I just finished the mission “Ghost Town” (I believe it is. Or the series of missions that follow Ghost Town) and when Johnny gives his speech about why he hates corporations I was thinking to myself that he sounds like a guy who fights for good. Even though he’s an asshole to everyone he is genuinely a morally correct man imo
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No
yes he’s hot
He detonated a nuclear device in the middle of a densely populated city. It didn’t even accomplish anything, Arasaka built another tower, slapped down a memorial where the nuke went off, and called it a day.
A lot of innocent people died and in the end Arasaka still had power…he had good intentions but overall it wasn’t justified.
Why is he holding a vape?
Naw, blew up building, died, Arasaja keeps going. He just killed people and then regretted it. He should’ve stuck to rock and girls lol
Morally, no. He helped detonate a thermo-nuclear weapon in a densely populated area to take down one (albeit large) faction of a global Illuminati due to a highly flimsy manifesto.
Philosophically, yes. He helped show that the people can rise up from an entities vice grip on their way of life. Again, his method was wrong…but the belief that we’re not meant to be subjugated is correct.
Just because he hates corps and actively fights them doesn’t make him morally good. He is a very bad person in fact. But so are most people in night city. The cyberpunk genre isn’t normally about “good guys and bad guys”
No. Morally grey at best.
Many people on reddit dislike Nestlé, O would not call anyone detonating a nuclear device in Geneva “morally correct.”
I think he has a good understanding of what is wrong with the world he lives in, but he’s too cynical to really try to formulate a solution (not that doing so would necessarily lead to a better outcome, certainly not without action to back it up) and the actions that he does take are ego-driven and as ineffective as they are destructive. I don’t know that it’s worth trying to categorise him as good or bad; his story is one of futile struggle against the corporations, and that is the epitome of cyberpunk as a genre.
Yes.
Yes he is. Far more people are killed by the corpo machine over the decades they are allowed to destroy the world than by his single act of defiance. He stood up when everyone else capitulated. If you want to smash the corporate control over the world, drastic measures are needed. The real question is who has the spine to do it.
He’s a bad person who is doing good only by coincidence, but doing far more damage to actual good people as collateral.
He hurt Rogue, Spider, and Kerry, who all actually cared for him and did their best to save him in their own ways. Never cared about anyone other than himself. The only consolation is that he shows signs of genuine regret and change in the Temperance ending, meaning that having V has made him into an actual good person, finally, after all the bloodshed.
I mean he was part of the distraction team and not the actual bomb team but he was involved in the nuclear bombing of a city thus killing innocent civilians and causing radiation poisoning and cancer in countless other civilians who might not be able to afford any of the treatment for it.
So no.
Yes.
I wish they added this into the game, because sometimes it’s slightly reference but never actually talked about, but Johnny didn’t know what was going to happen at Arasaka Tower, all the teams were being actively lied to and were told the area where the nuclear bomb was going off was so deep and protected there was no chance of it harming anyone in the city.
If you are playing the TTRPG and your team suggests something that would harm civilians or cause extreme destruction its written in the game that the GM should make the NPCs refuse to do that plan and make the players think of something else.
It would have made more sense to mention something like that, especially with him saying at one point he didn’t want any innocent people to die. Because he didn’t. Yes, he’s an asshole and cyberpsychotic at that point but he didn’t know nearly 750,000 people would die, and I don’t think he would have gone through with it if he did. I don’t think anyone on the team would have.
Tv Tropes has a name for him, [Well-Intentioned Extremist](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WellIntentionedExtremist).
No lol. Did you play or understand the game?
Johnny is a scumbag. I absolutely hated him, but the character was beautifully done.
In theory, yes. In practice, no.
The ends didn’t justify the means imo, though he was absolutely correct on the Soulkiller front. The problem is he’s very much ‘nuke first, ask questions later (but not really)’.
lmao. No. It’s not that Johnny doesn’t make some good points. But he’s a very flawed and complex and nuanced character. That’s what I love about Cyberpunk. Most of the characters aren’t really “good” or “bad”, they’re somewhere in the wild wastelands between.
No. Not even a little bit. He does make some really good points about late stage capitalism and the power corporations hold but he is also unequivocal not morally correct. The nuke killed over 12,000 people and injured almost a half million more.
His enemies are ontologically evil, and any action against them is correct. Yes.
He doesn’t put the cigar butts in the trash, he is inmoral and incorrect.
“Do you use your powers for good or for awesome?” – Strong Bad
Johnny Silverhand is a construct with Morgan Blackhands memories(?) and is just another asshole rocker boy. No he’s not morally correct, but I can agree he’s got the right to hate Arasaka.
I like how this thread is talking about Arasaka like it’s just a modern company and not one of the most lethal existing entities on the planet.
There is a difference a *fine* line between fighting a corp and trying to blow up a nuclear bomb in the middle of the city to fight a corp.
He’s an ass. But if you look past that he’s got the right worldview. Zealot. Kinda grumpy but personality aside he knows what needs to get done and who needs to go down.
He nuked a city. He’s a terrorist. Seriously… How is subjecting a city to nuclear fallout ever morally acceptable?
No…?
In the spectrum of the cyberpunk genre yes he is good. First because he believes in a cause greater than himself and second because he did something about it.
Now there are plenty of people here that point out setting off a nuclear bomb in the middle of metropolitan area is morally suspect at best. But I would argue that when all mission oriented systems are owned by mega corporations what other belief systems can people embrace besides, you know, that side mission of nailing that guy on that cross? Especially in a post apocalypse cyberpunk city.
So I am happy to make the deeply unpopular position that he is good, even if he detonated a thermal nuclear device in the middle of a population center. Because he wanted to create a belief system not owned by the corporations.
https://preview.redd.it/ibtvm3cbff2f1.jpeg?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=9dcf215246f9729d5c7c6fb314374501b730be22
No
Yet I love him still
It depends on who you ask, but generally, no. He had the right idea about corporations being very problematic but what he did in the arasaka building is absolutely not the solution to that. (Clearly, because arasaka continued to be a successful corporation decades after) Most people are morally grey. No one is wholly “right” or “wrong”.
I think it’s also important to look out how he treated everyone close to him. Majority of the time, he treated everyone like shit. Nothing morally correct about that.
Is setting a nuke off in a major city center morally correct? Bro
12,000 people died. approximately 1 Belka.
“Morally correct” lol.
Who are you asking?
Does he have a point? Yes, absolutely. But as V says, “You can’t change people by blowing ‘em up, Johnny.”
His heart is in the right place. Just about everything else from his words to actions/methods are at best morally grey and at worst completely fucked.
Fuck no
Anyone who takes part in a plan to detonate a nuke in the middle of a city is decidedly not a good person. He’s an awful person but that’s what makes him such an interesting brain roommate.
He’s a murderer and a terrorist and an asshole on top of that. But Arasaka is also **exactly as evil** as he says it is. He’s not exaggerating even a little bit.
I think V hits the nail on the head when he describes Johnny as “needing a nemesis at all times”. I think Johnny is someone who is motivated by a hatred of his enemies and not out of a compassion for their victims, as evidenced by him nuking Arasaka tower and countless civilians with it. While his crusade against the corporations is good, it’s a “right cause, wrong reasons” situation that makes it hard to definitely call him a “good person”. I do think that by the end of the game though he experiences enough character growth to have past that.
Fun fact: the universe doesn’t have a single “morally correct”. You get to decide what you agree is moral and what you don’t.
Morals are fictional concept symptomatic of the institution in which you are fostered.
I don’t think anyone except maybe Misty is morally correct.
people will say johnny is a bad person but the thing is, is that johhny spends his life fighting an actual evil, while he himself is morally questionable/debatable.
Jonny would do the right thing if given the chance.
Arasaka, at this point in time, has been given many chances and still shits on everyone, throws people’s lives literally in the can, and like an ancient evil lich lord, is seeking immortality because they literally dont want to stop exploiting everything they can.
So.. in the question of is ok to break a few eggs to make an omelette. yes. because in the end its for the better good. this is why V is upset if he ever gets cured of johnny. (Spoilers for phantom liberty.. but by now.. fkn play it already if youre on this reddit)
he gets upset no one even cares about arasaka, or that they bought out all the shit V grew up with. they did it in a slow state so people just think “oh this turned to that, which was that, which became this over time, and then blah”
but V sees things cut and dry. People sold out on fighting back because they didnt care if someone wasnt leading them or fighting harder than them, or they just didnt have the fight in them in the first place, then the others didnt even understand what they were fighting for. introduce the title. “Phantom Liberty”
lastly and back to johnny being morally grey: i dont remember if he actually did anything super messed up. but im willing to discuss my reasoning on why i think jonny is good if anyone wants. hes pretty understandable in my opinion. sure he treated people like shit.. but thats nothing compared to what johnny is trying to stop, and its damn near impossible to fight them while being “morally good”
trying to keep the title of “good” is like playing chess with checkers. you can apply this both to the real world and arasaka.
No.
People desperately want to think he is, because he’s played by Keanu Reeves and he looks cool.
But he’s a violent, manipulative, narcissistic, domestically abusive POS, who took part in the killing of thousands of people directly and indirectly, in a terrorist attack. He benefited from the system for decades as a rock star, he could’ve used his millions and his platform to make the lives of the poor and the sick better- hell he could’ve just handed people wads of cash and made more of a difference than anything else he did.
But instead his malignant ego grew to the point that he decided he wanted to kill a bunch of people, so he picked a target with good optics – evil corporation, booo! – and dashed off a bullshit manifesto “justifying” his reasons.
If you made him a wormy little middle eastern guy with a unibrow and a thick accent, the hate train would never stop.
Johnny Silverhand is brain cancer personified.