Cyberpunk 2077

On the issue of bugs, I discovered a recurring bug that was irritating. There is a DLC mission where you imitate a Cuban hitman. When you turn on the tech they disable inventory, map, etc, and when the quest is over they forget to re-enable them. Loading from the last save resets normal behavior.
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Anyway, wrapped up my new playthrough, choosing the Aldecado assault with Panam and ended up with "The Star" ending this time.

Seems like the best outcome possible. Johnny lives on as part of the AI and Arasoka stock is nosediving. V lives and loves, and moves on with his life with his new family. With Johhny out of his head, meds are seeming to help, and Panam says they have favors that they can call in that might be able to resolve the problem. Either way, this is the ending for hope. V said that the glow in cyberspace was hope (in this case for Johnny), and so is the departture from night city with those he is closest to. Misty's final Tarot reading in the credits mentions a good life in the badlands, which implies that that hope may have been realized. All in all, very satisfying

Still, there was a certain melancholy appropriateness of watching a changed Johnny wandering off on a bus to make a new life from my previous playthrough (Temperance). As implied throughout the game, Johnny was rubbing of on you, and you were rubbing off on him. Johnny became less of a selfish **ick and started actually caring for people, hence the Kerry storylines and some others. So, in a sense, V is still living on in Johnny and the world is better for it.

The final confrontation with Alt now references So Mi (Songbird) from the DLC, but nothing of significance changes... just one response, but it's nice that they took the time to do it. Somewhat appropriate that Misty's reading right before I did the Mikoshi job had The Moon as the final card. She describes is as Mystery (ie. an ambiguous ending... will V live or die?) but The Moon was also the ending I ended up with in the DLC.... probably just coincidence, but it was a little spooky.


All in all, Cyberpunk 2077 was very well written. I am satisfied and consider it one of the best games I've played. The dramatically different endings all have emotional resonance, and it's not a case of "this is the real ending, and we through in a couple of others quickly because it's an RPG." Probably won't play it again, and if I do it'll be a good long while, but it was a preem ride.



Addendum:

Realizing I was pretty much done with the game, I noticed that I was missing one Tarot card and that it was probably obtainable by doing the Hanako path to Arasaka Tower. In the interest of completeness, I did that storyline too.


Different than I thought it'd be, and interesting. Aft the end of things, in this one Sabura Arasaka gets reincarnated, V gets Johnny shredded and the biochip extracted. Unfortunately, after many tests it seems the chip is still killing him and Arasaka offers two options: 1) Sign the devil's contract and become an engram, consigning your soul to Mikashi-hell in hopes of a future rebirth. 2) Return back to earth to wait out your 6 months.

First thing to note... there's no reason to believe that Arasaka ever wanted to save your life, for those who say "if Arasaka can't save you, how could the nomads?" I think it's just as likely that Arasaka was just using you as a Guinee pig to see how your body reacts to various changes so that the eventual Saburo reincarnation goes well. They don't give a rat's ass about V. Hanako was willing to sacrifice her brother for this, but she's too honorable to fuck over V? Maybe they got enough data to finally do it, and didn't want to. Buh bye, or go directly to soul-jail. If Relic 2.0 can rewrite DNA, then why not use a second one to reprogram back to V? Because they don't want to. :)

Another thing to note... Johnny isn't completely gone via the surgery. He still pops up as a voice in your dreams telling you to make a break for it.. This may be the difference between the return-to-earth-and-die scenario (2) in this version and the Aldacado path, where Alt took Johnny away and the meds seem to be helping.

Just to see the difference I reloaded to see what happens if you sign the devil's contract. Not a whole lot really... walk down the hallway, lay on a chair and you see a starfield/nebula as you await your hopeful reincarnation that may never come. Limbo? Oblivion? You've literally sold your soul to the devil... all rights, signed away, literally.

So, lets bring it full circle! If Arasaka = the Devil. Saburo = the Antichrist, who was dead and lives again to the astonishment of the multitudes, thanks to you helping them experiment and getting the resurrection stuff nailed down with all of the testing. Mikoshi was a repository of souls for use as guinnee pigs to get it right before using it on Saburo... and realized that Yurinobo his son was the ideal candidate based on compatibility.



Not a "good" ending by any means, but one of the more informative from a lore perspective and helping understand the big picture, where the others V wanders off largely oblivious.


Now lets go back... how did all of this start? Who actually set up the heist? Evelyn? Dexter Deshawn? Really? Seems awfully ambitious to think two street thugs could pull this all off, and why is Johnny Silverhand? Just a wierd coincidence that Arakaka Corp's nemesis is the one on a prototype chip that can resurrect him? This link makes a compelling argument that Yorinobu set it all up and manipulated Evelyn into doing it as a big middle finger to daddy. That he hoped to resurrect SilverHand to fight Arasaka corp and that Saburo's arrival threw a wrench into everything? THere are some shards indicating that yorinubo may have been trying to sell Silverhand to Netwatch to be bait for Alt. Voodoo Boys then sweep in and steal it out from under them to cut a deal with Alt? Seems to fit pretty well either way.

https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...erything-that-happened-max-spoilers.11067428/
 
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I keep wishing this game had proper VR. Both 3rd party mods with AFR are crap halving frame rate forcing potato visuals.
 
Do you have a 40x card where the frame generation may be able to help (and it doesn't do enough?) or using a card that's doing it the normal way? I definitely wouldn't be able to turn up all of the rendering options without DLSS3 going.


I reloaded from the big checkpoint in phantom Liberty's story to choose "the other" path

Sided with Sol and betrayed SongBird.

Plays out completely differently. Rather than getting out then infiltrating a spaceport, you head to Cynosure, an ancient militech base to put a stop to songbird who has lost it and is being taken over by the AI.

The bit of playing hide-and-seek with the AI spiders is irritating as hell. Died more in an hour there than in the previous 300 hours I've put into the game simply because "if noticed -> die and reload from last checkpoint." That said, it was interesting, and the final "talk" with So Mi in her "apartment" as it was slowly being absorbed by the Blackwall was very effective.

Tried both avenues regarding the final choice. First, I took pity on So Mi and let her die rather than being taken over by the Blackwall, or sold into servitude for the good ol NUSA again. It felt right (though not as good as the Moon ending), but leaves you still with your problem. You confront mayers, etc, but no So Mi, no deal. Back to NC for you. Sol can't deal with failing to save So Mi's life even at the expense of her life.


Next, I reloaded back a-ways, got the schematics for the blackwall cyberdeck (which I missed the previous run), and captured/turned over So Mi to Sol/Mayers. She "lives", and Sol is satisfied (at least initially) but we don't really know what happened to her. I imagine that she's like a Human AI... constantly jacked into the net, surrounded by ICE for her protection and only let out to do jobs. But that's just conjecture. Sol and Mayers live up to their promise to use NUSA resources and technology to remove the engram and let you live. This is an alternate way to get "The Tower" ending it seems. The downside is that most of your cyberware is permanently disabled as it could kill you. Two years have passed and virtually everyone has moved on, but Viktor feels confident that he can fix the cyberware problem, but he's wrong.

Viktor's sold out to the corps, Arasaka moved out after Yorinobu was crippling Arasaka from the inside and he was deposed, and Militech's stepped into the power void. You leave Viktor's shop and get brutally beatn by a couple of punks that think you're loaded. Trying to scare then by bringing up Padre just makes them last as he lost control of Heywood. Misty finds you and you have a nice talk. She's moving on, and wants to know what you're going to do.

I chose to remain in Night City, maybe become a fixer. THe new V (after you wake ffrom surgery/coma you are shaved with natural hear colo, no facial hair, facial implants removed, etc... looks like a different person) fades into the masses... the nobodies. It's an ending completely the opposite of "dying a legend" which is what was initially offered you. As the phone calls during the end credits suggest, Rogue says you're always welcome at the Afterlife, but maybe better to let the legend survive on its own and build a new life. That maybe not a bad thing, so you can have your cake and eat it too. Vincent the fixer will have to build up his own reputation, but V will always be a legend and bring some hope.


So about getting the cyberdeck plans... before finalizing things in part 2, I was curious about this super-secret pre-Krash deck and wanted to try it out for a bit. Only 4 slots, a lot of ram, and a buiult in Blackwall Gateway cyberware, which is basically death... fries cybercircuits and other tech, for a low price of 12 ram, and supposedly spreads. Not nearly as effective as when I was throwing Blackwall around during the moon ending, and pretty lackluster really, mostly due to the delay. Memory wipe/reboot optics/sonic shock is not that much more expensive (use purple memory wipe), faster and "silent."

As I was preparing to put away Cyberpunk for good also decided to do a few fights with Sandevistan Apogee cyberware to speed things up. If you just want to blast things, it's pretty awesome. Not as good with my perks as some others I'm sure. Tech shotguns can't really charge when it's active, but don't really need to. Sasquatch's Hammer on the other hand's slow movement speed (no dashes) gets dealt with and a single strong swing takes most things down. If I was going Katana or otherwise I'm sure the combinations of dashes and slices would be very impressive.

Anyway, I think I'm finally done. Phantom Liberty is a good expansion and I'm glad to see that they took some of the criticisms of the base game to heart with regards to quest structuire, etc. I look forward to what they bring with the sequel.
 

A closer look at the current version of Ultra Plus mod that can give you allot more options for RT and Pathtracing. Allowing for more performance customization and even going the other direction and taking the visuals further than default.

Mod can be found in the link below,
www.nexusmods.com

Cyberpunk Ultra Plus Better Path Tracing and Stutter Hotfix

Up to 58% faster path tracing with improved quality, and multiple hotfixes. For both AMD and NVIDIA. 100% of donations go to Wildlife Society for all my mods.
www.nexusmods.com www.nexusmods.com
 
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