[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'm guessing Mr. Blue Eyes will turn out to be Richard Night and we'll find out he faked his death.

Just a random thought.
 
I'm guessing Mr. Blue Eyes will turn out to be Richard Night and we'll find out he faked his death.

Just a random thought.
also a good guess
p.s.
I just figured.
Only 20% on GOG and Steam did even finish the main story...
Only 6% did finish it with "The Sun" achievement, what i belive is the real one, because of the space mission
but there are so many people complaining how bad the story is...
i love the story
there where some parts where i had some tears in my eyes

for me it is the best game 2020 (PC) already played it 50 more hours then AC Valhalla, and still gooing on
 
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also a good guess
p.s.
I just figured.
Only 20% on GOG and Steam did even finish the main story...
Only 6% did finish it with "The Sun" achievement, what i belive is the real one, because of the space mission
Yea more than half of those 20% are generic Arasaka ending, which is kinda depressing - both the endings and the fact those people didn't do more side content.
 
Definitely agree, joining the many feedbacks on the main topic about these endings.

However, not sure why people consider the V post-Soulkiller as a "Fake V", as this is actually the whole point of debating about Soulkiller (except if I missed something, in that case, please let me know) : in my opinion, having V surviving without this "most probable 6 months" deadline would be sufficient, working as a happy ending.
 
Definitely agree, joining the many feedbacks on the main topic about these endings.

However, not sure why people consider the V post-Soulkiller as a "Fake V", as this is actually the whole point of debating about Soulkiller (except if I missed something, in that case, please let me know) : in my opinion, having V surviving without this "most probable 6 months" deadline would be sufficient, working as a happy ending.

Well in most media throwing the mind copy theme at you, you don't have the singular AI that was result of the same means used on you, actually tell you that you'll loose your soul. Therefore in those instances no one answers the question if you become lesser or less true by being copied. Here it is done by the single character you could argue actually knows stuff about it.
 
V being hit with Soulkiller made the story that much darker and surprised me in a great way. The cyberpunk world isn't a happy pleasant place with cheerful endings...for me the types I seek are the the kinds that strive for an intense feeling of realism. All this talk about "it's to depressive"...I just can't relate with stories that play it safe. Characters constantly winning in the end without losing something just feels unrealistic and boring. The call logs made me feel distant from the characters as if I'm physically and emotionally separated from them. These plot devices helped create a darker tone and mood that I've been waiting to see in stories more.
 
V being hit with Soulkiller made the story that much darker and surprised me in a great way. The cyberpunk world isn't a happy pleasant place with cheerful endings...for me the types I seek are the the kinds that strive for an intense feeling of realism. All this talk about "it's to depressive"...I just can't relate with stories that play it safe. Characters constantly winning in the end without losing something just feels unrealistic and boring. The call logs made me feel distant from the characters as if I'm physically and emotionally separated from them. These plot devices helped create a darker tone and mood that I've been waiting to see in stories more.
It's not about depressing endings. It's about being killed off without a meaning.

You could argue that every iteration of V loses something. Either you become a pawn to arasaka, lose your body, lose friends and a part of yourself because the soulkiller copies the status quo with the alterations already made by the chip and so on.

The cancer only makes sense in the low effort arasaka ending, where you don't surrender yourself to arasaka (the game literally says that), because they removed the chip before it could finish its work.

The cancer is just a tacked on it device, even soap opera writers are ashamed to use.

In the legend ending, V boards crystal palace (why not buy a regular ticket and enter as a tourist) to go out in a blaze of glory in one final suicide mission.

In the nomad ending, V leaves night city and abandons all the things V arrived to achieve. V literally let's her lucky charm (bullet) fly away in the wind and becomes a nomad, who is not meant for greatness anymore.

All versions of V lose something and in addition get their golden hourglass (reaper man from Terry Pratchett reference), only to make the player feel sick.
People are upset because of the lazy writing (of the endings), lack of closure, plot holes and contradictions (sometimes even only minutes away from each other) and the poor cop-outs.

People are upset, because we got a game over screen after finishing the game.

Btw. This is a game and not a deep and interlectual essay about the meaning of life.
 
On a very sarcastic note!

For those who want a happy ending and to let V survive. Give it to them, but you need/have to sacrifice everyone on the way that you get to know, might like or whatever.

V should have the "option" to sacrifice/burn everyone for her own personal benefit and "happy ending" where she lives. (a complete 180 on the suicide ending)
 
On a very sarcastic note!

For those who want a happy ending and to let V survive. Give it to them, but you need/have to sacrifice everyone on the way that you get to know, might like or whatever.

V should have the "option" to sacrifice/burn everyone for her own personal benefit and "happy ending" where she lives. (a complete 180 on the suicide ending)
So giving up a good chunk of her/himself in addition to the burning desire to smoke is not enough?

In addition to watch several. People die on your way into mikoshi?
 
It's not about depressing endings. It's about being killed off without a meaning.

You could argue that every iteration of V loses something. Either you become a pawn to arasaka, lose your body, lose friends and a part of yourself because the soulkiller copies the status quo with the alterations already made by the chip and so on.

The cancer only makes sense in the low effort arasaka ending, where you don't surrender yourself to arasaka (the game literally says that), because they removed the chip before it could finish its work.

The cancer is just a tacked on it device, even soap opera writers are ashamed to use.

In the legend ending, V boards crystal palace (why not buy a regular ticket and enter as a tourist) to go out in a blaze of glory in one final suicide mission.

In the nomad ending, V leaves night city and abandons all the things V arrived to achieve. V literally let's her lucky charm (bullet) fly away in the wind and becomes a nomad, who is not meant for greatness anymore.

All versions of V lose something and in addition get their golden hourglass (reaper man from Terry Pratchett reference), only to make the player feel sick.
People are upset because of the lazy writing (of the endings), lack of closure, plot holes and contradictions (sometimes even only minutes away from each other) and the poor cop-outs.

People are upset, because we got a game over screen after finishing the game.

Btw. This is a game and not a deep and interlectual essay about the meaning of life.

It's a cyberpunk themed game.
And cyberpunk is the genre always asking "What does existance mean? Is artificial life as valuable as natural life? What does natural and artificial mean? What's defining humanity?".
So yeah.. it's no essay, neither intellectual nor otherwise. But it's more or less doing the standard of the genre.

But it's funny of you bringing up Reaper Man, i mean you remember how it ends? Of the final dance?
The missing closure lies in the writers failure to open up an acceptance chapter. The biggest cop out they can offer, would be actually going against everything established before. Bringing up another Deus Ex Machina device saving V.

I'd rather haved liked a story about preventing soulkiller, and the loss of V, but i personally have seen to many dialogues pointing towards it being not a story of rebellious survival, but acceptance of change and inevitable death.
And i dislike the game for not offering discussion with the supposed romances with V pointing out how inevitable her early demise might be and them reacting more towards that.

So yeah, i guess i'm in minority in liking the actual story, but having preferred some other story. And would rather see them working towards the closure with the given story, than trying to change the story.
But maybe i'm completly wrong and CDPR already has the Deus Ex Machina in place with the Blue Eyed Guy and the Space Casino - but for them being completly mad didn't wait until that was finished.
 
Well. Genre is not an excuse for killing off a character in the epilogue - especially without a solid narrative reason.
Making the players feel shit is not a narrative reason.

I read the mother of cyberpunk - neuromancer (off course the whole sprawl trilogy) and surprisingly few main characters die in fact, most of them just leave town and retire or get to life in cyberspace/conciousness box.

So again, not a good reason to kill off the character after concluding the story.

In addition, having annendi g where V simply survives but leaves town in a max effort ending is not cheapening the story in any way - its rewarding the player for doing activities.

This is still a game and not a book of movie.

And brain cancer? Really? It's a soap opera ending.
 
It's a cyberpunk themed game.
And cyberpunk is the genre always asking "What does existance mean? Is artificial life as valuable as natural life? What does natural and artificial mean? What's defining humanity?".
So yeah.. it's no essay, neither intellectual nor otherwise. But it's more or less doing the standard of the genre.

But it's funny of you bringing up Reaper Man, i mean you remember how it ends? Of the final dance?
The missing closure lies in the writers failure to open up an acceptance chapter. The biggest cop out they can offer, would be actually going against everything established before. Bringing up another Deus Ex Machina device saving V.

I'd rather haved liked a story about preventing soulkiller, and the loss of V, but i personally have seen to many dialogues pointing towards it being not a story of rebellious survival, but acceptance of change and inevitable death.
And i dislike the game for not offering discussion with the supposed romances with V pointing out how inevitable her early demise might be and them reacting more towards that.

So yeah, i guess i'm in minority in liking the actual story, but having preferred some other story. And would rather see them working towards the closure with the given story, than trying to change the story.
But maybe i'm completly wrong and CDPR already has the Deus Ex Machina in place with the Blue Eyed Guy and the Space Casino - but for them being completly mad didn't wait until that was finished.

I just want to say, that I'm probably with you, in the minority.
Although I wouldn't really mind them offering some kind of "better bitter happy ending" :)

So again, not a good reason to kill off the character after concluding the story.

I agree, thats probably where impactful choices would need come into play.
 
Well. Genre is not an excuse for killing off a character in the epilogue - especially without a solid narrative reason.
Making the players feel shit is not a narrative reason.

I read the mother of cyberpunk - neuromancer (off course the whole sprawl trilogy) and surprisingly few main characters die in fact, most of them just leave town and retire or get to life in cyberspace/conciousness box.

So again, not a good reason to kill off the character after concluding the story.

In addition, having annendi g where V simply survives but leaves town in a max effort ending is not cheapening the story in any way - its rewarding the player for doing activities.

This is still a game and not a book of movie.

And brain cancer? Really? It's a soap opera ending.

I agree with the notion it's stupid to go "And after that they died - the end.". But nothing needs inherently to end with "And they lived happily ever after.". Well besides maybe wanting better sales numbers as people seemingly prefer fairy tales and classical narrations. As they don't want to deal with the reminder of death in something they wanted to consume as seemingly "mindless" entertainment.
And i even agree that i myself would have preferred something more on the side of mindless entertainment and living happily after having been a good person.

Sorry but having 3 (nearly 4) people i personally knew die of cancer in the last 1,5 years, makes me laugh about your complaint about any kind of cancer being a soap opera ending.
 
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.

As far as my V goes, she survived and left Night City with the Nomads looking for a cure and as far as my interpretation goes, V manages to find a way to prolongue her life or even solve the problem given that in the credits my V is living a comfortable and happy life with Judy.
 
I agree with the notion it's stupid to go "And after that they died - the end.". But nothing needs inherently to end with "And they lived happily ever after.". Well besides maybe wanting better sales numbers as people seemingly prefer fairy tales and classical narrations. As they don't want to deal with the reminder of death in something they wanted to consume as seemingly "mindless" entertainment.
And i even agree that i myself would have preferred something more on the side of mindless entertainment and living happily after having been a good person.

Sorry but having 3 (nearly 4) people i personally knew die of cancer in the last 1,5 years, makes me laugh about your complaint about any kind of cancer being a soap opera ending.

I think we can agree on the notion that even a surviving V might not necessarily live happily in a Hollywood style.

Giving up dreams, watching people die just because you live, living with alts words scratching at the back of your mind...

There are fates worse than death.
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Saying. The endings would have been dark enough without the plot-cancer.

It's a stupid tool that does not even make sense, except it's a build up for a continuation of the story. If it is a plot device, it's either highly cunning or highly dumb.
 
I think we can agree on the notion that even a surviving V might not necessarily live happily in a Hollywood style.

Giving up dreams, watching people die just because you live, living with alts words scratching at the back of your mind...

There are fates worse than death.
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Saying. The endings would have been dark enough without the plot-cancer.

It's a stupid tool that does not even make sense, except it's a build up for a continuation of the story. If it is a plot device, it's either highly cunning or highly dumb.

As i've written before it's a wierd split between going for finality and letting avert that finality for the forseeable future that's makign everything strange. And i think the aversion non holywood ending could have worked with the whole timeframe of death not being that set and short.

See coming from the dialogue with Alt, i was all "Okay, so if she's right inevitable death, best case the people you like will get a copied V if you push through". And that would have pretty much sufficed if the game would have let you act in that outlook. But it doesn't do that. Therefore i've percieved the problems rather in that direction than the 6 months or anything, though the 6 months is another kick for the idea that at least they could get a copy ...
 
The endings would have been dark enough without the plot-cancer.

It's a stupid tool that does not even make sense, except it's a build up for a continuation of the story. If it is a plot device, it's either highly cunning or highly dumb.

The plot-cancer/death is an important part of why this is a horrible plot device for a continuation. We just had a whole game about trying to survive by any means necessary, now any continuation is going to be more of the same: survive while hacking up blood occasionally. A bitter, but no expiration date on V, ending could have opened up a continuation with themes on revenge, or the horrors of being a legend, or pursuing Goro’s logic on corps being evil, but the alternative being a complete lack of stability, fixers being sellouts etc. Ending it in the last sliver of the final mission with “and now you’re dying AGAIN” was cheap. It took me from looking at these endings in awe, “am I even human right now? Arasaka is still going to be running the world, are they going to come after me for this?” to annoyance. Add this in to the fact your previous choices mean squat, only what you say in each ending when you’re offered dying meat sack or uploaded brain AND throwing you back to a point of no return after credits where you’re still dying and there’s this urgency to rush back to your non-choices and it’s a recipe to ruin any desire to do future playthroughs.

They’ve effectively given us two options; V is dead/lost in cyberspace/soul prison forever because DLC is midgame, or post-credit DLC will pretty much have to have a very similar flavor to the first part of the game, just without Johnny making snide comments. Catch-22, both options kind of suck.
 
Wow, this game has the worst ending(s) I've ever seen in a videogame. I highly doubt CDPR is going to see my money anytime in the future, not gonna fall for this kind of scam twice.

I rarely play videogames anymore, my every-day-life schedule is primarily packed with family and job matters. The ones that I still dedicate time to, are videogames with motivating, consistent and good stories, because a good story is the only thing that brings me to pull myself together after a busy day and invest the time to advance in the storyline.

And you know what? CDPR just stole invaluable 70 hours of my life. SEVENTY HOURS OF MY LIFE THAT I'M NOT GETTING BACK!

The only goal of the main character in this game was to survive. Everything done in this game was done to suvive. Every side quest, every interaction, everything. So, did it work? NO! He got whacked anyway. CDPR just sticked a huge middlefinger in my face, after I spent my last 5 leave days just to be able to complete this game. Nice move CDPR, really nice move to spit your customers in the face in all ranks.

I'm so happy that I went with a physical version of the game this time. At least I'm getting a portion of my money back.

Good night, Samurais, you've got a brain to burn.
 
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.
I think because the in their rewrites and changing of characters changed to game to be about johnny's arc and story - not V's. We are the vessel being reaped by the chip and johnny and his vehicle.

As zero choices matter except balcony - or who accompanies us to fate at end and some post flavor in coda.

The game even has a side quest of meditate with master of Zen and "it will help" - but it doesn't help - at all. even a slight amount - as the story isnt about saving V. Its johnnys story.

Further I love that you reference the name on a box. I found it insulting and HORRENDOUS that out friends would never ever be told our fate. Like poor souls who have loved ones disappear - they never know their fate. Always left with a hole wondering. So the real protagonist johhny narcissist silverhand gets a second life - and never tells anyone that their friend is gone.
 
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