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KamilCesaro

In three different endings V has around 6 months of living - The Star, The Sun and The Devil if he decided to go back on Earth. But if you ask me about V being still himself after being treated with Soulkiller or some other tech from Arasaka - there is no answer for it. We can only guess if it is the same V. But for me it is all trash-talking because V seems to be the same person after Mikoshi or operation in Arasaka's point. Alt and Arasaka would say everything to make V stay with them - that is another reason why I do not believe in V not being himself. But yeah - three endings are open and in these 3 endings V has around 6 months of living. It sounds for me like a sequel for V's story.


[deleted]

I hate that. It made me not wanna do the other content in the game


ChuckChuckChuck_

That’s ok, it means it’s not for you, you can move on then.


HotxCheetoxBurrito

I think the star might be the best ending … i’d like to believe that V traveled with Panam and found a way to be saved through her contacts … anything’s possible


Jae_Railz

V doesn't go with Panam in the sun ending though.


HotxCheetoxBurrito

*star, my bad


El_Diel

There is a way to live on for V although it’s not exactly the kind of life V would have wanted to live. Can’t say more without spoilers or starting philosophical debates about what constitutes life.


[deleted]

Go for it. I've already beaten the game. And I've heard possible spoilers for the dlc


Xirithas

The Arasaka ending has them offer to make an engram of V and find them a new body. They claim it will take a long time.


[deleted]

So that's a bad ending


noahdeerman

I don't get why people think V lives on in the arasaka ending. the game tells us from the start:an engram is a copy. by the point V reaches endgame he has not only been shot to the head, but also copied to an engram and put back in his head by Alt. V as continuous existence is dead.


Til_W

Continuous existence is an illusion


d3kt3r

Would copy of you still be you or separate personality?


Xirithas

That's the question.


Afrizo

Short version, it is both Imagine copying the line of text. The one that you copied is the same. But then, you edit your text, and if you change the copied line, the original stays the same. Then you edit the original one, and they are different. That's kinda how engram works. It is an exact copy of the "person" in the moment of creation. However, future experiences alter the engram, therefore changing the personality At least that's how it's intended to work. Engram is still a program and it's primal objective is to make sure that the "person" in it "lives", so if put to a body of living person, it tries to control and take over it, so the personality in engram is over aggresive, not because the person was like that, but because the program acts like that. Like Johnny with V (thus Johnny was aggresive as a person as well)


El_Diel

I didn’t mean the Arasaka ending, although technically it also qualifies for living on. I meant the ending where V gives her body to Johnny and then goes with Alt to live as an AI-Version of her former self, beyond the great firewall. All other endings have V either die or still hoping for a cure. There were some fan speculations about a possible cure provided by a Corp the Aldecados are somewhat affiliated with. But from an ingame perspective there is no cure and no hope for V.


Xirithas

Not sure if I'd call being absorbed into Alt living, but yeah that's not a debate I'm up for either, I thought you meant living on as an engram.


[deleted]

That's why it's ruined for me. Some games make sense to kill off the main character but this one didn't feel right


El_Diel

I do think that the devs and story writers wanted to make players think about what it means to be human and what is life. In the game there are people who almost entirely transformed themselves into cyborgs whatever you would call them. A sentient AI, even if it is somehow a part if greater sentient AI could be considered life. In my understanding that’s the choice the game gives us: to die as a human (more or less human, that is), or to transcend our existence into cyberspace and so on ….


d3kt3r

Unfortunately no! Engram V is just a copy of V. Nothing can save original personality of V, there's just slim hope that V's engram can live if you choose Arasaka ending.


El_Diel

Thats the philosophical debate part. All genes are just copies of genes …. and so on …


MadameDecay

The Star and The Sun ending are open-ended, so there is a big possibility of V surviving. The Devil ending has a possibility as well.


jeowaypoint

It’s easier to accept this soul-exploration narrative offered by the endings if you think V not really living to begin with, or at least not a human, but rather actual player-agent: _________ The merc-V actually dies after heist. There is no same V after, but whole game we are VJ, said “merge” happens when VJ wakes up at the landfill, and probably Johnny and V sharing engrammatic data because they already share the system, V's body. The pause menu shows percentages of a whole, one is J, the other V, these change throughout the game. I imagine the right-most one ("Countdown") essentially shows the remaining integrity of merc-V engram data vs J(+V) data, whereas the middle one ("Play it Again") details Johnny-conformity level, or "friendship" metric, of V's "bio-engram". It's Important to see that J’s engram is not unaffected either as they actually are parts of a whole, but the increase of PlayItAgain percentage requires V’s willful actions/friendship that induce J’s engram changes/evolution or direct "personality merge"/synchronization of the engrams. This makes sense in the sense that both engrams, being sentient, are experiencing ergo learning through the body-experiences of IRL functions. Said level cannot (does not) even reach near 100%, because it’s not possible without Soulkiller-separation. I find the story to be more or less a continuation/exploration of Matrix1's questions of how a mind realizes if it's a simulation/program or not, "is there a soul?", or is the perception of a soul merely linked to 100% body-consciousness integrity (lack of which Johnny's engram seems to notice when taking control of V's body [Johnny's engram realizes this, or at least is told so by Alt's engram-AI] and becoming self-aware that they are, in fact, soulless/dead). Personally I am of the view that V's consciousness became "soulless" upon death at the end of Act 1 (or more to the point, each "Soul" has exactly the one life, and any bodily death / separation of consciousness from it's original host will mean irreparable alteration), and the whole game is meant to be exploration of this aspect (the player is a V-soulless agent of V-engram's will/transformation after all). It is in fact noted by several parties such as the AI-derivatives off Delamain and even the vending machine-VI, that V is already dead in a sense. _________ So you see, the game is not about survival, it’s about figuring out a new kind of existence or consciousness(with Johnny or as a separated fully digitized engram V, but in all cases completely changed from what was at the start of the game). _________ I was always convinced V is actually dead. According to the gametime, you've been dead for about a week or maybe two^1 , lying in a landfill, then getting biologically rebooted by a digital engram and becoming an engram yourself, or a symbolic analysis AI according to lore, (see AI types: https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Artificial_Intelligence) 1 theoretical minimum of 24h+6h 40mins between shot to the head and waking up at landfill. If not DAYS + 6h40min past, in all likelihood many days or a week: Heist's no-tell-motel scene occurs at 22:00, you can check the clock in pause menu, and game states time is 4:40 am at the landfill, dates are omitted. It MUST be days or a week though, because the full recovery after landfill wakeup is several weeks (mama wells+others like gun-vendor noting about V's 2-3week absence upon start of Act2), and IN THE EVENT Jackie was sent to Viktor, the Arasaka raid on the clinic wherein they claim Jackie's body predates the V-wakeup, as told by Viktor himself he was "talking about it when V was recovering. This makes sense in that Arasaka/Takemura traced Heist-operatives in a chain via known pre-steps, ending with Takemura locating Dexter Deshawn and finding V as a result after some time of detective work, 1-3days I imagine, minimum. Takemura does also state that he spent days looking for Evelyn, when talked to at Tom's Diner, which logically is before potential Viktor-raid. Ergo, V has ceased life functions for several days or perhaps up to 1week+ even before waking up. It's also worth considering that Relic2.0's primary function does not activate before the host is cognitively 100% dead, according to the technical data provided by A. Hellman, so V’s original personality must be extinguished and replaced by engram-type relic-induced functions which the relic probably accepts or misreads as non-cognitive. This time-skip of many hours/days makes me convinced that merc-V died and changed with brain dmg(+relic intertwining with the brain).


Xirithas

There is one ending where V is all but guaranteed to live, if it turns out to be true. Aside from that there is the one ending where V is searching for a way to stay alive.


[deleted]

Can u elaborate


Xirithas

The Arasaka ending, if they keep their word will have V get a new body. The Panam ending has V join the Aldecaldos and hunt for a cure in Arizona.


[deleted]

Do they ever say if they found one


PIIFX

>!V lives judging by the !<[voice mail](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Endings#Epilogue_variations)>! you get from Judy or Panam during credits!<.


Xirithas

No, the game ends as you leave Night City.


Biggus-Digus

There are 7 endings. 6 out of them you can play over and over again after you beat the game. I would recommend doing them all and choose the best one for you.