You see alot of references to them in game exploring the city, but NPCs act like "that old ass band? Only indie rock enjoyers have their shit". Is the band famous or the way that johnny on your relic make you see things different as they really are???
23 Comments
>!There’s a mission where you meet with an old man that has a music shop and you find that he is so obsessed with samurai and Johnny silverhand. Also there is this guy who stole the porch you bought and turned it to his stylized Johnny silverhand can with samurai logo on it. So i guess yeah its something famous.!<
The lore is that time has past. People move on.
Its like AC/DC. Only older people really listen to them, that doesn’t mean they’re not well known or not a good band.
The band used to be huge but it died out. The bland split up way back and as well this is like 50+ years since their reunion tour. Also there was the whole issue of the old net being destroyed resulting in loss of their content so it was harder to access their music.
Id like to think its kinda like the bands we have right now from the 80s only older folks know them, yknow?
When they were active in the 2000s, Samurai was one of the biggest bands in-universe, think something like Metallica. They broke up in 2008 so still before the first iteration of the ttrpg.However, 2020‘s roll around and the internet got nuked by Rache Bartmoss into being literally unusable, so stuff like Spotify or YouTube wouldn’t be around anymore. Imagine if you had to rely on old bootleg CDs and Vinyls for classic 50‘s rock in a world thats plagued by countries literally sinking due to climate change and supply chains maybe not being what they used to be anymore. People might remember bands like the Beatles, Metallica and Elvis and have their fanbases still but they’re definitely not in the zeitgeist anymore.
I feel like the game itself is not super sure about it. sometimes it makes it seem like they were a super underground thing for people in the know, and then it has young people casually referencing them like they’re super famous, like jackie with his joke about “chippin’ in” in the heist.
feel like it’s a mixed bag, they seem to be generally known however i’m betting a large part of that is due to johnny’s terrorism and kerry’s present relevance rather than their music.
people will know of them but not necessarily know them and in the grand scheme of things it’s not been that long since they broke up. think about the beatles, they’ve been broken up for over fifty years too and we only have two of the surviving members and even if people don’t know their music, they’ve still heard of them.
You know who The Beatles are. They’re as old to us as Samurai is to V.
You can be a worldwide phenomenon with an enduring legacy *and* a “that old-ass band” seventy years later. These two things are not contradictory.
Id jam their shit till corpo shit burns
If you look at night city through the eyes of Maelstrom’s wardrobe, they are the fucking Beatles.
I look at them like a nirvana. They flared super bright for a short period of time.
Lost someone integral to the band, and one of their members did his own thing and got huge.
At the very least people know of the band, people do know of their music at least like when Panam mentioned they play them on the radio here and there. Theyre also probably forgotten about though to the point people can impersonate them and no one would notice. An example being the mission you have from the Streetkid lifepath when you get the Samurai bootleg jacket, it mentions a Johnny Silverhand impersonator called “Johnny Silverham.” Very similar case when you buy the rip off version of Johnnys Porsche and activate that mission to go get it and you find the corpse of another impersonator named “Johnny Silverman.”
Its handled really weirdly tbf
Basically heavy metal Led Zeppelin.
People in game say they’re a mostly-forgotten band, but their records, posters, and merch are everywhere and their music is always on the radio, so they must be at least popular.
It’s something like The Beatles or the Rolling Stones, everybody’s heard of them, but nobody really listens to them anymore.
Depends. In lore, a mostly forgotten Oldies band. Panam literally describes them as an oldies band you sometimes hear on the radio. In game, the prevalence of Samurai merch, tour posters, etc. is incorrect. Like, lore wise, it’s wrong. Samurai is mostly forgotten. But they wanted to have Samurai more visible because the game is about Johnny Silverhand, Samurai front man. But it’s _wrong_.
You can choose to interpret it as Johnny’s engram and ego influencing V’s perceptions, if you want. Those tour posters and band shirts aren’t actually there, Johnny just believes they are.
The venue and crowd size at their last show was pretty small, so I always assumed they were an underground band whose fame and influence and legend only grew after the band’s breakup and Johnny’s death. Sort of like maybe the Sex Pistols (I can’t think of any great examples…)
I feel like they probably got a lot more recognition when their front man decided to set off a nuke in the middle of the city.
Considering how anti-corpo they were, and we can see them play in a tiny venue in front of a small crowd, I’d say they’re a small band with some sort of cult status.
I mean did Johnny even want them to be popular?
I feel like he thrives in the “me against the world” mindset that’d be shattered if he was famous and loved.
A band where the lead singer detonated a nuke in the middle of a major city is going to be pretty famous.
They must be like Black Sabbath IRL:
**Scenario 1**:
“Black what? Never heard of them…” – Some zoomer.
**Plays Iron Man**
“OHHHH, Yeah, i know that song… also, that Ozzy guy is famous, right?”
**Scenario 2**:
“Black Sabbath, hell yeah, we’ve had some dark trips with those songs in the 70s, son…” – Some Oldhead
I think they were good, but intentionally played to a niche audience to avoid going mainstream, it was mentioned that while in the band, they weren’t really making good money.
However the band is kept famous by Silverhand’s connection to the 2023 bombing of Arasaka Tower, as well as Kerry Eurodyne’s extreme mainstream success, keeping the band’s name in mainstream consciousness.
My take is in Night City, very few people listen to them by 2077, but it’s impossible to not know their name.