. No lessions learnt, no interesting topic being explored thoroughly. The only thing we learn is that struggle is futile. The only thing changed after Dex shooting V is that by the end of the game, more people will be hurt by his death.
Now it is perfectly valid assumption that the solution for V's blight will be explored in the DLCs, seeing how in Blood and Wine they built a whole new region. But I find it so wierd that they built such a complex city, only to move the true conclusion of the story away from it. Especially after so much of the city still being left unutilized.
 
I just think/ hope the devs pulled a Fallout 3 (base game) ending here...

Meaning that the base game makes it really clear that you are dead and your story is finished, but actually the dlcs will continue with the story and explain what really happens to our character.
 
I just think/ hope the devs pulled a Fallout 3 (base game) ending here...

Meaning that the base game makes it really clear that you are dead and your story is finished, but actually the dlcs will continue with the story and explain what really happens to our character.
We can only hope and wait. Tbh the whole reason why I registered on the forum was in hope to find a comment from a dev, reassuring us that V's story isn't over.
 
I’d be way more okay with the Soulkiller ending if they didn’t throw the cancer in at the end as well. It would be a good chance to look at “what makes us human?” and they overshadowed any deep and philosophical questions with “oh, also you’re still gonna die.” Well now I don’t have time to ponder if I’m a Real Boy™️, I have to go scrambling to survive like I just spent some dozens of hours doing. (But also I don’t have to go scrambling, because I don’t have a choice. The credits will roll and I’ll be back at the point of no return.)

I also wouldn’t mind a merge ending, even knowing Johnny was a real engram jammed into my head, I started to view him more as just Johnny-flavored PTSD from the botched job with Jackie. Merging with Johnny could just be V learning to live with the guilt, since at first he wants to kill her and then gradually starts wanting to help her live.

I just feel like I could have handled so many different endings that were bad or not ideal, but they picked the absolute worst way to handle it beyond making the rainbow bridge you cross three different colors. :giveup: Let me play my open-world game without a PNR, please and thank you.
 

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My thoughts on what is considered by far the "worst" ending, the one where Arasaka makes an engram of you for future use and kills you, which is the first one I got after finishing the game.

In my opinion, it's the only ending that makes sense with the rest of the story, because I honestly see V as a pathetic and completely lost individual, who lives in a horrible world and doesn't even think about trying to reform it, or at least try to carve his own spot somewhere and live a good life, instead he is pursuing meaningless "I want to be the best" (in my town we would call this "being a rooster on top of trash") and is in most decisions and plot points a rather shallow and short-sighted person. A big disappointment I got was that we don't have a choice regarding implants, and there's no mechanic regarding humanity, which should have been the MOST important thing in this world, I wanted to be a pure-blood nomad without shitty implants, and see how different and morally BETTER I am than most of the shitty people in this game, instead I'm forced to be at their same level and I have no choice about it, so I roll with it

V starts the game with horrible and intrusive cyberware (from our 2020 perspective) and doesn't see anything wrong with it, he is 100% part of the giant problem in the world of cyberpunk, nobody gives a shit about their humanity anymore and is ready to make a monster of themselves just to get money or reputation, it's not even his fault as he's young and he's never seen a better world, but at the same time this prescribes him a shitty meaningless life, because he never tries to get out of it, he just gets deeper and deeper and is completely unable to accept his death with dignity, through the writing I got the strong impression that V is, indeed, a complete pu**y and as such, the arasaka ending seemed the most logical to me.

First off, Takemura and Hanako share with the nomads the sense of duty and honor and they prove it multiple times, if V abides by a contract with them, they will honor it no matter what, they are among the few characters who are genuinely trustworthy, even though they are completely fucked and warped as well, given that they are the upper echelon of a mega-corporation that has gained more power than every government on the planet combined. They offer to save your shitty meaningless life and they do just that! was V alive before mikoshi? it's completely irrelevant, as V is a shallow non-thinking moron who just wants to become a "star" and that's PRECISELY what he will gain by joining soulkiller! there are a miniscule amount of people who could afford to be in the program, and he is offered entry for free, of course now his psyche belongs to arasaka and bla bla, it doesn't matter! they owned you before as well.. you have mikoshi EYES! your eyes are not even your eyes, you've sold yourself a long time ago V, and I don't feel bad in sending you off so dishonorably because honestly you never deserved anything more.. and most likely, when you are finally revived, you will be interviewed everywhere and can become the star you always dreamt of, a complete joke of a zombie without personality, owned by a corporation and filthy rich.. EXACTLY what you wanted!

There's also a second reason why this ending could be legitimately chosen, and that is that through the dialog options you get it is strongly suggested that after the operation V is kind of "born again" and has lost his sense of self, his memories, and his psyche. The whole section feels like a waking nightmare, like someone with alzheimer who is incapable of focusing on the present and sees time go by very fast without being able to stop it, and V feels a lot of pain from this situation and wants it to end as fast as possible. Then takemura comes personally to you, tells you the truth and offers something that, in his eyes, is the solution to everything. Remember his warped morality, from his perspective he is giving you a huge gift and you should take it. The alternative? come back to earth, live 6 confusing, horrible and meaningless months before dying in great pain without friends or memories or a sane psyche, seriously which one would you choose?
 
I will say it in a short post.

It is not my problem people do not understand the ending and do not see the philosophy. I personally do not care about those who wish to get a HAPPY ENDING. The ending is very original , one of the things CDPR did not f...up is the ending, I would thank the designers for that.
 
The one issue I have with the Arasaka one, well that's a lie, there's many, but this one made my nose wrinkle. It's the cameo from Mike Pondsmith himself regarding Arasaka. He speaks about the relics and what they do with them and goes into detail on how Arasaka does indeed make an engram of you, but they also make a copy of the engram. This engram copy is then interrogated thoroughly - they look through every single memory, and by doing this they own you.

So, when you sign over yourself to Arasaka. Not only do they make a copy of your engram - so there's a possibility that there's could be two Vs, but they learn everything about you. Every memory is now there's.

If you go back to earth, Hanako contacts you asking for your services, as you are a very good Solo. She wants you to work for them. Now imagine how it's if you're literally their property? They can force you to work for them. Example, in Neuromancer the samurai jockey known as Chase is forced to with a group because if he doesn't they'll detonate poison-filled sacks that they put into his body. Imagine how it'd be for Arasaka. They're not stupid. Any body they give you could easily have the same failsafe. Heck, we've seen this in Corpo opening, they can just decommission your implants leaving you with nothing - you're completely under their control. In this ending, Arasaka knows what makes you tick, knows all your memories, knows your loves. They have you by the balls and they're not going to let an asset as you go. You defeated Oda for christ sake, you managed to bypass their security. You're strong. You killed Smasher. You are nothing but an asset, a replacement for Smasher/Oda. But if you think for one second that you have wiggle room in regards to demands, heck no.

Also, here's the cameo It should hold some serious weight here, considering it's Pondsmith.

I will say it in a short post.

It is not my problem people do not understand the ending and do not see the philosophy. I personally do not care about those who wish to get a HAPPY ENDING. The ending is very original , one of the things CDPR did not f...up is the ending, I would thank the designers for that.

The ending isn't original, it's basically parallel to For whom the Bells Tolls - the very book in the game. Along with another book called Neuromancer.
 
I will say it in a short post.

It is not my problem people do not understand the ending and do not see the philosophy. I personally do not care about those who wish to get a HAPPY ENDING. The ending is very original , one of the things CDPR did not f...up is the ending, I would thank the designers for that.
That's nice. And people who wish for a "happy ending" do not care about you either lol. You got your "original" endings. Let people discuss their view on the endings.
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The one issue I have with the Arasaka one, well that's a lie, there's many, but this one made my nose wrinkle. It's the cameo from Mike Pondsmith himself regarding Arasaka. He speaks about the relics and what they do with them and goes into detail on how Arasaka does indeed make an engram of you, but they also make a copy of the engram. This engram copy is then interrogated thoroughly - they look through every single memory, and by doing this they own you.

So, when you sign over yourself to Arasaka. Not only do they make a copy of your engram - so there's a possibility that there's could be two Vs, but they learn everything about you. Every memory is now there's.

If you go back to earth, Hanako contacts you asking for your services, as you are a very good Solo. She wants you to work for them. Now imagine how it's if you're literally their property? They can force you to work for them. Example, in Neuromancer the samurai jockey known as Chase is forced to with a group because if he doesn't they'll detonate poison-filled sacks that they put into his body. Imagine how it'd be for Arasaka. They're not stupid. Any body they give you could easily have the same failsafe. Heck, we've seen this in Corpo opening, they can just decommission your implants leaving you with nothing - you're completely under their control. In this ending, Arasaka knows what makes you tick, knows all your memories, knows your loves. They have you by the balls and they're not going to let an asset as you go. You defeated Oda for christ sake, you managed to bypass their security. You're strong. You killed Smasher. You are nothing but an asset, a replacement for Smasher/Oda. But if you think for one second that you have wiggle room in regards to demands, heck no.

Also, here's the cameo It should hold some serious weight here, considering it's Pondsmith.



The ending isn't original, it's basically parallel to For whom the Bells Tolls - the very book in the game. Along with another book called Neuromancer.
I personally think that the Arasaka>Back to Earth endings are the most logical choice of action. Takemura does a lot better job at selling his plan than Jhonny does. And I actually never learnt to care for Jhonny since in the main story quests he keeps being a total ass. Only through side quests can you slowly see redeeming qualities in him. And with the fast pace and false urgency in the main story, those side quests can be easily missed/skipped by accident.

And as @giammotto said above, V didn't really strike me as someone with a strong personality, as a street kid, to hell with principals. The only thing that matters in night city is to survive. So siding with Arasaka when it is clear as day that they are the most qualified people in the matter seemed like a no brainer to me.
 
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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
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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 :D)
 
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I'm going to put out my unpopular opinion that V isn't going to die and will have the chance to survive in the second Blood and Wine-esque expansion they're doing with the casino heist. Besides, Panam believes there's a secret to survival out there and I buy it.

In any case, I find it difficult to believe any V would be stupid enough to trust Arasaka.

The Corpo V especially knows they are the scum of the Earth.

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Re: Alt

Alt is the hero of the story.

I wish to serve as her Machine Priest for the New Neon Age

:)
 
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