Cyberpunk 2077: Rockerboy Keanu Silverhand

[Adloquium]

For all the vehicle options in the game, the MaiMai really feels like the best, despite the setting dismissing it as a cheap barely-car.

It's compact, it has a roof, and while it's not very fast, speed really doesn't matter in Night City, because all the other cars on the road aren't fast either. I know motorbikes also have the advantage of compact-ness, but as mentioned, I feel better with a roof.

Johnny particularly hates Arasaka. Which, you know. Old IJA holdout Saburo is pretty hateable.

Click to shrink...

It's not evident from what Johnny has been saying in-game, though. As in, Johnny obviously hates Arasaka, but his statements about his motives are all aimed against corporations in general, rather than Arasaka in specific. There isn't even a declaration of "first Arasaka, then the other corporations". The attack on Arasaka was presented as Johnny going after the corporation that happened to have a major physical presence in Night City; if it had been Militech HQ, it sounded like Johnny would have blown it up too.

Now, it's entirely possible Johnny will mention the hatred of Arasaka in particular later, but that's not how the game presents it. Which makes me think the writers might have intended Johnny's hatred of Arasaka to be revealed early enough to let his other statements be viewed in that context, but the structure of the game means the player (eg me) doesn't get to know this until after Johnny's other generic anti-corporate rants.

 

[query]

According to Johnny's admittedly unreliable memories in the game the assault on Arasaka tower was primarily motivated to free Alt.
She was trapped in Arasaka's subnet as a digital intelligence and his entry into the tower allowed him to upload the Liberator program to free her. He neglected to inform others of this until the nuke was planted, much to his allies ire.

Though I thought his unreadable memories would actually come up more in the base game. Like when you're talking to Rogue or that old Samurai fan I expected that parroting Johnny's references to the past would actually lead to a "What? No that's not what happened."

 

[wickedtruth]

that was an interesting bug. So at some point while i was in Clouds looking for Evelin i also managed to:

complete all the NCPD hustles in Sato Domingo
Reached Max Level in any one skill.
Collected all of Johnny's Belongings.
Talked to Hanako
and Pulled off a superhero landing taking out 2 enemies with a berserk running despite having a cyberdeck equipped.

all at the exact same moment in time

 

[Ford Prefect]

As in, Johnny obviously hates Arasaka, but his statements about his motives are all aimed against corporations in general, rather than Arasaka in specific

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There is absolutely dialogue from Johnny specifically about considering Arasaka the worst of the bunch, and the game takes great pains to present Arasaka as the most powerful and most dangerous of the corporations. I don't know where you get the idea that the game doesn't present things in this way, Arasaka and its Soulkiller project is the primary focus of the game's main storyline. Your introduction to Johnny Silverhand is the guy detonating a nuclear bomb inside Arasaka Tower lol

 

[Adloquium]

There is absolutely dialogue from Johnny specifically about considering Arasaka the worst of the bunch, and the game takes great pains to present Arasaka as the most powerful and most dangerous of the corporations. I don't know where you get the idea that the game doesn't present things in this way, Arasaka and its Soulkiller project is the primary focus of the game's main storyline. Your introduction to Johnny Silverhand is the guy detonating a nuclear bomb inside Arasaka Tower lol

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I did not know that Johnny hated Arasaka specifically, above and beyond his hatred of corporations in general, because I simply haven't reached any point in the story where Johnny says as much. His blowing up Arasaka Tower is presented, in the flashback scene itself, as Johnny hating corporations in general, and Arasaka being the closest and most obvious example of one that he can hit.

As mentioned, I would not be surprised that eventually, if I continued on the main story, Johnny would reveal that his hatred of Arasaka was more than his hatred of corporations in general. It's just that since I've been doing lots of sidequests where Johnny has dialogue for, I've been encountering a lot of his comments about corporations in general, but not much about Arasaka that wasn't folded in to "Arasaka is a corporation".

 

[Sir Bill]

that was an interesting bug. So at some point while i was in Clouds looking for Evelin i also managed to:

complete all the NCPD hustles in Sato Domingo
Reached Max Level in any one skill.
Collected all of Johnny's Belongings.
Talked to Hanako
and Pulled off a superhero landing taking out 2 enemies with a berserk running despite having a cyberdeck equipped.

all at the exact same moment in time

Click to shrink...

Clouds is supposed to help make all of your fantasies come true. They just put a bit more work into your fantasies than they would normally, because they care about customer service.

 

[Adloquium]

Stuff I've seen that are probably bugs, but which are pretty amusing, and I don't fault the game for it:

I was driving to a point of interest (a Tarot card) somewhere in the east, or perhaps southeast, when I had to stop due to what seemed like a long traffic jam. I also heard the sounds of gunfire ahead.

Curious, I exited the vehicle and stealthed ahead to scout. It turned out there was what might be a roadblock, in that there were several Militech Security people and several robots that scanned as "Unaffiliated", and they were just... shooting. I don't know what they were shooting at, but they had flanked the first car in front of the traffic jam on both sides, and apparently shot the driver dead. Meaning they were now facing each other shooting towards the middle, and thus stray shots were hitting the other side.

The driver of the car directly behind the now-dead one did get hit by the occasional stray shot. They remained patiently unresponsive, and evidently did not get hit often enough to actually die. Everyone else in that traffic jam were also patiently waiting to progress forward, and presumably also get shot.

I have no idea what that was supposed to be. Why were Militech shooting at cars? Why did they set up this impromptu roadblock? Why were the robots "Unaffiliated"? Why did they continue to shoot with such poor accuracy?

-----

Similar to the above, I was starting a gig mission, where I was supposed to steal a guitar that was once owned by Johnny's former bandmate. Pretty standard thievery mission.

Possibly to make it more difficult for the player, there were a couple of NCPD officers stationed at the entrance of the apartment building, with their patrol car parked nearby. They were probably tagged as "hostile", since they started doing the "detection meter" thing if I got too close.

While I was scouting the area (out of detection range) for alternate entrances, I saw another NCPD patrol car drive by, suddenly stop, and then a couple of NCPD officers got out and started shooting at the guard NCPD officers. Who promptly shot back.

So there was this weird sudden firefight of NCPD vs NCPD, and more patrol cars started showing up and shooting at each other. I had no idea what was going on, especially when it just stopped escalating after four or five cars. Again, they all had terrible aim, and it didn't look like they were going to get anywhere soon. So I sneaked into the building to do the gig.

When I completed the gig and exited the building, the two NCPD guard officers were standing there, like nothing had happened. No bodies or debris from the fight. I don't know if this is the game despawning the other NCPD officers and pretending all of that never happened.

-----

I was clearing out a building of gangsters, and I admit I don't recall if it was a gig mission or if I was just out for loot. Since the building was full of gangsters, I assume it's a gig mission.

The building was one of those large garages, technically two-storey, with the second storey accessible by catwalk. I went in, put everyone to sleep with quick-hacks, and started exploring for loot.

Suddenly, I heard a crash behind me. Turning around, I saw a car driven by a normal NPC, who had crashed into a van that was in the garage, and was just there for set dressing rather than being a mission objective or some such.

The NPC reversed their car a bit, then drove forward, crashing into the van again. Reverse, drive, crash. Repeat.

My guess is for some reason, this NPC (and only this NPC) was attempting to path-find their way somewhere, and their path-finding algorithm led them to this garage. Their path happened to have this van in the way, but the NPC AI had no idea how to handle this. So the NPC path-finding treated that van as just a regular obstacle that would eventually go away, perhaps assuming it's a vehicle, and thus some other NPC would be driving it.

-----

While driving somewhere, I encountered a large group of civilian NPCs in the middle of a road, albeit not a road I was going to take. They were clearly positioned as a protest of some sort.

There was one NPC standing on an elevated platform, scanning as "Protestor". Everyone else was "NC Resident", but were doing protest-like emotes.

It stuck in my mind because I would have loved to know what kind of protest this was, and potentially joined in if possible, but it's just set dressing. The protestors held signs that had the default "The End Is Near" message. The one Protestor representative had no speech or dialogue. I don't even know what they're protesting for. There was no NCPD or corporate presence at all.

I include this anecdote here because I'm not sure if this was indeed just set dressing, or if it was part of a mission or radiant event that did not trigger properly.

 

[Obfuscated]

Urgh, how long go you have wait till Mr. Hands calls you back? Please don't say do sidegigs or ncpd hustles till he does, those are done. The only thing I can do gig wise is meeting Takemura at the docks...

 

[Kadmus]

Urgh, how long go you have wait till Mr. Hands calls you back? Please don't say do sidegigs or ncpd hustles till he does, those are done. The only thing I can do gig wise is meeting Takemura at the docks...

Click to shrink...

Try going to sleep for a day in your apartment? Sometimes you need like a 24 hour wait to trigger stuff and sleeping often helps.

 

[wickedtruth]

so after several aborted attempts at starting i finally settled on a build im happy with V the Ex-Nomad Shinobi. currently using a Silenced Nue for Stealth take downs. Automatic SMG for mid range. Then a Katana and a Sandy for main up close fighting. all in all i think ive found my playstyle and im having a blast. Just kinda wish i had more of a harder hitting stealth take down for Konpeki. just couldnt hit hard enough to drop em in time. so Konpeki wound up a bloodbath thanks to Satori and my Sandy.

 

[Ford Prefect]

Urgh, how long go you have wait till Mr. Hands calls you back? Please don't say do sidegigs or ncpd hustles till he does, those are done. The only thing I can do gig wise is meeting Takemura at the docks...

Click to shrink...

It's just a matter of waiting if you've done everything already, and maybe sleeping to progress to the next. If you have been waiting a while and sleeping doesn't work, it's perhaps worth doing the next part of the Takemura storyline.

 

[Obfuscated]

In the end all it took loading a save the next RL day. Loaded in and off the hook the phone flies... constantly. Odd. Only quest that is still waiting is Beat on the Brat

 

[wickedtruth]

so im currently running one of jackies pistols with a suppressor as my stealth firearm. dose it just not work with supressors? cause every time ive shot it alerts everyone in the area even when my target is out of sight.

 

[ForeverShogo]

Finished my playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077. Including the new Tower ending. Played a Male, Corpo V that romanced Panam. Was generally satisfied with the outcomes of Phantom Liberty's gigs. I really liked that all of them were a bit more involved with choices and outcomes beyond what you generally saw in the main game's gigs. Really, the world state I was left with is one where the only thing I'd have done differently is handle a story mission from the base game a little differently. I did something that denied me the ability to get my preferred outcome in a Phantom Liberty gig, and I wasn't about to start another playthrough from scratch just to get that outcome. But whatever. I can just pretend I got the good outcome if it comes down to it.

I of course used a backup save so I could look at the different endings for Phantom Liberty itself and decide which one I wanted to roll with. I knew that particular outcomes were needed just to make the Tower ending available, but didn't know if I wanted to make Tower available until basically the end. Though I suppose I kind of already spoiled which one I went with when I already said I went through the Tower ending.

Both of the core endings are enjoyable in their own ways . . .

Spoiler

When you side with So Mi you can certainly say there's a feel good element to helping So Mi escape. A little bit tainted in that over the course of that escape a bunch of innocent people get killed. Which, granted, isn't something she intended to happen as she wanted a clean getaway . . . But I think she does bare at least a little responsibility. Myers ordered it, but the situation that allowed that order to be made only occurred because So Mi's plan wasn't as great as she thought it was. Which is kind of a running thing with her when you both see and hear about her other plans. She tends to overlook crucial details that end up fucking other people over. Well, that, and she doesn't really seem to actually care if innocent people get killed. If you bring it up she outright says that innocent people dying doesn't matter if "we" (really she) get to live.

It also doesn't help that she never actually intended to help V at any point. Even before she made contact with V she knew that the cure could only be used once and planned to be the one to receive it. Though how much that ends up mattering is ultimately up to you. You can have V be super pissed off about it or claim they'd have helped her regardless.

Siding with Reed certainly has the immediate gut punch of having to watch Alex die. A lot of people seem to like her and wished there could have been at the very least a pseudo-romance thing with her. In my own case, as fond of her as I was I didn't really find her physically attractive so I was okay with it being more a quasi-intimate friendship. It was also kind of cool setting up that ambush of the MaxTac convoy. As was seeing more of Cynosure, the stealth/survival horror sequence, and getting glimpses of So Mi's memories both before and after she was recruited into the FIA. Though I'll admit that her pre-FIA memories actually made me think a little less of her. Some of that might have been the fact that I think she looked terrible with the haircut she apparently used to have.

When it came down to picking the So Mi or the Reed route . . . Admittedly, it wasn't completely fair from the standpoint of what V could reasonably be expected to know. The people in that spaceport getting slaughtered sucked. Especially when there's actually a little memorial area if you go back to that spaceport with grieving people. If you read the messages on the memorial, one of them is from someone who asked a woman some manner of important question (marriage?) and is tormented by the fact that they'll never know how she would have answered. During that massacre you can actually find the body of the woman in question. She has a message on her with her reply. Having read the memorial message, you actually have the option of sending them her reply to grant them some closure.

Anyway, as much as I liked Alex I didn't want those people to die. So preventing that massacre was enough to tilt me towards the Reed route. Which of course meant I had to choose between killing So Mi or keeping her alive so that Reed could retrieve her. I chose to keep her alive. Otherwise it would have felt like everything that happened in Phantom Liberty would have happened for nothing. Of course, it wasn't just preventing the spaceport massacre. Ultimately, with all you learn about her past, I came away with the opinion that she was someone who fucked around and found out. With her deciding that it just wasn't fair that her actions had consequences, and rather than actually face the consequences she's someone that likes to double down. It's actually even part of the Reed ending, where when you're talking to her you can actually convince her to stop running from the consequences. That as much as she wanted to blame everyone else, ultimately she was the one who got herself in that mess in the first place.

Reed was okay. I have a soft spot for character who are loyal to a fault like that, and I feel a little sorry for where that kind of loyalty has gotten hi. It was an amusing enough experience feeling him out.

For the Tower ending itself . . .

Spoiler

It's interesting to me that there are people who treat it as the bleakest ending. That will even call it worse than the Devil ending. Which just feels really silly to me. Like, sure, V isn't as super duper special as they used to be, but come on. V gets pushed around by some thugs they should absolutely be able to body, chrome or no chrome, because they decided to immediately run back to a place as dangerous as Night City while totally forgoing any of the physical therapy they'd need after a goddamn two year coma. V was literally asking for it. And you can't tell me that V couldn't still be dangerous. There's a part in the main plot where Takemura is stilled escribed as being enough that V thinks they could still have a reasonable chance of dropping V despite the fact that Takemura's chrome has all been disabled in the same way Corpo V's chrome gets disabled when they're fired in the Corpo intro.

Ok. Sure. It sucks that a lot of people have moved on because you disappeared for two years. It even sucks that they just assume you ghosted them instead of wondering if something bad happened to you. Especially when you have the option of assuring people you'll only be gone for about a month. But people move on. It's a thing that happens. Not only do friendships end, but ultimately you've known most of those characters for a few weeks at best canonically. It's hardly a surprise that the people who stick by you the most are the ones V was friends with long before the Konpeki heist.

Even then . . . As someone who chose to have their V romance Panam? Her reaction to V's disappearance and eventual return is hardly surprising. Disappoint? Sure. But she was always a bit of a bitch. River's situation is a bit of a shame. My V's 4.6 million Eddies probably could have helped him avoid doing the things he had to do to help Randy that left him feeling too ashamed to see V again. Judy? She was pretty happy to see that V was still alive. There was even a promise to shoot the shit over beers if V ever found themselves in Pittsburgh. Though I hear that call is a little nastier if you were a V that romanced her. And Kerry? Well, he was pretty damn excited to hear from V again. V just had the shit luck of waking from that coma while Kerry was on tour in goddamn outer space.

Anyway, I actually thought the Tower ending was pretty hopeful in how it was open ended on what V did going forward. Trying their luck at being a fixer, working at Langley with Reed, or even visiting a certain forest in Poland to chill with Misty. Heh, the Tower ending actually had me kind of wishing V could end up smooching her. So all in all, I was pretty satisfied. I'd even say I liked the Tower ending.

The only thing that's personally odd to me is that you can't go fuck up Arasaka's shit and then let the NUSA perform the surgery to save V's life. It just doesn't really feel like there's any reason not to do so other than to force the negative of Johnny being deleted instead of potentially surviving with Alt beyond the Blackwall.

==========



Just wanted to share the outfit I settled on for my V.

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As for the silenced pistol thing . . .

First off, I also tended to prefer using Jackie's pistol with a silencer. Secondly, I think I heard that there's a range component to the silencers. That if you're too close to people when you pop them it can trigger an alert stat regardless.

Then again, I think I had moments where alerts were triggered even if they shouldn't be. And I'm pretty sure some of the gigs where a location had multiple floors would have enemies randomly able to see me through floors or ceilings.

 

[Adloquium]

so im currently running one of jackies pistols with a suppressor as my stealth firearm. dose it just not work with supressors? cause every time ive shot it alerts everyone in the area even when my target is out of sight.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I don't think I've ever had a silenced pistol ever be stealthy. It always alerts at least some enemies the moment the shot happens.

I also don't know if this is intended or a bug. The range thing might be a factor; I generally shoot from just outside the range of the alert meter. (Also I don't focus points in Cool, so I don't know if there's a hidden non-perk bonus to stealth there.)

However, thrown knives have always (within reason) been silent for me, so at least that works.

 

[Kadmus]

Can confirm knives are always silent when thrown, yeah, but you do still have to deal with the general bugginess of enemies; a lot of them can see through solid objects etc.

(Thankfully optical camo is the solution to many problems, especially when paired with the 'auto-activate on sprint' perk. Who needs to be actually sneaky when you can go invisible and zoom past everyone?)

 

[wickedtruth]

i stuck a point in gag order which seems to have helped a lot. that and upgraded to death and taxes and a higher tier silencer. i have to say im loving the way this build is coming together. have to say Fenrir is a beast even with a sandy. currently running the scalpel as well but debating on swaping to the new flame Katana due to liking to using blades outside of sandy time. also spent an hour last night hunting down the solo outfit which looks good on my V though still poking around to find a look im happy with.

 

[Squishy]

Yeah, I don't think I've ever had a silenced pistol ever be stealthy. It always alerts at least some enemies the moment the shot happens.

I also don't know if this is intended or a bug. The range thing might be a factor; I generally shoot from just outside the range of the alert meter. (Also I don't focus points in Cool, so I don't know if there's a hidden non-perk bonus to stealth there.)

However, thrown knives have always (within reason) been silent for me, so at least that works.

Click to shrink...

I find stealth pistols work better than other stealth weapons, but it's not at all clear to me how stealth with firearms is supposed to work.

My character has the Lexington X-Mod2, which I have put a silencer on, Overwatch, and Pizdets, so an iconic silenced pistol, iconic silenced smart SMG, and iconic silenced sniper rifle. The pistol very rarely triggers combat as long as I headshot the target and kill them right away. The SMG is super inconsistent - sometimes it triggers combat, sometimes it doesn't, and I'm not quite sure why. The sniper rifle almost always does.

 

[Kadmus]

My problem with stealth pistols was that they just... didn't really match up, damage-wise, to a throwable? Even an Iconic Power pistol (Arasaka Juniors') didn't keep pace, at the same tier, and that meant headshots weren't guaranteed to take out a guy in one shot, which rather defeats the purpose of stealth headshots, to me. And when you break into open combat they're even worse, in my experience.

Though I don't think the capstone perk for throwables is particularly good.

 

[wickedtruth]

ok serious question ive seen a few videos of people compairing damage done via stealth and in combat and what not. however no matter the damage done they always oneshot the target. if youre oneshotting things dose the damage even matter?

 

[Squishy]

My problem with stealth pistols was that they just... didn't really match up, damage-wise, to a throwable? Even an Iconic Power pistol (Arasaka Juniors') didn't keep pace, at the same tier, and that meant headshots weren't guaranteed to take out a guy in one shot, which rather defeats the purpose of stealth headshots, to me. And when you break into open combat they're even worse, in my experience.

Though I don't think the capstone perk for throwables is particularly good.

Click to shrink...

Honestly I only have a suppressed pistol because I have the pax mod on it and I can use it to stun people.

 

[Kadmus]

ok serious question ive seen a few videos of people compairing damage done via stealth and in combat and what not. however no matter the damage done they always oneshot the target. if youre oneshotting things dose the damage even matter?

Click to shrink...

In my experience the pistol was not one-shotting people, hence the problem I had with it. Perhaps with a completed build and/or a better weapon that wouldn't have been happening.

 

[Squishy]

In my experience the pistol was not one-shotting people, hence the problem I had with it. Perhaps with a completed build and/or a better weapon that wouldn't have been happening.

Click to shrink...

I think the thing is that throwing knife downsides can be really easily perked away, so the extreme damage suddenly becomes overwhelming.

My thrown knife crits for more than 1K damage, but juggler also means if you heatshot it immediately returns to your hand, which means that in practice it's incredibly powerful and brutalizing in a way that a pistol simply isn't - you can slaughter legions of mooks with the throwing knife and the sandevestan because each hit kills. There's just a really powerful stacking effect that is not really offset by the relatively short range of the throwing knife.

 

[Pidl]

I feel like stealth shouldn't actually work at all.

Enemy netrunners can use their allies to hack you, so they are clearly connected to their cyberware, so why don't they realise it when they go offline?

 

[Kadmus]

I think the thing is that throwing knife downsides can be really easily perked away, so the extreme damage suddenly becomes overwhelming.

My thrown knife crits for more than 1K damage, but juggler also means if you heatshot it immediately returns to your hand, which means that in practice it's incredibly powerful and brutalizing in a way that a pistol simply isn't - you can slaughter legions of mooks with the throwing knife and the sandevestan because each hit kills. There's just a really powerful stacking effect that is not really offset by the relatively short range of the throwing knife.

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I think this is it; especially the whole 'your reward for landing a good hit and one-shotting the enemy is that you get to do it again immediately' loop, which, as you mentioned, you can hit pretty early on. And which works in full combat, as well as from stealth. Combine that with the fact that literally the only engagments that are at a range where throwing knives are impractical are a couple of gigs in the Badlands (and even then they're not that far) and the fact you can buy half the Iconics if you know where the right merchants are and knives are just... better. Even if you're using a cyberdeck instead of boostware, it's hard to go wrong.

Of course I suspect katanas and/or shotguns/LMGs with the right perk investments blow knives out of the water, so it's all relative.