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Today I cover why there are no legitimate retcons or timeline differences within Cyberpunk 2077 and the Table Top RPGs, Red and 2020.
Recommended Video to View Beforehand: https://youtu.be/wISqBV3nmE8
Cyberpunk 2077 Playlist: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLeQC_C__1V0TYTu-CsTMyVQiM8TBgRHpS
Music: Samurai – Black Dog (Unofficial Instrumental) by DuLo
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Why do you have silver heads consciousness in the shard?
If they’re not red corning then why is he a central character in the show and in your consciousness?
wanna start play Cyberpunk so much!!! I have never played this game and I am very interested! maybe you know any cloud gaming services? I`d be happy to see a review about the boosteroid(this is a cloud gaming platform made by my countrymates), my friends told me about it. my wooden computer doesn`t allow me to play games newer than 2010 :(( I would appreciate it if you make a video review or just share your opinion about this!
I hope the DLC has us doing a deep dive with Night Corp that leads to contact with Spider Murphy. Maybe Spider Murphy will take a look at Johnny's Chip and initiates a merge that saves V's life by merging Johnny's engram with V's Neural Network, kinda like a Ghost in the Shell ending. Would be pretty rad and more satisfying than the main endings.
No offense, but how do you pronounce Ebunike wrong when they say it like a dozen times in game lol
Things we know happened in 2077 flashbacks:
1. Johnny is injured by Adam S. (And he plants a bomb that may not have detonated (it may have been a different weapon, and uploads a program).
2. Johnny is carried on a gurney.
3. Johnny gains consciousness in a chamber and after meeting Saburo loses consciousness.
I assumed he was soul-killer'd, but Arasaka may have just been using advanced interrogation techniques, facilitated by the woman with dark glasses.
I hope we get more on Silverhand, also a way for both V and Johnny to survive the ending without V having basically a form of terminal cancer
These cyberpunk 2077 lore videos are fucking great.
Great video! Started wondering if Johnny's memories were wrong when it was him at the top of the rooftop and not blackhand
I really like your content, and have been researching alot about the inconsistencies in the storyline and like that you're one of the few that have done a video about the topic. Even mention specific issues that bug me.
I happen to have more issues with the formation of Samurai, Johnny joining the army, and his birth date. Johnny was born in November 1988, which means he apparently joined the army around the age of 14 or 15? A bit young to lie about one's age and get an experimental arm installed.
Plus… it makes a certain conversation between V and Johnny regarding a 2004 Samurai gig really uncomfortable. During the mission to recover Johnny's pants.
I think 2077 is cooler if you choose to believe Johnny's memories are mostly real, so I did just that. But back to canon I feel like Red and 2077 don't exactly line up with some details simply because they were written by different people and while Mike probably gave CDPR some cliff notes on what happened and what's canon they might've had some rewrites along the way on either project and just missed some stuff.
* S P O I L E R S *
Things we know for sure. Johnny has a large ego, he seems to believe Arasaka is out to get him when this is all about Alt, Soulkiller and Mikoshi. Make sense that his memories, while dying become 'corrupted'. What's interesting is that, if Arasaka gets a hold of Jackie's body after the Heist you get a recording of him on Mikoshi, not an engram like Silverhand; so what defines the difference between a functional engram and a recording. Furthermore, Silverhand's appearance in the TTRPG is more like David Bowie, which I recall reading was the inspiration (might be wrong). Could it be possible that in some way the memories of Silverhand got overlapped with that of Blackhand? I'll go with the idea of Arasaka recovering the Relic that Spider planted on Silverhand as a way to recover what they lost of Soulkiller and Secure Your Soul program, as Saburo had a very personal interest on the program being succesful.
Fantastic job, I definitely agree that his memories aren’t reliable. Nothing about his engram is reliable
Smasher could have either watched video of Silverhand's interrogation, or someone else who was in the room (Saburo, the tech, a security guard) told him.
Did Pondsmith say it's the "same timeline" or a "unified" timeline, because there's a big difference. Unified mashes different elements together for a new canon.
Your content is so good I thought you were a massive YouTube channel and if you keep making content like this I can guarantee you will be
Just imagine that THis Crate they are speaking about contains Jhonnys body and in 2077 Cyberpunk in some Dlc we have the chance to Upload Jhonnys Biochip back to his own boddy XD FOK YEAH BRA
Great video! you are getting me so exited for phantom liberty!!
6:00. You're not wrong that silverhand's memories are wrong, but there's no issue with Smasher knowing how Johnny died if the false memories were actually true. Just receiving his body directly from Saburo would give him the details.
Heres what i think happened… at arasaka tower morgans memories were copied, seeing as they didnt have soulkiller yet. Johnny was dumped but being a rockstar some fan saved his body along the way. At some point arasaka realized they could reverse engineer soulkiller from johnny, causing them to look for him, gathering his various items along the way. Once arasaka gets johnny and soulkiller they fire him up and interogate him, this is the scene we see with saburo. Notice how saburo is the same model as the one we see get mercd by his son, leaving me to believe it was much later than 2023. Also the woman says her husband died in the tower, youd think she would be more emotional, or even slightly doubtful that he was dead. Arasaka tries to interogate johnny using morgans memories, possibly for years or even decades. However because they dont 100% understand how soulkiller works johnnys engram goes a bit mad and starts to think morgans memories are his own. Notice how johnny sees his silver arm when he takes control of v, i think thats what happened with morgans memories. Once v gets clapped johnnys engram gets reset causing mass chaos in the memory section. I doubt alt would have wanted soulkiller to be used as a body switching tool, not to mention arasaka doesnt really seem to understand how it works(the guy who designed the chip basically says so). So the johnny we get isnt actually johnny but a weird tortured ai with ptsd or something. The alt we see in the flashbacks is different to the one in netspace so either the engrams change over time, or soulkiller changes you. The fact that johnny doesnt see the buddist monk leaves me to believe that the engrams can be manipulated in some form, which could add to the fact that arasaka mangled johnnys engram permanently.
Who is Angel? Do you believe the theory that she is Alt?
I've talked to fans who didn't know it was an TTRPG. I was like "I was into Cyberpunk when it was a book."
Oh sorry you just explained it, ignore my question on the other video !
Tbh, we have no idea if what Smasher told people happened with Silverhand and his death is 100% truth anyway. He could just have easily embellished the story to massage his own ego.
Little fun fact, Black Dog is the only Samurai song not to have an associated sidequest yet in 2077. Just pointing that out…
Wrong! There are at least two retcons: the look of Johnny Silverhand and the lyrics of his songs.
Angel is a very interesting character, because she looks like Alt. So I believe that Angel and Alt are one and the same.
I'm of the idea that militech deceived johnny making him somehow believe that bombing was "his" operation while morgan blackhand unit was overseeing the whole operation… infact none seems to know the involvment of militech and NUSA in arasaka tower bombing. This + memories altered by ego and damages and we have johnny version of the facts.
Cybergeneration got relegated to a separate timeline, though Maximum Mike does comment on the Carbon plague on the radio…
Is it possible that morgan blackhand and johnny's minds might have been mixed up some how during the storing on the ship? If so or if they were for some reason merged during storage then this would explain the mixup of memories johnny has and the seeming exagerated importance of johnny to smasher during these memories.
Wouldn’t be the first time CDPR got lord wrong. Lol
I think that the part that glich out in his memories is when the editing begin, I really think that glich was on purpose, since it doesn't makes much sense how he got to the stairs, and here's my two hypothesis.
1 – the edition was part of Mikoshi interrogation (less likely)
2 – the edition was part of Yoribobu's plan (more likely)
I think Yorinobu edit his memories so he would think he was the hero, so he would eventually find Alt to fulfill his revenge against Arasaka, which in a way or another, it works, most of the endings of the main story are just like that, even if the original plan failed, Johnny's Engram was ultimately program to fulfill that mission to destroy Arasaka whatever the way possible.
Yeah, but isn't it made pretty clear to Rogue during 'Ghost Town,' that he died at the top of Arasaka Tower? I'm still heavily skeptical of the contents of Cyberpunk Red, and your theory that Silverhand's memories/visions are misinformed by his ego/narcissistic personality still doesn't really add up. Suggesting that the story of "Black Dog," is canonized doesn't prove that the whereabouts of Silverhand's death in Red wasn't retconned in 2077. Retcons like these happen all the time between these very different forms of media, considering production, scripting, acting, all of that – there can be real explanations like these that help us realize why the story is changed around. Considering the Relic being a critical focus of the story at most times, and Johnny's role in the creation of them (I mean, his personality is contained in one), I can see why they might retcon the contents of Cyberpunk Red to better explore the narrative being told in 2077.
Guy's remember what Hellman said about Biochip it was meant to transfer the consciousnesses of one individual into a empty dead body, but if Johnny's mind is on the chip what if you slot the biochip into Johnny's dead body what if the whole point of 2077 is to revive Johnny Silverhand.
'Soulkilled' should be the word, not Soulkillered.
For this to be true you have to be 100% confident in Grayson being 100% correct, which we just can't prove.
Oh, so all the inconsistencies are just bad writing… shit I was willing to give CDPR and Pondsmith the benefit of the doubt that they just weren't really talking to each other (gave an overview of the stories and that was it) but if they were talking for a full 6 months… The writing is just bad then but I should have just guessed that since there are major inconsistencies in just Pondsmith's work. (This is my biggest pet peeve in storytelling. How hard is it to reread what you fucking wrote to make it consistent?)
Edit: How are you going to make that leap? He was already dead… before any of this… In Arasaka Tower… cut in half with a shotgun… in HALF… meaning two parts. There's no way any of that would have even happened let alone Johnny imagining it… which is what he would have had to do. Saburo wouldn't have even gotten Johnny's body because it would have been worthless, maybe the chip but not the body (which according to red was perfectly preserved somehow) and unless Smasher and Johnny were actually rivals (which once again, according to RED, they weren't) He wouldn't have given 2 fucks about Johnny's shit. Hell they wouldn't have even gone after Johnny's body as who the fuck would leave a valuable chip (containing soul killer, you know, the program they wanted?) on a dead fucking body?
The confusion that people have is that yes, 2077 is a different timeline from the TTRPG but not from 2020. There was a third edition of the TTRPG that was not very well recieved and is now officially a divergent timeline. It's now called Cybergeneration and you can still pick it up from the Talsorian online store. But its the third edition that was retconned so 2020 and the fourth corporate war are canon and they move smoothly into Red and then to 2077. And we can forget that the God awful third edition Cybergenerations ever happened.
This made more sense… looking forward to the next video.
Then why in the ending where Johnny takes over your body, when V is abot to fell from the helicopter, Rogue grabs him and says "not this time, honey"?
So Adam smasher kills Blackhand, or maybe uses soul killer on him, finds out Johnny had been as well, takes it for himself, Arasaka tries to merge the two psyche’s in a new type of chip and begins trail phases for complete body takeover so that the Arasaka family can be blended together into one body being of one mind. Their rule would be through the ages using the bodies of the next generation allowing them to join the hive mind they created with the help of soul killer. Yori doesn’t want that to come true and tries to fight back feebly, honako wants that and wants the test to be on her brother rather than her so that they can gauge what the process does. Like we see in the ending with Hanako Her father gets put in the body of Yori and when V is rid of Johnny’s psyche he still has a connection to Johnny even though he is gone. To support this idea of a hive mind of Arasaka, it would be like what Alt does with Makoshi where she takes all the souls under her and blends it into her code, they basically become apart of her, their memories serve as counsel to her. This would explain why Johnny has a spilt idea from one story to the next. He has been spliced together with Blackhand. It explains the fight scene seen in his memories and everything with Arasaka. Blackhand was the one in the chair but Johnny remembers it as him because he was the dominant psyche in the test chip. It is possible they were working on two separate chips and Yori only stole the one with silver hand being the main test subject.
A theory anyways..
The entire story of '77 feels pretty damn underwhelming as the marketing and such for V as a character was supposed to be OUR insert as the player and not another pawn to a linear story. So, that's why I feel having the large emphasis of Johnny Silverhand for 3/4ths of the story to be quite irritating because your character, who you made your V as gets ripped from your hands and placed on a chess board of survival to keep V alive and find a way to get rid of Silverhand or let Silverhand live another day in some other fashion.
As sad as Jackie's death was, I have shed a tear from it, I never really connected to Jackie like the game wants you to believe. You only do two quests playable with Jackie and each are about 10 minutes each. All the cutscenes of V and Jackie doing gigs together are there to gaslight the player in liking Jackie more, and that is EXACTLY the point of the game where V is no longer your insert of a character and just a character being placed on that aforementioned chess board of survival.
I'm sure there's no official retcons in the game to the entire Cyberpunk storyline, however in this game specifically there is a sense of preemptive retcons to how V is handled as a character as I feel V and Jackie were supposed to be like a duo-solo party in the TTRPG aspect of Cyberpunk. But we don't get that.
I guess the point of this comment is to illustrate how there is a disconnect between V as a character and who you want V to be vs the concept of V not being an insert of you and only as a NEW insert for Johnny Silverhand. And this irritates me because ::SPOILERS:: every ending either makes V a slave to Arasoka or dead in some fashion. Which to me just feel like lazy writing due to the devs not knowing how to handle a custom insert character and how to implement it in future titles/DLC.
TL;DR – The Emphasis on Johnny Silverhand ripped the story away from it being you with your TTRPG style character "V".
Its. In a way explained in the game itself.. If you look to V's partner in crime who gets axed early on and how his character is after he was uploaded into Arasaka's database. The process is not perfect, so there is going to be problems. So people thinking Johnny's engram being perfect in terms of how its memories work is basically people just not paying attention. ( Obviously, yes this means there is a problem with one of the endings with Arasaka. While its considered to be his resurrection.. It really is not.. They are getting a knockoff version of him. A incomplete version of him. Though it is one that is as close to the real one as they could get. This is why both, IE Johnny's memories, and what really happened, are correct and is of the same timeline. )
I know my comment was not posted shortly after you uploaded this video, but I hope you still see it and understand what I am saying. There is a major problem with Arasaka's tech and no one is really talking about it when it comes to this. It is something that is glaringly obvious and accounts for the problem… So I am hoping this clears things up for people who for some reason either forgot or just did not notice it in the first place. Oh and PS.. Hanako also explains and points out the issues with it.. But V's character basically does not really listen to her. Though the only people who will get this explanation is if Jackie Welles is delivered to Arasaka/Victor ( They both end up in the same place if you do not send him to Jackie Welles's mother/family ) and you of course talk to her, and the engram of Jackie Welles.
lookin forward to the next video choom!
But if Silverhand died being split in half, and his body was stored, that means he was not interrogated by Arasaka, thus it can't be Silverhand, who's on biochip inside V. Especially, since he'd have no knowledge of fight on top of the tower. But, since we don't know what happened to Blackhand during his fight with Smasher, it is a possibility, that he got captured and put into Soulkiller in secret, then Arasaka disposed of the body, by disguising it as Silverhand's. So rather than Silverhand disillusioning himself by attributing Blackhand's feats to himself, it's more likely to be Blackhand's engram on the chip thinking he's Silverhand.
Or better yet. In order to interrogate Silverhand, Arasaka merged dead Silverhand and captured Blackhand, by using their Soulkiller and putting engram of one into body of the other, basicly causing them to experience what V does in Cyberpunk 2077, but accelerated. Then they put that merged psyche back on engram, once interragation was over. This would explain memories of both of them on same engram.
The biggest retcon to Silverhand's story is that the game doesn't mention The Night City Holocaust a single time. It doesn't mention that the nuke killed 3/4 of a million people and that the event is called The Night City Holocaust. This is a massive omission and one of the game's biggest flaws is that V and the entire Night City seem to have forgotten. It would've been cool to have Silverhand come to grips with that, or to have V actually acknowledge it in some way. All we hear is the 12,000 who died immediately after the blast. So there is a massive retcon in the game, but without it, nobody can really sympathize with Silverhand.