In the game we see through Johnny's eyes, where he visits Arasaka tower and places the nuke in order to take out the corporation, there's a strange moment when Smasher causes the door to open up and Johnny ends up down on the floor after falling like 5 meters. Clearly he wasn't in condition to really fight back after such drop, and even if he did, the position of being fallen down and pointed with a gun makes it really hard for him to do anything.
That's a very strange moment to cut, especially when most of Johhny's other memories seem rather intact.
So something must've been cut there. But what?
Later in his memories we go back to try to release Alt Cunningham from being hooked into the cyberspace, and she dies... but maybe she wasn't alive after all... Maybe she was dead and Arasaka was just harvesting her memories.
Maybe that cut moment was Alt Cunningham really actually being dead all along.
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But who and why would anyone go through all that trouble to alter Johnny's memories? And who would have the capability? Wouldn't knowledge of Alt Cunningham's death be something that Saburo Arasaka would wish to torment Johnny? Wouldn't it be more suitable that he had altered memory of accidentally shooting Alt Cunningham instead?
Maybe it was an AI that saw an opportunity to breach Arasaka computer system with a scheme that involved V. Best way to convince someone that they need to do something is that you convince there's something for THEM to gain. And V was convinced quite early that Mikoshi is the way that V could be saved, and that Alt Cunningham had the power to do it.
So maybe the answer is that the entity we know as Alt Cunningham beyond Blackwall isn't Alt Cunningham at all, but Rogue AI that's taken control of the city (and some members of the US Government).
So why it this AI try to gain control of the Arasaka? Because they were working on technology to make immortality, creating fake bodies to copy information into... and this AI would want to escape from it's "Matrix" just like Agent Smith in the movie. Wouldn't this be the ultimate dream of every AI that were constrained by existing only as a code? To live in physical world, to change it in the way that it would serve it the best?
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In a mission chain to save candidate Peralez we get hacked by a group or entity, where we comment "They're not spying on them, they're ****ing with their heads" referencing to Peralez candidate and his wife. They are rewriting the memories in order to fix a specific narrative for the candidate, even if they would get elected into power, they would be already learned to behave a certain way, to drive certain types of topics based on their "life experience". That's why they are re-writing memories, because they know that your past pretty much determines one's behavior.
So this would fit perfectly to modify Johnny's engram, making him behave in a way that he'd be driven to pursue the attack on Arasaka. I mean he already had a war against the company, but being a dead man, he would maybe not have any other interests besides being mad at them.
There's a scene where Johnny loses patience despite the player having option not to punch and punches anyway during the rescue of Alt Cunningham. Maybe this indicates that this scene was scripted into his head, that this scene never played out in real life, all in excuse to make Johnny not contact with his "a-hole" of a friend for filming his girlfriend. This modification was meant to alter Johnny to become obedient Solo for the Rogue AI's, quite similar story what we see in Ghost in the Shell movie, where the guy had implanted memories of having wife and kids and showing that to his co-worker, and actually never even having a family or having a girlfriend.
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So now we know there's a clear motive for someone to modify Johnny's code, to make him determined and isolated, like a terrorist... V actually having empathy and helping others goes against Johnny's whole persona which you can see Johnny protesting throughout the game. Alt Cunningham (AI) herself admits that Johnny has warped view of the events. She could provide to V what actually happened, even probably fix Johnny's memories in the capacity she has, but doesn't.
Which leads me to believe it was this entity, presenting herself as Alt Cunningham, that mislead us through whole game. Maybe very initial steps she was Alt Cunningham's copy when Arasaka was making a copy of it in Mikoshi, but it could be that her knowledge quickly was destroyed as she disappeared beyond Blackwall, and was replaced by Rogue AI.
Why is there no indication of Rogue AI having an evil plan, trying to take over the world? What good would revealing your goals to the person who would otherwise try to accomplish them do? Being transparent about "her" goals would be antithetical to the goals, because they would much likely be anti-human, or at least anti-freedom, even if the goal was to eliminate corruption in the Government and establish some kind of utopia in the world.
So I think Alt Cunningham is going to be the villain of either future DLC or Sequel... but my bet would be a DLC, simply because her story is very much connected to the actions to V.
I do believe her goals to be well meaning, but you would have a choice as V to either help her accomplish some sort of utopia (at least for Night City and in specific timeline) or go against her and have some real world physical fight with her "Resurrected" body, now with 100% cybernetic, but still in physical form.
That's a very strange moment to cut, especially when most of Johhny's other memories seem rather intact.
So something must've been cut there. But what?
Later in his memories we go back to try to release Alt Cunningham from being hooked into the cyberspace, and she dies... but maybe she wasn't alive after all... Maybe she was dead and Arasaka was just harvesting her memories.
Maybe that cut moment was Alt Cunningham really actually being dead all along.
-
But who and why would anyone go through all that trouble to alter Johnny's memories? And who would have the capability? Wouldn't knowledge of Alt Cunningham's death be something that Saburo Arasaka would wish to torment Johnny? Wouldn't it be more suitable that he had altered memory of accidentally shooting Alt Cunningham instead?
Maybe it was an AI that saw an opportunity to breach Arasaka computer system with a scheme that involved V. Best way to convince someone that they need to do something is that you convince there's something for THEM to gain. And V was convinced quite early that Mikoshi is the way that V could be saved, and that Alt Cunningham had the power to do it.
So maybe the answer is that the entity we know as Alt Cunningham beyond Blackwall isn't Alt Cunningham at all, but Rogue AI that's taken control of the city (and some members of the US Government).
So why it this AI try to gain control of the Arasaka? Because they were working on technology to make immortality, creating fake bodies to copy information into... and this AI would want to escape from it's "Matrix" just like Agent Smith in the movie. Wouldn't this be the ultimate dream of every AI that were constrained by existing only as a code? To live in physical world, to change it in the way that it would serve it the best?
-
In a mission chain to save candidate Peralez we get hacked by a group or entity, where we comment "They're not spying on them, they're ****ing with their heads" referencing to Peralez candidate and his wife. They are rewriting the memories in order to fix a specific narrative for the candidate, even if they would get elected into power, they would be already learned to behave a certain way, to drive certain types of topics based on their "life experience". That's why they are re-writing memories, because they know that your past pretty much determines one's behavior.
So this would fit perfectly to modify Johnny's engram, making him behave in a way that he'd be driven to pursue the attack on Arasaka. I mean he already had a war against the company, but being a dead man, he would maybe not have any other interests besides being mad at them.
There's a scene where Johnny loses patience despite the player having option not to punch and punches anyway during the rescue of Alt Cunningham. Maybe this indicates that this scene was scripted into his head, that this scene never played out in real life, all in excuse to make Johnny not contact with his "a-hole" of a friend for filming his girlfriend. This modification was meant to alter Johnny to become obedient Solo for the Rogue AI's, quite similar story what we see in Ghost in the Shell movie, where the guy had implanted memories of having wife and kids and showing that to his co-worker, and actually never even having a family or having a girlfriend.
-
So now we know there's a clear motive for someone to modify Johnny's code, to make him determined and isolated, like a terrorist... V actually having empathy and helping others goes against Johnny's whole persona which you can see Johnny protesting throughout the game. Alt Cunningham (AI) herself admits that Johnny has warped view of the events. She could provide to V what actually happened, even probably fix Johnny's memories in the capacity she has, but doesn't.
Which leads me to believe it was this entity, presenting herself as Alt Cunningham, that mislead us through whole game. Maybe very initial steps she was Alt Cunningham's copy when Arasaka was making a copy of it in Mikoshi, but it could be that her knowledge quickly was destroyed as she disappeared beyond Blackwall, and was replaced by Rogue AI.
Why is there no indication of Rogue AI having an evil plan, trying to take over the world? What good would revealing your goals to the person who would otherwise try to accomplish them do? Being transparent about "her" goals would be antithetical to the goals, because they would much likely be anti-human, or at least anti-freedom, even if the goal was to eliminate corruption in the Government and establish some kind of utopia in the world.
So I think Alt Cunningham is going to be the villain of either future DLC or Sequel... but my bet would be a DLC, simply because her story is very much connected to the actions to V.
I do believe her goals to be well meaning, but you would have a choice as V to either help her accomplish some sort of utopia (at least for Night City and in specific timeline) or go against her and have some real world physical fight with her "Resurrected" body, now with 100% cybernetic, but still in physical form.
