Shard.14: Protagonist V - The Existence of a Condemned Merc. The Choice Between a "Quiet Life" or a "Blaze of Glory"

Night City is a place where the toxic glare of neon lights intersects with back alleys stained by the stench of blood and urine. In this city, human life is a cheap consumable, destined to be ground to dust in the mortar of hyper-capitalism. The subject of this article is the trajectory of V, a merc who attempted to crawl up from the very bottom of this ruthless system and, as a result, touched the realm of the gods.

V’s story is not a mere heroic tale of rising through the ranks. It is the record of an extremely grueling and philosophical struggle of a human being, handed a “death sentence,” trying to define their own “existence” within the little time they have left. The question posed to V by the fixer Dexter DeShawn—“Quiet Life or Blaze of Glory?”—presents the ultimate extremes of survival strategies a human can choose in the dystopia that is Night City.

This article will conduct a systematic analysis from fragmented records (shards, communication logs, and environmental evidence) regarding the mechanism of the “Relic 2.0” embedded in V’s head and the erosion of self it brings, the definition of the “soul” in transhumanism, the philosophical dialogues exchanged on the borderline of madness, and the existentialist choices and exploitative structures of mega-capitalism symbolized by each ending.

1. Erosion of the Soul and the “Ship of Theseus”: The Mechanism of Relic 2.0 and the Definition of Death

V’s existential crisis begins with the failure of the heist at Konpeki Plaza and the treacherous bullet from Dex. The large-caliber bullet fired into V’s head was lethal, but ironically, it became the trigger that activated the Relic (biochip).

1.1 Rewriting of the Self by Nanomachines and the Bug of Incarnation

According to Anders Hellman’s interrogation records and design data, the “Relic 2.0” stolen by Yorinobu Arasaka as bait to lure NetWatch is not merely a storage medium for memory traces (engrams) used to “converse with the dead” like its predecessors. It was a prototype designed to overwrite the saved engram onto a body in a “neurologically indifferent” state (brain death), where the host’s nervous system has ceased activity, thereby “incarnating” a new personality.

Dex’s bullet physically damaged both V’s brain and the Relic. As the bullet crawled along the side of the skull and stopped at the occipital bone, it destroyed the Relic shard slotted on the right side. This caused V’s brain functions to temporarily cease, leading the Relic’s nanomachines to mistakenly identify the host as “deceased” and initiate the repair process. However, V’s consciousness was not completely lost, resulting in an unprecedented bug state where the “consciousness of the living V” and the “continuously unfolding engram of Johnny Silverhand” coexisted in the same body, eroding each other.

Viktor Vektor, a former heavyweight boxer running a back-alley ripperdoc clinic in the Watson district, gives V a despairing diagnosis: “You have a few weeks at most, maybe a month or two.” To borrow Viktor’s words, the Relic is rewriting the synapses of V’s brain one by one, and ultimately, the entity known as V will completely vanish, leaving only the digital ghost of Johnny Silverhand. No matter how skilled Viktor might be, he was powerless against the autonomously evolving nanotechnology developed in top secret by a megacorporation.

1.2 The Ship of Theseus and the Collapse of Identity

This situation forces upon V the paradox of the “Ship of Theseus” found in cyberpunk literature and philosophy. In the process where the parts constituting the body (or the synapses of the brain) are gradually replaced by another’s data, at what point does V cease to be V? The phenomenon where the boundaries of self blur every time they fall asleep, and Johnny’s memories conflate with their own, brings V a primal fear far greater than physical death.

Even more severe is the use of “Soulkiller,” presented as the only means to save V. The solution proposed by Alt Cunningham deep within Mikoshi is to use Soulkiller to turn V’s own consciousness into an engram (data), separate it from Johnny, and then download it back into the body. However, as a logical consequence of the event, a lingering doubt remains: “Isn’t the original V physically and irreversibly dead the moment they enter Mikoshi, and isn’t the one who returns merely a perfect copy (Engram V) who believes themselves to be V?” In cyberspace, does a mind (software) detached from the “hardware” of the body hold the same value as the original? This is nothing less than an existentialist death sentence regarding self-identity.

2. The Nihilism Defined by Lifepaths: The Hierarchical Structure of Capitalism and V’s Perspective

V’s existential struggle generates subtle differences in their philosophical approach to the system of Night City depending on where they came from (their lifepath). However, the fact that they cannot escape the “fate of death” regardless of the chosen origin highlights the deterministic despair of this city.

As a Corpo, V has navigated the quagmire of assassinations and power struggles as the number two in Arasaka’s counterintelligence division. Corpo V knows intimately from the inside how corporations process human lives as numbers on a spreadsheet, holding a cold-blooded worldview that “dying by a stray bullet and being erased by a corporation are equally cheap deaths.” As a Streetkid, V circulates through the very streets of Night City like blood, remaining most faithful to the ambition of “becoming someone (becoming a legend)” within the codes of fixers and gangs. As a Nomad, V is an outsider from beyond the city limits, finding value in the warm-blooded bonds of “family” and “kin” rather than the exploitative structures of capitalism.

What is interesting is that despite Corpo V’s deep understanding of Arasaka’s internal structure and the corruption of the privileged class, they are crushed by the massive gears of the system and ultimately forced to live as a bottom-tier merc. Whichever path is taken, where V ends up is the cruel dichotomy presented by Dex: a “Quiet Life” or a “Blaze of Glory.” The differences in lifepaths are merely differences in perspective regarding “how deeply and with how much despair V understands” the exploitative structure of Night City.

3. The Borderline to Madness: Cyberpsychosis and V’s Singularity

As the footsteps of death approach, V takes on the subjugation of “Cyberpsychosis” occurring throughout Night City (requests from Regina Jones). These cyberpsychos function as a “mirror image of a future V might have fallen into with one wrong step.”

For example, a shard titled “Farewell” is found on the body of Lely Hein, who is neutralized in the Cyberpsycho Sighting: Six Feet Under in Northside. Furthermore, at the crime scene of Cedric Muller, encountered in the Cyberpsycho Sighting: On Deaf Ears in Downtown, the tragic ends of those who were crushed by the system and surrendered their humanity to chrome are recorded. All of them lost their mental balance due to excessive cyberware implantation and the grueling stress of bottom-tier society, descending into a madness where they “can only perceive others as objects.”

Despite V themselves installing highly advanced combat cyberware to the absolute limit and repeating gruesome slaughter day after day, they never develop cyberpsychosis. Regarding this singularity, the perspective of Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the tabletop RPG version (Maximum Mike in the game), suggests a structure where “the presence of the Relic and Johnny Silverhand’s engram in the brain acts as a mental buffer, protecting V from madness.”

In other words, V is in an extremely ironic state of transhumanist equilibrium: “precisely because their brain is being devoured by Johnny, they are spared from the loss of humanity (cyberpsychosis) caused by chrome.” By being eroded by another’s soul, they escape their own mental collapse. This is the very process of the boundaries of the self disappearing.

4. The Moloch of Fear and the Teachings of the Zen Master: Acceptance of Death and Life

As an entity positioned at the opposite pole of the city’s frenzy, the mysterious “Zen Master” who frequently appears before V is a crucial key to unraveling the view of life and death that pierces through the spine of this work. The meditation via braindance he provides is not a digital transcendence (transhumanism) like cybernetics or AI, but a primitive and spiritual process of liberation through the natural elements of earth, water, fire, and air.

During meditation, the Zen Master speaks to the depths of V’s consciousness, quoting lyrics from SAMURAI’s songs (such as the metaphor of the devil in “Never Fade Away” and the concrete canyon in “Black Dog”). After the final meditation, the Zen Master suddenly vanishes, but interestingly, the Zen Master’s figure is not captured by Johnny Silverhand’s perception. From this fact, theories whisper that the Zen Master is a projection of a Rogue AI or an illusion related to Rache Bartmoss, but what should be emphasized more is the text of the shard he leaves behind, TEACHINGS OF THE TEMPLE - EXCERPTS.

“The welcome truth that sleep and death are twin sisters, beneficial, healing, and life-restoring… will forever overthrow the great Moloch of fear that stands before the gates of the human heart, waiting to devour the children of hope born wrapped in the joy of life.”

Moloch is a god (demon) in ancient Canaan who demanded infants as fire sacrifices. What this shard suggests is the fact that the “primal fear of death” harbored by the residents of Night City (and the Arasaka Corporation) is the very Moloch itself. Arasaka’s “Mikoshi” and Saburo Arasaka’s thirst for immortality through engrams are madness born of the desire to escape death (the Moloch of fear), and as a result, they are merely offering human dignity and souls as sacrifices to the system.

The Zen Master’s teachings present a philosophy to accept death not as a “defeat at the opposite pole of life,” but as part of the natural cycle (the twins of sleep and death). To Johnny, who tries to survive through the continuity of data known as an engram, and to V, who stands on the brink of physical death, the Zen Master preaches the importance of “casting away fear and accepting the existence that is here and now.”

5. The Symbolism of Fate: Misty’s Tarot and the Bullet Necklace

V’s fate is deeply intertwined with the symbolism (arcana) shown by Misty Olszewski’s tarot readings. The tarot graffiti scattered throughout the city are not mere occult phenomena; they function as synesthesia triggered by V’s unconscious and the Relic, or as warnings from higher intelligences in cyberspace.

Misty tells V, “Some consider uncertainty to be evil, while others argue that change itself is evil. But neither is true. We are all changing into new versions of ourselves every minute, every second. You shouldn’t fear change itself; you should fear what you might change into.”

The “Fool” card symbolizes V’s own journey. It suggests one who steps into a new world, destined to be ultimately transformed by their own steps. The scene where V agonizes on the roof of Misty’s esoterica before heading to Embers in the late-game quest “Nocturne Op55N1” is the ultimate moment when V is forced to reckon with their ambitions and fate.

An important symbol here is the “bullet necklace” Misty handed to V. This is the bullet that was fired into V’s head, the embodiment of V’s initial ambition to “become a Night City legend (Blaze of Glory).” Depending on the ending choice, V chooses whether to wear this necklace (fulfillment of ambition), tear it off (despair toward ambition), or throw it away into the Badlands (breaking with the past). This is V’s final answer to Dex’s curse of a “Blaze of Glory.”

6. Existentialist Choices: The Transaction of “Life and Death” Thrust by Each Ending

In the endgame, V must choose the form of their own end (or rebirth) from limited options. These choices cannot be discussed in the simple gaming dichotomy of good endings and bad endings. In no ending does V attain complete salvation. In Night City, there is no “victory without a price”; there is only the cold-blooded transaction of “what you give up and what you get.”

Below is a summary of the existential and philosophical meanings held by each choice.

7. Phantom Liberty Reveals the Truth of the “Quiet Life”: The Cruelty of The Tower

The ending of “The Tower,” newly added in the expansion DLC Phantom Liberty, complements the philosophical themes of this work in an extremely cruel manner. With the cooperation of Solomon Reed, an agent of the NUSA and the FIA, V finally succeeds in obtaining complete physical liberation from the Relic, a “cure.” On the single point of survival, this appears to be the greatest victory. However, the price V paid in return was a “deprivation of existence” beyond the player’s imagination.

7.1 The Loss of Chrome and the Neutralized Weapon

Waking up from a two-year coma, V had fallen into a state where their nervous system could no longer tolerate any combat cyberware (chrome). In the worldview of Cyberpunk, chrome is not merely enhancement parts; it is the “fangs” to prove one’s abilities and identity to the outside world, and self-expression itself. Losing chrome means falling into becoming one of the “faces in the crowd” in the dog-eat-dog Night City.

To NUSA President Rosalind Myers and Reed, V was once a useful weapon. Depending on the route chosen, Reed, while caught between his own convictions and guilt, can only choose to live as a “loyal dog trapped in the past,” and even tries to rope V in as a cog in the FIA’s desk work (or confesses his own loneliness in a communication from Dayton). They did not “save” V; they pulled the fangs of a highly skilled merc who could be a threat, castrating them into a “harmless civilian.” Just before the surgery, Johnny Silverhand reacts either with outrage that V “sold their soul to the government” or by accepting “self-sacrifice as a good friend,” but either way, he vanishes from within V forever.

7.2 The Avici Hell Named Mediocrity

What awaited the awakened V was a world where everything had transformed. Two years of time is ruthless, and former companions have begun to walk their own paths in life. Viktor Vektor discards his pride as a back-alley ripperdoc resisting corporations, forced to adapt to corporate life as a hired doctor at a clinic bought out by Zetatech, and leaves for San Francisco. Relationships with those V formed deep bonds with, such as Judy and Panam, are irreparably severed, and on the streets of Night City, V is beaten down by even a mere street thug.

From the beginning of the game, V recognized a “Quiet Life” as a kind of defeat, or an unreachable peaceful utopia. However, the ending brought by “The Tower” proves that a Quiet Life is an “Avici hell of living on, unremembered by anyone, remaining powerless and crushed beneath the system.” V survived. But that “life” is neither the glory at The Afterlife as a legend, nor the family bonds as a Nomad. It is the acceptance of absolute mediocrity, merely breathing.

This ending can be said to be an extremely cynical answer to the existentialist proposition: “Is there value in living itself, or is the way of life (the definition of self) what truly matters?”

Finale: Beyond Oblivion (The Requiem Played by Voicemails)

The holocall voicemails played during the end credits are a powerful method of environmental storytelling that retrospectively narrates what V’s fate was.

These messages drastically change their tone depending on the chosen route, but the common underlying theme is the cold reality that “those left behind will live on beyond V’s absence.” The report of a hopeful tarot reading from Misty in “The Star” route, the voice lamenting the severance with V in “The Devil” route. Or, in the case where V chooses suicide (The easy way out), Judy’s despairing wails and Viktor’s sorrowful regrets.

The message from Rogue, the queen of The Afterlife, highlights the true nature of a “legend” in Night City. While praising V’s legendary feats, she states, “I almost made a cocktail named after you, but gradually, people will forget V.” She then points out that while V is welcome to come to the bar, every time V shows their face, the mystique as a “living legend” is chipped away, and their legacy is tarnished.

In the world of Cyberpunk, a human truly dies not when their heart and lungs stop. It is when their data on the network is erased, and they can no longer be accessed from people’s memories (local databases). A legend becomes a myth by being fixed in a “dead state.” If one exposes the sight of living and rotting away, the legend fades. Is what V left behind the hollow glory carved into the name of a cocktail at The Afterlife, or the warm memories kept in the hearts of Nomad friends? In any case, the world continues to spin mercilessly, and the gears of mega-capitalism keep moving in search of the next victim. V may have left a scar on the world of megacorporations that are equal to gods, but they could not fundamentally transform the city itself. Because that is the absolute law of Night City.

Conclusion: What is the Victory of the Existence Known as V?

The existential struggle of the protagonist V in Cyberpunk 2077 was a search for an answer to the question of “who holds the initiative over life and death” in an era of transhumanism where the evolution of technology shakes the definition of humanity.

Corporations attempt to use “Soulkiller” to turn human souls into data in exchange for eternal life, reducing them to property. It is the empty flailing of those in power trapped by the fear of death (Moloch), and the completed form of ultimate exploitation. On the other hand, the illusion of a “Blaze of Glory” presented by Dex was also nothing more than a mechanism of life exploitation by the system of Night City, utilizing the desire for self-display known as fame.

The moment V can become truly “free” in the real sense arrives not in surviving itself, but only when they self-determine “how to meet their end (or live anew).” Whether that is gazing into the void from Arasaka’s space station and throwing oneself into the depths of Mikoshi as data (The Devil), discarding humanity and crossing over beyond the Blackwall (Temperance), traveling through the Badlands covered in dust with loved ones (The Star), or losing all chrome and legends to disappear into the bustle as a face in the crowd (The Tower).

Is the “soul” data, or is it something that dwells in the flesh? As the thought experiment of the Ship of Theseus shows, even if all the original parts (brain cells) are replaced, and even if patched-up memories mix with those of another, as long as there is a subject that takes a step forward with will at the very end, existence occurs there.

The story of the merc V, who received a death sentence, is a tragedy in a dystopia, and at the same time, it is the record of the most human soul that tried to carve out its own meaning amidst overwhelming nihilism. Night City does not allow winners. However, only the will to choose the form of one’s defeat for oneself continues to shine as an inviolable realm of humanity, beyond the reach of corporate power.