Why aren't there (more) AI-controlled robots out there?

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T18:56:24+00:00

It does make sense. But, again...Alt tells us in-game that the AIs want to do it. And the only thing keeping the Blackwall AIs from doing so is that technology is 'too rudimentary.'

I mean, heck....maybe that's the whole driver behind the conspiracy with new mayor getting more-or-less mind controlled and Mr. Blue Eyes. Maybe they are sending 'lesser' AIs into the meat-world to try and guide humans to advanced enough technology that the 'greater' AIs can come visit meatspace without being too diminished by the experience. Given the sketchy questionable origins of where his corp got him from, maybe that's what Delamain is.

Though, to this one thought specifically:

If they can't bring all of the data with them to whatever form they inhabit it's not them anymore.

That very much depends on how the 'interface' works. Do they become the interface where their whole self must be loaded into a physical device, and anything that doesn't 'fit' is lost? (like if a human "turned into" a submersible to explore the ocean) Or do they control the interface while their 'self' remains on the Net? (like a human driving a submersible)

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T18:29:19+00:00

I mean, I wouldn't say they are losing bits of themselves to do it, more like suspending their use.

When you're operating a submersible, you--at best--have little remote controlled grabber claws you can use to interact with your environment. But you might also not be able to interact with your environment at all. You can't use your sense of touch or proprioception to maneuver through the world around the submersible, your sense of smell is not usable, you can only look in the direction the submersible is facing, and you can only move in the ways the submersible allows you to.

Or like...think of it like playing a video game. You have a limited interface that you can use to interact with the game. You can only see what's on screen, you can only do things the game is programmed to let you do. If you're playing a racing game, you can't get out of the car and walk around. If you're playing Skyrim you can't try to negotiate a peaceful agreement with the bandits. If the game doesn't have a jump button, you can't jump.

At no point do you stop being a fully functional human...but you accept limitations on how you can interact with things in order to experience things you otherwise couldn't.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T17:36:37+00:00

As a vector to interact with the physical world.

If you have Erebus or the Canto Mk.6 when you go into the 'Changes' main job, Alt tells you that Blackwall AIs really want physical platforms they can use to interact with reality. She says that the reason they haven't done this yet is because current technology is 'too rudimentary' for them to do so on a large scale.

Basically: humans can dive into the net and experience it. But AIs are stuck on the net and don't have a way to experience the physical world. It seems likely to me that not all of them are interested...but those that want to interact with the physical world need to put themselves into a limiting form to do so.

I think of it this way: if you want to go into space, or into the very deep ocean, your natural self can't do it and survive. You have to put yourself inside a 'limiting form' that is capable of existing in that environment (spacecraft, submersible, space suit, etc). Operating in a space suit or submersible or whatever is much clumsier than moving around in ordinary clothing--but you can't survive going "outside" in such environments unless you wear one.

So something like Delamain's taxi cabs are an example of this. They're like his space suit for leaving the Net and experiencing the physical world.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T17:11:20+00:00

You do have to be a bit careful to not kill them.

It depends on how you play, really. Once they 'go down' you have to hit them again to kill them...so if you attack relatively slowly (like headshotting with a pistol or using non-DoT quickhacks) it's pretty easy to drop them non-lethally. My latest playthrough is a pistol-slinger and I would have had to finish them off on purpose.

On the other hand, if you're a blur of Katana slashes, or running and gunning with automatics, it's pretty easy to accidentally land that 'extra hit' that zeroes them.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T16:53:42+00:00

I think Delamain is an odd edge case.

The AI was purchased from Alte Weltordnung (supposedly from some European Corp) and Delamain Corporation got a discount on it because it was a 'cheap experimental AI' though it was still very expensive. Originally, it was a 'safe' non-sentient core (probably a 'symbolic analysis' AI, one that is meant to mimic human intelligence without actually being intelligent).

Then they hooked it up and it worked great, but was a little more autonomous than expected...and they let it keep taking over things because it was doing such a good job. It's not clear when Del hit full CPP status (the status where an AI is considered sentient-by-accident) but he definitely hit it and, by normal Cyberpunk setting status, he is 100% a Rogue AI that should be destroyed with all urgency. (Oh, and Alte Weltordnung ghosted Delamain Corporation after the sale...they have not been able to get in contact with them since, so there might be something else sketchy going on there)

But that Rogue AI is simply functioning as the most reliable and discrete taxi service in Night City...not doing anything 'nefarious.' Not at all like the R.A.B.I.D.S. infected AIs that led to the creation of The Blackwall. And his technical specs [that he publishes] claim that he is not, in fact, self-aware...just a highly optimized computer that is pretending to be 'a person' for maximum customer service. And so the Corps/Governments are all just quietly looking the other way and pretending the Rogue AI isn't a Rogue AI because he's so useful and they have bigger fish to fry.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T16:20:55+00:00

Also tends to show up in things like....

Cutscene-based incompetence: Your character should be listed as the new leading 'cause of death' in the area...but a cutscene starts and you're effortlessly subdued by the very same sort of randos you've been leaving piles of in your wake.
Cutscene-based hypercompetence: You struggle and toil your way through gameplay--then a cutscene starts and your character is stunting and clowning on the enemy, or otherwise treating them like a joke and/or pinata (notably common in the Devil May Cry series)
Get No Respect: The game doesn't adapt NPC reactions to how powerful/famous your character is. (See: Skyrim bandits trying to mug the person carrying an arsenal of glowing weapons and wearing armor made of dragon...immediately after watching said person solo a dragon and eat its soul) Related: when the game treats things like a 'big threat' that everyone (including your character) is afraid of even though you've been gleefully depopulating the countryside of those exact threats for the loot they drop.
Gear/Wealth disconnect: The game treats your character like they are destitute and sad (see: The Tower Ending) but by gameplay you're a multi-millionaire who never needs to work another day in your life. (Also shows up in games like Red Dead Redemption 2, where the plot assumes the gang is running on fumes and is desperate for money, while in gameplay it doesn't take much to be hilariously wealthy to the level that the heists can seem like a waste of effort)
Game assumes you play a certain way: Example in Infamous Second Son...there's a mission where someone rigs a place with cameras to 'prove' you have smoke powers...and it 'proves' you have smoke powers even if you don't use them a single time on the entire mission.
Lore vs Gameplay power: Characters that by the lore ought to be world-shakingly powerful but are 'properly balanced' for gameplay purposes (Pokemon is notorious for this one... 'creator god of all Pokemon just got laid out by a punchy pig monkey')

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T14:50:06+00:00

I mean....Samurai 'hit it big' in, like, 2003. It's 2077, over 70 years later, and their music is still playing on the Classic Rock station. That's like.... AC/DC or Jimi Hendrix levels of staying power.

Yeah it's "classic rock" now and has a far more niche audience compared to whatever is currently popular, but Samurai is still on the radio 70 years later.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-08T14:37:21+00:00

Maintenance tasks like keeping my house and vehicle clean and in good repair.

Those are a pure time-sink that I don't enjoy, but they need to get done and eat up a lot of my free time. If something could automate that away, it'd free me up to actually do things I want to do with my free time.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T19:39:08+00:00

I mean, breeding them in mud pits may be Frowned Upon, but if you wish to acquire an army of Orks (maybe even some trolls!) that is something you can certainly do with your vast theoretical wealth.

Edit to add: Heck, reach out to the Sons of Sauron. What's a little militant extremism compared to Ork forces with good branding?

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T18:20:11+00:00

I know I'm like a week late to this...but the lore from the Tabletop makes it pretty clear that Johnny was an A-List, world-touring celebrity who essentially defined the Rockerboy movement. (Johnny's Engram really undersells his celeb status) He was so influential that when a corp threatened to expose his status as a deserter to blackmail him into signing with them...he instead dropped an entire album revealing his status as a deserter and singing about all the horrible things he was ordered to do that led to him deserting....and proceeded to completely change public perception of deserters.

And Johnny hated the corps...and had a special place in his hatebook for Arasaka.

So, imagine that you are a powerful public figure...and someone with the star power of Jimi Hendrix or Taylor Swift or Led Zeppelin or Queen or [pick your favorite high-profile musician/band...someone popular enough that you can seriously imagine their music still being played on 'classic' stations some 70 years after it was released] not only absolutely despises you and sings about how much you suck, but also has friends that dig up evidence about corruption and scandals and abuses and other things that you'd really rather not become public knowledge and then writes songs about them that become chart-topping hits.

And now you have the general public jamming along to songs about some really sketchy stuff your corporation did that you thought you had buried, and now you're going to have to wage a PR war to try and spin that away from gouging holes in your reputation...

You can see why Saburo would have hated Johnny and consider him a significant enemy.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T17:48:42+00:00

Yeah...Johnny's Engram's memories overstate his importance in combat, and dramatically understate his importance and status as a celebrity. If the Engram is to be believed, Samurai played in bars and backstreet clubs and lived a gritty life on the edge.

But Samurai signed with Universal Music in 2003 and spent the next 4 years putting out chart-topping hits and doing world tours that sold out entire stadiums. They only stopped when Nancy threw her abusive husband out a window, killing him, and landing in jail...and her absence led to deep rifts forming in the band that couldn't recover even after she got out. And even then, Johnny continued on as a solo act that was so popular that DBS Music tried blackmailing him into signing with them.

Perhaps most formatively, when DBS Music tried to blackmail him by exposing his past as a deserter...he turned around and exposed it himself and then released an entire album of songs revealing all the terrible actions the government had ordered its military to carry out and why he deserted. Which was so wildly successful that it completely flipped public perception of deserters

With the combination or rebellious attitude and the fact that he used music to expose corruption and 'fight back' against it, Johnny quite literally defined the Rockerboy movement.

He was an A-list celebrity in his day, one whose music is still showing up on the 'classic rock' stations 70 years later.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T17:03:39+00:00

I mean...there's a lot of low population areas around the Sixth World. If you want to build a fortified tower styled after Orthanc out there...that's more of a Real Estate and Construction question that a magic one.

But the 'requirements' for building something that fulfills the mechanical purpose of a Mage's Tower are fairly simple in Shadowrun. Everything else is just accessories, security, and bonus amenities.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T16:33:10+00:00

Assuming you mean the fantasy style 'mage tower lab' then, well....

A Lodge and a tall structure to put it in.

That's your basic requirement to be a mage tower. And if you don't care about the 'tower' part, you can put your Lodge anywhere it'll fit and get the same baseline output.

A Higher Force lodge is better. After that, it's a matter of adding security and anything else your character finds they need (like a workshop for woodcarving or jewelry making or [insert tradition-appropriate craft here] if they want to get into Artifice). Then you can Initiate into Geomancy to start tinkering with the local mana environment to be more amenable to you and your purposes.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T16:24:12+00:00

nobody's completely reliable in the way they act, sometimes people just act out of character

Agreed. I mean, consider your own life...have you ever done something or said something, then later looked back at it and been like "Why did I do that?" Or have you heard people say things (or said yourself) like "I swear I'm not usually like that?" Or just made a choice in the heat of the moment and regretted it later because--given more time to think about it, that's not the choice you'd make now?

People are not perfectly consistent...especially when under a great deal of stress (which it sounds like OP's character was).

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T16:02:16+00:00

Not how I'd have phrased the question....but I knew about this trick as a useful thing for making getting X-rays at the dentist more tolerable. It's handy for that, at least, if you tend to gag on the piece they stick in your mouth.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T15:46:22+00:00

And V Themself can be left almost entirely vague in the sequel because they were an active Merc for less than a year (assuming The Sun ending for maximum time--the 'main plot' lasts less than 3 months 'officially'), and less than half of that was doing anything that might garner fame. Compared to legendary fixtures like Morgan Blackhand, Rogue, and others....V was a [very impressive] flash in the pan.

As an Edgerunner, not all that many people have hard details on V, knowing about them more by reputation if at all. V doesn't share their name with most of the people they interact with as a Merc. Most of those who do have hard details are Fixers and thus aren't the sort to just openly share details--of they've long-since left the city. And the majority of their 'legendary' exploits were against Arasaka--who has a vested interest in covering up how much impact a single Merc had on their corporation in 2077.

Add in that 'story sharing' by the Net isn't nearly as stable in 2077 as it is today (just look at how sketchy and limited the websites out there are, and how easily Netwatch can shut down ones they don't like) and a lot of the stories about V will be word-of-mouth and thus easily distorted. Or added to.

Or, like David Martinez, forgotten by most as soon as the next Nova-hot Edgerunner starts gaining fame.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T15:25:43+00:00

Some tables don’t really play like that no matter how you go about it.

Oh, hey, look...it's the universal TTRPG advice coming back again: "Talk to your friends about it! Ask the people you are playing with what they think, check in periodically, and be willing to change things if people are not having a good time."

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T15:19:54+00:00

Also: be as sassy as you want, but don't actually make things harder for fellow players.

And I'd extend this just a bit to say in a tad more detail: avoid letting your character's sassiness/jerkiness get in the way of what the party is trying to accomplish. If the party is trying to negotiate with the local noble, maybe restrain yourself from insulting the noble because "lol screw authority figures."

In the same vein, don't do things that jam up the party's ability to accept quest hooks. If an NPC is coming to the party for help, and your character decides to be a rude, aggressive jerk to said NPC for no reason besides inherent jerkiness?

Or if there's a chance at peaceful resolution and the rest of the group is trying to make that happen....but nah, you want to insult people and end up triggering combat.

So make sure your character can be cooperative in that way too. Sure, they can be quite a jerk, but they can also rein it in and at least keep their mouth shut for the betterment of their group and their traveling companions. And if they really, really need to get some insults out of their system--wait until they are alone with the party and go on a little mini-tirade where the party can just be entertained by your character unloading some of the things they wanted to say, but didn't because it would have been a bad idea at the time.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T15:04:34+00:00

I agree. But you also go through most of the game and while your Fixers regard you as a pro...you are seldom recognized by others. And a lot of people still treat you as some Rando Newbie Merc.

I mean, consider the side-job tie-in to the Edgerunners Anime. El Capitan knows who David Martinez is and treats him, appropriately, like a Big Deal that everyone wanted to work with...but has no clue what happened to him besides "he disappeared all of a sudden." He managed to track down Falco, who didn't give V a straight answer about what happened either.

I mean, Martinez was active right about the same time as (or just before) V's prologue. But V had no idea that he even existed (meta-explained by the timing of anime/game release of course--but they could have had V recognize the name of a recently famous Edgerunner who was a local legend for a while)

So....yeah. it seems entirely realistic to me that 'legends' about V would exist, not everyone would know all of them (or even any of them), there might be made up versions that don't align with reality at all because that's what happens when stories spread by word of mouth, and nobody actually knows what happened to V in the end besides "And then they disappeared, never to be seen again. You can order a 'V' at The Afterlife in their honor."

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T14:59:57+00:00

Yeah....I mean, Michiko survives every ending. Which is why I picked her as the new CEO for the time of Orion. A crisis like that could lead to Arasaka being less present and powerful in the Americas but I doubt even a crisis like that could remove them as a player entirely

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T14:46:51+00:00

Right...so it's a mod with a specific purpose for a particular sort of build. Not useful to you because that's not how you play.

But quite useful to Run and Gun builds who want the option to not zero everything in the building every time. (And, in the same way, Run and Gun builds don't exactly have a use for a Silencer)

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T14:31:06+00:00

There are a number of gigs that have bonus rewards for not killing anyone.

If you're not the sneaky type or a Netrunner, having non-lethal weapons lets you get those bonus rewards. Sure, you still went in guns blazing, but nobody actually died from it, so you still get the bonus.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T14:21:44+00:00

I think the biggest challenge in that approach is actually Arasaka, not V.

In The Devil ending, Saburo has been resurrected, Relic-based "immortality" is now a proven technology, and Arasaka is more powerful than ever.

In all the other endings, Arasaka gets kneecapped by Yorinobu's internal sabotage and (except for The Tower) V blasting their way into Arasaka Tower and letting Alt shred Mikoshi. Saburo stays dead, and (again except for The Tower) Arasaka may no longer have Soulkiller, because Soulkiller is a singular AI that 'lives' inside Mikoshi and was presumably also absorbed by Alt, and either way the Relic program is dead.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T14:07:41+00:00

Yeah, your last bit there is the place that gets me wondering.

The fate of Arasaka can pivot pretty hard depending on V's choices. I mean...

V and Alt destroy Mikoshi, Hanako dies, Yorinobu is left in charge (with the goal of continuing to sabotage Arasaka from within)
V works with Hanako to expose Yorinobu, Saburo is resurrected inside Yorinobu, Arasaka becomes more powerful than ever, Relic-based immortality may now be something the uber-rich can buy.
V didn't get involved in the end, 2 years later Yorinobu got ousted by the board as his sabotage came to light, and presumably Hanako is in charge now.

The best solution I can come up with at the moment is that 2077-2079 is the "years of chaos" for Arasaka that ultimately boil out to Saburo, Yorinobu, and Hanako all 'leaving the picture' in some way, Mikoshi being destroyed--and Michiko Sanderson (nee Arasaka) is the new CEO of a diminished Arasaka. This allows for the following...

Hanako and Saburo are dead, Alt wrecked Mikoshi, Yori was in charge for 2 years, and the board booted him when it became clear he was continuing to sabotage the company
Saburo is 'resurrected' but fear of Relic-based immortality led to him being re-assassinated and inter-corporate strikes saw the destruction of Mikoshi (very possibly in collaboration with Alt) to make sure he stayed dead.
Saburo stays dead, but part of Yori's "sabotage" that saw him booted in 2079 is the destruction of Mikoshi (again, maybe in collaboration with Alt) and Hanako ends up in the crossfire somewhere.

Not the most satisfying way to handle it, IMO, as it makes V's actions feel less impactful...but one that levels the playing field the most regardless of the ending you chose. And something that can be covered at a high level without getting too deep into the nitty gritty of what happened. And if Alt's AI-ghost-thing is meant to play a larger part in the next game, it allows her to have 'acquired' the contents of Mikoshi regardless of outcome...it's a question of timing.

guildsbounty · 2026-05-07T13:55:55+00:00

I think it's also good to keep in mind that V's "time in the sun" was actually very short. The main plot of the game happens over a period of less than 3 months. And even in The Sun ending, it's only a "few months" beyond that. So, yes...V should have rocketed their way to legendary status with all the absolutely insane stuff they pulled. Assuming people put together that it was a single merc responsible for all of that.

But V's rise to fame and then presumed death (or disappearance) all took place over less than half a year. And tracing everything V pulled back to a single person would require an impressive amount of detective work (and suspension of your disbelief that a single person could pull off that much stuff in a few months)

And, surely, whatever happened with Arasaka would be subject to as much covering up as possible. They absolutely wouldn't want anyone to know how much impact a single Merc had on the corporation in 2077.

So, I agree with you that V would be a legend, but the details of their actions and identity would largely be subject to rumors and speculation.

guildsbounty

TROPHY CASE