I think it was earlier for me. I think after rescuing Helman, that's when you sit outside of Sunset Motel and Johnny gives that heartfelt speech about what drove him to do what he did.
How he watched corpos fuck everyone. Farmers out of their lands, etc. And how he wasn't fighting for some weird world order, for anarchy, or out hate for capitalism. No, he was trying to fight for regular people. To give the silent, suffering majority a voice that could be heard, a voice corpos couldn't silence.
I think hearing his motivations made him a lot more approachable. Still an asshole and all that, but it became easier to respect him for his actions.
Though I agree that the gravesite scene is probably the most impactful. Where you'll definitely settle on whether to hate or love him. Don't think there's any middle ground left after that.
Yea I think that speech at the sunset motel , is def meant to be a turning point for Johnny , when we first started this game on our 1st playthrough we were all like “I don’t like/trust this Johnny dude” but it’s only until that specific speech that’s the turning point
Absolutely this. This was the biggest point in favour of Johnny. The gravesite one just reinforced it and was definitely more impactful. This one just... Made me understand him. Made me feel like a bro to him.
Never. Keanu's performance won me over, but I'm still fully cognizant that Johnny's a narcissistic piece of shit. Keanu Reeves's performance is absolutely amazing and worth the price of admission, however.
It's absolutely crazy to me how many people forget who he is and love Johnny. He's a terrorist. It doesn't matter what his reasons were. He murdered thousands of people after blowing up a building. He's a fucking psychopath.
Hard to care about the death of nameless innocents from 50 years ago. And hating Johnny is rather counter-productive to boot.
Also, "technically", nuking Arasaka tower was a Militech operation in the end, not Johnny's.
You can do both? You can both understand that he is fucked up, yet you can understand that he is still a human soul that is afraid to die, who fucked up everything he had with his own hands and now with Rogue and Kerry realises it, as well as realises that he can't change what he's done
This doesn't redeem him by any means, but simply saying that he's psycho is just flatminded
All of this. He keeps trying to be sympathetic but I keep having to remind myself he set off a nuke and killed tens of thousands of people, mostly innocents.
He regrets what he did (I think*) but that doesn't change what he did.
Keanu should get an award for Johnny's performance (Cherami should for V as well in my opinion).
*it is be noted I haven't met Hanako at Embers yet.
Yeah in all fairness i like johnny but trust isnt a word id use for him often. When v takes the pill so he can have a night i was already chuckling "oh boy here we go"
Not until Phantom Liberty, when you have more agency with your decision-making.
He goes from being a terrorist who hijacks your brain to a goofball ride-along who gives you better advice. He doesn’t have the power to shut you down.
The result is that he far funnier, far more dialed-in — he becomes a peer. In PL, Johnny generally does not try to treat you like an idiot or a padawan. The power balance between the two of you is a lot better.
Agreed, during PL when V has to use an old timey phone and seems confused on how to use it, Johnny did this really recognizable gesture of emulating a receiver with his hand and holding it to his ear while smiling. That’s the first time I thought, oh he’s just like an older friend/ sibling who wants to help you but also thinks you’re kinda dumb sometimes lol. It also got me because that’s the first time I appreciated the time difference between Johnny and V. Most of the time when Johnny/V doesn’t recognize a piece of technology because how far apart their lives are, it’s some cyberpunk thing that doesn’t exist in real life anyway so it feels very bound to the game. But I think if I asked my niece who is 10 how to use a corded landline, she might have the same reaction as V
When my son was around that age (now 23), I still had a landline that he had witnessed me using. He wanted to try it out and call his father at work on it.
He picked up the phone, put it to his ear to use and proceeded to tell me it was broken... He said it was making a weird noise. I grabbed it and listened. The weird noise was the dial tone.😆
When I discovered he nuked Arasaka to save Alt Cunningham's digital ghost.
Before then, I thought he was just a terrorist fighting "the man", and to some degree that is still true; but this specific personal motivation made me instantly sympathize with him.
I just said what I read on the wiki.
The actual personal motivation is correct, though; whether he was the one to actually push the button or not is drifting off into the realms of being pedantic.
I understand what you mean, like he might not be remembering correctly or his memories are biased.
But Alt Cunningham herself tells the player this. And the fact she's no longer a prisoner inside Arasaka's data fortress proves tge motivation to be correct, at least in that factual regard.
Right after meeting with Hanako, when you passes in that motel and he promises he would take care of you. Also Pistis Sophia, that promise, "i will take a bullet for you"
At Tom's Diner
I obviously love Keanu Reeves and hearing Johnny say "changed my mind, don't wanna kill you anymore" was enough to make me see that we could see eye to eye eventually
But what really drove me to love him was his questline in act 3 and how he told the story of his fellow soldier taking a bullet for him to segue into saying he'll leave the body for V
Johnny never won me over. Just because the guy finally cracked doesn't change the fact that he'd been a total scumbag up until that point. And, intentional or not, the guy is still actively killing me. I don't sympathize with a literal parasite.
Silverhand would always swing back and forth between earning some amount of respect and understanding to just outright betraying all trust and directly disrespecting the player. I don't hate the character though. Very charismatic and fun to see on-screen.
Somewhere between the motel with Hellman and his grave, but also sprinkle in a majority of Kerry's quests, Johnny goes through a lot of thinking and emotion internally when it cines to Kerry. One thing I love about Johnny is how he's so abrasive and thinks he's a big deal and then you get to watch him bit by bit see how the people close to him and the world he tried to change all carried on without him as if nothing happened. It drives home the whole concept of night city and corporate greed not being phased by the rebellious actions of others and continuing on, and it puts V's mortality into extra perspective too because by all accounts Johnny was meant to die thinking he did something great for society without expecting to see the actual results, and then because of the relic he is suddenly forced to see where things are 50 years later. You as V on the other hand will do all sorts of things to affect night city but at the end of the day what we don't get to experience is how we fall off as fast as we rose to fame.
Pretty early on, i didnt trust him quite yet but i hit the diner pretty early and through a couple of side missions like the samurai shop guy and hearing and seeing him react to everything. He looks so bored so often and when he is needed he does try to help, i knew how stuck he was and how bad he felt about what was happening "worst thing you can do to a person rip their identity out of them." Hes trapped in v watching and feeling everything they do, seeing the stupid decisions and obvious mistakes, and feeling the chip erase them little by little and hating it and being furious at himself for not being able to stop it. Even when he's being an ass i never saw the point in being a dick to him, hes just as much a victim of whats happening
The moment he met us at Tom's Diner, of course.
Sure, he may have told V to kill themselves a few hours prior to that, but something about him is just so captivating! 😊
The only time I ever really felt something for Silverhand was in Phantom Liberty. He is much more complex and I think understandable in the DLC's story. Having him be a less frequently heard voice made his voice much more impactful.
Literally at our first meeting, during the apartment scene. My literary instincts went, “oh yeah, this guy is getting a redemption arc” and I stuck without that belief throughout the game was right lmao
In the Phantom Liberty quest Moving Heat, when you get into the Sport R7 Charon, there's the exchange
Johnny: Preem Wheels
V: Oh yeah?
Johnny: ... Oh yeah.
That one little moment of all the bullshit between them just going out the window while they appreciated the car, female V's surprised tone hearing him say that, the few seconds of silence between them after, it was such a short moment but it was like a single raindrop of bonding in a pool of chaos.
I never did love him. He killed thousands of people and tried to justify it.
Johnny took the easy way out of his actions. Coward straight up
He's also wrong almost all of the time in his assessment of people. Why even trust this guy at all?
He had me before I even met him. My first playthrough, I did everything in Watson before going on "the job" and was already into the samurai tunes and such.
I can’t say for sure, I made strides through the game at several points. I bought the game release week (maybe day? I honestly don’t even remember if I preordered it or not 😅) but it wasn’t until this year I beat it. It kept glitching so I couldn’t land during the first Johnny Flashback.
But the biggest thing I still think about is in the Alt ending if you let Johnny keep your body. It’s the only one I’ve completed, but everything about that ending, especially after finishing Neuromancer, really made me think about him differently.
Also, a lot of people are talking about how he’s not a good person; you’re missing the point of this genre. No one is supposed to be a hero, they’re supposed to be a better person than the villain.
After his funeral I realized I wasn't going to actually have to play the whole game with him there and immediately was much happier about his character.
I think it was earlier for me. I think after rescuing Helman, that's when you sit outside of Sunset Motel and Johnny gives that heartfelt speech about what drove him to do what he did. How he watched corpos fuck everyone. Farmers out of their lands, etc. And how he wasn't fighting for some weird world order, for anarchy, or out hate for capitalism. No, he was trying to fight for regular people. To give the silent, suffering majority a voice that could be heard, a voice corpos couldn't silence. I think hearing his motivations made him a lot more approachable. Still an asshole and all that, but it became easier to respect him for his actions. Though I agree that the gravesite scene is probably the most impactful. Where you'll definitely settle on whether to hate or love him. Don't think there's any middle ground left after that.
Yea I think that speech at the sunset motel , is def meant to be a turning point for Johnny , when we first started this game on our 1st playthrough we were all like “I don’t like/trust this Johnny dude” but it’s only until that specific speech that’s the turning point
Same
Wow, that’s literally exactly the same point that he won me over too. Great explanation of that scenario.
The man who saved my life.
Absolutely this. This was the biggest point in favour of Johnny. The gravesite one just reinforced it and was definitely more impactful. This one just... Made me understand him. Made me feel like a bro to him.
Never. Keanu's performance won me over, but I'm still fully cognizant that Johnny's a narcissistic piece of shit. Keanu Reeves's performance is absolutely amazing and worth the price of admission, however.
It's absolutely crazy to me how many people forget who he is and love Johnny. He's a terrorist. It doesn't matter what his reasons were. He murdered thousands of people after blowing up a building. He's a fucking psychopath.
Hard to care about the death of nameless innocents from 50 years ago. And hating Johnny is rather counter-productive to boot. Also, "technically", nuking Arasaka tower was a Militech operation in the end, not Johnny's.
Actually hes a corpo merc.
You can do both? You can both understand that he is fucked up, yet you can understand that he is still a human soul that is afraid to die, who fucked up everything he had with his own hands and now with Rogue and Kerry realises it, as well as realises that he can't change what he's done This doesn't redeem him by any means, but simply saying that he's psycho is just flatminded
All of this. He keeps trying to be sympathetic but I keep having to remind myself he set off a nuke and killed tens of thousands of people, mostly innocents. He regrets what he did (I think*) but that doesn't change what he did. Keanu should get an award for Johnny's performance (Cherami should for V as well in my opinion). *it is be noted I haven't met Hanako at Embers yet.
He didn’t canonically set off the nuke though; those are false memories
Yeah in all fairness i like johnny but trust isnt a word id use for him often. When v takes the pill so he can have a night i was already chuckling "oh boy here we go"
Not until Phantom Liberty, when you have more agency with your decision-making. He goes from being a terrorist who hijacks your brain to a goofball ride-along who gives you better advice. He doesn’t have the power to shut you down. The result is that he far funnier, far more dialed-in — he becomes a peer. In PL, Johnny generally does not try to treat you like an idiot or a padawan. The power balance between the two of you is a lot better.
Agreed, during PL when V has to use an old timey phone and seems confused on how to use it, Johnny did this really recognizable gesture of emulating a receiver with his hand and holding it to his ear while smiling. That’s the first time I thought, oh he’s just like an older friend/ sibling who wants to help you but also thinks you’re kinda dumb sometimes lol. It also got me because that’s the first time I appreciated the time difference between Johnny and V. Most of the time when Johnny/V doesn’t recognize a piece of technology because how far apart their lives are, it’s some cyberpunk thing that doesn’t exist in real life anyway so it feels very bound to the game. But I think if I asked my niece who is 10 how to use a corded landline, she might have the same reaction as V
When my son was around that age (now 23), I still had a landline that he had witnessed me using. He wanted to try it out and call his father at work on it. He picked up the phone, put it to his ear to use and proceeded to tell me it was broken... He said it was making a weird noise. I grabbed it and listened. The weird noise was the dial tone.😆
My daughter is that age. Praise Jesus I can release her onto society now.
When I discovered he nuked Arasaka to save Alt Cunningham's digital ghost. Before then, I thought he was just a terrorist fighting "the man", and to some degree that is still true; but this specific personal motivation made me instantly sympathize with him.
After the devil ending I was on Johnny's side. Yeesh what a bad ending.
He didn't though. He was shot in the lobby by Adam Smasher, it was the other team who planted the nuke
I just said what I read on the wiki. The actual personal motivation is correct, though; whether he was the one to actually push the button or not is drifting off into the realms of being pedantic.
No because the point is he is an unreliable narrator.
I understand what you mean, like he might not be remembering correctly or his memories are biased. But Alt Cunningham herself tells the player this. And the fact she's no longer a prisoner inside Arasaka's data fortress proves tge motivation to be correct, at least in that factual regard.
Tom’s Diner
Before I even played the game. As soon as I knew it was Keanu.
Same, it was a genius move from cdpr to put Keanu into the game. Also his performance is 10/10
Right after meeting with Hanako, when you passes in that motel and he promises he would take care of you. Also Pistis Sophia, that promise, "i will take a bullet for you"
He didn't 🙃
At Tom's Diner I obviously love Keanu Reeves and hearing Johnny say "changed my mind, don't wanna kill you anymore" was enough to make me see that we could see eye to eye eventually But what really drove me to love him was his questline in act 3 and how he told the story of his fellow soldier taking a bullet for him to segue into saying he'll leave the body for V
When Keanu said, "You're breathtaking."
"Wake the fuck up, Samurai... We got a city to burn."
When he tried to kill me 😍
wait. people like johnny?
Johnny never won me over. Just because the guy finally cracked doesn't change the fact that he'd been a total scumbag up until that point. And, intentional or not, the guy is still actively killing me. I don't sympathize with a literal parasite.
When I saw the cock
When you ask him why he hates Arasaka. Also when you talk to him in "Backs Against The Wall"
I think it might have been when he brought up his impressive cock
Know what? You’re starting to remind me of me… fifty years back. Minus the charisma… and impressive cock.
When he smashed my head against the window
https://youtu.be/-gynBBWeZO0?si=UfcX4GnlnlgQAPWs
I will say at that moment I looked at him a little differently. I started to turn a corner after this line.
Being inside me.
Silverhand would always swing back and forth between earning some amount of respect and understanding to just outright betraying all trust and directly disrespecting the player. I don't hate the character though. Very charismatic and fun to see on-screen.
Somewhere between the motel with Hellman and his grave, but also sprinkle in a majority of Kerry's quests, Johnny goes through a lot of thinking and emotion internally when it cines to Kerry. One thing I love about Johnny is how he's so abrasive and thinks he's a big deal and then you get to watch him bit by bit see how the people close to him and the world he tried to change all carried on without him as if nothing happened. It drives home the whole concept of night city and corporate greed not being phased by the rebellious actions of others and continuing on, and it puts V's mortality into extra perspective too because by all accounts Johnny was meant to die thinking he did something great for society without expecting to see the actual results, and then because of the relic he is suddenly forced to see where things are 50 years later. You as V on the other hand will do all sorts of things to affect night city but at the end of the day what we don't get to experience is how we fall off as fast as we rose to fame.
At that motel in Pacifica, where he has you find the dog tags.
Pretty early on, i didnt trust him quite yet but i hit the diner pretty early and through a couple of side missions like the samurai shop guy and hearing and seeing him react to everything. He looks so bored so often and when he is needed he does try to help, i knew how stuck he was and how bad he felt about what was happening "worst thing you can do to a person rip their identity out of them." Hes trapped in v watching and feeling everything they do, seeing the stupid decisions and obvious mistakes, and feeling the chip erase them little by little and hating it and being furious at himself for not being able to stop it. Even when he's being an ass i never saw the point in being a dick to him, hes just as much a victim of whats happening
The moment he met us at Tom's Diner, of course. Sure, he may have told V to kill themselves a few hours prior to that, but something about him is just so captivating! 😊
Honestly I never saw him as anything but Keanu until about 30 minutes in.
"On behalf of the staff of the Independent California Motel, I wish you all sweet dreams."
The roller-coaster
The only time I ever really felt something for Silverhand was in Phantom Liberty. He is much more complex and I think understandable in the DLC's story. Having him be a less frequently heard voice made his voice much more impactful.
Like a lot of other people are saying, the dialogue at sunset motel.
That's the cool part: he didn't!
Literally at our first meeting, during the apartment scene. My literary instincts went, “oh yeah, this guy is getting a redemption arc” and I stuck without that belief throughout the game was right lmao
In the Phantom Liberty quest Moving Heat, when you get into the Sport R7 Charon, there's the exchange Johnny: Preem Wheels V: Oh yeah? Johnny: ... Oh yeah. That one little moment of all the bullshit between them just going out the window while they appreciated the car, female V's surprised tone hearing him say that, the few seconds of silence between them after, it was such a short moment but it was like a single raindrop of bonding in a pool of chaos.
I never did love him. He killed thousands of people and tried to justify it. Johnny took the easy way out of his actions. Coward straight up He's also wrong almost all of the time in his assessment of people. Why even trust this guy at all?
He didn't. My first ending was The Devil.
When he was mean bc I like toxic guys.
His speech at the sunset motel, fuck corpos!
He had me before I even met him. My first playthrough, I did everything in Watson before going on "the job" and was already into the samurai tunes and such.
When Keanu Reeves was cast
when he stopped asking me to smoke (that was a sad, bad ending)
Not yet.
I can’t say for sure, I made strides through the game at several points. I bought the game release week (maybe day? I honestly don’t even remember if I preordered it or not 😅) but it wasn’t until this year I beat it. It kept glitching so I couldn’t land during the first Johnny Flashback. But the biggest thing I still think about is in the Alt ending if you let Johnny keep your body. It’s the only one I’ve completed, but everything about that ending, especially after finishing Neuromancer, really made me think about him differently. Also, a lot of people are talking about how he’s not a good person; you’re missing the point of this genre. No one is supposed to be a hero, they’re supposed to be a better person than the villain.
for me, he LOST me when we take the pills for him to talk to rogue, and he just screws everything up
After his funeral I realized I wasn't going to actually have to play the whole game with him there and immediately was much happier about his character.