V for Vendetta and the secret Revolution building up in Cyberpunk
There's that secret room in Arasaka tower that oddly resembles this cover
"I'm V". I've always wondered why they picked that specific name for our main character. Sure their true name is either Valerie or Vincent but they're very insistent on being called 'V' and stated during 'Automatic Love' that only people who know them well can call them by their true name, which includes absolutely no one from the game even our romance options.
"V" is not a particularly memorable or badass nickname for a merc and multiple characters throughout the game mock our main character for insisting on being called V. But in the real world that particular name carries considerable weight if you've ever red the comic V for Vendeta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd. The Guy Fawkes mask became a very recognizable symbol in pop-culture in the late 2000s thanks to hacker group Anonymous, you used to see it everywhere from online campaigns to street protests. Some might have seen in the movie adaptation of the comic of course, but to truelly understand what a powerful symbol of revolution and anarchism that face represents you need to read the comic. This V is unrelenting, unrepenting, never shows any sign of regret or remorse and will absolutely do everything in his power, including killing and blowing stuff-up, to destroy the fascist government, no matter the cost or casualties. Remind you of anyone?
"V is by far the most notable character in V for Vendetta: he has the greatest amount of dialogue, he is the subject of the most attention from the other characters, his name is in the title, etc. Yet in spite of all this, V is also the most ambiguous character in the graphic novel. We don’t know how old V is, we don’t know who his family was, we don’t know his sexual orientation, we don’t know what his face looks like (he wears a Guy Fawkes mask at all times), and we don’t even know to a certainty if he’s a man or a woman (for the purposes of this summary, we’ll consider him a man). Based on the evidence we’re presented with, it seems that V was a “subversive” who was arrested during the early days of the Norsefire regime and sent to a concentration camp. There, he was injected with drugs and hormones that made him smarter, made him stronger, and made him forget his own past. Since breaking out of his prison, V has used terrorism to oppose the Norsefire regime, killing his former jailers and orchestrating an elaborate assault on its institutions. V is an anarchist who believes that violence and destruction are necessary in order to establish a new world order in which people consent to live with each other in peace, rather than submitting to the tyranny of a government." (source: https://www.litcharts.com/lit/v-for-vendetta/characters/v )
Upon his death Johnny Silverhand became a martyr, a symbol, a man who sacrificed everything in his quest to destroy Arasaka, and the corporate world at large, but I think our V could be something way more important for the future of the series.
From a RP perspective V is a customizable character, they can be from any origin, gender or sexuality and once equiped with the FIA's behavioral imprint faceplate, V can effectively "shapeshift" . V is and has always been a face in the crowd and I think that from a Meta-narrative stand-point the devs were trying to build a character who would be able to theorically be anyone in the sequels. Yes, I don't think V dies in any of the endings, except maybe 'Path of Least Resistance'. What we've experienced so far might just be the early years of someone who's gonna go on to do great things in the future, just like the other NC legends.
What about Johnny then? I don't think this is the real Johnny Silverhand or not the same as in 2023 at least. Someone clearly tempered with his memories hence why we only get unreliable bits and pieces of what really happened at Arasaka HQ like the fact that he pretty much took Morgan Blackhand's role. But to what aim? Well let's look at what happened to V and to NC as a whole in rapid succession since they inserted the Relic. If you subscribe to the idea that most of the main endings lead us roughly towards the same result that would mean that in a couple of month a single random merc managed to got toe-to-toe with the most dangerous gangs in the city + megacorps, save the president and survive Dogtown as an FIA operative, then eventually cripple the second most powerfull corporation on the planet with the help of a rogue AI. Obviously, Johnny is the only reason V managed to go that far, and Johnny is the only reason V managed to get in contact with Alt.
My point? I think the Relic prototype, as its presented by the time Yorinobu stole it, was a conditioning device. The Relic is the Guy Fawkes mask. We don't know for sure who (or what) made it so, but the results speak for themselves. By inserting that particular Relic litterally anyone can become the most dangerous anarchist terrorist in NC. It's not immortality, it's recruitment. V is bigger than a person, V is an idea. What might have been an unforseen consequense is that V would retain some residuals of their personality, or maybe that doesn't change anything either way since the Silverhand engram still has a massive influence on the subject.
Now imagine what an entire group of people with a copy of Johnny's engram could accomplish. You don't even need to spend years at a time trainning them, brainwashing them (like the Peralezes) or spreading propaganda (Doc Paradox), you could just copy Johnny's engram and build an army of perfectly synched anarchists in a couple of months. An entire unit of Vs. I think that's exactly what the game hints at during the 'For whom the Bell Tolls' quest when you arrive at the Afterlife as Johnny. You can catch a conversation between two mercs talking about an elusive and deadly unit moving like a single individual.
I beleive V is still the protagonist of Cyberpunk 2, they will return different, changed, and CDPR will find a way to justify character creation again, but from a character progression and RP perspective I think they absolutely plan to factor-in the experience gain and your previous actions and decisions like in Witcher 3. Gameplay might also include team dynamics like in the TTRPG, it just makes sense. They keep saying that there's no happy endings in NC and that's somewhat true, but if the game truely wants to walk in the foot-steps of something like Neuromancer or The Matrix, you need a form of resistance, you need a Revolution.
