Hi! On my 3rd replay of the game I finally went upstairs and got to Saburo's diary.
I know it's been said a thousand times that Johnny is not a reliable resource when recalling what went down at Arasaka HQ, mostly since it looks like Smasher breaks his arm, and later he's strapped to a chair being soulkilled while watching the explosion.
I know that in the TTRPG lore, the leader of the op is the (for Cyberpunk 2077) mysterious Morgan Blackhand, but, why does Saburo's diary directly call out JS (Johnny Silverhand?) instead of Morgan, Militech, Murphy or whoever was on that tower and had a bigger role?
Was Johnny THAT important to Saburo?
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Johnny was still the lead of a fairly big band that’s main deal was fuck arasaka and he did still commit several terrorist acts against the company very openly
He’s an enemy with a name but not super relevant in the grand scheme
Saburo probably knew about Alt too
I think this is Johnny being forgettable and Saburo’s fleeting memory rather than singling him out. He was a “loud” enemy if anything but not someone Saburo was losing sleep over
There might have been bigger thorns in Arasaka’s side, but I think it was probably personal with Johnny purely because Saburo recognized their similarities.
Two men who were suckered in by idealistic nationalism, went to war, were *deeply* traumatized by their experiences there, and returned furiously angry at both their own nation and everywhere else, who decided to take a catastrophic and destructive revenge that they know, deep down, accomplished nothing but hurting people, but choose to stubbornly double down on insisting that they did the right thing.
I think Johnny stayed on Saburo’s mind for a long while because, while he was still reeling from the horror and anger of a nuclear strike, Johnny’s presence in the team that made the attack made him recognize that if he’d been the same age and in the same circumstances, *he’d have done the same thing.* And that’s a thought he was never able to come to terms with.
Brendan tells you that JS was blown to bits during the events of 2023.though the last “joke”. There is that…
I think in this instance Saburo is thinking about Silverhand (a person he had almost completely forgotten about) specifically because he’s traveling to recover the stolen relic that has Silverhand’s imprint on it. He’s surprised to be recalling the faces of his old enemies
Edit: additionally on a meta level, the game is right about to introduce Johnny, and Blackhand is barely important for the narrative of 2077. It makes sense to foreshadow the character you’re actually supposed to care about
Maybe this is the game pushing towards Johnny actually having the importance he claims in this version. Or maybe Johnny is just the biggest profile they got from this attack.
I still think Johnny overstates his importance in the grand scheme. Even if he did lead the attack on the tower and everything, he sees himself as the arch-nemesis of Smasher and Arasaka, not just Saburo. Even in his deformed and biased reality, Smasher kicked his ass. Saburo barely remembers the guy. He likes to think he’s at war but he’s just making a bit more noise than the rest of the cattle when they’re getting squashed to those two.
Makes me wonder why Silverhand’s engram is on the experimental Relic version that implants the engram into a body? And also why Yorinobu would steal it.
Was somebody planning to resurrect him?
Given that he’s going to confront Yorinobu about stealing Johnny’s engram, it’s not hard to imagine that he would be present in Saburo’s mind.
that’s one of biggest no sense that fucks up the whole 2077 lore that fucks up with og lore by its own already…
we see johnny’s flashback giving for true what we see (bet really few people knew cyberpunk 2020 lore), then we’re warned from alt that johnny’s memories is only his version of facts and real events didn’t go that way, then we learn that saburo arasaka knew JS implying that johnny’s memories were true
Yup. He believes what he wants to believe. The very definition of an unreliable narrator
I don’t think this is Saburo saying Johnny is important. Rather Silverhand is such a non-issue that Saburo is surprised he even remembered the rockerboy. Even though the Relic has Johnny’s engram.
I mean, Johnny was on the shard. I suspect Saburo knew that. Arasaka also clearly pinned the bombing on Silverhand in the ‘official’ record. So while Johnny is not nearly as important to Arasaka as they would lead you to believe, saburo would still have call to be aware of him.
Everyone seems to forget or not know that Johnny tried to rescue Alt TWICE. The first time he organized a concert and twitter armied his fans to storm Arasaka.
I think Saburo would rather burn NC to thr ground than lose a monopoly on the kind of immortality the relic technology was capable of if it got in Netwatch or some other corps hands
I think the key words here are “I almost completely forgot about him”
This actually shows Johnny’s insignificance in all of the events.
The “even JS” implies there are a bunch of old enemies before him in the list, which is probably where Morgan, Murphy etc. would go.
Blackhand was important enough that he’d never forget about him. Johnny, on the other hand, was a fairly minor enemy, hence why he’s only just now remembering him. As to why he’s remembering Johnny specifically, it’s probably just because Johnny’s about to be introduced to the story.
I think the fact that he says ‘even js’ is telling. To me that seems to imply that his memories of those events are becoming so sharp that he’s even remembering someone as ‘insignificant’ as Johnny (when compared to the likes of Blackhand).
And I think it’s also likely that in some sense Johnny stands out among the rest of the group because he was killed and his engram was captured. I’m sure after the attack, Johnny’s engram was something Saburo, or his team, spent time looking through to gain insight on the attack itself.
So even while Johnny maybe isn’t as significant among all the enemies of Arasaka, he’s still unique enough in that sense to merit remembering.
Plus of course, this was put there by the game devs who had a Johnny centric story in mind, so of course he comes up here as foreshadowing, but in another telling of the story, it could have just as likely been another member of the team. That’s my take at least. I’m sure some lore junkies here could add more context.
Alright, I know some people here won’t like to hear that but I don’t think it makes sense to immediately disregard all the hints in the game that Johnny did have a larger role in this event in the lore of the games universe.
Adaptations change things no matter how faithful they try to be, it’s inevitable. During the time the story for 77 was written, CDPR had to assume they wouldn’t get the opportunity to adapt Morgan, old net, who knows if they’re going to use him in the future. So they rewrote the events and kept a door open to later introduce Morgan by pointing out that Johnny’s memories are flawed.
Johnny in 77 did have a significant role. It is totally possible that Johnny didn’t immediately die and met Saburo while getting erased by Soulkiller unless there’s something in the game that directly contradicts it. It is totally possible that he was the one placing the nuke.
I’m almost of the opinion that 2077 is a divergence from the tabletop canon, and is it’s own story with it’s own, slightly different world and history.
What benefit would Arasaka get from warping Silverhand’s memory in Mikoshi and tweaking it to include a super detailed, highly fictitious version of the Arasaka Tower attack? Of course, in the tabletop canon, he was a very damaged engram, so maybe over the years in storage, he filled in the gaps himself and made himself the big hero. But that’s weird too, because multiple people credit Silverhand with blowing up Arasaka Tower. Even Vic!
Given that rogue recalls her dropping johnny from the chopper in his ending im pretty sure the game simply wants to portrai their own events.
I know what mike said but the whole scene, and this message too, make no sense if we follow the ttrpg canon.
Pretty sure cdpr just wanted to alter events slightly to make them more interesting and johnny more involved.
Probably because he’s the one they have an engram of.
Militech covered their tracks, Saburo was bamboozled. Recall that the public narrative that’s persisted for 54 years is that Johnny Silverhand was responsible for the bombing.