V never dies

[Ēarendel]

There is a misconception that they are not the same V, the "real" V's consciousness being dead after jacking into "soulkiller" stemming from these popular myths:

1. V is brain-dead after the ending.

They are not, and it's not enough to function solely on an engram. A lot of people misunderstand how the engram works, based on A.I ALTS and Hellman's explanation among others, an engram projects another person's consciousness onto the brain sort of like hypnosis and psychotherapy (remember Liquid Ocelot from MGS4? Or Venom Snake from MGS5? Yeah) except, perhaps on a more biochemical level as well replacing damaged tissue, we never get nitty-gritty on details. Except that basically, neurons are overwritten, new synapses are formed and the brain now believes it's an entirely different person.

When V jacks into Mikoshi, ALT scans the brain and makes a digitized construct of V's consciousness (memories,personality) and pastes the data to the engram which is 98% V. This engram is now what acts as a buffer and now projects V's consciousness onto the brain.

2. V dies when they connect into mikoshi

The urban legend is the moment V connects into the "soulkiller" which is already a loaded term, is when V truly does. That does not happen, throughout the process V's body is alive, one cannot argue that his soul leaves the body since they never truly die.

The only true way to die then is to let Johnny take over, or suicide. And of course this is not saying that the V lives endings are good in itself and that the DLC ending loses value, for one your immune system is wrecked and the engram projected changes are destroying your body, while the DLC ending is the only one that offers the quiet cure at the price of glory.

TLDR: V's body never dies unlike ALT's (as stated by herself) therefore they are the same V by the end of the game.

[Balekai]

It's not about the body so much. It's about the mind or more specifically, the "soul." There's a spiritual angle to the "V dies" thing.

Essentially, one could argue that even though the Body is "alive" (and the brain), that once "engram" V chooses to stay in "his/her" body/brain, "he/she" will overwrite the consciousness of "real" V, which has essentially gone braindead or replaced fully with Johnny.

These neurons and brainwaves lined up identically at the time of the copy, but not as "real" V's consciousness failed thereafter (died) in the brain.

V as you say was able to be "saved" by Alt with an emergency execution of her plan (which was always to overwrite real V with an engram V, but didn't tell V because he/she may have issues with such a notion and does).

It really comes down to believing in an afterlife or not. Or whether through existentialism etc. it doesn't matter if V is "fake" or not. To the engram V and the universe around him/her, V is still V in Vs body. An exact copy. The only ones that may know the difference if they exist is some higher power and real V/others looking down from the afterlife. The only argument otherwise is a personal opinion about what is true life or not.

This is the problem with the whole engram program and the one in the Altered Carbon series. It's the same issue if we developed this tech in the real world. You would have a whole host of people, mostly religious, believing engram people to be fake copies. There would be a lot of legal, political, philosophical and theological debates around the issue. The same for AI.

Then we could even run into an issue like in Endless Space, where an Endless scientist scientifically proved there was a "soul," and that past ways of Immortality didn't save it. to actually make matters worse counter-intuitively, the same scientist discovered "True Immortality." Which was the beginning of the end of the Endless civilisation in that lore. If I remember correctly the only way was to become a "virtual" with her tech. While "Concretes" objected for one reason or another. Could be reversed, or both can't remember now lol. Anyways they killed each other off across the Galaxy.

Like what if there was an afterlife and the universe considered Engrams to be "people too," but not actually the original. Would there be multiple copies of the same people running around a heaven? Multiple people being reincarnated based off the same soul with their own trials? Maybe in a reincarnation event they all merge again over time/death?

It's all much easier when you don't believe in spiritual things, higher powers or the afterlife. As I said before in this case, functionally engram V is the same as real V in this instance. Same brain waves taking up the same place in the universe. If that's the truth, then you are absolutely correct V never died as the world is all about function, not purpose. If not and there's spiritual stuff going on with souls etc. then no, wrong (and so am I) as the universe includes actual purpose for things in addition to function. :P

[Ēarendel]

Originally posted by Balekai:

It's not about the body so much. It's about the mind or more specifically, the "soul." There's a spiritual angle to the "V dies" thing.

Essentially, one could argue that even though the Body is "alive" (and the brain), that once "engram" V chooses to stay in "his/her" body/brain, "he/she" will overwrite the consciousness of "real" V, which has essentially gone braindead or replaced fully with Johnny.

These neurons and brainwaves lined up identically at the time of the copy, but not as "real" V's consciousness failed thereafter (died) in the brain.

V as you say was able to be "saved" by Alt with an emergency execution of her plan (which was always to overwrite real V with an engram V, but didn't tell V because he/she may have issues with such a notion and does).

It really comes down to believing in an afterlife or not. Or whether through existentialism etc. it doesn't matter if V is "fake" or not. To the engram V and the universe around him/her, V is still V in Vs body. An exact copy. The only ones that may know the difference if they exist is some higher power and real V/others looking down from the afterlife. The only argument otherwise is a personal opinion about what is true life or not.

This is the problem with the whole engram program and the one in the Altered Carbon series. It's the same issue if we developed this tech in the real world. You would have a whole host of people, mostly religious, believing engram people to be fake copies. There would be a lot of legal, political, philosophical and theological debates around the issue. The same for AI.

Then we could even run into an issue like in Endless Space, where an Endless scientist scientifically proved there was a "soul," and that past ways of Immortality didn't save it. to actually make matters worse counter-intuitively, the same scientist discovered "True Immortality." Which was the beginning of the end of the Endless civilisation in that lore. If I remember correctly the only way was to become a "virtual" with her tech. While "Concretes" objected for one reason or another. Could be reversed, or both can't remember now lol. Anyways they killed each other off across the Galaxy.

Like what if there was an afterlife and the universe considered Engrams to be "people too," but not actually the original. Would there be multiple copies of the same people running around a heaven? Multiple people being reincarnated based off the same soul with their own trials? Maybe in a reincarnation event they all merge again over time/death?

It's all much easier when you don't believe in spiritual things, higher powers or the afterlife. As I said before in this case, functionally engram V is the same as real V in this instance. Same brain waves taking up the same place in the universe. If that's the truth, then you are absolutely correct V never died as the world is all about function, not purpose. If not and there's spiritual stuff going on with souls etc. then no, wrong (and so am I) as the universe includes actual purpose for things in addition to function. :P

I've literally pointed out that there is no "braindeath", do you like arguing with a wall? Because it doesn't seem like you've read anything I've said beyond the first two sentences.

The "spiritual" angle doesn't even come into play, since V never leaves their body nor do they lose their consciousness since they never die. The same is said by ALT in the game, that the real ALT dies when Johnny unplugs her since the body is where the consciousness resides.

And the V engram isn't an imposter or some alien part of the body, it's literally a copy of V's memory and personality, repairing the brain to stay as it is. If you had amnesia and someone reminded you of what you are like by showing you videos of you, did you suddenly lose your soul? Are you a different person now? Or are you remembering who you were?

[Silverbane7]

Alt didn't 'die' when Johnny unplugged her tho.
she couldn't get back into her body once it was unplugged.
(and he took that with him when they left Arasaka's lab. stored it in the Body Bank till he came back 2 years later and they put her in the columbarium)

Soulkiller originaly didn't store the engram inside an Arasaka database (2013 and 2020 tabletops). Alt was a special case, since she created the program, had backdoor's to allow her to not be stored.
when the C4 on the door went off, it disrupted com's so she couldn't tell him NOT to disconnect her. she was left screaming behind the walls of the lab, knowing Johnny thought she was dead. the story is inside the sourcebook of 2020, we all get access to a free pdf copy.

(its available for free. they moved it from bonus content in your cyberpunk2077 game folder to steam/steamapps/music/cyberpunk2077 bonus content/sourcebook. you may need to redownload it since the 1.63 legacy and 2.0+ versions installed. go to the dlc page and grab your free music,sourcebook, posters and wallpapers plus a free story)

[Balekai]

Originally posted by Ēarendel:

/snip

I did read it and said, braindead or Johnny had taken over critically or completely. It's why Alt had to act so fast or else V would be lost forever. V barely jacks in and is having "the ultimate critical failure" of his/her mind during that scene that he/she feared so much.

Regardless, It doesn't matter. Here's a thought exercise:

Say later on after the Arasaka ending, Saburo Arasaka lives for a while being his jerky all powerful self and continues to make engrams of himself as backups. Then after all his years, he sees something that completely changes his view on life and because of that, changes as a person completely into a Benevolent Saburo.

Then he has an accident that needs to download/use an engram "backup" of his self. however, the backup engram was from the day before.

You could argue in this case Saburo was replaced with a different Saburo, because the backup was an older version of him. Will backup Saburo ever be the same as the Saburo that witnessed that unique life changing event? Not likely. Maybe he will have a similar event that makes him like the lost benevolent version of Saburo from that lost day.

The same applies to V but much less consequential. Hell a nano second could have gone by during the whole conversation with Alt and the V/Johnny decision. Engram V (or Engram Johnny) will still override the real V consciousness or what's left of it after that decision, because for all intensive purposes its gone. Again it will be rewired to backup V or backup johhny. It's why V is upset and says something along the lines of "so i'm just an engram now, a fake like Johnny" or something like that in one of the responses.

If Vs consciousness was still active and working, don't you think there could have been an option to not go through any procedure and "find another way," without using a backup Engram V? No because its too late for that and Alt says this. It's either backup V or no V at all, or Johnny takes over and V goes to Cyber Heaven.

I myself as someone who doesn't believe in a god, or an afterlife, or spiritual stuff doesn't have an issue with V "dying" or not. For all practical purses especially in the Mikoshi scenario V is still V to me. In reality though, V's consciousness did die/break during or right after being "scanned." Therefore the scanned V was no longer the actual V from before. It was a copy/paste.

Another example. You copy a file to a USB, then right after your computer restarts and no longer boot up (computer still alive, but non functional). You go to a repair guy that gets it working but no files can be saved they're all corrupted/half missing data. So your like ok, I will just go with what I got and paste the copied file on the USB back to your computer. Is it the exact same file as the one that corrupted beyond repair? No it's gone and only the Copy remains. Which is perfectly fine and functions the exact same way.