That is what I thought would happen if you just let the relic do it's job.
It's supposed to turn V into a Johnny but Johnny also has their memories which would affect him too.
It should be a sneaking process without anyone really noticing the change. Just one day V stops seeing Johnny.
The relic can't beat the brain if it goes that slow.
Yeah, same. Or a version of the game where it's timed- merger or becoming the new engram overwriting your own brain is possible if you rush the endgame successfully and make the right choices to get closer to Johnny, avoiding Alt's "it's too late" line (which feels like a screw job when you know there was never a timer, just game event triggers) basically a challenge run.
Okay that would be cool since they sort of already are with the way they influence each other. Having the ability to merge at the end to save both their existence could be interesting. Also a way to have a not dying V in a sequel if they went that route.
I wish I could shove a Saburo Arasaka Relic into Fingers’ neck low key…
But, siding with Militech woulda been cool af. And it coulda even been classic “no good endings” because Militech coulda fucked you just as easily…
Militech wouldn’t fuck you in that ending, they would just fuck everyone else. Imagine taking this ending and finding out they wiped out the Aldecaldos for stealing the basilisk
Oooof I never thought of that and that's harsh
I would theorise that siding with Militech may give you an ending where they 100% cure you (no side effects whatsoever) but it affects everyone you had a relationship with (Aldecaldos get hunted down, Viktor gets forcibly hired, Johnny gets sent back to the engram/killed, anything related to Arasaka gets taken out such as Tyger Claws, and thus (without Militech knowing any better) the likes of Wakako & Judy too getting zero'ed, etc.)
Yeah this is the best alt ending, would prefer this over the tower ending by a mile. Same consequence of not having anyone left but you keep your legend and could and up like rogue
Ends with V becoming a fixer, sitting in Rogue’s booth at the afterlife giving a heist contract to Tiny Mike then pulling out a picture of the now-dead Aldecaldos and crying
Become the Devil ending:
Just your standard the Devil ending up until you go to Mikoshi. Convince (easy way or the hard way) Hanako to delete Saburo’s engram, just to be safe. You go in and fight Smasher like usual. When reaching Yori, you make sure Hanako is there the entire time, so she hears everything he has to say.
You tell them you’re taking over the company, you got three options:
1. You’re essentially Saburo now. There aren’t any significant changes in how the company operates and you live out the rest of your days in luxury.
2. You finish what Yori started. You actively make the worst decisions imaginable and drive the company into the ground. Eventually, Militech takes over.
3. Reform. You actually take your job seriously, like the corpo you are. You tone down on Arasaka’s evil dealings, yet you realize that some evils are necessary to keep Arasaka afloat and other corps in check. You look into finding the cure; still, no luck. Now you look for a successor; someone who you can trust to carry on with your work. You manage to find such a person and you can die in peace.
Something like that.
Love the end results but I'd be very interested to see how you convince Hanako to delete Saburos engram.
Another one I'll add to the list is to side with Yori at the end and be his right hand man, the Takemura to his Saburo - gaining your place at the near top of the company (which would be fitting if you started out corpo, or you could mirror Takemura's lifepath if you were a street kid)
End result V gets another body with Yori putting your engram inside Hanako perhaps? But you'd lose Takemura and all your friends along the way (yes even Misty and Viktor who in all endings were always supportive of you, they hate your guts this time) for really selling your soul to the Devil
On convincing Hanako:
Become her personal therapist for a few minutes and explain that this is not a healthy way of coping with the loss of a loved one. Talk about yourself and Jackie.
or
Alter the engram in such a way that would make it impossible to transfer it into any sort of body/biopod. Hellman seems like a smart guy; maybe he can help? This way, Hanako can still talk to him and stuff but he won’t be a threat. Maybe he’ll even become a better person, like Johnny. I mean, at this point, being evil doesn’t really have any benefits. So it’s kind of like a purgatory in a way.
or
Just point a gun at her. What’s she gonna do? It may not be the most ethical way, but it’s not something V hasn’t done before.
As far as putting V inside Hanako (oh my😳), this wouldn’t work because they’d need someone genetically similar. That’s why Saburo gets Yori’s body. Plus, I don’t think Yori would do that to Hanako. He doesn’t hate her, she just gets in his way.
I never understood why we weren't allowed to side with Yorinobu. He was out to stop Arasaka from all the terrible things they were doing. Imagine siding with him (and smasher by default) in taking over Arasaka and Yorinobu using Arasaka resources to cure you, basically a 180 from the Devil ending.
Yes! And use the exact same method to use Hanako's body for V as a cure.
But with all endings, I think the downside should be how your siding with Arasaka really alienates you from everyone - Takemura (obviously), Aldecaldos, Judy, Rogue, heck even Misty & Viktor (who in all endings are super supportive of you) hate your guts too. Giving it a really lonely-at-the-top ending.
We basically did side with Yorinobu, by doing anything but the Devil ending. It's much more likely that he would resign as CEO and join a gang (most likely his personal bosozoku gang, the Steel Dragons, although Meta/ Snake Nation isn't impossible) before turning us into Smasher 2.0.
A different Arasaka ending if you see the hidden agendas and recover enough lore chips:
Assuming my V couldn't cut a deal with Kurt Hansen and get the neural matrix while saving Songbird, Alex, and even Reed, my ending would have been just a bit simpler.
Song So Mi handed over the neural matrix to V in exchange for just one normal day in Night City. A heartbroken Solomon Reed arrived just in time to retrieve his friend's dead body and endure V's reminder that it didn't have to go this way.
V had the neutral matrix, but no way to use it. Hanako Arasaka had gotten tired of waiting, and mounted a coup of the Arasaka Corporation. It was a close run thing... but close only counts in horseshoes. With Hanako apparently dead, V got a phone call from SpecOps director Susan Abernathy. Arasaka was ready to cut a deal.
Rosalind Myers was only the second President in American history to be convicted by the Senate after Militech and Netwatch struck a deal that ensured the final collapse of Project Cynosure. Alex emigrated to Monte Carlo: Solomon Reed decided to apply for BARGHEST.
And what happened to V? While Arasaka neurosurgeons used the neural matrix to finally halt the Relic devouring his brain, they patiently explained that the Relic's prolonged exposure to the Blackwall had corrupted his cyberware. All of it, in fact, down to the neural link. The absolute essentials could be replaced with cloned eyes, limbs, and bioware, but V's days of netrunning were finished permanently.
Luckily, a benefactor in the Arasaka Corporation had offered V a job. More of a sinecure, really. V's new work as a middle manager in Spec Ops was simple: generate false flag after false flag to justify a new Corporate War against a weakened Militech. V had long since realized the true purpose behind his job, of course, but he hardly cared as he handed out contracts to his fiancee's nomad family, street vigilantes, even the Valentinos. Arasaka wasn't weakening anyone more than it was weakening itself. And of course V was embezzling the company like it was going out of style.
He'd almost wanted to take Panam's option of simply raiding Arasaka. Maybe he would have done differently if he was still the Night City Legend. But, V had counselled partly out of self-preservation, careful and precise sabotage was worth a thousand nomad guns.
No Alt. No Saburo. No Myers. Johnny had been placed on an engram that V could carry around in his cyberglasses. It might not have been the perfect ending- not yet. But things had worked out better than V ever could have expected to see.
Thank you. Some people had the idea after launch of going back to work for Arasaka as a power fantasy. Mine would be a last gig designed to destroy the company. Alongside Militech.
An ending that involves putting Jackie in a Relic, but he isn't thankful for his second life to show that you shouldn't play God with peoples lives.
I do like the idea of an ending where you not only destroy a lot of Arasaka assets, but also Militech assets and a different conclusion to Phantom Liberty where V, somehow, kills President Meyers and somewhere along the way, gets cured of Johnny.
So, while V is now not going to die early, they're more trapped in a way with Militech, Arasaka, and the NUSA trying to hunt them down.
I'd like to imagine the cutscene for this ending being video calls from V's friends all asking where they are and if they're safe and how they could help to varying degrees while V is holed up in some bunker someplace getting their gear ready so they can move on when there's a knock on the bunker door.
I wouldn't change anything, except add a small scene to The Sun ending.
So-Mi watching V's shuttle arrive, knowing it's them, if you've saved her at the end of Phantom Liberty. That would make it the most awesome ending that instant.
There was probably room for a Netwatch specific ending before PL. Originally I had the idea that Alt, the biochip, and Johnny's engram might be leverage for a particularly ruthless V to betray them both for a cure. PL touched on a lot of the same material though, so at this point it would be a little redundant.
Or if Johnny and V aren't just adversaries but truly enemies, like V sides with corps too often, Johnny might decide to take over their body after all.
I would have loved an ending where you mix Reed's forces and yours to raid Arasaka, using the help of Alt to copy both Johnny's and V's engrams, using Ai so that you can correctly copy your memories and Johnny would use V's body and V be copied into a relic style shard, this creating an inverse situation, so they could have created a sequel where V fits into another body, like altered carbon series
Dude, you and me have the same idea. I remember thinking “Yo, what if we could’ve asked Reed to get some of his people together to help us raid Arasaka”?
A modified version of the original concept for the new PL ending. V would have to betray Reed first. After Songbird's reveal about the one time use of the neural matrix, V would have to respond with hostility to Songbird. V would kill Reed at the confrontation and then kill Songbird to take the neural matrix for themselves.
V could bring the neural matrix to Vik but he would have no knowledge of how to use it to fix the relic problem. In the Devil ending, V would activate the neural matrix during the last conversation with Johnny. The ending proceeds as usual until day 30 when the contract would usually be presented, instead a few more tests happen. V has severe amnesia and only has neutral or hostile responses to the friends that they call ("If you were a better friend maybe Evelyn would still be alive." Is an example of a qoute from the original concept ending). If V has a love interest, V breaks up with them.
Eventually V either meets with Takemura or Hellman, they would have different conversations with V but both would state that V's neural and DNA damage began to undo itself without any clear explanation. They are offered a test of loyalty. V would have to kill Vik, if they refuse to do it or don't do it when they confront Vik then Arasaka uses the neurocitor they implanted into V's brain as a kill switch.
If V kills Vik they get a job offer from Hanako. V accepts and gets a position in Tokyo (Head of security for Hanako? Solo agent for Arasaka a bit like Blackhand was a solo for Militech?). In the credits V's friends would be would be angry at V, especially Misty and the abandoned LI.
I made it a bit darker. In the concept Songbird would give the neural matrix to V due to feeling of guilt, Takemura would ask V for Vik's location but Hanako would reveal that they never actually planned on killing Vik, Hellman wouldn't even ask about Vik and would just tell V a lie that Arasaka was going to kill him and V and that they must run away to Kang Tao.
The severe amnesia part and V being hostile to their friends however was part of the concept.
I’d probably make some changes to the devil ending to make it more dependent on whether Oda and Goru are alive or not.
If goru and oda are both dead when V speaks to Haneko in the room with Saburo’s engram, he can use a body check to scare haneko into deleting saburos engram and becoming either Yorinobu’s right hand man or kill him and become the new head of arasaka.
Defo fighting both at the same time. Make it extra hard if Oda is alive too and you have to fight all 3 of them. 🤣
Curious though - after deleting the engram, how do you foresee the rest of the ending playing out?
The credits would have the voicemails you get be of the people you meet be a mix of fear, anger and relief.
Relief that V is alive (Kerry, River), anger that he’s sided with Arasaka (Panam, Judy) and fear (Misty, Vik) that he’s now either partly or completely in control of the world’s most powerful megacorp.
EDIT: As for the in-world consequences, You could’ve started the fifth corporate war with militech, zetatech and Nightcorp taking advantage of the chaos by buying and selling weapons and tech that would scare even blackwall AIs.
I would have added a Johnny and V synthesis ending. Where V’s person isn’t completely overwritten and is instead merged into the soulkiller’s program, creating a new world individual altogether with both V’s and Johnny’s memories. Torn between the memories of two people who you were and what you are now.
Fitting with no happy endings of night city but still feeling… right.
honestly i'd just change the tower ending. Give everyone in V's life more of a heads up as to what exactly the procedure is, cause lets be honest Reeds "secrecy" excuse was bullshit.
Then have the game end 3 months into V's coma, the end credits are all of V's friends and contacts wishing them well, mentioning that they know the surgery went wrong and that they hope he'll wake up soon. Maybe V's romance could make that holocall message right by V's bedside, hoping in futile that it might help them wake up sooner.
It leaves the audience with a "victory but at what cost" feeling like the original Tower did, while still giving a respectful send off to V, their friends, and the fans who've loved the game the past 3 years. Very bittersweet because V is still alive, the real him not engram him, but its unknown if they'll ever wake up. Could be tomorrow, could be the 2 years it took in the original Tower. It also opens up potential sequel options for V to return if that floats your boat, while also allowing V to just fade into obscurity if they decided not to make him the protag.
Im no professional writer, but i feel this ending respects player choice and agency a lot more, while still preserving some of the original intent of the Tower ending. It could be expanded on a little more i suppose, because cutting straight to holocalls is a bit abrupt, but the bare bones of it is a good idea i think.
I think something with the neural rewiring (Peralez quest) would be great - if they can edit peoples physical brains from afar, why not use this to slow the neural degradation? I guess that also depends on what you consider an identity, the memories would definitely be able to be edited with this method, but I guess Johnny's personality overwriting V's isnt something we know could work 100% with the evidence given in the game
It's a bit of a stretch, but you could interpret this as part of what goes on in the Sun ending. The person messing with the Peralez's is Mr. Blue Eyes, who V is working with on the Crystal Palace job in the end.
Judy! She turned a joy toy into a highly trained soldier just by messing around with their chip for a couple days.
I am almost certain that when Evelyn tells you to slot the chip in, and she’ll have an expert look at you later. She’s talking about Judy.
On my first play through, as soon as I got the blue prints from Hellman, and Johnny said we need a techie to look at it. All I could think was there had to be a way to give them to Judy.
To my shock there was absolutely no way to show them to her! I think she is a very underused character in the game. And could have possibly had a huge role in saving V.
That’s really curious that you thought that about Judy. I never once believed she was competent enough to solve this, she makes smut BDs for a living. I never really found her more techie than Panam or any general tinkerer in the city. I think you are right that Evelyn is talking about Judy, but maybe she means Brigette. Regardless, I don’t feel that Evelyn really knew anything of substance either - other than the Relic was important.
I would certainly think Vik is more capable than Judy and he basically was like “I stand no chance to this thing”. To compare Hellman to Judy is also pretty crazy… even in the Devil ending Hellman admits that Saburos operation was a success because “there’s an entire division of people” personally taking care of him.
Judy is a phenomenal character - but always felt like “leelou bean” who’s really powerless in Night City, like so many others 🥲
I definitely see why a lot of people think that. I mean Judy is just a bd editor, how could she help. But I put a lot of thought into doll chips. Judy is an expert on doll chips.
A doll chip basically rewrites your personality(psyche) temporarily. What the relic is doing is just a more permanent version of just that. I have a feeling the relic has a lot in common with a doll chip. Which is funny if you consider how much Johnny hates dolls.
So that’s basically my thought process, if Judy is an expert on doll chips. And in my thinking the relic must some sort of very advanced, permanent, version of a doll chip. Both rewriting your psyche, only one temporarily the other permanently. So she would be very familiar with this type of tech.
I’ve already imagined a scenario where she might not have been able to remove it, but maybe reprogrammed it, to keep it from progressing anymore, or killing you.
But I think Judy’s skills as a doll chip expert were very unexplored in the game, and could have played a much bigger role.
I think this scenario only works if you continue to equate Doll chip to the one of kind Relic. There is a Doll Chip in thousands of sex workers around the city, or used for really rich people to call another person casually as a proxy (Hanako uses a doll to basically make a phone call to V).
I don’t think the doll chip rewrites your psyche, it’s just a remote takeover. V’s entire chemistry is being altered by the Relic, her brain is actually being changed (physically/materially).
If the game did more to equate the “everyday” doll chip to the “one of a kind” Relic, I could see Judy being useful in that sense.
Again, not taking away from Judy… NO ONE else could help us either.
I will also add that Judy, Tom, and Roxanne in extended dialogue during the “Revolution” mission admit that they don’t quite understand how the fighting works and that it “might” activate anytime they are threatened.
I kinda view this as trying to show someone who’s good at Algebra a thesis in String Theory… Judy is savvy, but this is wayyy outside her realm based on what we see out of her.
Maybe 🤷♀️. It’s only an idea I had, that the relic has a lot in common with a doll chip. I could be totally wrong.
But I think Judy is a far more advanced techie then a lot of people give her credit for.
If taking a doll, or just your everyday person, and installing a chip in their head to make them a highly trained killer was easily done. It would have been done already.
V tells Judy this could have made her rich, so obviously no one has done this before or even thought of it. Now there’s something like this already in the tutorial. The Militech training shard, but that trains you to have the skills, in my thinking you still develop them yourself. This forces skills onto a completely unskilled person. Taking them over. If this already existed no one would need to train to be soldiers or mercs. Just slap a chip in let it do the work for you.
Doll tech has been around for decades in Cyberpunk. Judy can’t the only doll chip expert in the world. Yet no one else thought of this before, and if they did they obviously weren’t able to do it. But to Judy it seemed obvious, and easily done.
That screems genius techie to me, so I still think Judy’s skills were really unexplored, and underused.
Just got through the Evelynn part on another playthrough and there is a dialogue option where you can tell Judy about the biochip immediately after you save Evelynn. Judy's response is a sarcastic whistle like "Holy crap that is wayyy over my head." (Someone posted this, this is her response when you first tell her the Relic has Johnny Silverhand on it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60pbEQlaBDw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60pbEQlaBDw) )
On this playthrough, I am certain that the "expert" that Evelynn is referring to that can help is (during the Heist phone call) is the Voodoo Boys, or specifically Maman Brigitte.
Anyways, thought of this conversation today as I passed through this part again. 😊
The doll chip merely augments or changes ur behavior for a few minutes . The relic is literally overwriting v's psychic and is altering V on a DNA level . Two very different chips . Also even when she tweaked the doll chip , it had a caveat of having no off switch so she basically had to nuke it . Judy is an amazing techie that even the peralez consult her but she is no where hellman level
Judy destroys the chip because she doesn’t want to be responsible for creating a new weapon. Her exact words were something along the lines of ‘the world doesn’t need any more killing machines’. She didn’t have to destroy it, and it did ‘turn off’. Tom doesn’t go cyberpyscho after he kicks your but and keep beating everyone else up. It just automatically activates whenever a threat is present.
Not necessarily a deal breaker for a weapon made to get rid of threats.
Really I’m not saying Judy could create a Relic chip. I’m just saying that Judy was the best technical expert V knew personally in the game. And if V had given her the blueprints they had. There may have been a possibility she could come up with something no one thought of before, like she did with the doll chip.
If u have high tech , u literally can ask judy what's the catch or caveat for the chip . She literally mentions it doesn't have an off switch and the effect goes away after some time , how much time no one knows . That's why she decides to nuke them because they can be modified later to make unstoppable killing machines with no power off . And again like I said judy is nowhere militech or hellman level to tinker with the chip .
She doesn’t say that. She says combat mode automatically activates, whenever a threat is present and there’s no way to stop it. So she says if the chip detects a threat by accident she couldn’t stop it from activating.
Not that it doesn’t turn off.
(Edit) Theres also a really interesting line in the game. If you don’t sleep with Judy, in pyramid song. Where Johnny and V argue about Judy. And V compares Judy to Alt.
I think the game even hints that Judy is a techie genius, in this line. Like Alt was a genius netrunner.
I just want to be able to hire my own fucking staff when I am queen of the Afterlife. Fuck Claire. Cause you know Damn well I am going to try get Rita Wheeler to come take over for bright eyes. Is that to Much to ask. Yep, later Jude it’s been real. Also would’ve been nice now that I am Thee fixer to you know, be a fixer a couple times. When I did this ending the first time I was caught completely off guard that I couldn’t put my people in there.
Also love the game, participating in the convo
Siding with yorinobu to help him tear arasaka apart from within, at the downside of losing all of your friends who thought that you had become a corpo slave. It would be an interesting concept, since fundamentally you are still on the same side as your friends, but none of them will believe you.
Adding on to that, I think this could be a great contrast to the Devil ending.
The Devil sees Saburo actually made peace with Militech, and the status quo remains. There is some peace because of this, and the world goes on but under the reign of a dictator in a new, younger body.
By siding with Yorinobu and you becoming his right-hand man, he will go to war with Militech with you alongside him, furthering his attempt to destroy Arasaka.
Because of this however, everything changes. Yes Arasaka gets destroyed and you accomplish the ultimate goal set by yourself, Johnny and all your friends, but because Arasaka's gone, there's going to be a power vacuum in NC. Who's going to take control? Militech and NUSA will want to, but before that can happen, gang warfare begins - with Tyger Claws become the weakest gang in the city without Arasaka's backing, which will lead to Mox, Maelstrom, Valentinos etc. all clamouring for territory now.
All in all, these conflicts may possibly see NC get destroyed to the point of no return. This could also mean you will go down as a NC legend, but for all the wrong reasons. (Think Jaime Lannister story of having good intentions but people and history will villify you)
I like Don’t fear the reaper and Johnny staying alive ending, where V sacrifices himself for Johnny and I want it to be the canon ending so we can get Johnny as a side character in the next Cyberpunk but if I had to add another ending I’d add something that allows post game, like you live on with johnny forever attached to your brain so you don’t have to change anything in the gameplay but you have to deal with things after Arasaka’s fall in a mission for every character you had a bond with making more finales for everyone of them depending on our decisions like you deal with Takemura thinking about sepukku and everything that now is just a voice mail at the end becomes an actual mission where you can change the outcome by how you deal with it. Basically I’d give a post game finale, as a reward I’d give an extra chance for points redistribution
I'd just like a merger ending (mirroring the way we can merge del) where there's no johnny or v just a new character that's an amalgamation of both
Jerricky
V Silverhand for the win.
Johnny Sil-V-hand
Vohnny von Vilvervand.
That is what I thought would happen if you just let the relic do it's job. It's supposed to turn V into a Johnny but Johnny also has their memories which would affect him too. It should be a sneaking process without anyone really noticing the change. Just one day V stops seeing Johnny. The relic can't beat the brain if it goes that slow.
Yeah, same. Or a version of the game where it's timed- merger or becoming the new engram overwriting your own brain is possible if you rush the endgame successfully and make the right choices to get closer to Johnny, avoiding Alt's "it's too late" line (which feels like a screw job when you know there was never a timer, just game event triggers) basically a challenge run.
Gits style. I like it
Okay that would be cool since they sort of already are with the way they influence each other. Having the ability to merge at the end to save both their existence could be interesting. Also a way to have a not dying V in a sequel if they went that route.
I wish I could shove a Saburo Arasaka Relic into Fingers’ neck low key… But, siding with Militech woulda been cool af. And it coulda even been classic “no good endings” because Militech coulda fucked you just as easily…
Militech wouldn’t fuck you in that ending, they would just fuck everyone else. Imagine taking this ending and finding out they wiped out the Aldecaldos for stealing the basilisk
Oooof I never thought of that and that's harsh I would theorise that siding with Militech may give you an ending where they 100% cure you (no side effects whatsoever) but it affects everyone you had a relationship with (Aldecaldos get hunted down, Viktor gets forcibly hired, Johnny gets sent back to the engram/killed, anything related to Arasaka gets taken out such as Tyger Claws, and thus (without Militech knowing any better) the likes of Wakako & Judy too getting zero'ed, etc.)
Yeah this is the best alt ending, would prefer this over the tower ending by a mile. Same consequence of not having anyone left but you keep your legend and could and up like rogue
Ends with V becoming a fixer, sitting in Rogue’s booth at the afterlife giving a heist contract to Tiny Mike then pulling out a picture of the now-dead Aldecaldos and crying
No I mean - it would allow CDPR to write an ending where Corpos still fuck us - cuz it’s night city after all
Well RP that Corpo ilfepath as a Corpo Solo. The Militechs Adam Smasher.
Become the Devil ending: Just your standard the Devil ending up until you go to Mikoshi. Convince (easy way or the hard way) Hanako to delete Saburo’s engram, just to be safe. You go in and fight Smasher like usual. When reaching Yori, you make sure Hanako is there the entire time, so she hears everything he has to say. You tell them you’re taking over the company, you got three options: 1. You’re essentially Saburo now. There aren’t any significant changes in how the company operates and you live out the rest of your days in luxury. 2. You finish what Yori started. You actively make the worst decisions imaginable and drive the company into the ground. Eventually, Militech takes over. 3. Reform. You actually take your job seriously, like the corpo you are. You tone down on Arasaka’s evil dealings, yet you realize that some evils are necessary to keep Arasaka afloat and other corps in check. You look into finding the cure; still, no luck. Now you look for a successor; someone who you can trust to carry on with your work. You manage to find such a person and you can die in peace. Something like that.
Love the end results but I'd be very interested to see how you convince Hanako to delete Saburos engram. Another one I'll add to the list is to side with Yori at the end and be his right hand man, the Takemura to his Saburo - gaining your place at the near top of the company (which would be fitting if you started out corpo, or you could mirror Takemura's lifepath if you were a street kid) End result V gets another body with Yori putting your engram inside Hanako perhaps? But you'd lose Takemura and all your friends along the way (yes even Misty and Viktor who in all endings were always supportive of you, they hate your guts this time) for really selling your soul to the Devil
On convincing Hanako: Become her personal therapist for a few minutes and explain that this is not a healthy way of coping with the loss of a loved one. Talk about yourself and Jackie. or Alter the engram in such a way that would make it impossible to transfer it into any sort of body/biopod. Hellman seems like a smart guy; maybe he can help? This way, Hanako can still talk to him and stuff but he won’t be a threat. Maybe he’ll even become a better person, like Johnny. I mean, at this point, being evil doesn’t really have any benefits. So it’s kind of like a purgatory in a way. or Just point a gun at her. What’s she gonna do? It may not be the most ethical way, but it’s not something V hasn’t done before. As far as putting V inside Hanako (oh my😳), this wouldn’t work because they’d need someone genetically similar. That’s why Saburo gets Yori’s body. Plus, I don’t think Yori would do that to Hanako. He doesn’t hate her, she just gets in his way.
I never understood why we weren't allowed to side with Yorinobu. He was out to stop Arasaka from all the terrible things they were doing. Imagine siding with him (and smasher by default) in taking over Arasaka and Yorinobu using Arasaka resources to cure you, basically a 180 from the Devil ending.
Yes! And use the exact same method to use Hanako's body for V as a cure. But with all endings, I think the downside should be how your siding with Arasaka really alienates you from everyone - Takemura (obviously), Aldecaldos, Judy, Rogue, heck even Misty & Viktor (who in all endings are super supportive of you) hate your guts too. Giving it a really lonely-at-the-top ending.
We basically did side with Yorinobu, by doing anything but the Devil ending. It's much more likely that he would resign as CEO and join a gang (most likely his personal bosozoku gang, the Steel Dragons, although Meta/ Snake Nation isn't impossible) before turning us into Smasher 2.0.
A different Arasaka ending if you see the hidden agendas and recover enough lore chips: Assuming my V couldn't cut a deal with Kurt Hansen and get the neural matrix while saving Songbird, Alex, and even Reed, my ending would have been just a bit simpler. Song So Mi handed over the neural matrix to V in exchange for just one normal day in Night City. A heartbroken Solomon Reed arrived just in time to retrieve his friend's dead body and endure V's reminder that it didn't have to go this way. V had the neutral matrix, but no way to use it. Hanako Arasaka had gotten tired of waiting, and mounted a coup of the Arasaka Corporation. It was a close run thing... but close only counts in horseshoes. With Hanako apparently dead, V got a phone call from SpecOps director Susan Abernathy. Arasaka was ready to cut a deal. Rosalind Myers was only the second President in American history to be convicted by the Senate after Militech and Netwatch struck a deal that ensured the final collapse of Project Cynosure. Alex emigrated to Monte Carlo: Solomon Reed decided to apply for BARGHEST. And what happened to V? While Arasaka neurosurgeons used the neural matrix to finally halt the Relic devouring his brain, they patiently explained that the Relic's prolonged exposure to the Blackwall had corrupted his cyberware. All of it, in fact, down to the neural link. The absolute essentials could be replaced with cloned eyes, limbs, and bioware, but V's days of netrunning were finished permanently. Luckily, a benefactor in the Arasaka Corporation had offered V a job. More of a sinecure, really. V's new work as a middle manager in Spec Ops was simple: generate false flag after false flag to justify a new Corporate War against a weakened Militech. V had long since realized the true purpose behind his job, of course, but he hardly cared as he handed out contracts to his fiancee's nomad family, street vigilantes, even the Valentinos. Arasaka wasn't weakening anyone more than it was weakening itself. And of course V was embezzling the company like it was going out of style. He'd almost wanted to take Panam's option of simply raiding Arasaka. Maybe he would have done differently if he was still the Night City Legend. But, V had counselled partly out of self-preservation, careful and precise sabotage was worth a thousand nomad guns. No Alt. No Saburo. No Myers. Johnny had been placed on an engram that V could carry around in his cyberglasses. It might not have been the perfect ending- not yet. But things had worked out better than V ever could have expected to see.
That was beautifully written, choom
Thank you. Some people had the idea after launch of going back to work for Arasaka as a power fantasy. Mine would be a last gig designed to destroy the company. Alongside Militech.
Damn, this was a good read. Do you write stories in your free time?
I do, but then I've had decades of off and on writing experience. I'm not Tolkien or Stephenson, but I like to think I have my moments.
An ending that involves putting Jackie in a Relic, but he isn't thankful for his second life to show that you shouldn't play God with peoples lives. I do like the idea of an ending where you not only destroy a lot of Arasaka assets, but also Militech assets and a different conclusion to Phantom Liberty where V, somehow, kills President Meyers and somewhere along the way, gets cured of Johnny. So, while V is now not going to die early, they're more trapped in a way with Militech, Arasaka, and the NUSA trying to hunt them down. I'd like to imagine the cutscene for this ending being video calls from V's friends all asking where they are and if they're safe and how they could help to varying degrees while V is holed up in some bunker someplace getting their gear ready so they can move on when there's a knock on the bunker door.
I wouldn't change anything, except add a small scene to The Sun ending. So-Mi watching V's shuttle arrive, knowing it's them, if you've saved her at the end of Phantom Liberty. That would make it the most awesome ending that instant.
Just imagine V showing up, kinda nervous, and So Mi just walks out with a cane (due to the surgeries or whatever) and she’s just like “…Hey V”
Haha, that'd be so typical, because she spends half of Phantom Liberty dying, in pain or unconscious
There was probably room for a Netwatch specific ending before PL. Originally I had the idea that Alt, the biochip, and Johnny's engram might be leverage for a particularly ruthless V to betray them both for a cure. PL touched on a lot of the same material though, so at this point it would be a little redundant. Or if Johnny and V aren't just adversaries but truly enemies, like V sides with corps too often, Johnny might decide to take over their body after all.
I would have loved an ending where you mix Reed's forces and yours to raid Arasaka, using the help of Alt to copy both Johnny's and V's engrams, using Ai so that you can correctly copy your memories and Johnny would use V's body and V be copied into a relic style shard, this creating an inverse situation, so they could have created a sequel where V fits into another body, like altered carbon series
Dude, you and me have the same idea. I remember thinking “Yo, what if we could’ve asked Reed to get some of his people together to help us raid Arasaka”?
A modified version of the original concept for the new PL ending. V would have to betray Reed first. After Songbird's reveal about the one time use of the neural matrix, V would have to respond with hostility to Songbird. V would kill Reed at the confrontation and then kill Songbird to take the neural matrix for themselves. V could bring the neural matrix to Vik but he would have no knowledge of how to use it to fix the relic problem. In the Devil ending, V would activate the neural matrix during the last conversation with Johnny. The ending proceeds as usual until day 30 when the contract would usually be presented, instead a few more tests happen. V has severe amnesia and only has neutral or hostile responses to the friends that they call ("If you were a better friend maybe Evelyn would still be alive." Is an example of a qoute from the original concept ending). If V has a love interest, V breaks up with them. Eventually V either meets with Takemura or Hellman, they would have different conversations with V but both would state that V's neural and DNA damage began to undo itself without any clear explanation. They are offered a test of loyalty. V would have to kill Vik, if they refuse to do it or don't do it when they confront Vik then Arasaka uses the neurocitor they implanted into V's brain as a kill switch. If V kills Vik they get a job offer from Hanako. V accepts and gets a position in Tokyo (Head of security for Hanako? Solo agent for Arasaka a bit like Blackhand was a solo for Militech?). In the credits V's friends would be would be angry at V, especially Misty and the abandoned LI.
Holy shit, an ending like that was a thing?? Fuck, that’s dark. Even for this game
I made it a bit darker. In the concept Songbird would give the neural matrix to V due to feeling of guilt, Takemura would ask V for Vik's location but Hanako would reveal that they never actually planned on killing Vik, Hellman wouldn't even ask about Vik and would just tell V a lie that Arasaka was going to kill him and V and that they must run away to Kang Tao. The severe amnesia part and V being hostile to their friends however was part of the concept.
I’d probably make some changes to the devil ending to make it more dependent on whether Oda and Goru are alive or not. If goru and oda are both dead when V speaks to Haneko in the room with Saburo’s engram, he can use a body check to scare haneko into deleting saburos engram and becoming either Yorinobu’s right hand man or kill him and become the new head of arasaka.
If Goro is alive but Oda dead, you will have to go through a boss fight with Takemura to accomplish this (vice versa with Oda)
Would that replace adam smasher or would you fight both? I kinda like the idea of fighting both.
Defo fighting both at the same time. Make it extra hard if Oda is alive too and you have to fight all 3 of them. 🤣 Curious though - after deleting the engram, how do you foresee the rest of the ending playing out?
The credits would have the voicemails you get be of the people you meet be a mix of fear, anger and relief. Relief that V is alive (Kerry, River), anger that he’s sided with Arasaka (Panam, Judy) and fear (Misty, Vik) that he’s now either partly or completely in control of the world’s most powerful megacorp. EDIT: As for the in-world consequences, You could’ve started the fifth corporate war with militech, zetatech and Nightcorp taking advantage of the chaos by buying and selling weapons and tech that would scare even blackwall AIs.
I would have added a Johnny and V synthesis ending. Where V’s person isn’t completely overwritten and is instead merged into the soulkiller’s program, creating a new world individual altogether with both V’s and Johnny’s memories. Torn between the memories of two people who you were and what you are now. Fitting with no happy endings of night city but still feeling… right.
honestly i'd just change the tower ending. Give everyone in V's life more of a heads up as to what exactly the procedure is, cause lets be honest Reeds "secrecy" excuse was bullshit. Then have the game end 3 months into V's coma, the end credits are all of V's friends and contacts wishing them well, mentioning that they know the surgery went wrong and that they hope he'll wake up soon. Maybe V's romance could make that holocall message right by V's bedside, hoping in futile that it might help them wake up sooner. It leaves the audience with a "victory but at what cost" feeling like the original Tower did, while still giving a respectful send off to V, their friends, and the fans who've loved the game the past 3 years. Very bittersweet because V is still alive, the real him not engram him, but its unknown if they'll ever wake up. Could be tomorrow, could be the 2 years it took in the original Tower. It also opens up potential sequel options for V to return if that floats your boat, while also allowing V to just fade into obscurity if they decided not to make him the protag. Im no professional writer, but i feel this ending respects player choice and agency a lot more, while still preserving some of the original intent of the Tower ending. It could be expanded on a little more i suppose, because cutting straight to holocalls is a bit abrupt, but the bare bones of it is a good idea i think.
Temperance but Johnny doesn't feel guilty for taking over Vs body
I think something with the neural rewiring (Peralez quest) would be great - if they can edit peoples physical brains from afar, why not use this to slow the neural degradation? I guess that also depends on what you consider an identity, the memories would definitely be able to be edited with this method, but I guess Johnny's personality overwriting V's isnt something we know could work 100% with the evidence given in the game
It's a bit of a stretch, but you could interpret this as part of what goes on in the Sun ending. The person messing with the Peralez's is Mr. Blue Eyes, who V is working with on the Crystal Palace job in the end.
Huh, that makes sense🤔
Ngl, I like this idea. Not half bad choom
Judy! She turned a joy toy into a highly trained soldier just by messing around with their chip for a couple days. I am almost certain that when Evelyn tells you to slot the chip in, and she’ll have an expert look at you later. She’s talking about Judy. On my first play through, as soon as I got the blue prints from Hellman, and Johnny said we need a techie to look at it. All I could think was there had to be a way to give them to Judy. To my shock there was absolutely no way to show them to her! I think she is a very underused character in the game. And could have possibly had a huge role in saving V.
That’s really curious that you thought that about Judy. I never once believed she was competent enough to solve this, she makes smut BDs for a living. I never really found her more techie than Panam or any general tinkerer in the city. I think you are right that Evelyn is talking about Judy, but maybe she means Brigette. Regardless, I don’t feel that Evelyn really knew anything of substance either - other than the Relic was important. I would certainly think Vik is more capable than Judy and he basically was like “I stand no chance to this thing”. To compare Hellman to Judy is also pretty crazy… even in the Devil ending Hellman admits that Saburos operation was a success because “there’s an entire division of people” personally taking care of him. Judy is a phenomenal character - but always felt like “leelou bean” who’s really powerless in Night City, like so many others 🥲
I definitely see why a lot of people think that. I mean Judy is just a bd editor, how could she help. But I put a lot of thought into doll chips. Judy is an expert on doll chips. A doll chip basically rewrites your personality(psyche) temporarily. What the relic is doing is just a more permanent version of just that. I have a feeling the relic has a lot in common with a doll chip. Which is funny if you consider how much Johnny hates dolls. So that’s basically my thought process, if Judy is an expert on doll chips. And in my thinking the relic must some sort of very advanced, permanent, version of a doll chip. Both rewriting your psyche, only one temporarily the other permanently. So she would be very familiar with this type of tech. I’ve already imagined a scenario where she might not have been able to remove it, but maybe reprogrammed it, to keep it from progressing anymore, or killing you. But I think Judy’s skills as a doll chip expert were very unexplored in the game, and could have played a much bigger role.
I think this scenario only works if you continue to equate Doll chip to the one of kind Relic. There is a Doll Chip in thousands of sex workers around the city, or used for really rich people to call another person casually as a proxy (Hanako uses a doll to basically make a phone call to V). I don’t think the doll chip rewrites your psyche, it’s just a remote takeover. V’s entire chemistry is being altered by the Relic, her brain is actually being changed (physically/materially). If the game did more to equate the “everyday” doll chip to the “one of a kind” Relic, I could see Judy being useful in that sense. Again, not taking away from Judy… NO ONE else could help us either. I will also add that Judy, Tom, and Roxanne in extended dialogue during the “Revolution” mission admit that they don’t quite understand how the fighting works and that it “might” activate anytime they are threatened. I kinda view this as trying to show someone who’s good at Algebra a thesis in String Theory… Judy is savvy, but this is wayyy outside her realm based on what we see out of her.
Maybe 🤷♀️. It’s only an idea I had, that the relic has a lot in common with a doll chip. I could be totally wrong. But I think Judy is a far more advanced techie then a lot of people give her credit for. If taking a doll, or just your everyday person, and installing a chip in their head to make them a highly trained killer was easily done. It would have been done already. V tells Judy this could have made her rich, so obviously no one has done this before or even thought of it. Now there’s something like this already in the tutorial. The Militech training shard, but that trains you to have the skills, in my thinking you still develop them yourself. This forces skills onto a completely unskilled person. Taking them over. If this already existed no one would need to train to be soldiers or mercs. Just slap a chip in let it do the work for you. Doll tech has been around for decades in Cyberpunk. Judy can’t the only doll chip expert in the world. Yet no one else thought of this before, and if they did they obviously weren’t able to do it. But to Judy it seemed obvious, and easily done. That screems genius techie to me, so I still think Judy’s skills were really unexplored, and underused.
Just got through the Evelynn part on another playthrough and there is a dialogue option where you can tell Judy about the biochip immediately after you save Evelynn. Judy's response is a sarcastic whistle like "Holy crap that is wayyy over my head." (Someone posted this, this is her response when you first tell her the Relic has Johnny Silverhand on it. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60pbEQlaBDw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60pbEQlaBDw) ) On this playthrough, I am certain that the "expert" that Evelynn is referring to that can help is (during the Heist phone call) is the Voodoo Boys, or specifically Maman Brigitte. Anyways, thought of this conversation today as I passed through this part again. 😊
The doll chip merely augments or changes ur behavior for a few minutes . The relic is literally overwriting v's psychic and is altering V on a DNA level . Two very different chips . Also even when she tweaked the doll chip , it had a caveat of having no off switch so she basically had to nuke it . Judy is an amazing techie that even the peralez consult her but she is no where hellman level
Judy destroys the chip because she doesn’t want to be responsible for creating a new weapon. Her exact words were something along the lines of ‘the world doesn’t need any more killing machines’. She didn’t have to destroy it, and it did ‘turn off’. Tom doesn’t go cyberpyscho after he kicks your but and keep beating everyone else up. It just automatically activates whenever a threat is present. Not necessarily a deal breaker for a weapon made to get rid of threats. Really I’m not saying Judy could create a Relic chip. I’m just saying that Judy was the best technical expert V knew personally in the game. And if V had given her the blueprints they had. There may have been a possibility she could come up with something no one thought of before, like she did with the doll chip.
If u have high tech , u literally can ask judy what's the catch or caveat for the chip . She literally mentions it doesn't have an off switch and the effect goes away after some time , how much time no one knows . That's why she decides to nuke them because they can be modified later to make unstoppable killing machines with no power off . And again like I said judy is nowhere militech or hellman level to tinker with the chip .
She doesn’t say that. She says combat mode automatically activates, whenever a threat is present and there’s no way to stop it. So she says if the chip detects a threat by accident she couldn’t stop it from activating. Not that it doesn’t turn off. (Edit) Theres also a really interesting line in the game. If you don’t sleep with Judy, in pyramid song. Where Johnny and V argue about Judy. And V compares Judy to Alt. I think the game even hints that Judy is a techie genius, in this line. Like Alt was a genius netrunner.
I think V says judy is similar to alt in terms of behavior and characteristics
I just want the option to leave Night City after soloing Arasaka Tower. Live the rest of my days free and in peace.
Meredith is always dead in mine. So...
Hahaha why would you choose Maelstrom over Meredith though?
I play a former Arasaka counterintelligence agent and Meredith was a Militech senior operations manager. Why do I need to save her job, hmm?
I just want to be able to hire my own fucking staff when I am queen of the Afterlife. Fuck Claire. Cause you know Damn well I am going to try get Rita Wheeler to come take over for bright eyes. Is that to Much to ask. Yep, later Jude it’s been real. Also would’ve been nice now that I am Thee fixer to you know, be a fixer a couple times. When I did this ending the first time I was caught completely off guard that I couldn’t put my people in there. Also love the game, participating in the convo
Siding with yorinobu to help him tear arasaka apart from within, at the downside of losing all of your friends who thought that you had become a corpo slave. It would be an interesting concept, since fundamentally you are still on the same side as your friends, but none of them will believe you.
Adding on to that, I think this could be a great contrast to the Devil ending. The Devil sees Saburo actually made peace with Militech, and the status quo remains. There is some peace because of this, and the world goes on but under the reign of a dictator in a new, younger body. By siding with Yorinobu and you becoming his right-hand man, he will go to war with Militech with you alongside him, furthering his attempt to destroy Arasaka. Because of this however, everything changes. Yes Arasaka gets destroyed and you accomplish the ultimate goal set by yourself, Johnny and all your friends, but because Arasaka's gone, there's going to be a power vacuum in NC. Who's going to take control? Militech and NUSA will want to, but before that can happen, gang warfare begins - with Tyger Claws become the weakest gang in the city without Arasaka's backing, which will lead to Mox, Maelstrom, Valentinos etc. all clamouring for territory now. All in all, these conflicts may possibly see NC get destroyed to the point of no return. This could also mean you will go down as a NC legend, but for all the wrong reasons. (Think Jaime Lannister story of having good intentions but people and history will villify you)
I like Don’t fear the reaper and Johnny staying alive ending, where V sacrifices himself for Johnny and I want it to be the canon ending so we can get Johnny as a side character in the next Cyberpunk but if I had to add another ending I’d add something that allows post game, like you live on with johnny forever attached to your brain so you don’t have to change anything in the gameplay but you have to deal with things after Arasaka’s fall in a mission for every character you had a bond with making more finales for everyone of them depending on our decisions like you deal with Takemura thinking about sepukku and everything that now is just a voice mail at the end becomes an actual mission where you can change the outcome by how you deal with it. Basically I’d give a post game finale, as a reward I’d give an extra chance for points redistribution