Why is Johnny in the chip??

[psionyx]

Ok so, I don't really understand WHY he's in that thing. From what we are told in the story, from sources like Hellman, who worked on the chip, this is a new biochip, with a slick, top of the line, prototype, unique design. Soooo....when Yorinobu steals it from his dad's company and brings it to Night City....before doing that he sticks the engram of a wannabe rockerboy that (apparently) didn't actually do anything of significance, and was nothing more than a joke? Why?! I know that the VDB's want Johnny because they think he will lead them to Alt, but Yorinobu never seems to express any interest in this at all. It never comes up from the Arasaka side of any conversations (though I haven't done the Devil ending, so maybe it's explained more there.) It's just.....a random dude, that they stuck on the chip for some reason. Did the VDB's have someone on the inside that implanted Johnny on the chip, BEFORE Evelyn was hired to then steal the chip? Implying that Yorinobu didn't know Johnny was on it? That seems far fetched. So if that's not the case, then that would mean that Yorinobu INTENTIONALLY put Johnny on that chip. But....why?

Apparently they've got a huge databank of people they copy for study purposes, as evidenced by what they do with Jackie if you leave his body with Vik. But they never really refer to any of them as being important. Certainly nobody at Arasaka gives a crap about the Johnny engram, they just want the chip. A chip that was apparently meant for a very specific purpose....a purpose that does NOT require a failed rockerboy ghost on it. It just doesn't make any sense to me.

So why is he on that thing?

[spasti696969]

Originally posted by psionyx:

I know that the VDB's want Johnny because they think he will lead them to Alt, but Yorinobu never seems to express any interest in this at all. It never comes up from the Arasaka side of any conversations

So when the Voodoo boys get involved is when it starts coming to light that the plot is much deeper than first realized. Arasaka didn't realize what the Voodoo Boys were looking for and the lengths they were going to in order to achieve it. The old man getting killed right at that time was just a chance coincidence that blew up in everyone's face.

[Zebedee]

Check Yorinobu's emails in his suite, specifically the ones between him and Netwatch's Ronald Cheever. Yorinobu requested Silverhand be placed on the relic. The 'why' is left open for the player to put together for themselves but I read it as him seeing the same opportunity to use Silverhand to get to Alt that the Voodoo Boys also see.

Link to the emails: https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Yorinobu_Arasaka/Computers

[spasti696969]

Originally posted by Zebedee:

I read it as him seeing the same opportunity to use Silverhand to get to Alt that the Voodoo Boys also see.

That would actually also explain why he chose to steal the chip from his dad, which fits in with his brash, rebellious nature. I never thought of that.

[psionyx]

Originally posted by Zebedee:

Check Yorinobu's emails in his suite, specifically the ones between him and Netwatch's Ronald Cheever. Yorinobu requested Silverhand be placed on the relic. The 'why' is left open for the player to put together for themselves but I read it as him seeing the same opportunity to use Silverhand to get to Alt that the Voodoo Boys also see.

Link to the emails: https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Yorinobu_Arasaka/Computers

But why would Yorinobu want to deal with Alt? He never says anything about her in any dialogue options that I've encountered yet. It's never brought up about some Arasaka plan to contact Alt at any level. The ONLY people that actually have shown an interest in her, is the VDBs. I know you said "the why is left up to the player" but I just don't understand what his end goal would be with that engram specifically. He obviously wasn't working with the VDBs, otherwise they wouldn't need to steal it from them. So it's just left...entirely unspecified. Which seems like a really big, gaping plot hole for the ultimate motivation of the macguffin of the game. If he IS trying to contact Alt, shouldn't they have...I dunno....put that ANYWHERE in the game as an explanation for why he brought him from Japan???

He doesn't try and get the chip back, his sister doesn't mention anything about any importance of Johnny's engram to any Arasaka plans. Yorinobu never does anything at all related to Rogue AI's or Blackwall. He just immediately takes his dad's place as the company head, in typical patricide trope fashion. I really do like this game a lot, but some of the places where they seem to have just shrugged and said "meh, screw explaining that" absolutely baffle me.

[Alex_x86]

Don't forget that Silverhand was only one (at the time of game creation) who was able to accomplish successful assault on the Arasaka building. I think Yurinobu wanted to either to destroy Arasaka or change Arasaka to his ideals and if that's the case he needed Johnny's knowledge. I don't know how he planned to deal with him but in case of the assault Johnny would be a good asset to have.

However once he killed his father and become their leader he did not needed that, I also believe he was changing Arasaka after that. I don't know what was his end goal though.

[Zebedee]

Originally posted by psionyx:

But why would Yorinobu want to deal with Alt? He never says anything about her in any dialogue options that I've encountered yet. It's never brought up about some Arasaka plan to contact Alt at any level. The ONLY people that actually have shown an interest in her, is the VDBs. I know you said "the why is left up to the player" but I just don't understand what his end goal would be with that engram specifically. He obviously wasn't working with the VDBs, otherwise they wouldn't need to steal it from them. So it's just left...entirely unspecified. Which seems like a really big, gaping plot hole for the ultimate motivation of the macguffin of the game. If he IS trying to contact Alt, shouldn't they have...I dunno....put that ANYWHERE in the game as an explanation for why he brought him from Japan???

He doesn't try and get the chip back, his sister doesn't mention anything about any importance of Johnny's engram to any Arasaka plans. Yorinobu never does anything at all related to Rogue AI's or Blackwall. He just immediately takes his dad's place as the company head, in typical patricide trope fashion. I really do like this game a lot, but some of the places where they seem to have just shrugged and said "meh, screw explaining that" absolutely baffle me.

Yorinobu doesn't want to deal with Alt. He's giving the Silverhand engram to Netwatch on the Relic. Read the email and see, from what you know of the background lore and what you're told in the game, whether there's another reason which would link giving Silverhand to Netwatch as being 'civic duty' and a way to prevent a lose-lose situation between the corporations. Maybe there is but I can't think of one given what we know.

The game does leave a lot of things unsaid, yeah. Some of it is in the background lore (eg Yorinobu may have been a prisoner in the Tower the night of the bomb - Maximum Mike does mention this on Morro Rock though to be fair, or that Netwatch were trying to contact Alt to work with her in clearing out rogue AI 30 years prior to the events of the game), some of it is done just because they don't want to give all the answers neatly served up.

[Akira]

EDIT: tons of comments appeared after I posted. Zebedee mentions the Netwatch deal, that's the only explicit thing indeed.

All the ♥♥♥♥ started when NetWatch made a deal with Yorinobu. What the deal actually is, it's never explicitly stated. But it involves that one of a kind prototype of the chip that could write any of the previously writen constructs from Soulkiller to a recently dead brain.

Chip's original purpose was to let Saburo live forever. He started the whole project, Hanako herself says this ("My father's flagship project"), so when his health could not be anymore maintained in his current body, he would be "transfered" to a new one, implications (that Johnny and Alt clearly state "V goes back to his/her body, right? Nothing changes." "You know very well EVERYTHING changes.") be damned.

So chip is, for now, one of a kind. NetWatch wants it, makes shady deal with Yorinobu behind Saburo's back, and he ends bringing it to Night City for the exchange. Saburo's ends up noticing somehow (someone told him? he actively knew from the start? we'll never know.)

Thing is, Johnny probably was one of the least important constructs on Mikoshi, he's a terrorist and Saburo only used Soulkiller on him to know how he and his crew did the tower bombing, who and were to hunt and kill the remaining terrorists. Apart from that he is expendable, completely unimportant. So Helman or whoever made the decision of chosing which one would they test the chip with first, probably chose him because one: any problems, he isn't important, we can lose his construct. Two: if it works and Johnny comes back to life in another body, he's a terrorist and not important to us (arasaka), so we kill he as soon as the tech proves it's working (which also would probably involve a lot of testings that would probably result in torture for the construct if things didn't go to spec. one more reason to not be one of the "normal" constructs).

If they have other less important people on Mikoshi, we'll never know. Could be his brain was the only one scanned while alive since Soulkiller was meant to read dead people's brain so they could find out what happened before, not living ones. Since Saburo's chip would be the first to scan he while still barely alive too, that's the one direct connection to Johhny and Soulkiller and Secure Your Soul. Alt says the current Soulkiller Arasaka has is extrmely different from the one she wrote, they probably adapted it tons for Saburo's own plans.

Or could be that who wrote the game's plot with Mike, ended only being able to introduce the Voodoo Boys (and entire Pacifica, which had tons of content cut off the final game) by making it being Johnny so they would klep it to try and contact Alt (since she flees to the net in the tabletop too I think, so it's kinda canon). Enters the stage Brigite and Evelyn.

Either way, the tabletop (original lore) and the game (kinda side "what if" lore) only have few named characters to be used. Johnny was a good choice for having connections with everyone the games explores, plus the whole "What he remembers are distorted memories he played time and again in his mind" not facts as Alt says. Which let's the game and Keanu's acting to be free lore-wise to do whatever CDPR and Mike wanted back then.

My opinion of course, neither one of them ever commented on why him officially I think. And since Johnny and the events he remembers in the game are radically different from what "actually" happens in the tabletop, and Mike never said it was wrong either so far, I think that's that, "artistic license" if you will.

[Faiza, Star Made Knight]

This is one of those details that leads me to believe, personally, that Johnny Silverhand was a originally a much smaller part of the story prior to being cast by Keanu Reeves. A lot of plot was lost/moved/shifted in order to accommodate making him basically the main character.

[psionyx]

I think I'm going to go with me and my friend's head canon theory that inspired me to post this question in the first place. Yorinobu is a huge Silverhand/Samurai fan, and smuggled him out, because he's secretly like that guy from Enormous Weight of Massive Talent, that Pedro Pascal plays. He wanted to revive Silverhand, and run around doing crazy parties and orgies with him. Go on drunken benders and orgies like that acid tripping scene from the film. Since Mike and CDPR decided to say "screw you that's why" as to the motivation for the core aspect of their narrative, nothing they can say will tell me I'm wrong. Because they didn't say anything at all.

[psionyx]

I appreciate the deep dive info from you all to clarify what little bit is actually established. But yeah, that's a lot of dangling plot threads that wouldn't irk me so much, if they weren't integral to the entire driving motivation of the game's narrative.

[Akira]

Originally posted by psionyx:

Because they didn't say anything at all.

That's the beauty of a single player rpg and tabletop rpg, Role Playing.
The lore is just a base, you are the important piece, you should be able to live in that world doing your own story as you wish.

If facts were writen as rules and you were just a player going in a pre-determined ride, other aspects of the game would probably had final answers and explanations.
But isn't it better to have multiple choices, and consequences (endings) instead? Some things had to have mysteries or be omitted on purpose so player choices and story driven events to push the player forward, could take place.

No tale is perfect, it changes from mouth to mouth, plus go see things like Star Wars and the cluster of absurd justifications deep lore ends up spawning. You end up making fans polarized between hate and love too much in my opinion.

People tend to not enjoy open ends and things left unexplained. But life itself, for example, is one thing that never ever explains itself to us, and never will.

[Zebedee]

Originally posted by Faiza, Star Made Knight:

This is one of those details that leads me to believe, personally, that Johnny Silverhand was a originally a much smaller part of the story prior to being cast by Keanu Reeves. A lot of plot was lost/moved/shifted in order to accommodate making him basically the main character.

Compare with Dream On. It's the same way of telling a story by putting small pieces of it in different places to be fitted together, or not, with no authorial voice coming in to tidy it all up at the end. There are hints in the files of changes which would, in my view, have amplified the importance of Alt in the story but they don't seem to be changes related to casting, more consequence of reducing branching within the main story.

[psionyx]

Originally posted by Akira:

That's the beauty of a single player rpg and tabletop rpg, Role Playing.
The lore is just a base, you are the important piece, you should be able to live in that world doing your own story as you wish.

Sure, great, let me do my own story then. Oh wait, I can't, because the entire narrative carries you down the exact same main plot path no matter what you do. Which is what you expect from a video game, because at the end of the day, it only includes whatever content the devs put into it. It's not a ttrpg, because that is dynamic, and a GM can improvise and make up stuff as they need to, based on player input. Maybe I didn't have any side story for that npc child I had them encounter. But the one player decided they're going to focus on that character, and now I've got to drum up a narrative hook for that NPC. Fine, no problem. I am great at improvising. But this isn't a table game. And a GM shouldn't have something that glaring in their main meta-plot

Originally posted by Akira:

.

If facts were writen as rules and you were just a player going in a pre-determined ride,

You mean like the pre-determined ride that is this game? How I have no choices that let me save Jackie? Or not finding a way to actually fix my brain at the end of the game? Or how even when using non-lethal weaponry, several enemies are just scripted to die? Almost like it's pre-determined. A fact isn't a rule. It's a fact. A rule is "when you fall X distance you take Y damage, mitigated by perks/implants" A fact is "Yorinobu is the one that put Silverhand on the chip" ANOTHER fact is why Yorinobu put him on the chip. Having the ability to find that information, if you dig for it, would at best, give us another optional ending perhaps, or possibly do nothing different with the very scripted, and linear story that is already being told.

Originally posted by Akira:

But isn't it better to have multiple choices, and consequences (endings) instead? Some things had to have mysteries or be omitted on purpose so player choices and story driven events to push the player forward, could take place.

Nothing about not knowing why Yorinobu decided to transfer Silverhand gives the player any choice. It doesn't drive anything forward, and doesn't change anything. If we DID know, it still wouldn't change V's ticking clock of the bomb in their head.

Originally posted by Akira:

But isn't it better to have multiple choices, and consequences (endings) instead? Some things had to have mysteries or be omitted on purpose so player choices and story driven events to push the player forward, could take place.

Please name them. Please name these theoretical choices/endings that were entirely dependent on NOT knowing why Yorinobu brought an incredibly odd and random engram construct, half way across the bloody planet, and then chose not to tell anyone. Because Johnny sure as heck THINKS he's super important, he never shuts up about how he's the center of ALL this Arasaka drama. And yet nobody, from the top to the bottom of the story's narrative, aside from Alt, actually give a damn that it's Johnny on the chip. The only reason the VDBs care is he can get them to Alt. But otherwise, he's just another ranyon, like the rest of us.

So seriously, please tell me what choices I have, as a player, that are intrinsically tied to NOT knowing why Yorinobu brought Johnny over. Because frankly I don't see it. And in fact, I feel having the option to find that information out, is the more likely option, to give me these theoretical choices/endings you speak of.

[r.linder]

NetWatch didn't have any interest in the construct or Alt, just the Relic itself since it was one-of-a-kind. Johnny's engram wasn't particularly important either since it was just collected for interrogation, but given Yorinobu's plan to destroy Arasaka from within, I wouldn't be surprised if he had chosen to put Johnny's engram on the chip to try to bring him back, knowing that he would go after Arasaka, and really, he was right.

[Zebedee]

Originally posted by 尺．し工几句ヨ尺:

NetWatch didn't have any interest in the construct or Alt, just the Relic itself since it was one-of-a-kind. Johnny's engram wasn't particularly important either since it was just collected for interrogation, but given Yorinobu's plan to destroy Arasaka from within, I wouldn't be surprised if he had chosen to put Johnny's engram on the chip to try to bring him back, knowing that he would go after Arasaka, and really, he was right.

By the time Evelyn is trying to sell it to them, she's pretty positive Netwatch knows exactly why Johnny Silverhand would be of interest to them. "I know it's not some random engram you want but him - to contact A."

Link to emails (ones to Brie Deol relevant here): https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/wiki/Bryce_Mosley/Computers

edit: for anyone not aware of why Netwatch would want to be in contact with Alt, it's to recover information lost in the old net where rogue AI now lurk. (That's in CyberpunK Red's source book.) Arasaka, on the other hand, do things like recruit teams of kids as netrunners and send them into the old net to try and recover bits of it - which is the backstory of Lucy in Edgerunners.