More spoilers for endings of Phantom Liberty and Cyberpunk 2077
Butch:
OK, after all this, though, what did we make of Rogue's little snippet during the credits? She was all "You can drop by, but, if you do, your legend will tarnish a little each time." That implies V is still, in some way, a legend. She isn't forgotten. She is still, at least a little bit, relevant.
Also, we can say the message is "you can't get out," but in my ending, my real ending, she DID give it up. She went off with the Nomads. Indeed, the very last thing you do is "hit X to 'Breathe Free.'" Explicitly, Breathe Free. That was kind of the point of that ending, and she was able to do it with Judy, with friends, without sacrificing everything she had. She escaped, got away. Got rid of the shackles of Night City, her legend, as it were, that Rogue was talking about. She managed to do all of that without blowing it all up. It can be done. You can be free and still be relevant to others.
Feminina:
I did think the Rogue line was interesting, but I'm not sure it means that V is 'relevant.' I think it means V-the-badass-legend is part of merc history in Night City. A cool figure who is confined to the past...or, if she chooses NOT to remain in the past, a figure who will inevitably diminish and become less cool.
She's relevant to today's mercs the way Curt Schilling is relevant to today's Red Sox. Sure, a significant figure if you're talking about 'back in the day,' he absolutely participated in some big moments, major props are due...but he's not exactly active RIGHT NOW in any way that matters, right?
Is being a legend 'relevance' in a meaningful sense? Enh.
Butch:
Interesting question.
I think...sometimes? Are legends relevant today? No. Do legends inspire and inform others? Certainly. Wayne Gretzky hasn't played a competitive hockey game in decades, but Nugget still watches film of him, learns from him, says "I want to do THAT." No one watches the NPC players who were there, sure, but that no one remembers. The faces in the crowd. People are inspired and emulate the legends, and that, in the present, matters.
Feminina:
Fair. We can definitely learn from important figures in the past.
I think the distinction is that Nugget is learning from what Gretzky did then, not what he's doing now, and future players will continue to learn from his existing body of work so to speak, but he's not adding anything to that work anymore.
So, relevant in the sense that we can still learn from his example. Not relevant in the sense that we need to pay attention to what he's doing right now to learn from it.
I think this is definitely where V fits in at the Afterlife. Nobody is going to care what she's up to now.
Loothound:
So Butch's point about the 'breathe free' ending with Judy is a good one. I feel like the Reed ending and that one have similar emotional tones to them. V is leaving the concerns of Night City behind, along with all of the things that made her powerful in that world: the cred, the money, the guns, the chrome. Both endings, I feel, set up the small life as being the free life, the life that really matters—as opposed to the life of having a lot of cool stuff and being a big name. Both endings require you to let go of the things that mattered while you were playing the game.
V is no longer part of the life of Night City, and has moved on to being a figure of the past (or legend, if you prefer). I think the Rogue comment reflects that even when you're a legend, when your time is past it's past. Trying to hold onto things does tend to diminish your image. As amazing as Gretzky was, if he were to step on the ice today, the excitement would be overshadowed by the fact that it would be kind of sad to watch him in a diminished capacity. Legends and reality are not usually good friends.
Feminina:
I think that's a good point that in both those endings, V has essentially left everything from her old self behind and is going to be starting a new life as basically a whole new person.
Going off with the Nomads, you get to keep some loot (presumably you can carry some guns and armor and bring along some eddies), while staying in Night City, you get to keep some contacts and a sense of how things are done. It's like, do you want to take your identity to a new environment (go be a badass merc somewhere else), or do you want to build a new identity in a familiar environment (maybe be a fixer here)?
But in both cases, you give up the life you had before. That's gone.
Butch:
Very true. Gretzky, actually, is an analyst on TNT now, and, frankly, it's painful to watch him talk. Instead of actually analyzing, he usually just starts rambling about old stories from when he was playing and people everyone else has forgotten about. It's kind of sad, and diminishes things. One can imagine V, at the Afterlife, musing about Padre and Johnny and, yes, even Jackie in a rather pathetic way.
Buuuuuuuttttt...........
She's not going to do that in the Breathe Free ending. Indeed, it's LESS likely she will, as she is out of Night City.
I don't really know why CDPR decided to tack this on, given they already had an ending that made these points.
Feminina:
I don't know, I think this one was pretty interesting. There was a "let's not attack Arasaka Tower, let's try having expert surgeons remove the chip" ending in the original game as well, and it turned out even worse than this, so there were already some pretty downer endings.
I don't think there was any reason they SHOULDN'T add another one that left you with a bit more going on than the one where you tried letting Arasaka remove the chip. Though if I recall correctly, at least in that one you weren't in a coma for two years...but on the other hand, at least in this one you're not still dying, right? They did actually save your life, just not exactly the way it was before.
In that sense – and Loothound alluded to this earlier with the mention of V as a patient with a medical condition – this is kind of an interesting look at the aftermath of a life-changing illness. You spend all your time and energy trying to defeat a disease...and you might still be left with a life that's very different from the one you had before you got it. If we see Johnny as a medical issue, this is what happens when you trust the NUSA to cure you.
Butch:
Hmm. True. Was your V bald in this ending or was that the same glitch that made mine naked? That certainly does elicit "medical issue." Specifically, cancer, so, if that wasn't a glitch, a disease in which we talk about "survivors," people who "beat" it.
Hmm.
Feminina:
Oh yeah, I forgot to reply to that! I think definitely a glitch that she was naked, as mine was not, but yes, she was bald. Very cancer-patient in appearance. And sort of frail-looking in general (as I expect one probably does look after being in a coma for 2 years).
You survived, but that doesn't mean life goes on the way it had been.
And, indeed, there could be a trade off here, couldn't there? Certainly we could (and do) optimistically assume that in Breathe Free they're going to find some way to keep V alive, but wasn't the official word still that you're dying, in pretty much all the original endings? (Except the one where you just shot yourself, in which case, well, you're already dead.)
Here they gave us an actual 'you beat it' ending. We're completely cured of Johnny.
And it's still rough, man.
Butch:
Also, it did leave the whole Alt storyline completely unresolved. It's been a while since I played that bit (obviously), but it was a big bit, and this ending didn't say a thing about it.
That's a bit of a knock. If this had been the only ending we got, I would've been pissed.
Feminina:
Again, maybe that's a trade-off you have to take to get completely cured.
As I said, I don't think that if I were to play the whole thing through again, this would be the ending I went with. But I do think it did some pretty interesting things, and is certainly not the worst ending of the ones now available.
Loothound:
I did not have the naked bit on my ending (a bit heavy handed as far as metaphors go, if it was intentional), but the bald cancer patient look was definitely for real. V comes out badly weakened, and missing a large chunk of her life, but she's healed. Though much is taken, much remains, as old Odysseus would say.
Funny thing that we're talking about legends, because V spent the whole game with a literal legend, in the form of Johnny Silverhand, living in her head. Johnny's entire thing is about making big statements and gunning for big change. Maybe being free of him and his worldview is part of this, too. His larger than life rockstar lifestyle sort of represents the whole living fast thing. Meanwhile his ultimately destructive drive to change things for what he saw as 'the better' got him in the sad state he spends the game in…literally having to live his life through another person. Johnny is a ghost of the past, one that is driven towards the creation of a better future (as he sees it).
V is free of him in both of the 'breathe free' endings. Maybe she is free of the past and the future, and is just able to live in the moment.
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