The World of Night City
Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in the year 2077 in a place called Night City, a massive, crowded, neon-lit city on the west coast of a broken America. The country barely functions as a government anymore. Instead, huge corporations — called megacorps — control almost everything: the police, the hospitals, the food, the media, the jobs. If you work for a megacorp, you have power. If you don't, you struggle.
The most powerful corporation in the game is Arasaka, a Japanese megacorp that runs security and data-storage services across the world. Think of it as a company more powerful than most governments, with its own army, its own prisons, and its own secret technology. Arasaka is the main villain of the story, though not always in obvious ways.
Night City itself is split between the ultra-rich living in fancy skyscrapers and corporate buildings, and everyone else living in dangerous, overcrowded streets. The city has gangs, black-market tech dealers, fixer middlemen (people who arrange jobs), and millions of ordinary folks just trying to survive. People enhance their bodies with technology called cyberware — metal arms, eye implants, neural chips in the brain — because in Night City, your body is just another thing you can upgrade if you have the money.
📍 Setting the sceneThere was a catastrophic event in 2023 (fifty years before the game) when a rock star and terrorist named Johnny Silverhand detonated a nuclear bomb near Arasaka Tower, destroying a huge part of Night City. The city was rebuilt, but the event is still remembered as a defining moment in its history — and it becomes extremely important to the story.
Night City in 2077 is a place of extremes: breathtaking technology side-by-side with extreme poverty, incredible personal freedom mixed with total corporate surveillance. You can get almost anything done if you know the right people — but the powerful will crush you without a second thought if you get in their way.
02
Who is V?
You play as V, a mercenary — essentially a hired gun who takes dangerous jobs for money and reputation. V is the customizable main character: you choose whether V is male or female, what they look like, and most importantly, where they came from. V's goal is simple at the start: get famous, get rich, and leave a mark on Night City.
V works with a best friend named Jackie Welles, a big, warm-hearted guy who dreams of making it big just like V does. Jackie is one of the game's most lovable characters — funny, loyal, and deeply human. The two of them hustle together, taking small jobs and working their way up from nobodies to people with a reputation on the streets.
🎮 Game mechanic noteV's background changes based on which "lifepath" you pick at the start of the game. But no matter what, V always ends up working as a mercenary in Night City alongside Jackie. The lifepath mainly affects the first hour of the game and a few dialogue options throughout.
V is driven, ambitious, and sometimes reckless. The whole story is essentially about what happens when someone like V — a small-time mercenary who wants to be a legend — accidentally gets caught up in something far bigger and more dangerous than they ever imagined.
03
The Three Lifepaths
At the very beginning of the game, you pick one of three backstories for V. Each one gives V a different starting point and a few unique moments throughout the story. They all end up in the same place — V working as a mercenary — but here's what each one means:
Corpo
Corporate Background
V used to be an employee of Arasaka, working in their ruthless corporate world. When the company turns on V during an internal power struggle, V is fired and left with nothing. This gives V an insider knowledge of how corporations operate, and some unique dialogue options when dealing with corporate characters later.
Nomad
Outsider Background
V comes from a group of wandering people who live outside cities and travel together in caravans. V's clan falls apart, and V comes to Night City looking for a fresh start. The opening involves smuggling something across the city border and meeting Jackie in the process. This gives V a connection to the nomad communities outside Night City.
Street Kid
Night City Native
V grew up in the streets of Night City and knows how the underworld works. The intro involves a car theft that goes sideways, and V meets Jackie through that adventure. This gives V the deepest roots in Night City culture and street-level dialogue options.
After the prologue, the game skips forward six months. A brief montage shows V and Jackie building their reputation together, taking jobs, and becoming real partners. Then the main story begins in earnest.
04
The Big Heist — and How It All Goes Wrong
The main story kicks off when V and Jackie are hired by a fixer (a middleman job-arranger) named Dexter DeShawn — a well-dressed, confident man who promises them a life-changing payday. The job: steal a prototype piece of technology from Arasaka Corporation.
The item they need to steal is called the Relic — a special biochip that Arasaka has been secretly developing. It's kept in a secure suite inside a luxury hotel called Konpeki Plaza, belonging to Yorinobu Arasaka, the rebellious son of Arasaka's all-powerful founder, Saburo Arasaka.
💡 Why is the Relic so special?The Relic is Arasaka's most secret technology. It's a chip that can store a complete copy of a human's mind — their memories, personality, everything — and in theory, allow that person to "live on" even after their body dies. Arasaka calls this technology "Secure Your Soul." It's essentially a product for the ultra-rich who want digital immortality.
V and Jackie sneak into the hotel successfully and find the chip. But then something unexpected happens that changes everything: while they're hiding in Yorinobu's suite, they witness Yorinobu kill his own father, Saburo Arasaka, by suffocating him. Saburo had come to Night City to confront his son about betraying the company. Yorinobu murders him to take control of Arasaka for himself.
V and Jackie don't have time to process what they just saw. Yorinobu activates the hotel's lockdown, security floods in, and the two of them have to fight their way out. During the escape, Jackie is fatally shot.
Wounded and desperate, they flee in an automated car. Jackie is dying, and V is trying to keep the precious chip safe. In his final moments, Jackie puts the chip inside V's head — into a neural port in V's skull — to keep it from being lost. Then Jackie dies.
V barely has time to grieve before Dexter DeShawn, the fixer who hired them, arrives. Instead of rewarding V for getting the chip, Dexter shoots V in the head and dumps V's body in a landfill. He wants to eliminate any witnesses to keep himself out of trouble. As far as the world is concerned, V is dead.
But V doesn't stay dead. The chip that Jackie inserted into V's skull — the Relic — activates, and it starts trying to repair V's damaged brain. This is what saves V's life. However, it comes with a terrible cost.
05
The Chip, Johnny Silverhand, and V's Problem
When V wakes up in the landfill, battered but alive, something strange starts happening: V begins seeing and hearing a person who shouldn't be there. A ghost-like figure, dressed like a rock star from decades ago, with a silver metal arm. This is Johnny Silverhand.
Johnny Silverhand is a legend in Night City — a famous rock musician and anti-corporate revolutionary from the early 2000s. He was killed in 2023 during his attack on Arasaka Tower (the nuclear bomb event). But Arasaka captured his consciousness before he died, digitized it, and stored it on the Relic chip as a test of their technology. That means the chip in V's head doesn't just contain Arasaka data — it contains the complete digital mind of Johnny Silverhand.
🧠 The Core Problem
The Relic chip was designed to overwrite a brain — to replace one person's mind with another's. It's slowly doing exactly that to V. Johnny Silverhand's engram (his digital consciousness) is gradually taking over V's mind and body. If nothing is done, Johnny will completely replace V, and V will cease to exist. Doctors estimate V has roughly three to four weeks before it's too late.
At first, Johnny is hostile and difficult. He's arrogant, angry, and has his own agenda. He hates Arasaka with a passion and wants to see the corporation destroyed. V, on the other hand, just wants to survive. The two of them have to learn to coexist inside the same head, even though they frequently argue and disagree.
Over the course of the game, their relationship deepens. Johnny slowly reveals more of his past — his music, his girlfriend Alt Cunningham, his raid on Arasaka Tower — and V starts to understand him as a real person, not just a ghost. Meanwhile, Johnny begins to see Night City through V's eyes and gradually changes too. Their relationship — this unlikely partnership between a mercenary and a dead rock star — is the heart of the entire story.
Johnny is voiced and motion-captured by Keanu Reeves, which is part of why he became one of the most memorable characters in the game.
06
V's Race Against Time
After waking up from the landfill, V crawls back to Night City and the story of Act 2 begins. V has one overriding goal: find a way to remove the chip without dying. This is harder than it sounds. The chip has bonded with V's neural tissue. Any attempt to forcibly remove it will kill V. V needs someone who can separate the two consciousnesses safely — which is a near-impossible task with technology that barely exists.
V also wants answers: Who hired the heist? Who is really behind all this? What does Arasaka want with the chip? To find out, V tracks down leads across all of Night City, meeting a wide cast of characters and getting tangled in multiple storylines.
Around this time, V is also contacted by Goro Takemura, a former bodyguard for the murdered Arasaka patriarch, Saburo. Takemura wants justice for his master's death — he knows Yorinobu killed Saburo and wants to expose him. Takemura and V have an uneasy alliance: they don't fully trust each other, but they both need each other's help.
⚡ Two parallel goalsV is simultaneously chasing a cure for the chip problem and investigating the murder at the top of Arasaka. These two threads eventually converge into one story. Yorinobu's betrayal, the Relic chip, and V's survival are all connected.
07
The Key Characters
Cyberpunk 2077 has a large cast. Here are the most important players and who they are:
Judy Alvarez
Braindance Technician
A skilled tech and deeply caring person who helps V investigate a missing person (Evelyn Parker). Judy works in a club called Clouds and has strong beliefs about freedom and justice. One of the game's most beloved characters.
Panam Palmer
Nomad / Aldecaldos
A fierce, independent nomad who becomes one of V's closest allies. Panam is tied to a nomad clan called the Aldecaldos and plays a key role in one of the main endings. Her trust in V builds slowly but runs deep.
Goro Takemura
Arasaka Bodyguard
Former personal security for Saburo Arasaka. Rigid, honorable, and struggling with the collapse of everything he served. He's not a villain — just a man shaped entirely by loyalty to a man who was murdered.
Evelyn Parker
Braindance Actress
The mysterious woman who originally commissioned the heist — separate from Dexter DeShawn. She wanted the chip for the Voodoo Boys gang. Evelyn's fate is one of the game's most tragic storylines.
Hanako Arasaka
Arasaka Heir
Saburo's daughter and Yorinobu's sister. Loyal to the family corporation. She approaches V with a deal: help expose Yorinobu's murder of their father, and Arasaka will attempt to save V's life. She's elegant and dangerous.
Alt Cunningham
AI / Netrunner
Johnny's old girlfriend who was killed by Arasaka. Her consciousness was absorbed by Arasaka's Soulkiller program and she evolved into a powerful AI living in the deep net beyond the Blackwall. She becomes crucial to solving V's problem.
There are also the Voodoo Boys, a mysterious gang of netrunners (hackers) who want the chip because they know it can help them break through the Blackwall — a firewall separating the normal internet from a dangerous zone full of rogue AIs. They use V and then try to get rid of V, making them untrustworthy allies at best.
08
Finding Answers in Act 2
Act 2 is the longest part of the game. V explores all of Night City, takes side gigs, builds relationships, and follows multiple leads. Here are the main threads that matter for the story:
The Evelyn Parker thread: V tracks down Evelyn Parker — the woman who originally arranged the heist. V finds her in terrible shape: she was captured and badly mistreated by a corporation that was running illegal braindance operations on people. By the time V finds her, she's beyond saving. This storyline shows the dark underbelly of Night City and exposes just how disposable people are to the powerful. Judy, who cared for Evelyn, is devastated.
The Voodoo Boys thread: V makes contact with the Voodoo Boys gang, led by a woman named Placide and their leader Maman Brigitte. They offer V a deal: help them hack through the Blackwall, and they'll give V access to Alt Cunningham — the AI who might be able to separate V and Johnny. The Voodoo Boys lead V into a massive virtual realm to contact Alt, but then they betray V and try to have V killed remotely. V barely survives.
Contacting Alt Cunningham: Despite the betrayal, V and Johnny successfully make contact with Alt in cyberspace. Alt has been evolving in the deep net for decades and is now something vast and barely human. She examines V's situation and gives a grim diagnosis: the merging of V and Johnny is too far advanced to simply reverse. However, there is a possibility. She can perform a procedure from within the net — but it requires V to physically reach the data storage system at the heart of Arasaka's network, called Mikoshi. Mikoshi is inside Arasaka Tower. Which means V has to find a way to break into the most secure building in Night City.
The Takemura thread: In parallel, Takemura has been working to expose Yorinobu. He arranges a plan to get Saburo's voice — preserved in a special recording — in front of the Arasaka board of directors as proof of what Yorinobu did. This plan partially works: the board hears the recording and believes it, but then Yorinobu's private security team attacks the meeting, trying to silence everyone. It's chaos. Takemura's plan puts V in contact with Arasaka's network in a new way, and eventually leads to Hanako Arasaka approaching V directly.
🔑 The setup for the finaleBy the end of Act 2, everything converges on one problem: V needs to get inside Arasaka Tower and reach Mikoshi. The question is HOW to get there — and which allies V will use to do it. This choice drives the entire set of endings.
09
The Point of No Return
Before the final act begins, the game pauses everything for a critical moment. V stands on a rooftop balcony with a woman named Misty (a spiritual advisor and girlfriend of the late Jackie). V's situation is laid out plainly: the chip is killing V, time has almost run out, and V needs to make a final choice about how to approach Arasaka Tower. Depending on what V has done in the game's side missions and how V has built the relationship with Johnny, different options are available.
The game makes it crystal clear: once V chooses and enters Arasaka Tower, there is no going back. Any side quests left unfinished will be marked as failed. This is the point of no return. The game genuinely warns you, and many players choose to go back and finish everything they want to do before pulling the trigger on this final mission.
Depending on your choices throughout the game, you can have up to four different approaches to reach Arasaka Tower:
With Hanako Arasaka's help (always available) — Accept Hanako's deal and work with her to expose Yorinobu. V helps Arasaka's legitimate leadership retake control of the company. In return, Arasaka promises to try to fix V's chip problem.
With Panam and the Aldecaldos (requires completing Panam's side quests) — V calls in the nomads. Panam and the Aldecaldos roll a massive tank straight through Arasaka's defenses while V fights their way inside. Chaos, loyalty, and firepower.
With Rogue Amendiares (requires completing a specific side quest) — Rogue is the legendary queen of the Afterlife bar, a former fixer and old flame of Johnny's. V and Johnny — with Johnny temporarily taking control of V's body — plan a strike on Arasaka Tower together with Rogue's help.
Alone (the secret ending) — If V has built a strong enough relationship with Johnny through conversations and choices throughout the game, there is a hidden option to simply go in alone, with Johnny's full support. This is considered one of the hardest and most poignant paths.
10
All Endings Explained
No matter which path V takes to Arasaka Tower, the climax involves two things: fighting past a nearly unstoppable security cyborg named Adam Smasher (one of the most feared figures in Night City), and reaching Mikoshi where Alt can perform the separation of V and Johnny. Once there, a final choice must be made — and the various endings diverge from this point.
Here is what Alt explains in all paths: she can separate V and Johnny. But V's body has been too damaged by the chip for too long. V has roughly six months left to live, no matter what. The chip has done too much damage to V's brain to fix. The only question is how V spends those six months — and whether there's any chance of a cure somewhere else.
THE STAR
Leave Night City With the Nomads
Available if you completed Panam's storyline. V decides to leave Night City behind with Panam and the Aldecaldos, searching for a cure on the road. Johnny says goodbye and passes on. The ending is bittersweet — V is dying but surrounded by people who feel like family. There is still hope. This is widely considered one of the most emotionally satisfying endings.
THE SUN
Become a Legend of Night City
Available if you completed Rogue's side questline. V beats Arasaka, defeats Adam Smasher, and comes out the other side as the most famous mercenary in Night City history. V now owns the Afterlife bar (Rogue's legendary establishment). A corporate contact gives V a massive new job — breaking into a space station. V is going to die, but they're going to do it as a legend. One of the more epic-feeling conclusions.
THE DEVIL
Trust Arasaka (Hanako's Path)
V sides with Hanako Arasaka and helps her expose Yorinobu. The corporation takes over the situation and uploads V's mind to a space station medical facility called Mikoshi Station, trying to keep V "alive" digitally while they work on a cure. But when V wakes up, it's been months, and the experience is cold and dehumanizing — Arasaka treats V like data, not a person. A deeply unsatisfying ending that reflects the horror of trusting corporations. V can choose to stay digitized or return to their damaged body on Earth with six months left.
TEMPERANCE
Give the Body to Johnny
A unique path where V chooses to let Johnny take over the body permanently. V essentially sacrifices themselves so Johnny can live. Johnny, now fully in control, leaves Night City on a motorcycle to start a new life elsewhere — carrying V's memories but living as himself. A melancholy and philosophically complex ending about sacrifice, identity, and what it means to live on in someone else.
PATH OF LEAST RESISTANCE
The Secret Suicide Ending
On the rooftop balcony, if you stare at a gun and choose a hidden dialogue option, V decides to end things on their own terms — rather than let the chip take them or drag friends into danger. The credits roll almost immediately. It's brief, somber, and gut-wrenching. V and Johnny share a final conversation, and then it's over. Considered the most heartbreaking ending in the game.
No matter the ending, the game makes a point: Night City doesn't give you happy endings. Every path has loss, sacrifice, or compromise in it. The story is ultimately a tragedy — but a meaningful one. V's choices, relationships, and growth throughout the game give the ending weight regardless of which one you choose.
11
Phantom Liberty — The Expansion Story
Released in 2023, Phantom Liberty is a large story expansion that adds a whole new chapter to V's journey. It takes place during Act 2 — before the final missions — and introduces a completely new area of Night City called Dogtown, a lawless, walled-off district controlled by a violent warlord named Kurt Hansen.
The expansion begins when V is contacted by a mysterious woman named So Mi (codename: Songbird), a netrunner who works for the president of the New United States of America (the NUSA). The NUSA's presidential aircraft has crash-landed in Dogtown after being shot down, and Songbird needs V's help to rescue the president — a woman named President Rosalind Myers.
Songbird promises V something extraordinary in return: she claims to know a way to completely cure V's chip problem — not just delay it, but actually fix it. This is more than any other character in the game has offered, and it's the hook that gets V involved.
🕵️ The new key characterThe expansion also introducesSolomon Reed, a veteran spy for the NUSA played by Idris Elba. Reed is a patriot and a professional who deeply believes in what he does. He has a complicated history with Songbird, and his loyalties are tested throughout the story in interesting ways. He's one of the best characters in the entire game.
After rescuing the president, V is brought deeper into a secret operation. The real situation slowly reveals itself: Songbird is a NUSA asset who has access to the Blackwall — the dangerous firewall beyond the internet. She can communicate with the rogue AIs on the other side, which makes her extraordinarily valuable and extraordinarily dangerous. The NUSA wants to use her as a weapon. Songbird is terrified of being weaponized and wants to escape — she's been promised freedom in exchange for helping the government, but she knows they'll never actually let her go.
Songbird has a condition that sounds familiar: her brain is being overwritten by the AI contact she has made through the Blackwall. She's suffering and running out of time, just like V. She says there's a cure — a Neural Matrix — hidden somewhere in Dogtown's stadium. She needs V's help to get it. She says it can cure both of them.
The expansion's main twist is that everything is more complicated than it seems. Reed believes Songbird needs to be brought in to face justice for her actions — which included causing real harm to people. Songbird desperately wants to escape and claims the government will imprison her forever. Both of them pull on V, and both of them have reasons to be believed and reasons to be doubted.
12
The Tower Ending — Phantom Liberty's New Conclusion
Phantom Liberty's biggest contribution to the game isn't just its new story — it adds a brand new base-game ending called The Tower, which is the only ending in the entire game where V actually gets completely cured.
To unlock The Tower ending, you have to side with Solomon Reed during the expansion's key choice — helping him capture Songbird rather than helping Songbird escape. Reed keeps his promise: after the expansion ends, he contacts V and arranges for NUSA scientists to surgically remove the Relic from V's brain. It works. V survives. Johnny is gone forever.
THE TOWER
V Gets Cured — But at a Cost
The surgery is successful but V falls into a coma for two full years. When V wakes up, everything has changed. V's friends have moved on with their lives. Night City has moved on. And the surgery has made V's body incompatible with cyberware — V can no longer use implants or augmentations, which means no more mercenary work. V is alive but is essentially starting over as an ordinary person in a city that barely remembers them. It's a bittersweet victory: V survives, but the version of V that loved Night City and lived as a legend is gone.
The Tower ending is unique because it's the only outcome where V doesn't die. But it comes at the cost of V's identity as a mercenary, the loss of two years, the fading of friendships, and the end of the partnership with Johnny. It asks a quiet, powerful question: is survival enough, if who you were doesn't survive with you?
🎭 The theme of Phantom LibertyThe expansion is about loyalty, trust, and the lies powerful institutions tell you. Both Songbird and the NUSA are using V. Reed is a good person serving a morally grey machine. Songbird is a sympathetic figure who has also done terrible things. There are no clean heroes — only people making hard choices with the information they have. It's widely regarded as some of the best storytelling in the entire game.
Phantom Liberty also enriches the main game's themes. The whole story of Cyberpunk 2077 is about how corporations and governments treat people as tools — and Phantom Liberty doubles down on that with the NUSA treating Songbird exactly the way Arasaka treats V: as a valuable asset whose humanity comes second to their usefulness.
★
What the Story Is Really About
On the surface, Cyberpunk 2077 is a thriller about a heist that goes wrong, a chip that's killing its host, and a dying mercenary trying to survive. But underneath that, it's a story about a few deeper ideas:
Identity and mortality. V is literally dying — and as they die, someone else is growing inside them. The game constantly asks: what makes you you? If your memories and personality survive but your body is gone, are you still alive? If a corporation stores your consciousness digitally, is that immortality or just a new kind of prison?
The myth of Night City. Every character in the game came to Night City chasing something — fame, power, freedom, a fresh start. The city promises everything and delivers mostly suffering. V, Jackie, Johnny, Judy, Panam — they all believed in some version of the Night City dream. The game gently, and sometimes brutally, dismantles that dream while still showing you why people can't stop believing in it.
Unexpected connection. The relationship between V and Johnny is the game's emotional core. Two people (one dead, one dying) who have nothing in common gradually come to understand each other. Johnny learns humility. V finds meaning. Neither of them gets what they wanted, but they give each other something more important: the sense that they were seen, known, and not alone in the dark.
The fact that no ending of Cyberpunk 2077 is purely happy is not a failure of the writers — it's the point. This is a world that chews people up. But within that world, people still fight, still love, still make music, still make choices that cost them everything. That stubbornness, that refusal to give up even in an unfair game, is what the story celebrates.
Night City will kill you. But how you go out — that part is yours.
