I still remember listening to Yorinobus monologue at the end of my first playthrough and the realization that he was a mere victim of his circumstances as well hit so hard
The Soulkiller arc was always the foundational lore of Pondsmith's Pen & Paper RPG since the 2020 edition, with Saburo Arasaka the central bad guy and Johnny & Alt the semi-central protagonists even into the (pretty awful) CyberGeneration setting, so this returns the lore to Saburo re-incarnating. 2077 is a great reboot for his signature franchise & a good way to retcon the CyberGeneration mess. Edit: the unexplained part is how V and Jackie, a pair of nobodies but probably identified as compatible hosts for the biochip, were set up to do exactly what they (you) did throughout the campaign, courtesy of Dex, who hired you for no real reason, who did so at Goro's orders, who was Saburo's bodyguard after all, pretending to be exiled and managing you while just carrying out Saburo's plan to reincarnate inside his sons meat body after being backed up just before deliberately aggravating Yorinobu into patricide, and you being the rather convenient witness to it.
@@WindFireAllThatKindOfThing if that were true Dex wouldn't have freaked out at the No Tell Motel the way he did, Evelyn wouldn't even have factored into the Heist. Nah, V and Jackie got plain unlucky, like all edgerunners keep saying throughout the game, "they knew the risks."
@@benadrylcumbersplatch6448 Dex literally told him before Goro executed him that he 'did everything you asked me to' How everyone never put that simple piece of the puzzle together is beyond me, making it really obvious that Goro and Hanako were always working towards her father's immortality while also purging Arasaka of Yorinobu AND using his body. In the lore, Yorinobu had spent his youth actively rebelling against Arasaka in a bosozoku biker gang like the Tiger Claws called the (hold your laughter) Steel Dragons. No relation to Mark Wahlberg. This was always going to be Yorinobu's fate planned far in advance by his father since the Corpbook 1 sourcebook printed back in 1991. We just got to see how it played out in video game form.
@@WindFireAllThatKindOfThing He "did everything he asked" as in he got his fat ass off the space shuttle, told him everything about the heist and showed him where he dumped V's body my guy, how you got such a simple line of dialogue so wrong is what is beyond me.
About T-Bug; her death was confirmed by the Netrunner merchant in the store in Kabuki. Unless that lady was running cover for her, she goes into detail how trauma found her body. Her nerves and muscles fried. T-Bug indeed got zeroed.
@@ArcaneSorceror yeah doubtful. Pretty sure she’s dead. T-Bug wasn’t given enough importance for this. Sure she could still be alive, but really doubt it
@@ShadowProject01 Wasn't given importance? She was the contact for Dex about the job, she messaged Jackie about V having to meet Dex, T-Bug is why Dex was able to escape Night City AND why he came back. Plus was the netrunner for the crew. She is the only crew member who we don't see die in front of us. She even meets in person for the big team meeting. What does she say she wants to do with her cut? Stop 'running completely. So when she notices the inbound flight she doesn't tell anyone, and she times it so we are caught, everything does sideways, and she can give the two mercs an out. All she has to do, is fake her death.
@@henningkaiser9192 I am fairly certain that Dex implies T-Bug is how he got out of Night City and way from his troubles. Plus, what idiot low-level netrunner would think to get better tech to help with a targeted hack. Low-levels are humble enough to not take the job, or stupid enough to think they don't need any help, and we see PLENTY of idiot netrunners in the game.
25:50 There's a much simpler explanation. There are other clues about Dex. He never runs with a regular crew, like most fixers. When asked about why he chose you and Jackie he talks about how he has good instincts about such things. Those are both red flags for spotting con artists. Also, it's hinted that he has ties with the VoodooBoys. He doesn't have a reputation for incompetence, he is a big fixer. But Vik, for example, just tells you to be careful around him. The conclusion I come to, is that Dex always intended to betray you and Jackie. Not for any Arasaka, but because that's straight up his modus operandi. He's looking for people good enough to get the job done, but who are still unknowns so that no one notable misses them. He operates just like the VoodooBoys do. When you want a fixer that cleans up loose ends, you hire Dexter Deshawn; who doesn't run with a regular crew, because he quietly disposes of them after the job is complete.
@@TheNukedNacho When ever I play a new game, at some point I always go when he lies and unload a couple of mags in his face. It's not a huge payoff but still satisfying from RP perspective.
With regards to Johnnys memory: - yes his narcissism - these engrams dont know what happened after their death. If Johnny was cut down inside the building, he may have crafted a false memory of himself escaping and being caught at the helicopter. The later memory created upon him accepting the fact he died.
Or maybe lore books are lying to us, and this is what really happen... But to be completely honest, lore books etc was just inspiration for the game, what happen inside the game is true, it is the same thing with The Witcher games, they change some things from books and in game world that changes are true, books are not.
@@HippoBean Ok thanks for info, but for casual players like me and others they never said how it really happen inside the game so most of the players will believe that this is how it was, and i think CDPR will not change that because thanks to this Silverhand feels more important, and i like it in fact, it is just more cool for casual gamer.
Seeing Jackie as an engram is kind of relieving because of the way he answers you. You telling him all these meaningful things and he almost just blurts out catchphrases. It's obvious it isn't really him and that puts me at ease that their isn't a part of him being forever tortured by arasaka. Or maybe it's just CDPR reusing his lines
Jackie's mind was fucked and so he's repeating his lines. By the time,Arasaka got to Jackie, likely he's already almost dead, no brain to oxygen and so - his engram isn't fully all there. Arasaka doesn't care - it's all research to them.
@@Svoorhout85 the one that hurts the most is "Misty knew, Misty always knew..." Like, you just know that's a snapshot of his final moments thinking he should have listened to Misty and not taken the job
@@itsybitsy3960 No, Jackie's brain was damaged, already dying. When Silverhand was zapped or whatever, he's still very much alive with functioning brain. When Jackie was uploaded, he was barely there. Arasaka uploaded him still - because research is research.
I just watched the T-Bug Was A Mole theory, and I just wanted to point out the fact that, the same shop you go to get your first Daemon Hack, that T-Bug left for you, that the owner does explain about going to T-Bug's apartment, and finding her body in the Netrunner Chair, with her brain completely scorched. It sounded awful, because the shop owner with further explain that, when they do that to a Netrunner, that it apparently feels like 1,000 knives are cutting into you at the same time.... 😮😢
When it comes to T-Bug, the original Cinematic trailers showed her turning off V's cybernetics since she's in league with Dex, with V eventually killing her. This means the original plan probably WAS for her to betray us and die by our hand.
This. T-Bug knew Dex for ages, knew how he worked. The reason he had to leave for two years was probably due to him zeroing a team after a job and needing to lay low until he could come back safely. T-Bug didn't have any deep ties to Jackie, and barely knew V, so them dying wouldn't be an issue. I'm also sure that T-Bug is tied into the VoodooBoys, and was behind putting Evelyn with them and bringing in Dex. She found out about the deal Evelyn offered V because while Judy's room was probably screened for someone hacking into the cameras, the hallway outside wasn't. If everything went right, they VoodooBoys got the chip for the cost of zeroing four "dishrags" and T-Bug would earn their favor
Johnhy's dog tags having a different blood type than is on the medical file could just be a mistake made by the Military of Cyberpunk. My dog tags have 2 possible mistakes on them, one of them possibly being my Blood Type as well. They read my blood type of A+, but two other times I have had it tested I had it come back as A+ once and B+ the other time, most likely meaning I am AB+. The other was my religion. I put No Preference on the form, but my dog tags say None, and yes, it can make a huge difference as to how I would be treated if I were captured, depending on what enemy we were fighting.
There's actually a big hint in the second act that Johnny's memories are incorrect. When smasher blast through the door inside of arasaka tower it immediately cuts to the rooftop scene, not showing how Johnny could've escaped the building.
one thing that i never see people point out, is that his environment in mikoshi was the exact area where he presumably died, which makes sense the more you analyze it
T-Bug even says she was going to burn all bridges and start a new life after the heist. Even if it wasn't a betrayal, but just a back up plan in case the job went south, faking her death seems like a good way to do that. Also notice the door actually opens after she "dies". Which is not how we see hacking work in-game. When you kill an enemy netrunner, their hacking stops.
I was gonna say that the hack could've taken a few moments to upload but bringing up hacks stopping after death sinks that argument, ngl thats a solid point. Kinda hope they do confirm her fate in Phantom Liberty.
The one think you misrepresented was that Johnny and Blackhand were hired but from what I understand that’s incorrect, militech hired Morgan and he hired the rest due to their various issues with arasaka and the corporations.
Great video choom. Definitely didn't expect me or my theory to be brought up within this Iceberg so that was a huge surprise. It means a lot that you would provide the detailed credit as well, keep up the great work!
T-bug betraying the crew is very likely imo. I mean it's literally shown in the 2019 cinematic trailer that T-bug is allied with Dex and helped him kill you when the heist went wrong. I'm guessing the story was changed a bit before actual game release but some small details were skimmed over so it's just sorta ambiguous now
The reason why Johnny leads the attack in the game is bc Mike Pondsmith, the creator of Cyberpunk and it's lore didn't want Morgan Blackhand to be in the game and would prefer the character to be introduced in a sequel.
@@zerotodona1495 They are, and its an interesting psychological phenomenon-and actually why courts are relying less and less on witness testimony. If you take a scenario that someone mostly remembers very well, but add lies-surrounded by confirmed truths-the subject will think they believe that lie, and it becomes a false memory. So (this is just my theory) since an engram is not active and Johnny himself said "its like sleep", im willing to bet that once he "woke up" his memories started to warp a bit due to overhearing what others claim happened to him.
@@zerotodona1495alt says that too when V tells her that he saw johnny save her in his memories, "what you saw wasn't the truth but a subjective point of view on it"
I mean it's practically spelled out that Johnny's "memories" are mixture of Johnny's dying thoughts (like Jackie's) and the torture of Morgan blackhand.
You can't even imagine how much it broke me when i thought i could really get to talk to Jackie as an engram and i realised it's just some nonsense.... Then and there, if i got the option i would have ended Hanako's life
Rogue says "Not this time , honey" to Johhny in For Whom The Bell Tolls ending when he jumps to the chopper and almost falls, just like what we see in his memory. But since this memory is corrupted and Johhny never made it to the roof why does Rogue say this? That cought my attention in my last playthrough.
Not exactly. He never had the bomb. 3 teams were sent into Arasaka Plaza. They were tasked with nuking the building, copying some data archive, and dealing with Alt. The primary goal being nuking the entire building and not telling the teams how powerful the nuke is. The president of the NUSA gaslights the country into believing that Arasaka set off the bomb to kick them out of the country.
I’m late but she might just said that as “this time I’m not leaving you behind” instead of “this time im not letting you fall”, while the timing happen to match the memory but the voice line isn’t exactly precise about what time. We know that she isn’t exactly happy about leaving Johnny behind, i dont think (though i might be wrong) that there’s any other voice line by rogue about her letting him fall and the teleport form the tower to the roof is still extremely weird, specially with how close Adam was to Johnny.
It’s so weird to hear how the “finish the job right away” option is so rarely taken for the sinnerman quest. He got on my nerves the moment he got out of the car with that attitude of his, makes him very shootable.
I still tear up thinking about Yorinobu. Even the quote "raising him like a pig for slaughter" fails in comparison. And his father of all people. Damn. Not only Saburo wanted to ensalave all of humanity but started it with his own son. It's even worse than enslavement. Yorinobu was not only not a villain but a hero in the grand scheme of things. He didn't wait for a second to let go of his good life the moment he learnt of his father's shenanigans. He knew he was most probably going to die but he still tried everything to end his father's tyranny. I loathed him for killing his father specially after seeing it up close and the other things but the moment I found out about the devil ending from one of the videos I had to take a long pause.
A theory I have is that when Johnny was killed with soul killer they could have manipulated his memories and personality so it would be impossible for him to tell the truth of the past, Johnny can't be controlled and he was already dead but Rogue was bought out, all we really know is that Mikoshi holds engrams, if alt could be replaced with AI why couldn't Arasaka make there own Johnny with a different story, this could also explain Johnny's conflicting blood type, what could they change, only those that know him would know the difference, but they know Johnny would always put him in the spotlight.
The idea that Biotechnica may be the solution to V's situation isn't that out there. They've been cloning humans and experimenting with a Soulkiller-like process to install personalities. It's possible they could create a clone with the proper match to the relic. And having an access to an actual Soulkiller created relic could make the process work. For Biotechnica, it would mean finding the last pieces and perfecting the process, and putting one over on Arasaka. Plus, it gives us the possibility of something the game doesn't give us: a happy ending
It was probably a ending before but they decided v never gets a happy ending or that biotechnica could always betray you even then you could have rogue or Panam or Judy help you after all im sure it’s somewhere hidden in the files or on a devs flash drive
TBug died. So the way I see it, Konpeki had top tier ICE and it doesn’t matter how good of a runner you are, you’ll want to take your time to get through it so you don’t get discovered. Then when Saburo arrives and is killed by Yori, the entire hotel goes into red alert. If Bug skipped out, she’d have left V and Jackie to die, but by hacking the door to get them out, the heightened security found her and zapped her.
@@EnclaveSgt the problem there lies within TBug opening the door for V and Jackie. Her chance to fake her death slipped past the second she decided to hack the door and got caught.
Great vid Dan! One thing I’d like to point out, is that there must be some truth to the way Johnny died after falling out of the helicopter. During the second assault on the tower in 2077, Johnny stumbles as he enters the chopper, which prompts Rogue to grab him and say “not this time”. I do still think he’s an unreliable narrator, but some of his recollections must be accurate.
Just wanna point out that Judy is the only one who says anything bad about Fingers in the game. Any time u overhear anyone else talking about him, it’s usually how he gave them a huge discount because of how poor they are or sometimes even installing much needed replacements completely for free.
@@CodeeXD No, he didn’t. Fingers wasn’t the one who did anything to her. He tried to repair her then when he couldn’t he gave her to a fixer since she was essentially brain dead from everything he could tell. Ur thinking of Forrest, the guy who gave Evelyn to Fingers.
@@davidponder1654 Wakako, gave her to the BD guys. Fingers called her to get rid of Evelyn to someone else since he tried to save her but couldn’t. Forrest r*ped her for three days then gave her to fingers. He didn’t try to “save” anyone. Fingers tried them trusted his fixer to handle things when he no longer able to do anything else to help her. Who wakako chose to sell her to wasn’t his choice.
The tabletop games literally talk about blue eyed people. They say they’re constructs using human bodies like proxies. It could be a little different for Mr. Blue Eyes but I guarantee it’s similar and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Alt as the Alt we meet in Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t the only or even most complete engram of Alt Cunningham. She actually says this in game.
What would T-Bug's motive be for betraying V? And if she did betray us, why didn't they know to find V in the hidden room? That would have solved everything. Arasaka gets killed, V and Jackie get killed, Yorinobu blames V and Jackie for the murder, case closed. T-Bug gets a nice fat payday. I think "Robert John Linder" was a different person. It's a common story - two soldiers in war, one gets killed, the other returns home and takes on the id of the one that got killed to make a better life for themself. So someone went off to war, saw his buddy killed, took on his id and became Robert John Linder, and then became Johnny Silverhand. But RJL was type O, where JS was AB.
Seeing how Johnny Silverhand is a famous rockstar as well as a legendary merc, having his arm be collecting rust in an oilfield seems very unrealistic. It would've been a sought after relic, likely in the posession or even worn by a collector like the Samurai fan you get a gig to steal a guitar from.
8:20 "Lack of good inventory" - Unless the patch 1.7 changes that, Fingers sells some top cyberware that can't be purchased anywhere else, like the Epic Fortified Ankles, Legendary Cataresist, Legendary Pain Editor and the QianT Sandevistan Mk.4.
I don't punch Fingers simply because of his use as a ripperdoc. But I also justify it by realizing that while he is a massive creep, he is also the only ripperdoc helping those women. And him giving them questionable cyberware could be just him doing whatever he can to give them treatment they can afford. Night City is a dog eat dog world, after all.
@@Demonpersithat 15 second cooldown can also be brought down to 2 with a legendary bioconductor and 3 legendary sandevistan heatsinks. Add an epic Nanorelay Cyberware and you've got 7 seconds of uptime for every second of downtime.
I personally subscribe to the idea that Spider Murphy is Songbird, Myers's right hand, and one of the most skilled netrunners in the country that we know is coming in Phatom Liberty. I mainly think these because in the trailer, when Songbird and Myers are in Spaceforce 1 and ut gets shotdown, if you look at the HUD she is using the Relic to display herself, and she appears to be trying to avoid Johnny. Going off of lore, I think Songbird is Spider Murphy directly, or somehow related to Spider Murphy, perhaps an apprentice of Murphy or Murphy's daughter, but considering she seems to actively be avoiding Johnny, and is so skilled she can hack the relic and states that she can help with the whole relic problem, which shows she obviously has some past experience with it, it leaves me to believe it's much more likely Murphy is Songbird
Not a bad theory, Spider Murphy most definitely has knowledge of Soulkiller. She would also have strong motive to join Arasaka's rival corp. Edit: Isn't there also a clip of Reed talking about how she leaves bodies in her wake? If I'm remembering that correctly, then that would fit too.
@palzsolt no, in the trailer, when Songbird calls V, it's made clear that this is her actually calling you when she is on Space Force 1, but, instead of the text in the top left saying "Phone" like it normally does when your called, it says Relic. It's made even more clear that she calls you because when the Space Force 1 is shot down, she stumbles before cutting out. It is also impossible to remove the chip because, when we are sitting down with Helman at the motel, we see that the Chip has grown tendrils were the brain was destroyed, literally becoming part of V's brain
You have to realize that Keanu Reeves is probably one of the most laid back real person actor you will ever meet. He literally rides public transportation because he wants to not because he has to..
I think i noticed Johnnys memories are clearly over exaggerations when his pistol one shots everyone and when you get it during chipping in it’s not as good
Actually in the trailer (I think it's the 2018 trailer) where V comes back from the heist and gets killed by Dexter, it was actually T Bug who hacked V so that dex could shoot him, after he had sliced up Dex's bodyguard into pieces. So originally T Bug was meant to be the bad guy...
Re: Alt My understanding is that usually when an engram is made there’s *something* tying all that together to more than the sum of its parts. Johnny is definitely more than some AI for example. For some reason with Alt (probably Johnny unplugging her when he did), that didn’t take. So instead of an AI that was a replica of the person, you have an AI made up of all the knowledge and memories of the person, but no attachment to those experiences tying them all together into a person. Like she says, she’s an AI made up of the data from Alt’s engram. I think it’s meant at face value.
From what I’ve read about this, it’s to do with being behind the black wall for so long. Or perhaps even in the net with no body. I’ve read that keeping the shape of your real body in cyber space, you can keep your emotions and personality for longer but eventually, you will become just data that can recognise other data. I read on the wiki that when Johnny unplugged alt and killed her at arasaka tower, she could see him from cyber space and was screaming at him but he obviously couldn’t see her. She hid herself away from arasaka in the net and kept herself safe and reached out to Johnny to make sure he knew nobody could get her but she was trapped forever. There was some kind of attempt to free her from her little prison by spider. But the longer alt has spent in cyberspace, the more of her personality she has lost. The only reason she hasn’t gone rogue is because she kept the shape of her body
I feel like I have to put this here. Tbug (shiva) is DEAD. You can find her dead body where you meet dex in his car. It’s in the alley across the street with two turrets as guards. Open the garage.
About Johnny leading the attack on arasaka, hellman mentions at the end that two bombs went off in arasaka, but in the flashback, only one is seen. So it’s not just cyberpunk lore, it’s actually mentioned in game that there were multiple bombs, hinting at multiple strike teams
Dan the reason why Johnny’s memories are false, is because of the way the engram works. In order to copy the mind, it puts the user in a fairytale like dream state. And what ever is true in that state for the user is what’s gets transferred. In a way the engram doesn’t copy the user. Jackie had its regrets (maybe due to a cheap way of using the engram - as his memories were more triggered than actually automatically used / interacting with the environment in a more organic way. The Old Arasaka had its empire and speaks more about the greed of the empire than anything else. However his seemed to be automated. But could as well lack functionality like Jackie’s. All we know is that we can’t trust Hanako. And seeing the evidence of her promise of V, it might as well be.
Yorinobu set up Evelyn. Evelyn hired the weakest fixer, Dex, because she knew she required expendables. And Dex did his thing because he required some hotshots.
Another thing to consider about the heist was T-Bugs lack of preparation as she didn't know the ICE would take a couple of hours to pierce through. Originally they thought the ICE would've been less than 2 hours but unfortunately took longer meaning if T-Bug didn't take so long then V and Jackie would've been able to do the gigg with no problems.
My favourite Iceberg Theory is a pet headcanon of mine. Sometimes I play a run based on the roleplaying premise that the person who wakes up after the Relic heist is *already* Johnny Silverhand. V's real personality is weak and malleable. They aren't just an unknown, they're a nobody for a reason: they were either an amoral Arasaka drone acting as the errand runner for a minor psychopath, a Bakker who stuck with one incompetent leader after another but never even thought to take the reins, or a street kid of no particular note who chased an SO off to Atlanta then sulked home with no plan and no prospects. Whoever they were, they ended up as Jackie's sidekick, and they only remember that dynamic being a little different because the whole story is from Johnny's perspective and we already know he's unreliable. V was a follower. V didn't even know what V wanted, so V just did whatever their boss or girlfriend or bestie wanted. Post-resurrection, Johnny isn't the imaginary friend. He's the core personality, and just having the schizoid delusion of talking to "himself" while acting as the kind of person he imagines V to have been. Someone way cooler and more competent and ambitious than the real Victor or Valerie ever dreamed of being. V is Johnny's coping mechanism to deal with the experience of being resurrected. His "old" memories struggle to integrate into this unfamiliar, incompatible form, so he's having a kind of out-of-body experience, cribbing the notes he found in this new brain, but the entire time, it's just Johnny Silverhand doing an impersonation of his subjective interpretation of V's memories and personality, living their life for a few weeks until he either reintegrates or goes completely cyberpsycho and self-destructs again. Even the V who hates Johnny and refuses to cooperate is just the kind of person Johnny *wishes* V were, someone with gumption and independence and a backbone, instead of Jackie Welles' sidekick who went along with a harebrained scheme just because they wanted to please their only friend, and got flatlined in a dirty hotel room by a very obvious thug because they were too dumb to anticipate Dex's betrayal. In this version, the Sun and Star endings where only V remains are actually BAD endings, because it means you were never able to reconcile your experiences and can now only operate as this husk of a person who is, ultimately, just Johnny's personality stripped of all memories and trying to imitate the stolen memories of his new host body. (Thank you for attending my TED Talk, apologies for the TL;DR. I will freely admit I have no RL friends who play this game, so I kinda used this as a dump for my thoughts)
Really interesting snippet 29:30 ; If you read Jackie's emails on his computer in his garage, T-bug vouched for both you and Jackie to Dexter Deshawn, Jackie and T-bug were much closer than you think... turns out T-bug didn't lie when she said that she wanted to cut ties and retire. :)
Yorinobu didn’t leave the Steel Dragons because he wasn’t cut out for street crime, he left shortly after the attack on Arasaka Tower in 2022 and the death of his older half brother Kei who had sworn to kill him.
I don't know who betrayed V and Jackie during the heist, but if you have the threat detector mod in your optics during the heist you can see that Smasher locks you up with his sensors more or less as soon as he enters the room. Unless it's a bug (and it might be) he knows you're there.
@@enbymonstercan Hostiles only lock on if they have detected you. The threat detector will only highlight them if they can see you and are hostile. Other hostiles will not highlight if they don't know where you are. So Smasher knows you are there, but whether that is a bug or not is up in the air. I'm leaning towards it being a bug, since I had a playthrough where Smasher and Takemura go into the elevator but don't descend while the old man is killed. (Knowing this because Smasher remains highlighted and just stands in the elevator.) And in another playthrough he does descend after entering the elevator. And loses lock on us when he does.
@Midtierman that's the funniest part about Johnny's death honestly, he starts shooting at smasher and smasher looks at him with bewilderment and probably thinks "the audacity" hen one taps him
I think the T-Bug theory is interesting, especially if you look at the lack of evidence, meaning the game gives lots of little easter eggs and resolutions to character's demise like Meredith Stout and Dexter Deshawn as you can find their bodies, and the fact that only rumors exist of what happened to T-Bug to me gives more credit to the theory, kind of like the horror movie rule of if you don't see a character die on screen they aren't dead kind of thing.
The tags being mislabelled I believe is a dev oversight as every character who is seen wearing a dog tag (Johnny, V, Kerry in flashback, and Thompson), that I can find, are all wearing dog tags that say Robert John Linder. Its just the same asset being used over.
@@CharlieKell Yeah. He does say that during the main quest. But the tags he wears say Robert John Linder. Robert John Linder is Johnny Silverhand's real name (also found at the colombarium next to alt, and in the ripperdoc clinic in the 2nd flashback). So either the devs messed up the name on the tags or Johnny is actually somebody else who assumed the real Robert John Linder's identity during the war.
I have a dark ending theory that V NEVER left Arasaka tower in the non-suicide endings. What I mean is that what V sees post Mikoshi plug-in is all an illusion made by either Arasaka or Alt Cunningham. We have already seen that those subject to soulkiller can have their perceptions altered to whatever the user desires. In Arasaka's case this would be interrogation and torture, in Cunningham's case it's a misguided mercy to make V's passing more comfortable after filling their end of the deal
@@Cichyhub of course not posing this as canon, just a fun thought experiment given other context clues and prior soulkiller subjects to vouch for the experience
@@The_Digital_Soul the only reason I proposed this theory is an offhanded remark by a relative of the vdb. I had never seen the dialogue in my own games because it requires conditions I never meet(completing Love Rollercoaster and simultaneously completing the Vdb questline while sparing the Vdb entirely). The guy you help repair the rollercoaster can be asked what he believes happened to the VDB after the quest, and what he says is low-key horrifying, comparing deals with Rogue AI to a genie wish, and I quote "if you ask them to make you smaller, the motherf* will rip off your head". To which V can inquire if that's what he thinks happened to them. He says something VERY damning, that his relative(or friend, forget which) had a daughter that if she could contact she would have, implying they departed behind the black wall and never came back, meaning they got merged with Alt. It would be far easier for Alt to conjure a false paradise(similar to the illusion of NC we see right before meeting her again) than to ACTUALLY repair V's ailing body.
I personally enjoyed this game from day one despite everything but if the game or ending if the game equated to "it was just a dream" then I'd go full twitter incel and start threatening the developers to change it... Or more rationally just pretend it didn't happen like with some childhood trauma like I do with ME3.
I also thought it was also hilarious that Dex set up our cover for the mission to be a couple of militech arms dealers, like arasaka wouldn’t be suspicious of their biggest rival having agents in their building. Whole mission was a just nothing but fuck ups
I always thought T-Bugg sold V out. There's dialog with her before the heist where she says if she was going to leave she would ghost everyone without a word, which is exactally what she does.
What I always wondered...you have genital sliders, but if you take all your armor off, you are wearing underwear. So what is even the point of a genital sliders if you can't run through the street making NPCs uncomfortable?
@krokodilegrundee5101 I play on PC. You are wrong. You have to use a mod to do that. Sure you're naked on the character creator, but nowhere else. Even with mods, nobody acknowledges your nakedness. Bethesda was having people acknowledge nakedness at least as far back as Morrowind. But I'm pretty sure it was in Daggerfall too.
I have an idea. What if heist was set up, because V’s body was the only one compatible with Johnny’s construct? Then T-Bug hired by Voodo boys( remember she’s a preem netrunner and we have never seen her gear, so she can be a voodo) set the heist up - Evelyn as a pawn is mysteriously gone and then commits suicide after we rescued her, Voodo boys try to use us to get to rogue AI which may have an unknown potential only they knew and wanted to use. As you said, the AI used Alt construct and maybe because the fact that Johnny’s construct was the only way to her. Then Netwatch comes in and tries to kill Voodos( if we sided with NetWatch) to prevent them from getting too much power(maybe NetWatch is working for corpo, who knows, or even someone like mr. blue eyes). Because this plan is so well made we would not even know we were a pawn ourselves, and maybe Garry the prophet is not that stupid.
The problem to your idea is that v’s body is not compatible with the engram hence the engram rewriting his literal dna to make it compatible. The chip is designed to take over a body which means this isn’t about whether or not the body is compatible as the chip will MAKE it compatible by force. Anyone can be the new body for the construct and the only prerequisite would be that they are essentially brain dead.
Im almost certain that Dexter was hired by Takemura to steal back the Relic from Yorinobu for Saburo. Its not a coincidence that Takemura is the one who meets with Dex after Dex shoots you. But now that Saburo is dead and the Relic has malfunctioned, there's no reason to take it from you so Takemura decides instead to use you to get his revenge on Yorinobu. Furthermore, you dont actually have Johnny Silverhand in your head. You have a bootleg knock off version of him in your head. Its the same thing that happened to Jackie. Its not the real version of him. So anyone who decides to give their body to Johnny got fooled big time.
I personally feel like either A. cyberpunk 2077's past is slightly different than the books (hence why Johnny's death is different and memories are different) B. 2077 is a fictional story in the universe of cyberpunk (like how there are references to some of the other games as being games in 2077) or C. The books are stories in universe so people thought Johnny was kia'd and not used in the Bio-chip thing.
Here's a wild theory for Johnny's blood type discrepancy: O NEG is a blood type that's considered a universal donor (O indicating that the blood has neither A nor B antigens, and has no RhD antigen, hence negative) AB POS is a blood type that's considered a universal recipient (AB POS contains both A and B antigens, as well as RhD antigen, hence can receive any blood type, such as O NEG, A POS, B NEG, etc) Why does this matter? Here's *my* personal theory: The change in blood type is a subtle nod at Johnny's change in character from 2013 (him being a self-absorbed narcissist who takes but never gives) to that of his character in 2077, where he's willing to face oblivion to give V a shot at life, sacrificing himself (being "selfless", as a universal donor of sorts). Alternatively, he could also have altered the data on the tags, showing V tags that incorrectly state he's a universal donor, as some sort of way to hint to V that he's genuinely willing to give what he can for V to get a chance to live, with the memory showing his actual blood type.
Johnny is already there on Character creation. The last time we hit the space bar to launch the game it says Breeching. We the player are running an Engram of V through a Fixed cyber world to steal V's secrets. That is why the dolls and AIs say we are already dead. It is also why V says to Misty that V could be already dead. It is also why the best hacker and AI ALT can not just reprogram the Nanobots to fix our mind back to our mental Matrix. You have no real chance to save yourself in the game even with the DLC because V is an Engram in Mikoshi.
If the Malorian, at 14mm pistol with explosive rounds described as an “anti tank weapon” couldn’t “crease” Adams armor…. How are we able to kill him, let alone DAMAGE him with anything we use? I hope the DLC drastically changes his boss fight
@@CodeeXD but hitting his “weak points” isn’t a part of the boss’s fight is it? No you just lay into him and his armor breaks away and gets destroyed despite… it apparently being exceedingly strong, atleast against standard ammo.
@@NormalPersonCommenting well, the gravity thing did kind of catch him off guard and then he just brute strengthened out of it. I think a gravity well machine like that could be easily devastating. Imagine having such fine control over it, you can increase the weight of certain parts and throw him off balance or even rip certain bits off. Materials do have stress limits and having the literal power over gravity would allow you to see those limits exposed very quickly. What I think the problem was, the amount of power to do so must be enormous. Hence why I believe the machine he was using was tuned perfectly for fleshy targets, it didn’t outright crush anyone. Like I mean CRUSH fine paste, flat like paper, because it didn’t have the power source to pump all that energy out Solve that problem and it would be devastating
The thing about Johnnys death is that it has to be atleast some mix of the two. He HAS to be uploaded to soul killer otherwise his engram would be like Jackies
Finger's lack of good inventory? I guess we play different games. About edgewood, if you have been there roaming, V will recognize where it is when the kid trying to escape sees the outside area.
Tbh I think the most likely explanation for the inconsistency between Johnny’s memories and the lore is simply that it’s not necessarily the same timeline as the books
I loved this video since Cyberpunk lore isn’t as popular as it used to be. There’s a couple points I’d like to add to the iceburg sections - with the “Was the Heist a setup” I don’t think T-bug faked her death. If I recall correctly you can see her name at the grave yard area(I forgot the name but it’s outside of nightcity). Also in Kabuki Town I think, if you talk to a quickhack vendor, you can ask her about T-Bug. I haven’t played Cyberpunk in a while so if I’m wrong about the grave memorial area I’ll edit this to be correct. - I believe Johnny’s memories are lying to us but I wouldn’t go as far as to assume he died to Smasher instantly, since soulkiller was used on him, and Johnny’s engrams is TOO complete compared to Jacky’s (since he died and Soulkiller was used on him). When you play as Johnny in his memory, his Malorian does more damage as it does in 2077. Same with his melees. I believe he also moves MUCH faster, despite his lack of augments. I’m sure his memories lie to us more but that’s all I can remember(I believe Morgan also lead the attack but Johnny’s memories lie to us about his own self importance since he is a Narcissist) - Alt Cunningham is a rough A.I. I partially partially partially disagree with this due to OneDragon’s deep dive. He points out that Alt says some bitter things to Johnny provided on what you choose to say to her as Johnny before she’s kidnapped. I believe when V meets her, she’s 1 of two things. 1) she’s an AI construct like 01 who consumed her engram and has taken on her personality as a result of her engram being so prefect/complex(an amazing netrunner as an engram would be nuts) 2) It’s actually alt’s engram that found a way to become something like if not exactly like a Rouge AI Great video btw Dan! This made my Saturday fr
Well that could be the case for Johnny but it could be that Johnny's perception is fucked up as he could easily be going through psychosis, he could also have had an episode during his death, and although Jackie was dead by the time he was hit by soulkiller it could have been either a different variation of soulkillers system, like using it to take all of Johnny's psyche while only taking Jackie's memories or they could have taken Johnny's engram and manipulated it to make it impossible to figure out what actually happened, such as making him more egotistical and self centered in some areas, keep his personality the same but change how he explains the events
That's what I loved about the game, EVERY place you have to enter always has another route in case the first one is too flashy or you can't get in because of the character experience
Johnny's "holographic" arm is what you see when Johnny has control over your body. It's the illusion you get looking at V's arm with Johnny's conscious.
I see Johnnys last memories alive as more of the last things running through his mind while dying. Him running up to the roof being his fight to stay alive, him thinking of Rogue one last time, and then his acceptance of his death by Smasher/ or his last moment alive was him hating smasher for taking it away from him
the part where you can "talk to Jackies ghost" is wrong. all of the lines he says are lines from the first two missions just replayed back to V. but he does say it's nice to be an arisaka heir meaning it was always Yorinobu just playing back Jackies memories to V. Nothing new was said and nothing new was said to V nothing new about mom or misty and you know damn straight that if it was really Jacki the first thing he would have done is ask about his mom and misty then vic. he would've been pissed that Dex set him up and let him die for the old hasbeen in Jackies words. To me it's just proof that Macoshi doesn't have Jackies consciousness but a copy of his memories instead.
I actually recently found a body that looked ALOT like TBug in an alley near the hotlel, totally fried, I can post them somewhere if someone wants. It could be someone else but it was pretty on point... idk but I kinda thought t-bug might have gotten away too.
26:40 You got one fact wrong there. It was said in the game that Jackie worked for Dex before, so he's not hiring 2 completely unknown mercs. Jackie and T-Bug were familiar with Dex before and now they worked with V so Dex has easy connection here and 2 opinions from people he knows already regarding V.
Now that Phantom Liberty is out, my headcannon on the whole Dexter/T-Bug scenario feels more fleshed out. In my mind, Dexter was the Pacifica Fixer, he got in over his head and tried to mess with the Voodoo Boys, he underestimated them and in turn, they run him out of town for two years. At this time, he knows T-Bug (Possibly a resident of Pacifica? maybe even of Dogtown? There's a dead runner you can find that has a shard where the VDB's are baiting them with possibly joining the gang if they do a job for them as a ranyon, so not sure how feasible it is that Bug is a former VDB herself), there's also the possibility that Mr. Hands engineered Dexter's downfall from behind the scenes (In Phantom Liberty, he makes a reference to Dexter's inability to keep leaks from happening) and at the same time, establishes himself in Dogtown, he pays his dues to Barghest and sets shop in the Heavy Hearts club, a place that is guarded by Bhargest and is visited by the elite. He's far more secure than Dexter was assuming that Dexter was set somewhere in Pacifica or Coastview and not Dogtown. Out of Pacifica, he realizes the other districts already have a Fixer: Wakako, El Capitan, Regina, Dakota, Dino, with Rogue herself reigning as Queen Fixer from the Afterlife. Dexter is desperate, he wants to get back to the major leagues, but he has no room to maneuver, until Evelyn Parker calls. Dexter mentions that he couldn't vet her and that people from Pacifica got back to him to back off. To any Fixer worth their salt this would have been a major red flag and would most likely remove themselves from the mess. Yet Dexter pressed on, even paid for the Flathead upfront. I don't think he did it out of incompetence, I think he did it out of impatience and desperation. I also think that Oleg, his bodyguard/driver got thrown under the bus, when you go to the No-Tell Motel and refuse to wash your face, you can hear Dexter call the spaceport and reserve a shuttle, one seat. Oleg was loyal to Dexter until he realized he was also going to be on the run for the rest of his life. Dexter panics, drops the act, and tries to kill V. He realizes the nuclear fire that the biochip really is (Something he should have done beforehand), which is also why he asks V if they got the biochip. I think T-Bug was trying to set the whole crew up. If you talk to her some more at the Afterlife, she pretty much expresses her desire to burn bridges with everybody and just leave Night City, she's in it only for the money and she's waiting for it. In the "Heroes" gig when you go to Jackie's garage, you can check his computer and find an email from her, she sets the meet at the beginning of the game between V and Dexter. I think T-Bug pulling Dexter from the hot mess that was Pacifica earned her a few favors from him, it's entirely possible she called in a favor and whispered V's name to Dexter. There's also the possibility that no other merc in Night City wants to work for a fixer who got ran out of their turf, went into hiding for two years, and is now claiming to have "the greatest gig of all time", Dexter's options were limited, and Bug just had the names. So why V? I think it's because V is the newer merc in the team. In a call with Jackie, he says he's known Bug for some time, so from the trio, V is the outsider, the newcomer, someone Bug thought would be eager to prove themselves to a legendary fixer and who would be easily blinded by the promise of riches and glory (Callback to Dexter's "Mind if I ask you something right off the bangle?" question, it's all reputation, and forging a legend with only one job). So in her mind, V would be eager to accept and willing to go with the job. She feared Jackie would fuck something up and not inspire confidence in Dexter (Check her "Jackie..." interaction when Jackie asks Dexter if the Afterlife booth is soundproof). There were a lot of things that went bad that made me think she set up the team during the heist proper. The identities she forged establishes V and Jackie as Militech representatives there to make a deal with Hajime Taki of Arasaka, and when the duo go to their room, Bug acts strange, there's a brief moment of silence, and then she claims she'll take a few hours to punch through Konpeki ICE. This potentially breaks the gig, sure there's no timeframe for how fast should the gig be completed, but how long do they expect Hajime Taki to wait? He could grab the holo, call Militech and ask where those representatives are, if Militech says there's no representatives sent to Konpeki, he could cause a stinkup, couldn't he? Then the gig goes as it does. I think Bug cut, or tried to cut a deal with Arasaka, Arasaka offers to pay her more than her cut with Dexter would have been, with the condition that she ensures that V and Jackie will be in the hotel, and information on Dexter's location. That would explain the weird pause in the call, and suddenly realizing that she'd need hours to punch through the hotel's ICE. What sealed her deal is the fact that she is a very talented Netrunner, and that got Arasaka's attention, if they got everything they wanted from Bug, why should they keep their end of the bargain? When you visit Yoko in Kabuki after the heist, she describes Bug's death and is very similar to the effects from Soulkiller. In the lore, Arasaka uses Soulkiller to target netrunners that could represent an issue for the corp, they get their engram and ensure that they can interrogate them, if Bug was soulkilled before her body died, that'd ensure an engram with 100% integrity (Unlike Jackie's engram which is severely damaged as it was obtained hours after his death), so Arasaka (Or in this case specifically, Yorinobu) gets the proper pieces for the next play, a heist he uses to further cement his position withing the corp, getting the board on his side and strengthening his faction, with the ability to use Hanako to garner support from the rest, but also ignorant of Saburo's plans for the Relic itself. Also, fun fact, in Phantom Liberty, if you side with Reed, you'll eventually go into the Cynosure facility, you can find T-Bug's holo avatar in there, and considering how the Soulkilled/Engrams have a relationship with the Blackwall, it's entirely possible that's her, and seeing her plans go to waste, she could hold resentment against the only survivor of the crew: V. Also, sorry for the wall of text, I sometimes get carried away...
@@amandaharris108 There's also the possibility that T-Bug may have been an informant for Militech. When you're on your way to rescue Myers, there's a computer in Space Force One you can use, one of the files is a report on the Konpeki Heist, and the report states that their informant disappeared shortly before they could give information on their employer. There's no indication of gender so we can't be 100% this is Bug or not, but if that's the case, it'd explain how Songbird and Myers know so much about Konpeki when almost no one else does (Brigitte's VDB faction knows because they commissioned the whole thing, other than that, I don't think anyone else knows). One could argue that the informant could be Hellman, especially considering he defects to Kang Tao shortly after the heist, but Takemura states that it was Hellman who warned Saburo about Yorinobu's move, so to me, it doesn't make sense that Hellman's the informant, he would have defected to Militech instead of Kang Tao, I think he panicked and Kang Tao was the closest/easiest option.
Evelyn definitely would have been better off dead right away, she was used and abused and took her own life anyway after being saved by Judy, possibly her best friend
Below is a breakdown of what Cyberware that is exclusively sold by Fingers : Qiant Sandevistan Mk.4 Cost: $35,000 Requires 15 Reflexes 3 Mod Slots Hold E/LB+RB/L1+R1 to slow time by 25% for 12 seconds, every 15 seconds. Increases any damage dealt by 15% when Sandevistan is active. Increases Crit Chance by 15% when Sandevistan is active. Cataresist Cost: $14,000 Requires 15 Cool Increases all Resistance by 35% Detoxifier Cost: $12,000 Requires 10 Body Grants immunity to Poison. Cataresist Cost: $10,000 Requires 12 Cool Increases all Resistances by 23% Pain Editor Cost: $28,000 Requires 16 Cool Reduces all incoming damage by 10% Lynx Paws Cost: $85,000 Allows you to move and run more quietly. The sound of your footsteps will not carry as far. Don't Hit Fingers.
There’s a lot of music Easter eggs for example there’s a mission named killing in the name, witch is a song by rage against the machine, type o- is a band as well
I always found it strange how after thr explosion when Johnny was making his exit, it just cuts to him closing the door and heading to the roof...like, you were just on the ground after an explosion, at the feet of Smasher, how tf you got out of there?
Bro saboru knows v and jackie are the walls from the way he looks directly at them when hes not talking to his son. He turns his head to talk to his son directly in the eyes. When he mentions the nail in the wall quote, hes looking right at them. i feel like saburo purposely sent his bodyguards away to intentionally antagonize his son to get him to kill him. A bit of a reach but remember theres a emgram copy saboru. This could be a way give his son a bad reputation to the company and complete dishonor to his family. Make them feel no guilt or remorse when the time comes to impant saburo's engram to his son's body. I think a man like saboru is very calculated and not dumb enough to just die like this. He 5 steps ahead and he using his death as a opportunity.
Hey man, Fingers might be a total creep & lack any meaningful cyberware for the most part but he *does* have the most broken Sandevistan you can get in the game. Takes a lot of Body + Reflexes investment, but is very much worth it for a near instant cooldown and total duration of 14 sec of time slowed to 25%. I'm talking about the QianT Mk4 legendary variant of course, which, despite the Mk5 iconic variant "seeming" superior on paper it really isn't. Just a few extra sec or duration at the expense of a significantly higher base cooldown before heatsinks + bioconductors. That being said, the Mk4 still allows for 3 mod slots like any other legendary tier Sandy, and can be used to it's "full potential" with legendary heatsinks, legendary bioconductors, and epic nanorelays. It's quite literally the closest you can get to using the Sandy the way good ol David Martinez does, and can only be purchased from Fingers unless you punch him in the Judy quest line. Side note: I've learned that even the epic bioconductors w/ legendary heatsinks or vice versa still allow for an incredibly short to nearly non-existent cooldown, allowing for some Sandy spamming chaos. With melee focused builds, it's such a fun way to play the game. Smasher on Very Hard difficulty was an absolute breeze to defeat while constantly moving at super speed and blitzing the ever living shit out of him with legendary gorilla arms + electrical knuckles attached. Funnily enough, he flexes on David by using his own Sandy in the end of Edgerunners, calling it a "rudimentary implant" and whatnot. Yet fails to actually have/use one in the game 😂 poor dude couldn't even stay on his feet the entire time and only lived longer than 20-30 sec thanks to his bullshit "damage immunity" that occurs when his health drops to certain levels due to scripted events like him firing his missiles & receiving help from backup Arasaka fodder
I still remember listening to Yorinobus monologue at the end of my first playthrough and the realization that he was a mere victim of his circumstances as well hit so hard
Yorinobu was born a victim. And once Arasaka knew about Soulkiller, none of Saburo’s children were safe from their father.
The Soulkiller arc was always the foundational lore of Pondsmith's Pen & Paper RPG since the 2020 edition, with Saburo Arasaka the central bad guy and Johnny & Alt the semi-central protagonists even into the (pretty awful) CyberGeneration setting, so this returns the lore to Saburo re-incarnating. 2077 is a great reboot for his signature franchise & a good way to retcon the CyberGeneration mess.
Edit: the unexplained part is how V and Jackie, a pair of nobodies but probably identified as compatible hosts for the biochip, were set up to do exactly what they (you) did throughout the campaign, courtesy of Dex, who hired you for no real reason, who did so at Goro's orders, who was Saburo's bodyguard after all, pretending to be exiled and managing you while just carrying out Saburo's plan to reincarnate inside his sons meat body after being backed up just before deliberately aggravating Yorinobu into patricide, and you being the rather convenient witness to it.
@@WindFireAllThatKindOfThing if that were true Dex wouldn't have freaked out at the No Tell Motel the way he did, Evelyn wouldn't even have factored into the Heist. Nah, V and Jackie got plain unlucky, like all edgerunners keep saying throughout the game, "they knew the risks."
@@benadrylcumbersplatch6448 Dex literally told him before Goro executed him that he 'did everything you asked me to'
How everyone never put that simple piece of the puzzle together is beyond me, making it really obvious that Goro and Hanako were always working towards her father's immortality while also purging Arasaka of Yorinobu AND using his body. In the lore, Yorinobu had spent his youth actively rebelling against Arasaka in a bosozoku biker gang like the Tiger Claws called the (hold your laughter) Steel Dragons. No relation to Mark Wahlberg. This was always going to be Yorinobu's fate planned far in advance by his father since the Corpbook 1 sourcebook printed back in 1991. We just got to see how it played out in video game form.
@@WindFireAllThatKindOfThing He "did everything he asked" as in he got his fat ass off the space shuttle, told him everything about the heist and showed him where he dumped V's body my guy, how you got such a simple line of dialogue so wrong is what is beyond me.
This franchise really needs more media. Movies, tv shows, games. Theres such a wealth of story and lore to explore in this universe.
Fr something like the netflix show
@@aaronthebotBoy do I have a surprise for you
@@bistostudiosentertainment4986 ?
@@aaronthebotCyberpunk Edgerunners…ever heard of it?
@@KngMaxwell bro, omd i was saying i want something esle like the netflix show aka edgerunners. Read
About T-Bug; her death was confirmed by the Netrunner merchant in the store in Kabuki. Unless that lady was running cover for her, she goes into detail how trauma found her body. Her nerves and muscles fried.
T-Bug indeed got zeroed.
That merchant HEARD that T-Bug got fried. It is not confirmation until WE see the body.
@@ArcaneSorceror yeah doubtful. Pretty sure she’s dead. T-Bug wasn’t given enough importance for this.
Sure she could still be alive, but really doubt it
@@ShadowProject01 Wasn't given importance?
She was the contact for Dex about the job, she messaged Jackie about V having to meet Dex, T-Bug is why Dex was able to escape Night City AND why he came back. Plus was the netrunner for the crew. She is the only crew member who we don't see die in front of us. She even meets in person for the big team meeting.
What does she say she wants to do with her cut? Stop 'running completely. So when she notices the inbound flight she doesn't tell anyone, and she times it so we are caught, everything does sideways, and she can give the two mercs an out. All she has to do, is fake her death.
@@ArcaneSorceror How do we know Tbug was the reason for Dex leaving/returning? By all evidence we see, T-Bug is just some low level netrunner.
@@henningkaiser9192 I am fairly certain that Dex implies T-Bug is how he got out of Night City and way from his troubles. Plus, what idiot low-level netrunner would think to get better tech to help with a targeted hack. Low-levels are humble enough to not take the job, or stupid enough to think they don't need any help, and we see PLENTY of idiot netrunners in the game.
25:50 There's a much simpler explanation. There are other clues about Dex. He never runs with a regular crew, like most fixers. When asked about why he chose you and Jackie he talks about how he has good instincts about such things. Those are both red flags for spotting con artists. Also, it's hinted that he has ties with the VoodooBoys. He doesn't have a reputation for incompetence, he is a big fixer. But Vik, for example, just tells you to be careful around him. The conclusion I come to, is that Dex always intended to betray you and Jackie. Not for any Arasaka, but because that's straight up his modus operandi. He's looking for people good enough to get the job done, but who are still unknowns so that no one notable misses them. He operates just like the VoodooBoys do. When you want a fixer that cleans up loose ends, you hire Dexter Deshawn; who doesn't run with a regular crew, because he quietly disposes of them after the job is complete.
I’m still upset that we don’t have a chance to take our revenge cuz of Takemura
@@TheNukedNacho When ever I play a new game, at some point I always go when he lies and unload a couple of mags in his face. It's not a huge payoff but still satisfying from RP perspective.
Maybe this is why Eve initially wants to cut him out of the deal, maybe Eve knew something about Dex's Rep
That's also why his gun is called plan b
I knew he was full of it after the first meeting with him. That's why I had no problem lying to him about the conversation with Evelyn.
With regards to Johnnys memory:
- yes his narcissism
- these engrams dont know what happened after their death.
If Johnny was cut down inside the building, he may have crafted a false memory of himself escaping and being caught at the helicopter.
The later memory created upon him accepting the fact he died.
Also, Johnny never had the bomb. Blackhands team did. It is also stated in the books that he got mowed down by Smasher.
Or maybe lore books are lying to us, and this is what really happen... But to be completely honest, lore books etc was just inspiration for the game, what happen inside the game is true, it is the same thing with The Witcher games, they change some things from books and in game world that changes are true, books are not.
Yeah cuz that cut of seeing him almost getting out was always iffy
@@HippoBean Ok thanks for info, but for casual players like me and others they never said how it really happen inside the game so most of the players will believe that this is how it was, and i think CDPR will not change that because thanks to this Silverhand feels more important, and i like it in fact, it is just more cool for casual gamer.
@@HippoBeanThat's very informative.
Seeing Jackie as an engram is kind of relieving because of the way he answers you. You telling him all these meaningful things and he almost just blurts out catchphrases. It's obvious it isn't really him and that puts me at ease that their isn't a part of him being forever tortured by arasaka.
Or maybe it's just CDPR reusing his lines
Jackie's mind was fucked and so he's repeating his lines.
By the time,Arasaka got to Jackie, likely he's already almost dead, no brain to oxygen and so - his engram isn't fully all there. Arasaka doesn't care - it's all research to them.
I get the impression he is trying to communicate with you through limited phrases.
@@Svoorhout85 the one that hurts the most is "Misty knew, Misty always knew..." Like, you just know that's a snapshot of his final moments thinking he should have listened to Misty and not taken the job
It feels like Jackies engram wants to actually talk to V but his vocabulary is limited to what Arasaka thought of as important
@@itsybitsy3960 No, Jackie's brain was damaged, already dying.
When Silverhand was zapped or whatever, he's still very much alive with functioning brain.
When Jackie was uploaded, he was barely there. Arasaka uploaded him still - because research is research.
I just watched the T-Bug Was A Mole theory, and I just wanted to point out the fact that, the same shop you go to get your first Daemon Hack, that T-Bug left for you, that the owner does explain about going to T-Bug's apartment, and finding her body in the Netrunner Chair, with her brain completely scorched. It sounded awful, because the shop owner with further explain that, when they do that to a Netrunner, that it apparently feels like 1,000 knives are cutting into you at the same time.... 😮😢
When it comes to T-Bug, the original Cinematic trailers showed her turning off V's cybernetics since she's in league with Dex, with V eventually killing her.
This means the original plan probably WAS for her to betray us and die by our hand.
On top of that, allegedly, Jackie's death was originally something that the player could prevent.
This. T-Bug knew Dex for ages, knew how he worked. The reason he had to leave for two years was probably due to him zeroing a team after a job and needing to lay low until he could come back safely. T-Bug didn't have any deep ties to Jackie, and barely knew V, so them dying wouldn't be an issue. I'm also sure that T-Bug is tied into the VoodooBoys, and was behind putting Evelyn with them and bringing in Dex. She found out about the deal Evelyn offered V because while Judy's room was probably screened for someone hacking into the cameras, the hallway outside wasn't. If everything went right, they VoodooBoys got the chip for the cost of zeroing four "dishrags" and T-Bug would earn their favor
Johnhy's dog tags having a different blood type than is on the medical file could just be a mistake made by the Military of Cyberpunk. My dog tags have 2 possible mistakes on them, one of them possibly being my Blood Type as well. They read my blood type of A+, but two other times I have had it tested I had it come back as A+ once and B+ the other time, most likely meaning I am AB+. The other was my religion. I put No Preference on the form, but my dog tags say None, and yes, it can make a huge difference as to how I would be treated if I were captured, depending on what enemy we were fighting.
This is crazy.
Or maybe you are a Science Military Project with changing blood types being the only vou for it! That would be Silverhand levels of cool, right?
@@douboyrari4700 it's not crazy, it's the government, and they could fuck up a wet dream.
@@thadeusilva8907 but why would the government do that? I know the US government loves to waste money, but only on useless shit.
@@phaylnx that’s a fact💯
There's actually a big hint in the second act that Johnny's memories are incorrect. When smasher blast through the door inside of arasaka tower it immediately cuts to the rooftop scene, not showing how Johnny could've escaped the building.
I wonder if there any scenes where Rogue discusses Johnny falling from the Helicopter. Not too familiar with the lore
one thing that i never see people point out, is that his environment in mikoshi was the exact area where he presumably died, which makes sense the more you analyze it
T-Bug even says she was going to burn all bridges and start a new life after the heist. Even if it wasn't a betrayal, but just a back up plan in case the job went south, faking her death seems like a good way to do that.
Also notice the door actually opens after she "dies". Which is not how we see hacking work in-game. When you kill an enemy netrunner, their hacking stops.
I was gonna say that the hack could've taken a few moments to upload but bringing up hacks stopping after death sinks that argument, ngl thats a solid point. Kinda hope they do confirm her fate in Phantom Liberty.
The one think you misrepresented was that Johnny and Blackhand were hired but from what I understand that’s incorrect, militech hired Morgan and he hired the rest due to their various issues with arasaka and the corporations.
It was even stated in other books that it was blackhand himself that did the nuking and silverhand group was mostly a distraction group
Yeah they hired Morgan and tasked him with setting up a crew
Great video choom. Definitely didn't expect me or my theory to be brought up within this Iceberg so that was a huge surprise. It means a lot that you would provide the detailed credit as well, keep up the great work!
T-bug betraying the crew is very likely imo. I mean it's literally shown in the 2019 cinematic trailer that T-bug is allied with Dex and helped him kill you when the heist went wrong. I'm guessing the story was changed a bit before actual game release but some small details were skimmed over so it's just sorta ambiguous now
It’s not. Her body is in a garage near where you meet Dex in his car. She has ties to the voodoo boys.
@@silverfoxeaterthe lady who sells bd's in kabuki says they found her body with nervous system fried
@@stevennwachukwu you can find the netrunner before the heist
The reason why Johnny leads the attack in the game is bc Mike Pondsmith, the creator of Cyberpunk and it's lore didn't want Morgan Blackhand to be in the game and would prefer the character to be introduced in a sequel.
Didn’t he also say Johnny’s memories are a lie?
@@zerotodona1495 They are, and its an interesting psychological phenomenon-and actually why courts are relying less and less on witness testimony. If you take a scenario that someone mostly remembers very well, but add lies-surrounded by confirmed truths-the subject will think they believe that lie, and it becomes a false memory. So (this is just my theory) since an engram is not active and Johnny himself said "its like sleep", im willing to bet that once he "woke up" his memories started to warp a bit due to overhearing what others claim happened to him.
@@zerotodona1495alt says that too when V tells her that he saw johnny save her in his memories, "what you saw wasn't the truth but a subjective point of view on it"
I mean it's practically spelled out that Johnny's "memories" are mixture of Johnny's dying thoughts (like Jackie's) and the torture of Morgan blackhand.
@@pancakes8816why though? Why would black hands memories be on Johnny’s biochip?
You can't even imagine how much it broke me when i thought i could really get to talk to Jackie as an engram and i realised it's just some nonsense.... Then and there, if i got the option i would have ended Hanako's life
Rogue says "Not this time , honey" to Johhny in For Whom The Bell Tolls ending when he jumps to the chopper and almost falls, just like what we see in his memory. But since this memory is corrupted and Johhny never made it to the roof why does Rogue say this? That cought my attention in my last playthrough.
Only small parts of his memories are corrupted.
Most of assault on arasaka tower went the same way as Johnny's remember
Not exactly. He never had the bomb. 3 teams were sent into Arasaka Plaza. They were tasked with nuking the building, copying some data archive, and dealing with Alt. The primary goal being nuking the entire building and not telling the teams how powerful the nuke is. The president of the NUSA gaslights the country into believing that Arasaka set off the bomb to kick them out of the country.
I’m late but she might just said that as “this time I’m not leaving you behind” instead of “this time im not letting you fall”, while the timing happen to match the memory but the voice line isn’t exactly precise about what time. We know that she isn’t exactly happy about leaving Johnny behind, i dont think (though i might be wrong) that there’s any other voice line by rogue about her letting him fall and the teleport form the tower to the roof is still extremely weird, specially with how close Adam was to Johnny.
It’s so weird to hear how the “finish the job right away” option is so rarely taken for the sinnerman quest. He got on my nerves the moment he got out of the car with that attitude of his, makes him very shootable.
I still tear up thinking about Yorinobu. Even the quote "raising him like a pig for slaughter" fails in comparison. And his father of all people. Damn. Not only Saburo wanted to ensalave all of humanity but started it with his own son. It's even worse than enslavement. Yorinobu was not only not a villain but a hero in the grand scheme of things. He didn't wait for a second to let go of his good life the moment he learnt of his father's shenanigans. He knew he was most probably going to die but he still tried everything to end his father's tyranny. I loathed him for killing his father specially after seeing it up close and the other things but the moment I found out about the devil ending from one of the videos I had to take a long pause.
A theory I have is that when Johnny was killed with soul killer they could have manipulated his memories and personality so it would be impossible for him to tell the truth of the past, Johnny can't be controlled and he was already dead but Rogue was bought out, all we really know is that Mikoshi holds engrams, if alt could be replaced with AI why couldn't Arasaka make there own Johnny with a different story, this could also explain Johnny's conflicting blood type, what could they change, only those that know him would know the difference, but they know Johnny would always put him in the spotlight.
The second i poured iced coffee into my glass, this vid drops. S Tier timing.
Iced coffee gang is here 🧊☕
hoooly
V calling Jackie after his death hits hard. I've done that. Sent Emails to someone who passed on.
The idea that Biotechnica may be the solution to V's situation isn't that out there. They've been cloning humans and experimenting with a Soulkiller-like process to install personalities. It's possible they could create a clone with the proper match to the relic. And having an access to an actual Soulkiller created relic could make the process work. For Biotechnica, it would mean finding the last pieces and perfecting the process, and putting one over on Arasaka.
Plus, it gives us the possibility of something the game doesn't give us: a happy ending
It was probably a ending before but they decided v never gets a happy ending or that biotechnica could always betray you even then you could have rogue or Panam or Judy help you after all im sure it’s somewhere hidden in the files or on a devs flash drive
TBug died. So the way I see it, Konpeki had top tier ICE and it doesn’t matter how good of a runner you are, you’ll want to take your time to get through it so you don’t get discovered. Then when Saburo arrives and is killed by Yori, the entire hotel goes into red alert. If Bug skipped out, she’d have left V and Jackie to die, but by hacking the door to get them out, the heightened security found her and zapped her.
Unless T bug faked her death. Maybe she saw the heist going bad and dipped, only pretended to die
@@EnclaveSgt the problem there lies within TBug opening the door for V and Jackie. Her chance to fake her death slipped past the second she decided to hack the door and got caught.
This isn't the first time Dan had this Tbug theory. It's one of the worst theories he's had and it's very, very, very dumb as a theory.
@@pintolerance785 it keeps popping up and each time I think “hold on this doesn’t track”
@@pintolerance785 FR. His only evidence we dont see her body but buddy this aint call of duty
I like how if your Fem V and romance River Johnny will be like
"Aw you made me bang a cop!"
Lol
It must be awkward for him being trapped in a woman's mind lmao. I usually play as male V tho
My only thought was, “too bad, he’s the only straight man to romance in game…”
Great vid Dan! One thing I’d like to point out, is that there must be some truth to the way Johnny died after falling out of the helicopter. During the second assault on the tower in 2077, Johnny stumbles as he enters the chopper, which prompts Rogue to grab him and say “not this time”. I do still think he’s an unreliable narrator, but some of his recollections must be accurate.
Nah he gets blown in half by smasher
Just wanna point out that Judy is the only one who says anything bad about Fingers in the game. Any time u overhear anyone else talking about him, it’s usually how he gave them a huge discount because of how poor they are or sometimes even installing much needed replacements completely for free.
I mean he does also buy "broken dolls" and doing terrible things to her to the point she kills herself
@@CodeeXD No, he didn’t. Fingers wasn’t the one who did anything to her. He tried to repair her then when he couldn’t he gave her to a fixer since she was essentially brain dead from everything he could tell. Ur thinking of Forrest, the guy who gave Evelyn to Fingers.
@@nikik5567no fingers sold her to the snuff bd guys. Forrest gave her to fingers to save her actually because Tyger claws wanted him to kill her.
@@davidponder1654 Wakako, gave her to the BD guys. Fingers called her to get rid of Evelyn to someone else since he tried to save her but couldn’t. Forrest r*ped her for three days then gave her to fingers. He didn’t try to “save” anyone. Fingers tried them trusted his fixer to handle things when he no longer able to do anything else to help her. Who wakako chose to sell her to wasn’t his choice.
@@nikik5567 I’m misremembering then
I love how in the ending of every video he says “i should go” love how he is a Mass Effect fan through and through
The tabletop games literally talk about blue eyed people. They say they’re constructs using human bodies like proxies. It could be a little different for Mr. Blue Eyes but I guarantee it’s similar and I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s Alt as the Alt we meet in Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t the only or even most complete engram of Alt Cunningham. She actually says this in game.
So, the actual human is dead? That doesn't seem to be the case with the politician in Cyberpunk 2077
What would T-Bug's motive be for betraying V? And if she did betray us, why didn't they know to find V in the hidden room? That would have solved everything. Arasaka gets killed, V and Jackie get killed, Yorinobu blames V and Jackie for the murder, case closed. T-Bug gets a nice fat payday.
I think "Robert John Linder" was a different person. It's a common story - two soldiers in war, one gets killed, the other returns home and takes on the id of the one that got killed to make a better life for themself. So someone went off to war, saw his buddy killed, took on his id and became Robert John Linder, and then became Johnny Silverhand. But RJL was type O, where JS was AB.
that is such a keanu reeves reaction though
"hey keanu, they modded you into the sex scenes"
"OH, FUCK YEAH!"
Seeing how Johnny Silverhand is a famous rockstar as well as a legendary merc, having his arm be collecting rust in an oilfield seems very unrealistic. It would've been a sought after relic, likely in the posession or even worn by a collector like the Samurai fan you get a gig to steal a guitar from.
8:20 "Lack of good inventory" - Unless the patch 1.7 changes that, Fingers sells some top cyberware that can't be purchased anywhere else, like the Epic Fortified Ankles, Legendary Cataresist, Legendary Pain Editor and the QianT Sandevistan Mk.4.
I'll have to check again! I don't remember him sporting the Sandy
@@BigDanGaminghe has arguably the best sandy in the game,12 seconds duration and 15 sec cooldown with 15 reflex requirements if im not mistaken
I don't punch Fingers simply because of his use as a ripperdoc. But I also justify it by realizing that while he is a massive creep, he is also the only ripperdoc helping those women. And him giving them questionable cyberware could be just him doing whatever he can to give them treatment they can afford. Night City is a dog eat dog world, after all.
@@BigDanGamingYeah dude, you really got that wrong. Fingers has some of the best shit.
@@Demonpersithat 15 second cooldown can also be brought down to 2 with a legendary bioconductor and 3 legendary sandevistan heatsinks. Add an epic Nanorelay Cyberware and you've got 7 seconds of uptime for every second of downtime.
I personally subscribe to the idea that Spider Murphy is Songbird, Myers's right hand, and one of the most skilled netrunners in the country that we know is coming in Phatom Liberty. I mainly think these because in the trailer, when Songbird and Myers are in Spaceforce 1 and ut gets shotdown, if you look at the HUD she is using the Relic to display herself, and she appears to be trying to avoid Johnny. Going off of lore, I think Songbird is Spider Murphy directly, or somehow related to Spider Murphy, perhaps an apprentice of Murphy or Murphy's daughter, but considering she seems to actively be avoiding Johnny, and is so skilled she can hack the relic and states that she can help with the whole relic problem, which shows she obviously has some past experience with it, it leaves me to believe it's much more likely Murphy is Songbird
Not a bad theory, Spider Murphy most definitely has knowledge of Soulkiller. She would also have strong motive to join Arasaka's rival corp.
Edit: Isn't there also a clip of Reed talking about how she leaves bodies in her wake? If I'm remembering that correctly, then that would fit too.
@johng6350 I've also noticed that Songbird has the same lips and nose model, with a similar face shape and skin color to spider murphy.
@palzsolt no, in the trailer, when Songbird calls V, it's made clear that this is her actually calling you when she is on Space Force 1, but, instead of the text in the top left saying "Phone" like it normally does when your called, it says Relic. It's made even more clear that she calls you because when the Space Force 1 is shot down, she stumbles before cutting out. It is also impossible to remove the chip because, when we are sitting down with Helman at the motel, we see that the Chip has grown tendrils were the brain was destroyed, literally becoming part of V's brain
You have to realize that Keanu Reeves is probably one of the most laid back real person actor you will ever meet. He literally rides public transportation because he wants to not because he has to..
I think i noticed Johnnys memories are clearly over exaggerations when his pistol one shots everyone and when you get it during chipping in it’s not as good
It still on taps most chromed out gonks that you find on the street. But thats only if you aim for the head, choom.
Actually in the trailer (I think it's the 2018 trailer) where V comes back from the heist and gets killed by Dexter, it was actually T Bug who hacked V so that dex could shoot him, after he had sliced up Dex's bodyguard into pieces.
So originally T Bug was meant to be the bad guy...
Re: Alt
My understanding is that usually when an engram is made there’s *something* tying all that together to more than the sum of its parts. Johnny is definitely more than some AI for example.
For some reason with Alt (probably Johnny unplugging her when he did), that didn’t take. So instead of an AI that was a replica of the person, you have an AI made up of all the knowledge and memories of the person, but no attachment to those experiences tying them all together into a person.
Like she says, she’s an AI made up of the data from Alt’s engram. I think it’s meant at face value.
From what I’ve read about this, it’s to do with being behind the black wall for so long. Or perhaps even in the net with no body. I’ve read that keeping the shape of your real body in cyber space, you can keep your emotions and personality for longer but eventually, you will become just data that can recognise other data. I read on the wiki that when Johnny unplugged alt and killed her at arasaka tower, she could see him from cyber space and was screaming at him but he obviously couldn’t see her. She hid herself away from arasaka in the net and kept herself safe and reached out to Johnny to make sure he knew nobody could get her but she was trapped forever. There was some kind of attempt to free her from her little prison by spider. But the longer alt has spent in cyberspace, the more of her personality she has lost. The only reason she hasn’t gone rogue is because she kept the shape of her body
I feel like I have to put this here.
Tbug (shiva) is DEAD.
You can find her dead body where you meet dex in his car. It’s in the alley across the street with two turrets as guards. Open the garage.
About Johnny leading the attack on arasaka, hellman mentions at the end that two bombs went off in arasaka, but in the flashback, only one is seen. So it’s not just cyberpunk lore, it’s actually mentioned in game that there were multiple bombs, hinting at multiple strike teams
28:21 Going to Hanako’s shop, she tells you that T-Bug was found dead in her chair.
Dan the reason why Johnny’s memories are false, is because of the way the engram works. In order to copy the mind, it puts the user in a fairytale like dream state. And what ever is true in that state for the user is what’s gets transferred. In a way the engram doesn’t copy the user. Jackie had its regrets (maybe due to a cheap way of using the engram - as his memories were more triggered than actually automatically used / interacting with the environment in a more organic way. The Old Arasaka had its empire and speaks more about the greed of the empire than anything else. However his seemed to be automated. But could as well lack functionality like Jackie’s. All we know is that we can’t trust Hanako. And seeing the evidence of her promise of V, it might as well be.
Yorinobu set up Evelyn. Evelyn hired the weakest fixer, Dex, because she knew she required expendables. And Dex did his thing because he required some hotshots.
Another thing to consider about the heist was T-Bugs lack of preparation as she didn't know the ICE would take a couple of hours to pierce through. Originally they thought the ICE would've been less than 2 hours but unfortunately took longer meaning if T-Bug didn't take so long then V and Jackie would've been able to do the gigg with no problems.
First time I played the game I asked Delamain to take Jackie to Vic's clinic strongly believing he wasn't dead dead. I got humbled fast after.
My favourite Iceberg Theory is a pet headcanon of mine. Sometimes I play a run based on the roleplaying premise that the person who wakes up after the Relic heist is *already* Johnny Silverhand.
V's real personality is weak and malleable. They aren't just an unknown, they're a nobody for a reason: they were either an amoral Arasaka drone acting as the errand runner for a minor psychopath, a Bakker who stuck with one incompetent leader after another but never even thought to take the reins, or a street kid of no particular note who chased an SO off to Atlanta then sulked home with no plan and no prospects. Whoever they were, they ended up as Jackie's sidekick, and they only remember that dynamic being a little different because the whole story is from Johnny's perspective and we already know he's unreliable. V was a follower. V didn't even know what V wanted, so V just did whatever their boss or girlfriend or bestie wanted.
Post-resurrection, Johnny isn't the imaginary friend. He's the core personality, and just having the schizoid delusion of talking to "himself" while acting as the kind of person he imagines V to have been. Someone way cooler and more competent and ambitious than the real Victor or Valerie ever dreamed of being.
V is Johnny's coping mechanism to deal with the experience of being resurrected. His "old" memories struggle to integrate into this unfamiliar, incompatible form, so he's having a kind of out-of-body experience, cribbing the notes he found in this new brain, but the entire time, it's just Johnny Silverhand doing an impersonation of his subjective interpretation of V's memories and personality, living their life for a few weeks until he either reintegrates or goes completely cyberpsycho and self-destructs again. Even the V who hates Johnny and refuses to cooperate is just the kind of person Johnny *wishes* V were, someone with gumption and independence and a backbone, instead of Jackie Welles' sidekick who went along with a harebrained scheme just because they wanted to please their only friend, and got flatlined in a dirty hotel room by a very obvious thug because they were too dumb to anticipate Dex's betrayal.
In this version, the Sun and Star endings where only V remains are actually BAD endings, because it means you were never able to reconcile your experiences and can now only operate as this husk of a person who is, ultimately, just Johnny's personality stripped of all memories and trying to imitate the stolen memories of his new host body.
(Thank you for attending my TED Talk, apologies for the TL;DR. I will freely admit I have no RL friends who play this game, so I kinda used this as a dump for my thoughts)
Really interesting snippet 29:30 ; If you read Jackie's emails on his computer in his garage, T-bug vouched for both you and Jackie to Dexter Deshawn, Jackie and T-bug were much closer than you think... turns out T-bug didn't lie when she said that she wanted to cut ties and retire. :)
Yorinobu didn’t leave the Steel Dragons because he wasn’t cut out for street crime, he left shortly after the attack on Arasaka Tower in 2022 and the death of his older half brother Kei who had sworn to kill him.
I don't know who betrayed V and Jackie during the heist, but if you have the threat detector mod in your optics during the heist you can see that Smasher locks you up with his sensors more or less as soon as he enters the room. Unless it's a bug (and it might be) he knows you're there.
all hostiles lock on in the games code, Adam is always hostile even in calm settings, more an oversight than anything
@@enbymonstercan Hostiles only lock on if they have detected you. The threat detector will only highlight them if they can see you and are hostile. Other hostiles will not highlight if they don't know where you are. So Smasher knows you are there, but whether that is a bug or not is up in the air. I'm leaning towards it being a bug, since I had a playthrough where Smasher and Takemura go into the elevator but don't descend while the old man is killed. (Knowing this because Smasher remains highlighted and just stands in the elevator.) And in another playthrough he does descend after entering the elevator. And loses lock on us when he does.
Oh, he definitely knew. He didn't care. Smasher lore wise is an op monster. There is not too many people in cyberpunk who can actually hurt him.
@Midtierman that's the funniest part about Johnny's death honestly, he starts shooting at smasher and smasher looks at him with bewilderment and probably thinks "the audacity" hen one taps him
I think the T-Bug theory is interesting, especially if you look at the lack of evidence, meaning the game gives lots of little easter eggs and resolutions to character's demise like Meredith Stout and Dexter Deshawn as you can find their bodies, and the fact that only rumors exist of what happened to T-Bug to me gives more credit to the theory, kind of like the horror movie rule of if you don't see a character die on screen they aren't dead kind of thing.
The tags being mislabelled I believe is a dev oversight as every character who is seen wearing a dog tag (Johnny, V, Kerry in flashback, and Thompson), that I can find, are all wearing dog tags that say Robert John Linder. Its just the same asset being used over.
Does he not say that those are the tags of a friend who sacrificed himself for him? Been a while but that's what I remember.
@@CharlieKell Yeah. He does say that during the main quest. But the tags he wears say Robert John Linder. Robert John Linder is Johnny Silverhand's real name (also found at the colombarium next to alt, and in the ripperdoc clinic in the 2nd flashback). So either the devs messed up the name on the tags or Johnny is actually somebody else who assumed the real Robert John Linder's identity during the war.
I have a dark ending theory that V NEVER left Arasaka tower in the non-suicide endings. What I mean is that what V sees post Mikoshi plug-in is all an illusion made by either Arasaka or Alt Cunningham. We have already seen that those subject to soulkiller can have their perceptions altered to whatever the user desires. In Arasaka's case this would be interrogation and torture, in Cunningham's case it's a misguided mercy to make V's passing more comfortable after filling their end of the deal
the endings are depressing as is, dont think they would be fake
@@Cichyhub of course not posing this as canon, just a fun thought experiment given other context clues and prior soulkiller subjects to vouch for the experience
@@The_Digital_Soul the only reason I proposed this theory is an offhanded remark by a relative of the vdb. I had never seen the dialogue in my own games because it requires conditions I never meet(completing Love Rollercoaster and simultaneously completing the Vdb questline while sparing the Vdb entirely). The guy you help repair the rollercoaster can be asked what he believes happened to the VDB after the quest, and what he says is low-key horrifying, comparing deals with Rogue AI to a genie wish, and I quote "if you ask them to make you smaller, the motherf* will rip off your head". To which V can inquire if that's what he thinks happened to them. He says something VERY damning, that his relative(or friend, forget which) had a daughter that if she could contact she would have, implying they departed behind the black wall and never came back, meaning they got merged with Alt. It would be far easier for Alt to conjure a false paradise(similar to the illusion of NC we see right before meeting her again) than to ACTUALLY repair V's ailing body.
I personally enjoyed this game from day one despite everything but if the game or ending if the game equated to "it was just a dream" then I'd go full twitter incel and start threatening the developers to change it... Or more rationally just pretend it didn't happen like with some childhood trauma like I do with ME3.
I also thought it was also hilarious that Dex set up our cover for the mission to be a couple of militech arms dealers, like arasaka wouldn’t be suspicious of their biggest rival having agents in their building. Whole mission was a just nothing but fuck ups
I always thought T-Bugg sold V out. There's dialog with her before the heist where she says if she was going to leave she would ghost everyone without a word, which is exactally what she does.
32:00 Alt even says in the cutscene with johnny that his memories are subjective and bare no resemblance to the truth
You know it's a good day when Big Dan drops a 1 hour vid.
I think T-Bug could be alive...it really adds a very nice mistery to Cyberpunk. She really did "burn the bridges" 👀 It's a very nice thought
You find her body where you meet dex in his car the first time. Look for a garage with two turrets.
27:00 Much simpler explanation: experienced mercs wouldn't sign up for such a risky job. So he found inexperienced but able and talented ones.
What I always wondered...you have genital sliders, but if you take all your armor off, you are wearing underwear. So what is even the point of a genital sliders if you can't run through the street making NPCs uncomfortable?
Sony forced that change, Sony is always behind these bs decisions
On PC you are naked
@krokodilegrundee5101 I play on PC. You are wrong. You have to use a mod to do that. Sure you're naked on the character creator, but nowhere else. Even with mods, nobody acknowledges your nakedness. Bethesda was having people acknowledge nakedness at least as far back as Morrowind. But I'm pretty sure it was in Daggerfall too.
I have an idea. What if heist was set up, because V’s body was the only one compatible with Johnny’s construct? Then T-Bug hired by Voodo boys( remember she’s a preem netrunner and we have never seen her gear, so she can be a voodo) set the heist up - Evelyn as a pawn is mysteriously gone and then commits suicide after we rescued her, Voodo boys try to use us to get to rogue AI which may have an unknown potential only they knew and wanted to use. As you said, the AI used Alt construct and maybe because the fact that Johnny’s construct was the only way to her. Then Netwatch comes in and tries to kill Voodos( if we sided with NetWatch) to prevent them from getting too much power(maybe NetWatch is working for corpo, who knows, or even someone like mr. blue eyes). Because this plan is so well made we would not even know we were a pawn ourselves, and maybe Garry the prophet is not that stupid.
The problem to your idea is that v’s body is not compatible with the engram hence the engram rewriting his literal dna to make it compatible. The chip is designed to take over a body which means this isn’t about whether or not the body is compatible as the chip will MAKE it compatible by force. Anyone can be the new body for the construct and the only prerequisite would be that they are essentially brain dead.
Im almost certain that Dexter was hired by Takemura to steal back the Relic from Yorinobu for Saburo. Its not a coincidence that Takemura is the one who meets with Dex after Dex shoots you. But now that Saburo is dead and the Relic has malfunctioned, there's no reason to take it from you so Takemura decides instead to use you to get his revenge on Yorinobu.
Furthermore, you dont actually have Johnny Silverhand in your head. You have a bootleg knock off version of him in your head. Its the same thing that happened to Jackie. Its not the real version of him. So anyone who decides to give their body to Johnny got fooled big time.
I personally feel like either A. cyberpunk 2077's past is slightly different than the books (hence why Johnny's death is different and memories are different) B. 2077 is a fictional story in the universe of cyberpunk (like how there are references to some of the other games as being games in 2077) or C. The books are stories in universe so people thought Johnny was kia'd and not used in the Bio-chip thing.
Here's a wild theory for Johnny's blood type discrepancy:
O NEG is a blood type that's considered a universal donor (O indicating that the blood has neither A nor B antigens, and has no RhD antigen, hence negative)
AB POS is a blood type that's considered a universal recipient (AB POS contains both A and B antigens, as well as RhD antigen, hence can receive any blood type, such as O NEG, A POS, B NEG, etc)
Why does this matter?
Here's *my* personal theory:
The change in blood type is a subtle nod at Johnny's change in character from 2013 (him being a self-absorbed narcissist who takes but never gives) to that of his character in 2077, where he's willing to face oblivion to give V a shot at life, sacrificing himself (being "selfless", as a universal donor of sorts). Alternatively, he could also have altered the data on the tags, showing V tags that incorrectly state he's a universal donor, as some sort of way to hint to V that he's genuinely willing to give what he can for V to get a chance to live, with the memory showing his actual blood type.
Johnnys arm got patched out. It was causing a bug and was just a place holder item. We were never supposed to get it
Johnny is already there on Character creation. The last time we hit the space bar to launch the game it says Breeching. We the player are running an Engram of V through a Fixed cyber world to steal V's secrets. That is why the dolls and AIs say we are already dead. It is also why V says to Misty that V could be already dead. It is also why the best hacker and AI ALT can not just reprogram the Nanobots to fix our mind back to our mental Matrix. You have no real chance to save yourself in the game even with the DLC because V is an Engram in Mikoshi.
If the Malorian, at 14mm pistol with explosive rounds described as an “anti tank weapon” couldn’t “crease” Adams armor…. How are we able to kill him, let alone DAMAGE him with anything we use? I hope the DLC drastically changes his boss fight
He's got weak points and I've got a qian2 sandy
@@CodeeXD but hitting his “weak points” isn’t a part of the boss’s fight is it? No you just lay into him and his armor breaks away and gets destroyed despite… it apparently being exceedingly strong, atleast against standard ammo.
@@CodeeXD he also has a sandi so….
I mean, even that gravity thing from the anime didn't give him any trouble, he's basically armored in solid Plot.
@@NormalPersonCommenting well, the gravity thing did kind of catch him off guard and then he just brute strengthened out of it. I think a gravity well machine like that could be easily devastating.
Imagine having such fine control over it, you can increase the weight of certain parts and throw him off balance or even rip certain bits off. Materials do have stress limits and having the literal power over gravity would allow you to see those limits exposed very quickly.
What I think the problem was, the amount of power to do so must be enormous. Hence why I believe the machine he was using was tuned perfectly for fleshy targets, it didn’t outright crush anyone. Like I mean CRUSH fine paste, flat like paper, because it didn’t have the power source to pump all that energy out
Solve that problem and it would be devastating
finger's "lack of good inventory"
meanwhile.... *fingers has the best sandy in the entire game*
sadly no more, 2.0 did a lot of good but i’m still indifferent on Ripperdoc inventory changes
Was it called "Sandy Fingers"?
The thing about Johnnys death is that it has to be atleast some mix of the two. He HAS to be uploaded to soul killer otherwise his engram would be like Jackies
Damn. Big Dan putting in the work with this one!
Finger's lack of good inventory? I guess we play different games.
About edgewood, if you have been there roaming, V will recognize where it is when the kid trying to escape sees the outside area.
Tbh I think the most likely explanation for the inconsistency between Johnny’s memories and the lore is simply that it’s not necessarily the same timeline as the books
If they didn’t want me to let River die they should have made him a more likable character 🤷♂️
More fun fact/things you might have missed over iceberg theories, but good vid
I loved this video since Cyberpunk lore isn’t as popular as it used to be. There’s a couple points I’d like to add to the iceburg sections
- with the “Was the Heist a setup” I don’t think T-bug faked her death. If I recall correctly you can see her name at the grave yard area(I forgot the name but it’s outside of nightcity). Also in Kabuki Town I think, if you talk to a quickhack vendor, you can ask her about T-Bug. I haven’t played Cyberpunk in a while so if I’m wrong about the grave memorial area I’ll edit this to be correct.
- I believe Johnny’s memories are lying to us but I wouldn’t go as far as to assume he died to Smasher instantly, since soulkiller was used on him, and Johnny’s engrams is TOO complete compared to Jacky’s (since he died and Soulkiller was used on him). When you play as Johnny in his memory, his Malorian does more damage as it does in 2077. Same with his melees. I believe he also moves MUCH faster, despite his lack of augments. I’m sure his memories lie to us more but that’s all I can remember(I believe Morgan also lead the attack but Johnny’s memories lie to us about his own self importance since he is a Narcissist)
- Alt Cunningham is a rough A.I. I partially partially partially disagree with this due to OneDragon’s deep dive. He points out that Alt says some bitter things to Johnny provided on what you choose to say to her as Johnny before she’s kidnapped. I believe when V meets her, she’s 1 of two things.
1) she’s an AI construct like 01 who consumed her engram and has taken on her personality as a result of her engram being so prefect/complex(an amazing netrunner as an engram would be nuts)
2) It’s actually alt’s engram that found a way to become something like if not exactly like a Rouge AI
Great video btw Dan! This made my Saturday fr
Well that could be the case for Johnny but it could be that Johnny's perception is fucked up as he could easily be going through psychosis, he could also have had an episode during his death, and although Jackie was dead by the time he was hit by soulkiller it could have been either a different variation of soulkillers system, like using it to take all of Johnny's psyche while only taking Jackie's memories or they could have taken Johnny's engram and manipulated it to make it impossible to figure out what actually happened, such as making him more egotistical and self centered in some areas, keep his personality the same but change how he explains the events
It's worth thinking of, but no. Despite the storefront owner telling you Bug was carted out, she doesn't get a memorial.
That's what I loved about the game, EVERY place you have to enter always has another route in case the first one is too flashy or you can't get in because of the character experience
Johnny's "holographic" arm is what you see when Johnny has control over your body. It's the illusion you get looking at V's arm with Johnny's conscious.
7:54 - "...some will explore off the beating path..."
Dan, my choom, you have committed an eggcorn.
The phrase is beaten path, not beating.
Maybe in the future it's the beating path
Wait T-Bug setting us up from the beginning is a theory ? The game made it clear enough that that's what's happening imo
Fantastic video! Well done. Love the commentary and research that goes into these videos.
I see Johnnys last memories alive as more of the last things running through his mind while dying. Him running up to the roof being his fight to stay alive, him thinking of Rogue one last time, and then his acceptance of his death by Smasher/ or his last moment alive was him hating smasher for taking it away from him
the part where you can "talk to Jackies ghost" is wrong. all of the lines he says are lines from the first two missions just replayed back to V. but he does say it's nice to be an arisaka heir meaning it was always Yorinobu just playing back Jackies memories to V. Nothing new was said and nothing new was said to V nothing new about mom or misty and you know damn straight that if it was really Jacki the first thing he would have done is ask about his mom and misty then vic. he would've been pissed that Dex set him up and let him die for the old hasbeen in Jackies words. To me it's just proof that Macoshi doesn't have Jackies consciousness but a copy of his memories instead.
I actually recently found a body that looked ALOT like TBug in an alley near the hotlel, totally fried, I can post them somewhere if someone wants. It could be someone else but it was pretty on point... idk but I kinda thought t-bug might have gotten away too.
26:40
You got one fact wrong there.
It was said in the game that Jackie worked for Dex before, so he's not hiring 2 completely unknown mercs.
Jackie and T-Bug were familiar with Dex before and now they worked with V so Dex has easy connection here and 2 opinions from people he knows already regarding V.
Now that Phantom Liberty is out, my headcannon on the whole Dexter/T-Bug scenario feels more fleshed out.
In my mind, Dexter was the Pacifica Fixer, he got in over his head and tried to mess with the Voodoo Boys, he underestimated them and in turn, they run him out of town for two years. At this time, he knows T-Bug (Possibly a resident of Pacifica? maybe even of Dogtown? There's a dead runner you can find that has a shard where the VDB's are baiting them with possibly joining the gang if they do a job for them as a ranyon, so not sure how feasible it is that Bug is a former VDB herself), there's also the possibility that Mr. Hands engineered Dexter's downfall from behind the scenes (In Phantom Liberty, he makes a reference to Dexter's inability to keep leaks from happening) and at the same time, establishes himself in Dogtown, he pays his dues to Barghest and sets shop in the Heavy Hearts club, a place that is guarded by Bhargest and is visited by the elite. He's far more secure than Dexter was assuming that Dexter was set somewhere in Pacifica or Coastview and not Dogtown.
Out of Pacifica, he realizes the other districts already have a Fixer: Wakako, El Capitan, Regina, Dakota, Dino, with Rogue herself reigning as Queen Fixer from the Afterlife. Dexter is desperate, he wants to get back to the major leagues, but he has no room to maneuver, until Evelyn Parker calls.
Dexter mentions that he couldn't vet her and that people from Pacifica got back to him to back off. To any Fixer worth their salt this would have been a major red flag and would most likely remove themselves from the mess. Yet Dexter pressed on, even paid for the Flathead upfront. I don't think he did it out of incompetence, I think he did it out of impatience and desperation. I also think that Oleg, his bodyguard/driver got thrown under the bus, when you go to the No-Tell Motel and refuse to wash your face, you can hear Dexter call the spaceport and reserve a shuttle, one seat. Oleg was loyal to Dexter until he realized he was also going to be on the run for the rest of his life. Dexter panics, drops the act, and tries to kill V. He realizes the nuclear fire that the biochip really is (Something he should have done beforehand), which is also why he asks V if they got the biochip.
I think T-Bug was trying to set the whole crew up. If you talk to her some more at the Afterlife, she pretty much expresses her desire to burn bridges with everybody and just leave Night City, she's in it only for the money and she's waiting for it. In the "Heroes" gig when you go to Jackie's garage, you can check his computer and find an email from her, she sets the meet at the beginning of the game between V and Dexter. I think T-Bug pulling Dexter from the hot mess that was Pacifica earned her a few favors from him, it's entirely possible she called in a favor and whispered V's name to Dexter. There's also the possibility that no other merc in Night City wants to work for a fixer who got ran out of their turf, went into hiding for two years, and is now claiming to have "the greatest gig of all time", Dexter's options were limited, and Bug just had the names. So why V? I think it's because V is the newer merc in the team. In a call with Jackie, he says he's known Bug for some time, so from the trio, V is the outsider, the newcomer, someone Bug thought would be eager to prove themselves to a legendary fixer and who would be easily blinded by the promise of riches and glory (Callback to Dexter's "Mind if I ask you something right off the bangle?" question, it's all reputation, and forging a legend with only one job). So in her mind, V would be eager to accept and willing to go with the job. She feared Jackie would fuck something up and not inspire confidence in Dexter (Check her "Jackie..." interaction when Jackie asks Dexter if the Afterlife booth is soundproof).
There were a lot of things that went bad that made me think she set up the team during the heist proper. The identities she forged establishes V and Jackie as Militech representatives there to make a deal with Hajime Taki of Arasaka, and when the duo go to their room, Bug acts strange, there's a brief moment of silence, and then she claims she'll take a few hours to punch through Konpeki ICE. This potentially breaks the gig, sure there's no timeframe for how fast should the gig be completed, but how long do they expect Hajime Taki to wait? He could grab the holo, call Militech and ask where those representatives are, if Militech says there's no representatives sent to Konpeki, he could cause a stinkup, couldn't he? Then the gig goes as it does.
I think Bug cut, or tried to cut a deal with Arasaka, Arasaka offers to pay her more than her cut with Dexter would have been, with the condition that she ensures that V and Jackie will be in the hotel, and information on Dexter's location. That would explain the weird pause in the call, and suddenly realizing that she'd need hours to punch through the hotel's ICE. What sealed her deal is the fact that she is a very talented Netrunner, and that got Arasaka's attention, if they got everything they wanted from Bug, why should they keep their end of the bargain? When you visit Yoko in Kabuki after the heist, she describes Bug's death and is very similar to the effects from Soulkiller. In the lore, Arasaka uses Soulkiller to target netrunners that could represent an issue for the corp, they get their engram and ensure that they can interrogate them, if Bug was soulkilled before her body died, that'd ensure an engram with 100% integrity (Unlike Jackie's engram which is severely damaged as it was obtained hours after his death), so Arasaka (Or in this case specifically, Yorinobu) gets the proper pieces for the next play, a heist he uses to further cement his position withing the corp, getting the board on his side and strengthening his faction, with the ability to use Hanako to garner support from the rest, but also ignorant of Saburo's plans for the Relic itself.
Also, fun fact, in Phantom Liberty, if you side with Reed, you'll eventually go into the Cynosure facility, you can find T-Bug's holo avatar in there, and considering how the Soulkilled/Engrams have a relationship with the Blackwall, it's entirely possible that's her, and seeing her plans go to waste, she could hold resentment against the only survivor of the crew: V.
Also, sorry for the wall of text, I sometimes get carried away...
I absolutely think you're right. This makes the most sense as a scenario and why it's hard to even trust dex from the start.
@@amandaharris108 There's also the possibility that T-Bug may have been an informant for Militech.
When you're on your way to rescue Myers, there's a computer in Space Force One you can use, one of the files is a report on the Konpeki Heist, and the report states that their informant disappeared shortly before they could give information on their employer. There's no indication of gender so we can't be 100% this is Bug or not, but if that's the case, it'd explain how Songbird and Myers know so much about Konpeki when almost no one else does (Brigitte's VDB faction knows because they commissioned the whole thing, other than that, I don't think anyone else knows).
One could argue that the informant could be Hellman, especially considering he defects to Kang Tao shortly after the heist, but Takemura states that it was Hellman who warned Saburo about Yorinobu's move, so to me, it doesn't make sense that Hellman's the informant, he would have defected to Militech instead of Kang Tao, I think he panicked and Kang Tao was the closest/easiest option.
I agree with your opinion about LayedBackGaming. Their videos are great!
Great job as usual Dan-o!
Evelyn definitely would have been better off dead right away, she was used and abused and took her own life anyway after being saved by Judy, possibly her best friend
I kept tally of which ones I knew about already. I knew 3/5 tier 1, all 4/4 of tier 2, half or 2/4 of tier 3, and knew 3/5 for tier 4. Nice video!👍
Good stuff, Dan. Well researched. I appreciate the deep look into story.
Below is a breakdown of what Cyberware that is exclusively sold by Fingers :
Qiant Sandevistan Mk.4 Cost: $35,000 Requires 15 Reflexes 3 Mod Slots Hold E/LB+RB/L1+R1 to slow time by 25% for 12 seconds, every 15 seconds.
Increases any damage dealt by 15% when Sandevistan is active. Increases Crit Chance by 15% when Sandevistan is active.
Cataresist Cost: $14,000 Requires 15 Cool Increases all Resistance by 35%
Detoxifier Cost: $12,000 Requires 10 Body Grants immunity to Poison.
Cataresist Cost: $10,000 Requires 12 Cool Increases all Resistances by 23%
Pain Editor Cost: $28,000 Requires 16 Cool Reduces all incoming damage by 10%
Lynx Paws Cost: $85,000 Allows you to move and run more quietly. The sound of your footsteps will not carry as far.
Don't Hit Fingers.
There’s a lot of music Easter eggs for example there’s a mission named killing in the name, witch is a song by rage against the machine, type o- is a band as well
all missions are named after songs
Based on all the animations when you equip that hand, they DEFINITELY wanted V to have that arm...so..why they removed it, is beyond me.
I always found it strange how after thr explosion when Johnny was making his exit, it just cuts to him closing the door and heading to the roof...like, you were just on the ground after an explosion, at the feet of Smasher, how tf you got out of there?
Bro saboru knows v and jackie are the walls from the way he looks directly at them when hes not talking to his son. He turns his head to talk to his son directly in the eyes.
When he mentions the nail in the wall quote, hes looking right at them. i feel like saburo purposely sent his bodyguards away to intentionally antagonize his son to get him to kill him. A bit of a reach but remember theres a emgram copy saboru. This could be a way give his son a bad reputation to the company and complete dishonor to his family. Make them feel no guilt or remorse when the time comes to impant saburo's engram to his son's body.
I think a man like saboru is very calculated and not dumb enough to just die like this. He 5 steps ahead and he using his death as a opportunity.
Hey man, Fingers might be a total creep & lack any meaningful cyberware for the most part but he *does* have the most broken Sandevistan you can get in the game. Takes a lot of Body + Reflexes investment, but is very much worth it for a near instant cooldown and total duration of 14 sec of time slowed to 25%. I'm talking about the QianT Mk4 legendary variant of course, which, despite the Mk5 iconic variant "seeming" superior on paper it really isn't. Just a few extra sec or duration at the expense of a significantly higher base cooldown before heatsinks + bioconductors. That being said, the Mk4 still allows for 3 mod slots like any other legendary tier Sandy, and can be used to it's "full potential" with legendary heatsinks, legendary bioconductors, and epic nanorelays. It's quite literally the closest you can get to using the Sandy the way good ol David Martinez does, and can only be purchased from Fingers unless you punch him in the Judy quest line. Side note: I've learned that even the epic bioconductors w/ legendary heatsinks or vice versa still allow for an incredibly short to nearly non-existent cooldown, allowing for some Sandy spamming chaos. With melee focused builds, it's such a fun way to play the game. Smasher on Very Hard difficulty was an absolute breeze to defeat while constantly moving at super speed and blitzing the ever living shit out of him with legendary gorilla arms + electrical knuckles attached. Funnily enough, he flexes on David by using his own Sandy in the end of Edgerunners, calling it a "rudimentary implant" and whatnot. Yet fails to actually have/use one in the game 😂 poor dude couldn't even stay on his feet the entire time and only lived longer than 20-30 sec thanks to his bullshit "damage immunity" that occurs when his health drops to certain levels due to scripted events like him firing his missiles & receiving help from backup Arasaka fodder
The dlc confirm that in fact there was a rat in the crew, you can read a file talking about this in rosalind's notebook in space force one ship
Always enjoy a big Dan deep dive. Thanks
Of course you had to have I really wanna stay at your house by let’s eat grandma playing in the background 😭
i look forward to the tarot card video, i LOVE how unique it is in this game. the only other game i think that did tarot well is persona
That Thomas the tank engine DeShawn was funny to look at
6:27 Hanako got the GYATT
T Bug also has the GYATT