First Play Through Endings

Like I said in my first post about this play through, I opened up four options for how to approach the final quests, each leading to a different ending and with three of them offering at least one obvious choice that would probably lead to a variation on that ending. The four options, listed in my play order, are:

1. Let Jonny handle things;
2. Make a deal with Arasaka;
3. Suicide; and
4. The Heterosexual Romance

I played all four endings through once. Two of the four end with me beating Adam Smasher as a final boss and then jacking into Soulkiller and entering cyberspace. Three of them involve me being told the biochip has done too much damage to my DNA and that I’ll die in six months.

Option 1: Jonny, Take the Wheel

Here, Jonny takes over and I play him as he controls my body. He calls up his old friend Rogue and she organizes an assault on Arasaka Tower that echoes Jonny’s earlier “terrorist” assault. In the time since that attack, Alt has become an AI construct and she’s helping Rogue and Jonny get into the tower and will destroy Soulkiller once she has access to the data terminal.

Rogue dies as Smasher’s entrance kill and it can’t be avoided, which sucks because I liked Rogue. In cyberspace, Alt separates me and Jonny and the three of us discuss who will return to my body: Jonny to live in a body that’s been remade by the biochip to fit him, or me who will be a mismatch and will die in six months. Jonny insists I go back, I don’t argue. Jonny merges with Alt and stays in cyberspace, and I wake up the proprietor of Rogue’s merc club, the Afterlife and meet a client. It’s a job hitting an orbiting casino. I’ve hit the big time, Jonny’s with Alt. Final shots:

Great ending. I’m a Night City legend. Arasaka Corp is crumbing. Things seem okay, like maybe there’s time to figure things out and not die.

Video calls from friends over the credits are excited and happy. The tarot is The Sun.

Option 2: Fucking Lying Corpos

For the corpo ending, I accept a deal: help Arasaka’s daughter capture control of her father’s corporation from the son who killed him. Do this without harming the son, and she’ll have the biochip removed. The father has been made a construct. Once the son is captured, the father’s engram is copied over his son’s brain, erasing the son and giving the father a new body. Arasaka Corp becomes even more powerful because of this and I wake up in an orbiting science station, Jonny’s chip gone, barely able to walk or see. The scientists keep running the Blade Runner word association and empathy tests on me day after day. Eventually they offer to make me a construct (and their property) or to send me home. I go home. Final images:

This ending = failure and I should have known better. Why would I team up with the people who killed Jackie and Jonny and tried to kill me? And I wind up lobotomized and lost. Totally depressing.

Variations: 

1. I could have let the son kill himself—or tried to?—which would have stopped Arasaka Sr. from coming back and would have slowed down the corp. I think then I’m probably left to die?
2. Once on the station I could have become an even bigger loser and let Arasaka make me a construct.

Video calls over the credits are all about friends wondering what happened to me and where I am. The tarot is The Devil.

Option 3: Thelma & Louise

When beginning the final quest sequence, one option is to commit suicide. Initially, I thought this was just going to be a dialogue option: choose it and Jonny explains it’s stupid and I agree and then am sent back to choose between the other three options. Instead, I explain to Jonny that all three options involve people we love dying and that they don’t have to, that me and him can end all the madness right there and then. Jonny says he hadn’t thought of that and actually agrees that it’s a good option, that enough people have died. We then acknowledge that it’s the only option where we are together at the end. (All the others involve taking one of two pills that either make me disappear or Jonny. We won’t meet up again until we’re both in cyberspace.)

I throw both pills off the rooftop, so the decision is final, and we sit as the camera pulls out. There’s a brief montage of the Night City skyline and then the sound of a gunshot. The video calls from friends over the credits are all terribly sad.

Final shots:

I thought this ending was going to be a gimmick but it was really well done and just made so much sense given what had been going on and what they faced. That together they decide to say “no, we’ve lost, but we can lose on our own terms” and do it as friends nearly killed me.

Option 4: The Love Story

I spent the entire game fighting this story arc in an effort to avoid the romance that, it turns out, was hardwired into the narrative. To choose this option, I call up Panam (the love interest) and her nomad clan decides to make me a member of their family. They then organize an attack on a tunnel that will lead to the basement of Arasaka Tower. I contact Alt who agrees to help the same way she did in option 1. When Smasher arrives in this option, he kills Saul (my rival if I were actually pursuing Panam), clearing they way for me to be with Panam and for her to become the leader of the Nomads. 

Once in cyberspace, I decide that I really really really don’t want to do the romance ending and decide to give my body to Jonny instead. 😇 

He protests, over and over as I walk to the bridge that will take me to Alt and beyond the Blackwall into the Deep Net. I keep insisting he live and he finally takes my hand and accepts. I then join Alt’s data stream, and Jonny wakes up in an apartment. He gets the teenage boy next door to drive him on some errands. He’s been teaching the kid to play guitar and has clearly used this second chance to turn his life around. The errands: memorialize me at a cemetery, buy a guitar for the boy, and then catch a bus out of Night City.

Jonny accepting my sacrifice:

Me decomposing into bytes:

Jonny’s momento in my grave: the bullet that would have killed me if he hadn’t been in my head:

Jonny in my body leaving Night City:

The video calls over the credits are a mixed bag. Rogue is angry that Jonny has tricked me into sacrificing myself and is breaking off contact. Panam promises to find and kill Jonny for killing me. Misty doesn’t know what happened to me and has read cards suggesting some kind of death. Judy, who’s great, says she hopes I’ve left Night City (and I have in a sense). The others are asking where I am, why I’m not calling, assuming that I (rather than Jonny) am just ignoring them. The tarot is Judgement and The Hanged Man.

Final Thoughts

Giving my body to Jonny was the best ending, followed by—and I can’t believe I’m saying this—the suicide. The casino gig ending was the classic “win” and was a great pay-off. The corpo ending sucked just as badly as it should have.

After a 100+ hours, I can say without question that this game is a top-notch story. Super trashy, but absolutely a great, fun and moving game. By the end, I realized there were real characters with their own personalities and stories, that I cared about them a lot and made decisions about what to do based on how I felt about them, and that the voice acting was really incredible, especially V’s and Jonny’s. So let the haters hate, but I love this game.