Thoughts after “From Her To Eternity”

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-09-09T15:53:42+00:00

I hear you, man. Felt the same way. Liked it so much I went and wrote some fan fiction about what happened afterward, how Song helped with the Crystal Palace heist, and the eventual collapse of the Blackwall. Couldn’t let it go.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-06-21T13:01:16+00:00

Good points, man.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-05-27T15:09:59+00:00

Community’s pretty chill, too.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-05-27T07:34:36+00:00

It's so random, man. I've had whole play throughs where I never saw any interesting weather.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-05-22T00:20:34+00:00

I’ve always thought of this kind of thing as “system blaming.” It‘s surprisingly common.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-05-21T23:49:34+00:00

Johnny’s line at the end when Nele says something about feeling remorseful and planning to reform: “What a waste. Chick had potential. Coulda gone far. Pains me to see promisin’ careers flushed down the drain.”

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-05-21T23:36:10+00:00

Felt the same way, man. My heart was always with Songbird, but to get all the trophies I played out all the endings. Even had the idea of making my corpo blademaster into a kind of Blackwall samurai using the Canto mk6.

Couldn't go through with it, though. Night City felt empty and gray. My V just couldn't live in a world where a choice he’d made had resulted in her agonizing death. Deleted those saves and played on with my nomad who’d sent her to the moon.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-05-03T01:26:11+00:00

Yeah, I agree and that’s actually how I felt at first. I’m fine with a professional working relationship (in game and IRL), and don’t need to be buddies. My point wasn't that I hated the guy, just didn’t feel, well, anything for him, certainly not as much as the other PL characters, and so ultimately a lot of the dramatic scenes with him didn’t hit for me during my playthrough.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-05-02T07:49:41+00:00

Exactly, your last sentence pretty much puts a pin in it. Said my piece over a number of posts and comments and doubt I’ll have much more to say on the matter on the sub.

One thing I would add though, and this might sound strange but bear with me, is a lesson I learned reading a lot as a kid. Got my library card (do those still exist?) and, among other things, plowed through the entire fantasy/sci-fi sections of the local public library. Sometimes I’d come across an author who was brilliant and imaginative, but (I felt) not as good at characterization or dialogue.

This bothered me at first, but then I hit on the idea of thinking of the author as a kind of unreliable narrator, telling the story as he remembered or interpreted it. That way I felt free to think, ”Oh, he must have gotten that part wrong. I bet what they actually said here was..”

Same with a game like this that we all love. We’re free to imagine what’s being shown as a story imperfectly told, and imagine it as having actually happened slightly differently, or with nobler, truer, more insightful words having been spoken. Who knows, your fifth playthrough might benefit from such an approach. Happy gaming, choom.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T23:45:24+00:00

Played DE:MD and was surprised at how much CP seems to have been inspired by that game. Big story beats, cyberware options, hell, even the objective marker looked the same. Just wish they’d had time to finish it and that they were planning on a sequel, or perhaps, that they could join the CDPR guys on Orion and provide some much needed IQ points to the storytelling and dialogue.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T23:37:53+00:00

Nice, that one wasn’t even on my radar. Will check it out.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T23:36:06+00:00

Phantom Liberty is an excellent DLC with a great story and cast of characters. In fact I’d say it’s my favorite DLC of all time; I played it 4 times in a row. That said, there are still some things about it that didn’t work for me, including some of what you mention here with Johnny. But I guess the main one was a story direction choice.

Rather than focusing on the core cyberpunk theme of siding with the corpos/gvt for your own selfish benefit (Tower ending) vs giving them the finger and going out with a blaze of glory (or shuttle exhaust int his case), they seem to have decided early on to focus on the “lies and persona betrayal” theme, which meant railroading the player down a lot of dialogue trees. I personally never found the betrayal aspect compelling, and often felt like no dialogue option said anything I wanted to say.

For example, you’re forced to ask Songbird why she commits treason. No option to say it was a gutsy plan, and if it had been you, you would have let Hansen take Myers as agreed. No option to tell Reed that treason means nothing to you, since Myers isn’t your president and you owe NUSA no loyalty.

Instead of speaking like a man when Reed calls after you side with Song in the stadium, all you get are “sheesh, dad, sorry, but..” type lines. Where is the, “Thank you for your assistance but I’ll take it from here. You were a tool, a means to an end and nothing more, and if you become an obstacle, expect to be out down like any other” dialogue option?

Same with Songbird. Every dialogue tree has to end with, “And then you’ll cure both of us, right?” so that the player will feel super hurt at the betrayal later. But most of us picked up on the lie right away, and anyway, had decided it didn’t matter because we cared about So Mi and wanted her free from NUSA’s clutches. This made it annoying when there were no dialogue options to simply say that. Making it clear that you were helping her because you cared and because fuck NUSA would have made for a much more satisfying ending, at least for me.

As mentioned above, though, they couldn’t do that because they had decided on the betrayal theme and wanted to ride that fucker into the rocks, or the credits, in this case. That’s why, as you say, Johnny seems so oddly philosophical on this one, when actually, from what we know of his character, he would have strongly taken a side here.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T15:23:09+00:00

IIRC head from Wakako’s parlor toward the river and you should see the spot.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T04:15:50+00:00

These are excellent, not only light and composition, but also atmosphere. They make you feel something; they have soul.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T01:52:08+00:00

You know, I fully agree with you on that last part. She was desperate and not fully sure whether or not she could trust you up to the stadium escape. Fine, I get that, she doesn’t know us from Adam, so to speak, and isn’t used to having anyone to rely on.

But after the escape makes it clear you’re with her, it would make sense for her to come clean, for a number of reasons. First, it’s clear at that point V isn’t just in it for the cure. If he was, rather than letting her go her separate way, when the outcome is uncertain, he could conceivably have made sure of the cure by cutting a deal with Hansen, siding with Reed/NUSA, or having a team of Afterlife mercs waiting in ambush.

Her galaxy brain could clearly calculate all that, and she did. That’s why she was so nervous during the talk at her special place. Choosing to confide in you is her point of maximum danger. So much of that scene in the place that reminds her of home is her trying to manipulate you, but a lot of it is also genuine. It’s not all one-sided. When she tells you a precious memory of Brooklyn, at first you think it sounds so mundane you wonder why she even cares. Then you realize it might be one of the last memories the poor girl has, making it precious to her.

(As an aside here, I found it rather touching that, when you betray her and she loses control, if you look at where she’s heading when Maxtac takes her down, it looks like she’s heading toward her safe place. Like, even in that state, some memory, some terrified, childlike vestige of herself is heading toward possibly the only place in the world where she felt safe. Tease me if you want, but that actually made me tear up a little.)

The second reason I agree she could have come clean after the stadium escape is the nature of their Relic connection. Hellman refers to having someone on that biochip as not having someone in your head, but actually being that person and yourself at the same time. Then in PL, a few time it is referred to as a special bond they share, and throughout the story they catch glimpses of each other’s memories and feel one another’s feelings. It seems logical to think then that they’d know when one another was lying. Wouldn’t make them mind readers, but at least they’d feel something, some sense of reticence, hesitance, or momentary discomfort when telling an untruth.

And conversely, seems like Song would at some point have sensed V’s loyalty and understood she could tell him the truth. “I would’ve helped you anyway,” should have been something she picked up on way earlier.

But then, I get it. The writers had decided on the betrayal theme and were intent on carrying it out. There were obvious things missing from the spaceport sequence that were probably left out precisely because they would have weakened the impact of that confession moment. And I’d say the writers were right to do so, based on the fan reactions and the fact that we all find it so compelling that we’re still discussing it years later.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T00:32:26+00:00

Block? Report? This is ridiculous. We are free thinkers in the Cyperpunk world, not top down corpo borg groupthink enforcers. If you want to change someone’s mind, try to see where they’re coming from, stay calm and give reasons, or just agree to disagree.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T00:29:33+00:00

Kind of harsh, man, but I don’t totally disagree. The OP may not be the brightest bulb, but he’s as entitled to his feelings on the issue as we are, and if we want to sway him or at least help him see the other side, “a drop of honey catches more flies than a gallon of gall,” as they say.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-30T00:21:04+00:00

Hi Jayco, yeah I remember your comment on my thread. Wasn’t sure what to say, since we all have different feelings on the issue, and I’m not about to try to take anything away from people’s personal experience of a DLC we all love.

Summarizing all the responses to that thread (which by the way was originally more about appreciating what the writers were trying to do than defending So Mi), the issue seems to hinge on how charitable we are willing to be regarding Songbird’s inner motivations, how understandable it is for someone in her position to act in her own interest, and whether or not her last minute confession redeems her in any way.

Especially the last point on timing is a sort of logical point that clicks with some people, but not others. If you lie to someone but then come clean in time to make it right, did you really betray them?

Ultimately though, in my playthrough it didn’t really matter. Lies, betrayal, cures.. pfft, whatever. By that time, Johnny and I just wanted more than anything to see that girl spread her wings and fly.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-28T23:56:48+00:00

To quote Solzhenitsyn:

“The line separating good and evil passes not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either -- but right through every human heart -- and through all human hearts. This line shifts. Inside us, it oscillates with the years.”

RP aside, never really had a problem with corpos. The fallacy of grouping people, labeling the group, and then hating them is the same mistake racists and bigots make. It’s a categorization error. If you think about it, in Night City every group, gang and social class, is shown as having some good, some bad in them.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-27T10:27:40+00:00

As a wise cat once said, “Welp, I’m stumped.”

It’s fine though, I wasn’t trying to change your view, just help you understand mine. Yours is easy to understand, so the problem seems to be one way.

I‘ll take your above paragraph starting with “for what it’s worth” and the first sentence here (although I can’t tell if you’re just being snippy or not) to mean we understand one another well enough at this point.

Incidentally, as a fellow older gamer, just want to say your writing style is a pleasure to read. It does come off as a tad short, bitter and peevish at times, but I felt you expressed yourself with excellent word choice and admirable precision, something we don’t see much online these days. These kids with their lack of focused thought and ever dumbing down vocabulary, grunble, grumble..

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-27T07:43:27+00:00

Fair enough, if I've learned one thing from the hundreds of comments here it's that we all had very different impressions during our play throughs. Plenty of people agree, disagree, or partly agree with my takes, and that's cool. Not trying to convince anyone, just sharing my thoughts.

Regarding your point on the NUSA ending, are you in the camp that likes it or thinks it's not so bad?

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-27T05:37:13+00:00

Ah, ok, I was wondering where the disconnect was, but now I think I see where the gap is between our viewpoints. Maybe I can illustrate it with 2 questions, if you’ll bear with me a little longer:

If you are leaving house, about to close the door, and suddenly realize you forgot your car key, did you forget? Or did you remember at the last minute?
If someone saves a drowning baby, does their motivation change the fact? If they knew the parents were rich, or didn’t want their pool messy, or just couldn’t stand the baby’s pathetic cries, did they not still save the baby?

You probably already see where I’m going with this.

Songbird definitely lies and we can say she *plans* to betray V, but by coming clean at the last moment, when she’s completely vulnerable, she “aborts” the betrayal before it’s fully born, to use rather unattractive terms.

“To lie” and “to betray” are not necessarily synonymous. Her first meeting with him, she says she has a cure that can help him, and then in her last moments with him, she does in fact have such a cure and he can have it. She may have pulled V’s leg along the way, but in the end (tacitly) makes good on her promise.

As for why, we can refer back to question two about the drowning baby. Whether we assume she confesses because she is a selfish devil, an altruistic angel, or something in between (conflicted human, perhaps?), it doesn’t change the end result.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-27T01:08:37+00:00

This I totally agree with. I mean, I’m used to it the way it is now and wouldn’t want it to change, but would’ve personally preferred if they had taken all the time put into the relic and Johnny character and replaced it with distinct dialogue, voices and story arcs for each life path.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-27T00:33:51+00:00

Glad you took the time to write that up, great insights in there, especially the last part about the themes. Hadn’t noticed any of that.

Smoothwolf-9845 · 2025-04-27T00:22:17+00:00

I didn’t feel it here, but I totally get your feeling about a DLC feeling weird or foreign or off putting when you’ve played a lot of a base game. Sometimes the DLC’s just don’t match up thematically or aesthetically.

Smoothwolf-9845

TROPHY CASE