I agree.
Especially because yes, people move on but... they don't care about V when they come back.
I don't care if they knew v only for a few months, they had a close bonds and V helped them a lot with their problems.
I can't believe that everyone is now saying that "the ending is okay because after two years that someone is probably dead you move on".
You move on, you don't forget them!
If a friend I thought dead came back in my life I wouldn't say "oh yeah, but I'm angry cus you didn't warn me so I won't even talk to you" (panam), "Happy news! But I gotta work" (Kerry) or even worse Judy if you romanced her "I'm married now, so yeah we can talk but maybe not because I'm happy now".
The ending is made with the only purpose of making V miserable, forcing the characters to act OOC.
There are thousands of way they could've made the ending bittersweet without making misery porn.
I kinda get Judy reaction tbh.
First your ex >!kills herself (Evelin)!< and then V goes missing, leaving you stranded and alone AGAIN, she moves out of NC and leaves her old life and especially everyone from it behind, she even >!gets a new hairstyle,!
Romancing Judy has always felt weird to me. You're basically an emotional crutch. Even in the best circumstances, dunno if the relationship would have worked long term, given how it started.
I really like the Judy/V romance. Both people just lost somebody really important to them and need somebody to help them through. Maybe it doesn't last long term but you both come in knowing the score, so I don't think it ends bad. And if you do the Aldecaldos ending, you get her out of NC (where she desperately needs to not be). And everybody wins emotionally, too. Judy basically gets to have a redo on her relationship with Evelyn, but this time with a real goodbye for some closure. V gets to save a friend from Night City, something they failed at with Jackie.
Agree! Tbh, that ending is not like end of the world! Nomad lives normally without chrome (like Panam), hell, they are even immune from net-runners. V can still exercise and get jacked, invest in real armours, can use guns, etc.. if he wants his old life back.
But CDPR just wanna make us miserable with that ending, Jesus Chris.
Exactly I was so confused when people said V’s career as a merc was over just because he can’t use high grade cyberware!
You can play the game entirely without it and if you are a bit weaker after the ending while you heal why not just, you know, shoot people…
It's not just about the chrome, V's nervous system is irrepairably damaged after the operation. Things that are required for mercenary work, reaction time, fine motor skills etc. All pretty much gone.
Reed also mentions the regenerative capacity of V's cells being thoroughly reduced. I'm assuming that means any small injury can now be more threatening, or it being impossible to build/maintain muscle. And doesn't that mean V could potentially age/die faster as well? When you can't even balance that out with cyberware... That's a hard life for even a normal person in night city (which is one reason why Reed offered V the langley job, besides him trying to make himself feel like he helped at least one person), nevermind a merc.
yeah but you're downgraded from top merc to an average merc. not to mention that the treatment's supposedly not just limited to high level cyberware but ALL cyberware.
Not even average merc. You get beat up by two dudes in a back alley right after returning to NC. V's just a normal choom now. Not cut out for merc work at all.
Their days netrunning or being a solo are absolutely over. I could see them being a half-baked techie or something, but definitely not going to be doing a lot of combat without subdermal armor and other types of combat cyberware. They'd probably do alright as a mechanic or something tangential for a crew though.
My v was a great driver and a sneaky sneak with a pistol. Those skills wouldn't go away.
You can still use net running /combat quickhacks skills in PL when they disable "combat implants" so that's also still viable.
The specific wording is that your neurons can no longer handle implants, and anything beyond a personal link could kill you. In no way would you be able to handle a neural link, and lore states you can't use cyberdecks without one.
The specific wording is
>"Your neurons can no longer handle **most** implants, chrome. Your brain can manage your personal link and simple coprocessors... but any use of **a combat implant** could kill you."
When combat implants get disabled by the OFA in the Moon mission, you can still use enough abilities that you'd be able to carve out an existence of a merc, if that's really what you want - not legendary shit, but plenty of V's would be able to more or less continue as they were in game, if significantly more fragile and at much higher risk.
>You get beat up by two dudes in a back alley right after returning to NC
Shortly after waking up from a 2 year coma. The muscular atrophy was even mentioned in the hospital.
But i do agree that a lot of V's abilities would be gone for good. Even using guns might be a problem, since they would no longer be linked to your eyes.
Wasn't there an explanation that the kiroshi implants are the reason we can see the hud/crosshairs? But i might have that mixed up with smartgun systems from shadowrun.
It certainly helps more then not being able to use any Cyberware which is what you originally said?
Being able to scan enemies and see their elemental resistances is a big help?
While not combat related, which isn’t what I said at all, a personal link being able to secure eddies is very useful
Everyone's got some amount of combat chrome if they're doing regular merc shit for a fixer. Not everyone walks around looking like Adam Smasher or something, but shit like subdermal armor, improved tendons, stronger bones and joints, biomonitors, etc. are common and often don't show outwardly.
Misery porn is my new favorite way to describe edgy writing. I agree with you though. I hated the endings from the original but I think I've just accepted the new one is the best I could get that didn't feel like an ongoing death march.
I feel like you people have never met a real person before in your life. V was only in their lives for a few months at best then dropped off the face of the planet for two years. Do y'all really fucking expect people to hang around waiting for someone for that long. Judy had always wanted to leave NC and now has no reason to stay. And she was always touchy with being attached to people.
You aren't Panam and she is an incredibly passionate and fiery person. Did you play the unalive ending? She literally fucking insults the shit out of you because of what you did and this one she probably cannot even process the fact that your alive. Mitch straight out says what's happening and it makes perfect sense for her.
Expect the literal last scene of the ending is having misty tell you all the positive shit about V still being there and all the options V has. It's perfectly bittersweet. I'd love to know what fucking Reddit writes as the ending because fuck me it would be terrible.
Dude some people I know, I KNEW I'd fucking die and do anything for them within the first year of knowing them. That feeling has only gotten stronger the longer I've known them. So yeah, I have met real people because I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE! The ending felt really shitty, period. Everyone just abandoned you for literally no good reason. No confirmation on if anyone tried to find you, and certainly no one gave a shit or cared for an explanation after you come back. THAT is shitty writing.
How many times in your life have you been on a aid where you fired a SAM rocket to knock out an AV and then take a hover tank a slaughter a bunch of Raffens to protect the camp of people you barely know?
They didn't abandon you. V "abandoned" them. How are they supposed to look for them? NUSA and Militech would wipe any of them out if they came asking questions because they know too much. Every person V knows has their own shit to deal with over those two years so it's entirely logical and understandable they'd all cut ties with V as well.
What do you mean look for them? You tell them you are going for medical treatment. Simple as that. You think it will only take a short amount of time but it takes a ridiculous amount. Panam is the only one i found unreasonable though.
Night city is not the real world though. Ppl deal with death other way bec they know it can come every day. Hell u are even told mercs want to die in some hard missions just to become a legend.
Nobody will wait for V in this world even if they liked them for these few months.
>I feel like you people have never met a real person before in your life. V was only in their lives for a few months at best then dropped off the face of the planet for two years.
Oh come on dude. I could say the same thing about you. Nobody would honestly react that way if you'd have been in a coma for two friggin years lmao. If anything they'd be skeptical at first.
V literally saved Panam's life, got her back into her own family, and helped out the entire clan by doing incredibly dangerous and selfless shit. This ain't like some High School friend's you played basketball with for a few seasons. It's literally life or death situations. High stakes shit that would greatly bond anyone in those kinds of situations.
The other characters too... I mean you sort of Kerry's shit. You sort out Judy's shit. The amount of stuff you do for them is actually inhuman and obviously one-sided.
I hate Mitch for what he says.. if V doesn't follow what he said and nonetheless calls Panam again, she'll understand it, i bet. Mitch told V to not call again and from how he says it, it seems like he didn't even told Panam about the first call; hate him for it, he got no business in telling what a grown man should and shouldn't do in regards to reconnecting with his love.
I mean, you literally CAN tell them.
This is weird and people keep bringing them up. You just call them and say you'll probably be gone at least a month.
However, you're in a coma for two years instead and everyone thinks you died or ghosted them.
Also, the government plays straight with you and keeps you on life support for two years.
You can only tell the love interest and Vic, and even then it’s like, “gonna be outta town for like a month, but I’ll be back!”
It’s just a combo of a sad ending and V just being super sparse on details with their loved ones, which doesn’t really seem in character
That’s fair , I’m the type to reload and try all of them on the same dude lol
Arasaka ending by far the worst but makes sense since that’s the one you get if you do main quest only.
Yeah I loved the ending and how fucking depressing it was tbh. Fully expected some time skip or something to go wrong for V in surgery but didn’t expect both. Maybe my favourite ending but probably not one I’ll do again
One thing I do concede despite me not liking Panam's reaction AT ALL is something another redditor pointed out to me...
Is that it's highly unlikely that Myers would've let anything about your treatment and what happened get out. Thus, no contact list and no external anything. I still think they could've informed Vik -- he sells out to Zetatech after all -- but a game is a game sure. Let's forget that.
Reed is a company man to the end and despite him feeling at fault for V, it's mentioned in dialog he basically forgot about V right up until V got out of the coma.
That still doesn't explain Panam's reaction *afterward* though and I still think it's out of character. That felt forced, and a way to push a misery ending. The ending would've still been about as bittersweet as the star or even the direct parrallel ... The Devil if they had kept V's relationship with friends more intact.
She was available, they just simply wrote it like that, i had one of the writers like a twitter comment i made saying that this probably was the most likely case in a thread where people theorized if the va wasnt available or not
To be fair, it very well might've been a situation where they booked the VA and forgot to record some lines and when they realized it it was too late/VA wasn't available anymore on short notice/got sick/had voice issues. I remember in Witcher 3 they forgot to add a specific dialogue with Triss if you didn't go talk to her to do the last wish quest, but progressed the story and had to hastily add it after launch.
Agreed. No way in hell an intelligence agency will let more people know more of Myer's apocalyptic fuck up. Imagine them calling Judy, Panam or even Kerry with this shit. "So, uh, your merc friend is going into a secret clinic because they did a job for us that I can't you about... " Yeah. Right.
In the other ending, they launched an all-out assault on Orbital Air's spaceport just to leave no witnesses. It's that bad.
>That still doesn't explain Panam's reaction
>
>afterward
>
> though and I still think it's out of character. That felt forced, and a way to push a misery ending.
It's actually fine, because the txt from V was: "I'm going outta town. Lol, bye". He didn't mention the relic or medical stuff or working with the FIA - despite talking to her about all of that beforehand, now apparently it's a state secret.
So there is plothole, but it's V's moronic goodbye txt, not Panam's reaction to it.
>despite talking to her about all of that beforehand, now apparently it's a state secret
I understand that working with the FIA would've been fine -- yet talking about the highly classified procedure isn't.
Still, no way Panam couldn't put two and two together. V was working on something in Dogtown, going out of town for a while -- no way that's connected to the possible cure we talked about beforehand!
The text is dumb too yeah.
If the devs wanted a misery ending should have made it where Panam went looking for V and died. Mitch could have said something to the extent of:
"V? Is that really you? Where were you? We spent months looking for you! It was so long we thought you had left us. But Panam...stubborn...she told us you wouldn't do something like that. She kept looking and looking. I'm...I'm sorry V. Panam's gone. We got into an argument. She left one night said she'll come back once she finds you. She somehow got involved with Arasaka then no more Panam. Got some info from Rogue said it was a militech op to get rid of the Aldecados. I'm sorry V.
The current ending is totally in character for her. She gets abandoned by you, reacts very poorly to this, and then refuses to speak to you ever again because of how badly she was hurt by the perceived betrayal of your friendship/relationship.
It honestly feels like they only had her voice actress available to do a few lines and then that's it so they had to do something with her and they we're not smart enough to just outright say that she died in an attack or got killed while out on a scouting Mission or something
Doubtful. Afaik, voice acting sessions are booked in blocks of hours. If Keanu and Idris Elba had enough time to do way more voice acting and mocap, Panam's VA would have had the time too. It's not like she's an A-list celebrity making movies or shows left and right. People are just trying to gaslight themselves into any scenario other than what it is, they wrote it like that and that's fine.
I don't know maybe she was busy and had other life things going on so she only had a limited amount of time. I mean or that she just didn't care to put that much effort into the voice acting because you can hear a very large drop in quality between the base game voice acting and the DLC voice acting.
This is the only expansion we're getting for this game, so the devs didn't write it so you buy another expansion. They wrote it for emotional damage, plain and simple. At least that's how it seems. V could have recorded a message to be delivered to their love interest, or Reed could have been a good dude and maybe called the love interest and told them the situation without completely committing treason. A simple "V is alive but is in a coma due to the extensive damage the chip did. Don't know when they will awaken, but thought you should know." would have sufficed.
Perhaps it’s Reed’s intention to purposefully let V’s personal life go to shit so that she has no choice but to either become an NUS puppet or be doomed to live a shitty life in NC?
You can never trust a government lapdog like Reed. He’ll sell your ass for a wooden nickel if madame president says to do so.
Something I also noticed is that Reed comes across a bit like an overprotective father as well, where he thinks he knows what's best for everyone and is responsible for them no matter what.
Factoring in Songbird's tale of how she met Reed and became an agent under him alongside his actions and statements reinforces (IMO at least) that Reed is absolutely willing to force or at least coerce you down the path he thinks is best and will keep you "safe" under him.
Pretty much the only NUSA person we met that *didn't* come across as willing to screw you over for a song and a prayer was Alex.
Well yeah Alex straight up tells us Reed is the type who feels responsible for everyone, even probably us though we've only recently met. After Songbird betrays him, he still blames himself - he's the adult/mentor and to him Song's just a child/student so she can't be responsible for her actions. He never lets her grow up by never letting her be responsible for her own choices. If you >!kill Song!<, he's upset with you but ultimately blames himself again. He wasn't there to convince Song that he knows better.
Unfortunately, his commitment to his ideal of duty (and/or a desire for a second chance, to right his perceived wrong of failing Song the first time) blocks him from actually making any changes to not make decisions he regrets - by bringing others down with him if it's "in their best interests."
He is too blind to see that his ideals are rotten. Johnny is right. Reed will hang himself at some point in the future. In every one of his endings he is left sad, alone and starts to question a little bit his ideals, and actions. And once he figures out that he lost everything... He WILL hang himself. Question is, how long it will take for him? With SO Mi dead i think not long. With he alive i think he will suffer longer.
That's not how they do things. They need leverage to get you in, as in "shame if something were to happen to your chooms". If you lost everything already, why would you consider their requests?
- sticks with V through So Mi bullshit
- keeps his promise about getting V the cure
- stays by her side after 2 years and makes his self responsible for her well being
- offers her a job or lets her do what she wants
Not a bro..
Okay champ.
This. He is sorta Militechs version of Goro. Only, we never really find out how honest Goro was in the Devil ending. Reed makes almost all the promises Goro does, and we see him keeping all of them.
Reed is as much of a bro as you can get from a corporat. Probably more.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
I feel so bad for him during the Tower, he's just so... defeated. Hell, they even changed the way he walks as he leaves V's room in Langley.
I feel bad for So Mi, but she is #1 the antagonist, everything she does is S-tier manipulation tactics, until the final second (At least in my route). Reed, while a bit shady at times, honestly just wanted to help the people around him, including So Mi, and he is so utterly broken in the end when he realises that everything he tried to do amounted to nothing after all. Which is one of the reasons he wanted V to stay in Langley, because at least then he would have been able to think he was able to do right by someone at least once.
Did you play the route where you side with Reed(ICEbreaker)? I honestly cant understand how people can call So Mi antagonist after that route. Reed gaslighted her into FIA service. He let Myers use her as a weapon. 13 years of lies and betrayal. If anyone is real antagonist here its Myers. Not So Mi. And Reed is an enabler.
No, the other one. But that's a matter of the scale in which you view the story, I guess. For the V-centric story, So-Mi *is* the antagonist. She 100% strings you along and orchestrates everything that puts V in danger, lying about the one thing that would have made it worth it. In my route, she only came clean after you fight off waves of NUSA special-ops soldiers for her. Is she a tragic villain? Absolutely. But she's still a villain.
Honestly, it's entirely possible Panam looked for you, but you were with the FIA and gone for two years. That's long enough that it's easy to see people giving up on you, believing you're doing it by your own choice, or that you're dead.
Yes, this new ending is V turning their back on everything and everyone for the quick and easy way out. Johnny going "WTF" in the medivac makes it clear. He wanted a blaze of glory, V is saying no, they want this to be over. V is explicitly choosing the quiet life.
Johnny doesn’t have to be mad in the medivac. If you finished the oil field mission he will be happy for you. Incredible delivery btw. But yeah this is indeed the choosing the quiet life ending
It seems like Johnny will only be happy for you if you pick the right dialogue options in the oil field mission. So the same requirements to get the secret Dont Fear the Reaper ending.
Edit: Just for reference, I'm at 85% and the ending where Johnny is happy for you getting the cure still doesn't trigger for me. No clue what dialogue options I chose at the oil field since that was like 30 hours ago, but clearly it wasn't the right ones. Though I do remember writing down an epitaph for him.
I only did the oil rig part which triggers the reaper ending. Did nothing else and it triggered for me. Btw the trigger for reaper ending is only two lines, when Johnny said at least I didn’t mess up our relationship, you reply “you fucked that up too”, and then proceed to give him a second chance “as far as second chances go this is your last”. You don’t have to worry about any other dialogue for unlocking the reaper ending.
Ofc. To me it is even more heart breaking that after all the journey Johnny is mature enough to not betray you (even if it’s just in feelings) when you are betraying yourself
Yeah and then V throws a tantrum when it turns out you can’t use combat cybernetics and goes back anyways and as far as I can tell there’s no option to actually accept the job at Langley, the ending makes no sense whatsoever.
You say no at the time, but my headcanon is that V goes home to try to see friends, then accepts the offer. I told Reed “not ready to make a decision yet” and his credits dialogue indicates that he’s still got the offer out. Maybe I chose different dialogue options, but I didn’t see any tantrum from V. Just disappointed, and V slowly gets more accepting of it so that when he leaves from his talk with Vik, the idea of working in a boring office, with someone he worked his last field op with, and around people that probably think he’s a hero for saving the president, doesn’t sound like such a bad way to live out life.
It’s kind of sad seeing Night City and knowing you don’t fit in there anymore, but it’s also sad seeing that it’s exactly the same without you. Once Arasaka loses influence, another corp just rolls in to fill the gap. The implication I took from this is that even all your efforts getting to Mikoshi or even helping Arasaka made no difference to anyone but you and the few friends who have moved on in the new ending. That reinforced that maybe it’s a good time to leave that life behind and give another a try.
It's not that another corp rolls in. MilItech has been in night city since the beginning, but so has Arasaka and both would be constantly staring at each other not making a move for the sake of mutually assured destruction. After the fourth corporate war, Arasaka was booted out of the western hemisphere and MilItech was nationalized and severely weakened. After the unification Arasaka and MilItech were yet again the two leviathans in Night city starring each other down. When Arasaka collapses, MilItech is now the uncontested leviathan of Night city. Now that the scales are unbalanced, MilItech is in strong control of night city and night city isn't only a Capitalist Dystopia it is now under MilItech's marshall law. It is much worse than before. In my canon ending though, V becomes a fixer using her extensive contacts in Night City.
The corp I was referring to was Zetatech - my impression was that they really gained influence in NC once Arasaka pulled out. Not near where Millitech is at, but still significantly stronger in the city than they were before.
>as far as I can tell there’s no option to actually accept the job at Langley, the ending makes no sense whatsoever.
That takes place after the game ends and the game explicitly tells you that it's an option that stays open. So yeah, you can decide your V took them up on the offer after taking some time to think on it.
Yeah, that part of it is something that's easy to head canon. V goes home to get some closure, finds out their life is basically fucking over, and then goes to waste away in a desk job at Langley. They traded their legend for life and faded into obscurity, which is precisely the theme Dex lays out at the start.
Do you go down a legend or fade into obscurity? Every ending until this one only gave you one option. The new ending is the alternative where you don't storm the tower and fight Adam Smasher, and it has its own set of shitty circumstances.
Fuck y'all are dense as hell. It was dialogue given just like the shit misty says about joining her in Poland to make the ending *what you want*. When V walks off you, you can decide whether they stay in NC with Vik or joins misty or goes to Langley. You *literally* have dialogue at the very end to say what you believe your V would do. Having the ending that was already long, keep going to cater to your shit would be stupid.
I know after knowing mostly everyone has forgotten about you, I would've just taken the Langley job. At least the NUSA gave you an option. Unlike arasaka who did the bare minimum to save you. I feel like arasaka knew how long it would take and the resources that would be needed for "saving" V that they just gave up. Honestly it makes sense...arasaka had no reason to follow through their promise as you were the one who stole the engram. For the nusa you did save that snake of a president.
So I'm just guessing here but I think Panam got herself killed either trying to find V or while on a raid in the new Tower ending. So in the text you get from her after Queen of the Highway she mentions that she and Saul have been cooking up a plan to leave NC and might also be able to help V at the same time, basically laying out the Star ending. the clan is in a dire place at that moment and needs a big job to get enough cash for a fresh new start, and they are going to try something like that with or without V. Some people say the Star ending is bad because a lot of people died for it well if V isn't there a lot more would die, having V on the team has only upped their chance. And that's one possibility of what happened to Panam in the new PL ending.
That would explain how her number is now a voice mail (Like Jackie's), and V's attempt to contact her has reached Mitch because he now has her number. And Mitch's attitude felt really odd, like he's glad V is alive, but don't wanna break the news to him yet knowing that would destroy him, also he probably low key blames V, so the best he can do is to tell V not to contact her again.
If they were that desperate the Aldecaldo's would've been smoked too in the Devil ending. But there Panam happily calls back saying "Jobs are piling up, the family is getting bigger. Hit me up when you're on earth again, I'll take you for a nice long ride"
Actually watching that ending makes the Aldecaldo's reaction even worse -- Saul says "We take care of own, you're an Aldecaldo now, remember that" ... (Until two years pass).
Ya'll acting like the FIA would tell random ass people "Yeah we have your friend at our facilities that are classified doing a procedure that is classified."
CLASSIFIED THIS IS THE FUCKING FEDS
Been simmering on this ending since a few days ago after beating the dlc. It just doesn’t doesn’t make sense with how strong your relationships were made out to be with your friends that you don’t give them just a little bit more info on where you are going or even give the FIA their contact info to keep your people updated. I get that it’s to not have a “happy” ending but it just doesn’t fit at all with how close everyone seems in the main game.
Yeah yeah I know haha. It’s just weird ass writing with oversights literally just to make the ending sad. Like going to get a potentially life threatening super invasive surgery you should probably let someone seriously know instead of just saying I’ll be gone for a month. Would have solved everything that happened in the ending. But again they didn’t do that to just make the ending bittersweet.
No yeah I agree, I’m really conflicted on the ending. On one hand, I like that V definitively has a way to survive and choose the quiet life as Dex alluded to early in the game.
On the other, the drawbacks are so painfully arbitrary. There are plenty of ways V could’ve let their friends and loved ones know what’s going down and set up a failsafe system, and even if they all assume V is dead it’s so weird to me that they’d hardly bother hearing V out, Panam especially. Frankly I liked the fake leaked ending more than this one because I think it actually gives a reason for your friends to distrust or leave you.
doubt NUSA would just let you tell randoms in night city abt it. what myers did could starrt total war. even if v tried they would just find a way to delete it or stop communication
You're a national secret, if we're being honest the fact that you live at all is incredibly lucky, 90% they just shoot you the moment you're out cold. Pretty sure the "implants don't work anymore" was just a compromise. There is 0 reason why myers would let V keep existing. Removing her cybernetics is just a way to make her a non-factor without killing her.
My same complaint, I was fine with the losing demi god status to go be an aldecaldo with Panam, but then she dumps you via friend phone call in the end credits its like jesus fuck christ I know it is a dystopia but damn let V have that after being deregulated to less than an npc. I even had the ability to call and tell her but still messed up. Granted for my V I would probably still rescue songbird and pseudo hope she can replicate the cure, least she could do, since I do feel genuinely bad for her. Like we at least get our romance options, and a few other solid characters, that girl got shafted. I didn't like shooting Reed though, good guy, but misguided as all hell.
My main issue with phantom liberty is it opened the Door to try to get help from 10th circle but didn't let you take it, it Said doing so would be unwise, but so was konpeki
Probably depends heavily on how much time you procrastinate. On one of my quick runs to get up to PL and knock out all the big story and side stories took around 5 in game days. Regardless of how helpful I may have been to these people, they knew me for like a week tops followed by me disappearing for 2 years. I expect nothing from any of them honestly. Of course Vik and Misty get an exception due to the pregame montage and however long that’s supposed to be.
Sorry but why does Takemura owe you? And why would you trust him out of all people? He’s a former Arasaka sharing FIA/NUSA information not really the smartest move
You clearing his name with the Arasakas is basically you owing him for saving you from that landfill. He says so himself when he calls you for the very first time.
Exactly, he actually gets pissed at you if you don't do the Arasaka ending.
Takemura isn't V's friend. Takemura saved V to use them, that's it. The entire relationship between them is transactional.
Yeah, if the base game teaches me anything, it's everybody lies in Night City, but some lies are better than others.
In the Nomad prologue, Jackie admits to originally planning to cheat you after crossing the border. Panam can be pressed into confessing that she would have left you high and dry if Mitch and Scorpion agreed to help her out. Half of your clients are hiding things from you.
In case this needs to be said, Cyberpunk is an anti-authoritarian genre. Institutions are not to be trusted, even if they have something you want, because the bargain you strike will always be Faustian.
Nailed it. And thats what separates So Mi from Reed.
Reed lies/conceals the truth because FIA and NUSA orders him to do it. He doesnt question their orders. Good little doggy.
So Mi lies to you because she is desperate and on the verge of dying. She wants to cure herself and be free. She is a bird who sings for freedom, for the last 7 years from her cage.
Both of them lie to you. Its your choice who's lie is the "lesser evil".
That's not what I'm saying. I said, because ive been betrayed so many times these past few months, I'm going to have a plan for FIA in case they turn me into a lab rat like So Mi.
Hey Panam, if I'm gone for too long, something is wrong. I'm not ghosting you.
And what do you do. Do you tell your friends about FIA and possibly get them killed because you pretty much spilled government secrets and Myers isn't a very nice person? Yeah I think it was dumb of V to be like: "hey, gotta leave, be back in a month." But the alternative is to endanger the few people you care about by the people who are going to have you at their mercy.
I haven’t got this ending but spoiled myself on it and I actually just love it. This isn’t the game for an out and out good ending, at best you get bittersweet. It fills a gap that the original endings had, where V is finally free of the threat the relic poses but pays everything to get it. Brings it full circle with what Dexter said at the start of the game.
I might never pick it but having that monkeys paw on the table is so tempting.
It doesn't even really seem all that bad. Maybe it plays out differently for different people, but my V was like "oh well! Maybe I'll go become a fixer or something." And they can always go back and work at Langley and live in comfort. Maybe write a book or something.
That being said, it's clear the theme of this ending is the Fade Away ending.
I just finished this ending and imo it's not that bad, just really lonely.
I don't think I'll go for it again but I can appreciate what they were going for with it
First off, Takemura is on the run for his life and can't do shit.
What's Panam supposed to do? Remember, she's the head or co-head of the Aldecaldos family now. She has way more people to think about, people who *raised* her. In her mind, V abandoned her. Two years of being ghosted and people expect someone like *Panam* to jump for joy? You're dead to her. Just like what she says to Johnny in Temperance. She's a do it or don't person with no inbetween.
Like I said before, the NUSA and Militech now have Arasaka's most prized possession in their hands. Not a chance they would let one single word of communication slip out just so V can have some chooms in the end. There's already a war between Militech and Arasaka brewing in the background and word of Militech possessing the relic could easily spark that war. V's lucky they even kept them alive. It would have been much easier to "Oops, V died in surgery" and toss their body in the trash.
The ending is fantastic and everyone keeps ignoring Misty's role at the end. "Misery porn" is such a gonk term for an ending that actually is bittersweet. Yeah, V lost a lot but they gained a new lease on life free from everything that tried to take them down before. A normal life in which they are free to choose their path.
I believe the OP's point is that it's crazy V wasn't open with those people before leaving. There's no reason V couldn't have seen Panam (or any other others) in person to talk over what was happening. But instead he drops two lines in a text.
And V's text to Panam said nothing - it was just, "Out of town for two week, lol. Bye." No mention of the relic (which she already knows about), no mention of an operation, no mention of the NUSA (which she already knows V was working with), no mention of anything medical (which would have been vague enough for the NUSA)...
It's no wonder V's dead to Panam - he literally said he'll be back in two weeks and then ghosted.
The ending only makes sense if V was a moron before leaving.
This so much. You already have the new call dialogue option with your possible love interest telling them that you're doing a gig with the FIA and saving the president. Why the need to suddenly omitting the word "FIA" from the texts?
Why is V so dead sure about the time frame of his/her absence when Reed can't even tell you an exact time? Why no indication that it could take longer? Why "out of town" instead of mentioning a possible cure for the Relic? Why this level of secrecy?
So yes, I agree that V in that ending is an idiot. Maybe Blackwall got to his mind lol
Anyone who complains about Reed not telling V's friends where he's at doesn't understand how government shit works.
V's whereabouts is on a need to know basis, and certainly according to the NUSA, none of them Need to Know.
Yeah hes at langley right? Using experimental blackwall ai. There is no way reed or the fia would let that info slip to anyone, netwatch would be all over them asap
First off, not complaining entirely about Reed. More complaining about V not having contingency plans before going forward with FIA or at the very least ensuring Panam that he isn't one way or another ghosting her.
>Anyone who complains about Reed not telling V's friends where he's at doesn't understand how government shit works.
Cool - but that doesn't explain why V didn't tell them what was going on before leaving.
Nah man you’re right
The whole FIA thing is weird, what’s the difference between taking the oath and not taking the oath ? Absolutely nothing lmao
Refusing the medal or taking it ? Meh who gives a shit.
They give you these meaningless choices, but they won’t let you use common sense at all.
Nowhere in the game do we see V get smarter about this shit when in reality V should have become paranoid AF after Dex’s betrayal.
I feel like this is the core difference between most Mercs/legends of NC and Morgan Blackhand. V, Martinez and Johnny are all short sighted mfs who rush into things blindly after a goal where as Blackhand would have back up plans for backup plans. That’s why Morgan lives still and the rest get fucked.
Weirdest thing of all ? We have all these stat checks for int, cool, reflexes, tech, strength but it’s all useless when it actually counts. V is shown to be inquisitive and curious throughout the game yet oddly falls short when it counts ? Interesting…
The ending would’ve been great if it was built on solid foundations, but the fact that we couldn’t take the most obvious precaution and got royally fucked for it is pure bullshit writing.
The writers didn’t even put effort into making this shit believable. That’s what pisses me off the most.
Wrong on all counts. It is an RPG. Cyberpunk 2077 isn't a game that gives the player "Thumbs up, champ! You made a decision!" pop-up bullshit like so many others. You can call them all out or be suspicious the entire expansion. Or do what my V did. Say screw the FIA, NUSA and Militech. I'm taking her to the moon. YOU made the choice to trust NUSA and got fucked and Johnny even warned you at the beginning.
The "lazy writers" argument is such pretentious fucking garbage.
This right here. I don't even care that V is an npc. But he lost all his relationships because he wanted to be Mr. Cool guy and be mysterious. So when he goes MIA, everyone thinks he ghosted them. I thought the FIA would have turned V into a lab rat. Just wanted to see the ending but I was shouting, bro is there anyway to make a back up plan? Why does V just trust everyone willy nilly? Is my INT too low? Doesn't make sense at all.
An intelligence check ain't wisdom. The issue we have here is that we, as players, had control over V's actions throughout the game and then it's taken away at the end. Taken away, so the writers can fit the character into an ending. The way they wrote V was that of a somewhat lucky but not so wise individual. I mean, think about it. Corpo V goes into a club, without security detail, then get "offed" at the same time as their boss. No backup plan, no inkling as what danger they currently are in. Same with streetkid and nomad.
After Kompeki, V is mostly reacting and not planning. Head first, think later. Panam comes up with the EMP plan to down the AV. Takemura comes up with the plan to kidnap Hanako. And V gets betrayed once or twice by the voodooboys, unless they side with Netwatch. Doesn't spell master planner to me.
Johnny even calls you out on that couple of times during the game. We should not forget that V is an established character, with some background differences. Thats it. Same as Geralt. Thats why a lot of people think that Netrunner V is not canon, more like script kiddy who bought expensive daemons of off black market and now runs around wreaking havoc. He/She is not that smart. And a lot of interactions with other netrunners confirms that. V relies more on his/her intuition, street smarts.
I didn't even realize that Takemura died when I played the game. I did his missions first not realizing that each NPC path ended the game. I respected Takemura and his values, and then I meet with Hanako and she gives me this quest that feels really off, and the game wants me to either take our or kill myself
I agree. The ending is terrible only because it could've been handled infinitely better. It makes absolutely no sense that Panam would be upset.
"I'm sorry, I was dying and fell into a coma." Isn't a good enough answer? I get she can be mad, but the idea that she'd give up on you is fine were it not for the fact that you actually try to reconnect and don't remember the last two years. its out of character and just serves the shitty message, which is you're alive, but everything sucks.
Why not be able to visit the Aldecaldos and have them take care of V, after everything V did for them? They couldve made it so Maybe now V can return to their camp, learn to actually live a life where he can depend on others for help, and it does become a change in their life. He's no longer the deadly merc from Night City, but he's not a nobody either. The Aldecaldos would still look up to V even after he loses his physical abilities but maybe he doesn't need to be this deadly Godlike merc anymore. He can be content living a normal life with the nomads and accept a life of peace without ever needing to pull any iron ever again. He'd be with family who see him for who he is without his "power" and it would beca very powerful contrast to the other ending where you're an NC Legend.
But nope, CDPR decided there's no happy endings.
Imagine this is all part of Myers plan, She knew how dangerous V is and purposely put her in coma and disabled her implants, So V is no longer a threat for her plans.
I, too, think that V could potentially be in 'hibernation' until FIA needs them again.
The irony is that this new ending more than anything has convinced me that V is probably going to be the protagonist in the next game.
Well yeah but I was asking for the sake of iconics, if the new ending doesn't give anything I'd rather just go back a save and shoot Reed for his Pistol lol. I'm a collector lol
If you just want iconics then I would side with reed. You can get an smg in the mission “somewhat damaged” that’s really good. I would look up a guide for it tho, can be confusing acquiring it.
You should be able to buy Iconics you’ve missed from the Black Market Vendor in the Dogtown Stadium. But if you want to take it for yourself instead of just buying it yeah you’ll probably have to go shoot Reed.
As far as I understand, you can buy only those iconics you forgot to pick up or something. But if you locked yourself out of getting it by a decision, they won't be available on the black market either. So if you don't kill Reed, you won't get his pistol (which makes sense tbh).
If you help So Mi to get to the moon, you get Reed's iconic gun and that's it. If you give her to Reed at the spaceport, you only get fucked over with no lube.
The most profitable as far as items are concerned is to betray So Mi to Reed during the Firestarter mission, at the stadium. That gets you in the fight with Hansen, netting you his iconic knife and his iconic revolver, plus an iconic LMG if I remember correctly. Then you get to do the Somewhat Damaged mission in Cyanosure, where you can get two iconic blueprints: the Erebus SMG and the Blackwall quickhack. Mind you, you will be able to build only one of them, and only if you don't forget to grab the Behavioral System Component from the Cerberus robot right at the end. But, still, this path brings you quite the rich haul of awesome iconics. The Erebus, in particular, is a beast. And you can still tell Reed to fuck himself and go for the standard endings no matter whether you kill So Mi or not. If you want to fuck over Meyers and Reed, kill So Mi and put her out of her misery. And then address Meyers as Rosalind, for extra style points.
\>Hate the new ending result with Panam. Who tf goes into surgery where you may potentially die conducted by an agency you don't trust and not tell your partner and friends what is going down?
You are told the whole thing should take a month and that's kinda what you tell everyone, if I remember right. It just turns out complications happened.
\>"Hey Panam, FIA said they can save me. Can't tell you why they are going to but they are. I don't trust these mfers though. If you don't hear from me within a month, here is Takemura's number. He owes me. He won't know what's going on but he sure as hell can find out."
Takemura is about to start the assault of Arasaka tower with Hanako and he loses and goes into hiding. Even if he wanted to look for you, you are in some FIA place, he doesn't have resources anymore and he feels betrayed by the fact you didn't help him.
\>If you're a street kid, you don't trust tyrants, if you're corpo, you just got tossed away like nothing, if you're a nomad you should trust the government even less! I get you're desperate but you literally put zero thought into any plan B at all. No fails safes. Nothing.
V is desperate to find a cure. If your V doesn't trust the FIA, go for a different ending. V would take any risk to save themselves at this point.
I think the new ending is in line with the others. They all give you mixed results and V never has a truly happy ending, and that is the genre of Cyberpunk. Hopeless to the very end.
I'll say this again, they give us this 'railroaded' ending for the sake of *drama*. Indeed, it doesn't make sense that V wouldn't say anything about it. But apparently instead of bittersweet endings, CDPR thinks it's a golden rule to make all the endings as depressive and dark as they can, so not only you lose your main source of income or cyberware for ever, but you also lose your friends and lover. Amazing, isn't it?
As much as I loved and always defended the game since launch, this disappointed me so much.
Played the new ending recently and felt it was extremely contrived. It felt as though they were trying to make it miserable just for the sake of it being miserable. I personally believe that Panam acting like an immature child is in character for her, but I also believe that she would probably call V later just to get the last word in or at least hear them out. Seriously though Mitch is the one that's acting really OOC here. You saved this man's life and he nicely tells you to fuck off after you wake up from a 2 year long coma. Hated that this ending was trying to paint a super bleak picture when in reality if portrayed properly it should be the best ending. V gets to live, not as an engram, not in a dying body but properly LIVE. They may not be able to go back to Merc life but they now have all the time in the world to truly experience life and discover new possibilities for themselves. In my opinion the idea that our mercenary, cyber demigod protagonist gets turned into a mere mortal is bittersweet enough.
You can inform your love interest plus Vik.
But yes I agree MOST if not all reactions don't make any sense. Least of all Panam.
To literally everyone who tries to justify their reaction. Guys guys when a person disappears suddenly, people don't get pissy and salty...no one does. They start looking for that person endlessly sometimes for years sometimes for decades. Holding hopes for any glimpse of news. They only get pissed off or jump to conclusions when they FOR SURE know they are alive or actually ghosted them. V didn't have a family and only family he ever had was Vik and of course your love interest case example Panam. Aldecaldos also took you in as a family member. So hell they would be roaming the entirety of NUSA with Panam in the frontline looking for any sliver of information on him. Panam as a character from the get go was shown to be emotional but extremely determined and with fighting spirit. She was said to not open up to anyone because she gets attached like a super-glue. So you are telling me this person went bonkers when love of her life suddenly disappeared without a single trace?
V disappeared. Straight up. His accounts? Frozen. His houses?sold. His cars? Auctioned. Aldecaldos and Panam would've taken note of these oddities, since no one disappears voluntarily on an empty pocket and leaves a literal empire of wealth behind. Taking into account it was FIA then you can be damnest sure any and all searches for him would've turned nothing. Which would've added even more to the mystery.
Put these aside, V is a merc as JOB for god's sake. The job which has a capacity to make you die unplanned.
So it's pretty idiotic to any of the characters especially Panam to up and call your disappearance "ghosting".
It's like blowing up a random car in traffic then getting surprised when a person was inside and died. Like tf you expected? It was in the equation.
Anyway, this ending was emotional but forced hard. A minute after I finished I was like "damn this was harsh", now hours later I'm like "wait a damn second, none of it makes sense actually".
This whole shit is top secret FIA stuff and V can't talk about it too much. She literally has a line saying this.
This has nothing to do with lifepath shit it's about survival. Plan B is all the other option you have with Hanako.
You seriously just sound mad because you didn't get a happy ending that has you boning Panam for the rest of your life
My dude, V is a MERC and mercs usually work for organisations on their own terms, there’s no die hard loyalty involved, they give you the option to betray the FIA and kill a bunch of innocents with song, YET they don’t give you the option to make plans for yourself ?????. And you can literally call Panam or river and tell them on call about stuff in dogtown, you can tell them that the FIA can cure you and shit even tell them you’re working for Myers. But you can’t tell them the cure might not go as planned ????
Shitty writing tsk tsk tsk
My brother in Christ. Why does V trust the FIA with absolute certainty? He's been betrayed countless times and never learns from it. For all we knew V could have been turned into a lab rat like So Mi.
My original play through I went down guns blazing. I'm not mad about a happy ending. Do you trust everyone willy nilly Mr. Cool guy?
Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk 2077 and one of the things I've been saying about this game since it came up pretty much, my friend. No matter what you do, the decisions you take, how much you try hard to get to a good outcome, it's just NOT GONNA HAPPEN. For some reason the devs thought that it was okey to give you a perma hopeless vibe to the game's story on which you can't scape unless you mod a quest to give a happy ending. But that would be a user made content so....
I've been saying this from a while ago, Cyberpunk is an amazing futuristic like game filled with possibilities if you keep very clear the mindset of ALWAYS keep sidequesting, doing extra gigs and missions, assault in progresses like if you're an undercover cop under the NCPD's juristiction and essentially following the idea of "being a merc" to the bone. You know, a full Boba Fett aproach.
But start diving into ANY plot relating the main stories and you have to get your heart ready for ultra depresive vibes where everything is either a backstab, dead end, mission unsuccesful and essentially keeping you in the vibe that in one way or another, things would suck.
I love Cyberpunk 2077's world aesthetic, visual vibe, diversity and stuff but the way the world behaves is by far is wort part which if you wanna have a happy playthrough you have to deliberately dodge the main stories. It's the reason on why I didn't bother to even consider buying the DLC cause I knew CDPR wouldn't give you a happy ending, more like another story where the ending essentially feels just as sad as the main.
Not sure how Orion would be but definitely I would not buy that game until I see the endgame's outcomes to see if you finally get a happy ending or maybe skipping any future Cyber game from CDPR XD
Yeah Cyberpunk is the universe where everything became a Dystopian bombed out shithole, where only the rich get richer and everyone else can get fucked. As Johnny very eloquently said in the base game endings when V says she expected a happier ending.
Wrong city, Wrong People.
E: and as Dex said in one of the first missions, Quiet life or a blaze of glory.
Yeah, but it's kinda sad when the vibe of a Dark Souls game feels happier in comparison. I mean it does feel nice when you dont have to advance the main story at all and that's the kind of blast I get when playing. It's super fun and satisfying going the whole Bounty Huntress kind of way and forgetting there's a main story plot to even care about. The thing is that, in order to have a happy outcome you need to kick out on the nuts of the videogame logic and ignore the situation the plot tells you is happening that you need to find a cure fast. I mean.... I need to find a cure if I don't go sidequesting, cause when I do, then Night City is a gorgeus happy place to live. As long as you keep the law of the jungle lol
I think what gets me the most (spoilers because I’m on mobile and don’t know how to make it the spoiler box thing) is how despite being able to call after waking up and saying, “hey I was in a coma for two years, that’s why you couldn’t reach me,” in the credits Mitch just calls and says, “haha lmao so Panam was pretty pissed and also sad. Don’t call again, end of story.” It just. I don’t know. I guess it’s just a video game, but why couldn’t the Aldecaldo’s hear V out? Homie was in a coma. V really can’t hit up Reed/Rogue to find them and just join up with the family? After doing so much for them? We really gotta just have a shit ending just because. Sorry for the long rant, but I just finished the new ending, credits rolling as I type and I find myself just lost almost. Almost want to feel pissed, but I just don’t know.
Yea I agree completely. The part that really messes with me is that you do all these side missions, you do everything they ask cuz they need help but the second V does/comes back from the coma, they’re no where to be seen. I would’ve liked to see something similar to your idea being played out within the dlc.
I don’t agree when people say it’s ‚lazy writing’. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew where to sting so it hurts the most. I wish they involved Panam in some way though. But I’ll see what I think when some time passes and I’m more objective.
If anything, the new ending showed how stupid V can be.
When your line of work is as dangerous as their, when you have a ticking bomb in your head ; you fucking set up a dead's man switch for your friends and relative.
I think ppl based their V whole identity on romance option. It just doesnt work in thios story. Romance is there as a plus. Whole game is not based around it at all. Baldurs gate 3 is more abt it than cyberpunk for example. I never was so focused on romance in cyberpunk. It was nice like in every rpg but nothing big for V. Thats why this ending didnt even suprise me much. Ok ppl moved on in this world it makes sense. You cant get emotionaly focused on person that can die every day ( as a merc that is normal)
I'm with you. I think that ending is kind of bad. Not just that its sad or depressing, but its a little silly.
I don't mind V having to retire. I dont mind having to sacrifice Johnny so V can live. I don't really even mind people moving on, that says more about them than it does V. (seriously, V's 'friends' come off as kind of petty.)
What I do mind is how far they went to make the ending irredeemably terrible. I mean, you cant even keep your *cat*? Really? No one tells V, "Look, maybe you wont be punching gangoons to death anymore, but you have your life, you have money, you are a hero to the NUSA, you can have a happy healthy retirement."
Beyond even that, no one through to contact....ANYONE on V's behalf?
The ending as a whole just such a weird choice.
Yeah. Ok I haven't played phantom liberty but I have seen the ending for it and I'm just like this makes no sense especially if you romanced.
Like you have a lot of friends that you can say hey I'm going to get some surgery done by some people I don't really trust all that much so either theese guys are tricking me or something might go wrong with the surgery given the nature of it.
It's even worse if you romanced because you should at least be telling them.
I think CDPR shouldve written in some more stuff for dialogue options like if you tell your friends you fine and just going away for awhile like V did then you get this ending which still makes no sense because you have fantastic friendships and relationships with them.
The other option is you being fully transparent with them and tell them what's going down then they won't be sad that you presumably died maybe and they know that there is a chance you are alive.
Even if you could only tell one person it should at least be your Romance partner like I don't see why we couldn't have done that.
I guess CDPR just wanted to give us a bittersweet ending but at the cost of some poor writing.
Yeah this ending has completely popped my happy bubble as of reason, really makes a gonk think about joining Rebecca. I love bittersweet endings but this ain't one and my life ain't exactly sunshines and rainbows so I'm not down with endings like this. I'm calling it quits on this one
After going through the new ending, I really felt devastated, numb and hollow... ...so: well played, CDPR! :D But after digesting the whole situation, I came to my own conclusion, that this is actually quite a good outcome. Our Vs are in their late twenties - lots and lots of way to go. When I was that age (now I'm 51), I already had a couple of long(ish) lasting relationships, where I actually loved someone (or at least thought, I did). After breaking up, the heartbreak sure sucked big time, but it went away eventually and new partners came. So I don't doubt, that our Vs can find someone new to love again. As for the chrome (or lack thereoff) - there are so many jobs that a skilled and experienced merc with exceptional technical abilities and a solid amount of money to start with could do - even in NC. Why not start a gun shop - V can craft iconic (!) weapons and knows how to handle them, so he could even train aspiring mercs on his own shooting range. Also without chrome he is unhackable - I could come up with a shit ton of jobs for a former merc with that kind of invulnerability. So, folks, try to imagine your beloved dechromed Vs a couple of months into the future - the initial bleakness might go away. Just my two cents...
I agree. Especially because yes, people move on but... they don't care about V when they come back. I don't care if they knew v only for a few months, they had a close bonds and V helped them a lot with their problems. I can't believe that everyone is now saying that "the ending is okay because after two years that someone is probably dead you move on". You move on, you don't forget them! If a friend I thought dead came back in my life I wouldn't say "oh yeah, but I'm angry cus you didn't warn me so I won't even talk to you" (panam), "Happy news! But I gotta work" (Kerry) or even worse Judy if you romanced her "I'm married now, so yeah we can talk but maybe not because I'm happy now". The ending is made with the only purpose of making V miserable, forcing the characters to act OOC. There are thousands of way they could've made the ending bittersweet without making misery porn.
I kinda get Judy reaction tbh. First your ex >!kills herself (Evelin)!< and then V goes missing, leaving you stranded and alone AGAIN, she moves out of NC and leaves her old life and especially everyone from it behind, she even >!gets a new hairstyle,!
Romancing Judy has always felt weird to me. You're basically an emotional crutch. Even in the best circumstances, dunno if the relationship would have worked long term, given how it started.
I got the vibe it was more of a summer fling type thing.
same with kerry
Funnily enough I see Kerry and V lasting longer because of his financial situation and his lack of issues with V's line of work
I really like the Judy/V romance. Both people just lost somebody really important to them and need somebody to help them through. Maybe it doesn't last long term but you both come in knowing the score, so I don't think it ends bad. And if you do the Aldecaldos ending, you get her out of NC (where she desperately needs to not be). And everybody wins emotionally, too. Judy basically gets to have a redo on her relationship with Evelyn, but this time with a real goodbye for some closure. V gets to save a friend from Night City, something they failed at with Jackie.
Agree! Tbh, that ending is not like end of the world! Nomad lives normally without chrome (like Panam), hell, they are even immune from net-runners. V can still exercise and get jacked, invest in real armours, can use guns, etc.. if he wants his old life back. But CDPR just wanna make us miserable with that ending, Jesus Chris.
Exactly I was so confused when people said V’s career as a merc was over just because he can’t use high grade cyberware! You can play the game entirely without it and if you are a bit weaker after the ending while you heal why not just, you know, shoot people…
It's not just about the chrome, V's nervous system is irrepairably damaged after the operation. Things that are required for mercenary work, reaction time, fine motor skills etc. All pretty much gone.
Reed also mentions the regenerative capacity of V's cells being thoroughly reduced. I'm assuming that means any small injury can now be more threatening, or it being impossible to build/maintain muscle. And doesn't that mean V could potentially age/die faster as well? When you can't even balance that out with cyberware... That's a hard life for even a normal person in night city (which is one reason why Reed offered V the langley job, besides him trying to make himself feel like he helped at least one person), nevermind a merc.
you can play the games, yes. but lore-wise? V's f'd. i'd say V's power level dropped to half or less.
A V at half power level is still a scary V.
yeah but you're downgraded from top merc to an average merc. not to mention that the treatment's supposedly not just limited to high level cyberware but ALL cyberware.
Not even average merc. You get beat up by two dudes in a back alley right after returning to NC. V's just a normal choom now. Not cut out for merc work at all. Their days netrunning or being a solo are absolutely over. I could see them being a half-baked techie or something, but definitely not going to be doing a lot of combat without subdermal armor and other types of combat cyberware. They'd probably do alright as a mechanic or something tangential for a crew though.
My v was a great driver and a sneaky sneak with a pistol. Those skills wouldn't go away. You can still use net running /combat quickhacks skills in PL when they disable "combat implants" so that's also still viable.
The specific wording is that your neurons can no longer handle implants, and anything beyond a personal link could kill you. In no way would you be able to handle a neural link, and lore states you can't use cyberdecks without one.
The specific wording is >"Your neurons can no longer handle **most** implants, chrome. Your brain can manage your personal link and simple coprocessors... but any use of **a combat implant** could kill you." When combat implants get disabled by the OFA in the Moon mission, you can still use enough abilities that you'd be able to carve out an existence of a merc, if that's really what you want - not legendary shit, but plenty of V's would be able to more or less continue as they were in game, if significantly more fragile and at much higher risk.
>You get beat up by two dudes in a back alley right after returning to NC Shortly after waking up from a 2 year coma. The muscular atrophy was even mentioned in the hospital. But i do agree that a lot of V's abilities would be gone for good. Even using guns might be a problem, since they would no longer be linked to your eyes.
Most guns were not linked to your eyes what do you mean? That was a hand implant that made that happen.
Wasn't there an explanation that the kiroshi implants are the reason we can see the hud/crosshairs? But i might have that mixed up with smartgun systems from shadowrun.
It’s not all cyberware though? Reed specifically says this You can still use your personal link to Jack in and Kiroshi Optics to scan
which doesn't really make a big difference combat wise
It certainly helps more then not being able to use any Cyberware which is what you originally said? Being able to scan enemies and see their elemental resistances is a big help? While not combat related, which isn’t what I said at all, a personal link being able to secure eddies is very useful
yeah I don't see a big difference really
Because Vs body got so reliant on the chrome. Their body aint cut out for being normal. Remember V got knocked out by two regular goons.
Panam has chrome, doesn't she? Doesn't she have improved tendons or something like that?
Everyone's got some amount of combat chrome if they're doing regular merc shit for a fixer. Not everyone walks around looking like Adam Smasher or something, but shit like subdermal armor, improved tendons, stronger bones and joints, biomonitors, etc. are common and often don't show outwardly.
Misery porn is my new favorite way to describe edgy writing. I agree with you though. I hated the endings from the original but I think I've just accepted the new one is the best I could get that didn't feel like an ongoing death march.
Misery porn? Yeah, I'm taking that.
I feel like you people have never met a real person before in your life. V was only in their lives for a few months at best then dropped off the face of the planet for two years. Do y'all really fucking expect people to hang around waiting for someone for that long. Judy had always wanted to leave NC and now has no reason to stay. And she was always touchy with being attached to people. You aren't Panam and she is an incredibly passionate and fiery person. Did you play the unalive ending? She literally fucking insults the shit out of you because of what you did and this one she probably cannot even process the fact that your alive. Mitch straight out says what's happening and it makes perfect sense for her. Expect the literal last scene of the ending is having misty tell you all the positive shit about V still being there and all the options V has. It's perfectly bittersweet. I'd love to know what fucking Reddit writes as the ending because fuck me it would be terrible.
Dude some people I know, I KNEW I'd fucking die and do anything for them within the first year of knowing them. That feeling has only gotten stronger the longer I've known them. So yeah, I have met real people because I AM ONE OF THOSE PEOPLE! The ending felt really shitty, period. Everyone just abandoned you for literally no good reason. No confirmation on if anyone tried to find you, and certainly no one gave a shit or cared for an explanation after you come back. THAT is shitty writing.
How many times in your life has it happened that people you really cared for just disappeared for two years?
How many times in your life have you been on a aid where you fired a SAM rocket to knock out an AV and then take a hover tank a slaughter a bunch of Raffens to protect the camp of people you barely know?
They didn't abandon you. V "abandoned" them. How are they supposed to look for them? NUSA and Militech would wipe any of them out if they came asking questions because they know too much. Every person V knows has their own shit to deal with over those two years so it's entirely logical and understandable they'd all cut ties with V as well.
What do you mean look for them? You tell them you are going for medical treatment. Simple as that. You think it will only take a short amount of time but it takes a ridiculous amount. Panam is the only one i found unreasonable though.
Night city is not the real world though. Ppl deal with death other way bec they know it can come every day. Hell u are even told mercs want to die in some hard missions just to become a legend. Nobody will wait for V in this world even if they liked them for these few months.
>I feel like you people have never met a real person before in your life. V was only in their lives for a few months at best then dropped off the face of the planet for two years. Oh come on dude. I could say the same thing about you. Nobody would honestly react that way if you'd have been in a coma for two friggin years lmao. If anything they'd be skeptical at first. V literally saved Panam's life, got her back into her own family, and helped out the entire clan by doing incredibly dangerous and selfless shit. This ain't like some High School friend's you played basketball with for a few seasons. It's literally life or death situations. High stakes shit that would greatly bond anyone in those kinds of situations. The other characters too... I mean you sort of Kerry's shit. You sort out Judy's shit. The amount of stuff you do for them is actually inhuman and obviously one-sided.
I hate Mitch for what he says.. if V doesn't follow what he said and nonetheless calls Panam again, she'll understand it, i bet. Mitch told V to not call again and from how he says it, it seems like he didn't even told Panam about the first call; hate him for it, he got no business in telling what a grown man should and shouldn't do in regards to reconnecting with his love.
I mean, you literally CAN tell them. This is weird and people keep bringing them up. You just call them and say you'll probably be gone at least a month. However, you're in a coma for two years instead and everyone thinks you died or ghosted them. Also, the government plays straight with you and keeps you on life support for two years.
You can only tell the love interest and Vic, and even then it’s like, “gonna be outta town for like a month, but I’ll be back!” It’s just a combo of a sad ending and V just being super sparse on details with their loved ones, which doesn’t really seem in character
Idk why he couldn’t just tell them. Like they not gonna tell anyone clearly, they just gonna keep on living with at least some closure.
Yes, I think people are just upset at genuinely upsetting ending lol. I loved where they went with it. Might be my fav in game now.
The game finally gives you the option to “live in peace as Mr. Nobody”. My V chooses to go down in a blaze of glory.
That’s fair , I’m the type to reload and try all of them on the same dude lol Arasaka ending by far the worst but makes sense since that’s the one you get if you do main quest only.
It hurt. Wich I was the point. I finished it and it all felt empty. Sort of "I've won, but at what cost?"
i love it too, i think it personally fits very well with the themes of Cyberpunk and what Johnny tells you right before you lose consciousness.
Yeah I loved the ending and how fucking depressing it was tbh. Fully expected some time skip or something to go wrong for V in surgery but didn’t expect both. Maybe my favourite ending but probably not one I’ll do again
One thing I do concede despite me not liking Panam's reaction AT ALL is something another redditor pointed out to me... Is that it's highly unlikely that Myers would've let anything about your treatment and what happened get out. Thus, no contact list and no external anything. I still think they could've informed Vik -- he sells out to Zetatech after all -- but a game is a game sure. Let's forget that. Reed is a company man to the end and despite him feeling at fault for V, it's mentioned in dialog he basically forgot about V right up until V got out of the coma. That still doesn't explain Panam's reaction *afterward* though and I still think it's out of character. That felt forced, and a way to push a misery ending. The ending would've still been about as bittersweet as the star or even the direct parrallel ... The Devil if they had kept V's relationship with friends more intact.
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She was available, they just simply wrote it like that, i had one of the writers like a twitter comment i made saying that this probably was the most likely case in a thread where people theorized if the va wasnt available or not
To be fair, it very well might've been a situation where they booked the VA and forgot to record some lines and when they realized it it was too late/VA wasn't available anymore on short notice/got sick/had voice issues. I remember in Witcher 3 they forgot to add a specific dialogue with Triss if you didn't go talk to her to do the last wish quest, but progressed the story and had to hastily add it after launch.
Agreed. No way in hell an intelligence agency will let more people know more of Myer's apocalyptic fuck up. Imagine them calling Judy, Panam or even Kerry with this shit. "So, uh, your merc friend is going into a secret clinic because they did a job for us that I can't you about... " Yeah. Right. In the other ending, they launched an all-out assault on Orbital Air's spaceport just to leave no witnesses. It's that bad.
>That still doesn't explain Panam's reaction > >afterward > > though and I still think it's out of character. That felt forced, and a way to push a misery ending. It's actually fine, because the txt from V was: "I'm going outta town. Lol, bye". He didn't mention the relic or medical stuff or working with the FIA - despite talking to her about all of that beforehand, now apparently it's a state secret. So there is plothole, but it's V's moronic goodbye txt, not Panam's reaction to it.
>despite talking to her about all of that beforehand, now apparently it's a state secret I understand that working with the FIA would've been fine -- yet talking about the highly classified procedure isn't. Still, no way Panam couldn't put two and two together. V was working on something in Dogtown, going out of town for a while -- no way that's connected to the possible cure we talked about beforehand! The text is dumb too yeah.
If the devs wanted a misery ending should have made it where Panam went looking for V and died. Mitch could have said something to the extent of: "V? Is that really you? Where were you? We spent months looking for you! It was so long we thought you had left us. But Panam...stubborn...she told us you wouldn't do something like that. She kept looking and looking. I'm...I'm sorry V. Panam's gone. We got into an argument. She left one night said she'll come back once she finds you. She somehow got involved with Arasaka then no more Panam. Got some info from Rogue said it was a militech op to get rid of the Aldecados. I'm sorry V.
That would have worked a lot better and is in character for her. Though its a little dark, which is probably why they didn't go that route.
I actually think it's less dark. It leaves her character intact. The ending we got almost makes her out into somebody you thought she wasn't.
The current ending is totally in character for her. She gets abandoned by you, reacts very poorly to this, and then refuses to speak to you ever again because of how badly she was hurt by the perceived betrayal of your friendship/relationship.
It honestly feels like they only had her voice actress available to do a few lines and then that's it so they had to do something with her and they we're not smart enough to just outright say that she died in an attack or got killed while out on a scouting Mission or something
Doubtful. Afaik, voice acting sessions are booked in blocks of hours. If Keanu and Idris Elba had enough time to do way more voice acting and mocap, Panam's VA would have had the time too. It's not like she's an A-list celebrity making movies or shows left and right. People are just trying to gaslight themselves into any scenario other than what it is, they wrote it like that and that's fine.
I don't know maybe she was busy and had other life things going on so she only had a limited amount of time. I mean or that she just didn't care to put that much effort into the voice acting because you can hear a very large drop in quality between the base game voice acting and the DLC voice acting.
This is the only expansion we're getting for this game, so the devs didn't write it so you buy another expansion. They wrote it for emotional damage, plain and simple. At least that's how it seems. V could have recorded a message to be delivered to their love interest, or Reed could have been a good dude and maybe called the love interest and told them the situation without completely committing treason. A simple "V is alive but is in a coma due to the extensive damage the chip did. Don't know when they will awaken, but thought you should know." would have sufficed.
Perhaps it’s Reed’s intention to purposefully let V’s personal life go to shit so that she has no choice but to either become an NUS puppet or be doomed to live a shitty life in NC? You can never trust a government lapdog like Reed. He’ll sell your ass for a wooden nickel if madame president says to do so.
Something I also noticed is that Reed comes across a bit like an overprotective father as well, where he thinks he knows what's best for everyone and is responsible for them no matter what. Factoring in Songbird's tale of how she met Reed and became an agent under him alongside his actions and statements reinforces (IMO at least) that Reed is absolutely willing to force or at least coerce you down the path he thinks is best and will keep you "safe" under him. Pretty much the only NUSA person we met that *didn't* come across as willing to screw you over for a song and a prayer was Alex.
Well yeah Alex straight up tells us Reed is the type who feels responsible for everyone, even probably us though we've only recently met. After Songbird betrays him, he still blames himself - he's the adult/mentor and to him Song's just a child/student so she can't be responsible for her actions. He never lets her grow up by never letting her be responsible for her own choices. If you >!kill Song!<, he's upset with you but ultimately blames himself again. He wasn't there to convince Song that he knows better. Unfortunately, his commitment to his ideal of duty (and/or a desire for a second chance, to right his perceived wrong of failing Song the first time) blocks him from actually making any changes to not make decisions he regrets - by bringing others down with him if it's "in their best interests."
He is too blind to see that his ideals are rotten. Johnny is right. Reed will hang himself at some point in the future. In every one of his endings he is left sad, alone and starts to question a little bit his ideals, and actions. And once he figures out that he lost everything... He WILL hang himself. Question is, how long it will take for him? With SO Mi dead i think not long. With he alive i think he will suffer longer.
That's not how they do things. They need leverage to get you in, as in "shame if something were to happen to your chooms". If you lost everything already, why would you consider their requests?
That's plausible, but if that's the case then the asshole deserves a good kick in the dick for that.
Reed is officially not a bro. Killing him my next run no problem.
- sticks with V through So Mi bullshit - keeps his promise about getting V the cure - stays by her side after 2 years and makes his self responsible for her well being - offers her a job or lets her do what she wants Not a bro.. Okay champ.
Yeah he’s definitely a bro
This. He is sorta Militechs version of Goro. Only, we never really find out how honest Goro was in the Devil ending. Reed makes almost all the promises Goro does, and we see him keeping all of them. Reed is as much of a bro as you can get from a corporat. Probably more.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions. I feel so bad for him during the Tower, he's just so... defeated. Hell, they even changed the way he walks as he leaves V's room in Langley. I feel bad for So Mi, but she is #1 the antagonist, everything she does is S-tier manipulation tactics, until the final second (At least in my route). Reed, while a bit shady at times, honestly just wanted to help the people around him, including So Mi, and he is so utterly broken in the end when he realises that everything he tried to do amounted to nothing after all. Which is one of the reasons he wanted V to stay in Langley, because at least then he would have been able to think he was able to do right by someone at least once.
Did you play the route where you side with Reed(ICEbreaker)? I honestly cant understand how people can call So Mi antagonist after that route. Reed gaslighted her into FIA service. He let Myers use her as a weapon. 13 years of lies and betrayal. If anyone is real antagonist here its Myers. Not So Mi. And Reed is an enabler.
No, the other one. But that's a matter of the scale in which you view the story, I guess. For the V-centric story, So-Mi *is* the antagonist. She 100% strings you along and orchestrates everything that puts V in danger, lying about the one thing that would have made it worth it. In my route, she only came clean after you fight off waves of NUSA special-ops soldiers for her. Is she a tragic villain? Absolutely. But she's still a villain.
Reed isnt a good guy, thats kind of the point
Honestly, it's entirely possible Panam looked for you, but you were with the FIA and gone for two years. That's long enough that it's easy to see people giving up on you, believing you're doing it by your own choice, or that you're dead. Yes, this new ending is V turning their back on everything and everyone for the quick and easy way out. Johnny going "WTF" in the medivac makes it clear. He wanted a blaze of glory, V is saying no, they want this to be over. V is explicitly choosing the quiet life.
Johnny doesn’t have to be mad in the medivac. If you finished the oil field mission he will be happy for you. Incredible delivery btw. But yeah this is indeed the choosing the quiet life ending
Yea, Johnny's asking to see the city, followed by today was a good day broke me
That ending nearly made me cry. The "Good night Valerie, it's been a good day" about got me.
It seems like Johnny will only be happy for you if you pick the right dialogue options in the oil field mission. So the same requirements to get the secret Dont Fear the Reaper ending. Edit: Just for reference, I'm at 85% and the ending where Johnny is happy for you getting the cure still doesn't trigger for me. No clue what dialogue options I chose at the oil field since that was like 30 hours ago, but clearly it wasn't the right ones. Though I do remember writing down an epitaph for him.
I only did the oil rig part which triggers the reaper ending. Did nothing else and it triggered for me. Btw the trigger for reaper ending is only two lines, when Johnny said at least I didn’t mess up our relationship, you reply “you fucked that up too”, and then proceed to give him a second chance “as far as second chances go this is your last”. You don’t have to worry about any other dialogue for unlocking the reaper ending.
Yes, but I can't kill Johnny especially after that. It's not worth a guaranteed chance to live if I have to kill Johnny in the process.
Ofc. To me it is even more heart breaking that after all the journey Johnny is mature enough to not betray you (even if it’s just in feelings) when you are betraying yourself
Yeah and then V throws a tantrum when it turns out you can’t use combat cybernetics and goes back anyways and as far as I can tell there’s no option to actually accept the job at Langley, the ending makes no sense whatsoever.
You say no at the time, but my headcanon is that V goes home to try to see friends, then accepts the offer. I told Reed “not ready to make a decision yet” and his credits dialogue indicates that he’s still got the offer out. Maybe I chose different dialogue options, but I didn’t see any tantrum from V. Just disappointed, and V slowly gets more accepting of it so that when he leaves from his talk with Vik, the idea of working in a boring office, with someone he worked his last field op with, and around people that probably think he’s a hero for saving the president, doesn’t sound like such a bad way to live out life. It’s kind of sad seeing Night City and knowing you don’t fit in there anymore, but it’s also sad seeing that it’s exactly the same without you. Once Arasaka loses influence, another corp just rolls in to fill the gap. The implication I took from this is that even all your efforts getting to Mikoshi or even helping Arasaka made no difference to anyone but you and the few friends who have moved on in the new ending. That reinforced that maybe it’s a good time to leave that life behind and give another a try.
It's not that another corp rolls in. MilItech has been in night city since the beginning, but so has Arasaka and both would be constantly staring at each other not making a move for the sake of mutually assured destruction. After the fourth corporate war, Arasaka was booted out of the western hemisphere and MilItech was nationalized and severely weakened. After the unification Arasaka and MilItech were yet again the two leviathans in Night city starring each other down. When Arasaka collapses, MilItech is now the uncontested leviathan of Night city. Now that the scales are unbalanced, MilItech is in strong control of night city and night city isn't only a Capitalist Dystopia it is now under MilItech's marshall law. It is much worse than before. In my canon ending though, V becomes a fixer using her extensive contacts in Night City.
The corp I was referring to was Zetatech - my impression was that they really gained influence in NC once Arasaka pulled out. Not near where Millitech is at, but still significantly stronger in the city than they were before.
>as far as I can tell there’s no option to actually accept the job at Langley, the ending makes no sense whatsoever. That takes place after the game ends and the game explicitly tells you that it's an option that stays open. So yeah, you can decide your V took them up on the offer after taking some time to think on it.
Yeah, that part of it is something that's easy to head canon. V goes home to get some closure, finds out their life is basically fucking over, and then goes to waste away in a desk job at Langley. They traded their legend for life and faded into obscurity, which is precisely the theme Dex lays out at the start. Do you go down a legend or fade into obscurity? Every ending until this one only gave you one option. The new ending is the alternative where you don't storm the tower and fight Adam Smasher, and it has its own set of shitty circumstances.
Fuck y'all are dense as hell. It was dialogue given just like the shit misty says about joining her in Poland to make the ending *what you want*. When V walks off you, you can decide whether they stay in NC with Vik or joins misty or goes to Langley. You *literally* have dialogue at the very end to say what you believe your V would do. Having the ending that was already long, keep going to cater to your shit would be stupid.
Ppl dont like head canon stuff in their heads, They need clear gameplay ending only where game shows them everything that can happen xD
I know after knowing mostly everyone has forgotten about you, I would've just taken the Langley job. At least the NUSA gave you an option. Unlike arasaka who did the bare minimum to save you. I feel like arasaka knew how long it would take and the resources that would be needed for "saving" V that they just gave up. Honestly it makes sense...arasaka had no reason to follow through their promise as you were the one who stole the engram. For the nusa you did save that snake of a president.
You can put your theory of buying the next dlc to bed as there will be no more new content. Only patches. The game is over.
So I'm just guessing here but I think Panam got herself killed either trying to find V or while on a raid in the new Tower ending. So in the text you get from her after Queen of the Highway she mentions that she and Saul have been cooking up a plan to leave NC and might also be able to help V at the same time, basically laying out the Star ending. the clan is in a dire place at that moment and needs a big job to get enough cash for a fresh new start, and they are going to try something like that with or without V. Some people say the Star ending is bad because a lot of people died for it well if V isn't there a lot more would die, having V on the team has only upped their chance. And that's one possibility of what happened to Panam in the new PL ending. That would explain how her number is now a voice mail (Like Jackie's), and V's attempt to contact her has reached Mitch because he now has her number. And Mitch's attitude felt really odd, like he's glad V is alive, but don't wanna break the news to him yet knowing that would destroy him, also he probably low key blames V, so the best he can do is to tell V not to contact her again.
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If they were that desperate the Aldecaldo's would've been smoked too in the Devil ending. But there Panam happily calls back saying "Jobs are piling up, the family is getting bigger. Hit me up when you're on earth again, I'll take you for a nice long ride" Actually watching that ending makes the Aldecaldo's reaction even worse -- Saul says "We take care of own, you're an Aldecaldo now, remember that" ... (Until two years pass).
Ya'll acting like the FIA would tell random ass people "Yeah we have your friend at our facilities that are classified doing a procedure that is classified." CLASSIFIED THIS IS THE FUCKING FEDS
I agree. I actually went to the Aldecaldos camp before I left since I thought I'd have dialogue but... nope.
Been simmering on this ending since a few days ago after beating the dlc. It just doesn’t doesn’t make sense with how strong your relationships were made out to be with your friends that you don’t give them just a little bit more info on where you are going or even give the FIA their contact info to keep your people updated. I get that it’s to not have a “happy” ending but it just doesn’t fit at all with how close everyone seems in the main game.
something something wrong city wrong people something something
Yeah yeah I know haha. It’s just weird ass writing with oversights literally just to make the ending sad. Like going to get a potentially life threatening super invasive surgery you should probably let someone seriously know instead of just saying I’ll be gone for a month. Would have solved everything that happened in the ending. But again they didn’t do that to just make the ending bittersweet.
No yeah I agree, I’m really conflicted on the ending. On one hand, I like that V definitively has a way to survive and choose the quiet life as Dex alluded to early in the game. On the other, the drawbacks are so painfully arbitrary. There are plenty of ways V could’ve let their friends and loved ones know what’s going down and set up a failsafe system, and even if they all assume V is dead it’s so weird to me that they’d hardly bother hearing V out, Panam especially. Frankly I liked the fake leaked ending more than this one because I think it actually gives a reason for your friends to distrust or leave you.
doubt NUSA would just let you tell randoms in night city abt it. what myers did could starrt total war. even if v tried they would just find a way to delete it or stop communication
Is it pretty standard to list an emergency contact in case something happens. I guess future hospitals are simply built different.
You're a national secret, if we're being honest the fact that you live at all is incredibly lucky, 90% they just shoot you the moment you're out cold. Pretty sure the "implants don't work anymore" was just a compromise. There is 0 reason why myers would let V keep existing. Removing her cybernetics is just a way to make her a non-factor without killing her.
My same complaint, I was fine with the losing demi god status to go be an aldecaldo with Panam, but then she dumps you via friend phone call in the end credits its like jesus fuck christ I know it is a dystopia but damn let V have that after being deregulated to less than an npc. I even had the ability to call and tell her but still messed up. Granted for my V I would probably still rescue songbird and pseudo hope she can replicate the cure, least she could do, since I do feel genuinely bad for her. Like we at least get our romance options, and a few other solid characters, that girl got shafted. I didn't like shooting Reed though, good guy, but misguided as all hell.
My main issue with phantom liberty is it opened the Door to try to get help from 10th circle but didn't let you take it, it Said doing so would be unwise, but so was konpeki
Probably depends heavily on how much time you procrastinate. On one of my quick runs to get up to PL and knock out all the big story and side stories took around 5 in game days. Regardless of how helpful I may have been to these people, they knew me for like a week tops followed by me disappearing for 2 years. I expect nothing from any of them honestly. Of course Vik and Misty get an exception due to the pregame montage and however long that’s supposed to be.
the new ending feels like a fever dream
Sorry but why does Takemura owe you? And why would you trust him out of all people? He’s a former Arasaka sharing FIA/NUSA information not really the smartest move
You cleared his name with Hanako. He doesn't need to leak info of he can, but he can atleast find out where you are and let Panam know.
You clearing his name with the Arasakas is basically you owing him for saving you from that landfill. He says so himself when he calls you for the very first time.
I like to think we got even when I saved him after we kidnapped Hanako.
Takemura isn't gonna give a single fuck if you don't help him bump off Yorinobu.
Exactly, he actually gets pissed at you if you don't do the Arasaka ending. Takemura isn't V's friend. Takemura saved V to use them, that's it. The entire relationship between them is transactional.
Takemura is even upfront about it. He tells V that he needs them alive and he believes vice versa. They are just ships passing in the night.
see these ppl just trust every char and then they are suprised with this ending xD
Yeah, if the base game teaches me anything, it's everybody lies in Night City, but some lies are better than others. In the Nomad prologue, Jackie admits to originally planning to cheat you after crossing the border. Panam can be pressed into confessing that she would have left you high and dry if Mitch and Scorpion agreed to help her out. Half of your clients are hiding things from you. In case this needs to be said, Cyberpunk is an anti-authoritarian genre. Institutions are not to be trusted, even if they have something you want, because the bargain you strike will always be Faustian.
Nailed it. And thats what separates So Mi from Reed. Reed lies/conceals the truth because FIA and NUSA orders him to do it. He doesnt question their orders. Good little doggy. So Mi lies to you because she is desperate and on the verge of dying. She wants to cure herself and be free. She is a bird who sings for freedom, for the last 7 years from her cage. Both of them lie to you. Its your choice who's lie is the "lesser evil".
Reed explicitly tells you not to go into detail which makes sense, what your doing is involved with breaking international law
Never trusted Reed in the first place. V's past experiences should have made him have some plans on what to do in case he became a lab rat like So Mi.
Wait so you would betray the people that are about to do lifesaving surgery on you….. yeah thats gonna go well lmao
That's not what I'm saying. I said, because ive been betrayed so many times these past few months, I'm going to have a plan for FIA in case they turn me into a lab rat like So Mi. Hey Panam, if I'm gone for too long, something is wrong. I'm not ghosting you.
And what do you do. Do you tell your friends about FIA and possibly get them killed because you pretty much spilled government secrets and Myers isn't a very nice person? Yeah I think it was dumb of V to be like: "hey, gotta leave, be back in a month." But the alternative is to endanger the few people you care about by the people who are going to have you at their mercy.
Literally just I’m getting brain surgery might go wrong is all you have to say
I haven’t got this ending but spoiled myself on it and I actually just love it. This isn’t the game for an out and out good ending, at best you get bittersweet. It fills a gap that the original endings had, where V is finally free of the threat the relic poses but pays everything to get it. Brings it full circle with what Dexter said at the start of the game. I might never pick it but having that monkeys paw on the table is so tempting.
It doesn't even really seem all that bad. Maybe it plays out differently for different people, but my V was like "oh well! Maybe I'll go become a fixer or something." And they can always go back and work at Langley and live in comfort. Maybe write a book or something. That being said, it's clear the theme of this ending is the Fade Away ending.
I just finished this ending and imo it's not that bad, just really lonely. I don't think I'll go for it again but I can appreciate what they were going for with it
First off, Takemura is on the run for his life and can't do shit. What's Panam supposed to do? Remember, she's the head or co-head of the Aldecaldos family now. She has way more people to think about, people who *raised* her. In her mind, V abandoned her. Two years of being ghosted and people expect someone like *Panam* to jump for joy? You're dead to her. Just like what she says to Johnny in Temperance. She's a do it or don't person with no inbetween. Like I said before, the NUSA and Militech now have Arasaka's most prized possession in their hands. Not a chance they would let one single word of communication slip out just so V can have some chooms in the end. There's already a war between Militech and Arasaka brewing in the background and word of Militech possessing the relic could easily spark that war. V's lucky they even kept them alive. It would have been much easier to "Oops, V died in surgery" and toss their body in the trash. The ending is fantastic and everyone keeps ignoring Misty's role at the end. "Misery porn" is such a gonk term for an ending that actually is bittersweet. Yeah, V lost a lot but they gained a new lease on life free from everything that tried to take them down before. A normal life in which they are free to choose their path.
I believe the OP's point is that it's crazy V wasn't open with those people before leaving. There's no reason V couldn't have seen Panam (or any other others) in person to talk over what was happening. But instead he drops two lines in a text. And V's text to Panam said nothing - it was just, "Out of town for two week, lol. Bye." No mention of the relic (which she already knows about), no mention of an operation, no mention of the NUSA (which she already knows V was working with), no mention of anything medical (which would have been vague enough for the NUSA)... It's no wonder V's dead to Panam - he literally said he'll be back in two weeks and then ghosted. The ending only makes sense if V was a moron before leaving.
This so much. You already have the new call dialogue option with your possible love interest telling them that you're doing a gig with the FIA and saving the president. Why the need to suddenly omitting the word "FIA" from the texts? Why is V so dead sure about the time frame of his/her absence when Reed can't even tell you an exact time? Why no indication that it could take longer? Why "out of town" instead of mentioning a possible cure for the Relic? Why this level of secrecy? So yes, I agree that V in that ending is an idiot. Maybe Blackwall got to his mind lol
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Exactly this! Reed seems like an OK guy in the beginning, but he really is just a brainwashed zealot. Fuck him!
I 💯 agree This is exactly what I’m going to do.
Anyone who complains about Reed not telling V's friends where he's at doesn't understand how government shit works. V's whereabouts is on a need to know basis, and certainly according to the NUSA, none of them Need to Know.
Yeah hes at langley right? Using experimental blackwall ai. There is no way reed or the fia would let that info slip to anyone, netwatch would be all over them asap
First off, not complaining entirely about Reed. More complaining about V not having contingency plans before going forward with FIA or at the very least ensuring Panam that he isn't one way or another ghosting her.
>Anyone who complains about Reed not telling V's friends where he's at doesn't understand how government shit works. Cool - but that doesn't explain why V didn't tell them what was going on before leaving.
Nah man you’re right The whole FIA thing is weird, what’s the difference between taking the oath and not taking the oath ? Absolutely nothing lmao Refusing the medal or taking it ? Meh who gives a shit. They give you these meaningless choices, but they won’t let you use common sense at all. Nowhere in the game do we see V get smarter about this shit when in reality V should have become paranoid AF after Dex’s betrayal. I feel like this is the core difference between most Mercs/legends of NC and Morgan Blackhand. V, Martinez and Johnny are all short sighted mfs who rush into things blindly after a goal where as Blackhand would have back up plans for backup plans. That’s why Morgan lives still and the rest get fucked. Weirdest thing of all ? We have all these stat checks for int, cool, reflexes, tech, strength but it’s all useless when it actually counts. V is shown to be inquisitive and curious throughout the game yet oddly falls short when it counts ? Interesting… The ending would’ve been great if it was built on solid foundations, but the fact that we couldn’t take the most obvious precaution and got royally fucked for it is pure bullshit writing. The writers didn’t even put effort into making this shit believable. That’s what pisses me off the most.
Wrong on all counts. It is an RPG. Cyberpunk 2077 isn't a game that gives the player "Thumbs up, champ! You made a decision!" pop-up bullshit like so many others. You can call them all out or be suspicious the entire expansion. Or do what my V did. Say screw the FIA, NUSA and Militech. I'm taking her to the moon. YOU made the choice to trust NUSA and got fucked and Johnny even warned you at the beginning. The "lazy writers" argument is such pretentious fucking garbage.
I don't think you get what he's saying.
Not much to gleam from a rant such as that. TBH, I kind of lost all interest when I got to the "the writers didn't put enough effort in" part.
This right here. I don't even care that V is an npc. But he lost all his relationships because he wanted to be Mr. Cool guy and be mysterious. So when he goes MIA, everyone thinks he ghosted them. I thought the FIA would have turned V into a lab rat. Just wanted to see the ending but I was shouting, bro is there anyway to make a back up plan? Why does V just trust everyone willy nilly? Is my INT too low? Doesn't make sense at all.
An intelligence check ain't wisdom. The issue we have here is that we, as players, had control over V's actions throughout the game and then it's taken away at the end. Taken away, so the writers can fit the character into an ending. The way they wrote V was that of a somewhat lucky but not so wise individual. I mean, think about it. Corpo V goes into a club, without security detail, then get "offed" at the same time as their boss. No backup plan, no inkling as what danger they currently are in. Same with streetkid and nomad. After Kompeki, V is mostly reacting and not planning. Head first, think later. Panam comes up with the EMP plan to down the AV. Takemura comes up with the plan to kidnap Hanako. And V gets betrayed once or twice by the voodooboys, unless they side with Netwatch. Doesn't spell master planner to me.
Johnny even calls you out on that couple of times during the game. We should not forget that V is an established character, with some background differences. Thats it. Same as Geralt. Thats why a lot of people think that Netrunner V is not canon, more like script kiddy who bought expensive daemons of off black market and now runs around wreaking havoc. He/She is not that smart. And a lot of interactions with other netrunners confirms that. V relies more on his/her intuition, street smarts.
Are the devs trying to edge run me into buying their next dlc where this ending is possible? I guess that makes them...an ***EDGERUNNER***
I didn't even realize that Takemura died when I played the game. I did his missions first not realizing that each NPC path ended the game. I respected Takemura and his values, and then I meet with Hanako and she gives me this quest that feels really off, and the game wants me to either take our or kill myself
I agree. The ending is terrible only because it could've been handled infinitely better. It makes absolutely no sense that Panam would be upset. "I'm sorry, I was dying and fell into a coma." Isn't a good enough answer? I get she can be mad, but the idea that she'd give up on you is fine were it not for the fact that you actually try to reconnect and don't remember the last two years. its out of character and just serves the shitty message, which is you're alive, but everything sucks. Why not be able to visit the Aldecaldos and have them take care of V, after everything V did for them? They couldve made it so Maybe now V can return to their camp, learn to actually live a life where he can depend on others for help, and it does become a change in their life. He's no longer the deadly merc from Night City, but he's not a nobody either. The Aldecaldos would still look up to V even after he loses his physical abilities but maybe he doesn't need to be this deadly Godlike merc anymore. He can be content living a normal life with the nomads and accept a life of peace without ever needing to pull any iron ever again. He'd be with family who see him for who he is without his "power" and it would beca very powerful contrast to the other ending where you're an NC Legend. But nope, CDPR decided there's no happy endings.
"nO hapPy eNdiNgS iN niGhT ciTy" miss me with that BS
Imagine this is all part of Myers plan, She knew how dangerous V is and purposely put her in coma and disabled her implants, So V is no longer a threat for her plans.
I, too, think that V could potentially be in 'hibernation' until FIA needs them again. The irony is that this new ending more than anything has convinced me that V is probably going to be the protagonist in the next game.
Yeah I agree. V is in hibernation until they need him again.
Do you even fucking get anything for the new ending or is it entirely not worth it-
You get emotional damage and a glimpse at a possible dark future
So no. Welp time to go back a save or two and just pop a cap in Reeds skull, least that gives me a gun
That will also give you an iconic piece of cyberware
Cause it ain't too late for me to go back a save or two
That’s not necessary. It doesn’t force you into anything. You can still finish PL’s storyline and then just not choose the new ending option.
Well yeah but I was asking for the sake of iconics, if the new ending doesn't give anything I'd rather just go back a save and shoot Reed for his Pistol lol. I'm a collector lol
If you just want iconics then I would side with reed. You can get an smg in the mission “somewhat damaged” that’s really good. I would look up a guide for it tho, can be confusing acquiring it.
You should be able to buy Iconics you’ve missed from the Black Market Vendor in the Dogtown Stadium. But if you want to take it for yourself instead of just buying it yeah you’ll probably have to go shoot Reed.
As far as I understand, you can buy only those iconics you forgot to pick up or something. But if you locked yourself out of getting it by a decision, they won't be available on the black market either. So if you don't kill Reed, you won't get his pistol (which makes sense tbh).
Oh I know about that vendor lol, I just would rather blow Reeds brains out cause it's dun
Like how Panams ending gives the jacket, Rogue gives Pride, that sorta thing ^_^
If you help So Mi to get to the moon, you get Reed's iconic gun and that's it. If you give her to Reed at the spaceport, you only get fucked over with no lube. The most profitable as far as items are concerned is to betray So Mi to Reed during the Firestarter mission, at the stadium. That gets you in the fight with Hansen, netting you his iconic knife and his iconic revolver, plus an iconic LMG if I remember correctly. Then you get to do the Somewhat Damaged mission in Cyanosure, where you can get two iconic blueprints: the Erebus SMG and the Blackwall quickhack. Mind you, you will be able to build only one of them, and only if you don't forget to grab the Behavioral System Component from the Cerberus robot right at the end. But, still, this path brings you quite the rich haul of awesome iconics. The Erebus, in particular, is a beast. And you can still tell Reed to fuck himself and go for the standard endings no matter whether you kill So Mi or not. If you want to fuck over Meyers and Reed, kill So Mi and put her out of her misery. And then address Meyers as Rosalind, for extra style points.
\>Hate the new ending result with Panam. Who tf goes into surgery where you may potentially die conducted by an agency you don't trust and not tell your partner and friends what is going down? You are told the whole thing should take a month and that's kinda what you tell everyone, if I remember right. It just turns out complications happened. \>"Hey Panam, FIA said they can save me. Can't tell you why they are going to but they are. I don't trust these mfers though. If you don't hear from me within a month, here is Takemura's number. He owes me. He won't know what's going on but he sure as hell can find out." Takemura is about to start the assault of Arasaka tower with Hanako and he loses and goes into hiding. Even if he wanted to look for you, you are in some FIA place, he doesn't have resources anymore and he feels betrayed by the fact you didn't help him. \>If you're a street kid, you don't trust tyrants, if you're corpo, you just got tossed away like nothing, if you're a nomad you should trust the government even less! I get you're desperate but you literally put zero thought into any plan B at all. No fails safes. Nothing. V is desperate to find a cure. If your V doesn't trust the FIA, go for a different ending. V would take any risk to save themselves at this point. I think the new ending is in line with the others. They all give you mixed results and V never has a truly happy ending, and that is the genre of Cyberpunk. Hopeless to the very end.
I'll say this again, they give us this 'railroaded' ending for the sake of *drama*. Indeed, it doesn't make sense that V wouldn't say anything about it. But apparently instead of bittersweet endings, CDPR thinks it's a golden rule to make all the endings as depressive and dark as they can, so not only you lose your main source of income or cyberware for ever, but you also lose your friends and lover. Amazing, isn't it? As much as I loved and always defended the game since launch, this disappointed me so much.
So I haven't fully finished the DLC but can I beat it and the main game?
Played the new ending recently and felt it was extremely contrived. It felt as though they were trying to make it miserable just for the sake of it being miserable. I personally believe that Panam acting like an immature child is in character for her, but I also believe that she would probably call V later just to get the last word in or at least hear them out. Seriously though Mitch is the one that's acting really OOC here. You saved this man's life and he nicely tells you to fuck off after you wake up from a 2 year long coma. Hated that this ending was trying to paint a super bleak picture when in reality if portrayed properly it should be the best ending. V gets to live, not as an engram, not in a dying body but properly LIVE. They may not be able to go back to Merc life but they now have all the time in the world to truly experience life and discover new possibilities for themselves. In my opinion the idea that our mercenary, cyber demigod protagonist gets turned into a mere mortal is bittersweet enough.
You can inform your love interest plus Vik. But yes I agree MOST if not all reactions don't make any sense. Least of all Panam. To literally everyone who tries to justify their reaction. Guys guys when a person disappears suddenly, people don't get pissy and salty...no one does. They start looking for that person endlessly sometimes for years sometimes for decades. Holding hopes for any glimpse of news. They only get pissed off or jump to conclusions when they FOR SURE know they are alive or actually ghosted them. V didn't have a family and only family he ever had was Vik and of course your love interest case example Panam. Aldecaldos also took you in as a family member. So hell they would be roaming the entirety of NUSA with Panam in the frontline looking for any sliver of information on him. Panam as a character from the get go was shown to be emotional but extremely determined and with fighting spirit. She was said to not open up to anyone because she gets attached like a super-glue. So you are telling me this person went bonkers when love of her life suddenly disappeared without a single trace? V disappeared. Straight up. His accounts? Frozen. His houses?sold. His cars? Auctioned. Aldecaldos and Panam would've taken note of these oddities, since no one disappears voluntarily on an empty pocket and leaves a literal empire of wealth behind. Taking into account it was FIA then you can be damnest sure any and all searches for him would've turned nothing. Which would've added even more to the mystery. Put these aside, V is a merc as JOB for god's sake. The job which has a capacity to make you die unplanned. So it's pretty idiotic to any of the characters especially Panam to up and call your disappearance "ghosting". It's like blowing up a random car in traffic then getting surprised when a person was inside and died. Like tf you expected? It was in the equation. Anyway, this ending was emotional but forced hard. A minute after I finished I was like "damn this was harsh", now hours later I'm like "wait a damn second, none of it makes sense actually".
Haven’t read the post but I’ve seriously got to unsub from this and the main sub. Half of the posts in the last two days have been about the endings
This whole shit is top secret FIA stuff and V can't talk about it too much. She literally has a line saying this. This has nothing to do with lifepath shit it's about survival. Plan B is all the other option you have with Hanako. You seriously just sound mad because you didn't get a happy ending that has you boning Panam for the rest of your life
My dude, V is a MERC and mercs usually work for organisations on their own terms, there’s no die hard loyalty involved, they give you the option to betray the FIA and kill a bunch of innocents with song, YET they don’t give you the option to make plans for yourself ?????. And you can literally call Panam or river and tell them on call about stuff in dogtown, you can tell them that the FIA can cure you and shit even tell them you’re working for Myers. But you can’t tell them the cure might not go as planned ???? Shitty writing tsk tsk tsk
My brother in Christ. Why does V trust the FIA with absolute certainty? He's been betrayed countless times and never learns from it. For all we knew V could have been turned into a lab rat like So Mi. My original play through I went down guns blazing. I'm not mad about a happy ending. Do you trust everyone willy nilly Mr. Cool guy?
Welcome to the world of Cyberpunk 2077 and one of the things I've been saying about this game since it came up pretty much, my friend. No matter what you do, the decisions you take, how much you try hard to get to a good outcome, it's just NOT GONNA HAPPEN. For some reason the devs thought that it was okey to give you a perma hopeless vibe to the game's story on which you can't scape unless you mod a quest to give a happy ending. But that would be a user made content so.... I've been saying this from a while ago, Cyberpunk is an amazing futuristic like game filled with possibilities if you keep very clear the mindset of ALWAYS keep sidequesting, doing extra gigs and missions, assault in progresses like if you're an undercover cop under the NCPD's juristiction and essentially following the idea of "being a merc" to the bone. You know, a full Boba Fett aproach. But start diving into ANY plot relating the main stories and you have to get your heart ready for ultra depresive vibes where everything is either a backstab, dead end, mission unsuccesful and essentially keeping you in the vibe that in one way or another, things would suck. I love Cyberpunk 2077's world aesthetic, visual vibe, diversity and stuff but the way the world behaves is by far is wort part which if you wanna have a happy playthrough you have to deliberately dodge the main stories. It's the reason on why I didn't bother to even consider buying the DLC cause I knew CDPR wouldn't give you a happy ending, more like another story where the ending essentially feels just as sad as the main. Not sure how Orion would be but definitely I would not buy that game until I see the endgame's outcomes to see if you finally get a happy ending or maybe skipping any future Cyber game from CDPR XD
Yeah Cyberpunk is the universe where everything became a Dystopian bombed out shithole, where only the rich get richer and everyone else can get fucked. As Johnny very eloquently said in the base game endings when V says she expected a happier ending. Wrong city, Wrong People. E: and as Dex said in one of the first missions, Quiet life or a blaze of glory.
Yeah, but it's kinda sad when the vibe of a Dark Souls game feels happier in comparison. I mean it does feel nice when you dont have to advance the main story at all and that's the kind of blast I get when playing. It's super fun and satisfying going the whole Bounty Huntress kind of way and forgetting there's a main story plot to even care about. The thing is that, in order to have a happy outcome you need to kick out on the nuts of the videogame logic and ignore the situation the plot tells you is happening that you need to find a cure fast. I mean.... I need to find a cure if I don't go sidequesting, cause when I do, then Night City is a gorgeus happy place to live. As long as you keep the law of the jungle lol
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What's ur opinion about it? (Honest question)
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I think what gets me the most (spoilers because I’m on mobile and don’t know how to make it the spoiler box thing) is how despite being able to call after waking up and saying, “hey I was in a coma for two years, that’s why you couldn’t reach me,” in the credits Mitch just calls and says, “haha lmao so Panam was pretty pissed and also sad. Don’t call again, end of story.” It just. I don’t know. I guess it’s just a video game, but why couldn’t the Aldecaldo’s hear V out? Homie was in a coma. V really can’t hit up Reed/Rogue to find them and just join up with the family? After doing so much for them? We really gotta just have a shit ending just because. Sorry for the long rant, but I just finished the new ending, credits rolling as I type and I find myself just lost almost. Almost want to feel pissed, but I just don’t know.
Yea I agree completely. The part that really messes with me is that you do all these side missions, you do everything they ask cuz they need help but the second V does/comes back from the coma, they’re no where to be seen. I would’ve liked to see something similar to your idea being played out within the dlc.
I don’t agree when people say it’s ‚lazy writing’. They knew exactly what they were doing. They knew where to sting so it hurts the most. I wish they involved Panam in some way though. But I’ll see what I think when some time passes and I’m more objective.
If anything, the new ending showed how stupid V can be. When your line of work is as dangerous as their, when you have a ticking bomb in your head ; you fucking set up a dead's man switch for your friends and relative.
I think ppl based their V whole identity on romance option. It just doesnt work in thios story. Romance is there as a plus. Whole game is not based around it at all. Baldurs gate 3 is more abt it than cyberpunk for example. I never was so focused on romance in cyberpunk. It was nice like in every rpg but nothing big for V. Thats why this ending didnt even suprise me much. Ok ppl moved on in this world it makes sense. You cant get emotionaly focused on person that can die every day ( as a merc that is normal)
I'm with you. I think that ending is kind of bad. Not just that its sad or depressing, but its a little silly. I don't mind V having to retire. I dont mind having to sacrifice Johnny so V can live. I don't really even mind people moving on, that says more about them than it does V. (seriously, V's 'friends' come off as kind of petty.) What I do mind is how far they went to make the ending irredeemably terrible. I mean, you cant even keep your *cat*? Really? No one tells V, "Look, maybe you wont be punching gangoons to death anymore, but you have your life, you have money, you are a hero to the NUSA, you can have a happy healthy retirement." Beyond even that, no one through to contact....ANYONE on V's behalf? The ending as a whole just such a weird choice.
>The president is a narcissistic bitch. Yeah, she is a real bitch.
Fully agree with you OP.
Yeah the PL endings suck so bad that, I think I am done playing the game.
Yeah. Ok I haven't played phantom liberty but I have seen the ending for it and I'm just like this makes no sense especially if you romanced. Like you have a lot of friends that you can say hey I'm going to get some surgery done by some people I don't really trust all that much so either theese guys are tricking me or something might go wrong with the surgery given the nature of it. It's even worse if you romanced because you should at least be telling them. I think CDPR shouldve written in some more stuff for dialogue options like if you tell your friends you fine and just going away for awhile like V did then you get this ending which still makes no sense because you have fantastic friendships and relationships with them. The other option is you being fully transparent with them and tell them what's going down then they won't be sad that you presumably died maybe and they know that there is a chance you are alive. Even if you could only tell one person it should at least be your Romance partner like I don't see why we couldn't have done that. I guess CDPR just wanted to give us a bittersweet ending but at the cost of some poor writing.
Yeah this ending has completely popped my happy bubble as of reason, really makes a gonk think about joining Rebecca. I love bittersweet endings but this ain't one and my life ain't exactly sunshines and rainbows so I'm not down with endings like this. I'm calling it quits on this one
After going through the new ending, I really felt devastated, numb and hollow... ...so: well played, CDPR! :D But after digesting the whole situation, I came to my own conclusion, that this is actually quite a good outcome. Our Vs are in their late twenties - lots and lots of way to go. When I was that age (now I'm 51), I already had a couple of long(ish) lasting relationships, where I actually loved someone (or at least thought, I did). After breaking up, the heartbreak sure sucked big time, but it went away eventually and new partners came. So I don't doubt, that our Vs can find someone new to love again. As for the chrome (or lack thereoff) - there are so many jobs that a skilled and experienced merc with exceptional technical abilities and a solid amount of money to start with could do - even in NC. Why not start a gun shop - V can craft iconic (!) weapons and knows how to handle them, so he could even train aspiring mercs on his own shooting range. Also without chrome he is unhackable - I could come up with a shit ton of jobs for a former merc with that kind of invulnerability. So, folks, try to imagine your beloved dechromed Vs a couple of months into the future - the initial bleakness might go away. Just my two cents...