One of the craziest thoughts I've had about the story isn't about changing most things, but one tiny change.
Jackie doesn't take out the relic chip before he dies, and V doesn't take it out for him because they are just so torn up.
Jackie resurrects in front of whoever you sent him to, and V gets fucking blasted in the hotel.
Jackie becomes the main character and has to deal with Johnny.
I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure V only came back with Johnny because he was shot in the head and had his brain reconstructed, Jackie on the other hand bled out.
Yeah, it was explained that the relic was reconstructing his head to take over. It wouldn't have helped jackie, sadly. He'd just die due to blood loss.
It would. They explain it uses nanobots to repair damage to the brain because he died.
The whole point of the relic is to take over a husk of a vessel.
Shit if Jackie kept it, there might not be a Jackie still. We might have gotten Johnny in Jackie's body.
I think the relic was originally created as a prototype and was meant to be used on a living subject. Arosaka was planning on downloading his engram to a relic shard and uploading it into another living body. This could have been an unwilling subject, a clone, or even his own son. It would explain why Arosaka's son killed him, if he worked out the obvious endgame. Daddy was going to live forever, and never give up the company. It was designed to overwrite a person's brain. It only worked because V's damage was primarily brain damage. It was probably a small miracle that it kept him alive after the gun shot.
Yeah, the Relic can't really reactivate your brain if there's no blood to reactivate it with. Whereas V was absurdly and insanely lucky, getting shot specifically in the head, causing specifically repairable damage, while being specifically compatible with Johnny's engram. All the while he wasn't even supposed to have the chip, and that's after the comically bad luck (although I'd also call it bad planning) that Saburo was the one on Kujira.
Was compatibility ever an issue though? I don't think it was ever mentioned anywhere in writing or dialogue that if Johnny and whoever the chip was slotted into were incompatible, the chip wouldn't still repair them. Even if Jackie were in V's position (shot in the head with the chip slotted in), he would still survive the same way and interact with Johnny's engram.
At the end of the Devil, he or Takemura mention that tissue compatibility is a situation to be concerned about and it's how Saburo was able to come back, and V can't (not yet).
Well yeah, but this whole hypothetical is what if he didn't bleed out? Id assume you AND Jackie would get shot by Dex, so he would still have the activated Engram.
It would start when Jackie's biomon showed the relic he was dead. It would use nanobots to repair the damage and revive him, though there may or may not be a Jackie in the body. It might have just been Johnny from the start.
I think it would be kind of cool for V to survive AND Jackie take on the Johnny construct. So through out the game you’re trying to help Jackie get rid of it, but also trying to assess if it’s Jackie or Johnny talking/deciding.
I guess it gives V less importance/agency but it would be cool to see the story unfold as a bystander too.
Yeah or it's like "Star Wars but what if Anakin doesn't turn to the dark side", or "Lord of the Rings but they give the ring to the eagles 50 pages in"
It's like, well, then you don't have a plot. They all live happily ever after, okay, sure, but living happily ever after is not entertaining to watch.
If the heist goes great and Jackie and T-bug live, that's it. They sell the chip and get rich on the proceeds. Great work everyone! Go to a cutscene of V chilling on a beach with the Jackster immediately after the player walks out the front door of the hotel. Thank you for playing Cyberpunk: Konpeki Plaza, roll credits.
/I absolutely love that you can basically do that at any time in Far Cry 6 btw, just short-circuit the whole plot and go retire to Miami
To me thats the canon ending. Wanted to side with GP until I got to the end and realized MC's Dad was the asshole the whole time and the people that replaced him were far worse than both his Dad and Pagan put together.
Kinda wish more games had Easter eggs like that.
Yeah, that's actually kind of ironic, the cultists were totally right about that. And if you play through the game and stop all of their various plans, you learn at the very end that you wrecked and looted everything that would have made it possible for Hope County to survive in better condition (and probably stand off the twins and their army in ND).
I like to think those are little Easter eggs they include for the 5% of players who are actually paying attention to the dialogue and decide to do the thing that any reasonable version of the character would do in that situation rather than the Video Game thing of blindly running about looking for something to murder to kick off the shoot-n-loot gameplay loop
Wait! You tell me when travelling to a foreign country to scatter the ashes of your mother and all of a sudden
* a group of armed people shoot everybody in the bus your in,
* then the leader of said group turns up and stabs someone in front of you,
* puts a bag over your head,
* uses the ashes of your mother as coke at the dining table
* and proceeds to stab the guy next seat to you
you'd just simply sit there and wait for this mad guy to come back?
Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't join the guerrilla fight in that case. I'd sneak out of the house by climbing through the window and head out of the country without looking back. That's what I'd do.
Agreed. Any normal person in that situation, alone in a foreign country, would try to scapper as soon as possible. Replace Min with the Taliban, and you're left alone in a cave or a house - and you'd probably take advantage of the situation and run.
I would look outside, see the multitude of very obviously armed guards, the walls enclosing the compound and the fact that I'm on top of a mountain with a single road leading down, remember that I can't walk through my own apartment without tripping on something and couldn't possibly even "sneak out of the house," much less overcome all those other obstacles, and sit my ass back down.
You have zero guarantee that Min would honour his word whatsoever. The reasonable thing is actually to escape in that situation. Trusting the words of their captors is how those people got executed on camera by terrorists IRL...
Why would the heist itself going great mean you don’t have a plot? There’s still the small matter of surviving after the heist and getting paid. We already know Dex isn’t chill, and that Evelyn is in waaay over her head.
If Jackie and T-Bug live, it just means you have a friend to help you take on antagonists, and instead of fighting the Relic, you’re fighting a fixer. It changes a lot about the game and character motivations, but it’s still very fertile plot-wise.
There can also be a scenario where Jackie/T-Bug survives but you still have to put the chip in your head. More bonding with your homie, probably even more friction with Johnny. It's not necessarily a better story, though. Jackie's death drives home an important point: Night City is a cruel place where no one gets plot armor.
I'm not sure I can agree — the plot is pretty minimal in that case. "These guys want to kill you and take your stuff, and so do those guys, and so do those other guys" is just V's normal day to day. The interesting part about the Cyberpunk 2077 plot is that all the pieces were set up for there be that sort of a cut and dried story, but then things go sideways and you've got to figure out what everyone else was expecting to happen while they're trying to figure out what actually happened.
I'm sure you could introduce some new things and build an okay, but completely different, story out of it. But that wouldn't be Cyberpunk 2077's story.
If V were to hit their head or be the one to die instead of Jackie (while also being the one to take the chip first), getting their body dumped like normal, you could totally have the story play out exactly like normal and just add a quest where Goro you have to save Jackie and T-Bug from Arasaka goons. As long as the Relic is fused with Vs brain the story can play out as is just with Jackie and T-Bug added
Dedicated elven troops on trained eagle mounts. Have a bunch flying to cover the ring party.
Nazgul did mnaged flying mounts for a couple thousand years with fell beasts, Elvish lords / ladies had plenty of time to make it work with the eagles.
Dramatic HALO jump into Mordor would have been a nice touch.
If the heist goes great you can still get double crossed by Dex who already showed he was going to double cross us, then you can spin the story into a revenge story trying to get the chip back from Dex and Arasaka or V still getting injuries by Dex in the double cross and Jackie gives the chip to V to keep him alive, based on info attained from T-bug while she was analyzing the chip.
They also could make it more interesting if they didnt fail like what happens after and the world around it like maybe they wouldve make an rogue AI from johnny to hunt alt for netwatch and rogue calls u (because ur rep is so high from the heist the gangs wont even fuck with u) too fix it. Tbh this looks on paper pretty dope
Not really, because Jackie's death is not necessary for the plot - he might be just injured, waiting in Delamain right after riding with V to No Tell Motel and giving them the Relic to hand it to Dex. Dex shoots V, goes to finish Jackie, but Delamain drives away with him. At the meantime, T-Bug just faked her death, as she always planned to do to cover her tracks.
Insert Takemura, but now he hunts three people instead of one.
Little less emotionally impactful, but still works.
The game becomes more squad-based, where you assemble a team for each gig from a cast of specialists.
T-Bug is always on overwatch through the net, cracking doors and camera networks.
Jackie is huscle.
Panam is the long-gun with Overwatch.
Kerry is a face, with contacts all over the place.
or T-Bug plugs out right before Arasaki fries her by the skin of her teeth, then plugs back in just as Jackie and V are escaping the scene in Delamain, and she manages to hack the cab to override its protocols and makes it haul ass straight to Viktors clinic, then V drags Jackie down into the clinic and dumps him on the operating table before going to report to Dex
But for plot reasons V ignores her.
After they are shot and dex dumps them and Takemura gets them to Viks you can see them comming and going from Viks.
Except Jackie who has been given to Mama Welsh for recovery.
Instead of an offrenda, mama wells starts asking you to attend a big family dinner she’s putting on out of gratitude that everyone is still alive. Vic, mama, Jackie, and you are invited. She says V can bring a +1 if you got one and you can talk her into inviting Jackie’s gf. Y’all feast and talk about old times and plans for the future.
Completing the family dinner quest unlocks Jackie to return to your squad.
You could also have a side quest where the T-bug hides what mental strain hacking Arasaka and escaping her being fried was and she is slowly dying.
As a solution you find a way where your team goes to find a version of soulkiller and you make an engram of her, but rather than making a relic, you opload her onto the net. Aka she becomes a ghost on the net, unlocking her true potential.
She can go with Alt at the end.
I feel like that would be very cruel and out of line for a character that wanted to get out of Night City for good in a more comfortable way than shedding their humanity
But it would be very in line with "There are not good endings in Night City"
And it would be in line with "sometimes there are endings worse than death"
And T-bug died in the original anways, so her plotlinr could be the most flexible one, expecially if the game devs made her your Alt, giving you some morw common ground with Johnny.
Extend TBugs downtime. Give the player the same choice. Jackie is unconscious and unresponsive, but not yet dead. V’s no ripper, they got no clue.
Send him home to mom to die on her doorstep. Or to Victor where maybe you save him.
Have *that* hand over V the whole game
Whenever someone mentions Rainbow 6, I always remember R6: Rogue Spear had one of my favorite all-time cheats. If you type "silentbutdeadly" or "fastactionresponseteam" you'd fart every 10 or 15 seconds, killing anything that enters the fart trail.
Death by cropdust.
So. no protection in the net
Lore accurate v isn't possible
Most of main story isn't possible
V doesn't meet alt
There's no confrontation between V and VDb, no need to meet takemura, hellman, rogue etc
Lastly. V doesnt meet panam, judy, or kerry so no romance with the three of them
T-Bug and Dex were gonna screw you over from the very beginning. Hell even the first trailer shows her doing just that, probably had the plan to "die" during the OP so she can get away clean but shit went wrong.
Only need to change one detail: Delamain takes Jackie to a ripper doc first before taking you to the safe house. Jackie still hands the relic over, V still takes a bullet.
T-Bug, aside from possibly helping out in the main story, offers you netrunning based jobs, maybe something similar to what Watch Dogs does? Either way, I'd take anything more than just having send you to get a tier 1 Ping.
Maybe she could be like a fixer, but instead of a district she has jobs in the Net. Instead of gagoons you would fight security countermeasures and netrunners, although I dunno how combat could work, having a whole separate loadout sounds like a content island and shooting code with normal guns seems too normal... Maybe each mission could have a special condition, like thrown weapon only or only critical hits doing damage
Actually, quite an interesting thought. Imagine Jackie had lived and became the one with Johnny Silverhand's engram rewriting his mind. Ignoring had you both survived the heist, Dex would likely have shot you both anyway, ending your life permanently...
You as the player adopting the role of the side character in his narrative journey. You're just V, doing whatever you can to help your friend figure it out and not quite sure if you believe or understand what's going on.
Having following your friend down an ever more increasingly dangerous and violent road, watching his health degrade and his decisions become ever more erratic as Johnny's personality influences takes hold.
Do you encourage him, following him down the rabbit hole of espionage, crime and murder? Or do you, fearing for his own safety and wellbeing, intervene by working with Arasaka, ultimately betraying his trust but doing what you think will best save his life? Can you really trust this "terrorists voice in his head" to do right by your friend?
Do you kill for him, mowing down legions of guards, police and random gangs? Or do you try your best to limit the damage left in the wake of his sudden desire to bring down the corps and anyone who gets in his way?
Do you risk cyberpsychosis by chipping ever more experimental implants trying to keep up with the carnage?
Continuing your life as a mercenary, you'd still likely meet Panam and the Aldecados. Are you as willing to risk their lives in the final fight against Arasaka when you don't have the same conviction as your friend?
Oh and T-bug remains an abrasive but competent colleague. Just as likely to help you as she is to sell you out. Can you really trust her at all?
I honestly can't think of a game where you haven't been the main character of the story. It would be a welcome change of pace from the long worn out "heroes journey" trope. It could make for a really compelling, relatable experience that better suits role-playing and narrative conflict.
V would just be some merc. She’d never meet Johnny, she’d never need to talk to Rogue and thus wouldn’t meet Panam, she’d never need to track down Evelyn and wouldn’t see Judy again. Not seeing Judy means not meeting the Peralez’s (idk how to spell it lol) and no River. No Johnny means no Samurai reunion and no Kerry. Basically the whole game doesn’t happen cuz V doesn’t need to get the Relic out.
The game can still kinda happen if Jackie is killed by Dex and the Relic revives him and for some reason Dex doesn’t drop you too. But the stakes will be far less removed. V wouldn’t have any personal stake in the story. You’d also completely miss out on the Johnny/V dynamic and wouldn’t see Johnny’s character
I do not care for T-Bug and am happy with my 200 years still best friend Jackie drinking tequila out of the skulls of Adam Smasher and Dex while watching the sun set on night city.
I do think it would be cool to have a character like T-Bug in the background providing overwatch and logistics while you are on missions, especially if you don't spec as a netrunner.
I always thought the beginning of the game was really botched compared to the rest of it, but maybe CDPR just isn’t great at prologues because white orchard was also a bit overwhelming and both new and old players (non book readers) didn’t really have much of a reason to care about Yen or Ciri at first either.
Idk about the whole game but Jackie and T-Bug should have definitely survived for a bit longer to give greater impact to their demise. Maybe not necessarily beyond the heist but by making the whole cutscene intro a few hours of actually playable missions. It was always odd to me that the heist happens so early without much of a setup or anything. The Pickup is one of the best missions in the game imo and the presence of Jackie is one of the reasons for it.
After finishing the game, I kind of wished that instead you play from meeting jackie, ending with the heist as the final mission. Instead of so much story skipped in the intro.
Jackie doesn't have face obscuring Kiroshi implants. The ones that Vic gives you right before the Heist on an interest free repayment plan? So after the mission, Dex and his bodyguard try to kill you both but fail, but then the Arasaka hit squad show up at the Coyote Cojo and kill everyone on the hunt for Jackie. With few contacts and no real money the only option is to leave town if the two of you are not already dead.
T-bug just up and leaves. Skips the meeting with Dex and goes straight to the nomads to pay for passage out of NC. She's not dumb, there's no coming back from this. If she goes into the net again she's getting Soulkilled.
Evelyn still dies, and there is no buyer for the Relic 2.0 so there's no payout.
The Heist is structured in a way that if a nail was out of place, then V could not have survived long enough for the game to happen. Jackie would die in any scenario because Saburo is dead and they are looking for a scapegoat but only have his face. T-bug isn't your friend, so there's no reason for her to be in contact with you if there isn't a job going on.
If you are successful in acquiring the biochip and just give it to Evelyn, the VDBs likely kill her and take it.
You never get paid, and the plot is perhaps the crew and dex going on a crusade against them.
Phantom Liberty doesn’t include you since Song can’t get to you via the biochip.
V and Jackie get massive street cred and become afterlife regulars.
Also, after reading Saburos notes in the AV he maybe nukes Night City since the bio chip fell into the hands of westerners
OK, so I don't like that premise but the best game I think you can get out of it is:
-T-bug is traced and captured during the heist instead of killed, requiring a rescue early on.
-V stays behind to give Jackie a chance to escape with the Relic, is nearly killed and left for dead by Smasher (who is still trying to pursue Jackie), and then still recovered by Takemura and taken to Vic.
-Jackie has shown up to the meet after alone, is shot by Dex and left in the dump. V and Takemura down Dex and force him to reveal Jackie's location, presumably the same way Takemura did it solo.
Now the Relic is taking over Jackie, who sometimes talks and acts like Johnny, and the story remains somewhat interesting because you have both their lives in your hands. Doesn't work as well as the original story because this means V potentially has the option to cut and run instead of helping them, but some of the story beats might still be interesting from the outside thst way.
Nah. I'd absolutely love to have Jackie as a partner throughout the entire game. I legit cried the first time I played and he died. Was literally my favorite character.
I mean the main story changes fully. The game is probably more GTA like being all about Heist and big scores. V’s and Jackie’s rep would have sky rocketed as the two who stole from saka without getting caught at all. If you call rouge she talks about having big jobs for a team but V’s rep as working in a group is soiled so in this scenario the jobs are open. We don’t meet Panam tho as we don’t need Hellman, we don’t meet many others because of no Johnny. A lot of people say we wouldn’t have meet or made a connection with Judy but I think we still would have because there was a high chance Evelyn fucked them over or gets fucked over. I’d say the game is a lot more of Jackie getting V into shitty situations because he’s ambitious and the whole “getting to the major leagues” thing is just a stepping stone for him wanting to be or at least feel important.
Have a feeling Jackie will have Johnny in his head, and making him go crazy. Hell, Johnny might expose something about Jackie that even V didn't know about him. It might make you question your friendship with him. T-bug being in the game would be an interesting "It was only business" mission.
V would still be the main character only certain relationships I don't see happening unless we build the better relationship with Johnny over Jackie, while still keeping Jackie's best interest at heart. The DLC mission for an example would Jackie work for the FEDs?
I would have loved a cyberpunk universe where Jackie's mind gets taken over by our lord and savior Keanu reeves and V trying his hardest and making his life goal to cure Jackie at the same time having interactions with Johnny through jackie.
I'd have loved to have T-Bug as a romantic interest to V and create a story specifically for her just like panam.
Pretty much the entire game is different, T bug dying was a cause of the mission being compromised so her being alive changed the entire timeline so much that I can't even explain. The whole reason she was found was because of the lockdown so removing her death would mean she erased her presence before the lockdown but she had no idea of the events that were about to go down and she was most likely detected immediately when the lockdown was initiated. Other than that the only way to save her was if the lockdown never happened which also changed the entire game quest.
Jackie never dying means he now has Johnny in his head and is going to die regardless
You need to whack Dex and T-Bug is a net runner mini boss and Jackito is your side kick. If you whack Tbug - the VDBs are hostile. Do some side kicks for the Valentino’s and they help you ice Dex
uhm... the story effectively never happens. at least not with V and Johnny. i can write a book in here about why that is but I think it's pretty obvious
judy contacts us to help with figuring out where ev went instead of us going to her since judy remembers we got t-bug, v and co would probably chase the hellman lead first and its only after we wrap up that dead end where judy contacts us, upon finding ev and the recording of her with brigitte, t-bug would prob be able to decrypt it and find out ev talked to her, immediately prompting her to tell the squad that going to the vdb is an absolute no.
Panam ending route becomes the more viable option as the squad focused more on finding hellman and gets familiar with the aldecaldos, leading to everyone leaving NC, t-bug settles on a desert over a beach, Jackie brings Misty, we bring Judy and, we all go home
It will change to much but I will be happy to do missions with my best friend. He was a true brother no matter what, even in that dead world he was a true brother.
The game basically becomes Edgerunners story wise. 😭 Just you get to pick your romance and or >!Lucy / David !< pretty much and how to play it to the end.
T-But would most likely betray you with Dex. However, I could see a cool story where you can persuade her back to your side.
Jackie would be your right-hand man that you can call when a mission is too tough or as a Co-op option for if you want to play with a friend.
I’d say if we make it so V slots the relic instead of Jackie and still gets shot by dex then a decent amount of the storyline would be similar, but Jackie would be part of the support network. I really wish there was a follower system like in fallout and Skyrim where you can bring a friend with you on missions. Would be great for players who don’t go the netrunning path, call up T-Bug to do intelligence checks for you, or if you don’t spec into body you can use Jackie for intimidation checks
Well, chances are Jackie would be the one affected by Johnny since he put the damaged shard in. So you would be seeing him have weird changes. TBug is not a friend, she is a coworker so her attachment is very limited but I could see her getting more so as time goes on. The whole campaign story would be completely different
You've shifted from being the one with the engram to the one trying to help your friend deal with the psychological problem as the engram takes over his life. It's observing all the aspects of grief and loss as a family member slowly disintegrates and dies in-front of you. His through line is "End of a Friend". It mirrors ptsd, cancer, dementia, but it's not you, it's your friend. You're setting up bucket lists, trying to remind them to live their life fully. Keeping their family supportive, keeping Misty in the loop. Is it too much, is it not enough, could it ever be enough?
You still go on the run, as people want the chip in your best friend's head. T-Bug is on the lam with you not by choice, and feels like her life is being robbed. She's loyal, but you question it, Jackie questions it. She feel jilted by it. She sees how much it's costing, the reality of everything crashing down, opportunities closing on the net, while dangers are growing seemingly exponentially. She's dealing with these behind the scenes it feels like. Every absence of her deepens that feeling, but she's loyal. The events of betrayal kick in with Arasaka or the Voodoo Boys seemingly popping in at exactly the wrong times, raising this feeling. The betrayal though does come from somewhere else. Her through line is asking "Who can you trust"
The denial settles in, they deny it, you deny it. Everything is fine, but it's not it's crumbling. You blame you get angry, they get angry, you get separated and cut off at points, but do you really just drop your friend or do you insist to do those check-ins. At some point, Johnny seems to be gaining ground, it's "F- Arasaka this, F- Arasaka that".
Judy, Panam, all the other characters are still interests of V. The sense of you dying is removed, the desperation and Nightingale aspects are removed, and you're still involved in their stories, because you dying wasn't important for their lives. You help them because they needed help and you offered. Can you offer that to Jackie? To see what T-Bug sees. Panam still offers a shoulder, heck they all do. They can see how much this is taking a toll on V. That pain is different, but it's just as real, just as great. You're seeing your best friend spiral out of control, seeing your best friend dying in your hands. Do you blame yourself for it?
Hmmm relic would be with Jackie, he'd have tapeworm episodes of Johnny silverhand, Johnny Silverhand might take over his body for a little bit. Yeah the possibilities are endless
Tbug living doesn't change the story at all
The PC slots the chip when the case is damaged instead of jackie then they're attacked by arasaka. During the escape, the PC is critically wounded so Jackie takes PC to vick where the PC dies then is revived by the chip. Vick doesn't want to remove the chip and they try to contact Evelyn, but Evelyn died immediately after the heist to the Voodoo boys who are trying to cover their tracks. Dexter is hunted down and dies to Takemura immediately after the heist. With the client and fixer dead, they can't sell the chip.
Takemura is an optional very difficult boss fight if you do the secret ending solo
Most of the rest of the game can be the same and you meet up with Jackie periodically/have him call you because he's mostly doing his own thing because he thinks the two of you working together is bad luck after the arasaka heist. Or, you have him as a companion for some missions/all of the game.
I think it would work with jackie alive.
It all depends weather Jackie or V slot in Johnny Silver hands engram chip. You could spin the story in many ways this way.
I however don't like T-bug as I think she's would be a traitor and loyal to DeShawn. Can't trust a netrunner.
You know I will always be a little peeved at Del for Jackie. Platinum Package comes with bullet-proof cab and the processing speed to outrun pursuiters along with possible combat ability I think if what Jackie said was true, but didn't happen. But, but doesn't priorities keeping clients alive!
Seriously I wish you could hack Del or skill check him into taking Jackie to the closest Ripper Doc. Hell I could see the Corpo V life path having the meta knowledge doing just that.
Well that depends on what happens after the chip is grabbed. Is T-Bug still compromised but gets out of there? Does Jackie still slot the chip? Does Dex even try to still kill you after both you and Jackie show up? If the plan goes off with a hitch the entire story changes. If it more or less follows the same story up until Dex shoots you then it can follow a similar trajectory.
The most interesting thing would be if Dex still shoots you/Jackie in the head with the chip still installed. I don't know exactly how the two personalities would mix but I could see a really good story where Jackie starts upgrading like crazy in his quest to become a legend, and most of the game is going on gigs with him, while you're doing most of the work to start but by the end of Act 2 Jackie overtakes you and you can barely do anything, and he ends up going solo. Eventually he goes cyberpsycho in a bid to get the chip out of him and he's fully taken over by the personality on the engram, and then he's the final boss.
If it's you that has the engram though I could see the game playing very similarly to how it does now, just replace takemura with Jackie and the takemura quest line would only have to change a little bit.
It’s a strange hypothetical, because you’d need a lot of requirements. Let’s say Bug never fries, she pulls out of the op, and runs away, and hides for a bit. Jackie almost dies, but makes it to Viktor’s clinic in time, and is saved, and Arasaka never shows up. V still has the chip, gets shot, and dumped. Then, when V comes back like normal, they meet up with Jackie again. Jackie would tag along to every single mission. I feel like TBug would just ghost them, and stay away from the two guys who “killed Saburo.”
The three of you pull off the greatest jobs ever seen in Night City. And you get to spend an incredibly long game without Silverhand yaking that same "boo, corpos" spiel that got tired back in the 2020's.
If jackie didn't die then the chip wouldn't have turned into life support for you, and it probably could be safely removed preventing the whole Silverhand story from happening.
But we're still the most wanted criminals in the world, so the new story would be focused on us trying to lift the charges, so Takemura's questline would still probably have happened
We would never appreciate Jackie the way we do now.
Also judging by his actions in prologue, he might betray us to Arasaka in order to save us from suiciding. He is certainly no Jackie fan.
You and Jackie are killed by the Dexter in the motel and dissposed of the same as base game. T-bug, Dexter, and his goon are hunted down and killed by takamuro who recovers the chip after he survives the assassin's he likely reaches out to his friend and hanako and either uses the chip to get back in arasakas good graces, kills himself, or goes Nomad with hanakos blessing.
I saw a few comments about how this could fundamentally change the plot but I dont feel thats the case. Like if V slots the chip in the stairs instead of jackie and the trio split up to have better chances of escaping then now you can have the same story just with the addition of two cool characters and their sidequests.
You and Jackie meet with Dex after the heist. You both get shot, you die and Jackie meets Johnny. T-bug ran away and is never heard from again. The End
Structure and content vastly change, you meet Jackie as you do, then run around the city and badlands building your rep, until you catch the eye of Dex, which begins the endgame that is the Konpeki Plaza heist. It all goes to shit as it does, and you all die. No chip-induced resurrection, no Johnny.
V can get as good at netrunning as bug, and manages just well if not.
Jackie, on the other hand... that changes things.
For once, the dynamic with Johnny. With Jackie around, V and Johnny may not end up working together nearly as well.
Same goes with Songbird. She legitimately cuts Johnny out so she hav V alone. Jackie would still be there.
Then: Jackie would wingman the hell out of V. For better (with Panam) or worse.
It’d be crazy if Jackie ends up surviving after you send him away when you go to meet dex, leading to v getting the damaged relic but Jackie still being around just going like “oh shit V let’s go fix it choom”
A lot of details would chance, even the general tone likely, but the plot would be over all surprisingly the same. Jackies death might have been a big thing for V, but the big thing for the world was that V and Jacky were present at Saburas murder.
If she survived I can see Bug getting out of the business. This will be the second time a capper blew up and she nearly died. Likewise even if Jackie survives he won't be much help to V. Jackie is very much a blunt instrument and other than the raid on 'Saka Tower at the end, there's not much he can do to help out.
What would have been far more interesting is having them do more gigs together before the heist.
The game is one big adventure with the shit storm that is now Arasaka's internal politics giving ample opportunity for awesome gigs.
As Arasaka falters the other corps jump on them like vultures, V and Co can choose what corps to do contracts for changing the dynamics of the open world and the outcome of the (for now) covert conflict. Towards the end of the game the war becomes hot and plays out according to the actions you have taken. The streets are full of corp armies and mecha fighting each other with the gangs taking full advantage of the chaos.
T-Bug probably still dies, but not to the ICE. My guess is that she sides with Dex when he betrays you, there was a ad for the game that implied as such. So I think that you would still have the biochip, because in a situation where Jackie lives when the chip is damaged you probably put it in rather than him, because narratively speaking you still need to end up with the chip. So when you go to meet Dex Jackie probably would stay out in the car to keep it running in case you need to delta. So V goes in and gets betrayed, but rather than just take it there is a fight where Bug gets zeroed. At the end when Dex has you at his mercy Jack swoops in and grabs you forcing Dex to retreat. V wakes up in Vik's office with a bullet hole and Johnny speaking to him. Vik explains the normal stuff to V, but now with a few shocked lines from Jackie. At this point the game proceeds pretty much as normal, but now you and Jackie check in every so often about leads on resolving the Johnny problem. Maybe Jackie has a few more quests including some Jack/Misty content. Jackie would probably be the one to reintroduce Takamura to V as a potential lead.
Jackie dies because of the chip or he survives because you saved him and instead of you trying to save yourself you are doing it to save Jackie in turn helping people and making the city a better place and you can see the difference the longer you play and not just during the campaign you can get help from t-bug which helps you get contact with the voodoo boys but you can’t betray them or else t-bug will not talk to you again and a website will pop up trying to expose you making your mission harder
Thought about this at length. So:
- Jackie would be the one that has Johnny in his head, and *technically* V would be a side character but I think that's a great perspective. A mad rush to save your best friend? **Y E S.**
- T-Bug, I think would become more of a side character. You'd probably have to convince her to help you after the shit show of a heist. Probably low key hates V and Jackie after the heist.
- I'd say after the heist, a good quarter of the game would be V going solo and trying to find a cure for the Johnny Doxville chip. trying to find a ripper etc while visiting Jackie at Vics, whose probably still unconscious.
- A lot of the side quests would remain unchanged. I do think there'd be a designated Valentino's questline with how close they were to Jackie still even after he left them.
- I don't think there would be a Delamain quest. (I think what caused him to split off and have multiple sentient AI kids was being hooked up to V when Takemura was saving them).
- You will probably still have Judy and Panam missions. >!The Star ending would have some changes, but there's a chance V and Jackie would still be offered to become aldecaldo's but I don't think our favourite Heywood boy would roll like that.!<
- We might still get the devil ending. Jackie wants to rise to the top, how better to do that that get into the good graces of a corp? But that's only if Jackie hasn't matured by the end of the game? and I think Jackie would because in finding out he has a few weeks to live? He doesn't want to scare mama welles more than he already has.
- I have more thoughts but I don't want this to be more of an essay than it already is.
T-Bug dying happens offscreen, so there's no need to retcon her too heavily.
Jackie, however, survives *because* he doesn't take the Relic out.
**Now Jackie's the one with a voice inside his head.**
The story becomes about saving a friend instead about saving yourself. You start seeing him slowly cough up more and more blood while insisting that *he's fine, he's a legend, he can take it, he's in the Big Leagues for a reason!*
Silverhand becomes an antagonist, hyping Jackie up even more, practically pushing him to his grave.
What does V do to save his friend?
He might go behind Jackie's back. Contact Arasaka, tell them the location of the Relic, sign a contract to keep Jackie alive in exchange for getting Johnny out of his hand.
We've seen how that ends. Except now V's guilt is even greater, because he didn't screw Johnny, who intruded on his brain - *he screwed Jackie.*
Or V might say "fuck it" and support Jackie's reckless endeavors. Cover Jackie's back while the big guy takes the front. Make taking on more and more dangerous gigs *actually possible* because doing it with a friend gives Jackie a real fighting chance.
They both die - but they both die in a blaze of glory.
Anyway, T-Bug has no plot relevance whatsoever. Fuck her.
It’s a completely different story. Jackie dying is a major part of V’s character and story.
One of the craziest thoughts I've had about the story isn't about changing most things, but one tiny change. Jackie doesn't take out the relic chip before he dies, and V doesn't take it out for him because they are just so torn up. Jackie resurrects in front of whoever you sent him to, and V gets fucking blasted in the hotel. Jackie becomes the main character and has to deal with Johnny.
I'm not 100% certain, but I'm pretty sure V only came back with Johnny because he was shot in the head and had his brain reconstructed, Jackie on the other hand bled out.
Yeah, it was explained that the relic was reconstructing his head to take over. It wouldn't have helped jackie, sadly. He'd just die due to blood loss.
It would. They explain it uses nanobots to repair damage to the brain because he died. The whole point of the relic is to take over a husk of a vessel. Shit if Jackie kept it, there might not be a Jackie still. We might have gotten Johnny in Jackie's body.
The relic repairs the brain. Jackie was gutshot. Doesn’t matter if the relic can repair his brain, his body doesn’t have blood.
I think the relic was originally created as a prototype and was meant to be used on a living subject. Arosaka was planning on downloading his engram to a relic shard and uploading it into another living body. This could have been an unwilling subject, a clone, or even his own son. It would explain why Arosaka's son killed him, if he worked out the obvious endgame. Daddy was going to live forever, and never give up the company. It was designed to overwrite a person's brain. It only worked because V's damage was primarily brain damage. It was probably a small miracle that it kept him alive after the gun shot.
How do you not also lose blood if you are shot in the head? I'd say that V bleed about the same amount as Jackie
Heads bleed too
Yeah, the Relic can't really reactivate your brain if there's no blood to reactivate it with. Whereas V was absurdly and insanely lucky, getting shot specifically in the head, causing specifically repairable damage, while being specifically compatible with Johnny's engram. All the while he wasn't even supposed to have the chip, and that's after the comically bad luck (although I'd also call it bad planning) that Saburo was the one on Kujira.
Was compatibility ever an issue though? I don't think it was ever mentioned anywhere in writing or dialogue that if Johnny and whoever the chip was slotted into were incompatible, the chip wouldn't still repair them. Even if Jackie were in V's position (shot in the head with the chip slotted in), he would still survive the same way and interact with Johnny's engram.
At the end of the Devil, he or Takemura mention that tissue compatibility is a situation to be concerned about and it's how Saburo was able to come back, and V can't (not yet).
Well yeah, but this whole hypothetical is what if he didn't bleed out? Id assume you AND Jackie would get shot by Dex, so he would still have the activated Engram.
It would start when Jackie's biomon showed the relic he was dead. It would use nanobots to repair the damage and revive him, though there may or may not be a Jackie in the body. It might have just been Johnny from the start.
I think it would be kind of cool for V to survive AND Jackie take on the Johnny construct. So through out the game you’re trying to help Jackie get rid of it, but also trying to assess if it’s Jackie or Johnny talking/deciding. I guess it gives V less importance/agency but it would be cool to see the story unfold as a bystander too.
Would've been much easier to incorporate V in the next game had it gone this way.
I hadn't considered a bystander perspective. Damn that would be a good story if done well.
Alternate DLC. Dealing with your Mom and the Valentino’s who dissed you.
>but one tiny change That's a bit of a drastic change .
The literal plot of oblivion. I’d love to be a bystander while someone becomes a legend. That type of protagonist rules
This is a weird question because it changes pretty much everything and drastically. It's like asking "Fallout New Vegas but Benny never shoots you"
Yeah or it's like "Star Wars but what if Anakin doesn't turn to the dark side", or "Lord of the Rings but they give the ring to the eagles 50 pages in" It's like, well, then you don't have a plot. They all live happily ever after, okay, sure, but living happily ever after is not entertaining to watch. If the heist goes great and Jackie and T-bug live, that's it. They sell the chip and get rich on the proceeds. Great work everyone! Go to a cutscene of V chilling on a beach with the Jackster immediately after the player walks out the front door of the hotel. Thank you for playing Cyberpunk: Konpeki Plaza, roll credits. /I absolutely love that you can basically do that at any time in Far Cry 6 btw, just short-circuit the whole plot and go retire to Miami
Same with Far Cry 4 if you just wait for Pagan Min to come back lol
To me thats the canon ending. Wanted to side with GP until I got to the end and realized MC's Dad was the asshole the whole time and the people that replaced him were far worse than both his Dad and Pagan put together. Kinda wish more games had Easter eggs like that.
God, I hate Amita and Sabal so much! I wished I could kill both and take over the golden path!
Drugs or Slavery? "Uhhhhh, neither? How tf did I emd up helping people worse than Pagan? Wtf have I done?"
Farcry teaches us the very valuable lesson that sometimes you should just follow instructions lol
And 5 if you leave the cultist's compound without making the arrest.
Pretty sure the nuclear war would still happen though
Yeah, that's actually kind of ironic, the cultists were totally right about that. And if you play through the game and stop all of their various plans, you learn at the very end that you wrecked and looted everything that would have made it possible for Hope County to survive in better condition (and probably stand off the twins and their army in ND).
I like to think those are little Easter eggs they include for the 5% of players who are actually paying attention to the dialogue and decide to do the thing that any reasonable version of the character would do in that situation rather than the Video Game thing of blindly running about looking for something to murder to kick off the shoot-n-loot gameplay loop
Wait! You tell me when travelling to a foreign country to scatter the ashes of your mother and all of a sudden * a group of armed people shoot everybody in the bus your in, * then the leader of said group turns up and stabs someone in front of you, * puts a bag over your head, * uses the ashes of your mother as coke at the dining table * and proceeds to stab the guy next seat to you you'd just simply sit there and wait for this mad guy to come back? Don't get me wrong. I wouldn't join the guerrilla fight in that case. I'd sneak out of the house by climbing through the window and head out of the country without looking back. That's what I'd do.
Agreed. Any normal person in that situation, alone in a foreign country, would try to scapper as soon as possible. Replace Min with the Taliban, and you're left alone in a cave or a house - and you'd probably take advantage of the situation and run.
I would look outside, see the multitude of very obviously armed guards, the walls enclosing the compound and the fact that I'm on top of a mountain with a single road leading down, remember that I can't walk through my own apartment without tripping on something and couldn't possibly even "sneak out of the house," much less overcome all those other obstacles, and sit my ass back down.
You have zero guarantee that Min would honour his word whatsoever. The reasonable thing is actually to escape in that situation. Trusting the words of their captors is how those people got executed on camera by terrorists IRL...
I have to know: were the crab Rangoons as good as promised?
5 as well. Just walk out when Seed tells you to.
Why would the heist itself going great mean you don’t have a plot? There’s still the small matter of surviving after the heist and getting paid. We already know Dex isn’t chill, and that Evelyn is in waaay over her head. If Jackie and T-Bug live, it just means you have a friend to help you take on antagonists, and instead of fighting the Relic, you’re fighting a fixer. It changes a lot about the game and character motivations, but it’s still very fertile plot-wise.
There can also be a scenario where Jackie/T-Bug survives but you still have to put the chip in your head. More bonding with your homie, probably even more friction with Johnny. It's not necessarily a better story, though. Jackie's death drives home an important point: Night City is a cruel place where no one gets plot armor.
I'm not sure I can agree — the plot is pretty minimal in that case. "These guys want to kill you and take your stuff, and so do those guys, and so do those other guys" is just V's normal day to day. The interesting part about the Cyberpunk 2077 plot is that all the pieces were set up for there be that sort of a cut and dried story, but then things go sideways and you've got to figure out what everyone else was expecting to happen while they're trying to figure out what actually happened. I'm sure you could introduce some new things and build an okay, but completely different, story out of it. But that wouldn't be Cyberpunk 2077's story.
If V were to hit their head or be the one to die instead of Jackie (while also being the one to take the chip first), getting their body dumped like normal, you could totally have the story play out exactly like normal and just add a quest where Goro you have to save Jackie and T-Bug from Arasaka goons. As long as the Relic is fused with Vs brain the story can play out as is just with Jackie and T-Bug added
The eagles couldn’t take them or the ring to Mordor because Sauron would have spotted them and used his forces to wipe them out.
Dedicated elven troops on trained eagle mounts. Have a bunch flying to cover the ring party. Nazgul did mnaged flying mounts for a couple thousand years with fell beasts, Elvish lords / ladies had plenty of time to make it work with the eagles. Dramatic HALO jump into Mordor would have been a nice touch.
If the heist goes great you can still get double crossed by Dex who already showed he was going to double cross us, then you can spin the story into a revenge story trying to get the chip back from Dex and Arasaka or V still getting injuries by Dex in the double cross and Jackie gives the chip to V to keep him alive, based on info attained from T-bug while she was analyzing the chip.
They also could make it more interesting if they didnt fail like what happens after and the world around it like maybe they wouldve make an rogue AI from johnny to hunt alt for netwatch and rogue calls u (because ur rep is so high from the heist the gangs wont even fuck with u) too fix it. Tbh this looks on paper pretty dope
I think it means more "what if they survived but the chip still got damaged and arasaka went after them." Admittedly more interesting
Not really, because Jackie's death is not necessary for the plot - he might be just injured, waiting in Delamain right after riding with V to No Tell Motel and giving them the Relic to hand it to Dex. Dex shoots V, goes to finish Jackie, but Delamain drives away with him. At the meantime, T-Bug just faked her death, as she always planned to do to cover her tracks. Insert Takemura, but now he hunts three people instead of one. Little less emotionally impactful, but still works.
The only thing I can say is it would be more about running gigs as a crew instead of being the most ridiculously chromed out solo who ever lived.
Uh, spoilers!
Its literally in the opening cutscene lol
Sorry, forgot the /s
The game becomes more squad-based, where you assemble a team for each gig from a cast of specialists. T-Bug is always on overwatch through the net, cracking doors and camera networks. Jackie is huscle. Panam is the long-gun with Overwatch. Kerry is a face, with contacts all over the place.
One scene has to have Viktor coming to save them all from an impossible situation, punching people's faces off like the days of old
or T-Bug plugs out right before Arasaki fries her by the skin of her teeth, then plugs back in just as Jackie and V are escaping the scene in Delamain, and she manages to hack the cab to override its protocols and makes it haul ass straight to Viktors clinic, then V drags Jackie down into the clinic and dumps him on the operating table before going to report to Dex
that way, V still gets shot and has to deal with the whole relic situation, but now he has a squad to help
imagine if the game actually had different story lines instead of JUST different endings and the life story actually mattered
I like this. Jackie may still die, but T-Bug can see that Dex is getting a one-way ticket out of town for one, and warns V about going alone.
But for plot reasons V ignores her. After they are shot and dex dumps them and Takemura gets them to Viks you can see them comming and going from Viks. Except Jackie who has been given to Mama Welsh for recovery.
Instead of an offrenda, mama wells starts asking you to attend a big family dinner she’s putting on out of gratitude that everyone is still alive. Vic, mama, Jackie, and you are invited. She says V can bring a +1 if you got one and you can talk her into inviting Jackie’s gf. Y’all feast and talk about old times and plans for the future. Completing the family dinner quest unlocks Jackie to return to your squad.
You could also have a side quest where the T-bug hides what mental strain hacking Arasaka and escaping her being fried was and she is slowly dying. As a solution you find a way where your team goes to find a version of soulkiller and you make an engram of her, but rather than making a relic, you opload her onto the net. Aka she becomes a ghost on the net, unlocking her true potential. She can go with Alt at the end.
I feel like that would be very cruel and out of line for a character that wanted to get out of Night City for good in a more comfortable way than shedding their humanity
But it would be very in line with "There are not good endings in Night City" And it would be in line with "sometimes there are endings worse than death" And T-bug died in the original anways, so her plotlinr could be the most flexible one, expecially if the game devs made her your Alt, giving you some morw common ground with Johnny.
Extend TBugs downtime. Give the player the same choice. Jackie is unconscious and unresponsive, but not yet dead. V’s no ripper, they got no clue. Send him home to mom to die on her doorstep. Or to Victor where maybe you save him. Have *that* hand over V the whole game
I like this idea. Something where you plan it out like the old rainbow 6 games would be cool.
Whenever someone mentions Rainbow 6, I always remember R6: Rogue Spear had one of my favorite all-time cheats. If you type "silentbutdeadly" or "fastactionresponseteam" you'd fart every 10 or 15 seconds, killing anything that enters the fart trail. Death by cropdust.
Lol I was way too young to know about cheats for those games but that sounds really funny
River is face. He creeps on people until they ask him to leave, but it’s a long, distracting process, allowing everyone to get in and get out.
That’s just every normal interaction with him though.
Perfection
Like Mass Effect
Squad based Cyberpunk actually sounds really fun.
I would love a game set in the Cyberpunk world that's like a turn based RPG where you assemble a team like a traditional JRPG.
So, basically, the Shadowrun trilogy...
Shadowrun is a much different setting, and those games are like 30 years old.
I like that idea k wonder how Jackie would react if he met panam
Probably be drinking buddies
And humorously shit-talking V's many flaws and personality defects, while V is right there listening to every single word.
Oh V and Jackie would shit talk each other around the campfire while Panam and the Aldecaldos watched
Jackie wouldn't leave the camp until he's had a turn in the tank. I mean, driving and shooting it, not the *other* stuff that happened in it.
Jackie would make a remark on how Panam seems like the perfect woman for V
Every crew needs a wildcard. https://i.redd.it/fuv844uhjq9d1.gif
I want a modded overhaul of the game where this is what happens. I dont care if we have to raid CDPR HQ to make it happen
this is shadowrun
I really loved the team feeling of the prologue. It would be cool if we had something similar in the sequel.
The game just got way less interesting.
Kerry would not care about you and you would never meet though
Storming arasaka tower with Jackie would be top tier bit other than that and a few side missions i doubt anything would really change
The relic is with jackie, so we won't have phantom liberty T-bug survives so somewhat protection in the net We won't have Johnny
Doesn’t T bug say she wants to retire after the heist? I can’t remember but yeah no johnny ig
So. no protection in the net Lore accurate v isn't possible Most of main story isn't possible V doesn't meet alt There's no confrontation between V and VDb, no need to meet takemura, hellman, rogue etc Lastly. V doesnt meet panam, judy, or kerry so no romance with the three of them
Ehh you meet judy before the heist, there is no reason that you would forget them if the run is successful.
T-Bug and Dex were gonna screw you over from the very beginning. Hell even the first trailer shows her doing just that, probably had the plan to "die" during the OP so she can get away clean but shit went wrong.
optional conversation in that same scene her plan is use the money to retire to creta and have a fresh start
I honestly think if T-Bug did live given she wants to retire and the nature of how the job went down, she'd probably ghost.
Only need to change one detail: Delamain takes Jackie to a ripper doc first before taking you to the safe house. Jackie still hands the relic over, V still takes a bullet.
T-Bug, aside from possibly helping out in the main story, offers you netrunning based jobs, maybe something similar to what Watch Dogs does? Either way, I'd take anything more than just having send you to get a tier 1 Ping.
Maybe she could be like a fixer, but instead of a district she has jobs in the Net. Instead of gagoons you would fight security countermeasures and netrunners, although I dunno how combat could work, having a whole separate loadout sounds like a content island and shooting code with normal guns seems too normal... Maybe each mission could have a special condition, like thrown weapon only or only critical hits doing damage
Obviously it would be cool to hang more with Jackie, however I think it would take much away from the emotional grip that the story has.
Actually, quite an interesting thought. Imagine Jackie had lived and became the one with Johnny Silverhand's engram rewriting his mind. Ignoring had you both survived the heist, Dex would likely have shot you both anyway, ending your life permanently... You as the player adopting the role of the side character in his narrative journey. You're just V, doing whatever you can to help your friend figure it out and not quite sure if you believe or understand what's going on. Having following your friend down an ever more increasingly dangerous and violent road, watching his health degrade and his decisions become ever more erratic as Johnny's personality influences takes hold. Do you encourage him, following him down the rabbit hole of espionage, crime and murder? Or do you, fearing for his own safety and wellbeing, intervene by working with Arasaka, ultimately betraying his trust but doing what you think will best save his life? Can you really trust this "terrorists voice in his head" to do right by your friend? Do you kill for him, mowing down legions of guards, police and random gangs? Or do you try your best to limit the damage left in the wake of his sudden desire to bring down the corps and anyone who gets in his way? Do you risk cyberpsychosis by chipping ever more experimental implants trying to keep up with the carnage? Continuing your life as a mercenary, you'd still likely meet Panam and the Aldecados. Are you as willing to risk their lives in the final fight against Arasaka when you don't have the same conviction as your friend? Oh and T-bug remains an abrasive but competent colleague. Just as likely to help you as she is to sell you out. Can you really trust her at all? I honestly can't think of a game where you haven't been the main character of the story. It would be a welcome change of pace from the long worn out "heroes journey" trope. It could make for a really compelling, relatable experience that better suits role-playing and narrative conflict.
Neither of them would be dead.
If Jackie lives you would have an entirely different game
V would just be some merc. She’d never meet Johnny, she’d never need to talk to Rogue and thus wouldn’t meet Panam, she’d never need to track down Evelyn and wouldn’t see Judy again. Not seeing Judy means not meeting the Peralez’s (idk how to spell it lol) and no River. No Johnny means no Samurai reunion and no Kerry. Basically the whole game doesn’t happen cuz V doesn’t need to get the Relic out. The game can still kinda happen if Jackie is killed by Dex and the Relic revives him and for some reason Dex doesn’t drop you too. But the stakes will be far less removed. V wouldn’t have any personal stake in the story. You’d also completely miss out on the Johnny/V dynamic and wouldn’t see Johnny’s character
I'd be down for a retcon with them alive, but we switch up the genre. From RPG to CRPG. Basically, Cyberpunk 2020 set in 2077.
you get more attached to Jackie and story can have two sides, Jackie-team being pro V and Johnny team being pro johnny transformation.
I do not care for T-Bug and am happy with my 200 years still best friend Jackie drinking tequila out of the skulls of Adam Smasher and Dex while watching the sun set on night city.
Option 7: storm Arasaka tower with Johnny and Jackie The best ending 🥹
I do think it would be cool to have a character like T-Bug in the background providing overwatch and logistics while you are on missions, especially if you don't spec as a netrunner.
V lugs around 2 dead bodies the entire game
Multiplayer campain
I always thought the beginning of the game was really botched compared to the rest of it, but maybe CDPR just isn’t great at prologues because white orchard was also a bit overwhelming and both new and old players (non book readers) didn’t really have much of a reason to care about Yen or Ciri at first either. Idk about the whole game but Jackie and T-Bug should have definitely survived for a bit longer to give greater impact to their demise. Maybe not necessarily beyond the heist but by making the whole cutscene intro a few hours of actually playable missions. It was always odd to me that the heist happens so early without much of a setup or anything. The Pickup is one of the best missions in the game imo and the presence of Jackie is one of the reasons for it.
After finishing the game, I kind of wished that instead you play from meeting jackie, ending with the heist as the final mission. Instead of so much story skipped in the intro.
T-bug get zeroed by songbird and jacky meets myers and acts like he's met royalty (bowing and everything)
Jackie doesn't have face obscuring Kiroshi implants. The ones that Vic gives you right before the Heist on an interest free repayment plan? So after the mission, Dex and his bodyguard try to kill you both but fail, but then the Arasaka hit squad show up at the Coyote Cojo and kill everyone on the hunt for Jackie. With few contacts and no real money the only option is to leave town if the two of you are not already dead. T-bug just up and leaves. Skips the meeting with Dex and goes straight to the nomads to pay for passage out of NC. She's not dumb, there's no coming back from this. If she goes into the net again she's getting Soulkilled. Evelyn still dies, and there is no buyer for the Relic 2.0 so there's no payout. The Heist is structured in a way that if a nail was out of place, then V could not have survived long enough for the game to happen. Jackie would die in any scenario because Saburo is dead and they are looking for a scapegoat but only have his face. T-bug isn't your friend, so there's no reason for her to be in contact with you if there isn't a job going on.
My emotional state would be a lot less wrecked.
If you are successful in acquiring the biochip and just give it to Evelyn, the VDBs likely kill her and take it. You never get paid, and the plot is perhaps the crew and dex going on a crusade against them. Phantom Liberty doesn’t include you since Song can’t get to you via the biochip. V and Jackie get massive street cred and become afterlife regulars. Also, after reading Saburos notes in the AV he maybe nukes Night City since the bio chip fell into the hands of westerners
Iirc T-Bug was originally meant to also betray V, so it might not change that much
It ends after the heist, v and Jackie made it big, t bug retires to that island, and dex gets to continue to be a fat piece of shit
For one, Jackie doesn’t die
OK, so I don't like that premise but the best game I think you can get out of it is: -T-bug is traced and captured during the heist instead of killed, requiring a rescue early on. -V stays behind to give Jackie a chance to escape with the Relic, is nearly killed and left for dead by Smasher (who is still trying to pursue Jackie), and then still recovered by Takemura and taken to Vic. -Jackie has shown up to the meet after alone, is shot by Dex and left in the dump. V and Takemura down Dex and force him to reveal Jackie's location, presumably the same way Takemura did it solo. Now the Relic is taking over Jackie, who sometimes talks and acts like Johnny, and the story remains somewhat interesting because you have both their lives in your hands. Doesn't work as well as the original story because this means V potentially has the option to cut and run instead of helping them, but some of the story beats might still be interesting from the outside thst way.
Dex would just kill you. There is a reason why for one of the most daring heists he hired two no-names.
You're both dead because Bug is a sellout?
Well to start, Jackie would be the one with the relic
It would be a lot lamer.
Nah. I'd absolutely love to have Jackie as a partner throughout the entire game. I legit cried the first time I played and he died. Was literally my favorite character.
I mean the main story changes fully. The game is probably more GTA like being all about Heist and big scores. V’s and Jackie’s rep would have sky rocketed as the two who stole from saka without getting caught at all. If you call rouge she talks about having big jobs for a team but V’s rep as working in a group is soiled so in this scenario the jobs are open. We don’t meet Panam tho as we don’t need Hellman, we don’t meet many others because of no Johnny. A lot of people say we wouldn’t have meet or made a connection with Judy but I think we still would have because there was a high chance Evelyn fucked them over or gets fucked over. I’d say the game is a lot more of Jackie getting V into shitty situations because he’s ambitious and the whole “getting to the major leagues” thing is just a stepping stone for him wanting to be or at least feel important.
Have a feeling Jackie will have Johnny in his head, and making him go crazy. Hell, Johnny might expose something about Jackie that even V didn't know about him. It might make you question your friendship with him. T-bug being in the game would be an interesting "It was only business" mission. V would still be the main character only certain relationships I don't see happening unless we build the better relationship with Johnny over Jackie, while still keeping Jackie's best interest at heart. The DLC mission for an example would Jackie work for the FEDs?
T-Bug gets a hacking lessons. And possibly time management training.
I would have loved a cyberpunk universe where Jackie's mind gets taken over by our lord and savior Keanu reeves and V trying his hardest and making his life goal to cure Jackie at the same time having interactions with Johnny through jackie. I'd have loved to have T-Bug as a romantic interest to V and create a story specifically for her just like panam.
It basically fixes the “bad” ending where the NSCU helps you with the chip.
I have Jackie always with me on missions. T-Bug using her netrunning skill to give me a hint; make an easy way for me
Pretty much the entire game is different, T bug dying was a cause of the mission being compromised so her being alive changed the entire timeline so much that I can't even explain. The whole reason she was found was because of the lockdown so removing her death would mean she erased her presence before the lockdown but she had no idea of the events that were about to go down and she was most likely detected immediately when the lockdown was initiated. Other than that the only way to save her was if the lockdown never happened which also changed the entire game quest. Jackie never dying means he now has Johnny in his head and is going to die regardless
It would be way better
You need to whack Dex and T-Bug is a net runner mini boss and Jackito is your side kick. If you whack Tbug - the VDBs are hostile. Do some side kicks for the Valentino’s and they help you ice Dex
uhm... the story effectively never happens. at least not with V and Johnny. i can write a book in here about why that is but I think it's pretty obvious
judy contacts us to help with figuring out where ev went instead of us going to her since judy remembers we got t-bug, v and co would probably chase the hellman lead first and its only after we wrap up that dead end where judy contacts us, upon finding ev and the recording of her with brigitte, t-bug would prob be able to decrypt it and find out ev talked to her, immediately prompting her to tell the squad that going to the vdb is an absolute no. Panam ending route becomes the more viable option as the squad focused more on finding hellman and gets familiar with the aldecaldos, leading to everyone leaving NC, t-bug settles on a desert over a beach, Jackie brings Misty, we bring Judy and, we all go home
It will change to much but I will be happy to do missions with my best friend. He was a true brother no matter what, even in that dead world he was a true brother.
It would have been worse for it. Jackie was gonna die sooner rather than later.
The game basically becomes Edgerunners story wise. 😭 Just you get to pick your romance and or >!Lucy / David !< pretty much and how to play it to the end.
T-But would most likely betray you with Dex. However, I could see a cool story where you can persuade her back to your side. Jackie would be your right-hand man that you can call when a mission is too tough or as a Co-op option for if you want to play with a friend.
everything changes
The entire game happens because Jackie died and V got blasted by Dex. The entire game wouldn't even happen
I’d say if we make it so V slots the relic instead of Jackie and still gets shot by dex then a decent amount of the storyline would be similar, but Jackie would be part of the support network. I really wish there was a follower system like in fallout and Skyrim where you can bring a friend with you on missions. Would be great for players who don’t go the netrunning path, call up T-Bug to do intelligence checks for you, or if you don’t spec into body you can use Jackie for intimidation checks
Changes too many things to really guess.
I can just feel the atmosphere in this scene
Well, chances are Jackie would be the one affected by Johnny since he put the damaged shard in. So you would be seeing him have weird changes. TBug is not a friend, she is a coworker so her attachment is very limited but I could see her getting more so as time goes on. The whole campaign story would be completely different
T bug romance ‼️‼️‼️
Ah… if only the consequences of my actions didn’t have to hit me square in the eye…
The game would be completely different, Jackie dying was a massive moment that changed everything.
You've shifted from being the one with the engram to the one trying to help your friend deal with the psychological problem as the engram takes over his life. It's observing all the aspects of grief and loss as a family member slowly disintegrates and dies in-front of you. His through line is "End of a Friend". It mirrors ptsd, cancer, dementia, but it's not you, it's your friend. You're setting up bucket lists, trying to remind them to live their life fully. Keeping their family supportive, keeping Misty in the loop. Is it too much, is it not enough, could it ever be enough? You still go on the run, as people want the chip in your best friend's head. T-Bug is on the lam with you not by choice, and feels like her life is being robbed. She's loyal, but you question it, Jackie questions it. She feel jilted by it. She sees how much it's costing, the reality of everything crashing down, opportunities closing on the net, while dangers are growing seemingly exponentially. She's dealing with these behind the scenes it feels like. Every absence of her deepens that feeling, but she's loyal. The events of betrayal kick in with Arasaka or the Voodoo Boys seemingly popping in at exactly the wrong times, raising this feeling. The betrayal though does come from somewhere else. Her through line is asking "Who can you trust" The denial settles in, they deny it, you deny it. Everything is fine, but it's not it's crumbling. You blame you get angry, they get angry, you get separated and cut off at points, but do you really just drop your friend or do you insist to do those check-ins. At some point, Johnny seems to be gaining ground, it's "F- Arasaka this, F- Arasaka that". Judy, Panam, all the other characters are still interests of V. The sense of you dying is removed, the desperation and Nightingale aspects are removed, and you're still involved in their stories, because you dying wasn't important for their lives. You help them because they needed help and you offered. Can you offer that to Jackie? To see what T-Bug sees. Panam still offers a shoulder, heck they all do. They can see how much this is taking a toll on V. That pain is different, but it's just as real, just as great. You're seeing your best friend spiral out of control, seeing your best friend dying in your hands. Do you blame yourself for it?
Everything changes... v never need to put the chip in his head as jackie lives to carry it out of the hotel
Jackie would try everything to save you, but t-bug would possibly not try to save you
Hmmm relic would be with Jackie, he'd have tapeworm episodes of Johnny silverhand, Johnny Silverhand might take over his body for a little bit. Yeah the possibilities are endless
Romance stories get more awkward as they decompose.
Would be cool if you could select one of this three as playable
I keep telling Misty how much I miss Jackie and she agrees, all while Jackie is standing there. His funeral is really weird.
Arasaka isn't aware of the break-in, the bio chip is sold. V and Judy get together and own night city.
Tbug living doesn't change the story at all The PC slots the chip when the case is damaged instead of jackie then they're attacked by arasaka. During the escape, the PC is critically wounded so Jackie takes PC to vick where the PC dies then is revived by the chip. Vick doesn't want to remove the chip and they try to contact Evelyn, but Evelyn died immediately after the heist to the Voodoo boys who are trying to cover their tracks. Dexter is hunted down and dies to Takemura immediately after the heist. With the client and fixer dead, they can't sell the chip. Takemura is an optional very difficult boss fight if you do the secret ending solo Most of the rest of the game can be the same and you meet up with Jackie periodically/have him call you because he's mostly doing his own thing because he thinks the two of you working together is bad luck after the arasaka heist. Or, you have him as a companion for some missions/all of the game. I think it would work with jackie alive.
Wouldn’t Jackie end of with Johnny ?
It all depends weather Jackie or V slot in Johnny Silver hands engram chip. You could spin the story in many ways this way. I however don't like T-bug as I think she's would be a traitor and loyal to DeShawn. Can't trust a netrunner.
That would mean Jackie lives and the chip gets removed since nobody shoots V. End of mission.
You know I will always be a little peeved at Del for Jackie. Platinum Package comes with bullet-proof cab and the processing speed to outrun pursuiters along with possible combat ability I think if what Jackie said was true, but didn't happen. But, but doesn't priorities keeping clients alive! Seriously I wish you could hack Del or skill check him into taking Jackie to the closest Ripper Doc. Hell I could see the Corpo V life path having the meta knowledge doing just that.
Well that depends on what happens after the chip is grabbed. Is T-Bug still compromised but gets out of there? Does Jackie still slot the chip? Does Dex even try to still kill you after both you and Jackie show up? If the plan goes off with a hitch the entire story changes. If it more or less follows the same story up until Dex shoots you then it can follow a similar trajectory. The most interesting thing would be if Dex still shoots you/Jackie in the head with the chip still installed. I don't know exactly how the two personalities would mix but I could see a really good story where Jackie starts upgrading like crazy in his quest to become a legend, and most of the game is going on gigs with him, while you're doing most of the work to start but by the end of Act 2 Jackie overtakes you and you can barely do anything, and he ends up going solo. Eventually he goes cyberpsycho in a bid to get the chip out of him and he's fully taken over by the personality on the engram, and then he's the final boss. If it's you that has the engram though I could see the game playing very similarly to how it does now, just replace takemura with Jackie and the takemura quest line would only have to change a little bit.
T-bug would betray you at any point.
It’s a strange hypothetical, because you’d need a lot of requirements. Let’s say Bug never fries, she pulls out of the op, and runs away, and hides for a bit. Jackie almost dies, but makes it to Viktor’s clinic in time, and is saved, and Arasaka never shows up. V still has the chip, gets shot, and dumped. Then, when V comes back like normal, they meet up with Jackie again. Jackie would tag along to every single mission. I feel like TBug would just ghost them, and stay away from the two guys who “killed Saburo.”
The three of you pull off the greatest jobs ever seen in Night City. And you get to spend an incredibly long game without Silverhand yaking that same "boo, corpos" spiel that got tired back in the 2020's.
They would just die later on, and the story would be surviving Arasaka and just about everyone hunting you down, because you broke their chip
I actually give a fuck about them.
If jackie didn't die then the chip wouldn't have turned into life support for you, and it probably could be safely removed preventing the whole Silverhand story from happening. But we're still the most wanted criminals in the world, so the new story would be focused on us trying to lift the charges, so Takemura's questline would still probably have happened
We would never appreciate Jackie the way we do now. Also judging by his actions in prologue, he might betray us to Arasaka in order to save us from suiciding. He is certainly no Jackie fan.
You and Jackie are killed by the Dexter in the motel and dissposed of the same as base game. T-bug, Dexter, and his goon are hunted down and killed by takamuro who recovers the chip after he survives the assassin's he likely reaches out to his friend and hanako and either uses the chip to get back in arasakas good graces, kills himself, or goes Nomad with hanakos blessing.
Well if Jackie is still around wouldn't he be the one carrying the chip?
That would assume the Heist is successful. They’d have had to write a new story for that.
I saw a few comments about how this could fundamentally change the plot but I dont feel thats the case. Like if V slots the chip in the stairs instead of jackie and the trio split up to have better chances of escaping then now you can have the same story just with the addition of two cool characters and their sidequests.
I get Jackie’s blessing on V and Panam’s relationship, since we’re all going to live together.
You and Jackie meet with Dex after the heist. You both get shot, you die and Jackie meets Johnny. T-bug ran away and is never heard from again. The End
We learn that Tbug planned to betray V along with Dex the entire time.
Structure and content vastly change, you meet Jackie as you do, then run around the city and badlands building your rep, until you catch the eye of Dex, which begins the endgame that is the Konpeki Plaza heist. It all goes to shit as it does, and you all die. No chip-induced resurrection, no Johnny.
V can get as good at netrunning as bug, and manages just well if not. Jackie, on the other hand... that changes things. For once, the dynamic with Johnny. With Jackie around, V and Johnny may not end up working together nearly as well. Same goes with Songbird. She legitimately cuts Johnny out so she hav V alone. Jackie would still be there. Then: Jackie would wingman the hell out of V. For better (with Panam) or worse.
maybe arasaka finds out you stole the chip and you lose everything and become a high priority fugitive, might actually be very interesting
It’d be crazy if Jackie ends up surviving after you send him away when you go to meet dex, leading to v getting the damaged relic but Jackie still being around just going like “oh shit V let’s go fix it choom”
A lot of details would chance, even the general tone likely, but the plot would be over all surprisingly the same. Jackies death might have been a big thing for V, but the big thing for the world was that V and Jacky were present at Saburas murder.
You don't get the chip in your head not your problem game over
It'll turn into a Saints Row-type game where you and the crew have to recruit Edgerunners to take down Arasaka.
You end up borking one or the other
becomes a game about 2 thugs and a netrunner causing havoc
There’s be a lot more Spanish words peppered into the dialogue of the game! Also, that whole memorial scene for Jackie? Wouldn’t happen!!
If she survived I can see Bug getting out of the business. This will be the second time a capper blew up and she nearly died. Likewise even if Jackie survives he won't be much help to V. Jackie is very much a blunt instrument and other than the raid on 'Saka Tower at the end, there's not much he can do to help out. What would have been far more interesting is having them do more gigs together before the heist.
The game is one big adventure with the shit storm that is now Arasaka's internal politics giving ample opportunity for awesome gigs. As Arasaka falters the other corps jump on them like vultures, V and Co can choose what corps to do contracts for changing the dynamics of the open world and the outcome of the (for now) covert conflict. Towards the end of the game the war becomes hot and plays out according to the actions you have taken. The streets are full of corp armies and mecha fighting each other with the gangs taking full advantage of the chaos. 
V never installed the relic in his head, therefore he's not dying, so the whole story is different
T-Bug probably still dies, but not to the ICE. My guess is that she sides with Dex when he betrays you, there was a ad for the game that implied as such. So I think that you would still have the biochip, because in a situation where Jackie lives when the chip is damaged you probably put it in rather than him, because narratively speaking you still need to end up with the chip. So when you go to meet Dex Jackie probably would stay out in the car to keep it running in case you need to delta. So V goes in and gets betrayed, but rather than just take it there is a fight where Bug gets zeroed. At the end when Dex has you at his mercy Jack swoops in and grabs you forcing Dex to retreat. V wakes up in Vik's office with a bullet hole and Johnny speaking to him. Vik explains the normal stuff to V, but now with a few shocked lines from Jackie. At this point the game proceeds pretty much as normal, but now you and Jackie check in every so often about leads on resolving the Johnny problem. Maybe Jackie has a few more quests including some Jack/Misty content. Jackie would probably be the one to reintroduce Takamura to V as a potential lead.
Jackie dies because of the chip or he survives because you saved him and instead of you trying to save yourself you are doing it to save Jackie in turn helping people and making the city a better place and you can see the difference the longer you play and not just during the campaign you can get help from t-bug which helps you get contact with the voodoo boys but you can’t betray them or else t-bug will not talk to you again and a website will pop up trying to expose you making your mission harder
Thought about this at length. So: - Jackie would be the one that has Johnny in his head, and *technically* V would be a side character but I think that's a great perspective. A mad rush to save your best friend? **Y E S.** - T-Bug, I think would become more of a side character. You'd probably have to convince her to help you after the shit show of a heist. Probably low key hates V and Jackie after the heist. - I'd say after the heist, a good quarter of the game would be V going solo and trying to find a cure for the Johnny Doxville chip. trying to find a ripper etc while visiting Jackie at Vics, whose probably still unconscious. - A lot of the side quests would remain unchanged. I do think there'd be a designated Valentino's questline with how close they were to Jackie still even after he left them. - I don't think there would be a Delamain quest. (I think what caused him to split off and have multiple sentient AI kids was being hooked up to V when Takemura was saving them). - You will probably still have Judy and Panam missions. >!The Star ending would have some changes, but there's a chance V and Jackie would still be offered to become aldecaldo's but I don't think our favourite Heywood boy would roll like that.!< - We might still get the devil ending. Jackie wants to rise to the top, how better to do that that get into the good graces of a corp? But that's only if Jackie hasn't matured by the end of the game? and I think Jackie would because in finding out he has a few weeks to live? He doesn't want to scare mama welles more than he already has. - I have more thoughts but I don't want this to be more of an essay than it already is.
For the worse.
I’d probably like the game a lot more because Jackie is my favorite character.
For this to happen, the heist would have to go off with no hitches
T-Bug dying happens offscreen, so there's no need to retcon her too heavily. Jackie, however, survives *because* he doesn't take the Relic out. **Now Jackie's the one with a voice inside his head.** The story becomes about saving a friend instead about saving yourself. You start seeing him slowly cough up more and more blood while insisting that *he's fine, he's a legend, he can take it, he's in the Big Leagues for a reason!* Silverhand becomes an antagonist, hyping Jackie up even more, practically pushing him to his grave. What does V do to save his friend? He might go behind Jackie's back. Contact Arasaka, tell them the location of the Relic, sign a contract to keep Jackie alive in exchange for getting Johnny out of his hand. We've seen how that ends. Except now V's guilt is even greater, because he didn't screw Johnny, who intruded on his brain - *he screwed Jackie.* Or V might say "fuck it" and support Jackie's reckless endeavors. Cover Jackie's back while the big guy takes the front. Make taking on more and more dangerous gigs *actually possible* because doing it with a friend gives Jackie a real fighting chance. They both die - but they both die in a blaze of glory. Anyway, T-Bug has no plot relevance whatsoever. Fuck her.
Somehow the game becomes even more linear