Headscratchers / Cyberpunk 2077

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Abandoning the Relic

• Would V and Jackie fare any better if they ditched the Relic and just made a run for it? It would certainly have made the escape easier. And as Dexter said, stealing the chip would mean nothing if anyone and everyone involved in Saburo's death is as good as dead.
  • No, remember their prints are all over that case, even if they somehow got out, it'd probably take less than an hour to ID both of them and since Yorinobu's got connections, I doubt anyone short of Hanako herself could potentially get V and Jackie safe enough to have them confess to what they saw and actually get it to people who'd act against Yorinobu. Plus Jackie was already hit at that point when they're considered "Safe" after getting out of there, so he was gone then. They'd also need someone who knows how to sneak a living person out of NC to get out if they wanted to do that. It was a done deal, the fact V 'lived'(which is debateable if they're alive at the point they climb out of the junk) was specifically because of that relic.
  • By 'ditching the Relic', this troper meant leaving the container in Yorinobu's suite. About Jackie being 'hit', he wasn't seen to be shot by the security drone, so his injury is most likely having to fall down a long way with a heavy container.
  • He dies from internal bleeding caused by a ruptured artery — he was hit. You can actually hear the exact moment it happens.
  • Honestly without the Relic, V would be dead. They still had to get out of there, the Relic was pretty irrelevant to Yorinobu's plans at that point, and they're still easy scapegoats. The only change would be Jackie having one extra hand free for that fall, which isn't a significant factor.

Easily Killed Billionaire

• How is Yorinobu able to just kill his father with his bare hands? Surely the man has to have some better ways of surviving than that. Also, strangulation seems pretty weak for Trauma Team not to be able to handle.
  • Saburo dies relatively easily because he's over 150 years old and thus is very fragile, even with cybernetics. Saburo also does have a better way of surviving: the Save Your Soul project.
  • It is also mentioned that Saburo himself is not augmented because he was already almost 80 years old when the cybernetic implants were introduced.
  • Saburo doesn't have a Trauma Team plan, because he's the head of Arasaka and thus has access to better emergency medical care. That, and Trauma Team cannot bring back the dead, especially when the acting head of the corporation orders a full lockdown of the hotel.
  • Trauma Team actually shows up in their vehicle and that's why Jackie as well as V get caught since they're on the ledge when it happens.
  • Additionally, in the tabletop source Trauma Team do bring people back from the dead with some regularity, but have a sliding scale of "deadness" running from dead-1 (almost still alive) to dead-10 (resuscitation impossible) and as a general rule moving up the scale by one number for every minute the corpse is unattended to. Saburo's advanced age, crushed throat, and nasty head wound combined with the difficulty of accessing Yorinobu's penthouse probably left him deader than a doornail before they could reach him.
  • It doesn't take that long to choke someone out if you're really trying. All he'd have to do is squeeze hard enough and wait for Saburo to basically die of asphyxiation. Strangulation is a a known execution practiced by many ancient cultures after all. Also, as been said, dude's 150 years old and just got done having his head slammed repeatedly into a wall.
  • It's also possible that part of the reason Yorinobu immediately put the hotel on lockdown was to make sure that Trauma Team couldn't get to Saburo in time.

No Proof Of Murder Innocence

• V is framed for the murder of Saburo and the game indicates that they don't have any means to prove otherwise. Aside from the fact that a lie detector is suggested and rejected by V (whether this is the method used by Stout's minion or some other means), there is at least one other means to do so - Braindances. It should be more than possible to record V's memories of watching the murder and show them to other people - I'm sure there would be claims that it was faked footage, but it should at least have been a suggested option.
  • V wasn't scrolling a Brain Dance through a recording rig at the moment Saburo died. Without that, it's just memories - easily manipulated and highly unreliable. The only time memories are recorded and played back is in a situation where hard proof events occurred isn't necessary.
  • Though not compelling evidence, V and Takemura present enough motive-based evidence that causes the seed of doubt already in Hanako's mind to grow. V presents enough motive evidence that shows they were there only to pilfer the Relic; and the method Yorinibu asserts was Saburo's cause of death doesn't match up with V's reason for being present at the scene and time.
  • V was never framed for Saburo's murder; Takemura was. Dialogue between Takemura and V confirms that Arasaka is hunting the former, and Hanako corroborates that Yorinobu pinned the blame on him. Conversely, the only implication made in-game that V could be responsible for Saburo's death is an assumption made by Dex, who is one of the few people aware that V was present at the scene.

Jackie and Corpo V

• How did Jackie meet the Corpo? Unlike the others, we don't know how they met. It seems an Odd Friendship at best.
  • The Corpo probably hired Jackie's merc services on a regular basis and eventually developed a friendly rapport with him.
  • It's all but stated that Corp!V hired Jackie for multiple "contract assignments" in the past, as an optional dialogue has them discuss how Jackie helped Corp!V cover up an "incident" on the Mexican border.

Why Would Anyone Live Here

• I haven't played the game, but I have read the lore, and I am appalled at Night City being "the worst city in America". Why would anyone, in their right minds, want to live here? It sounds like a miserable, disgusting place to be! Why can't V just go somewhere else?
  • Because in the Cyberpunk universe, it's still one of the best cities to live in for corporate workers and has a high degree of opportunity for advancement if you're willing to take the risk. It's very much a high-risk, high-reward environment, especially in a universe that is already as messed-up as the world of Cyberpunk. Night City is incredibly dangerous, but it is still a better place to live and work in than the rest of North America.
  • Panam states that the difference is Night City is a violent shithole but there's a lot of technology and wealth to be had if you're clever. However, most of America is abandoned ghost towns living in poverty. This is due to the fact Arasaka took over the city.
  • Hilariously, the only good place to live in the world is Europe and it isn't accepting immigrants. It was a funny joke in the Eighties and now? Not so much.
  • Night City is also billed as The City of Dreams and has a reputation that nobodies can become the top edgerunners in the world there. Famous, wealthy, powerful, and able to live a good life that most of NUSA can only dream of because everything has gone completely to crap. It's a lot like how Vegas attracts people for the idea of being the one in a million big winner who gets riches beyond their dreams at the slots. Sure almost everyone who tries loses, or in the case of Night City dies a terrible death, but the chance at success is enough to keep pulling people in.
  • It is also worth noting that while Night City is a massive place with lots of upward mobility for gangs, mercenaries, and corpos, the shittiness of the city for most ordinary people is having an effect on it. According to one of the loading screens the city's population shrank by over 20% in 2076.
  • Why does anyone live in any of the numerous slums, shanty towns, or other generally awful urban spaces in the real world? Oftentimes being able to relocate is logistically challenging, if not flatly impossible; too expensive, too dangerous, no opportunities or support networks necessary to thrive in other locations are available, etc. Plus, how is someone even supposed to leave Night City, as a practical matter? Militech has a contract to patrol the surrounding wastelands and decided to flood them with automated drones that shoot on sight, the space port is unsurprisingly expensive (going off Dex's conversation at the No-Tell Motel), the one official border crossing encountered in the game is staffed by corrupt killers who murder anyone without a pass, and the Maglev public transportation system linking Night City to the rest of the US and Mexico was destroyed years ago and never rebuilt. It's effectively a prison for anyone who doesn't have corpo cover, ennies to spare, and/or enough firepower to fight their way through a literal army.

Why is V coughing?

• After inserting Johnny's construct into their head slot, V starts to cough up blood. I know it's because Johhny's personality starts to eat through their brain, by why does this manifest as coughing? The construct shouldn't damage their lungs/respiratory system, it targets the nervous system and the brain, so bleeding from the nose/ears/eyesockets would seem like a more logical choice. The only reason I can come up with on why CD Projekt chose coughing up blood is because of how common Incurable Cough of Death in media is.
  • The nanites from the relic that are working to overwrite Vs mind with Johnny's are dumping the excised tissue into his sinus cavity which in turn is provoking the cough reaction as it spreads downward toward the lungs. V is literally coughing up his own broken down brain matter.
  • While I love the above explanation, there's a Doylist reason too: it's a symptom visible to the player in a way bleeding from the eyes or ears wouldn't be without looking in a mirror or V doing something contrived like saying “Oh no, I'm bleeding from the ears!” Same reason the gun is still visible even when firing from the hip. It's an interface thing.
  • I'm inclined to agree, but V could still wipe their nose or cheeks and look at the blood on their palm. Bioshock Infinite had the protagonist bleeding from his nose at certain moments of the game (also entirely in first person) and that's how it was shown: the screen would blur and he would wipe his face and look at his two fingers covered in blood. I do like the "V's coughing up their brain" theory too.
  • Johnny's a smoker. Smokers cough. V at one point starts smoking. At first it's an early symptom of a portion of the personality engram taking over the new body and thus a new habitual cough develops as a result of the invading personality expecting to need to cough and having some limited control over the body AND as a result of V staring to smoke.
  • So here's an attempt at a Watsonian explanation. We know that by Act 2, the Relic chip isn't just overwriting V's brain, it's actually compensating for them having been shot in the head. The Relic chip is the thing telling their heart to beat, their lungs to breathe, their kidneys to function, their eyes to blink. Now imagine all those processes stuttering for a second or so. Coughing and collapsing to the ground would be a mild reaction to that.

Jackie's Guns

• When you arrive at the hotel for the heist, V and Jackie both leave their guns with Delamain. From then on, V is gun-less for the duration of the heist unless he picks one up along the way. But after finding the relic, Jackie draws his own signature pistols. How did he get them back?
  • They're not his signature pistols. They're a pair stolen from the Arasaka agents he and V took down just after slotting the biochip. They lack the distinctive paint job.
  • I double-checked and there's a model error that sometimes has Jackie wielding his confiscated pistols just after he "borrows" the other pair, but it seems wholly unintentional.

Where's Morgan Blackhand?

• Given Morgan's importance to both the Arasaka raid of 2023 and Adam Smasher's (one sided) rivalry with him, it seems weird that he's barely mentioned in the story, especially as the raid is where he seemingly dies. Where is he?
  • Probably being reserved for DLC.
  • The first time you go to the Afterlife, Jackie and Claire briefly talk about him, to mention that he doesn't have a cocktail to his name, and that despite Jackie pointing out it's been fifty years, Claire doubts he's really dead.
  • The game is based on Cyberpunk 2020 but unlike The Witcher series it's not a direct sequel running from the same canon. Several other things are different as well, such as Johnny and Alt's relationship being on-and-off again rather than a stable romance, Johnny being a brunette, Cyberpsychosis not actually being real etc. Presumably in this version Morgan either wasn't there or was less important.
  • No, it's a direct sequel with about the same level of 'loose canon'. Johnny lies, his memory is weird, and it's been fifty years. Morgan Blackhand didn't make a BIG DEAL out of being involved in the raid like Johnny, so it's not known publicly, and as an arrogant SOB, Johnny edited out Morgan's involvement from his memory, what with all the brain damage.
  • That only covers one thing, maybe. Seems unlikely Johnny's ego would make him into more of an jerk in his own memories, as he is with Alt. And even if it did he now looks like Keanu Reeves rather than looking like David Bowie like he does in 2020 (and no, that's not just memories altered for whatever reason, he looks like that on album covers too). The we have the change in the nature of Cyberpsychosis, changes in personality and goals for the Arasaka children etc. The game takes the tabletop canon in Broad Strokes.
  • Also there is one news report that can also be found mentions a gunfight in Japantown, where a small army of Lazarus troops were taken out by "a portly man with a black cyberarm", implied by the tone to be an older Morgan. So he is likely there in the background.
  • If you squint a little, there is some material in the "The Solo's Manual"-shard that may reference the Arasaka Tower raid (the "dead rockerboy" may well be Silverhand), meaning that Morgan survived.

Why does Delamain know Jackie's real name?

• While starting the heist with Jackie, it's emphasized that Jackie and V have been given false identities to get them into the hotel, which the Delamain taxi's are also provided with. But when fleeing the hotel, Delamain calls Jackie Mr Welles. How did Delamain acquire this information?
  • They probably just told him. Delamain is a wholly sapient and intelligent individual, so bringing him in on the plan was better than trying to fool him too, especially since they need him as a getaway driver and he's got his own reasons not to give up client information.
  • They also jacked in to Delamain's vehicle when they first sat down, and unlike Arasaka, they have no reason to be hiding their identities, especially since you can hear Dex personally calling Delemain to arrange transport as you enter the soundproof room in Afterlife.

Recovering in space

• In at least one of the endings, V is treated in a space station. Why? Why can't Arasaka treat them in a hospital on Earth?
  • Space is where the even more shady corpo stuff goes down, so the station likely has the specialised equipment needed to treat V — well away from prying eyes, if it came to it.
  • Zero gravity also opens up options for surgery and precise machining that might not be possible inside of Earth's gravity well.
  • Blood doesn't clot properly in zero g environments so surgery in space is basically a death sentence without some form of artificial gravity (whether sci-fi or centrifugal).
  • For Alt Cunningham to treat it, she needs access to Mikoshi resources, which she also states is physically on a network of satellites. That space station may be one such orbital facility in the Mikoshi network.
  • The station is definitely part of the network. It has Mikoshi written on it. You can see this in a cinematic.

Arasaka's Plan Makes No Sense

• OK, so from what I gather, they are creating these soul chips so they can more or less survive long after their previous body expires by simply being uploaded into another person's psyche. Except...problem. Johnny Silverhand's psyche is clearly anti-Arasaka, and good chance a lot of other people follow suit. So, if they uploaded him or anyone else who holds anti-Arasaka sentiments into a recently deceased Arasaka agent let's say, aren't they just shooting themselves in the foot?
  • Outside of a body engrams are totally helpless, and Arasaka controls the means of recording and uploading exclusively and entirely. Any anti-Arasaka engram is just going to have to stew without a body, as Johnny was before V slotted and damaged the Relic 2.0 (which was going to remain in-house anyway) and Arasaka requires a huge fee even for the normal Relic.
  • Also if you were going to try to record and edit the minds of people with experimental technology would you try it on someone you actually liked? No, you'd risk the insanity, mind melting suffering, etc on someone you hate then when the program actually works you move on to people you like. The Relic 2.0 was probably meant to be tested in a well guarded Arasaka base where they could try to get a working upload of Johnny over and over until they fully understood how to get it to work properly every time, then shoot him in the face and put him back into storage.
  • The Relic that V had in him was a prototype. Prototypes typically are used to figure out how to get things to work and if they function. Johnny being used in a prototype makes more sense than risking using an Engram of "someone you like." Why? Think of it like this: Let's say you're going to test to see if an Engram can be successfully transferred onto the Relic, to see if anything would go wrong with the transfer. Are you going to risk the Engram of someone you like to see if it works? Or are you going to risk the Engram of someone you don't like, which carries less risk of losing someone you care about?

Why Don't Ya Just Re-Upload V?

• So what's stopping Arasaka from uploading V into a chip ala Johnny Silverhand and then slotting into someone else? Is it something about the damage to V's brain/the Relic chip that makes it impossible?
  • Alt Cunningham points out that in addition to the nanites from the Relic screwing up V's body down to the DNA, which would make uploading his consiousness tricky as they'd need to find a body that wouldn't reject him, his mind is intertwined with Johnny's now. They'd need an AI or a sufficiently skilled human to disentangle them without destroying them both in the process and a copy of the soulkiller to put V's mind onto a Relic chip. Not to mention they'd need a second Relic 2.0 which was a prototype if they wanted to upload him into another body since Relic 1.0 available on the market for the ultra wealthy doesn't do that.
  • Hellman or Takemura says that the Relic has altered V's DNA so much it will take a long time before they'll find a suitable match. Saburo could be uploaded almost immidietly because Yorinobu was his biological son, so their DNA was considered "matching". V doesn't have any children, and their DNA is so messed up that finding someone who just won't reject them will take a long time.
  • But Johnny Silverhand isn't related to V by blood or marriage, yet he was able to assimilate into V's psyche just fine. Just upload V's psyche into a different body and it'd be the same thing, right? Only this time it's V assimilating into the body. As I understand it, the psyche is the thing that's uploaded, not the physical DNA. That's why Johnny Silverhand can be uploaded into a female!V's body without trouble despite them obviously being two different genders. If the transfer only works when the two bodies are compatible (i.e., have similar DNA), then doesn't that defeat the entire point of the plot? As far as we know, Johnny isn't related to V.
  • The Relic does alter the body using nanites, though, and the uploading wasn't “just fine” - it was slow and painful, with V fighting Johnny every step of the way, coughing blood, throwing up, blacking out and having seizures. At one point V's heart actually stops. It's awful to live through once, so why endure it a second time when you don't have to?
  • It's also stated that V's personality is altering Johnny's in turn. That's probably not supposed to happen. And frankly it might be a case of pure luck, coupled with V's mental and physical toughness, that the procedure worked at all.
  • Also don't forget that the Relic's processes that we see in-game are not the normal procedure for altering a body for an uploaded mind. Its an emergency life-saving mechanism that the Relic initiated to save the host. V is in a particularly nasty situation involving experimental tech that shouldn't have happened at all.

Why does everyone seem to forget that V is dying?

• V is slowly having her personality overwritten by a terrorist who killed thousands of people. So why the hell is it that in the euthanasia ending, everyone is mad or upset directly at her, not her death? Why is it that Misty gives you shit for going to Arasaka to help, given that in some game states the alternatives may only be dying or letting said evil terrorist take over your brain? Does everyone want V to just twiddle her thumbs and wait to be hijacked by a terrorist that kills everyone, or something? They get mad if she dies on her own terms, they get mad if she tries to live. What the hell else is she supposed to do? Suffer? Watch Johnny possibly kill thousands of innocents again while she's powerless to stop him? Everyone's carrying on as if she's "just" (for lack of a better term) depressed, not terminally ill in such a way that could take a lot of people down with her if she just sits there and does nothing. Even the people who didn't know about Johnny knew she was terminal, so what gives?
  • Johnny is not evil or a mindless monster. He's a raging asshole and a violent extremist, but Arasaka really is that bad - not just controlling and exploiting and killing people but imprisoning them forever to be manipulated without their consent, on top of killing them. He also slowly realises that his attack did not have the effect he was hoping for and learns to be less of a dickhead, to the point he'll strongly advocate giving V's body back even though he'd live longer in it if he took it for himself, even if V says he should take it. There's no sign Arasaka or any corporation is ever going to even slow down on the “exploit literally every part of human life and the earth to death” train. As irrational and harsh as reactions to V's death may be, V either selling themselves to the devil or committing suicide are not rational or nice things to do! Terminally ill or not, there were other options, and if V failed to take them, well, be ready to endure anger, grief and judgement from their loved ones.
  • Again — what other options? In certain worldstates your options are suicide, letting yourself get taken over by the guy who killed thousands of innocent people (for a guy who's not "evil", he didn't wait long after giving the evacuation order), or Arasaka. The US healthcare system kills tons of people a year due to pricing them out of healthcare, should Americans just not seek medical treatment and let themselves die? Not even euthanise themselves (because that's evil), but just die?
  • Like, don't get me wrong, I know Arasaka is as evil as it gets. But if I had a friend in V's shoes and they wanted to live — I'd tell them to do whatever it took. I wouldn't rather them dead if the only alternative (and if you don't finish the Nomad questline, it IS the only alternative) is death or having a terrorist take over their head.
  • You know how you feel about potentially having Johnny live in V's body? That's how V's friends feel about V selling themselves to Arasaka, except more so - because as terrible as his attack was, Arasaka is worse. Whatever Johnny does in V's body, there's nothing he can do that will even approach the harm that Arasaka has done and will do to the world. Ever. This isn't the banal nastiness of American health care (which at least exists to help people in theory, even if it's bad at it). This is a force of active, constant, all-encompassing malfeasance that incidentally benefits V as it goes on to consume all V knows and loves, as long as V assists it in achieving that goal.
  • (Part 1, regarding V joining Arasaka) As noted above, Arasaka is THE BAD GUY in this setting. They literally treat the common folk like disposable lab rats. In Misty's case, of course she'd be pissed. V just joined the very organization that was indirectly responsible for Jackie's death. V's action here told her, “You and Jackie don't mean shit to me, even after all we've been through together.”
  • The problem is Arasaka didn't kill Jackie, the Trauma Team did. And even if it was true, it is dificult to blame Arasaka for shooting the suspected killer of their boss trespassing their own hight-security area. RDIT: looks like I was wrong. Seeker drones that shoot Jackie had Arasaka logo on them.
  • If I recall, she didn't know what Jackie was planning to do. Far as she knew, he was just doing his own thing until he ran afoul of Arasaka agents and was killed. And even she knew the specifics, she has a clear bias against them so she's not about to go, 'Yeah, my lover totally deserved it.'
  • As I said to the other person — if I had a friend in V's shoes and there was no other choice (ie you haven't finished the Panam questline), I wouldn't rather they died than went to Arasaka for help. It does nothing in the fight against Arasaka. If anything, it means they have one less person to oppose them. Better to pick your battles and live another day to stick the knife in.
  • (Part 2, regarding V's suicide) This is treading on mighty thin ice here so I'll just say this: We don't really control how others react to our deaths, self-inflicted or otherwise. I shall say no more.
  • Which is fair enough, but it's still disheartening that it seems to be almost unanimous. Even Misty acts as if your suicide was due to depression, and not a terminally ill patient choosing not to suffer and draw it out. There's a difference between "It sucks that you had to choose this, but it was your choice to make and I'm glad you didn't have to suffer" and "it was your choice but you had SO MUCH TO LIVE FOR", and a difference between that and even the "screw you for not suffering" which a lot of people had. If this was a game about depression, it would be very understandable that such attitudes would be the dominant reaction but... nobody seems to care that V was suffering what was, essentially, a terminal illness. Grief is grief, and I would grieve, but I'd also be relieved that they went out before they could suffer too much. But maybe that's just because I've actually had a relative who wasn't able to be euthanised and had a long, drawn-out death that they shouldn't have had to go through.
  • True. I think the writers dropped the ball on that one.
  • (Part 3, Conclusion) In short, they have some idea that V is dying, but were hoping V would try literally anything other than those two options.
  • Which is also fair, especially if you've finished the Nomad questline. Just, the first time I checked out the endings I hadn't — so my V's only options were death, terrorist and Arasaka, which makes the NPCs' reactions absolutely brutal and lacking empathy. The context is much different if you haven't unlocked the Star ending.
  • This is striking me as less a “headscratcher” and more an emotional reaction to the ending, to which there can really be no answer. Grief is grief. It's also irrational, angry, anguished, judgemental, and totally unfair. If it helps, as far as V's friends know V can't hear or react to them, so they're not particularly eager to avoid hurting V's feelings.
  • I can see the OP's point, though. Far as they knew, Johnny's still the deranged terrorist he was in life. They're not there for Johnny's Heel–Face Turn. They don't know he's trying to be better. For all anyone would know, the second he overtakes V, he goes right back to blowing up Arasaka Tower. So while it's understandable why they'd be angry, it's not like V had any other option. Remember, V has what amounts to a terminal illness. A terminal illness that will end with their mind being wiped out and replaced with the mind of an extremist who blew up a tower with a nuclear bomb fifty years earlier. If I were one of V's friends, I would grieve, yes, but I would understand why they needed to do what they did.
  • It's worth noting the different cultural attitude here. In Night City and particularly in the circles V runs in stubbornly fighting even in the face of overwhelming odds is considered the thing to do. Remember the Afterlife cocktails? You get one (and thus are remembered fondly) if you die on a job. Going out in a blaze of glory while trying whatever you can, no matter how extreme, to achieve something, even something hopeless, is respected. Giving up is not. As far as V's social circle is concerned suicide or selling out to Arasaka is giving up and, rightly or wrongly, they expect V to stubbornly push forward no matter the cost.

The engram death problem

• If engram is said to be not a "real person" but a data copy, and only original body is everything that counts, then why overwriting V's brain is treated by narration like a literal death instead of bizarre mental illness?
  • Because overwriting V's brain means V dies, even if V's body lives. What makes V uniquely themselves is gone forever and can't be restored, which is death in all practical senses. It's made a little difficult by there not really being terms for this that aren't philosophically loaded.
  • For a somewhat poor example, it'd be like if I took your laptop and removed everything from it and replaced them with stuff from another computer. Your laptop is physically there, but everything that made it uniquely yours (i.e., all your documents, photos, etc.) is gone. That's what's happening to V. At the end, what we're left with is Johnny Silverhand in V's body. His personality, his memories, etc...all in V's body. It's not a mental illness akin to V suddenly thinks they're Johnny Silverhand. Its literally Johnny Silverhand's psyche taking over and erasing V's.
  • It's not just that V's personality is being overwritten, but that their brain is actually rotting away, and their body is using the chip as a replacement. In the laptop example, it would be less that you deleted all the data and replaced it with different data, and more that you swapped out the hard drive. V's mind, and therefore their consciousness, will be physically destroyed.
  • It's also being treated as literal death because the process of the Relic converting V's body to make it suitable for Johnny Silverhand is literally killing them. It's why you see V cough up blood, or suddenly collapse. Most of the endings still have V on death's door as a result. It's not just mentally wiping V out, there is a physical aspect to the hostile takeover that's happening to V as well.

Kerry in "The Temperance" ending

• In "The Temperance" ending, Johnny takes over V's body (with their consent) and leaves Night City. If the player has romanced Kerry, he will leave you and angry message about V ghosting him, with Kerry thinking that he just skipped town without contacting him to tell him they're breaking up. Why couldn't Johnny tell Kerry about what happened in Mikoshi? He was one of the people who knew about V's and Johnny's situation with the engram from the start and knew about both of them, unlike, let's say, River. I'd understand if Kerry was just an acquaintanance, but he was V's partner and Johnny's best friend. Doesn't Johnny owe that to both V and Kerry, his best friends, to let Kerry know the truth? "Johnny wanted to spare Kerry the pain" doesn't really work either: at least Kerry would have some closure and wouldn't feel hurt about V seemingly having sex with him and leving without a word. Not to mention that Johnny is (in a way) tarnishing V's reputation and Kerry's memories of him. It's also not like Johnny didn't know how much they've ment for eachother, he was literally there for their every interaction.
  • While Johnny certainly has changed, he's still a bit of an asshole. The concept of thinking about other people other than himself is fairly new to him, so it's not surprising if Kerry just slipped from his mind.
  • It's also possible that Johnny feels too guilty about the whole thing to talk to Kerry.

Parking in Night City

• Why's there so little parking in Night City? There's only one parking garage (you can see at least) available in the entire city and very few buildings have actual parking lots. (And no handicapped spaces either, then again paraplegics can be healed by punches here) When people are not using their car, does everyone just send them to drive around aimlessly until they're needed again? Why on earth would anyone think that was a good idea? Because that would cause a of wasted fuel, traffic congestion, and accident potential. It seems as if CDPR didn't realise American cities are designed with car ownership in mind.
  • Population outgrew the projected capacity. Happens all the time — particularly since I suspect many of the people inhabiting Night City are not there officially. Also, considering it was designed to be a "paradise", perhaps the designer tried to minimise how many cars would wind up present (since cars are noisy, smelly, dangerous and clunky) by not installing the facilities to maintain them. As for the paraplegic thing, most debilitating injuries can be patched up with cyberware, probably to the point where accommodations aren't considered.
  • If accommodations aren't even considered due to Cyberware then that really does fit into the whole "Night City is in America" thing. Cyberware is prohibitively expensive because healthcare is seen as a luxury. But that aside, doesn't anyone notice the traffic problem?
  • Yep: there are radio broadcasts reminding people that laws prohibit the use of firearms to bypass traffic specifically because it's that bad. They notice, but no one with power gives a shit.
  • There's more than one parking lot - most of the corporate facilities have their own parking area. What there's a scarcity of is *public* parking. This is a city where the corporations run everything - public parking doesn't benefit the corporations (there's other more valuable uses for the space), so they don't build it. The city government isn't strong enough to make sure public parking is built either.
  • There's probably also a lot of underground parking beneath the various megastructures V can't access. Several of the larger buildings the player is able to access have garages attached to them and/or lots in the sublevels.
  • One of the futuretech proposals for the age of auto-driving cars is that they would drop off their user and then drive off to park elsewhere (or even become autonomous taxis) until their user summoned them back. It would allow much denser parking lots to be built on cheaper land and make for a denser urban core.

Johnny-In-V's eyesight colorations...

• So it's evident that Johnny has a colorblindness (like his VA, Keanu). This makes sense during the flashbacks... but why is it present even when Johnny takes control of V's body? V's eyes do not have colorblindness (as well they shouldn't, since they're Kiroshis). It's not a mental thing, either, because there are light-filtering glasses that can solve color blindness. It's not that colorblind people's eyes can't detect the light wavelengths, it's that the color-detecting nerve cones in the eyes have bleed-over into wavelength ranges they shouldn't have, and artificially filtering them out can solve this. There are videos out there of colorblind people first wearing these glasses and being moved to tears because of it.
  • Implants weren't as common in Johnny's day so he got used to seeing tech run in colorblind mode. When either he eventually got an upgrade in his original body or got moved into V's he gained the ability to see all colors but opted to keep the HUD set to what he was used to. That way he would have the muscle memory of 'blue blip/text on screen, probably important' instead of missing important details.
  • The UI colours change, but the rest of the time V-as-Johnny seems to perceive colours just fine.
  • Alternatively: artistic license.
  • He's also seeing the ghost of his artificial hand over V's real hand, so it could easily just be in his head.
  • Also, not really relevant to the topic, but Keanu probably isn’t actually color blind, that’s just hearsay. The UI change is probably just to reflect Johnny’s control.

Dex, Rogue and the Afterlife

• Why is Dex allowed to run a big job out of the Afterlife? Most fixers seem to get territorial about entire city districts, making sure any decent sized scores go through them. Now the Afterlife is something of a special case; Watson is Regina's turf but the club is where the high end mercs from all over the city go so she doesn't control jobs from there nor does she try to. But why is Rogue okay with Dex setting up a heist on the level of the Konpeki job, against her old enemy Arasaka at that, in her club without her being in on it?
  • Because Dex was a washed up hazbin looking for his way back in. So long as he paid for the space and did his due diligence to respect Rogue in her domain she didn't really care much what he did specifically. She didn't know he planned to take on Araska just that Dex was going go pull something big and either make a glorious return, becoming a potential asset, or get himself killed in which case they'd add a new item to the menu.
  • He probably also just went to Rogue as a 'restarting' fixer, and straight out ASKED. "Wanna run a job, get back in the game. I'll give ya a fee, mind if I use Afterlife? One shot, then I'm ghosting again." Or "One shot, back in the game, I'll pay a tithe."

How much money did Johnny have?

• I feel like the game gives us a conflicting message about how profitable Samurai actually was. Both Kerry and Johnny mention multiple times that they've lived in squats and that they've barely had enough money for food and upkeep of the instruments. On the other hand, Johnny says to Rogue that he'll pay her and Santiago double if they'll help him with getting Alt out of Arasaka, he drove around in a Porshe and his Malorian is a one of a kind gun made by a legendary gunsmith, and the tabletop description mentions that Johnny "was willing to pay any price" for having it made. I've talked with a few people who know more about the tabletop lore, and they've said that Johnny apparently earned quite a lot later on, and "Never Fade Away" became a fenomenon listened to all around the world, but I don't know how canon it is in the context of the game. Not to mention that Johnny has both the malorian and the Porshe in 2013, before Alt died, so he couldn't have had written "Never Fade Away" before that, since the whole song is basically a eulogy for Alt. I know that Johnny's memories aren't a perfect recreation of the events, but even without that I still don't know if Samurai was a struggling niche band with a group of devoted fans (like the game seems to imply), or an international sensation, with the lead being able to buy an expensive classic car, a custom-made handgun from the best manufacturer on the market and can easily pay double the rate of one of the top mercs in town.
  • It's worth remembering Samurai wasn't Johnny's only source of income. He was also a fairly successful edgerunner. Now his focus was political, not commercial but still. Johnny is also exactly the sort of person who would splurge on a fancy gun and a what-is-he-compensating-for car after getting some decent cash without considering where his next meal is coming from. Overall the impression I got was Johnny went through periods of being well off or dirt poor as fortune took him. As for the 2013 raid given as he was going to get Alt he was likely willing to pay whatever it took, even if it left him ennyless. Or he was bullshitting; notice even in his own memories he never actually paid Rogue and Santiago.
  • Things like a vintage car (it looks like a relatively old model in 2020s) or a custom-made weapon could have been received as the payment for some high-profile gigs Johnny could have done in the past. And given that he was eventually able to procure a tactical nuke, he definitely managed to make some really good connections in his life.
  • Johnny did not buy the car, canonically. It used to belong to an Arasaka Corpo-Rat who got into a fight with Johnny over a parking space. Johnny shot out the tires, and then later stole the car. The car was already over forty years old when he acquired it. And what specific Arasaka executive owned the car? Toshiro Harada. (Source: Mike Pondsmith.)
  • Johnny downplays his wealth and fame to better represent himself as the hero of the struggling masses, rather than a rich asshole playing pretend. While he never hit it as big as Kerry due to his anti-corporate attitudes, he was still an underground phenomenon, and without a corporate middleman taking a lion's share of the profits, he unquestionably had a fortune of several million eddies by the time Alt was kidnapped. The tabletop game also tells us that for all his anti-corporate bluster, he was a shrewd businessman, and although his investments usually had an ideological bent, such as cheap housing for struggling artists, he was always expecting to make decent profit out of them, as well.

Engrams Aren't the Actual Person

• So, throughout the game, people treat the "Secure Your Soul" and the Engrams as if they're life after death. Except, it's stated that the engrams are copies of your neural data, not actually you. Johnny didn't come back from the dead, a copy of his personality was uploaded into you. In the Devil ending, Saburo didn't come back from the dead. An immortal copy of him was uploaded onto Yorinobu's body. At the VDB den, Alt makes the plan to turn V into an Engram and then download that back onto her body, and my first thought was "Isn't my objective to survive? Creating a digital copy and downloading that onto my body is what I'm trying to avoid! Even if it is a copy of me!" But V seemed to think this is seriously a solution to the whole 'dying' problem. So why do people treat it as if these people have cheated death and become immortal when, from the perspective of the original person, they're dead and staying dead while a copy of them lives their life? Who would pay billions of dollars to have a digital copy of themselves take over and live their life?
  • It's a matter of perspective. From the original person's perspective, yes, they're dead. From the perspective of the clone, they are exactly the same person. In V's case, there's more wiggle room because reformating his brain with his original memories is still the same brain and body. From his perspective, they're only dead for like a few seconds and back to normal. Even a materialist would probably agree that it would seem like nothing happened. Besides, it seems very likely that V doesn't have more than SECONDS left of their life when they upload. So it's a last ditch hail mary play anyway.
  • Most of the talk about "souls" is just Arasaka marketing. Depending on your dialogue choices, Johnny will freely admit that he's aware he's an AI and not the "real deal", and Alt will state both that she is only an AI copy of the original person, and that V will in fact "lose their soul" if converted to an engram. Everyone else is ignorant of the truth, spouting corpo propaganda, and/or indulging in wishful thinking.
  • This is really a philosophical question and quite a deep one. What is the real you? The body? The brain? The personality? A soul of some sort? That's not a question we're going to answer here. In V's case however almost all are covered; the same personality is in the same brain in the same body. So that only leaves the soul and, lacking a supernatural element to the plot, that can't be measured.
  • It's odd that a religious V never really considers this, especially when the game didn't shrink away from such questions in sidequests. You'd think the Street Kid V especially (even if they aren't personally religious Heywood is very Catholic culturally) would want to talk to Padre or something.

Johnny's elbow knives

• A minor one regarding the two blades on Johnny's left elbow: does anyone know what their purpose is? The only explanation I can come up with are that they are decorative or a self defence tool (if someone tried to grab him from the back), but doesn't that make his normal every day life difficult? Don't they slice through clothes with long sleeves, or make it difficult for him to lie down on his back?

The point of the 'sacrifice' and Johnny Silverhand's reaction in 'There Is A Light That Never Goes Out'

• OK, so Joshua converts to Christianity and decides that he'll be crucified in an attempt to redeem himself for his sins and hope to inspire other criminals to walk a different path. I've several questions about this. 1: How does he think this is gonna redeem him? Joshua isn't innocent. He even admits that. Besides, the whole point of the original 'Sacrifice' that he's imitating was that Jesus was the innocent lamb brought to sacrifice on behalf of humanity. As it's implied, no one other than Joshua seems to care. They view this as either a way to get rich or just 'meh'. Forcing himself to die in the most painful way possible seems like a Stupid Sacrifice to me. No one's gonna go, "Holy shit! So brave and powerful! Let me rethink my life and seek salvation!" He's not Jesus. His death isn't saving anyone for anything. 2: Johnny Silverhand more or less lays it down to you when y'all talk in the bar. He doesn't buy the religious talk. He even says, paraphrased, "you see a god, and you bow. I see a god, I shoot him in the face, right between the eyes." Yet during the actual event, he's reciting passages from the Bible such as, "Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself as you would save us." and at the very end, he is very respectful and quiet. While the latter I can chalk up to him not being 100% an asshole and knowing when to behave himself, but the former? What's he going off on reciting passages when he made it clear he doesn't buy into any religious thing past or present? Besides, it reeks of gaslighting, like he's telling the victim's family, "Hey, look how sorry I am! I'm filming myself being crucified! Am I redeemed now?"
  • Yes. Seriously, it's supposed to make you think, and apply your own judgement. As for Johnny, he states himself that he respects Joshua's convictions. Though not a religious man, Johnny likely sees a very flawed individual making a brave moral stand and identifies on some level.
  • Okay, piece by piece:
    1. "How does he think this is gonna redeem him? Joshua isn't innocent. He even admits that." Well, yeah. The innocent do not require redemption.
    2. "Besides, the whole point of the original 'Sacrifice' that he's imitating was that Jesus was the innocent lamb brought to sacrifice on behalf of humanity." Joshua doesn't think he is Jesus. He's doing something else. Jesus is the reference, obviously, but that doesn't mean he's comparing himself directly to the big guy. The point is for other people to feel his acceptance of his fate, his faith in those final moments, and the horrible pain he experiences in death while still keeping his faith. For Joshua it is not about adulation or glory for himself, its about trying to do something that might help others and atone for some of the wrong he brought into the world.
    3. "As it's implied, no one other than Joshua seems to care. They view this as either a way to get rich or just 'meh'." Some do, sure, but they wouldn't believe it would make them money if it wasn't something people wanted.
    4. "No one's gonna go, "Holy shit! So brave and powerful! Let me rethink my life and seek salvation!"" They might. It is doubtful anyone will see Joshua as brave because thats not the intent but feeling his final moments might well make viewers rethink things as is his intention. Remember that they're not just watching a movie, they are feeling what he's feeling, including his faith and sincerity. Since he's been sentenced to death anyway he might as well try.
  • As to Johnny the above poster has it; he respects the conviction even if he doesn't share Joshua's faith. Joshua's much the same; if you choose to quote non-Christian texts to him it still encourages him.
  • "Besides, it reeks of gaslighting, like he's telling the victim's family, "Hey, look how sorry I am! I'm filming myself being crucified! Am I redeemed now?"" There may be an element of that but if so it's not conscious on Joshua's part. Remember his victim's daughter reached out to him, not the other way around. From all appearances Joshua isn't looking to gain anything for himself but instead is just making an attempt to apply the beliefs he found on death row. That including trying to give peace to someone he wronged, we see it as misguided because it looks like hes trying to force forgiveness but from his side these new beliefs dictate he has an obligation to try.
  • Ultimately I can't say he's making a good choice. I'm not even Christian so I may be missing doctrinal points and I do not think the logic behind his choice is completely sound. However it is an attempt to do something meaningful with what little is left of his life and we can't know if it'll have the effect he wants it to. It is, however, his choice, the only one he has left as a condemned criminal. If it gives him comfort to make this attempt to help others find faith with his final moment who are we to say he can't?

The Temperance Ending

• I love the Temperance ending but two things confuse me:
  • Why do V's friends still think V is alive and has just ghosted them, even months after the assault on Arasaka, rather than assume V probably just died there? Did Johnny as V show himself to them at least once to give them the impression V still lives, and then ghosted them?
  • Imagine being one of V's friends or allies - they show up after knowing of what they've been going through for the whole time they've been fighting with the Relic, and instead of V, it's Johnny. "Oh hey, I know this exact thing that happened is the exact thing you've all been working to help V avoid happening, but it was TOTALLY consensual and they're idea, trust me for realsies." Would you believe him? How do you even begin to broach that subject? No one went through all the discussions and time with Johnny that V did to learn how he changed, or saw what happened in Mikoshi. All they have is the word of a viral AI infection that was killing their best friend/ally/lover, who would have a very vested interest in seeing V fail. At this point, it's easier to just ghost and let them wonder, since there's no way you could convince them otherwise.
  • To flesh this out a little more: at this point, V is a hardened badass with an ocean of willpower. If you've done their quests, each of V's friends would have their reasons to say "no way V would just give up on his life". Doubly so when considering that, from their perspective, V is the kind of person who will charge Arasaka tower with a small handful of backup, in what has to be one of the ballsiest missions in the Cyberpunk universe. There's not reasonable way Johnny can show up and say "hey the person you know and love, who has fought life and limb with the small bit of juice keeping their body running to preserve their life and make a name for themselves, let themselves die for me. You know, without giving any hints to anyone. Just gave up and became part of the net. Aight, peace." As mentioned by others, all the others would know is that V, all of a sudden without warning gave up the ghost. The people that know Johnny would especially say "wait Johnny is EXACTLY the kind of person who would backstab V and betray his/her trust when given the chance." Under these circumstances, it'd be more unreasonable for Panam/Judy/etc. to be understanding than otherwise.
  • Why does it seem in the game like such a big deal, and is displayed as such a sad thing, that V gives their body to Johnny? Don't get me wrong, clearly it is still a selfless sacrifice, but it's like the epilogue forgets that V only had 6 months to live regardless (and could have simply died in the assault or any other day as well). In fact the Temperance ending is the only ending in which both Johnny and V continue to exist in at least some form, every other ending requires at least one of them to permanently die (at least soon). Yet it has a notably much more melancholic tone, than for example the ending where V takes off with the nomads to live for a few more months and then probably dies slowly and in pain.
  • Only if they can't find a fix. The tabletop game certainly has decent enough medical tech to fix issues like this for enough ennies if you can find the right doctor and that was 50 years ago. The Star and Sun endings have hope, just not certainties. V giving up to Johnny is giving up that hope and that is certainly melancholy.
    • In support of the point above, the "Tower" ending confirms that V's condition can be cured given enough time and resources, albeit with some unfortunate permanent side effects.

Johnny's Porsche

• Why did Johnny even own a car, if he never, ever drives himself? Every single time we see him in flashbacks or let him take over, he always lets others drive him around (Rogue in "Never Fade Away", Ruby in "A Cool Metal Fire", and Steve in "New Dawn Fades").
  • Because those flashbacks aren't the entirety of Johnny's life.
  • But "Cool Metal Fire" and "New Dawn Fades" take place in reality, and the Porsche also exists and is recognized as having been around by independent observers (Rogue). So either Johhny owned and drove it in the past, but stopped driving in the present; or he owned the car but never drove it, nor drives in the present. Both options are head-scratchy.
  • People buy things for all sorts of reasons, sometimes because they simply want to own something. There are celebrities in real life who have bought luxury cars despite not even having a driver's license to begin with. Humans are not always rational creatures.
  • ...and especially not Johnny Silverhand. It makes sense for him to buy something he never actually uses just to show everyone how successful he is.
  • Johnny does, in fact, drive the car from the ripper doc to the club to meet & recruit Rogue & Santiago.
  • Word of God says he actually stole it after a fight with an Arasaka Corpo-rat over a parking spot. He had it repainted and detailed to fit his style as a screw you to the guy he stole it from.

Corpo V's job

• What exactly did Corpo V do in their former job? The intro mentions something about counter intelligence, but what specifically does that mean? Was V some kind of Corpo version of James Bond or something?
  • Sorta. Counter-intelligence covers a whole range of activities primarily aimed at responding to when internal security suffers a blind spot. If there is an info-leak say, the job of someone like V would be to close any openings and clean up the mess that leak caused. And in this world that can be anything from recovering a misplaced prototypes to silencing a Media or politician with info on one of the corp's many buried skeletons. Meredith Stout being a good example of another corp's counter-intelligence in action (her mission being "recover stolen Militech property and close the security gaps that let them find and run off with it.")
  • A subordinate to V has them decide whether or not to pull out an agent infiltrating another corporation, as well — something that would be espionage rather than counterintelligence. Given what happened that put their department into a tailspin during the prologue, they're supposed to also keep other corporations (especially Militech) from discovering weaknesses, operations, or safehouses worldwide. Something happened that seems to have gotten a lot of Arasaka employees killed, and it's because counterintel screwed up.

The Doll talk

• Having played through multiple time, why does the Doll gets annoyed with V, even if you logically run through everything else, leaving you only with the safeword? I understand they probably want to get paid more, but from how they react it seems like you kind of killed their high and there's no 'easy way' to let them out of it, as even if you give it several minutes they act like you just shat on the floor. Especially since it was just such a tender scene if you do the full dialogue. it feels like the option to come to a "natural" end should be there.
  • They become annoyed because you're asking questions about a coworker and their employers. Asking questions about the Tyger Claws can easily result in trouble for them, so its understandable that they would get a bit upset that you cut the session short, brought them back to the real world where the person underneath the Doll can see everything again, and then start asking questions about the very scary gang that is entirely willing to just sell them off to a shady ripper if they start to malfunction.
    • Before that though, if you run down all dialogue , and say thank you even and the doll says "everything has to end"...,before you can ask a single thing about Evelyn when they're themselves they say "you pulled the air break " like it's nearly traumatic for them to use the safe word and before they hear you're looking for Evelyn outside of the Programming. That's the head scratcher not them being annoyed after.

Why does Rogue look so old

• Okay, despite being an extreme example of Older Than They Look should she not in fact look exactly the same as she did if she wanted to? If she is using fake synth-skin, she doesn't need to look aged at all. I suppose she could simply prefer being Silver Fox, but is there another explanation?
  • Rogue simply doesn't like the idea of faking what she is and thus doesn't get face lifts or the like. She was a Cyberpunk and so doesn't play by the rules including the ones that say rich people have to keep themselves looking perfect in their 20s to 30s forever.
  • She's close to her 70s/80s at the point in which the game takes place. And she looks like she's no older than her 50s. It could very well just be a personal preference. It could likely be a professional choice too. Think about it: If she went with looking like she was still in her 30s, people who meet her for the first time more than likely wouldn't take her seriously. Looking like her actual age may make her look like she's washed out and too old to be a fixer. By going with a look like she's in her 50s, she looks like she's forever in her prime and capable to be a fixer and not someone to take lightly, while not looking naïve or over the hill in the process.

Why did Johnny name his band "Samurai"?

• Like, if your enemy is a nationalistic megacorp that sees Imperial Japan as a goal to aspire to, why would you name your rock band after an iconic Japanese warrior class?
  • According to Mike Pondsmith on Reddit, Nancy was actually the one to come up with the name. She found the historical samurai's level of blind loyalty that led to them being willing to die for their cause, even if said cause was immoral, incredibly stupid and attempted to turn the word into a form of mockery. Johnny and Kerry just thought the name sounded cool and stuck with it.

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