Standing in front of a cracked, bloodied mirror in the No Tell Motel, I know what comes next. My latest Cyberpunk 2077 run is off to a depressing start already. V has done nothing but roll her eyes at Jackie Welles and mourn the loss of her Arasaka status since I wrapped the game's prologue. But much like Regina George, at least she looks as fabulous as she is evil.
She's cold. She's calculated. She's a corpo through and through, and I'm so in-character it's scary. But being snarky to her Valentino bestie and signing him up for literal soul prison are two different things, and as my first ever asshole Cyberpunk playthrough goes from bad to worse, I am seriously questioning everything that led me to do this to myself.
Night City's bad girl
Cyberpunk 2077 is a better role-playing game than The Witcher 3
The most important thing going into any of the best RPGs is to have a clear character in mind to roleplay as, but that gets a little trickier with each replay. I've explored all three Cyberpunk 2077 lifepaths already, as well as tested out all the playstyle-dictating operating systems the game has to offer (Sandevistan forever, by the way). But there's really only one combo that screams "what a bastard" in my eyes, and that's corpo netrunner V.
Just to be clear, my first playthrough was a fem corpo V, non-asshole variety. She was just a cool slick city chick who used her knowledge of Arasaka to stick it to the man and destroy it from the outside. Things panned out a little bittersweet that time, though; I never got the secret ending where you and Johnny storm the corp by yourselves, sparing your friends in the process, so I saved that for my street kid playthrough immediately after. This time, I am approaching my corpo playthrough with much firmer parameters in mind: I'm not trying to be anyone's friend. I'm trying to get my job, my title, and my life back, and I'll manipulate my way there if I have to.
That doesn't mean my V is a full cyberpsycho, cutting people down in droves for the hell of it. Think lawful evil over bloodthirsty chaos. My corpo V is the ultimate cynic, mocking Jackie for his "major league" dreams before giving the Konpeki Plaza receptionist a rude dressing down without flinching. She also refused to take the Burning Balls guy to a ripperdoc (and watched him explode on the sidewalk instead) because why the hell would she want that freak dirtying her new car?
But most painfully, instead of sending Jackie back to his mother, my corpo V sent him directly to Vik Vektor. That was, probably, the shittiest thing I have ever done in Cyberpunk 2077. It might not sound so bad at face value – in truth, I've roleplayed it as my V actually trying to do Jackie a solid by sending him to a ripper to get a bit cleaned up before Mama Welles lays eyes on her poor dead son. But, sending Jackie to Vik, and in the process, delivering him into Arasaka's hands, is just a step on the way to the ending I'm angling for.
The devil in I
Being an asshole doesn't mean my V needs to be a bad person – just a person who does bad things.
The Devil is considered one of the worst endings in the game. It's the default base game ending, unless you've ingratiated yourself with Rogue by doing Johnny's side quests or invested time into helping Panam and the nomadic Aldecaldos family out in the Badlands.
It plays out after you meet Hanako at Embers (when you eventually bring yourself to do so) and sees V aiding Takemura and Hanako in bringing patricidal Yorinobu Arasaka to justice. If V tried sending Jackie's body to Vik early on in the game, a move you later learn was intercepted by Arasaka, they can meet Jackie's engram down at 'Saka HQ and have a chinwag. Sounds like a sweet little reunion, right? Wrong. Engrams can only exist if the copied personality construct was a victim of the Soulkiller virus, much like Johnny himself.
Arasaka's intervention means Jackie didn't just die during the heist on Konpeki Plaza. His soul was scrubbed away like an offensive smudge on Arasaka's glass-paneled corridors after they stole his body from Vik's, and it's all thanks to V.
But I'm getting ahead of myself. I'm still in the motel, remember? None of that has happened yet. My V hasn't even met Johnny Silverhand, and nor does she know that the chip in her head is going to be the death of them both – or maybe just one, if they're lucky. The only problem is that I didn't expect to feel so bad about my handful of choices so far already, even in the name of playing one of my favorite games in a brand new light.
As I head out to meet Dexter DeShawn and seal V's fate, I make one last promise to myself. Being an asshole doesn't mean my V needs to be a bad person – just a person who does bad things. Man, I'm sorry, Jackie. I wish I'd told you I'd see you in the major leagues.
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