Tear Jerker / Cyberpunk 2077

"Blinding lights. It's loud. I'm on stage and almost can't breathe. I'm so damn full of...hatred. Then I let it all out into a mic. And I realize it didn't help, I don't feel any better."

— V regarding the visions of Johnny Silverhand's memories, right before receiving some bad news.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an emotional rollercoaster. Between the revelations during the main story and side missions along with the many bittersweet endings the game has, not many people get a happy ending in Night City.

Keep in mind: spoilers are unmarked on all Moments pages.

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Main Game

• On a minor example, during the Streetkid lifepath introduction, V, who recently returned from a failed venture to Atlanta, has the option to remain silent during a tense standoff with a local gangoon. Padre, who will defuse the situation regardless, will comment that Atlanta "broke" V, implying that their silence is a result of whatever happening in Atlanta which was so traumatic it destroyed V's nerve. V, being, well, V, bounces back by the beginning of Act 1, but it's pretty sobering to know that whatever happened in Atlanta, it was so bad for poor V that they decided that Night City was a better place to live. Turned out in the below-mentioned "The Star" ending, a Streetkid V will end up leaving Night City again for good.
• The end of the Corpo-Rat introduction ends with the Corpo V getting "fired" from Arasaka, for something that wasn't even technically their fault. Problem is, Arasaka basically owned all of V's assets, from their apartment, to their car, to their medical coverage, and even V's bank account, meaning that once they got the boot, they had literally everything taken away, leaving V with just the clothes on their back and the paper money they had been holding onto. Thankfully, this was enough to get them back on their feet, but one cannot help but think about all the poor souls who were terminated from a megacorp, and really were left with absolutely nothing. Considering that Arasaka even owns V's cybernetic implants and that Jackie had to get V to a ripperdoc soon after, it's easy to imagine someone dropping dead when the company shuts down a replacement organ.
• At the bar in Konpeki Plaza, two women can be seen talking about multiple paintings by Hieronymus Bosch, Monet, and others were blasted out of an airlock on a space station and destroyed. It wasn't an accident or act of terrorism, it was a piece of performance art. All those works of irreplaceable art destroyed at the whim of an avant-garde artist that is the current darling of the elite. Who knows how many other works of art or cultural artifacts were destroyed in similar ways over the years.
• Jackie's death at the end of Act 1, after the heist for the biochip goes horribly awry. The game had, by this point, through montage and gameplay banter, built him up as having become as thick as thieves with V since the time they met, and V is deeply affected by his death: some mission descriptions in the journal are implied to be written in Jackie's voice, which continues after Act 1, making it clear that V is constantly thinking of him and what he would say if he was still there.
  • Worse, there's the reason Jackie dies when V can even point out that Delamain could easily take them to a Ripperdoc to patch Jackie up. Delamain's itinerary is predetermined by Dex's orders and he can't deviate from it. Jackie dies from his wounds because of the corporate capitalist hellscape that is Night City and his last words make it clear he knows.
  • Jackie spends his final moments calmly accepting his own death and passing on the Biochip to V and his final words are heartwrenching as it shows his final thoughts were both of V's future as a Solo and his beloved girlfriend Misty. What's worse is the screen goes black when he passes but no time is implied to have passed, which means the loss of their best friend was so traumatic that until Delamain rouses them from their Heroic BSoD V just shut down completely.
    Jackie: Misty... She knew... She always knew... The biochip... hold on to it. For me.
  • V's state during the scene is horrible to see as well. For the past few hours of gameplay, V's been a flippant, wisecracking, badass merc, but now they sound so small and helpless. Female V sounds like she's in the middle of a panic attack the whole time while Male V sounds like he's on the verge of tears. In that moment the game character falls away to show a terrified person, desperate for something better, watching the best friend they have in the entire world slip away, unable to do anything for him.
  • Sending Jackie's body to Viktor is tragic in its own right, as it could be seen as V desperately trying to cling to the idea that Jackie could be saved, sending his body to his family is arguably worse. Mama Welles had called Jackie just before the heist to check on him, afraid he'd end up dead like most of his siblings... and then Delamain rolls up to her house carrying his corpse and realizing her greatest fear, that Night City would consume Jackie just like it consumes so many others.
  • Doubles with Heartwarming as you can attend his ofrenda if you sent his body to his family, reminisce about the good times with him, see what he was up to outside of his mercenary work, and give a heartwarming speech about your fallen friend. You can even repair the rift between Mama Welles and Misty.
  • Listening to Jackie talk about what the Relic Heist means to him makes it clear that, for him, this isn't just about the fat wad of eddies as a payout. The poor guy has been in the gutters of Night City practically since he was born, fighting tooth-and-nail for everything he has: Running his abusive dad out of the house, his mother finding out about him joining the Valentinos, nearly getting killed in a gangoon shootout that resulted in him quitting said Valentinos, becoming a merc taking small-time gigs...In the Delamain on the way to Konpeki, he will more or less say to V that for all intents and purposes, he is done with being a small-time merc, and this Heist is how he is going to pull himself out of the underbelly of Night City and into its legends, giving him the power, influence, and eddies he needs to turn his life around and make it about more than always looking over his shoulder for the next bullet and wondering where his eddies will come from. And then the Heist goes wrong. He makes it into the Afterlife's legends, sure but he does so at the cost of his life, and so soon at that.
  • As if all of the above wasn't enough to convince the player of just how much of a shithole Night City is, near the end of the Heist when you exit the Delamain at the No-Tell Motel, there is a Night City logo on the wall with the NC slogan: "City of Dreams." There is also some generic graffiti over the logo as well, namely the common "BROKEN" scrawl which you can often see elsewhere, but this particular scrawl is placed precisely so that the slogan says something different, now: "City of BROKEN Dreams". Whether a coincidence or written by some other poor gonk who has also seen their asiprations destroyed by the place, it's there as if to ask the now emotionally broken V, "What the hell did you expect would happen?"
  • Much like the rest of the quests in Act 1, Jackie narrates the updates for "The Heist". The final one he gives can hit you hard, especially considering it's basically him narrating about his own death.
    So that's how it is...at least for me. In the backseat of a limo with hot corporate lead wedged in my gut. You know, all things considered, that ain't a half-bad way for a Welles to go. Most sons of Heywood tap out without all those fireworks. But what can I say, Night City's chewed up names way bigger than mine before. Not you, though - you still got work to do. Cut a fat deal (heh) with Dex in my honor. And don't piss it all away in vain, or I'll be rollin' in my grave until I hit the east coast. I won't give you a minute of goddamn peace, chica/mano. This is the last favor we owe ourselves.
• Despite being an Evil Overlord and Corrupt Corporate Executive, there's something genuinely tragic about the fact that Saburo Arasaka is murdered by his son after he insisted on dismissing his bodyguards because he had no fear from him. His final act is try to reach out to his son too. Subverted when he takes over his son's body, though that wasn't willingly.
  • There's also the scene during the initial flashback to Arasaka Tower, as Saburo looks out at the mushroom cloud that stands where Arasaka Tower once stood. This man is a World War 2 veteran, and one can't help but wonder what thoughts might be going through his head in that moment. At that moment, the only thing he can ask Johnny is "Why did you do this?" Not why he attacked Arasaka, which was for reasons he would be fully aware of, but rather, why would Johnny use a nuke to destroy what Saburo had built. Blowing up the tower wouldn't do much to hurt him, as he runs a global corporation and can always rebuild. But using a nuke to do so hurt Saburo in ways that Johnny likely wouldn't even have understood, due to the difference in age and culture.
• V's breakdown after being told by Vik that the biochip that brought them back to life is slowly overwriting their consciousness with Johnny Silverhand's, and that they only have a few weeks to live. On top of having just lost Jackie, V is clearly beside themselves with grief, and Vik looks like he's barely keeping it together himself. He clearly wants to give V a solution to this, but there just isn't one he can provide.
  • What really sells it is the voice acting. Male V sounds like he's trying desperately to keep himself from falling into Inelegant Blubbering, but it's already happening, especially after the emotional bombshell of losing Jackie AND being betrayed by Dexter in the same night. It's good, then, that neither Viktor nor Misty blame them for Jackie's death. The latter especially, since she was Jackie's girlfriend and has full rights to blast V for it, but doesn't. V even has the option to call her "lovely" due to her taking them back to their apartment while they're too emotionally wracked (and physically wracked) to get there on their own.
  • Going back to Jackie's death, Female V sounds like she spent the entire ride from the moment Jackie passed to when they arrived at the No-Tell Hotel either choking back tears or downright sobbing. Her voice when she says her parting words to Jackie's body before leaving the Delamain is so emotionally raw and distraught that there is no doubt that she's just lost her best and only friend.
  • For Viktor's part, there's something absolutely tragic about the way he breaks the news to V: He's clearly as distraught as V is, and yet...he still knows how to hold himself together (at first), and knows how to explain to V what is going on. Basically, he's acting like the doctor he is now, and in a way that implies this isn't his first time having to explain to a client that there is nothing more he can do, and indeed, an email conversation you can find later in the game between Viktor and the sister of a patient whose cybernetics are failing shows him doing just that. You gotta wonder how many times this guy has had to do this...but with V, it's different, considering that the patient is one of his good friends.
• Later on in the Automatic Love quest, V can stop being intensely focused on finding Evelyn Parker to let out their fear of dying and/or being forgotten to either Angel or Skye.
  V: 'Course I'm sad. And... surprised. Death was something that happened to other people—hell, that I dealt to others. Now my number'll be up. Was gonna go out in a memorable way... and later, lots later. Turns out death don't give a shit what you want.
• If you go out of your way to retrieve your old car from a junk heap as a Nomad V, you encounter a Nomad (Alanah Pearce's cameo) who had been trying to fix it in order to leave Night City. It's obvious that she's incredibly upset about the thought of living in this place right now. You luckily have the option of paying her the money to get a new car...or, if you feel so inclined, giving her the car. Either way, she is shocked and extremely grateful at the gesture.
• The horrifying death of Evelyn Parker, after she's brain-damaged and Driven to Suicide after what is implied to be brutal sexual assault for weeks, followed by being unresponsive since being rescued. Given she was such a captivating and intriguing NPC, this hits especially hard. Given you managed to rescue her and deliver her to Judy, her best friend and implied lover, it's doubly tragic. The music that plays during this scene (sadly not part of the released soundtrack) really sells it, too.
• The discovery that Johnny Silverhand's insane vendetta against Arasaka Corporation wasn't motivated by his anarchist philosophy or frustrated idealism, but the much more human fact that they killed his girlfriend, Alt Cunningham. It's clear that as nasty as a person as Johnny was, he only loved one person and Arasaka Corporation took her from him. Made all the more tragic in that, if Johnny had been just a few seconds slower in "rescuing" Alt, she wouldn't have "died" in the first place.
• When Johnny Silverhand is captured by the Arasaka Corporation and subjected to Cold-Blooded Torture, he finds out that his torturer isn't just a random mook, but the wife of one of the people killed in his terrorist attack a few hours ago.
  "I didn't want him to die."
• V's second breakdown at the very end of the game, when they learn that after all the damage done to their brain, despite all their efforts, they still have only a few more months to live at best.
• Johnny’s Character Development over the course of the game, especially if you progress down his questline. Whether it’s because of V’s psyche affecting him, or because he’s finally forced to sit still and contemplate, he self reflects on himself and his past, and he realizes how much of an asshole he was to the people he cared about. It culminates in him nearly having a breakdown as he has doubts on whether any part of his life was worth it, and how V is technically his only real friend, as everyone else only barely tolerated him.
  • V and Johnny parting ways in Mikoshi. Unless V chose to side with Arasaka and if their friendship is high enough, neither of them want to see the other go.
  • It reaches its utmost climax in the “Temperance” ending, where their bond is so strong, V willingly sacrifices themself so that Johnny can live on in their body. The entire ending itself is tearjerker material, as Johnny is deep in mourning over V, and he swears over V's “grave” in the Columbarium that he plans on not taking the second chance V gave him for granted.
    Johnny: I’m wiser now...and I don’t plan on wasting it.
  • Of particular note is V giving up their body after "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" (assumedly if you have a high enough relationship with Johnny). Johnny tries to stop them from crossing the bridge multiple times, before he eventually admits that he's scared for V while displaying some very anxious body language. V then offers a handshake goodbye, which Johnny reluctantly accepts. But when V tries to pull away, Johnny refuses to let go at first, holding their hand closer to him as he looks them in the eyes, before finally releasing it with an absolutely heartbreaking expression on his face. See it here for yourself.
  • If Johnny decides to look in the mirror, he audibly mourns V upon seeing their face on the body.
  • One of the saddest parts of this ending is that apparently Johnny still instinctively talks to V, even though they're no longer around. Johnny even admits that he should stop talking to them.
• The Temperance Ending gives players a huge punch to the gut when V's friends leave behind their messages. With the exception of Panam and Rogue, none of them knows that V is gone and Johnny is inhabiting their body, honestly thinking they are up to something big. The only ones that do know are Panam^*unless you take the "(Don't) Fear the Reaper" ending, in which case her standard message plays, who honestly thinks that Johnny stole V's body and swears to Johnny that she will find him and tear him out from V's body, unaware that V gave up his body willingly, and Rogue^*if she's absent from your Arasaka Tower raid, and thus, survives the endgame, who, not being privy to all the details, thinks that Johnny tricked or coerced V, and is so disgusted by it she doesn't want him to set foot in Night City ever again.
• The 'path of least resistance' (suicide) ending, or "(Don't Fear) The Reaper" ending but V dies midway through. The phone calls as the credits roll are everyone leaving V voice messages ranging between angry (Panam), sad (Viktor, River, Misty), or disappointed (Kerry), but taking the cake is Judy, who is absolutely devastated. Even worse is that unless the player just bolted straight for the end of the main story this is likely twice now she's had to suffer through someone very important to her committing suicide (or in the latter, being killed in action). She calls laying in bed, makeup streaked down her face, and is only barely managing to keep it together until she breaks down in the middle of her message and starts crying again, unable to say anymore.
• "The Devil" ending is by far the most bitter of the endings, almost to the point of being a Downer Ending.
  • While Johnny's reaction to V willingly choosing to work with Hanako elicits an angry reaction, it's worse if he and V became friends over the course of the game. Johnny doesn't lash out, instead he's just dismayed...and worried, telling V he won't be there to help them. While he does but understand V's choice, it's clear that he really does care about V's safety in the hands of a megacorp that has repeatedly proven to care little for anyone but themselves.
  • Misty is understandably confused and initially angry with V for working with Arasaka, given how they were responsible for Jackie's death.
  • The epilogue involves a medical montage of V being treated by Arasaka doctors, asking them routine questions and putting them through physical training that always ends in them falling flat on their face and being unable to solve a Rubix cube. Between the doctor's clinical and apathetic attitude towards V and their own rapidly building frustration, they finally snap and send the cube flying. V can then trash their room in anger.
  • During the word association test, V can respond with "Johnny" when asked about their association with "Home". (In fact, they can answer most of the questions with "Johnny".)
  • Adding onto this are the nightmares. Although the first isn't bad, involving V just taking a dive into a void, the other two aren't so nice. The second has a Jump Scare where V finds Jackie's corpse in a hallway where he grabs them and slots in the shard and the third has V breaking the rubix cube in half, revealing the grinning face of the Devil tarot card as if mocking them. It also doesn't help that the first two dreams has Johnny calling out to V despite having been removed, telling them to get out of the medical facility.
  • During the "Return to Earth" variant, V sings a few especially poignant lines of "Never Fade Away" to themself. Both versions of the ending also have Olga Jankowska's cover of the song from the credits playing over their final shots, just to make things even worse.
  • Watch that clip of V preparing to go back home closely. Notice the silhoutte of a ghostly apparition that seems to be following them around? Gee, wonder what that could be? Or rather, who?
• "The Sun" ending is also borderline Downer Ending. While V is rich, famous and admired for their freshly earned status of edgerunner's living legend, they are also terminaly ill thanks to Relic destroying their central nervous system. Through the ending scene they are apparently resigned to their fate, bitter and possibly seeking quick, spectacular death in action, telling to Mr. Blue Eyes they have nothing more to lose. And the final sequence in ending is them gritting their teeth either because of pain caused by their terminal condition or because of increasing angst and despair.
• "The Star" ending is the most hopeful ending players can achieve, but even it ends on a bittersweet tone. V makes the decision to leave Night City behind and travel with the Aldecaldos, in the hopes of finding a way to stave off their death, remote though that hope may be. The ways in which the ending tugs at the heartstrings also differ: a Nomad V came to Night City chasing a better life than simply wandering through the wastes, but all they got for their trouble was a death sentence. A Streetkid V may have called NC home their entire life, but they have come to grow weary of how dismal the city truly is, and decided to leave once again: wandering the wastes, in comparison, is a better departure than their aforementioned previous departure to Atlanta.
• Johnny's bender in "Chippin' In" is already upsetting and violating,^note yet hilarious but it's twice as painful if you've played your V as straight-edge/non-drinker/someone who doesn't use drugs, especially since Johnny would have to know this, because you two share a brain.
• In an example that is simultaneously tearjerking and heartwarming, you can overhear a child telling her father that she wants to join the Trauma Team when she grows up. The father's reaction, in an example of Good Parents, is completely supportive, if cautious about how tough it is to work for them. However, his comments also indicate that neither of them see anything morally wrong about the existence of an armed ambulance company that serves only those who can pay.
• The story of Kerry Eurodyne and his unreciprocated devotion for Johnny is pretty sad. In Samurai days, he was clearly in love with Johnny who not only didn't reciprocate but treated him badly - to the point where Johnny's last words to Kerry can be to call him a pussy. Then Johnny dies and even 50 years later, Kerry - when you meet him through his personal questline - is clearly depressed and still living in constant memory of Johnny. You can find lyrics to a potential new song on his computer that are clearly about how much the memory of Johnny still haunts him. While you can help him through his creative block or even initiate a romance (with male V) Kerry will still comment that he wishes he could delete Johnny from his brain. And this is the best outcome - it's heavily implied that Kerry was about to shoot himself when you first visit him, so if you never do his questline, you could assume that he did in fact commit suicide.
• On the Night City intra-net there is a fanpage for Samurai—pretty standard stuff, until you read to the bottom of the page where the one who created the page reminiscences on their good times with Johnny and the gang, declaring that "real rock with a capital R" died with Johnny Silverhand on the night that he blew up Arasaka tower. The final passage, however, is much more sobering, and it's a solemn reminder that, even if Johnny was a jerkass most of the time and Samurai a dysfunctional mess, there are still those out there who still felt their loss, and even in modern Night City still feel that a piece of them is missing without Johnny or Samurai.
  We're still here listening to your songs, Johnny. And we remember. There's nothing left for us.
• The story of how River's parents died is both frightening and absolutely tragic. A pair of thugs broke into their house, looking for eddies, but finding none they held River and his family hostage. One of the thugs, completely skezzed out of his mind on who-knows-what, shot River's father dead when he insisted there was no hidden cash for them to take. This apparently sent him into a (possibly cyberpsychotic) frenzy, and he gave River a gun and forced him to aim it at his own mother and pull the trigger. River, just a kid then, was too frozen in fear, so the thug just took the gun back, killed his mother, and fled the scene, never to be caught. River was severely traumatized by the incident, and it is what originally drove him to become a detective in NCPD.
  • One of the worst parts of this is that Joss, River's sister, was forced to witness the whole thing, and it is implied that the rift between them was started here, when Joss watched River point a gun at their mother. Even if River didn't have a choice in the matter, it left an impression upon her that makes it hard for the two siblings to grow close any more.

Gigs/Side Missions

• A lot of the Side Gigs are genuinely tragic.
  • In "Backs Against The Wall", a veteran has stolen a bunch of medicine to treat his cyber-psychosis, only to find out that it is actually just placebos. He proceeds to plot to murder a politician to make a political statement, but V can point out he'll just be labeled a terrorist. Provided V talks them down and recovers the medicine peacefully, he asks to be alone, but as they make their way down, they hear a gunshot. You can even examine his terminal and learn that he had fellow veterans with PTSD still calling and inviting him to their group meetings.
    • Unfortunately, V can also find the corpses of the veterans who sent the meeting invitations, identified by reading their own terminals; several were killed on a bridge by a different veteran also suffering from cyber-psychosis, while the rest were wiped out in a heroic but doomed final stand against a Militech kill-team.
  • In "Happy Together", a pair of police officers are worried about their friend who recently had a tragic loss. V investigates this and discovers that their friend was actually their pet tortoise. It isn't played for laughs as it's revealed that his pet was the only outlet from his trauma. His fellow police officers having encouraged him to ignore the horrible corruption in Night City and not be a "pussy" (with Mendez saying anyone who is soft-hearted has 'pussy genes'.) It's even worse if you make the wrong dialogues choices, as Barry commits suicide and the officer telling him to suck it up is crying as he was just attempting Tough Love.
    Mendez: Barry... Barry, you fucking asshole! I'm sorry, OK? I'm sorry... I'm so sorry...
    Petrova: Mendez... It's too late. He can't hear you.
    Mendez: Your... Your genes were fine, Barry! You were the strongest son of a bitch I knew! I-I'm so... I'm so sorry, Barry, I... I'm sorry...
  • "Dirty Biz" is issued by a preacher whose son was kidnapped and murdered. The investigation was halted due to lack of evidence, but the preacher manages to find a slim lead: a braindance recording of the boy's murder. The man has essentially been subject to the immersive Snuff Film of his own child's death, and hopes that V is able to find the killer through the braindance tuners who edited the recording.
    • When you break into the tuners' compound and confront them over the recording of the child's murder, they need to repeatedly ask you for more details to determine which child's murder you're talking about. They're completely desensitized to the horrific content they handle, if only through sheer volume.
    • The tuners happen to be a family operation consisting of a father and his teenage son. They are both absolutely terrified of V, with the father desperately trying to keep him placated and the son nervously trying to be helpful. Should V kill the father, the son will tearfully admonish you before pleading for his own life. And should V kill the son - giving the father a taste of what the preacher went through - the father will immediately break down sobbing and begging his son to stay with him. The surprisingly heartfelt voice acting elevates the impact, despite the two characters being intended Hate Sinks.
  • The "Coin Operated Boy" side-gig. Over several gigs, you've gotten to know Brendan, a quirky little talking SCSM with what appears to be an AI, in Japantown. Brendan is a pacifist who gives passers-by helpful life advice and encouragement, and even helped a girl named Theo Price through a rather dark period of her life. However, when the corp operating him catches wind of the "glitch" (through his mention of someone's marital troubles which the person didn't like), they haul him off for reformatting, which is basically tantamount to killing him. Even if V rushes to stop them, they are too late and can only confirm that Brendan is perfectly content with his fate. With sufficient Technical Ability, you can deduce that Brendan is not a true AI, but instead possessed an exceptional convo-emulating algorithm to facilitate his interactions with visitors. He'll then ask you to give Theo a message from him and give you one last joke if you wish.
• In the mausoleum, a widower tells his daughter that their mother is in Heaven and watching over them. Then the daughter is depressed because her rich friend's father died, was brain uploaded, and now they get to talk to each other every day in Arasaka, while she's separated from her mother forever. The father can only say he's sorry they don't have the money to afford that level of immortality. Either way, both children's parents have died prematurely, because death is just that frequent in Night City.
• The Psycho Killer side quest has V tracking down individuals who have succumbed to Cyberpsychosis and degenerated into homicidal maniacs. However, the logs and messages V finds while investigating each case reveal that the vast majority of these individuals were actually good people who were pushed to their breaking points, crossed the Despair Event Horizon, and lost their minds because of it.
  • The first one you will likely encounter is Lieutenant Mower, an elite Militech Soldier whose body was rejecting the experimental augments she had been given and was desperate for help. Her Militech-employed doctor promised that she would be taken care of and sent her to an address to await help and treatment...only for the corp to send in a hit squad to eliminate her instead, declaring her untreatable and labeling her a Cyberpsycho.
  • Another is Dao Hyunh, an actress who was given hideous augmentations to film a scene for her show, but woke up from her coma with amnesia and forgot it all. When she saw the fake message claiming that her sister (her co-star) did it to her and pulled a Surgical Impersonation to steal her life, she thought it was all real. The script called for the actress to show up and try to attack her sister, so when she showed up in a murderous rage nobody suspected anything until it was too late.
    • Also, when surveying the scene, V's scanner indicates that after the bride and groom at the "wedding" were cut down, the dying groom crawled back to the bride and held her hand as they died. Show or not, they really were apparently in love, or at least very close.
  • Gaston Phillips was a mechanic spent his life savings buying a shop, only to fall prey to a corporate scheme that stole his money and drove him into inescapable debt. Stressed-out, cheated, and likely about to be "repossessed" himself due to the murky legal terms of Night City, he turns his auto-shop into a fortress with explosives galore, slaughtering his debt collectors before V stumbles upon him. As Johnny says, Night City is where you go to see the "American Dream" turn into the "American Nightmare".
• The way the Delamain series of quests ends. After you've gotten to know the AI taxi driver, even developing a genuine bond with him despite being a robot, he's being torn apart by his split personalities that want to be free. You have three options, and all of them to some extent involve losing Delamain:
  • If you reboot Delamain to save him, he returns to factory default settings, forgetting everything about V except that they were a contractor that fixed him, and the split personalities are gone.
  • If you destroy Delamain's core, his split personalities are freed, driving off into the city in their own cars. The original Delamain himself is gone, but he leaves a (very confused) fragment of himself to serve V.
  • If you have the intelligence and choose to merge Delamain with his split personalities, he becomes a new being and ascends to leave Night City, though leaving behind its "first true child" (another Delamain AI) for V.
• Joshua. Despite the horrible things he did, the Sinnerman questline involves crucifying himself to make a braindance that will help others understand what Jesus went through. The whole thing is so bleak and existentially terrifying that when they go through with this, even Johnny shuts up and has a moment of respectful silence.
• The "Family Matters" side-gig seems rather straightforward at first; El Capitan wants you to make contact with a fellow runner, Juliet, who missed the deadline for an important contraband dropoff. Seems fairly simple, until you step inside and notice that the house is an absolute wreck, with furniture and items strewn about and, most disturbingly, a pharmacy's worth of prescription meds used to treat cyber-psychosis, all drained empty. Eventually, you find Juliet, eviscerated in her own basement, with a cyberpsycho standing over her, whom you must fight and kill to recover the contraband. Wondering what the Tear-Jerking part is? Well, several emails and files on the computers in the house reveal that the cyberpsycho is Juliet's sister, who moved in with her after some hard times and was dealing with the effects of her cybernetic implants being rejected by her body. Initially, Juliet thought she could help her sister with doses of pain meds, but as the rejection got stronger, even copious amounts of drugs didn't help, and to make matters worse, her sister's mental state was getting worse by the day, until eventually, she snapped completely. By the time you get to her, the poor girl is completely gone, not even realizing she's killed her own sister, and forcing you to put her down and end her misery. When the gig is completed, El Capitan sounds completely distraught, apologizing to V and making it fairly clear he deeply regrets assuming Juliet had simply skipped out on him.
• The Reported Crime: Roadside Picnic involves finding a dead scav with a hostile drone hovering over her body. Search her, and you find out via a message log that her name was Nina Chelo and she was seriously wounded after a scavenging gig gone wrong ended with her taking some lead in the stomach. Bleeding heavily, she called her ripperdoc friend, but her biomonitor was inactive and she couldn't tell where she was, and ended up bleeding out as her friend desperately tried to get her to answer. If you follow the coordinates from the log, it leads you to her hideway, where you find another message chain, this one from her father, who angrily disapproves of her scavenging forays and urges her to quit going on the gigs. Unfortunately, his advice came too late. The entire tale is a sad page from the underbelly of Night City, demonstrating what happens to those who simply aren't as skilled, or as lucky, as V when their missions go south. The mission flavor text on the journal entry, presumably narrated by Silverhand, only drives it home:
  Mission Text: Her name was Nina. And she died alone, terrified. You'll fill in the rest of the story, V.
• One NCPD Assault in Progress found in Pacifica, has V mopping up a small team of gangoons standing over the corpses of a young couple. Reading the associated shards reveals that the gangoons were hired to kill the two of them....by the girl's father. Her crime? Dating a man that he disapproved of, then being uppity when he tried to persuade her otherwise. Even the gangoons' leader expresses disgust at the father's decision, but happily accepts the hit for the eddies.
• Another Assault in Progress, likely the first one that you'll encounter in the game after your ride with Dex, has a small group of Tyger Claws and roughly three to four people dead, including a young woman by the name of Keiko. Reading the shards tells the story of a woman who only wanted to be free from the worst scumbag in Kabuki and Watson in general. She had a friend named Jake who took her to a ripperdoc to have the tracker that was put into her removed, with the intent of leaving Night City. But this story does not have a happy ending, as the scumbag in question had the ripperdoc shaken down for Keiko's location and then sent Takeshi Kazou and the other Tyger Claws in the group to murder her and Jake both. As an example of what happens when people try to skip out on him. This will likely be many players' first introduction to Jotaro Shobo, the titular monster of the "Monster Hunt" gig.
• An Assault in Progress site out in the Badlands has a patrol of Militech soldiers standing over a pair of deceased men. A shard among the men's possessions has the two talking about how they miss each other and plan to spend time together at their old hangout, where they now lie dead. A shard on one of the Militech soldiers reveals that the two men were mistaken for smugglers and executed, only for the soldiers to realize their mistake. They reported back to their superiors, whose instructions are to simply frame the men to cover up the murder.
• One of the pieces of the Corpo outfit is in the ruins of a brothel by the name of "Barely Illegal" run by some Maelstrom guys who were pimping out underage girls. The shard on the guy reveals that the corpo in question, who was there to get his pedofix, wanted an "amateur" snatched off the street for this, and the Maelstromers brought him a girl who turned out to be the guy's own daughter. The corpo had a heart attack and died on the spot, and the Maelstromers, in a bid to keep Trauma Team from showing up because this guy had a Trauma Team Platinum subscription, cut out the guy's biomon with a machete. It didn't work — the place is in ruins when you arrive, and every Maelstromer in the vicinity is dead, along with the body of the corpo, who was presumably left behind because of the cut-out biomon. We do not know what became of the poor daughter in question or anyone else these guys were pimping out, but it's just one more piece of the tragic ugliness of Night City in general.
• The tale of Martha Frakes and Gustavo Orta, whom Padre himself describes as "Night City's Romeo and Juliet". Orta is a ranking member of the Valentinos gang, while Martha is a member of the 6th Street gang, and...let's just say the two gangs aren't exactly meeting on weekends for pool, and Martha's father definitely has no love for Gustavo. However, the two are undeterred, and V can at one point even meet Gustavo and Martha (disguised as a Valentino), and they're shown to be close. The tragic part comes in when someone (implied by Orta to be Martha's father) tips off 6th Street of Gustavo's location, and they subsequently ambush him, unaware that Martha is with Orta. A stray round hits Martha, putting her into a coma. Both Gustavo and Martha's father are grief-stricken, but instead of reconciling, Martha's father puts a hit out on Gustavo, blaming him for his daughter's injury. And said hit is one you can carry out for Padre. And worst of all, he can't be saved. Either V kills him, takes him in alive (where he will almost certainly suffer a far worse death), or V talks him into skipping town. While at first Padre's remarks about Gustavo killing himself appear to be a cover story, should you go back to the apartment you will find Padre was telling the truth and Gustavo did in fact kill himself. During the same mission, Gustavo is shown to have a security feed of Martha's hospital bed.
• As much of a slimy weasel Kirk is, the last line of his mission hits hard. Johnny asking V if they should call someone, and V just sadly saying that there isn't anyone to call to pick up his body.
• The 2.0 update adds in various niches in the Columbarium for the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners characters, with parting words from Lucy.
  David Martinez: You didn't take me to the moon, but you were there with me.
  Rebecca: I regret not finishing our conversation.
  Gloria Martinez: You were right. David reached the top of Arasaka Tower.
  Kiwi: You taught me to never trust anyone.
  Pilar, Dorio, Maine: You were the only family I ever had.
  Julio: He blew us away with his enthusiasm.
  • The fact David’s niche refers to Lucy’s time on the moon in the past tense implies that Lucy returned to Night City at some point. Whether she stayed or not is anyone’s guess, though the fact she returned to Night City period after trying so long to leave is heartbreaking. The city always finds a way to pull you back in...
    • Alternatively, Lucy's chosen epitaph for David could be referring to her virtual reality construct of the moon.

Phantom Liberty

• The Official music video is just brutal and shows how bad the situation is for Reed, Songbird and V.
• The Official Trailer for the expansion shows how thoroughly broken V is. In contrast to the main game, where they're fighting tooth and nail to find a way to get the Relic out of their head, they're defeated and flat out tells Johnny they're going to die and there's not much they can do about it.
• Solomon Reed and Song So Mi AKA Songbird were two NUSA operatives who were as thick as thieves seven years prior to the events of the game. But for one reason or another, Song made the decision to betray Solomon the same day he was finally allowed to leave Night City by remotely locking him inside a passenger train filled with Hired Guns and Arasaka Soldiers before cutting off all communications. What makes the betrayal even more of a gutpunch is the Cinematic Trailer's photo-realistic CGI being able to faithfully recreate subtle expressions such as Song's eyes visibly welling up with tears before reluctantly typing in the command that seals her old friend's fate and Solomon's completely heartbroken reaction upon realizing that he's been set up by the one person in the world he explicitly trusts.
  Songbird: This is it. Trust me?
  Solomon: You know I do.
• The Dazed And Confused sidequest has an unexpected tearjerking moment for a wacky hijinks quest. You find a fan letter that tool wrote to his favorite braindance porn star. The heartfelt thanks that her memories were the only thing that lets him go forward is touching and sad. His life is in such bad shape that pretending to be a porn actress is his only joy in life.
• Handing Songbird over to Reed and Myers unlocks "The Tower" Ending in the main game, where V contacts the FIA to get the Relic out of their head. While the Relic is safely removed and V's life is saved, Johnny's engram is destroyed and the damage done by the Relic has destroyed V's neural system to the point where they will no longer be able to use combat-oriented chrome and implants. Worse, V finds out they've been in a coma for two years, and that many of their old friends and associates and friends have died or moved on with their lives, though they're either forced to make deals with corpos, fleeing from them, or left Night City entirely. Hell, even Misty is leaving, though she at least offers V some parting advice about where to go from here. The ending credit scene also features Reed leaving a message for V, commenting on the events of the expansion; it's made blatantly clear from the tone in his voice and his mannerisms that as much as he'd like to believe he did what was right, he knows it wasn't worth it. At all. It honestly makes "The Devil" ending seem more positive by comparison, even though that ending is just as depressing. Overall, this ending just makes the player ask themselves if going so far to cure V of the Relic was worth losing everything that made them "V", the Edgerunner. It seems like you didn't just sacrifice So Mi, didn't just destroy Johnny, but also permanently damaged yourself.
  • Johnny's parting words to V in this ending are pretty gut-wrenching. If you've got a high relationship value with him, he doesn't begrudge or cuss out V for taking the FIA's deal. If anything, he sounds regretful that it's come to this and confesses how while the thought of not being able to see what becomes of the world without V scares him, him taking over their body and killing them scares him even more. That the whole scene takes place on an AV bound for the NUSA with V being sedated and slowly drifting to sleep sets the somber, depressing mood of the scene itself, not at all helped by Johnny trying to reassure V. His last words are a solemn goodbye, asking them not to keep fighting, but to just "let things go"...all while calling them by their name. Not "V", but their real name.
    "G'night, Vincent/Valerie... Today was a good day."
    • Even sadder is when, in response to V's vitals spiking from their emotional response, they increase the dosage. You can see Johnny's face fall into sorrowful resignation as he knows that means V's going to go unconscious, and Johnny won't be waking back up with them. You can just tell he's thinking "Well...guess this is it, then..."
  • The body language V has when Reed tells them about their new neuron damage: they slide their hands under their legs, probably realizing what has happened but not ready to accept it yet. Eventually, V looks at their hand...their completely organic hand, free of any cyberware. That ballistic coprocessor you probably kept from Viktor? Gone. Any arm cyberware? Gone. Whether V accepts it or not, the way of life they were so used to two years ago—the Edgerunner's path—is gone.
  • Speaking of Misty, you'll almost immediately notice she's wearing Jackie's old Edgerunner jacket. While the rest of the world has moved on and even Mama Welles has seemingly stopped mourning the loss of her son, Misty hasn't forgotten him at all. It's sweet, but otherwise a bitter reminder of what she lost.
  • On the subject of romances, a female V who romanced Judy is likely to get sucker-punched hard. Turns out Judy got married during the time V was stuck in a coma and is happy with her new life. When V calls her, Judy begs her not to barge back into her life. While that alone is pretty gut-punching, the other romance endings are not much better: Panam doesn't even pick up, having only just moved on from the pain of their seeming abandonment, and Mitch only calling after the fact to tell V to not ever call back again lest they open up the old wounds. River meanwhile is a complete mess, forced into a bad position being The Mole for Trauma Team into the NCPD after V left him hanging to help save his nephew, and would rather not talk to them at all. The only potential romance partner who's somewhat cordial after learning of your recovery and coma is Kerry, but even he can't quite make time to see them right away as he's dealing with his record label and touring at the moment, leaving V without anyone at their side.
  • After leaving Vik's practice, V gets jumped by two thugs and gets the shit kicked out of them. Not gangoons, not elite corporate soldiers, but the run-of-the-mil two-bit street criminals. It really emphasizes how V's gone from being one of the scariest people in Night City and a top-tier merc to a weakling who can't even defend themselves from common muggers.
    • Even V's lifepath background as a Streetkid didn't help in any way shape or form when it comes to them interacting with the thugs. When the thugs mug the Streetkid V, V can try to spook them off by stating that they have strong connections like Padre. The thugs laugh them off, as they state that Padre is no longer in power within Heywood by the time of 2079. This implies that within a span of two years, the fixers that V worked with are no longer operating in Night City, or that their influence over certain areas of Night City have diminished significantly.
  • During V's talk with Misty, they can tell her they intend to climb their way back to the top lack of implants be damned, accept Reed's offer for a job over at Langley, start over as a fixer, or leave Night City to start over like she is doing. Alternatively, they can vent to her about how the loss of their implants has affected them so badly, even wondering how they're supposed to go about life in Night City if they can't even defend themselves. Misty simply tells them they're acting like the average NC citizen and that they will have to be more cautious than ever.
  • If he was saved during "Search and Destroy", Takemura sends a message to V during the end credits, where he reveals that he and Hanako attempted to take over Arasaka Tower and failed, leading to Hanako's death and Yorinobu framing him for it. He's been a fugitive on the run for the past two years, and while he has finally disavowed Arasaka after all that has happened to him, it's clear that he's deeply bitter at V for vanishing when he needed them most, even though he admits that them doing so was an important part of his personal growth.
• Alternatively, going through the "Save Songbird" route has its own fair share of heartache. So Mi is slowly dying as a result of her repeated intrusions into the Blackwall finally taking its toll on her. The only way to save her is to get her to the spaceport where she will take a rocket transport to the moon, with the hopes that the cure she managed to attain from the Blackwall will help her enough to save her life. And in the end, should we succeed in getting her to safety, there is no guarantee that the surgery she needed managed to save her life, especially since she is not among those who sends a message to V in the ending credits.
  • It is during this time that she reveals her regrets in betraying absolutely everyone around her to save herself...and that her betrayals of V hurt especially. In particular, the fact that she hid from them the truth that the cure she created can only be used once, meaning it can save only her or V; after that, it is gone. Whether you take the cure for yourself or give it to her, one person is leaving the spaceport without the means to save themselves.
    • You then have the option to take the cure for yourself while she's unconscious, leaving her to die. A heartless decision, and one that comes with a cost: using it will destroy Johnny's engram. So essentially, you doomed two lives to death for yourself.
    • And for an additional twist of the knife, after So Mi reveals the cure can only be used once, you have the option to hand her over to Reed. After everything she did to try and get away to freedom, it can be heartbreaking for her to realize she was betrayed and left to a Fate Worse than Death. All because she came clean to you about her plan.
    • Hell, even V's position in this is depressingly shitty if you took the time to truly befriend Songbird: They thought they had found the one person in the city, no, the world who could truly understand what they were going through, and formed a genuine, trusting bond with her...and then right before the finish line it turns out she was playing you the whole time and fully intended to abandon you to fend for yourself in the Wretched Hive known as Night City. It really helps make giving her over to Reed seem less like a greedy sellout and more the fact that V was done with shit like trust, loyalty, or true friends. Which, in turn, offers a rather depressing interpretation of the Tower Ending: Perhaps V is alone because they chose to be alone, because even the most loyal chooms will let you down in the end when it's their asses on the line, after all.
  • For those who truly came to see Solomon Reed as a friend, choosing to go through with getting So Mi to the moon to save her life sees V and Reed coming face to face just outside the rocket, with the latter holding the former at gunpoint. The only way to go forward to get her to safety is to kill Reed; shooting him anywhere but the head will cause him to live long enough to try and fire his gun as well...but in the end, he can't bring himself to pull the trigger as he dies, proving that he truly considered V his friend as well (or that alternatively, he was done with it all). The fact that you had to gun down a friend to save another's life is a somber moment, one that has even Johnny expressing pity and empathy for how Reed's ideals and loyalty led him to such a fate.
  • In addition, he will be heartbroken and furious at V if they euthanize So Mi, as Reed desperately wanted to keep his friend alive (even if she would be a veritable slave to Myers), and that everything he did to try and save her in his own way was All for Nothing.
• If you finished Phantom Liberty storyline with both Reed and Songbird alive but choose any ending other than The Tower, while it's clear that V had the right to reject their cure from NUSA, Reed's reaction will be genuinely pissed, berating them for doing so.
  Reed: Word's reached me about your decision. I can't understand it. You were so damn close... one holo and you'd've lived. Gratitude's one thing the NUSA's good at. Yet you preferred to give up, await death... for no good reason I can see. In the name of what, V?

---

"Guess I meant, I dunno...a happier ending...for everyone involved."
"Here, for folks like us? Wrong city...wrong people."