What do you think Alt meant here? Did we see a false perception after looking into Johnny’s past?
What do you think Alt meant here? Did we see a false perception after looking into Johnny’s past?
23 Comments
We know that some of Johnny’s memories are fabricated. His biggest fear, manipulated personalities and memories came true. Alt is telling the truth, his memories aren’t reliable as they’ve been planted and grown by the fact that he spent 50 or so years reliving those memories.
He says he never worked with Thompson again but he was in the helo during the bombing of Arasaka which takes place AFTER Alt’s death.
Yea Johnny’s memories are definitely unreliable, perhaps not by Johnny’s fault but one example I saw was in Spider Murphy’s lore where during the bombing Johnny’s memory makes it seem like he was able to put up a fight against smasher but in reality Silverhand died mere seconds into trying to pick a fight with him.
Ha! Literally just did this mission about 30 min ago. Was playing for a few hours. Started to get a headache and wanted to stop. Said “okay after the mission” not knowing it would be another 30 or so damn minutes. Probably longest mission in the game so far I can recall.
Ask this question, where is Morgan Blackhand in Johnny’s memories?
In the pen and paper lore, Johnny lead the distraction team in 2020. Morgan Blackhand lead to main team with the bombs. Adam Smasher had a rivalry with Morgan, not Johnny. Johnny attempted to fight Smasher to buy his team time, and got shotgunned in half nearly immediately for it.
This conversation is because in the lore, Johnny pulled the plug on Alt before she could get out of the net.
Yeah it’s been confirmed. The events we see break the canon already established and at first some ppl thought CDPR was retconning the Arasaka attack, but as it turns out Alt reveals that Johnnys ego created those memories
Something I don’t think people are entirely aware of is that Alt is actually correct with this statement. People’s memories don’t record the events like a camera, all memories are more of a retelling of how you felt about the event than they are a reliable account of exactly what occurred.
It is entirely possible that a malignant narcissist like Johnny would remember himself as the main character of every story without manipulation from arasaka
The situation she is talking about is a great example. When Johnny ran to disconnect Alt from the arasaka net, he killed her. Johnny is not a netrunner, he had no idea how soulkiller worked, so obviously he would remember himself as trying to save her and failing. Whether that was the factual truth or not is irrelevant when it comes to how he would remember the scenario
Alt is just telling us that Johnnie is an unreliable narrator.
Johnny’s memories are not true. Example the whole thing on the helipad. There was never Johnny there, but Morgan Blackhand and Adam had this fight. When nuke went off, both Morgan and Adam fell off the building. We know Adam survived, we also think Morgan did too as there is never drink made in Afterlife for him.
That reporter guy who Johnny had small fight with, Lyle Thompson. There is no memory of Thompson. But he also was with the team when they went to plant the nuke.
Good read: [https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Night_City_Holocaust](https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Night_City_Holocaust)
Most of his memories are what he wants to remember so not everything is true. There is a lot of ego behind it and some things are changed or either fully left out.
From what I understood, Johnny replayed that fabricated memories over and over for 50 years, so he accually belives them.
Every moment on reddit you’ll likely see someone express an interpretation of events, but it has to do with their biases, reflection of events, thoughts towards those people or the object in q uestion, and all kinds of other factors. Others may distort intentionally or otherwise to make themselves seem better. Sometimes the distortions, paraphrasing, etc come without us realizing it even.
It is as a result likely that in this situation Johnny may have embellished negatively or positively on the results or actions taken against him by others or in general that he took towards others.
Like a person bullied was bullied sure but perhaps they weren’t bullied every single day, or perhaps they were, but the one telling it presents it as if it was just one time and not too big a deal.
Truth is johnny lost early in the fight, according to the official lore johnny was shot in the head by adam smasher early in the fight. Some of his memories seem comparable to things that were ascribed to morgan blackhand not johnny, but this is back in the pen and paper rpg.
What do we think Alt meant here? Exactly what she said, that the memories we are seeing aren’t 100% truth. Just like everyone’s memories tend to be. We all view ourselves as the main character in the story. Johnny is no exception. He viewed himself as the big bad Arasaka was after. When even in his version of events, characters were like “no Johnny, they don’t care about you.”
I think the lines are very blurry between the tabletop and ‘77. I think it may be intentional, sort of like a “soft reboot/retcon” but honestly it’s hard to tell. I know there’s conflicting dialogue from rogue, who was there and lived, stating that Johnny made it to the roof if I remember correctly. PL didn’t really help us narrow this down as it was like one large side quest for the most part, not really feeding into the question prompted here. Another sidenote, regardless of ending, Smasher never really confirms or denies Johnny being his rival, the closest we get is “you’re fucking with me right?”. I feel like maybe the next game will help us nail down the official story, my gut says that the tabletop is the true story, but I wouldn’t mind a slight change in history. If they stay true I feel they def need to bring in Blackhand tho.
It is stated that Soulkiller can’t see the difference between wishes, desires and memories. It’s like with our AI Stuff that we have currently.
That what we see in the game is half true. Yes It’s right that Johnny and his friends attacked the Tower and he was shoot in half by Smasher and died there.
Spider Murphy put the Relic in him, because she got it from Alt earlier on.
I guess what we see in Johnny his memories is kinda a mash-up of truth and wish/perception of the event.
But because Johnny is mind was uploaded on this Relic it was the truth for him, because the programm couldn’t differ between all this stuff.
Morgan was there and fought Smasher, but Johnny his Wish and Desire was to fight Smasher himself.
At least that’s how i understood the difference from the Game and the original.
Everything from the TT-RPG is true and canon, but Johnny his mind was full of stuff, the Programm couldn’t differ between all this stuff and gave Engram-Johnny this memory.
Human memory is a really fickle thing. Every time we recall a memory, we’re actually recreating it each time. Over time this means that details get lost or replaced by our imagination.
So Johnny’s recollection of Alts death is heavily tainted by his own grief and anger. Now lets add some extra variables. The conversion to an engram may not have been flawless. The biochip is designed for believability, not accuracy. The engram may have been “fudged” to what seems more believable for Johnny to behave.
In addition to this, Arasaka may have messed with the engram data themselves and fucked with Johnnies memories.
All in all, a perfect storm for a wholly unreliable historian.
Can we address that in the paper lore Johnny rode with the Aldecaldos for 10 years in between Alt’s death and the Arasaka attack
And how in game he is STUPIDLY dismissive of the Nomads?
The “memories” we see from Johnny’s POV are wrong. Altered. Either his warped perception based on his ego, or deliberately altered by Arasaka when they created his engram.
For starters, Johnny and Rogue were not the leaders of the mission. It was Morgan Blackhand, sponsored by Militech who was leading the assault. Johnny’s team was more of a distraction and “plan B”. Johnny is not the big name hotshot he thinks he is, it’s why Samurai has faded into obscurity in the past 50 years. People still recall his name here and there if you bring it up, but he didn’t go down in history in as big a way as he thinks he did.
I don’t know all of the lore. But we do know that Arasaka is going to tinker with memories to see how they can affect personality. How do we know that the Arasaka biochip Johnny was on isn’t some kind of new military tech meant to take over soldiers bodies after they fall in combat? As it was stated, it’s a prototype than the chip designer had never even seen before. Likely saburo and a small engineering team are the only people who have those answers. Saburo is dead. Between implants and biochips, the amount of potential for people to manipulate what you think and who you are in that world is pretty terrifying. Think of what is happening to the Jeffersons in that political mission when you look around their house.
Basically what a lot of people have already pointed out, Johnny’s memory of events are different than lore event. Few explanations as to why could be SK doesn’t fully copy the data accurately, it was altered, or the one I like, Johnny was a narcissist with a hero complex. Johnny always sees himself as the main character which is why in his mind, it is him who lead the charge, has beef with smasher, and it was always arasaka out to get him when in reality
– He pretty much got shotgunned in half at the start by smasher lol
– Morgan blackhand led the charge, you the player of the table top served as part of the distraction team
– Shai tan was a full borg like smasher and held his own, not getting shot right at the start of the heli scene
– Johnny was never at the top of the tower as again, he got shredded fairly early on, it was morgan and smasher at the top duking it out
– It was johnny who caused alt to become an AI because he pulled her plug too early before she could get back in her body like a gonk but his mind twists it to always be arasakas fault
– Smasher we see in game was also using a diff suit, smasher in table top during that mission was much much scarier
– The assualt team already had a version of SK and it was spider murphy who SK’ed Johnny, not saburo, he was also never interrogated ect. How arasaka has a copy if murphy had it? IDK, could be that maybe arasaka did create one after murphy so there is 2 engram of johnny.
– Johnny’s body was also somewhere else and not in the oil field. Cyberpunk RED describes Rogues children who actually got johnny’s body and hid it away somewhere with another person who resembles alt. Potential for sequel or maybe they will change it.
There’s levels to this:
1) Johnny’s action hero levels are his memory. He did survive and basically achieve what happened in those, but the details aren’t quite right. The PnP lore doesn’t quite match, so any missing details (like Morgan Blackhand) are explained that Johnny is the star in Johnny’s memories.
2) Alt is still more human then she thinks and is angry with Johnny for being a selfish douchbag when she came to him upset and that’s the last real memory she has of him before she was abducted and soulkiller-ed, and blames him for the death of her organic body.
She thinks his perspective (that he loved her and died to save her AI self from ‘Saka) is partly a lie he told himself to feel better.
I think what she could be referring to is the subjectivity of our individual experiences.
In short, yes.
In long; in reality we know that eyewitness testimony is unreliable. Every time you remember something, your brain is imagining and rewriting it. Details change over time, in many cases.
Johnny has spent decades in his personal digital hell, reliving the same memories over and over again. He’s also kind of a *massive* narcissist, and I’m not sure his ego could tolerate the true series of events, or admit that he wasn’t the center of the universe. So he’s rewritten everything to fit his view of himself – he’s had plenty of time to do it. He’s convinced this is what happened, and V never questions it because they have no reason to.
It’s all real to Johnny, but that doesn’t mean it’s factual.