I'm aware of all you said but that isnt an answer to my problem with the soul thing. The game implies on just quick three conversations this interpration you mentioned but the word here is imply and leaves alot of room in there because if the game didnt let room for interpretation, the only logical thing was to say fuck Silverhand and refuse to cooperate with him at all so there wouldnt be a choice in there. Also, Johnny offers a suicide run against Arasaka if you are friendly with him, what would be a strange thing for the engram to do because if you died inside fucking Arasaka, there would be no reconstruction, no magical reboots( it would be an one way journey to Mikoshi of what was left of you after Adam Smasher cut you in half), what supposedly go against the goal of the engram that is replace you with Johnny. Also, this theory doesnt hold up because being hostile to Johnny or being cooperative doesnt increase the hold of the engram and accelerates the process what would be the supposedly objective of the engram. You could to the very end, just say fuck it and ride to the sunset with Panam or go with Arasaka. Johnny only really complains if you go to the Arasaka route.
I dont care or want exactly an explanation, I care about exploration, on MotB, you get to know the story of Akachi, the creation of the wall of the faithless,meet its creator, meet those that oppose to its existance and you can choose how to deal with your curse, it was all about the curse that is the main thing on there, side characters are involved too on the way you deal with the curse and react to your choices, this is good storytelling that offers extensive exploration of the main story issue on a game. The game didnt even needed to tell the truth, only offer enough meat for me to think about it and played with the whole thing before reaching for a final decision.
It felt like the main issue of the game, your predicament and the Johnny situation thing that are the crucial thing in the game were shoved aside in favor of a series of things that didnt go anywhere anyway. The Voodoo boys vs NetWatch (You choose which of the two gets fucked but that has zero consequences on the story), remember Yorinabu was trying to sell the Relic to Netwatch... yeah, the game forgets about that pretty quickly, Evelyn dies anyway, sure, it was a cool story but it doesnt evolve the main plot beyond revealing Brigitte, honestly, it should had been a secondary mission, the Panam interception of the transport, in the end, the only thing you win is an explanation that is pratically a repeat of what was already said by Viktor, the Goro missions, they are nice and all but all of that just to meet Hanako. The game needed another entire act or had an act 2 about your problem and the differents sides and interpretations of it, the way it does, feels like they had to take some rabbit out of the hat to not making you wishing to live the only logical end to the story.
This is supposedly to be a game (who am I kidding, it is a movie pretending to be a game), so there is this cool theory that sounds so profound is nice for a movie but really doesnt impress me the least on a video game, especially one with storyfag pretentions. Let's pretend this game actually cares into being a game, on the newest CoD, there is a section on the main campaign where there is some guy telling you the events that happened on your life, if you follow the path the game indicates, everything happens as he says but if you move on another direction, he keeps complaining and demanding you return to the path while the scenery keeps changing and getting weirder and weirder until you discover you had implanted memories. Fucking CoD did this, indie games like Stanley Parable and etc but CDPR cant let you explore the nature of your condition. The only moments they even try to insinuate the whole unreliable narrator thing with Johnny is on the Flashback section but even there, I had a feeling they insinuated that more as an ass cover in case people questioned those sections because they didnt include the whole story of them because the unreliable narrator thing disappears on the rest of the game.
I suspect, for them to do what was right for the story they were making, they would need to go way overboard on keanu's lines and that would mean a few more millions of dollars so they shipped what they felt was good for what it was. The game, to me, ended feeling like a linear movie in the begining followed by walking in circles and then a rush to the end trying to do what it should had done on Act 2, so I felt meh about it . Are individual moments on the three acts that are really well done? Sure, there are (just wish CDPR didnt spoiled half of them) but it doesnt convince as a complete coherent narrative much less one that is for an interactive medium. It was far from being the worst story ever but if you ask me if that compensated the gameplay problems the game has? Nope.