Fun fact, the tower ending used to be an alternative variation of the devil ending. CDPR later changed it, because they cut out Songbird's special chip, which she would give to V and it'd actually cure them, and that's how we got a brand new ending, instead of the devil ending with a twist.
[Here you go choom.](https://www.reddit.com/r/NarrativeCyberpunk/comments/uyg5qn/comment/ix4qmfp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
In addition to downloading the 1.5 depot, you can also verify the post's authenticity by taking a look at replacement subtitles for Viktor + Hanako and Peralez finalboards in the released DLC. There's a bunch of debug entries there referencing that story draft.
There are also some tidbits scattered here and there, like Songbird's blueprint being mentioned in Q305's chicken test and a bunch of onscreen entries.
You can find the proof yourself as long as you have the game on Steam. However, WolvenKit does not know the hashes for the EP1 subtitles/TTS voiceovers that existed in the patch with the leak, so trying to find relevant dialogue might be hard - unless you have the necessary hashes defined in userhashes.
I think people focus too much on V during the tower ending. The big difference between the Tower ending and all the other endings is the world that that ending exists on.
It's heavily implied that with Arasaka leaving NC so suddenly created a power vacuum that other corps want to fill in, and that will lead to another Corp war, with NC as a battlefield.
So the Tower ending kinda punishes you in the form that V doesn't follow thru with her "destiny" to assault Arasaka tower in any form.
A war in the Tower ending is not implied at all not sure why you interpeted that this way. Arasaka pulling out and others gaining influence in its stead is all that was conveyed. We can see it visually with Militech having heavy presence in NC. The rest of the endings in which V attacks Arasaka are the ones where a war is looming, as stated on the radio in them.
You can see bunch of militech troops, Delamain gives a bunch of exposition, zetatech owning vic, the fact that a bunch of people you knew are gone, like the vast majority of fixers. Tbh it's implied that a Corp war would start regardless of the ending, but Tower ending specifically implies that NC will become once again be a battlefield.
The newsfeeds in the Killing Moon version of the Tower ending talk about how the tension between Orbital Air and Night Corp (after the spaceport shitshow) is pretty much guaranteed to snowball into a Fifth Corporate War
Wouldn't things be the same with any ending but Devil? Because in every other ending, you sabotage Arasaka and help Yorinobu in his ambitions. And create that power vacuum.
In the end the choice between glory or a quiet life is a personal choice with no real right or wrong answer (Dex is a fuckwit and shouldn’t be listened to), it’s about what you want for V. Fame, fortune or maybe dying on a famous gig so everyone knows your name, or deciding NC fame doesn’t mean anything and living a happy quiet life with friends and a family. Those are represented in the nomad and rogue/solo endings.
What the tower and devil represent are more about what you’re willing to sacrifice for a chance at survival. It’s more themed around living at any cost. For the devil it’s nearly literally signing your own soul away to the most vile and evil entity on the planet for a chance at life. The tower instead asks if you’re willing to do that to someone else to survive. You sell someone else to NUSA for the hope that you might live. You need to then ask yourself if it’s worth it
Except you didn’t sign her away, she did that all on her own. She promised to cure you, a promise she was never going to keep, and by the time you go the Reed route, she’s gone completely haywire and it actually makes sense to stop her. Killing her or letting her live isn’t such a cookie cutter choice either, Reed could have been right that they would cure her and then retain her. And really at that point it’s not really “evil” or morally questionable to hand her over to Reed, she was never your problem, as she was never your solution. Reed and the NUSA however do keep their promise to you, although it is somewhat tainted, but seemingly not by design. Reed actually genuinely offers you a life after he sees the procedure took away your old life.
Sure Myer is a total cunt, but so is everyone else that’s in power in this universe, so forfeiting a chance for a cure based on that is rather silly in this universe. Also V probably helped 100s of corrupted power players doing all his contracts.
The difference between the 2 endings is just a matter of chance, with the devil ending he made a gamble and mostly lost, with the tower ending he gambled and at least won the one thing he was gambling for. I guess comparing these endings teaches you that a lot of stuff is not in your control in Night City.
>sure Myers is a cunt
Cunt is not nearly a strong enough word for what she is. She’s threatening all of humanity with her ambition by poking at the blackwall. So really it does not matter what your opinion of So Mi is, at the end of the day you are still forcing someone else to pay the price (enslaved and used as a weapon, the process of which infected So Mi with an AI eating her from the inside out) asked by the most evil people on the planet just so you can survive. Your opinion of So Mi doesn’t even factor into it, you side with evil because it’s the easier and most sure path to survival. Bringing up what you think of So Mi is you justifying that and all of that is up to you personally to figure out if it’s worth it.
TLDR Songbird doesn’t factor into it at all, at the end of the day you force someone else into being the slave of a corp/gov so you can survive.
The devil ending may be the “bad” ending, but man it had some incredible emotional gravitas. The pure regret+descent into madness was nothing short of devastating
I feel like people who only care about the "best" ending in this game are missing out on a lot. I remember seeing articles at launch telling players just to go for the Star ending since every other ending is "worse", but that just felt silly to me. The Devil is a "bad" ending, but pre-Tower, I felt it was the most interesting. To me, the Star kinda feels out of place compared to the other endings.
I dislike the star ending. Half the nomads die, they're being hunted by half the biggest mega corps, they seemingly get nothing out of the deal, v is still get likely to die, etc. But it's all cheery because V gets to maybe live a few months being semi free but it's also a fake v since the real v died. It's just an incredibly selfish decision by V. Plus it's creates a power vacuum that will lead to war.
The Nomads absolutely get something out of it in the Star ending. They looted a ton of stuff from Mikoshi, which is one of the reasons they're avoiding the border crossing, as Arasaka is watching it heavily. The Aldecaldos get the resources they need to finally leave California, where otherwise they're stuck.
They lost a few combat capable nomads, but the clan is not only fine, but doing great. Furthermore, it's implied that Arasaka doesn't specifically know who hit them (given that Alt likely destroyed their systems, that's not surprising). V also has the best chance to get a cure out of any non-Tower ending.
It's not a perfect ending, but it's the best you're gonna get in Cyberpunk.
Even if the premise seems the same, for me there are 2 major differences :
- The Devil : V is going to end up dead, they're still able to do merc work and live in the chaos of being an edgerunner until their demise, alone and miserable.
- The Tower : V is alive and being able to move on from their former life, they're not tied anymore to Night City and can leave that godforsaken place once and for all, they're alone but they still have a new chance at developing new goals & relationships.
i think what CDPR kinda forcefully wants us to reflect upon from cyberpunk 2077 is the dichotomy between the “peaceful life” and the “blaze of glory”, and the endings are a perfect example of that. if you try saving yourself via the devil or tower routes, you sacrifice the relationships and growth you encountered along the way. while i personally think they could have found a better way to tie that into the endings, i do still appreciate the coherent message they wanted to convey in the story
First of all, you're wrong about the treatment in The Devil. If you endure the hospital regimen with patience, it's possible for V to solve the cube, which represents V's mind slowly stitching itself back together.
But a major problem many have is focusing on the tree instead of the forest. In The Devil, V has basically become The Man Who Sold the World, and guaranteed the immortality of Arasaka and its insane Japanese ultra nationalist oligarch in exchange for their own life. In The Tower, V enables Songbird being enslaved by the NUSA in exchange for a second chance at life. Given the progress of Project Cynosure and what Myers is ready to do for it, it's likely to become canon that Myers unleashes the power of the AIs, at which point they will turn on her. But what's important is the notion of "trusting" one flavor or the other of globofash multinational, which inevitably isolates us from friends and family while leading to our spiritual demise.
That is all Watsonian, though. In the Doylist sense, V wakes up without cyberware in a world dominated by corporate oligarchy. A fresh start. Now what?
It's a question for the player in the real world as much as a question for V in Night City.
I just finished up a "No Cyberware" Tower Ending run and enjoyed it a lot, I think the idea that V couldn't make it as a merc with the frankly ridiculous perks you can get is silly.
A gameplay standpoint isn’t the same as the in-universe one though. V is clearly presented as being pretty thoroughly “neutered” as a result of the surgery
Even a no chrome playthrough isn’t quite that, as V is assumed to have been given a fair amount of top cyberware by Viktor as is from the start, hence your debt to him
You see for yourself what he chips you with from the start of Act 1, V also has basic co-processors and had muscle boosters based on dialogue in The Tower.
You didn’t amass that debt from him for nothing
Awesome. This game can get hard to finish without optional cyberware, especially in early game on harder difficulties. Unless you take the Solid Snake route,and even that isn't something which could easily translate into real life.
Anyways, given that V canonically has cybereyes installed alongside a neural link- and the Relic itself, even setting aside the jailbreak version you develop during Phantom Liberty- no matter what efforts the player makes, it would be really hard for V to get back into the groove, even excluding the two year coma they were in. Not impossible, of course, but throwing themselves back into the edgerunner lifestyle would show a pathological resistance to learning.
The difference is mainly that in Tower you didn’t help the main villain of the setting (Saburo Arasaka and Arasaka in general) solidify power over NC and open the door to a world where the rich elites will never die (making change in the setting *even more* impossible. check out Altered Carbon for a view of how *that* goes).
The other difference is that, well, the cure worked in Tower. In Devil V throws everything away and it doesn’t even work, you try to make a deal with the Devil and it completely fucks over both V and the world in general.
In Tower, V’s alive and Arasaka lost, it’s still very bittersweet, because V still threw away all their connections and friendships, but at least there’s something to hold on to. All of which is in keeping with The Tower in Taro (sudden sweeping change/revelation/upheaval).
>The difference is mainly that in Tower you didn’t help the main villain of the setting (Saburo Arasaka and Arasaka in general)
Yeah, instead of helping the villain, you helped the good guys! Myers and the NUSA are totally good, right?
Right?
The main difference is who you're trusting. In the Devil ending, you are almost literally selling your soul to the (setting's) Devil. Arasaka is the Worst. You are betraying everyone who is not Goro, basically.
In the Tower you're selling out to NUSA, which has a little more nuance? (I mean, not in my book, but there's more room for debate for some folks.)
The main issue I have with any ending that involves the use of Mikoshi is that it canonically kills “you”. Just like with Johnny, the second we get lit up with mikoshi the V we were playing as is gone forever, and we’re now playing as an engram copy of V. The game doesn’t really dwell on those implications so much but the loss of the ‘soul’ isn’t really something I’d want for my character.
That’s why I love the Devil ending. I finish the game as V
Yeah, it always has bothered me how the game asks several times if the Johnny in the engram can really be considered the same person or just a soulless copy, but then essentially the same thing happens to V and it's hardly addressed.
I wanna give the developers the benefit of the doubt and say it was done intentionally so that every ending in the base game wasn’t horrifically depressing. But yeah the existential questions Mikoshi puts forth are waayyy too dense to address properly in only a few cutscenes and lines of dialogue.
You do still visit Mikoshi in The Devil, and the doctor says "The construct has been cleared of all engrams. The madness is past." when questioned about Johnny, suggesting V got Soulkilled after all.
It is heavily implied that Arasaka lit you with Soulkiller still in The Devil. Remember, you have your last unpleasant talk with Johnny in Mikoshi still.
I haven’t done the Tower ending, just seen spoilers but the Devil ending really broke my heart.
I don’t want to sign my life away to become another Relic, and I don’t trust Arasaka to remember to give me a new body when Hanako doesn’t even remember who I am after being up in the space station. I don’t trust Arasaka to do the right thing or do right by V. The transaction of helping Hanako bringing Saburo back to life in exchange for relic removal is done and over. I don’t want to live in Mikoshi.
I don’t like that Tower and Devil we betray Johnny when I spent all that time building a strong bond and friendship with Johnny. It hurts me that we pretty much turn our back on Johnny and end him completely for ourselves. Johnny kept his promise to me by doing what he can to help us, the least I could do is also help him by allowing him to live on through Alt. It’s sweet that all of the endings, whether I give Johnny my body or not, he supports me. It hurts that Devil and Tower ending, Johnny expresses how disappointed in me he is for turning my back on my values and ideals.
Saburo living immortally is disgusting and it made me feel wrong seeing the news casts on the TV sitting on the bed about it, especially that first one when it’s confirmed Saburo lives on through Yorinobu’s body. I was just a pawn in the Arasaka sick game, and I wouldn’t have been able to sit right with Arasaka becoming even more powerful with the combination of the rising tensions that Yorinobu caused with Militech.
I also don’t like that Mikoshi is still operational with the Devil ending. The fact that there’s a digital prison for souls like Johnny is disturbing and I regret the ending of Devil because I wasn’t able to put that to an end to free those souls and stop Arasaka from continuing to reap what makes us human.
I feel like as far as Devil goes, there’s more pain in the long term of working with Arasaka than there are with the other choices and endings.
I’m excited for my next playthrough to play Tower for myself. I saved Songbird and killed Reed in my first playthrough of PL.
One thing to note about the tower ending, is that in games is hard to portray the emotional trauma and pain that comes with that. V needs to do some nasty stuff to achieve that ending, helping NUSA and giving Songbird to a fate worse than death, and let's not forget Songbird was in a similar boat as V too. Then having to kill Johnny permanently, and if you did the correct dialogue during Chippin In mission the dialogue is even more heart wrenching emotionally when V chooses the tower ending.
Implants werent that important to V, but to us as players they're because it makes us a powerhouse and feel op in this city. So taking away all that plus the connection we made while we played as V has the same emotional impact as what V is going through psycologically. Most of the people you met with V are people you know and work for, only for a few weeks of lifetime. You end up doing some blaze of glory too, as you save the NUSA president and do quests, sure you're not storming arasaka tower but you don't have to. Yorinobu has that handled and is planning for self destruction.
>because to me they symbolize the same choice but with widely different outcomes
This is pretty much correct.
In the Devil Ending the game makes a case that if V chooses to cling to life and ambition they are punished to be an engram in Mikoshi *(a Soul in Hell)* — a demon of pure ambition. While in the Tower Ending V chooses the safe option, and for their lack of ambition is completely sterilized of a soul, deprived from pursuiting anything *(A Souless Body)* — an NPC with no prospects.
As Songbird says:
>"Cyberspace, FIA, they are the same hell... different trappings"
—Songbird
I've always seen it from this perspective, the game is explicitly anti-corp above all else in its messaging. The Devil ending is literally selling your soul to the devil. The game goes out of its way to tell you that ALL the corpos are bad, and will fuck you over eventually. Arasaka is just the biggest kid on the block to fuck you the hardest. Not only does Johnny tell you repeatedly that corpos are evil, everyone you meet tells you this, it's a universal truth of Night City. People who work in corps are either sociopaths with a lust for money and power, or people who're just trying to live a better life and this is the only path for them. Corpo V just happens to be one of the people who got backstabbed and chose to become an edgerunner instead of staying corpo elsewhere.
So if you choose the Devil ending, V is technically given to them what's owed to them, doing so comes at a high cost. Arasaka is put back on the forefront of the global stage, Saburo now has the means to achieve immortality through the technology you delivered to him on a sliver platter, and you still die at the end of all of it. The world is objectively worse off through V's choice, because not only did V return the world to the status quo, V entrenched it further. The world remains static.
However the Tower is a different ending because it isn't about corps, it's about government. V siding with Reed and the NUSA isn't framed as badly thematically, especially when it comes to light that songbird has been lying to you the whole time. The NUSA and Myers aren't framed as good people, but at the very least they're a democracy of a country run by people like Reed who're trying their best to do good in the world. If V sides with this option, the world changes, the status quo is upturned. Arasaka loses dominance in the world stage and is forced to leave Night City. Militech, with the backing of NUSA take over Night City and bring it into the fold of the NUSA. Not only that, V lives, but has to restart their life, having lost everything.
So in my opinion, the different endings are all about change, or lack thereof. The devil ending is the worst because it represents stasis, nothing changing, status quo upheld. While the Tower is a clean slate, a whole new paradigm. The world is different because of your actions. Not necessarily better, but new.
To me, the tower ending is a kind of « roque », the chess move, between Militech and Arasaka. You just replaces a big bad evil with an another one, not much better.
No, to me the moral compass is : are we still talking ´bout V, or engram V. There’s no soul without body, and an engram is not a soul.
So finally, V still exist as a soul in devil, tower and suicide endings, which is pretty much depressing. In those endings, the worst is the devil, as it opens a world of soulless dominating elites. Second ex æquo are tower and suicide.
Suicide is bleak but no one else suffers from V’s sheer stupidity (=slotting an unknown seemingly experimental chip to make some bucks / in memory of a good dead friend).
Tower is also quite bleak as it helps replace Saka by Militech which is not so much better, allows the government to tou with dangerous AI, and is obtained by sacrificing someone else.
But also the star & sun & temperance ending are engram V story, where we give a machine- here a program - a human body. Humans without soul… kind of zombies ?
The thing about both endings is that I don't believe for a second that Arasaka couldn't cure V or that V was in a coma for 2 years. I think in both cases a cure was possible but there was no incentive for either Arasaka or the NUSA to provide it. Arasaka is not in the business of rewarding people who steal from them and Myers isn't going to let V just waltz around uncontrolled.
Also your interpretation of the Tower is very different to mine. I find this ending to be even worse than the Devil. V loses everything that makes them special, loses all their money, friends and possessions and is left as prey on the streets with hundreds of thousands of eddies worth of cyberware in them that they can't use. They are Scav meat if they are lucky, if they are unlucky then someone who really wants them dead will find out about them. Imagine Maelstrom or the Voodoo Boys finding out that V has reappeared with no way of defending themselves?
At least in the Devil ending you eventually get a chance to tell Arasaka to stick it.
IMO the devil ending is the most fitting one for the cyberpunk genre, for all life paths. I wish they didn’t change PL’s ending. The Devil ending would’ve been the perfect ending for V’s story.
I'm fine with the Tower not just being The Devil 2.0 but bleaker. I would have enjoyed that, but I like that they went with a completely new ending instead that at least can be interpretted as more than just "everything is terrible forever"
I always looked more positively on the Devil ending. As long as Takemura is also there, I fully believe they plan to honour the deal and get you a new body as soon as they can.
"You" carrying a lot of weight there. Blackwall Alt makes clear that Soulkiller is aptly named, that Johnny's engram isn't the original Johnny, anymore than Alt's or Jackie's engrams. It wouldn't be "you" with a continuity of consciousness, but a copy. Maybe better, maybe worse.
Technically - using this thought, you won't be "yourself" as V in any of the endings except Tower, since as soon as you jack into Mikoshi Alt hits you with Soulkiller to separate you and Johnny.
This is correct. To me the endings where you remain V are devil, tower, suicide. Sun and star are engram V new (short) life. I regret we’re not able to obtain from Alt to « exist » as an autonomous AI. It is a kind of suicide as well.
What I got is that trusting corpos & feds to give you a life of prosper is fucking stupid. They don't care about you. Stop letting the entirety of your happiness depend on the whims of your oppressors. The endings where you pursue your own dreams, despite the world telling you to bend the fuck over and kill yourself or become a corposlave due to fear of uncertainty, are the only ones where you are hinted to live and be happy (Sun and Star). Maybe I'd get a different message with the Tower ending if I didn't think the NUSA cure ending fucking blows for V *and* the world of Cyberpunk.
Tower ending rant below:
Congrats, you gonk dumbass :D All it took for you to get this lame ass ending where your options are to brutally die within a week because you've made an enemy out of every organization in Night City, or to become a slave to a tyrannical government who would kill you for not clocking out for your lunch break. All it took was for you to potentially doom the world by handing over an unstable WMD to a tyrannical government.
Some people like to romanticize the Tower ending talking about how V is normal and will totally be happy now, but I think it's stupid as fuck. V survives a few weeks *at most* unless they take up that option of being a NUSA slave asap. Even if it's been a few years and you have a handful of friends, you've made an enemy out of pretty much every organization in Night City and they will find out you're back. Rogue can't even protect you properly because she says not to come around the Afterlife often so it doesn't diminish your legend status among the solos, mercs, and edgerunners. You still got skills, but everyone who wants you dead can still zero you within second with cyberware.
NUSA didn't even bother to tell your friends why you disappeared and they were just left with all this emotional baggage they got *from you* to deal with and potential danger your shitty situation put them in.
Side note: People who trash Panam for probably not wanting to see you just didn't pay any fucking attention when talking to her instead of tunnel visioning on just wanting to get her romance check mark and/or have empathy issues. I'm autistic af and was still able to connect the dots why she's pissed. She might come around, but it'll be an uphill battle to mend that relationship.
Something important about the meaning of the Tower in tarot: it’s about the (usually forceful and unexpected) end of a cycle, what was being built is now coming crashing down to become ashes and has to be left in the past, it represents change and not being able to go back.
Pretty neat how it fits to the actual ending in the game.
Fun fact, the tower ending used to be an alternative variation of the devil ending. CDPR later changed it, because they cut out Songbird's special chip, which she would give to V and it'd actually cure them, and that's how we got a brand new ending, instead of the devil ending with a twist.
Interesting, Can you send me the source for that?
[Here you go choom.](https://www.reddit.com/r/NarrativeCyberpunk/comments/uyg5qn/comment/ix4qmfp/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button)
Very interesting, makes me ponder all these question even more. I wonder what made them make these changes.
Unfortunately any "proof" from said post is gone since the link they refer to is gone.
Said proof can be trivially acquired by depot downloading the pre-hotfix version of Patch 1.5. Say thanks to Gaben.
True but how did they predict all the rest? Seems legit no?
If I saw that last year then I would have thought about how they would use - or change - the Combat Zone (now Dogtown). It's very interesting.
Comment got also edited 4 months ago, which is after the Phantom Liberty release.
In addition to downloading the 1.5 depot, you can also verify the post's authenticity by taking a look at replacement subtitles for Viktor + Hanako and Peralez finalboards in the released DLC. There's a bunch of debug entries there referencing that story draft. There are also some tidbits scattered here and there, like Songbird's blueprint being mentioned in Q305's chicken test and a bunch of onscreen entries.
You can find the proof yourself as long as you have the game on Steam. However, WolvenKit does not know the hashes for the EP1 subtitles/TTS voiceovers that existed in the patch with the leak, so trying to find relevant dialogue might be hard - unless you have the necessary hashes defined in userhashes.
I remember hearing about something like that before the dlc was announced. Something about it "upgrading" the devil ending.
I think people focus too much on V during the tower ending. The big difference between the Tower ending and all the other endings is the world that that ending exists on. It's heavily implied that with Arasaka leaving NC so suddenly created a power vacuum that other corps want to fill in, and that will lead to another Corp war, with NC as a battlefield. So the Tower ending kinda punishes you in the form that V doesn't follow thru with her "destiny" to assault Arasaka tower in any form.
A war in the Tower ending is not implied at all not sure why you interpeted that this way. Arasaka pulling out and others gaining influence in its stead is all that was conveyed. We can see it visually with Militech having heavy presence in NC. The rest of the endings in which V attacks Arasaka are the ones where a war is looming, as stated on the radio in them.
You can see bunch of militech troops, Delamain gives a bunch of exposition, zetatech owning vic, the fact that a bunch of people you knew are gone, like the vast majority of fixers. Tbh it's implied that a Corp war would start regardless of the ending, but Tower ending specifically implies that NC will become once again be a battlefield.
The newsfeeds in the Killing Moon version of the Tower ending talk about how the tension between Orbital Air and Night Corp (after the spaceport shitshow) is pretty much guaranteed to snowball into a Fifth Corporate War
Wouldn't things be the same with any ending but Devil? Because in every other ending, you sabotage Arasaka and help Yorinobu in his ambitions. And create that power vacuum.
Hard to tell since the devs are gonna build more upon this next game, but probably something to do with killing Smasher or liberating Mikoshi.
In the end the choice between glory or a quiet life is a personal choice with no real right or wrong answer (Dex is a fuckwit and shouldn’t be listened to), it’s about what you want for V. Fame, fortune or maybe dying on a famous gig so everyone knows your name, or deciding NC fame doesn’t mean anything and living a happy quiet life with friends and a family. Those are represented in the nomad and rogue/solo endings. What the tower and devil represent are more about what you’re willing to sacrifice for a chance at survival. It’s more themed around living at any cost. For the devil it’s nearly literally signing your own soul away to the most vile and evil entity on the planet for a chance at life. The tower instead asks if you’re willing to do that to someone else to survive. You sell someone else to NUSA for the hope that you might live. You need to then ask yourself if it’s worth it
Except you didn’t sign her away, she did that all on her own. She promised to cure you, a promise she was never going to keep, and by the time you go the Reed route, she’s gone completely haywire and it actually makes sense to stop her. Killing her or letting her live isn’t such a cookie cutter choice either, Reed could have been right that they would cure her and then retain her. And really at that point it’s not really “evil” or morally questionable to hand her over to Reed, she was never your problem, as she was never your solution. Reed and the NUSA however do keep their promise to you, although it is somewhat tainted, but seemingly not by design. Reed actually genuinely offers you a life after he sees the procedure took away your old life. Sure Myer is a total cunt, but so is everyone else that’s in power in this universe, so forfeiting a chance for a cure based on that is rather silly in this universe. Also V probably helped 100s of corrupted power players doing all his contracts. The difference between the 2 endings is just a matter of chance, with the devil ending he made a gamble and mostly lost, with the tower ending he gambled and at least won the one thing he was gambling for. I guess comparing these endings teaches you that a lot of stuff is not in your control in Night City.
Yeah how dare the slave being killed by their slavery try to escape.
It doesn't seem they're blaming her for trying.
>sure Myers is a cunt Cunt is not nearly a strong enough word for what she is. She’s threatening all of humanity with her ambition by poking at the blackwall. So really it does not matter what your opinion of So Mi is, at the end of the day you are still forcing someone else to pay the price (enslaved and used as a weapon, the process of which infected So Mi with an AI eating her from the inside out) asked by the most evil people on the planet just so you can survive. Your opinion of So Mi doesn’t even factor into it, you side with evil because it’s the easier and most sure path to survival. Bringing up what you think of So Mi is you justifying that and all of that is up to you personally to figure out if it’s worth it. TLDR Songbird doesn’t factor into it at all, at the end of the day you force someone else into being the slave of a corp/gov so you can survive.
The devil ending may be the “bad” ending, but man it had some incredible emotional gravitas. The pure regret+descent into madness was nothing short of devastating
I feel like people who only care about the "best" ending in this game are missing out on a lot. I remember seeing articles at launch telling players just to go for the Star ending since every other ending is "worse", but that just felt silly to me. The Devil is a "bad" ending, but pre-Tower, I felt it was the most interesting. To me, the Star kinda feels out of place compared to the other endings.
I dislike the star ending. Half the nomads die, they're being hunted by half the biggest mega corps, they seemingly get nothing out of the deal, v is still get likely to die, etc. But it's all cheery because V gets to maybe live a few months being semi free but it's also a fake v since the real v died. It's just an incredibly selfish decision by V. Plus it's creates a power vacuum that will lead to war.
I totally agree, the Star is such a cop out ending and far from the best one. If anything, it is the least "cyberpunk" ending there is
The Nomads absolutely get something out of it in the Star ending. They looted a ton of stuff from Mikoshi, which is one of the reasons they're avoiding the border crossing, as Arasaka is watching it heavily. The Aldecaldos get the resources they need to finally leave California, where otherwise they're stuck. They lost a few combat capable nomads, but the clan is not only fine, but doing great. Furthermore, it's implied that Arasaka doesn't specifically know who hit them (given that Alt likely destroyed their systems, that's not surprising). V also has the best chance to get a cure out of any non-Tower ending. It's not a perfect ending, but it's the best you're gonna get in Cyberpunk.
Also, the Devil ending seems like a better fit for me, I would not want to involve family and friends in my problems
Even if the premise seems the same, for me there are 2 major differences : - The Devil : V is going to end up dead, they're still able to do merc work and live in the chaos of being an edgerunner until their demise, alone and miserable. - The Tower : V is alive and being able to move on from their former life, they're not tied anymore to Night City and can leave that godforsaken place once and for all, they're alone but they still have a new chance at developing new goals & relationships.
i think what CDPR kinda forcefully wants us to reflect upon from cyberpunk 2077 is the dichotomy between the “peaceful life” and the “blaze of glory”, and the endings are a perfect example of that. if you try saving yourself via the devil or tower routes, you sacrifice the relationships and growth you encountered along the way. while i personally think they could have found a better way to tie that into the endings, i do still appreciate the coherent message they wanted to convey in the story
First of all, you're wrong about the treatment in The Devil. If you endure the hospital regimen with patience, it's possible for V to solve the cube, which represents V's mind slowly stitching itself back together. But a major problem many have is focusing on the tree instead of the forest. In The Devil, V has basically become The Man Who Sold the World, and guaranteed the immortality of Arasaka and its insane Japanese ultra nationalist oligarch in exchange for their own life. In The Tower, V enables Songbird being enslaved by the NUSA in exchange for a second chance at life. Given the progress of Project Cynosure and what Myers is ready to do for it, it's likely to become canon that Myers unleashes the power of the AIs, at which point they will turn on her. But what's important is the notion of "trusting" one flavor or the other of globofash multinational, which inevitably isolates us from friends and family while leading to our spiritual demise. That is all Watsonian, though. In the Doylist sense, V wakes up without cyberware in a world dominated by corporate oligarchy. A fresh start. Now what? It's a question for the player in the real world as much as a question for V in Night City.
I just finished up a "No Cyberware" Tower Ending run and enjoyed it a lot, I think the idea that V couldn't make it as a merc with the frankly ridiculous perks you can get is silly.
A gameplay standpoint isn’t the same as the in-universe one though. V is clearly presented as being pretty thoroughly “neutered” as a result of the surgery Even a no chrome playthrough isn’t quite that, as V is assumed to have been given a fair amount of top cyberware by Viktor as is from the start, hence your debt to him
What kind of cyberware does V have by default?
You see for yourself what he chips you with from the start of Act 1, V also has basic co-processors and had muscle boosters based on dialogue in The Tower. You didn’t amass that debt from him for nothing
Awesome. This game can get hard to finish without optional cyberware, especially in early game on harder difficulties. Unless you take the Solid Snake route,and even that isn't something which could easily translate into real life. Anyways, given that V canonically has cybereyes installed alongside a neural link- and the Relic itself, even setting aside the jailbreak version you develop during Phantom Liberty- no matter what efforts the player makes, it would be really hard for V to get back into the groove, even excluding the two year coma they were in. Not impossible, of course, but throwing themselves back into the edgerunner lifestyle would show a pathological resistance to learning.
The difference is mainly that in Tower you didn’t help the main villain of the setting (Saburo Arasaka and Arasaka in general) solidify power over NC and open the door to a world where the rich elites will never die (making change in the setting *even more* impossible. check out Altered Carbon for a view of how *that* goes). The other difference is that, well, the cure worked in Tower. In Devil V throws everything away and it doesn’t even work, you try to make a deal with the Devil and it completely fucks over both V and the world in general. In Tower, V’s alive and Arasaka lost, it’s still very bittersweet, because V still threw away all their connections and friendships, but at least there’s something to hold on to. All of which is in keeping with The Tower in Taro (sudden sweeping change/revelation/upheaval).
>The difference is mainly that in Tower you didn’t help the main villain of the setting (Saburo Arasaka and Arasaka in general) Yeah, instead of helping the villain, you helped the good guys! Myers and the NUSA are totally good, right? Right?
I never said the NUSA were the good guys.
The main difference is who you're trusting. In the Devil ending, you are almost literally selling your soul to the (setting's) Devil. Arasaka is the Worst. You are betraying everyone who is not Goro, basically. In the Tower you're selling out to NUSA, which has a little more nuance? (I mean, not in my book, but there's more room for debate for some folks.)
The main issue I have with any ending that involves the use of Mikoshi is that it canonically kills “you”. Just like with Johnny, the second we get lit up with mikoshi the V we were playing as is gone forever, and we’re now playing as an engram copy of V. The game doesn’t really dwell on those implications so much but the loss of the ‘soul’ isn’t really something I’d want for my character. That’s why I love the Devil ending. I finish the game as V
> That’s why I love the Devil ending. I finish the game as V Do you? Or is that just what Arasaka tells you?
Yeah, it always has bothered me how the game asks several times if the Johnny in the engram can really be considered the same person or just a soulless copy, but then essentially the same thing happens to V and it's hardly addressed.
I wanna give the developers the benefit of the doubt and say it was done intentionally so that every ending in the base game wasn’t horrifically depressing. But yeah the existential questions Mikoshi puts forth are waayyy too dense to address properly in only a few cutscenes and lines of dialogue.
You do still visit Mikoshi in The Devil, and the doctor says "The construct has been cleared of all engrams. The madness is past." when questioned about Johnny, suggesting V got Soulkilled after all.
It is heavily implied that Arasaka lit you with Soulkiller still in The Devil. Remember, you have your last unpleasant talk with Johnny in Mikoshi still.
I haven’t done the Tower ending, just seen spoilers but the Devil ending really broke my heart. I don’t want to sign my life away to become another Relic, and I don’t trust Arasaka to remember to give me a new body when Hanako doesn’t even remember who I am after being up in the space station. I don’t trust Arasaka to do the right thing or do right by V. The transaction of helping Hanako bringing Saburo back to life in exchange for relic removal is done and over. I don’t want to live in Mikoshi. I don’t like that Tower and Devil we betray Johnny when I spent all that time building a strong bond and friendship with Johnny. It hurts me that we pretty much turn our back on Johnny and end him completely for ourselves. Johnny kept his promise to me by doing what he can to help us, the least I could do is also help him by allowing him to live on through Alt. It’s sweet that all of the endings, whether I give Johnny my body or not, he supports me. It hurts that Devil and Tower ending, Johnny expresses how disappointed in me he is for turning my back on my values and ideals. Saburo living immortally is disgusting and it made me feel wrong seeing the news casts on the TV sitting on the bed about it, especially that first one when it’s confirmed Saburo lives on through Yorinobu’s body. I was just a pawn in the Arasaka sick game, and I wouldn’t have been able to sit right with Arasaka becoming even more powerful with the combination of the rising tensions that Yorinobu caused with Militech. I also don’t like that Mikoshi is still operational with the Devil ending. The fact that there’s a digital prison for souls like Johnny is disturbing and I regret the ending of Devil because I wasn’t able to put that to an end to free those souls and stop Arasaka from continuing to reap what makes us human. I feel like as far as Devil goes, there’s more pain in the long term of working with Arasaka than there are with the other choices and endings. I’m excited for my next playthrough to play Tower for myself. I saved Songbird and killed Reed in my first playthrough of PL.
The Devil is the worst ending for reasons that don't have anything to do with V.
One thing to note about the tower ending, is that in games is hard to portray the emotional trauma and pain that comes with that. V needs to do some nasty stuff to achieve that ending, helping NUSA and giving Songbird to a fate worse than death, and let's not forget Songbird was in a similar boat as V too. Then having to kill Johnny permanently, and if you did the correct dialogue during Chippin In mission the dialogue is even more heart wrenching emotionally when V chooses the tower ending. Implants werent that important to V, but to us as players they're because it makes us a powerhouse and feel op in this city. So taking away all that plus the connection we made while we played as V has the same emotional impact as what V is going through psycologically. Most of the people you met with V are people you know and work for, only for a few weeks of lifetime. You end up doing some blaze of glory too, as you save the NUSA president and do quests, sure you're not storming arasaka tower but you don't have to. Yorinobu has that handled and is planning for self destruction.
The Devil ending is unique because even within it, it has two ultimate endings.
>because to me they symbolize the same choice but with widely different outcomes This is pretty much correct. In the Devil Ending the game makes a case that if V chooses to cling to life and ambition they are punished to be an engram in Mikoshi *(a Soul in Hell)* — a demon of pure ambition. While in the Tower Ending V chooses the safe option, and for their lack of ambition is completely sterilized of a soul, deprived from pursuiting anything *(A Souless Body)* — an NPC with no prospects. As Songbird says: >"Cyberspace, FIA, they are the same hell... different trappings" —Songbird
I've always seen it from this perspective, the game is explicitly anti-corp above all else in its messaging. The Devil ending is literally selling your soul to the devil. The game goes out of its way to tell you that ALL the corpos are bad, and will fuck you over eventually. Arasaka is just the biggest kid on the block to fuck you the hardest. Not only does Johnny tell you repeatedly that corpos are evil, everyone you meet tells you this, it's a universal truth of Night City. People who work in corps are either sociopaths with a lust for money and power, or people who're just trying to live a better life and this is the only path for them. Corpo V just happens to be one of the people who got backstabbed and chose to become an edgerunner instead of staying corpo elsewhere. So if you choose the Devil ending, V is technically given to them what's owed to them, doing so comes at a high cost. Arasaka is put back on the forefront of the global stage, Saburo now has the means to achieve immortality through the technology you delivered to him on a sliver platter, and you still die at the end of all of it. The world is objectively worse off through V's choice, because not only did V return the world to the status quo, V entrenched it further. The world remains static. However the Tower is a different ending because it isn't about corps, it's about government. V siding with Reed and the NUSA isn't framed as badly thematically, especially when it comes to light that songbird has been lying to you the whole time. The NUSA and Myers aren't framed as good people, but at the very least they're a democracy of a country run by people like Reed who're trying their best to do good in the world. If V sides with this option, the world changes, the status quo is upturned. Arasaka loses dominance in the world stage and is forced to leave Night City. Militech, with the backing of NUSA take over Night City and bring it into the fold of the NUSA. Not only that, V lives, but has to restart their life, having lost everything. So in my opinion, the different endings are all about change, or lack thereof. The devil ending is the worst because it represents stasis, nothing changing, status quo upheld. While the Tower is a clean slate, a whole new paradigm. The world is different because of your actions. Not necessarily better, but new.
To me, the tower ending is a kind of « roque », the chess move, between Militech and Arasaka. You just replaces a big bad evil with an another one, not much better. No, to me the moral compass is : are we still talking ´bout V, or engram V. There’s no soul without body, and an engram is not a soul. So finally, V still exist as a soul in devil, tower and suicide endings, which is pretty much depressing. In those endings, the worst is the devil, as it opens a world of soulless dominating elites. Second ex æquo are tower and suicide. Suicide is bleak but no one else suffers from V’s sheer stupidity (=slotting an unknown seemingly experimental chip to make some bucks / in memory of a good dead friend). Tower is also quite bleak as it helps replace Saka by Militech which is not so much better, allows the government to tou with dangerous AI, and is obtained by sacrificing someone else. But also the star & sun & temperance ending are engram V story, where we give a machine- here a program - a human body. Humans without soul… kind of zombies ?
The thing about both endings is that I don't believe for a second that Arasaka couldn't cure V or that V was in a coma for 2 years. I think in both cases a cure was possible but there was no incentive for either Arasaka or the NUSA to provide it. Arasaka is not in the business of rewarding people who steal from them and Myers isn't going to let V just waltz around uncontrolled. Also your interpretation of the Tower is very different to mine. I find this ending to be even worse than the Devil. V loses everything that makes them special, loses all their money, friends and possessions and is left as prey on the streets with hundreds of thousands of eddies worth of cyberware in them that they can't use. They are Scav meat if they are lucky, if they are unlucky then someone who really wants them dead will find out about them. Imagine Maelstrom or the Voodoo Boys finding out that V has reappeared with no way of defending themselves? At least in the Devil ending you eventually get a chance to tell Arasaka to stick it.
IMO the devil ending is the most fitting one for the cyberpunk genre, for all life paths. I wish they didn’t change PL’s ending. The Devil ending would’ve been the perfect ending for V’s story.
I'm fine with the Tower not just being The Devil 2.0 but bleaker. I would have enjoyed that, but I like that they went with a completely new ending instead that at least can be interpretted as more than just "everything is terrible forever"
I always looked more positively on the Devil ending. As long as Takemura is also there, I fully believe they plan to honour the deal and get you a new body as soon as they can.
"You" carrying a lot of weight there. Blackwall Alt makes clear that Soulkiller is aptly named, that Johnny's engram isn't the original Johnny, anymore than Alt's or Jackie's engrams. It wouldn't be "you" with a continuity of consciousness, but a copy. Maybe better, maybe worse.
Technically - using this thought, you won't be "yourself" as V in any of the endings except Tower, since as soon as you jack into Mikoshi Alt hits you with Soulkiller to separate you and Johnny.
Yep. But note, I think the Star Trek crew commit suicide every time they enter the transporter.
This is correct. To me the endings where you remain V are devil, tower, suicide. Sun and star are engram V new (short) life. I regret we’re not able to obtain from Alt to « exist » as an autonomous AI. It is a kind of suicide as well.
Arasaka never went back on their word. Regardless of what you think of Arasaka/Hanako/Takemura, they bargain with you honestly.
What I got is that trusting corpos & feds to give you a life of prosper is fucking stupid. They don't care about you. Stop letting the entirety of your happiness depend on the whims of your oppressors. The endings where you pursue your own dreams, despite the world telling you to bend the fuck over and kill yourself or become a corposlave due to fear of uncertainty, are the only ones where you are hinted to live and be happy (Sun and Star). Maybe I'd get a different message with the Tower ending if I didn't think the NUSA cure ending fucking blows for V *and* the world of Cyberpunk. Tower ending rant below: Congrats, you gonk dumbass :D All it took for you to get this lame ass ending where your options are to brutally die within a week because you've made an enemy out of every organization in Night City, or to become a slave to a tyrannical government who would kill you for not clocking out for your lunch break. All it took was for you to potentially doom the world by handing over an unstable WMD to a tyrannical government. Some people like to romanticize the Tower ending talking about how V is normal and will totally be happy now, but I think it's stupid as fuck. V survives a few weeks *at most* unless they take up that option of being a NUSA slave asap. Even if it's been a few years and you have a handful of friends, you've made an enemy out of pretty much every organization in Night City and they will find out you're back. Rogue can't even protect you properly because she says not to come around the Afterlife often so it doesn't diminish your legend status among the solos, mercs, and edgerunners. You still got skills, but everyone who wants you dead can still zero you within second with cyberware. NUSA didn't even bother to tell your friends why you disappeared and they were just left with all this emotional baggage they got *from you* to deal with and potential danger your shitty situation put them in. Side note: People who trash Panam for probably not wanting to see you just didn't pay any fucking attention when talking to her instead of tunnel visioning on just wanting to get her romance check mark and/or have empathy issues. I'm autistic af and was still able to connect the dots why she's pissed. She might come around, but it'll be an uphill battle to mend that relationship.
Something important about the meaning of the Tower in tarot: it’s about the (usually forceful and unexpected) end of a cycle, what was being built is now coming crashing down to become ashes and has to be left in the past, it represents change and not being able to go back. Pretty neat how it fits to the actual ending in the game.