If you know the tabletop games, then you’ll know that this flashback sequence is essentially Johnny’s view of the AHQ raid from his own retelling. In reality, Johnny was part of a taskforce sent in with Morgan Blackhand, Militech commandos, the player characters, a few Lobos from Santiago, and the other additional seen characters here. Samurai had already broken up by the time of the raid, so the beginning concert most likely is one that already happened. During the raid, Spider Murphy was the one to extract Alt from the Arasaka servers along with the help of a body-dead Rache Bartmoss (at least I think). Seamus gets injured in a fight, Smasher shows up. Thompson, who was actually with Johnny’s squad (Johnny never actually beat up Thompson, he just really wanted to) gets injured and things are looking dicey. Johnny, in the midst of suffering from Cyberpsychosis due to his metal arm (which he talked to and seemingly had a mind of its on at times) challenged Smasher to a duel while unloading on him with an SMG in one hand, the Malorian in the other. Smasher cut him in half with gunfire and Spider Murphy soul-killed Johnny by jabbing his brain with a data-slug containing a copy of soul-killer. His body was recovered by a firefighter and shipped off in a nuclear casing to Angel (a possible physical clone of Alt created using Arasaka’s cloning technology which was hijacked by Spider Murphy). Story goes that either Smasher or Clayton recovered the body with the data-slug sometime during the 2050’s-2060’s (his body was cryo’d) with the intent of recovering Silverhand’s things. Basically, Johnny’s radiation damaged memories, cyberpsychosis, and general narcissism changed his memories and parts of his personality in his soul-killer engram form.
Ish, you can try to rationalize the retcons as corrupt memory, but there are a few problems. Canonically there are a number of characters who know everything that happened, including where johnny's cryoed body really is, rogue is one of them. Then there is the whole Yorinobu thing in the firestorm series........
Honestly, I kinda wanna teach myself to animate with 3D models so I could make a cool animation based on all this. I know SODAZ works on projects like these, and his animations are legit driving me to make similar animations. Imitation is the best form of flattery, after all, imo.
@@TaigaXsenpai They did a good job of casting Zouken's VA for Suboru. I immediately recognized his voice in that first scene and was like HELLA YEAH LET'S GO. He even has a similar goal with the creation of the relic. Immortality.
@@moret25 I mean, not that I have much love for Araska, but isn't that kind of the same as not giving a shit hoe many Night City residents die if you just consider them to be as vile as gangs like the Maelstrom? Even Corpos have people they care about.
@@ArbiterofMankind The bomb was given to Johnny's crew by Militech, but Johnny was fully aware what he was about to do. He knew he had a nuclear warhead in that bag. He even gazes on the radioactivity logo for a moment before he goes on to release his crazy manifesto and nuke the tower. When he said "I didn't want him to die." I actually laughed. And what did you think would happen when you shot that elevator cord, Johnny? Pretty little fireworks? Regardless of corporate evil, I found it very hard to sympathize with the protagonists half the time. They all talk about how corpos exploit the people, and then go move on to murder somebody and sell them for organs. The hypocrisy there was astounding and Johnny was a prime example of it. He was just as sociopathic as Saburo and almost as violent as Adam Smasher and his heist seemed more about stroking his own inflated ego than about doing good by the people.
@@nicolaslabra2225In the new ending added in Phantom Liberty Yorinobu Arasaka drove the corporation to ruin and ended up being removed from his position by the board of directors, which got tired of his antics, and due to the bad state of Arasaka they were forced to retreat from Night City just like how they did after the 4th corporate war. Since every ending besides the Devil ending involves you storming the Arasaka tower and wreaking havoc as well as Yorinobu staying in power with the intent of destroying his father’s legacy I’m pretty sure that Phantom Liberty’s explanation of what happened to Arasaka years later is correct/canon, due to the fact that in that ending Yorinobu practically didn’t have any obstacles to stop him from destroying the corporation, but in all the other endings except for the Devil ending, V practically speeds up the process of Arasaka’s downfall by raiding the tower and destroying Mikoshi.
I love how the game build around corruption, income inequality, and how the rich corporates like Arasaka are controlling most of the city's wealth and resources leaving most of the people to live in poverty and violence and how as character whether it's V or johnny you must stand to this injustice, they even killed Johnny's girlfriend Alt for their crazy experiments, this game definitely deserves 5/5 rating unless only if it hadn't been the bugs that brought it down.
Yousef Saber well if you don’t know, besides being the name of the video game and the tabletop game it’s based on, “cyberpunk” is also an entire genre, with the themes of out of control capitalism coupled with advanced technology. So you should check it out, you might find other stuff, movies, books, etc. that you like, tho I’m not sure how many games set in cyberpunk worlds have been made, especially since out of control capitalists run the gaming industry.
This is what happens when you give corporations too much power. Yesterday a big corporation silenced the President of the United States. Good luck poor bastards. We're gonna need it.
@@mangutero12 the corporate control of social media and the internet is bad but it really couldn't have happened to a worse person Still a bad precedent though
@@scapelife And later they do something badder. In the last five years a lot have changed. They always started with small doses to not make people protest it too much.
Seriously CDPR hired probably the most badass old man they could. Masane Tsukayama is a frivkin' legend, and I'm so happy he was chosen. Funny thing I actually mentioned he would be a good choice long before the reveal you can imagine my surprise. Now if they could also get another fricken' legend on board, Takeshi Kitano to appear in a DLC as a Solo or something we have to work with. Oh man, my dream would be complete.
The lore behind this game is insane like how does a rockstar get a nuke, then the part about the Gang of Four (nsa, fbi, dea, cia) having a city wide war with police in Washington D.C. resisting arrest and treason
@@daltongarrett3393Because he didn't! He was just part of one of the three teams sent by Militech to nuke 'Saka Tower. His memory are f'ed up, he didn't have a duel with Smasher, instead he just was cut in half by him. The real duel was between Smasher and Morgan Blackhand, the true legend behind the bombing.
@@theholysalt18 I doubt it would come anytime soon. First they need to fix the game, then bring out expansions, and probably more fundamental and QOL fixes. High chances that multiplayer would be cancelled, if you ask me.
@@linhza501 the multiplayer is an entirely different project being worked on by a different team. Dataminers have already found multiplayer code in the game files.
This game really shows you that terrorists think that they are right while they are fighting for their cause and vision. Honestly I was all for it Johny: "Let's fuck up Arasaka!" Me: Yeah!
It's kinda terrifying isn't it? How quickly we got on board with blowing up the "evil multinational" in this game? How easily we justify Johnny's actions because Arasaka were bad and oppressive? Makes you realise how easy radicalisation must be in real life. We only saw part of Johnny's journey, but we still got swept up in it and were all-in.
@@americancommunist6076 That he nuked thousands to tens of thousands of people just like him who are only doing what they are doing to survive. Pretty much everyone but the execs is a decent person.
@@Pro_Butcher_Amateur_Human easy to get radicalized when the few cities left are controlled by the top mega corpos and pretty much nothing more than big R&D labs and everyone in them are only lab rats...
Aiming? With the Silverhand gun? No no no. In the true Spirit of Johnny Silverhand you *drunkely* run straight at them and hip fire until they all stop moving
apparently as you were living out johnny's experiences, he actually altered it. While he was in Mikoshi, he changed the way he remembered things. So the things you end up experiencing are a twisted form of reality, more of what he wanted people to remember things as. Like in the memory playthrough to save Alt, apparently she was actually already dead before Johnny reached her, as in she was already plugged out.
@@bsmc1311 Yeah, but there is literally no mention of him during the mission or from Johnny or even Smasher. Really only minor mentions from Jackie and that Solo manual. Tho Johnny's altered memories could be a factor. Hoping for a dlc with him.
@@WatchMan283 ya, i mean that's what i read. But tbh from the game it probably is possible, like small things like him saying that he was the one who asked rogue to go to the movies and all that. it all just adds up
Considering the amount of drugs and booze in Johnny's system along with The Hand, was the pain just dulled or was the process of being Reliced too quick to feel anything?
Johnny probably died in the arasaka tower. Think about it. After the shootout with Smasher, sudden cut gets us straight to the roof, which is not convincing. Also Smasher shoots the implant off at the roof but in the soulkiller scene there is a black hand implant and when Johnny talks we hear two different male voices like. I'm guessing thats Morgan Blackhand's memories merged with Johnny's. I'm waiting an explanation in the DLC's.
@@justdude2775 So smasher got on top of Jhonny and it cuts to the roof where smasher catches up with him again? he shoots off Jhonny's arm and in the soulkiller scene Jhonny still has his silver hand, he also has it as an engram. What we're seeing is simply not how it exactly went down and is just how Johnny remembers it or at least convinced himself to believe
@@justdude2775 Adam smasher use portable device to place engramm. Morgan Black Hand data is bigger than Johny. And theirs personality fuse form ideal version of Jhony.
@@justdude2775 not all of it, no memory is perfect even in organic memory, now take possible mistakes from the prototype memory transfer and some details are BOUND to be not 100% kosher. However the shootout with smasher is quite easily explained, Johnny gets blown back and surrounded, Spider Murphy(potentially also Shaitan) cover his escape, everyone else makes it and Johnny gets incapacitated by Smasher, cuts to loss of consciousness where the fight with Black hand would take place, nuke goes off and Arasaka science team recovers Silver hand's body from the wreckage, Smasher is reduced to meat paste(thus the new suit) and Blackhand is MIA (50/50 whether it's dead or working black ops)
@@yasinomidi7525 Well I tried looking carefully and no. I don't think his arm came off but apart from that, both of you could be right. Guess we'll just have to wait for the DLCs. Maybe, just maybe they'll tell us something. Fingers 🤞🏻
He actually didnt mean to kill the innocents, thats why he planted the bomb deep undergound by using the elevator but arasaka messed it up and it blew up early
Well actually it did. It inspired Yorinobu to rejoin arasaka, and become the bomb destined to deliver the killing blow to the company after you destroy Mikoshi.
It brings a smaller conflict in the story by showing how hard it actually is to change the world. People complain about your desicions not having an impact but look at Johnny he literally nuked a tower and it didn't have much of an impact. Mike pondsmith even stated at one point that Johnny Silverhand can be considerd the main charachter.
Of course cybernetics this genre is heavily transhumanism subject and CDPR has fetish with old age look at witchers and Lodge of Sorceress ages and compare it with their looks
Johnny Silverhand is a real Badass when he actually went an all out Assault and Nuked the Arasaka Tower all by himself, shows that he is truly a *"Night City Legend,"* kinda sucked he got Flatlined by Adam Smasher then was taken away and was turned into a Construct as an Engram.
@@TonyTylerDraws I've been knowing that since the Day before I made this Sarcastic Comment, Left out so many Key Important Details from the original Sourcebook to making Johnny the one and making him the MC instead.
well with the new cyberpunk sequel announced there might be a chance of them revisiting some stories before 2077, including Silverhands time in the fourth corporate war, who knows
- how did Johnny get way from Smasher the first time, after being knocked down - how did Johnny get from the top of the tower to being evacuated through the bottom
It's at this point that we can see that Johnny is much darker than he wants to show. The bomb not only destroyed the Arasaka Tower, but also killed thousands of innocent people, and he knew exactly what he was doing (you took everything from me, I'll take everything from you).
Not only that: he actually was just a pawn. See, Militech was worried about the soulkiller program and wanted to nuke the tower in order to impede the program. So they hired Blackhand and a group of elites to go underground and plant the nuclear bombs. Johnny and his team werent the only ones here, their part was diverting the Arasaka attention towards the top of the tower, which worked as it gave time for Blackhand and his team to plant the nukes. So, at the end of the day, he was also an hypocrite, working for corpos.
In my mind, most of the badlands are the way they are because of Johnny's actions, mountains of junk are made not only by the citizens living there, but also due to a good chunk of NC being an exclusion zone. Most likely that trash is irradiated. By the way, Johnny is definetly an unreliable narrator - on the Arasaka Tower raid we only see one bomb planted, whereas later, in the mission where you rescue Alt, he said he got his hands on two nuclear charges. We never see the other bomb being planted in 2023. Btw, I can't really say Johnny is in the wrong for agreeing to work with Militec, because as the old saying goes, an enemy of my enemy is my friend, so...
so the city he nuked is not night city righ? or was the city he nuked a place where only the Arasakas were? Like some sort of factory? I just played through this part and im super confused.
Whats the name of the song that starts at 5:07 / 7:03? Its some sort of a modified version of "The Rebel Path" with guitar sounds. It's nowhere to be found online :(
Everyone talking about characters like Johnny, V, Solomon, etc. but imo Saburo and Arasaka Corp as a whole are equally as interesting from a character standpoint (especially in the lore). If/when they make another TV adaption of the Cyberpunk universe, I’d personally want it to be about their origins… like Succession but with imperial war crimes and crazy technology
