CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[gurugeorge]

I stumbled into the secret ending. I didn't suck up to Johnny at first, which is probably why my relationship percentage wasn't very high. I did answer The man who saved my life during the moment in the oil fields. By that point I felt Johnny had become a good friend, and it was appropriate. I did take some time contemplating who to call for help on the final mission, but I didn't think I took five minutes.

It maybe shouldn't be so obscure, but it is one of the rare moments where an option exists outside of what the game is telling you to do. There are probably others that I didn't find, but it's difficult when the game conditions you to expect nothing outside of what is in the quest objectives.

I'm glad I did stumble into it though. I felt it was the most appropriate ending for my character.

The game does seem to be designed for you to naturally dislike Johnny at first, call him an asshole, tell him to fuck off, etc., but eventually come to like him by the time of the graveyard scene. It worked naturally for me like that anyway; the Johnny-friendly responses came naturally to me and it was a genuinely moving moment.

But there's always that cold feeling in the pit of the stomach: is this just a program manipulating me (as in Ex Machina)? That's one of the best aspects of the game, that genuinely dark and cyberpunky ambiguity.

 

[Tyrr]

Considering what he done (detonating a a-bomb inside a city) and why he done it, I can't see why anyone could ever think of him as a nice guy.
But what do I know. Just look at all the love letters Ted Bundy got in prison.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Johnny is also a deeply unreliable narrator. The flashbacks of his adventures likely never happened the way he remembers them. The source material makes this pretty clear.

 

[somewhatgiggly]

Considering what he done (detonating a a-bomb inside a city) and why he done it, I can't see why anyone could ever think of him as a nice guy.
But what do I know. Just look at all the love letters Ted Bundy got in prison.

Johnny is also a deeply unreliable narrator. The flashbacks of his adventures likely never happened the way he remembers them. The source material makes this pretty clear.

The guy still nukes a city to get at ONE (not the other) corporations; 12,000 people die immediately and who knows how many more. Pacifica's construction is also halted at this time.

Johnny doesn't get a pass for jack shit but the game hates it if you go against him. Eventually I said fuck it, guy died, time served, just to enjoy parts of the game that are locked if you tell Johnny to fuck off. Not like we have another mini-nuke staying around.

Speaking of, what do ya think the DLC will be? My guess is something to do with Trauma Tower (the Hospital in Kabuki that does jack shit), the Spaceport - maybe a Space based one like we see in Far Cry or Wolfenstein or whatever, and something with Biotechnica that might be a Soylent Green ripoff.

 

[Arulan]

Johnny is also a deeply unreliable narrator. The flashbacks of his adventures likely never happened the way he remembers them. The source material makes this pretty clear.

A character in the game even says as much.

Spoiler

Alt Cunningham

 

[Fedora Master]

Nearly 10.000 posts in the thread.
What a ride.

 

[Zero Credibility]

The game really wants you to like Johnny, but is schizophrenic in how it presents his character. His introduction gives you every reason to hate him, but if you step off the main quest after that, suddenly the two of you are supposed to be best buddies, despite him trying to kill you less than 5 minutes ago. I just couldn't swallow that, they should have made his introduction more gradual instead. At least on the main quest line you can push back against him, though even then the game often made me pull my punches.

And him nuking the city does not help with that. Yeah, I heard the unreliable narrator theory, and I think that's just the fig leaf excuse to cover for the fact that CD Project is taking some big liberties with the continuity of the setting. For example, in the source material that nuke killed half a million people just in the blast, not 12 thousands like news in the game claims. They either did not do their research, or they changed this because killing that many people (mainly guilty only of being near the city center) would make Johnny an even bigger asshole than he already is.

 

[Haplo]

Its not a "theory" about unreliable narrator. I consider it a fact. You just need to compare his "memories" with the events described in the source material. Even other characters in game warn you that what he says probably has little in common with what really happened.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Problem is that I just don't buy it as it is presented. Did Johnny imagine personally bringing the nuke, setting it in the elevator and arming it? I know memories change with time, but for him that was literally yesterday. Fuck, did he even know about the nuke in the source material? Wasn't it brought in the by the second team, and only used after Johnny was dead? If so, how did he know about the elevator part? That's not unreliable narrator, that's bat-shit crazy schizophrenic narrator.

Also, does anyone or anything except Alt-AI ever bring this possibility up in the game? Because I honestly don't remember anything like that. Victor, Arasaka and Johnny seem convinced he really did it. You'd think Rogue would be the one to say that's not how things went down, considering she was there, but I can't recall her ever saying anything about that. And then there's things in the world that don't add up, like the number of casualties. That goes against source material as well, but can't be explained away this way.

It's all nitpicking, I know. But what it all adds up to is that CD Project had their story to tell, and faithfulness to the source material was a secondary concern at best to them. I certainly can't blame them for that, but it does make the attempt at covering this with that off-hand one line remark by one character come off as silly. If they wanted to explore that angle they needed a hell of a lot more here to make it work after the whole game tells you a very different story.

 

[raz3r]

The issue with Johnny acting as a super buddy only happens at the very beginning if you do specific side quests immediately after the prologue, one in particular is probably meant to be done later on.

That said, I wonder how people would have reacted to Johnny if it wasn't played by Keanu Reeves. I think that alone has brought many people into trusting the character or just trying to please him. Personally I believe the 2077 (2078?) Johnny is not that bad, I mean sure he tries to kill you at the beginning of the game but I understand the guy, I mean all of a sudden he finds himself in a foreign body not knowing what the hell is going on. Bad reaction, sure, but it does fit the character and the awkward situation.

 

[Haplo]

Yeah, I didn't notice nearly as large a dissonance concerning V-Johnny relations, as I've seen people claim. Maybe because I've done most side quests pretty late (Panam's quests first).

 

[Haplo]

Problem is that I just don't buy it as it is presented. Did Johnny imagine personally bringing the nuke, setting it in the elevator and arming it? I know memories change with time, but for him that was literally yesterday. Fuck, did he even know about the nuke in the source material? Wasn't it brought in the by the second team, and only used after Johnny was dead? If so, how did he know about the elevator part? That's not unreliable narrator, that's bat-shit crazy schizophrenic narrator.

Also, does anyone or anything except Alt-AI ever bring this possibility up in the game? Because I honestly don't remember anything like that. Victor, Arasaka and Johnny seem convinced he really did it. You'd think Rogue would be the one to say that's not how things went down, considering she was there, but I can't recall her ever saying anything about that. And then there's things in the world that don't add up, like the number of casualties. That goes against source material as well, but can't be explained away this way.

It's all nitpicking, I know. But what it all adds up to is that CD Project had their story to tell, and faithfulness to the source material was a secondary concern at best to them. I certainly can't blame them for that, but it does make the attempt at covering this with that off-hand one line remark by one character come off as silly. If they wanted to explore that angle they needed a hell of a lot more here to make it work after the whole game tells you a very different story.

I think there was more to it then just one line from Alt. She was very blatant about it.

And sure, Rogue could say more about what happened... but is she ever confronted with Johnny's memories? Don't think so. Even if she were, would his ego dominating those events bother her?

Plus the "memory" sections for me kinda prove that whatever happened, was hugely distorted by Johny's overblown ego. I mean look, he's the action hero in these "memories", the others are just his sidekicks that barely matter. He one-shots every enemy, Rogue or Santiago barely put a dent in them. He's leading the charge. The Smasher encounter also went differently in the source material AFAIR.

 

[raz3r]

Regarding future DLCs...

Spoiler

I wonder how they are going to deal with them, I mean if V has to be the protagonist it's gonna be quite an issue, unless they go for the time with Jackie but then you'd be like level 1 or something, dunno.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Future DLC is likely to be the multiplayer stuff.

 

[somewhatgiggly]

Regarding future DLCs...

Spoiler

I wonder how they are going to deal with them, I mean if V has to be the protagonist it's gonna be quite an issue, unless they go for the time with Jackie but then you'd be like level 1 or something, dunno.

Future DLC is likely to be the multiplayer stuff.

I mean I would just do it as New Vegas did. Someone calls you up, they have a new job. New locations open up. Go to it right before the Point-of-No-Return.

 

[Yosharian]

I hope the first DLC is AI for the game's NPCs

 

[Caim]

Going by the delays this game got, I wouldn't be surprised if we got the DLC in 2025.

 

[raz3r]

Regarding future DLCs...

Spoiler

I wonder how they are going to deal with them, I mean if V has to be the protagonist it's gonna be quite an issue, unless they go for the time with Jackie but then you'd be like level 1 or something, dunno.

Future DLC is likely to be the multiplayer stuff.

I mean I would just do it as New Vegas did. Someone calls you up, they have a new job. New locations open up. Go to it right before the Point-of-No-Return.

In New Vegas you didn't have few weeks left though, I mean you can do it sure but with the relic malfunction getting worse every day it'd make absolutely zero sense. That's why chronologically speaking it'd only make sense during the Jackie period. But then it'd be even more weird because you would expect people to acknowledge what you already did.

Honestly I'll never understand why developers put theirself in this weird position with the story, if you have story DLC in mind you can't just always go for a fucking prequel or something completely unrelated. Like we want to know what happens AFTER, who cares about before. It's like they never want to acknowledge the post ending world, same with every other RPG out there, unironically the only game that went further was Fallout 3 lol.

 

[Renevent]

I absolutely hate DLC prequels...continue the story FFS.

 

[moon knight]

Game is dead. Cancel everything. Cut your losses and move on.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

The failures to deliver shit on time keep on piling.

 

[Alienman]

Pffft, don't even go the effort of producing a yellow background PR statement. Game is d.e.a.d.

 

[Lambach]

Game is dead. Cancel everything. Cut your losses and move on.

LOL

From the "CD Projekt RED has been hacked, hacker threatens to release CP2077 and Witcher 3 source code" Thread:

we had police, apartments, complete game rebalance and everything already made we swear
if only those pesky hackers wouldnt destroyed everything, now you'll have to wait till 2022

oldest trick in the book.
we have backups but it's from january 10th. since then we fixed everything and now all is lost

As predictable as the Sun rising in the morning.

 

[Alienman]

Reminds me of the thieves that stole all the code from the Project Zomboid creators.

https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...dent-the-theft-and-loss-of-two-months-of-work

 

[racofer]

CDPR failing to meet deadlines. How can this be?!