System still down, but some thoughts watching others play

Back in the day of arcade games there was a good rule of thumb for learning how to play better: for every game you played watch five other people playing it.  To me part of gaming in the modern era is learning from others.  And not just about exploits, glitches and items that can be viewed for lolz, but actively examining how other players actually play and what their methodology to play is.  Mind you this shouldn't become a chore because that would turn it into a job, which isn't the point of play (though there are all sorts of playing at things, to be sure).  The best players are those who tell you what they are doing, demonstrate it, and let you, the viewer, watch the outcomes.  In my time of gaming in the modern era, I've taken the exact same attitude as when I was dropping quarters into video game arcade machines - watch other players to learn how to play better and how to utilize the game mechanics to become a better player.

As I don't really care about spoilers, there will be some involved in the larger analysis of Cyberpunk 2077 and a few other games, as well.  If you see it mentioned, I'll probably spoil your fun on a decade old game, so be warned and get out and have some playing it first.  Then watch five other people play it.

Just a quick note before getting into other problems, you would think that a place called Night City would have more than a couple of hours of this thing called 'night'.  As it is the 'night' clocks in at around 4 hours, and since the place planet doesn't appear to live under a continual blanket of dust to scatter light through the atmosphere, I would expect that during those hours without sun we would get to experience 'night'.  If you had all those particulates in the air then you'd never get a good sense of day as the sun would be this hazy bright thing in the sky.  Instead the atmosphere can be crystal clear and you only get 4-5 hours of night in Night City.  Instead of the 'City that Never Sleeps' we could say that Night City is the 'City of Sleep Disorders' or the 'City with a diurnal anomaly'.

When a game has a perk that allows one to throw knives I expect to see specialized throwing knives enter into the game.  Instead of relatively inexpensive and low damage throwing knives one is expected to throw individual combat knives which cost a bit, and can go missing after being thrown, plus if you want to throw three you will need to either enter your inventory to equip a new one or put a knife in each weapon slot and then, after cycling through those, go into your inventory and equip more of these single use weapons.  A throwing knife system should feature a stack of throwing knives, that run out when the stack is exhausted.  A stack of throwing knives could be replenished either via purchase or crafting new ones out of relatively common components.  These stacks would be able to be modded (don't ask me how, but we can make up  ways to deal with this through hand-waving) to deliver bleed damage for the mid-tier types, then electrical damage or poison damage.  The game mechanic would have a specialized feature for actual throwing knives in that they would apply their damage ever second they remained in a target until removed and that damage stacks.  A perk could be taken where a critical hit applies critical damage every second until removed.  Another perk would have knives that have hit the back be removable only outside of combat.  And, finally, the ability to throw three at a time with a spread rate would cap this off.  So a character build with high critical chance, hitting from behind, with three throwing knives would give the possibility of up to three weapons landing, and for each that does giving a chance for critical damage that is then applied every second until removed outside of combat.  Add in any fun damage types so that opponents get shocked with electrical damage, and the throwing knife at its upper tiers would become an extremely powerful weapon.  And as this is Cyberpunk, the idea of adding a Quickhack to a stack of weapons means that whatever that hack would do would also be applied, like blindness, suicide, detonate, etc. and if one has contagion active then that will spread to nearby enemies.  This would be explained as the knife having its own component, again in its upper tiers, that penetrate the cyberware system of an individual and instantly act as an unwanted piece of cyberware that has malware on it.  All of this would require throwing knives, however, and a good combat mechanic for it, which isn't in the game.  You might throw a combat knife as a last resort weapon, but it isn't all that viable for combat without specialized throwing knives due to the weight of combat knives and the inability to stack them.  Stacks of throwing knives with mods and quickhacks would make for an extremely dangerous build in the mid to late game, especially once all the other critical chance and damage modifiers are added in from other perk trees and character stats.  And using critical head damage should mean one-shot kills as the central cyberware system has just received a disconnect that is physical in nature.  Perks against robots and drones would have this be available for use against them, too.  A throwing knife hitting the spinal cord in the neck, from behind is pretty much instant death.  So is a knife in the eye or one that hits a critical input port for a cyberware system or for a robotic control system.  And as these are aerodynamic and sleek knives, even when you miss they don't make any noise as they hit the ground.  Add in a perk that removes range penalties and know you can start on the hard Knife Ninja build.  Who needs guns when you have throwing knives?  And if you wanted to make a set that inflicts only pain until someone went unconscious, that should be available as an alternative to bleed damage, thus targets brought down would still be alive but in ever so much pain that they aren't recovering any time soon.  And that would also apply to all the head critical damage, because delivering such pain directly the control system of either a brain or equivalent for a feedback in a robot or drone would be an instant take-down.  A weighted version for true stun damage could even be made...and now you have the Batman Build.  No capes, though.  Really, who bothers with thrown knives when they aren't implemented in a way that makes a lick of sense?  How about throwing away that legendary combat knife for a one use deal that means you might never recover it?  Hope it didn't have good stats on it...because using it when throwing it means you might have just thrown it away.  So cheap, upgradeable and modifiable throwing knives in stacks with each knife weighing a fraction of a combat knife and even when upgraded and modified not being all that expensive.  Vendors should sell them in stacks of 3, 5, 10, 15 and 20, and there should be crafting recipes for the Common and Uncommon types available at start, and then for each tier above that which can be purchased or found as loot drops.  If CDPR adds a real system of throwing knives in the game, then stealth mechanics will be getting a boost by giving the player options for weapons.

Onto driving.  I'm not fond of driving in games, and even horses just don't do it for me in fantasy settings.  Given the choice, I'll walk or run.  I'm rewarded for that by getting my athleticism boosted, in the only game that properly reflects doing wind-sprints.  Plus, in a hand-crafted sprawling city, some of the best finds aren't found when driving around, but when poking into alley ways, looking around in the back of trash heaps, and generally just going places where cars and motorcycles won't go.  A player who takes on the role of scavenger for the very early part of the game is rewarded for doing so and gets to see Night City up-close and personal.  Driving on the PC is like being on ice and cars have next to no real traction and their physics is god-awful.  Motorcycles are only a bit better.  And everything explodes like it is a car in a TV show or movie.  Cars tend to burn.  They don't tend to blow up.  Your cars and motorcycles are all explosive, so if one is on fire and you don't get out of it, then its pretty much going to be death once it explodes.  How about burning to death for idiots who can't get out of their vehicles, instead?  Once I get back to the game I'll get mods for making vehicle driving better.  Sadly the slot car nature of NPC driven vehicles won't go away so easily, and a real driving AI where cars go around stalled out vehicles or take alternate routes isn't in the game.  That is immersion breaking.  So is changing vehicle types when you aren't looking at them.  Heck that goes for NPCs in general.  The city is one of the finest game settings I've ever seen, and there is so much in it to see that driving really misses the fun bits hidden around the map.  Or course there are a few building...issues... where some places aren't as solid as they should be because some designer forgot to make the roof of a building a physics object, but that is a minor quibble and rare.  After casing a part of the city I'll fast travel past it, because vehicles are...the opposite of fun or even interesting for me.  Make the driving better and I'll consider it.  It is a very vehicle friendly city if the physics for cars included traction.  Oh, and if the tires of vehicles could be shot out like they were, you know, tires, that would be nice.  As it is shooting at tires doesn't disable a vehicle.  Fix, plz?

Instant awareness of enemies on a network is awful.  Yeah I got a whole bit on stealth but this...is primitive.  If, as in the promos for the game, the idea of all your enemies being tied together in a central network is a thing, then if I hack into it, why can't I upload a hack that effects every damn thing on the network?  Like a global shutdown or, in this game, reset?  Stealth your way up to a part of the system you can jack into, hack it, and then all those enemies should be able to be taken down in one go.  They get the benefits of instant comms across their network and none of the downside of it.  If designed to be interconnected, then let all of those having the joy of instant global awareness suffer the downside of instant, global malware.  These are concepts that are poorly executed, but this needs to be addressed not just in stealth but in hacking.  The contagion bit is fun for Quickhacks, sure, but if you actually get into the network that everyone and everything is using, then that vulnerable point should be something that can be exploited.  I'm sure its easier to program a hive mind response for the NPC enemy AI, but by giving it no downsides as are shown in the promos, then it is just a busted game mechanic to substitute for lousy enemy AI.  Fix the AI and remove global awareness or allow the Quickhacks to be applied throughout any network jack that one can jack into physically.  Yes this would make a lot of the arcade shooters into mass victims....but that is the point of a stealth/hack build, now, isn't it?  You aren't going for guns or explosives, or chopping or bludgeoning people, but to do the subtle approach and make the effects systemic.  If enemies can use a network to their advantage then they should also find out the problems of doing that.  This would mean that a few members might be designated to not be on the network just in case it is hacked, which would make for better game play that would be challenging.

Another thing of interest is that, like in The Witcher 3, V is only a protagonist.  In The Witcher 3 Geralt is the protagonist, and Ciri is the Hero.  Where CP77 falls flat is that there is no Hero, just a protagonist.  Yes it all goes with that no black and white concept, but without a true, hard central thread to the game, V becomes an object to move Johnny Silverhand around.  Sure you get romances and some really nice side content, but the meant of the game is about Johnny, not V.  The variations of ending are not all that good and your decisions throughout the game come off as flavor added to the mix, with no real impact on the final story.  Moving large parts of the story to the 'flavor' category with no large-scale changes to a sweeping story told in Night City gives the player the feeling that their choices have little to no meaning to everyone, including the protagonist.  I'm fine playing a Witcher, who is just the Protagonist and who has only a few times he can meaningfully change his future life.  But for V there are fewer than in The Witcher 3, and the only DIY ending is locked behind a certain set of dialogue choices.  By level 35 I knew I could probably pull off an infiltration/invasion of Arasaka on my own, and should have that option not as an ending deal but at any time during the damned game.  It is an artificial restriction to push the story to a few conclusions, and the player isn't allowed to actually get that choice save for making the right choices in dialogue earlier in the game.  An Open World should allow for creativity by the players to figure out what to do and how to do it, and that includes wrecking the main plot and getting things done early that they are pushed to do at the end-game.  The scripting for the game, and game path should allow for this and grant the player Agency to play as they wish in an Open World.  If the well crafted story proves to be of no interest to the player and the player wants to set it aside or massively change the course of it, then that should have been something the developers thought through and prepared for.  This would mean that CP77 would become a horrifically complex games with things the developers wanting to have happen in a certain set of sequences either being done early or scratched off the list by the player who could figure out what they needed without going through the pre-scripted story as the developers wanted them to.  Sadly this is not the case as that would be a full-on RPG and CP77 is an action game with fun arcades, lots of combat and a scattering of RPG elements.

CP77 is in a trans-human setting with cyberware replacing parts of the human body.  The idea of cyberpsychosis, in which the detachment from being human causes a psychotic break in an individual is an excellent one so that players are limited in the amount of cyberware they can install...well, if you were in the tabletop game, that would be the case.  Not in CP77.  Of course you aren't allowed to go full chrome, but if you want time slowing, double jumping, missile launching, quickhacking, fast healing builds and have the cash, well, that is a thing.  Still there are people who over-mod their bodies and go psychotic about it: they have gone beyond what their human parts can endure.  So in a world where every part of a body, including the naughty bits, can be swapped, why are there still 'gender issues'?  That is so early 20th century its not funny.  The idea of fluid gender goes beyond just the naughty bits in the trans-human world and the old fashioned 'what's in your underwear' should have gone out the window at some point.  Don't like your current gender?  Pay a bit and swap it out.  So what if you can no longer reproduce?  You can't have it all.  I'm truly against making every NPC a bi-sexual romance target.  Going through the romances in CP77, which I consider some of the best ones I've run across in gaming, BTW, on all sides, I was struck by how quaint they are.  

A Separate Section on a Full Judy Experience

Of  all the romance options, Judy with the Brain Dance hook-up to share experiences... that was the only one that I felt started to embody trans-human outlooks.  She was still stuck on gender issues, though, which made her feel old fashioned for someone who is willing to do a moderated brain to brain hook-up.  I thought, for sure, that CP77 was going to explore what it means to truly be in love with someone on such a deep level that gender didn't even matter and being that compatible to take the risk of that level of intimate exposure would get some different form of partnership beyond romance.  If taken to an unmoderated by equipment level, a direct, physical hook-up between V and Judy, then gender wouldn't even be a consideration and Judy might actually be able to help stabilize the damage of the Relic and maybe give a new alternative to dealing with it.  She then goes from one of the best romance options for a lesbian to a woman who has stepped past all that and has found someone so compatible that she is willing to join with her partner mentally and get more than echoes of Johnny and be able to talk with him directly.  THAT would have put trans-human relationships on the map.  Sad that CDPR went all conservative and bothered with gender issues, instead of approaching what it means to be human on a whole new level.  I should not have raised any expectations, I guess, as its easier to cater to the outside pressure of 'gender' and forget that you are dealing with what it means to be human.

Here was the opportunity to open up the relationship between V and Judy to new levels not just on the sex side, which CDPR still can't commit to, but on the emotional and psychological levels.  Opening the direct mind-to-mind contact would allow Judy to see what V does directly, and share memories.  V would get more than echoes of Judy's past and Judy would get to see what sort of hell V has been through, with Johnny Silverhand there starting to understand just what sort of relationship this is becoming.  This would only happen after V approaches Judy on living together 'for real' not just using Judy's place as a crashpad with storage.  There would be options, like buying the rest of the building Judy is in and setting it up as a real home, and having V's apartment stuff shipped there and closing down the Megabuilding apartment.  Going to an Upstairs/Downstairs shared living arrangement in a building co-owned with Judy would signal that path of deeper commitment going forward.  Alternatively the couple could start to look at alternative digs, that would suit both of them with V given lifepath options that basically can outline how V sees this.  For a Corpo the line would be something like, 'money can't buy what we have and nothing is taking that away from us'.  A Street Kid would have something like, 'I never expected to find someone I could trust...<and then tell Judy their real name>'.  And for the Nomad, it would be along the lines of, 'Judy I like to live out of a tent, but a home, that is where you are.'  Makes me wish that there were some Persona 4 game mechanics for Judy...'You have achieved Level 7 of the Magician Social Link with Judy!'

The next part of The Full Judy is partnership, and helping Judy find work.  Yeah she has cash to fall back on, but she needs some gigs.  Choices are variable, but after seeing what V does, Judy might become your first real field companion when lets V know that she can't live with V taking those risks alone.  A love that goes beyond just the physical and mental, and now starts to get risky.  'You have achieved Level 8 of the Magician Social Link with Judy!'  OK, I'll stop that, but you should get the idea.  Even a normal job of BD gigs will get this, but there are benefits to even FWB's, though the two of you are way, way past FWB at this point.  Next up is intro to the Aldocaldos and the new family.  Judy can ride along on this and become an integral part of it.  In fact after getting a place together, Judy might be a bit shy and say that she actually gets living out of a tent...and after rescuing Saul she may start to feel that this is a family she wants to be in.  You get a home from home, with Judy.  But before that there is tracking down the designer of the prototype Relic and at this point, Judy can be given the blueprints and documentation and she will start a Soft Burn path.  At the end of it, there will be a necessary part of getting a robot (and I have seen police robots taking a smoke break!) and doing a soft deactivation of the Relic.  As Judy will explain it, once the engrams are shifted out, the Relic will deactivate as it has no ability to change the host because that depends on an active construct.  Johnny gets to be a robot for a bit, and the two of you get to take care of your new robotic Johnny Silverhand.  Getting robotic augments shouldn't be so difficult and, over time, Johnny can become a formidable construct enabled robot.  You now have the strange and bewildering team of a Solo, a BD specialist and a Rockerboy Robot.  Give that robot a guitar and he can play!  And smoke, too.  That is one glitch I'll just take as canon, tyvm.  The idea of robots having their own union...ahhh...the things CDPR missed!  Cyberpunk the land where some robots want to be more like humans and some humans want to be more like robots.  Too bad they didn't decide to run with that.  Still a Soft Burn yields a V with fully intact cyberware, no damage and natural processes starting to repair what the Relic did.  V is free, but with commitments.  And Johnny Silverhand has gotten to experience what love actually means on a level he never even thought was possible.  He will have regrets. Many, many regrets.  And the three of you have earned trust mutually to be able to participate in three-way activities that make sex seem archaic.  This could be the Rehab of Johnny Silverhand.  Mind you Rogue might be a bit put off by a Robotic Johnny, but...well, parts are available, you know?  And the moment Rogue understands, truly understands what is happening with the three of you, she will start to change, too...I mean she would if this was an RPG where actions have consequences.  In the end the options taken with Judy will begin to change just what the actual goals of the game are, so what the player had started with might be totally over-turned by this relationship.  I mean, that would be a good game if that happened.

Back to dull stuff, Judy has had her time in the limelight.

The game mechanics of CP77 are action oriented with a few RPG elements.  Part stealth, part First Person Shooter, and all Action for as much as can be crammed into the game. In many ways it follows the formula of Fallout 4 which, in turn, follows the formula of a number of other Action/Shooter games.  You have a constantly ramping up tail-chasing system of Hit Points, Damage, and Armor, that cycles ever upwards and you get galleries of foes to take down to gain experience.  The Arcade Shooter aspect of CP77 is well done, in fact it offers more approaches to deal with enemies in a well presented set of natural situations growing out of the background of the game world than most games I have seen or played.  

From using stealth to hacking to melee to a complex variety of ballistics, the player is given a set of ways to deal with nearly any situation.  The game mechanics are decent, in some ways, yet lacking in others.  As an example, that I've mentioned before, the criminal/police ecosystem lacks many basic elements, which means there is no reaction in the larger game setting to the player removing major criminal activities, or even some local crime bosses.  The 'Street Cred' you gain means little beyond being able to get a few items locked behind that and the amount you can pay.  And if you gun down an innocent bystander, the police instantly know it was you and teleport in to take you down, just like in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.  That is not an RPG crime system, nor is it a formulaic system seen in the GTA series - it is just a broken game mechanic.

Stealth Needs to be more than not being seen

Broken game mechanics litter this game.  Stealth is poorly done under the observation side of things as one enemy seeing the player instantly alerts everyone.  There is no questioning investigation phase of observation, which would allow a player to use their stats or perks to fast talk their way out of a situation, nor is there a faction disguise system because there is little in the way of a rational faction system involved.  Stealth is more than just sneaking around and not being seen, it also covers blending into a group, being a part of normal operations so as not to stand out, and knowing enough about what you are doing to talk your way out of suspicious situations.  I am not expecting Hitman level of competence here, and a game ,mechanic like The Outer Worlds demonstrated with a decent way to cover this sort of thing without going overboard and by making second suspicious individuals harder to convince, with no way to get out of it a third time.  

With neither a disguise nor faction system, there is no way to do high skill infiltration work.  Depending on people not seeing you is one primitive way of doing things, going all the way back to D&D, but since those days what stealth means and how it is done as a game mechanic have improved.  Stealth via social engineering, getting to know someone who can give you internal details of a situation would mean being able to better infiltrate and disguise oneself to perform stealth operations.  In CP77 that should include false ID shards or one taken off of known but absent individuals, and those shards would allow the local network to identify an individual as part of an authorized group of users. That is an Identify Friend/Foe or IFF system.  A good disguise, a shard to keep the IFF system happy will mean less suspicion even if one is observed and turn that red eye seeing the player into a yellow one: so long as you keep to duties and places appropriate for the disguise, no suspicion will be aroused.

Stealth is not a single vector system in modern games, and even in desktop group games the capability of alternative forms of stealth existed, especially if the Game Master who ran a set of scenarios in a world of their own design added them in.  Knowing who to talk to, what was necessary to get through a scenario, prepare for it and then execute on it was a very important part of player planning, and those GMs who enforced rules on sleep, food, water, training and finding equipment got players used to preparing for upcoming adventures.  In the future all of that is unknown save for one particular mission.

Single Mission Mechanics Are Insane.

A good game uses an introductory system to get the player used to the game mechanics of the entire game.  The first mission of any size, and you can do smaller ones before even getting to it, features things that are rarely seen elsewhere in the game.  And before going on, it is necessary to note that in most any RPG there are options for a player to run on their own, and even take on an entire large mission without any help at all.  That group falls under the Solo Mercenary tag in CP77, and you actually have to run as a Solo throughout most of the game.  Solos don't always work alone, of course, and that will be taken as a given.

Going into your first major mission you have a compatriot who has been contacted by a Fixer, a person who arranges for jobs to get done for a client.  They are the intermediary between those with money wanting a job done and those who can do them.  Unless running as a Street Kid, this will be only one out of two times you will need to do this in the entire game.  The majority, over 95% of all missions you run Solo, with no help at all.  Your first task is to get a robot from a street gang's headquarters, and there are lots of ways you can do this...all of them involve your friend.  As far as I can see, and I may be wrong on this, there is no way to get into that HQ alone using stealth, tech or cyber hacking, or plain old brute strength.  One of the core parts of RPGs is giving the player Agency to try different ways of playing the game.  In this case the player is railroaded into having to go through a scripted set of sequences with their compatriot to get the robot in question.

In a game that was to feature advanced game mechanics, loads of player agency, and the ability to get through the game your way, that vital Agency is removed.

In the true introductory, very first mission, you and your compatriot work with a Net Runner who helps to get a few things done for low level Mercs, and acts as a bit of a mission overseer.  I'm actually fine with that.  She returns for the Main Mission, which seems to imply that for missions it is important to have someone in contact with you that has specialized skills you lack.  That actually makes sense, and during the game you should be making important contacts between organizations to find reliable individuals willing to work with you to help out on missions for a cut of the payout.  I actually wish that was in the game as it would require a number of social systems, social venues and a way to interact with people and make friends who knew people.  That would be very fun and require some social skills and possibly their own skill tree sub-system.  That would be very 'Next Gen' in synthesizing older game mechanics like factions, and including social setting mechanics as a way to handle faction interaction and individual interaction within factions.  Who you know would become just as if not more important than what you know.  And this first Main Mission does its best to reinforce this camaraderie.  Perhaps not well, true, but it tries.

Yet, outside of only a couple of missions, this sort of 'build your own team' concept is thrown out the window, yet it appears to be a very, very important thing since it is stressed right at the very beginning of the game when you are supposed to be learning how the game works.  Fixers, people willing to help out, getting specialized equipment for missions for a team...if that were how the entire game ran for the vast majority of all missions, then CDP and CDPR would have had an award winning game on Day 1.  Some players would just mainline the story, of course, and show that it wasn't all that hard.  Players who actually played the game would be discovering systems, places, interactions, and learn how to make friends and influence people on their slow rise from lowly Solo to well known Merc who has all eyes on them the moment they enter a room.  Street Cred would reflect this and NPCs would be heard whispering about jobs of interest to them that you had pulled off.  And these would open more opportunities on the Main Story and begin to offer more and more alternatives on how to approach it.  That would even allow for thinking outside of the box on the way most people would complete the game and give alternatives that would remove the trope of 'you only have so long to live' deal and allow the player to move forward to other objectives due to the choices they made.

An Example of a Missed Alternative

After completing some loyalty missions for a Nomad Clan, you ask them for help on getting someone important off of an armored air transport.  They agree and you go with their top person to rig up a system of electrical discharges from solar power storage systems that will knock out the electronics of the convoy so that the person you want to get will be made available after defeating the surviving guards and robots.  During that rigging, as the EMP is powering up, you feel physical effects throughout your Cyberware systems.  More critically, the biochip housing the cyber engrams that is slowly converting your body and getting rid of you, it feels extreme pain directly because it is, for all intents and purposes, a piece of Cyberware.

When playing this, I felt that this would lead to a brand new pathway in the game: EMP removal of the Construct and the biochip.

The player would consult with Ripperdocs, get opinions and go in with the basic knowledge that this will work but the consequences would be major and they might even be crippled for life if not outright die beyond recovery.  Assume some base Body stat is required, like 8 maybe, to ensure some form of survival.  The player could go ahead with this in an attempt to save their body from more damage and get rid of the Cyberware doing this.  The character goes under, goes to sleep, and wakes up and finds that systems have had to been replaced as any Cyberware they had was burned out by the procedure.  Further they are limited to basic Cyberware eyes and a basic Cyberdeck as most of the bandwidth across their systems has been burned out.  Further there would be no capability for brain augmentation Cyberware or anything dealing with the neurological system.  The player would be stuck with a basic 2 slot Cyberdeck.  And everywhere else on their body they would only have one slot for Cyberware, save where there was only one slot to begin with, where they would have no slots available, including the hands.  But there would be a bonus of not enough bandwidth for others using Quickhacks to get into this highly degraded system. While the active deterioration of the body has ceased and normal cellular repair is ongoing, and the biochip was removed. The player would find out that the Construct had adapted enough to still be resident in their mind, however, which is an unexpected consequence.

That would open up a whole new set of pathways, which could include coming to terms with this Construct and slowly meshing personalities together.  Of course the missions to remove the Construct would still be available, but the player character would now be very, very restricted in what they could do and use in the way of equipment and skills. Then there would also be the idea that as your body repaired itself, the Construct would begin to slowly be degraded and removed by your mind, and wanting to find some other way to exist before it is killed off.  Since robots are a thing in CP77, using a skilled Ripperdoc and Net Runner could lead to the Construct getting rehoused in a temporary mechanical system with a view towards a longer term solution of how to shift it to a new biological framework.  Maybe this would entail finding personal effects of the body of the Construct when it was human and getting enough DNA together to clone a new body.  That would entail a whole new set of missions similar to the original one, but now with a robotic compatriot seeking to become human again through the mental transference system seen in the game.  The player would walk out of that still crippled, but with a new friend who has the ability of forging a new life thanks to your hard work.

A burnt out Cyberware system is seen in the game with one character, and he never attempts to deal with it, as it was a very targeted form of burnout that has rendered the entire system inoperable for any purpose.  Yet there must be older systems, legacy systems, that didn't require implanting at least for the Cyberdeck.  The game material even indicates that early Cyberdecks were external pieces of equipment, and given the amount of junk the player can come across, having a few pieces of apparent junk that are marked as Antique Cyberware that can't be scrapped would allow a player to begin piecing together an older, external set of systems to augment their limited capacity.  At that point the player would be in the situation of a Retro-Cyberpunk run and might even decide to go fully Retro to get more Street Cred and show that Old School still works.  Modern Quckhack shards would require an adapter to run on an external Cyberdeck, and the external deck, itself, would need to be jacked in to one of the two slots in the modern Cyberdeck to function as an auxiliary system.  It would still be possible to be a Net Runner or Quick Hacker, as enhancements for the older system should still be available as random loot or at the equivalent of pawn shops.  Of course the remote hacking would be much, much slower as seen in flashbacks, but that would be the price paid to remove the timer and the 'you only have so long to live' plot device.

World Building Plot Holes

The world of CP77 has lore to it, past history shards are readily available and as it conforms to older games, it should have those milestones as part of its background.  The major plot hole revolves around Johnny Silverhand (the cyber construct on The Relic chip), Alt Cunningham (the woman Johnny truly had feelings for when he was alive) and cloning technology.  Arasaka Corp. runs Mikoshi, the home of the Soul Killer system where hostile Net Runners have their bodies killed and their mental processes uploaded into the Soul Killer system.  In the Mikoshi area it is indicated that there are places that look like some sort of suspended animation chambers.  As cloning was perfect back in the 2010's, and Alt Cunningham had briefly worked for Arasaka which would give them the ability to get cellular samples from her, I fully expected that the plot would end with V getting a rebooted body with proper bioinformation rewriting the damage from The Relic, and Alt Cunningham would also have a new body available as Arasaka would have been trying to use that to entice the uploaded version of Alt Cunningham back to their labs.  She saw the trap for what it was, but with V needing help the endgame for most of the endings revolves around giving Alt total control of Mikoshi.  As duplication of engrams is a thing in the CP77 world, it would be possible for Alt to not only remain resident in cyberspace, but to also inhabit a new body which would become a separate individual.

The question of what Yorinobu Arasaka's plan actually was after he got The Relic (which V and company steal at the beginning of the game) is one not fleshed out.  The hatred for his father Saboru Arasaka and all he represents shouldn't yield the brazen attack with no real ramifications of just leaving his father's body for Arasaka medical staff to then quickly move into their care and then hooking that body up so that Saburo could have his memories uploaded into the commercial version of the removing engrams and preparing them into a cyber construct.  That is a pointless system without the follow-up of putting that construct into a freshly cloned body for the individual to inhabit and have the cloned body's neural pathways get an imprint of the engram construct.  That isn't some future technology of CP77, but one that has its basis all the way back to the 2020's and cloning back to the 2010's.  Why did Yorinobu even bother having the Relic with Johnny Silverhand embedded in it?

While The Relic chip with Johnny on it is the central point of the plot, what was Yorinobu's plan for it?  The Voodoo Boys found out about it and hired Evelyn Parker to procure it, and she went through Dexter who hired V, Jackie and T-Bug as the procurement team.  If Yorinobu wanted the Voodoo Boys to have it, he would have just sent a courier with it to them.  So he didn't expect his theft of the The Relic to be found out.  Why did he steal it?  What was so important about it that he risked his standing to get it?  Yorinobu may be an awful individual, but he bugged out to become the head of a Street Gang for a number of years before Saboru brought him back into the Arasaka fold.  Yorinobu gives his own position of detesting tradition and the stultifying culture his father livers by, bridles at the restrictions of same, being inside Arasaka and that finally has him kill his father.  Why even bother stealing The Relic in the first place?  And who, in their right mind, would put Johnny Silverhand's engram construct into the damned thing?

The obvious answer would be that he wanted to use that chip to put in his father's system, and then have confederates in the medical teams keep his father's body functioning while The Relic overwrote it.  Those same confederates would have pulled The Relic prototype out for the imprint as it was probably less well guarded than any ongoing work. The idea would be to put the person who absolutely wanted to see the company destroyed put in charge of it:  Johnny Silverhand's neurological system would have overwritten almost of all Saburo's mind, and his body would be altered by nanotech to serve as the host for Johnny Silverhand.  Otherwise there is no plausible reason for stealing The Relic.  Without the ability to upload Saburo's recent memories as his body had which had been rebooted by The Relic, and having confederates keep him under while The Relic did its job. The use of The Relic makes complete sense as this is Yorinobu's revenge on the entire company and his father who would be trapped as a vestigial mental construct with no access to his own body and slowly being killed off by Johnny Silverhand's construct and The Relic biochip.  That is sweet, sweet revenge.  Yet in the game this very sensible if entirely twisted and comprehensible rationale is not put into motion.  Yorinobu doesn't immediately go to get The Relic to install in his father's body, something that would take less than a minute as he has proper authorization to open all his own safes, and in that process find The Relic missing.  He doesn't do that.  And even with having to escape Arasaka tower, Yorinobu does NOT send Arasaka agents out to get The Relic back as Dexter expects he will.  The sole purpose of The Relic is to re-write the mental functions and the body of the host of that chip to be one suitable for the engram construct on it.  I don't see the purpose of the nanotech biological rewriting to make the body 'compatible', that feels like a plot device more than anything else and would require an actual genetic makeup of the individual to be used to program the nanotech to start the process.  That seems like an unnecessary waste of time and resources while removing the host sentient system would merely require adapting the brain which isn't a functionn of genetics but biochemistry.

In fact if such nanotech was available, it would have made Cyberware pretty much obsolete.  Where is the march of technological process from that era of the 2020's, anyway?

The march of technology process in the CyberPunk alt-history would continue, and Cyberware would also be more advanced than it was in the 2020's.  Yet data shards from that era can be directly read without having to adapt them to 2077 standards.  It is to be remembered that Cyberware is, by and large, self-powered: there is no need to recharge the system when it is resident in a body.  The player is asked to believe that this technology has not progressed one bit in data transmission capacity from the 2020's and that a chip designed for the Cyberware of the 2020's can fit easily into a modern 2077 system as there has been no advances in interface technology for over 50 years.  To put this into computer terms, in 1971 the Industry Standard Architecture for expansion cards for computers hadn't even been developed yet.  That ISA standard had to wait for the IBM PC, and ushered in the modern era of computing.  Yet that ISA based card interface was soon seen as limited in bandwidth and saw the Extended ISA (EISA) architecture being developed, along side a proprietary Micro-Channel Architecture by IBM (which wasn't widely adopted and soon dropped), within a decade of the standardization of ISA.  Later an attempt to give a dedicated sub-system for graphics cards via the AGP port was developed and standardized as well as the PCI architecture for other types of plug-in cards.  By the early 2000's the advances in processing brought about the PCIe (or extended PCI architecture) which would be both backwards and forwards compatible with the PCIe x16 standardization.  That architecture is still being used and has been one of the longer lasting standards of the plug-in architecture for computers.

So in CP77 timeline Cyberware was being developed in the early 1990's, the basic Cyberdeck was also developed a few years after that and both were available in the early 2000's.  By 2023 the external Cyberdeck is widely in use and hasn't developed to the point of being implanted in the brain with plug-in upgrades to better quality hardware.  The player is being asked to believe that there was no change in interface technology between the older, external Cyberdecks and the newer, implanted versions with upgradeable hardware.  That requires the stagnation of Cyberware data stream interface development for over 50 years as that interface must be damned near perfect from its original design in the early late 1990's to early 2000's.  

That isn't believable as data transmission standards would become an even more intense focus for development given the problems that Cyberware can induce.  We can learn in-game that some older versions of Cyberware can cause Cyberpsychosis, and that newer developments have aimed towards reducing that or eliminating it entirely.  Older systems can even be brought up to modern standards through better technology, and as the individual for this is referring to Mantis Blades, the only thing that really needed adapting is the firmware running it.    One of the problems for Cyberware is the mind not being able to adjust to the added pieces as actually being a part of their body, and with enough sub-systems Cyberpsychosis is still a problem in 2077, especially with black market Cyberware. The Cyberware that was upgraded needed to interface better with the individual, and once they underwent rehabilitation they were no longer a Cyberpsycho.

Restructuring the Game

Implementing the above requires some restructuring of the game and getting a plot overhaul, and that requires closing loopholes, tightening up the entire play system and adding in the above material. From that a new chronology and sequence emerges.

Act I - The Heist

At the very start the player gets to decide between Dexter and Evelyn, who is the one putting the job out there and she wants to cut Dexter out of the loop and go through V.  This is one of the most important decisions that should have ramifications in the game, but doesn't.  You can choose to 'side' with Evelyn, but her story is set in stone and 'choosing' that makes no difference in the outcome at all.  So, when the mission is rebuilt for this new story, choosing Evelyn will change the course of the game as V decides to cut ties with Dexter and T-Bug and let Jackie know V has decided to go true Solo for the mission.  This is a damned risky thing to do and will lose some Street Cred.  The part of the plot revolving around the robot is removed as superfluous and V has to figure out how to get into the hotel, get to the top floor, get The Relic and leave.  Evelyn has arranged for a Delamain cab, but V has to figure out the entire hotel entry part Solo.  There would be breaking in either via stealth and a rear set of entries that staff uses or by the more direct and brazen route of stealing an aerodyne and doing a daring leap to the roof of the building just above Yorinobu's apartment.  From there getting into the apartment and getting the case will also yield the cutscene in the game, save without Jackie, and V has to figure out how to get out of the lockdown on their own.  It should be noted that there is an unused side-room in the apartment and one alternative is to simply hide there for a few hours until it is confirmed that no one  is around and The Relic is missing.  Arasaka agents are sent out, but when the lockdown is lifted, V can escape through multiple methods from simply attempting to walk out with the case, to mugging a staff member who has an ID card, take a service cart to hide the chip and simply go to the staff entrance and leave.  Once V gets into the cab and on the streets pursuit begins and V finds out that Evelyn is no longer picking up.  A chase scene with Arasaka drones that have Identified the case causes a fight, and to throw them off V puts the chip in their head and ditches the case. Delamain offers a place to hide at Delamain Prime as ensuring the safety of a customer is the top priority of any Delamain cab.

There is little change to the Dexter section.  It is only down the Dexter section that the Militech interference shows up and if V decides to help out, with Meredith having a longer storyline, then there will be ramifications much further down the line.  Truly both agents V encounters should have a longer story and romance path to them, and following that gets actual benefits later in the game. During the actual heist part of the mission Yorinobu is seen going to get The Relic after killing his father, and finding it stolen.  At that point he is rattled and puts together the story of his father being poisoned and Takemura is put in play for the rest of the game. This would also happen in the Evelyn route, as well. The escape portion is the same, save that V comes out with the knowledge that Yorinobu had a real reason to have The Relic and its going missing has thrown a spanner into his plan.  Delamain takes V to the No-Tell Motel and is told to wait for V to come back (the decision on Jackie's body is postponed just a bit).  After going into the room with Dexter and his bodyguard, the moment that Dexter utters the words about Arasaka sending Cyberninjas out, one of them busts into the room through a window and V has to make an escape as Dexter and his bodyguard get killed by the ninja.  When ordered to take V someplace safe, Delamain takes V to Delamain Prime, and V instructs Delamain on what to do with Jackie once they arrive there.  

Finding a cot in the back room of the control center, V goes to sleep and The Heist finishes.  Both paths of Act I end at Delamain Prime.  And V realizes that their apartment is not a safe place to go for some time.  Hope you had the rent paid up!

Act II - Survival

With V not having been killed, the new timeline emerges and a much slower awakening of The Relic starts.  At this point The Relic can't be easily removed from V's system as its structure has become lodged in one of the shard ports due to its being a prototype (revealed later).  Hallucinations with Johnny Silverhand start, but with neither of them knowing what is going on.  What is apparent is that V is being hunted by Arasaka agents, and Delamain can start to give V some ideas of where they were seen last.  At the start of the Act the idea is to avoid these agents as they are higher level with more perks than V has.  This should not make them bullet sponges, indeed those disappear from the game as does armor rating for clothing save those parts that are labeled as armored, but due to speed, reflexes and higher damage potential, it will be difficult to take any of these agents out.  Delamain is not really set up to hosting a human, so V is going to need to get food, supplies and the basics of life outside of the Delamain building.  To do that requires finding a Fixer to set up jobs, and that requires a meeting face-to-face so V can make sure that the Fixer isn't being watched or paid off by Arasaka.  At this point there are safe Fixers and unsafe Fixers, and getting money requires doing jobs where the Arasaka agents aren't that likely to be, but that is problematical as they do move around the city looking for V.

By the mid-point of this section V will have to confront one or more Arasaka agents and start taking them down.  Arasaka is limited to the number of reliable agents it has, and once that number is established, V can start to winnow their ranks, moving across the city to try and find a safe place to actually go to ground.  Delamain Prime will always be open for this, yes, but with Fast Travel disabled, it isn't always going to be a handy place to go to ground.  New places will have to be found, even if they are out of the way abandoned apartments or inside sewer grates where some bedding can be put down.  Slowly V works out a path through the city, doing jobs, finding fixers, getting to know people until, finally, a lead to a relatively reliable contact on the fringes of the Badlands is found.

During this Takemura is also trying to find V and finally will track V down and lay out a plan, just as he does in the game.  Much of his content can remain the same, though he recognizes the peril they both face.  Thus starts the Arasaka story with the revelation of 3 factions in Arasaka, which are roughly equal parts of the company: The Old Guard loyal to Saburo and the current corporate culture, Yorinobu's faction of Young Turks wanting to break away from past restraints, and the Technocrats who want the company to run smoothly.  Each of these factions will show up with Takemura and should be an important part far later in the game.  For now getting to Hanako Arasaka is important, but during gameplay there should be missions to actually talk to other members inside Arasaka once V has gotten through Survival.

If Dexter is still around, he will have spilled the beans to Arasaka if V is on the Evelyn path, and they will use him as a catspaw to try and figure out where V is and track V down.  Dexter, by having been out of the loop for so long, doesn't have reliable contacts and when the barest hint of Arasaka association gets attached to him, he finds himself alone, without Street Cred, without contacts and without real freedom.  Dexter has played his part in the Great Game and come out a loser.  Yet redemption might be possible.

Further down the Evelyn path, actually finding Evelyn becomes a top priority and she has gone to ground.  Her story starts by going with the Mox and then bugging out for Clouds, but instead of crippling her Cyberware, the Voodoo Boys actually kidnap her, since she is the only one that knows who has the biochip.  She is actually treated well because no one knows what the hell is going on and Evelyn is a valuable contact when she reveals V was sent in on the mission and it somehow went south.  The Vooddo Boys know the biochip is missing from Arasaka and put 2 and 2 together and realize that V is the one who has it and doing anything to Evelyn will screw their only chance of getting their hands on the thing.

Getting to Evelyn should be a long pathway leading from Fixer to Fixer, crossing city sections, and generally feeling hunted the entire time.  Getting to the Voodoo Boys is the objective, and once there if V is on the Evelyn path they will be re-united.  V will need to show some capacity to the Voodoo Boys on either path, though they will go the harsher route if not on the Evelyn path.  It is possible to betray the Voodoo Boys on all paths and side with Netwatch.  This choice will determine how V gets into cyberspace: either with the Voodoo Boys or with Netwatch, and Netwatch will take care of the Voodoo Boys and get Evelyn to safety on the Evelyn path.  Still siding with Netwatch is taking a side, and encountering Alt Cunningham will require revealing this assistance.  What comes from this, however, is a tacit understanding between Netwatch, V, Johnny and Alt that the Mikoshi system and Soul Killer is far too dangerous to exist in Arasaka hands.  Yes Netwatch would love to get their hands on that, but also realize they will be under immediate suspicion by all corporations and ticking off Militech is not a route to any survival in their book.  This sort of arrangement is also seen on the Voodoo Boys side of things, as they know that if they had Soul Killer that they might be the target of a few tacnukes from Militech.  But neither of these groups have the manpower or ability to overcome Arasaka security.  Either are potential allies and can be brought in on the deal.  It should be noted that it is easier to get Netwatch onside on the Corpo lifepath while for the Voodoo Boys a Street Kid will find that they are more agreeable.

The only people that might be able to help are the Nomads.  Now running with the Nomad lifepath helps on this as V will already have contacts and knowledge and won't need prompting by Johnny to get to The Afterlife.  Getting into The Afterlife, well, that takes some doing.  A Fixer in the Badlands can arrange that after V gets a few gigs done, and as a Nomad the number is reduced to 3 gigs, while a Street Kid sees a normal amount, say 7 gigs, and a Corpo has to do a good 10 to 12 gigs and not screw up.  Trust is earned in the Badlands, not granted.  Do the gigs and that gets entry to The Afterlife and Rogue.

At some point the player will reach level 20 and the Arasaka agents are no longer out ranking them by level.  In any event once 30 agents have been killed off, the ready supply of high level people to send out is exhausted and the attacks stop.  Thus the break point is level 20 or 30 Agents.  At that point a massive boost to Street Cred is applied.

Effectively Act II ends, though the player may be taking their time doing gigs, side-jobs, picking up a romance with Evelyn or Judy or both, though the entire 'take over Clouds' is removed unless Evelyn wants it and is willing to start making a deal to get it done.  With both Evelyn and Judy, plus the help of Netwatch or the Voodoo Boys, the Tyger Claw gang that Arasaka supports can be ripped out of Clouds and V may even start on a task to hunt down all the Tyger Claw operations across Night City to remove them as a faction.

This will bring up faction affiliation between gangs as a whole new part of the game, because there are gangs that would love to see the Tyger Claws gone.  This section starts with finding gang associates who can take you to higher up gang members and starting negotiations with them.  This isn't a mandatory part of the game, and V can just decide to side with the NCPD and Netwatch to try and become the law enforcer of Night City, though this means non-lethal combat for almost all situations except immediate hostage situations.  Even with that a few gangs will still want to work with V, and new Fixers can start showing up based on gang reputation.

All of this is in play when there is a transition to the next act behind the scenes.

Act III - Burnout

Welcome to the Panam section of the game!

If you thought V was busy surviving the Arasaka agents, running around town to find out who started this all off on the outside, having to start choosing sides, learning about Fixers and getting any Street Cred, doing loyalty/romance mission(s), starting up a business for a friend (or not), and starting to feel out the gangs and learning about the factions inside Arasaka, boy, all of that is the preamble.  You Better Buckle Up!

The Nomads become the key to unlocking everything else in the game if you don't want to become a lab rat for Arasaka.  It will be made quite clear that Nomads help each other inside their family, clan and Nation, and that means doing every single damned major quest they have or doing the couple of side-quests, like getting an artificial pancreas for one of their kids.  So if you don't want to do the full Panam loyalty set of missions, then the player had better better get to know everyone at the Aldocaldo camp and find the side-quests.  Faction affiliation is a make or break thing with the Nomads and if you don't then don't expect their help even if you help to rescue their leader:  you will always be considered an outsider.

The lab rat part is a joke, actually, because there will be many, many ways to get into Arasaka, including an absolute stealth mission requiring all sorts of game mechanics played to the hilt that just aren't in the game.  What the Nomads offer is the Brute Force Approach, and if V does every mission for them, searches out every side-mission and finish them, then there will be later unlocks in the game.   The main point in this section is to get to Helman who invented The Relic prototype that V's endocrine system is being seriously screwed up by and that there is damage taking place system-wide to V's body.  For various 'reason's the biochip can't be removed as it has started to change neural and biological pathways that make it a functional part of V's body.  There were problems with the prototype and this is one of them.  What is also revealed, however, is that this process, in and of itself, is a valuable one to observe and that if V wanted to, they could present their case to a few other major corporations that would seek to study the process and find a way to remove the chip.

Oh if you though the negotiations with gangs was a thing, now comes the Corpo negotiations section of the game layered on top of that.  Yes once this information gets around then even the factions inside Arasaka will be sending agents to court V.  Takemura will want V to take a side (Hanako and the loyalists) and at the very least a good loyalty mission to get Takemura into the good graces of Arasaka can take place but  make it clear to the factions that this is for Takemura and to clear his name.  The Yorinobu faction will stop courting at that point with sever ramifications.  Loyalty to Takemura means certain endings are closed off while new ones open up.  If you don't help Takemura, indeed you'll have to kill him, then all options remain open.  It is to be remembered that in this game version he hasn't helped V come back from the dead, he is just a man who has been falsely accused of a crime he didn't commit by the man who actually did the crime.  If you're going down the 'Bringing Law to Night City' path, then helping Takemura is a no-brainer.

To get to Helman, however, the EMP rigging takes place and it is to be noted that in the game this causes pain to Johnny and causes problems with the biochip.  So if V wants to court corporations, and that really is a Corpo Lifepath deal and should be exclusive to it, they can.  The Street Kid/Nomad path offers a far more severe alternative:  use directed EMP to burnout V's Cyberware system.  This is dangerous and risky, and will lead to results I outlined before this game restructuring.  Here there is no open set of paths to corporate bank accounts, no playing groups against each other, and if you had gone with a Militech agent at the start, then they would offer not only help on the chip but in getting access to Mikoshi.  So if you're a Corpo and screwed up the Nomad path, the Militech path opens up as well as all the rest of the corporate paths.  Your choice in lifepath actually MATTERS!  Who knew, right?  That isn't to say that a bit of sweet talking and romancing with the Militech agent at the start doesn't yield good results for other lifepaths, but if you want Militech on-side, then Corpo is the way to go.

The fate of Takemura will kick off a series of events inside Arasaka corporation.  Completing his loyalty mission will cause the Young Turks to start an assassination attempt against the other intra-company leaders, and this will lead to the fighting between factions going to the streets.  Joining a faction without Takemura will also cause this result.  Kill Takemura and this will get you appreciation from the Young Turks and the other factions will see it as murder and go against them, with fighting going to the streets.  Go with Takemura and Hanako, and this will happen, but the neutral Technocrats will be able to be brought on-side as they are the ones who are aligned with the Board inside Arasaka.  Still it isn't pleasant.  There should be a tricky path available to have Takemura survive, but use contacts before that loyalty mission to let Yorinobu know that this isn't taking a side and he should chill out.  This requires buying time through a mission or two, to try and keep the open warfare from going to the streets.  That will happen, but might be because of other events some which can be stopped and others which can't

Burn out the biochip and the warfare happens as everything goes to hell with or without Takemura going back.  Save him and the Loyalists and Technocrats will start to get the upper hand, though.  Don't save him and you may get the strange mission to rescue Hanako from the corporate fighting.  She realizes that she needs to be secure and that V is the only one who can provide that as everyone else is busy with in-fighting and street warfare to actually target her during that early window of opportunity.  This gets the weird setting of a major corporate faction leader seeking the protection of the Nomads.  Welcome to CyberPunk and Night City!  This opens up the very, very  brief romance option for Hanako, and if done successfully, the new path of Going Rogue without Rogue starts.  Basically the Aldocaldo's are asked with major corporate backing if they succeed, to break into Arasaka and end the fighting...permanently.  Mikoshi, Soul Killer, Yorinobu...they all get on the hit list and if you want to finally get Johnny out of your head that is one way to go.  Though it will be covered in the next act.

In chaos there is opportunity.  The Street Kid gets brand new options of taking advantage of the chaos in Night City.  A strong affiliation with a couple of gangs would mean starting to expand their operations where the corporate in-fighting is going on.  This will have ramifications in the last part of the game, too.

The Mayoral race has gone to hell.  V might want to start Chippin' In with that, or not.  Gang warfare, intra-corporate warfare, the NCPD on their own survival mission, and the safety of Delamain cabs going to the side as a mental breakdown within the AI starts to take place so even the one place of absolute safety is gone.  But no one's going to bother you in your apartment!  Did you pay the rent?  You really should, you know.  Boy wouldn't that be a fun game mechanic?

So V can be in a few states... no a lot of different states... by the end of Burnout.  You'll need to provide help to Clouds, spend time with Evelyn/Judy or with Panam.  Then there is getting in real contact with Rogue and see if she's open for some time with Johnny.  Get the band back together while the chaos is going on because, well, isn't that part of the fun?  Murder mysteries to solve!  Cyberpsychos to take down!  Calls for help to rescue NCPD groups.  Gangs to lead.  Corpos to court.  Deciding if you want to do a massive systemic burnout with risky results but finally ending some of the problems with the damned biochip. Getting Delamain fixed, you really should since its been so nice to you.  People to meet, cars to buy and Night City slowly turning into Stalingrad.

V might just want to do something about that last part.

No, really!

Act IV - Order from Chaos

Also known as - Themes with Variations.

Just how many people are actually dying out there due to the actions V has taken?  Yeah that daily death toll thing is mounting up and your Street Cred is going down.  You might want to fix that, you know?  Because you'll be friendless or worse if you don't.  V has been busy trying to manage chaos and chaos is getting the upper hand.  Ooops.  You had other plans and life just keeps on happening.

In this crucible of Night City a leader is being forged or broken, and that individual is V.

The basic endgame starts to be shaped up at this point, and there are a few lead-ins already in place.

Burnout, at worst, leaves V with the biochip in place but slowly screwing over V's body with really bad effects that can be crippling or debilitating without warning.

Burnout, at best, leaves V with a crippled Cyberware system, a burnt out and removed biochip, the construct of Johnny Silverhand slowly being sidelined and wanting to survive in some form, but V can't be hacked any more and has options for a very few Cyberware slots.

In either event Mikoshi and Soul Killer are good ways to start dealing with things but, due to the warfare, that is problematical.

Now is the time to build bridges and start deciding what the best way forward is.  These endings have preferred lifepaths, but as players will tend to focus on a few things, it is possible to work them through on any lifepath, but is easier (not easy) on the designated ones.  You should be able to find Dex and figure out if he can be brought on-board, let loose during the mayhem, or even recruited to start a form of reputation rehab with him.  Evelyn and/or Judy will call for help if you secured Clouds and securing that district will become a priority if you did.

Hostile Takeover - Corpo Lifepath - Choose a side in Arasaka and enforce it with help either from gangs, the police or other corporations.  Or do the much more interesting Corpo Alliance where a few of the heavy hitters are asked to help in putting down Arasaka in Night City.  A properly wooed Militech will join like a shot, but they can't do it alone.  Plus they have severe government restrictions on what they can field against Arasaka. The Corpo Lifepath will yield the small companies that can get some interesting stuff in the field and if you went with Netwatch, then they are ready to cripple Arasaka's communications infrastructure.  Militech, Netwatch, trusted Fixers able to get Mercs out for a cut of the fun or, with Militech wooed, for pay.  Some independent Net Runners you've worked with or saved may want a piece of the action due to loyalty.  This is the path of removing Arasaka from the streets of Night City and will offer an entryway to the end game.  If Going Rogue without Rogue is active, then the Arasaka Loyalists will join up and make the entire thing easier...not easy, mind you... as this is now viewed as a hostile corporate takeover.  There are refugees to care for, and a few gangs are using this opportunity to expand their power, and that is a threat to getting a stable corporate environment for consolidation as a Limited Liability Corporation.  Removing liabilities and threats to the workforce and customers is a job of this fledgling corporation, and that means ending the fighting not just with the Arasaka factions, but places where corporate warehouses and points of sale are threatened by gang violence.  Actual board meetings will be done on-the-fly and a methodology to secure the assets of Arasaka in Night City must be found so that the factions are cut off from the parent company.  Secure your own logistics and agreements, remove opposition logistics and comms, and the stage for the showdown is set once the miscreants are deprived of any place to run, hide or even get a decent cup of coffee.

The Warlord - Street Kid - Gang reputation with a number of gangs is high, a couple might even want you as their leader.  Your objective is to call in the trusted heads of gangs for a meeting.  The result is The Warlord path.  You can get Militech help if you helped them out at the start, and that will mean some level of Mercs coming in to help.  Some minor gangs might ask to sign on just due to Street Cred and Cool.  The basic plan is to target anything Arasaka owns for absolute stripping and burning down.  This turns into Scorched Earth, and as critical supply buildings for Arasaka are ravaged, looted, and set ablaze, the factions realize that they are now in a fight for survival in Night City.  As with Corpo, Going Rogue without Rogue has a similar result, save that the Loyalist facilities are spared, and those people help the gangs to target the rest of Arasaka and capture the major communications center between Night City and corporate HQ.  Here either Netwatch or the Voodoo Boys will be playing a key role in misdirecting the rest of comms inside Arasaka and building the path into Mikoshi in a digital sense.  The physical barriers are still there.  A Warlord has a lot to deal with outside of main objectives, and by putting a 'kill anyone associated with Arasaka' order in place, the gangs that are closest to Arasaka strongholds will have a reason to join up.  A Warlord needs to enforce their will, and that requires a gang or two willing to act as Enforcers, choose wisely.  Gangs are not used to helping refugees, just the opposite, in fact, and as your Street Cred declines with every instance of gang activity against civilians while a war is being waged, actually finding a way to delegate this to someone you know and trust comes to the surface of problems.  The Aldocaldos can do some of this, but this isn't their gig.  Any gang looking to go 'legit' or is simply focused on protecting their own neighborhoods should be optimal for this and their respect and reputation must be earned.

War Never Changes - Nomad Lifepath - Going Rogue without Rogue has the Loyalists staging a retreat and pulling out to the Nomads.  With a wooed Militech there is 'obsolete' heavy equipment to get, tanks to repair, combat drones to get outfitted and, generally, working with other Nomad groups to start staging the Assault on Night City.  War has reared its ugly head and the veterans in the Nomad camps have heard its call.  The Nomads have had it with the source of the Shiv in the somewhat psychotic outcasts Night City produces and that must end.  Arasaka must go, Soul Killer must be destroyed and those souls kept confined by Arasaka must be set free.  V lets gang contacts know that if they join up they will be appreciated.  You deliver the message to the gangs openly: "If you help you will be appreciated and respected. If you "get in the way, you will be crushed. And if you do neither you might survive, but no one will ever trust you on anything ever again because you are cowards."  A few demonstration projects on a gang or two by having their headquarters leveled and their people run down in the street by cars, tanks or chased down by drones should start to get the message across.  The Nomad endgame is now in play and heaven help anyone who stands in their way.  The Nomads will help civilians to leave, set up refugee services as they roll through districts and clear them of opposition.  This isn't meant to pacify Night City, it is meant to end the insanity and deliver the message that Night City must clean up its act.  The objectives are to eliminate Arasaka non-compliant factions, take their powerbase and resources, and add those resources to the fight.  Safe paths through the city will be designated and secured with any gangs that sign on, Mercs, the NCPD once they understand what is happening and get out of the way, and any help companies can send in logistical aid.  War is rough, outcomes are rough, but in the end a Peace Agreement will be signed by those that signed up and those that have been removed as combatants.  You would prefer a civil government be stood up, but the Peace Agreement will need to be signed by all sides and include a representative body and Mayor that actually have backing.  What you broadcast as the reasons to go to war are the basis for this agreement, and those put in charge in the aftermath will see exactly how hard the job of getting order in Night City is.  That is their problem, not yours.

The Law Has Arrived - Any lifepath -  That Heist has caused problems and the open warfare of Arasaka factions just doesn't sit right with you.  Deep inside you see the suffering because you have had to cause some of your own to Survive.  Night City is going lawless and there is no justice to be had anywhere.  You've had enough of it all: the violence, the death, the murders and the warfare going on.  You were the one that started this ball rolling and now you realize that you must end it and bring Justice to Night City.  Justice is blind, but you can't close your eyes to what is going on.  You have gotten appreciation from the NCPD when you helped take down organized crime and gang incidents, and on missions where you brought in kidnap victims.  While they may have been the opposition for a few missions, you have steered clear of association with the worst gangs and have done your best to bring just a bit of peace to Watson so you can get to your apartment and not be assaulted.  This needs to be done across all Night City, and you have a plan to do it.  A new game mechanic will appear where areas in a black overlay will appear on the map - those are war zones.  Red map areas are where gangs are going wild and the NCPD can do nothing about them.  Yellow map zones are those that have had organized crime activity addressed, but gang fighting and victimizing are still going on.  Green zones are those that are tenuously cleared with no apparent fighting.  Blue zones are the goal: no gang activity, no organized crime, and the NCPD are able to deploy personnel to keep it that way.  The goal is to remove the Black and paint the map Blue - because the fighting doesn't end with Arasaka, not by any means.  This is the most difficult endgame available as it requires clearing all NCPD noted incidents from the map, bringing open combatants in to be judged and are thus non-lethal, and it requires working with the NCPD, friendly gangs, corporations willing to support you like Militech if they were wooed, and any friendly Fixer and Merc willing to sign up even for small jobs.  You will no longer be fighting alone, though you will end up taking point:  Justice has a sword and you are at the point of that sword.  You'll get added Street Cred for everyone taken in ALIVE to be judged.  Going Rogue without Rogue gets you Arasaka support and Hanako will get a gleam in her eye no matter what gender V is.  Yes if you want to be the Hero you can give it a whirl.  Pragmatically you know that everyone you deal with can be duplicitous, and having to deal with a gang or corpo group trying to stab you in the back and sabotage your plans is part and parcel of this.  You'll need refugee camps, you'll need prison camps, and you'll need fair judges...and if you thought managing a widespread police campaign in a warzone was hard, just try to find a fair judge in Night City.  It can be done, and by your prior jobs you might even be able to get some help on finding them.  Everyone is Chippin' In, and you also will want to remove the corporate powerbase that Mikoshi and Soul Killer embody.  Justice will be served with each and every battered individual who is cuffed and sent to be judged... one by one.  If they aren't committing a crime and have no sheet of past crimes, you leave them alone.  Watson, itself, will range in color but it will be necessary to go back into Konpeki Plaza and any Arasaka held facility and put all the personnel under arrest.  Remove the gang activities and the district flickers to Green and then, a day later, Blue.  You thought the game was kidding about all those map markers, didn't you?  This is when the game turns from 'I can take anyone out' fun and games to, 'dear lord what have I signed up to do?'  That game mechanic comes with a benefit: MaxTac can now shake one group loose per District that is Blue to help.  These are only for one use, though, so designate their use wisely.  If done properly a cutscene ending of you arriving outside Arasaka tower and then a large number of MaxTac groups being dropped off along with drones and mechs should be Iconic.  The fighting in the tower is still going on, and this is the day the war stops.  Added police, friendly gangs, Mercs, and Delamain cabs to ferry the arrested and wounded out should be a sight to behold.  Bringing justice is grim business and by prioritizing properly you get the cutscene with variations.  You have given your word and honored it throughout the game, and that has culminated in doing the impossible.

Let It Burn - Any Lifepath - Night City is beyond redemption.  If just one job can lead to this, then there is no way to save the place.  Chaos shall rule forever in Night City, and you do have a role to play in getting rid of Mikoshi and Soul Killer and then causing as many problems as you can.  Your Street Cred will drop every time you do so, but so what?  The Fixers who sought everything to their own ends, they are now getting what they deserve.  Hanako will walk out once you decide this, though the Loyalists will stay on the sidelines and even decamp back to Japan to see if anything can be done to save the legacy of her family.  If Dexter is still alive, you can contact him and offer an alliance of revenge on everyone who has fucked you both over.  In the Warlord ending there is targeted Scorched Earth on Arasaka.  Chaos knows no bounds and the objective of Let It Burn is to leave burnt out buildings, torn streets, and bodies of anyone who thinks you might be a fun person to target.  This is war on your own terms and that black overlay used in the law part appears here, though with a skull and cross-bones on it.  When you take out enemies that used to re-spawn, they no longer do.  You'll be able to see the areas you clear block by block as Chaos spreads across the city.  You will become Public Enemy #1, and your acts of wanton destruction will blaze a path of Infamy for you.  The goal is to leave a lifeless city behind, a place that will be your memorial to just how one person can destroy a society.  You have no friends.  You turn your back on allies.  You are Judge, Jury and Executioner, and where you walk, Death Follows.  The police shall fall.  The corporations cannot stop you.  The gangs will die as they lived in defiance, save that will be their blood leaving a defiant stain for generations to come.  It is a sad thing to have to destroy so much to make a point.  Yet if those who caused all this had simply seen any form of sense and attempted to mitigate their attitudes, it would never have come to this.  In the end you will walk out of the smoking ruin of Night City alone, without friends... and without enemies as no one can even think of calling the rider of the Pale Motorcycle a terrorist.  Johnny, himself, will be horrified by what you're doing, and will want to leave your mind ASAP.  You are a monster.  No one can figure out why V chooses this, but it is a choice.  It is an option. Or it should be.

If at any time V dies during Act IV, the game is over and the somber ending credits begin.  As the player gets to set their own priorities and their own objectives, saves will only happen after each objective is finished.  These are generic Operations with simple numbers: they get no names and the description will be - You know what you have to do, so do it.  No saving when on the operation, and this is to be clearly stated going into Act IV.  The 'bad ending' of Suicide is available and V will be remembered as the person who started something they couldn't see through, the person who was overwhelmed by events and crushed by them.

Act V: Aftermath

If anyone takes the standard game endings, the ones CDPR currently has in the game, then the roll credits and phone call monologues start.  That's an underwhelming ending, really.

Instead there are now other options and what you put into them will lead into a short post-game section that will outline all the things still on the agenda. 

For The Law Has Arrived and Let It Burn outcomes, this will be relatively short.  Being the lawman means getting calls from people, and seeing what the next jobs that need to be done look like.  Once you get through your phone log, and decide to start the next job the game fades to black.  For the bringer of death there is a lonely campfire in the badlands and the smoke of the ruins of Night City as a backdrop.  No one can call you since you destroyed that service as part of the destruction you caused, and the fires still burn in the city, itself.  Cooking a can of something over a fire is it, Chaos rules.

For Hostile Takeover you still get the phone calls and you have... meetings.  Lots of meetings.  This new company that may be built on the bones of the Night City part of Arasaka or just be a new conglomerate, or even giving over Night City to Militech to run are all available in the post-game.  The finale is inking the paperwork, signing it and looking out at Night City which is a place that has to be run far better than it ever was.  Even if you agree to become part of Militech, they'll hand you that corporate position of City Manager.  If you go for the conglomerate or new LLC, then this becomes a board matter after the inking of the deal and you'll have to find a City Manager that is agreeable to all concerns.  Once that person is chosen and you've gone through your phone logs, you get a Delamain ride to your new home, meet whoever stuck with you, and kick back as a brand new executive who desperately needs a break and knows they will never get it.

For The Warlord you have some heads to crack during gang meetings, and then you need to figure out how to run this place called Night City.  You'll have trusted Lieutenants, other lesser gang bosses, those corpo suits and the NCPD to try and deal with.  Pragmatism is the order of the day, and Night City requires an iron fist to rule it.  You recognize the value of commerce, and that Night City needs its workforce, and that workforce needs your protection.  Who you chose to be the Enforcers will now weigh heavily on you for the aftermath of victory.  If you chose well then you will be able to get the NCPD on-side and the Enforcers deputized.  Gangs will still run their shakedown rackets, prostitution, gambling and a host of other vices, but for vice to pay off there must be principle and order.  Workers who are terrorized on the street for petty gang abuse must end, and as the Warlord you get a Piece of the Action in everything that takes place and anything that makes you look bad cannot be tolerated.  A few gangs need to go, really, but that is why you have Enforcers.  And if they have to go, well, you'll need to stand up your own force and you'll have options.  Many, many options.  There is no inking of deals for The Warlord, but your handshake is your bond and that is worth more than any legal piece of crap any corpo wants you to sign.  Deals are made in-person or not at all, and anyone waving papers gets shoved out and told to keep their crap if they can't back their word with their life.  Night City never becomes peaceful, but that was never the real goal.

For War Never Changes, V is found helping to direct people at a refugee center, and getting the withdrawal of forces from Night City into full swing.  There are a few meetings with corpos and civil governments and gang leaders, in an attempt to thrash out something that can at least get things in order for the interim.  For you the Badlands are your home, now, and Night City is a place that just has to run a bit better than it did and actually deal with the Cyberpsycho problem in a real way.  The old equipment will be manned for a few weeks, the scavenged artillery and heavy equipment at the ready, but as the other groups in the Badlands leave and are thanked for their help, the Aldocaldos learn that leaving Night City is a job that can never really finish.  Overwatch, that gift from Panam, is the new rule of the day and that is a new job for the family.  A rotating detachment will be formed so that wherever the family goes, it will keep tabs on Night City at the proper range of artillery.  You know this is temporary, not for more than a year or two, and at that point Night City either has started the clean-up process or a few pieces of ordnance that are far rougher will be used to remind Night City that it is being watched.  You've seen the nuclear and biohazard labels on them and hope that they will never have to be used.  You'll get messages and a few people V knows will come to the Badlands and join V as a Nomad.  With this job finished there is always the next one, and you are left talking with your new extended family about what the future will hold.

After that the credits roll.  And if you chose a more conventional ending, you get the voice-overs.

CP77 isn't a bad game as it is.  But it just isn't very good and really needs a story where decisions matter and the outcomes you get fall from the things you've done or not done.  It could be a truly great game, but as it is, well, it isn't bad.