Xenowars | Defense, Dungeon, And Dung
Cyberpunk 2077 | No Return
End of the line but not really. It was time to take the main story to its conclusion. The game warns once you start you can’t stop till you have finished it. Thankfully they bring you back to a former save once you are done to keep playing the game if you choose.
I was not ready to end the game. I, however, just had to know how things would end up going down. It turns out, or at least from my point of view, I'd have some options. I still was not quite certain what my final choices would end up being. I’d only know once the moment came.
So, I took the next step and walked into an elevator for a meeting with Hanako. I had no idea what she wanted. Let alone if I was walking into a trap. I just knew I had to see how things played out.
Things became rather suspect when I walked in to see if she and I was just. The area where the meeting was to be held was cleared out of anyone else. That is when I learned that not only did Hanako know about what happened to her father. That others knew as well.
Her grand plan for helping me out was to help herself out. She wanted me to come along to a board meeting and tell everyone the truth. Out in the open. She was also not the only one who knew the truth. This entire thing smelled like a giant trap.
At the very least she gave me information regarding trying to save myself. Information that I would end up using in ways she did not possibly consider. I know I had one of many large choices to make.
Right after the meeting things became quite dire for me. I had yet another episode. This time I woke up in the Ripdocters office of Viktor. He had dire news for me. I would be dead soon and if there was anything I could do now would be the time.
Do I take her offer or try and get help elsewhere and find some other way to save myself? It did not quite sit well with me that she'd been sitting by knowing what she knew. In the end, I decided I could not trust her.
While she talked a lot about family. We are not family. I do, however, have, as it turns out, a bit of a family. I ended up calling Panam and telling her I was in dire need of her help. Without even missing a beat she offered and would even get her entire clan involved in what needed to be done.
I needed to hit Arasaka and get access to their mainframe. As it turns out there would be a way to sever the link between me and Johny. I’d however need help from the AI known as ALT. For her to help me, however, I needed to jack into the systems at Arasaka Tower.
I ended up going out to the badlands and despite the mission that they were about to undertake, there was quite a high risk of death. Most of them took it on without a question of if they were going to help or not.
So, a plan was formulated about stealing a digging device called a SERCs. Once was deployed for tunning not that far from the city it could quickly make our entry point into the Arasaka Tower.
We were quite hopeful this plan would be such a shock to everyone we were attacking that they would be ill-prepared for such an attack as we were planning to mount. As is everything. Things never go the way you are hoping.
I spent a final night out in the badlands with my new clan who have now accepted me as one of their own. We would ride at dawn and bring everything we had to carry out the loose plan we had.
They would not be the only help either. As I had obtained a program from ALT which would once inside their systems give us what assistance and program could. Which ended up being a considerable amount.
Things at the start of our assault seemed to go according to plan. I rode in laying down massive fire and missiles on anything that moved. It seems that tank we stole a while back was coming in handy.
Things, however, did not take long before going bad. The tank broke down and everyone ended up needing to go on foot. On top of that, they had a lot more defense guarding the digger we needed to use to bore a tunnel into the tower.
The last thing I wanted was for there to be heavy losses on our side. It became quite clear after the combat kept raging out that we were not all getting out of the situation I put everyone alive. While many would make it some would not.
Another one of my concerns was if I had enough ammo for all of this. I did stock up on some beforehand. I was just not expecting to take on so many waves of enemies. For as long as could I sniped as many as I could.
After moving around in the area, I was held up in. It became clear some of the attacking forces were holding back. Just sit out of range and in other cases line of sight for me to take them out.
I ended up having to come down from my sniping next and taking things in a bit more mid-range combat. Thankfully I had some smart guns with me that had bullets that would lock on and do quite some damages if I had a decent shot.
Slowly the forces melted away. The tank was also repaired enough to do one more assault on the main gate to get us inside the building the digger was being kept in.
Things from there on out only got worse. The digger hit some rather rough spots and the building even deep down below the surface had a bit of reinforcements around it. At least the digger managed to finish our entry point before breaking down fully.
It was then time to start taking out any security of the tower that was in the areas we laid siege to. All the while the relic in my head kept malfunctioning causing me all kinds of issues. It was quite clear my time was starting to tick out before my eyes.
Some areas we would enter and there would be forces that would simply wait for them to pass us by before doing things in a bit more stealth-like manner. In other places, I was full of guns blazing slowly watching my ammo tick down on different gun types to zero.
Then we ran into Adam Smasher. The very guy who had taken out Johny Silverhand. Smasher managed to kill someone quite important to our group. So, getting revenge not only for Johny but for us became a top priority.
It was during this rather prolonged fight that I started to enjoy the massive amounts of money I had spent on implant upgrades. It was the only reason I was able to survive this encounter and take down the smasher.
After that, there were only a few more places to get past before entering an area where I could connect to the mainframe known as Mikoshi. Inside ALT was already waiting and I quickly found out that the connection between Johnny and myself had been separated.
Like any time, I had encounters with ALT. The surroundings were quite strange. This is also when I discovered the bad news. That Johny had won the internal fight. Despite him being removed. My body and mind would now consider me to be an intruder.
ALT told me at best I had six months to live. After everything it seems it just was not good enough. Too much damage had been done to me. I was given a choice to return to my body for a death I know is coming or stay behind as well. I decided I wanted to spend what time I had left with Panam.
Final Thoughts
We made one final escape out of the Night City and past the surrounding areas where they did not want anyone leaving. Thankfully this was just the main story ending and I would be able to go back to the city before all of this and keep on enjoying side content, gigs, and any other fun I could find.
I have to say it was well worth waiting all these years to have a computer to be able to play this game. I’ve loved every moment of it. I also can’t wait to get back in to just keep doing random things not involving the main story. Who knows, I might even see if I'm permitted to do the ending again and this time around make different choices.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Cyberpunk 2077.