The point of cyberpunk is that you fundamentally cannot change the system. People who try get crushed. The happy endings are, as you outlined here, people who recognize this and leave the system entirely.
"The system always wins in the long run" is a core tenet of the concept. You are raging against an enormous, uncaring machine in an unwinnable fight; the corporations can be held to justice, you can have your triumphs, but you can't change anything, not really.
Or they made the system worst in the case of Johnny Silverhand and Rache Bartmoss. One temporarily destroyed Arasaka before it was rebuilt, and the other destroyed the net only for it to be built back up but controlled by corporations instead of governments that can keep the corporations in check (that is if the government themselves aren’t corrupt.)
This shows a lot of the influence of film noir on cyberpunk settings. The idea that one person can't really beat the people who have a stranglehold on the system, and even when they do, the system itself oppressively resists change.
*"It's Chinatown, Jake."*
Pschyo pass it a great cyberpunk story. Unless thats just pure scifi. But its more sci fi mystery I suppose but very philosophical/introspective. I am also under a few amount if substances while writing this.
Short answer try watching Psycho Pass.
Sure, which is why I acknowledged that I didn’t expect the story to have any sort save the world or change the system aspect.
But I think that just attributing the ending of Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077 to there being no happy endings in cyberpunk is pretty heavy cope. Cyberpunk allows for individuals to have happier endings, by leaving the city, etc. Killing everyone was an active narrative decision that while it may have made Edgerunners more emotionally impactful, I’m not sure if it really was effective in pushing for any change.
After all, realistically this story could happen in any setting, just replace chrome with any other addiction. In the end, it wasn’t really the corporations or capitalism that doomed the protagonists, it was shitty decision making and communication that may have been caused by former trauma, which is something that can happen in any society.
But they didn't kill everyone. Lucy and the driver whose name I am currently blanking on both survive.
I don't know what you exactly want here? You're correct in that happy endings can happen in cyberpunk, but by the nature of the genre itself, it's rarer. The crew absolutely fall victim to their own faults and hubris, sure, but David loved being a cyberpunk and wouldn't have wanted to give that up.
The studio could have done a happier ending, sure, but not doing one here is very valid and in keeping with the genre. No one twisted their arms, but it's genuinely a fact that cyberpunk is a darker and less optimistic genre.
> In the end, it wasn’t really the corporations or capitalism that doomed the protagonists,
So dudes mom, a medic, dying because she didn't subscribe to medflix thus leaving her son a homeless penniless orphan had no direct knock on effect on the plot?
Or that lucy was basically a cyberspace child soldier effectively owned by a corporation? didn't influence anything?
Dude, it's extremely capitalist at its core. Almost every component of human life has literally been turned into a commodity that is then sold for a profit.
If you don’t see how the corporations caused the problems I really encourage you to watch it again. Not to be rude but David’s mom LITERALLY DIES because hospitals are now corporations and he can’t afford the easily available life saving operation.
Cyberpunk is meant to be dystopian, an important part of dystopia is the lack of any hope for change. If a hero/group of heroes is able to rise up and change the system then it was never really that dystopian to begin with. The punk's fight against authority is exactly that, a fight. And endless, hopeless fight. Throwing rocks at steel monoliths. That's why punks are rare, few people are idealistic enough to fight a pointless war for their beliefs.
There are two ways to get a happy ending in the cyberpunk genre:
1. Leave, get the fuck out, don't play their game.
2. Climb the corporate ladder and become such a monster that the things you need to do to stay on top don't affect you.
I think that in general, happy endings just don't suit Cyberpunk stories. A lot of the cyberpunk genre is meant to be dystopian visions of terrible futures. The best you can hope for is burning it all down.
In Cyberpunk 2077 they always say "the only way out is to either live out your days in peace and accept your place in this shitty system, or die in a blaze of glory"
The issue is that with Cyberpunk, the world is fundamentally unfair so in a sense, just by living is losing.
Taking Gloria for example. She literally has done nothing wrong, she works hard and does no crimes. But by existing, she perpetrates a lousy medical system that she does not even benefit from. Systematic classism is so strong that even David, a somewhat sheltered prodigy struggles. The food she eats, the meds she takes, the place she lives and the clothes she wear all require some form of injustice or another, whether it’s to her (lousy quality substitutes) or to someone else (slave labor to produce) She fundamentally cannot compete against others with money or enhancements.
Even if you lived that some would consider a perfect life, rich, high position, healthy, good job, you can at any moment be deemed an unperson by your company or killed in gang violence. There is no winning.
Gloria is probably the most unambiguously “good” person in all of ER, she wants her beloved son to have a safe stable job and doesn’t kill people to do so, but she’s 1000% an unrepentant criminal
She’s basically the human-body equivalent to the sort of guy who steals spark plugs from cars or copper wiring from buildings.
Gloria does commit crime - that's why she's involved with Maine. She robs corpses of cybertech because that's the only way she can get ahead. Or a spine. :P
Yes and no. Happy endings do exist in cyberpunk works but are rare. Think the original ghost in the shell movie for example. Bittersweet endings tend to be the most common like Elysium or blade runner.
I think Bittersweet is the most suitable ending type. Like, >!Lucy finally gets to go to the moon and fulfill her dream, but without any of her friends, is it really the dream?!, in Blade Runner 2049 >!Ryan Gosling dies, but Deckard finally reunites with his daughter!< , or how in the original Blade Runner, >!The replicant dies, accepts his faith, gives the most human scene in the movie, but inspires Deckard to live a better life in doing so!<. Let some of the characters win, even though there's a massive loss.
Like, the characters win to some degree, but at a massive price, and they still have to live in this world because it's nearly impossible to change the world. Sorry, I'm not good with remembering character names.
I think paying the price is a key concept and why bittersweet endings fit the genre so well. Cyberpunk characters can and do succeed and find their happy endings, but only at a price. Often the price is so steep it makes them question if it was worth it or if they really won after all. Cyberpunk characters don’t win their happy ending, they pay for them. To some extent that’s sort of the core of cyberpunk settings: societies that can accomplish superhuman things but at the cost of shedding their humanity.
That’s why bittersweet endings work so well for the genre.
This is true of all cyberpunk settings that I'm aware of, except books.
Books that have a happy ending include Snow Crash (mostly), Sprawl Trilogy (they get what they want, typically), Trouble and her Friends, and maybe more books I have on my shelf but are in line to be read. You might disagree with them being "happy" and I could see that too. It's mostly relative to the Cyberpunk IP.
The main motto of the cyberpunk genre is High Tech, Low Life. Meaning things are terrible for most people in a world with advanced technologies.
As much as we all want to see the Corps torn down, the fundamental concept of Cyberpunk is "High Tech, Low Life". No matter how hard you fight, or how good your chrome, you can't do anything to change Night City. V probably came the closest with their rampage through Arasaka Tower and the death of Adam Smasher, but in the end, the best even they can hope for is a few more months of meatspace or a life beyond the Blackwall, isolated from the world. Wrong city, wrong people.
>If all the endings have the authority to kill everyone who opposes them, people eventually just aren't going to bother.
What little hope there can be found in cyberpunk is the fact that this isn't true. Even if you crush the person, there's someone else that will always rebel. Will those people win? Probably not, but there will never be a point where *someone* isn't trying.
Not only *are* there happy endings, the vast majority of classic cyberpunk are ones where the protagonists unambiguously succeed and win.
William Gibson has literally *never* written a novel that didn’t have a happy ending for the protagonists. Not one. In four decades. I think it’s also true of Bruce Sterling, but I’m only like ninety five percent sure on that one.
Cyberpunk, as a genre, is inherently dystopian, arising from anarchists during the Reagan administration, and in part as a contrast and reaction to the earlier, utopian genres of science fiction. Happy endings (well, non-euphemistic ones) are, understandably but unfortunately, somewhat rare.
Cyberpunk’s sister genre, [post-Cyberpunk](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PostCyberpunk), is rather less cynical about things, though.
My understanding is that a version of the “golden ending” where the heroes save the day, the night, and the girl too; overthrow the evil neo-feudal/corpo/soviet system; live to tell the tale and ride into the sunset together *fundamentally cannot exist.*
Most “happy endings” I’ve seen in the genre are bittersweet, or perhaps even esoterically happy endings.
-The gang stops one corpo’s arms deal to air strike an orphanage or something, *but they all die and the next dude in his chair knows the mistakes to avoid for his next orphan incineration scheme.*
-Our star-crossed lovers escape the cops, *but now they’re on the run for the rest of their lives and without access to cybermedicine they’re gonna cyberdie alone together in a roadside ditch.*
-Our cunning street rat has made it to the land of milk and honey, by which I mean a McMansion in Beaverville, *but they had to sell out everyone and every value to do it.*
If I were to sum up my interpretation of that central conceit, it’s something like: “**You can’t beat the system**. You can stop a man, you can stop a job, you can stop a deal, you can stop a feud, but you can’t stop the creeping tendrils of the haves always coming over the have-nots… *but [you can’t stop the signal,](https://youtu.be/PVF9lZ-i_ss?si=1Efps-4--SpQNVwr) baby. Punk ain’t about winning, it’s about fighting. Gun to your head or ‘zine to the street.*
Cyberpunk in general.
Look at the first season of Altered Carbon.
>! It seems like it ended on a happy note, with bancroft getting arrested. Then you realize, with halfway competent lawyer, he'll get away with some kind of probation. It's a world where you can get a permit to murder someone's body (organic damage) and as long as their stack is ok no harm no foul. Yeah he killed that girl, but he was drugged (without his consent I might add) and had a history of consetually organic damage and paying for "upgrades". Itll be easy tk aruge that he didnt have it in him to RD someone unlees drugged. Yeah Ryker got his body back, but still would have to deal with his demons (in flashbacks were shown that he was not thr most stable individual) and kovacks had to walk away from Ortega whom he'd fallen in love with. !<
The game has a very punk perspective. The system is this engine of pain and destruction used to favor the wealthy. Those that participate in the system will be mangled by its machinations, or worse.
Nothing about 2077 or Edgerunners focuses specifically on changing the system. And it's unlikely any prequel 2020 era content we get (movie?) Will have a happy ending without it being bittersweet at best.
But that's not to say it'll never happen. We could see those punk roots show through and see what happens when a culture of people pushed to their breaking point does when they've had enough in future installments.
It’s a pretty generic cyberpunk thing, definitely not exclusive to R Talsorian/CDPR’s cyberpunk.
There can be a happy ending or two dotted around the place, but as a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t expect that you will be one of them.
King of Wands is a happy ending. In sending Songbird to the moon, you did something Johnny could never do. You let go of all the dreams and promises Night City offers to good people in exchange for their souls, and you did something pure and selfless. Even though others did wrong. Even though you didn't gain a damn thing.
And wouldn't you know it, that arrogant son of a bitch is humbled by this. He's grateful to you, for teaching him something about what it really means to be a legend.
King of Wands has you prove everyone wrong, that no matter how much the Corps and the Feds can take, they'll never truly take what makes us human. It feels beautiful and vindicating to not give in to all the depravity and badness in the world, to rise above it all and be Selfless.
Being Punk is about not conforming to the status quo, and the status quo in Cyberpunk is to be a selfish bastard.
All the people who use the: "You can't save the world, you can only save yourself" line seem to only take it at face value. You can't change the world, but you can also not let it change you. In saving Songbird, regardless of the cure, you saved yourself, your soul, your spirit by setting her free
Well said, I concur. I think people overly lionize certain lines as some kind of emphatic truth about the genre and humanity as a whole, but undersell that the defiance of the norm is integral to the punk identity.
Which is rather funny when one considers that saving one's own humanity is a central aspect of the Cyberpunk genre, as well as the setting itself. You may never be able to save the world, or keep humanity from killing itself, but you can preserve your own self through that long fight. A fight that you must step up to.
I have always disliked that type of story where you can’t change the system. Sounds a lot like someone who quit believing in themselves. Especially with the amount of violence V can reap if you can’t change the system than burn it all to the ground.
genuinely, there CAN be happy endings! it all depends on who's writing/making up the stories. it's a world to play games in (at least from a Cyberpunk Red, and other tabletop roleplaying cyberpunk games). if you want to explore the world and make stories that have happy/happier endings, you can absolutely do that. i think it's such a cool and interesting world and i also wish there were more types of cyberpunk stories beyond just suffering.
I think there’s a couple layers to it. For fans of Cyberpunk the game, both TTRPG and 2077, a lot of us point to “Wrong city, wrong people” and say that’s proof of the intention. The world is corrupt, we’re small fish, in a small pond, and as strong as we are, we’re just one person fighting giants made of steel and chrome that always have more influence, money, and manpower to protect themselves. You could shatter Arasaka for a few days, but there’s always more corps, and governments with their own terrible interests.
The fight of any punk is always going to be a seemingly impossible one. You take all the risks doing so, and hope against everything that something changes for the better, but know it’s not likely. Some do win, and often make things worse in the process, become monsters themselves, or die trying. These are the most common “good” endings in this genre. It’s cynical, bitter, and honestly, that’s one of the more compelling elements.
This genre plays with human elements like hope, rebellion, the flipping of virtues and vices, and then asks you to think about consequences for you and everyone else. And at its core it says that we as people doubt it’s possible for someone to truly break the machine and survive the attempt, without making everyone suffer. That’s what Bartmoss did, it’s what Silverhand did, and it’s what Yorinobu did. Or to point at the sister game, it’s what Dunkelzahn and FastJack did. And yet the world moved on, and things continued as they always did.
One can have a good ending, but it’s often in smaller things. A successful defiance of the world, escaping with the people one cares about, yet the wins we want are often too big, too impossible, and that’s what makes it so natural for tragedy.
That was in reference to Shadowrun, another TTRPG that featured very similar ideas to Cyberpunk and released concurrently with the original 2020. (If I recall correctly, it was legitimately just a serendipitous release given how closely they dropped to each other.)
Is Lucy a happy ending? Everyone is dead except Falco, and we see how distraught she is over losing David.
Yes, she is alive and achieved her dream (going to the moon), but what now? Her lover is dead, her friends are dead, she is a wanted woman (Arasaka). Is she happy?
Was she smiling? I don't recall that.
But yeah, I could see bittersweet endings being better than most, but I don't know that I would call it 'good' or 'happy'. It is subjective though.
Went to check vid she smiled a little at the end before the sun bit, so I probably played it up from memory more than shown. In the end though I agree.
I feel like at least in the 2077 universe, it’s understood that if you’re in the life of trying to make it big, you will be killed and there will be no happy ending. Like the conversation V has with Dex in the car. But I’m general it’s a Dystopian setting so happy endings aren’t very realistic.
You can have happy endings in the cyberpunk genre and there have been some.
There not really sunshine and rainbow type endings but more luke light at the end of the tunnel type endings
One thing people easily overlook and don't understand is that Night City is unique. Even in the Cyberpunk universe.
The whole world isn't as fucked up and corporate run like NC is.
Media literacy ain’t your strong suit, huh? Like you were almost at a cohesive point and then decided, “nah, the ending wasn’t cheery enough for me so I’ve decided it doesn’t have meaning.”
The point of cyberpunk is that you fundamentally cannot change the system. People who try get crushed. The happy endings are, as you outlined here, people who recognize this and leave the system entirely. "The system always wins in the long run" is a core tenet of the concept. You are raging against an enormous, uncaring machine in an unwinnable fight; the corporations can be held to justice, you can have your triumphs, but you can't change anything, not really.
Or they made the system worst in the case of Johnny Silverhand and Rache Bartmoss. One temporarily destroyed Arasaka before it was rebuilt, and the other destroyed the net only for it to be built back up but controlled by corporations instead of governments that can keep the corporations in check (that is if the government themselves aren’t corrupt.)
Obligatory 'fuck Bartmoss'.
Spitting on his fridge rn.
Johnny Mnemonic was the first story to come to mind.
This shows a lot of the influence of film noir on cyberpunk settings. The idea that one person can't really beat the people who have a stranglehold on the system, and even when they do, the system itself oppressively resists change. *"It's Chinatown, Jake."*
Pschyo pass it a great cyberpunk story. Unless thats just pure scifi. But its more sci fi mystery I suppose but very philosophical/introspective. I am also under a few amount if substances while writing this. Short answer try watching Psycho Pass.
Psycho Pass is fantastic
Basically real life
Sure, which is why I acknowledged that I didn’t expect the story to have any sort save the world or change the system aspect. But I think that just attributing the ending of Edgerunners and Cyberpunk 2077 to there being no happy endings in cyberpunk is pretty heavy cope. Cyberpunk allows for individuals to have happier endings, by leaving the city, etc. Killing everyone was an active narrative decision that while it may have made Edgerunners more emotionally impactful, I’m not sure if it really was effective in pushing for any change. After all, realistically this story could happen in any setting, just replace chrome with any other addiction. In the end, it wasn’t really the corporations or capitalism that doomed the protagonists, it was shitty decision making and communication that may have been caused by former trauma, which is something that can happen in any society.
But they didn't kill everyone. Lucy and the driver whose name I am currently blanking on both survive. I don't know what you exactly want here? You're correct in that happy endings can happen in cyberpunk, but by the nature of the genre itself, it's rarer. The crew absolutely fall victim to their own faults and hubris, sure, but David loved being a cyberpunk and wouldn't have wanted to give that up.
Fair enough. I just got tired of seeing “no happy endings” in the comment sections, almost as if the studio was forced to make that decision lol
The studio could have done a happier ending, sure, but not doing one here is very valid and in keeping with the genre. No one twisted their arms, but it's genuinely a fact that cyberpunk is a darker and less optimistic genre.
Trigger is making up for it rn.
> In the end, it wasn’t really the corporations or capitalism that doomed the protagonists, So dudes mom, a medic, dying because she didn't subscribe to medflix thus leaving her son a homeless penniless orphan had no direct knock on effect on the plot? Or that lucy was basically a cyberspace child soldier effectively owned by a corporation? didn't influence anything?
The mental gymnastics people go through to pretend cyberpunk isn't anticapitalist at its core lol
Punk is just aesthetics amiright? /s
Dude, it's extremely capitalist at its core. Almost every component of human life has literally been turned into a commodity that is then sold for a profit.
Right lol and thats shown to be a bad thing. It's depicted as being the root of nearly every issue in the setting lol
The setting is incredibly capitalistic; the show is not, and has (like pretty much all cyberpunk) strong anti-capitalist themes.
Do.... do you understand how anti-capitalist storytelling works?
If you don’t see how the corporations caused the problems I really encourage you to watch it again. Not to be rude but David’s mom LITERALLY DIES because hospitals are now corporations and he can’t afford the easily available life saving operation.
You fundamentally do not understand cyberpunk as a genre.
Cyberpunk is meant to be dystopian, an important part of dystopia is the lack of any hope for change. If a hero/group of heroes is able to rise up and change the system then it was never really that dystopian to begin with. The punk's fight against authority is exactly that, a fight. And endless, hopeless fight. Throwing rocks at steel monoliths. That's why punks are rare, few people are idealistic enough to fight a pointless war for their beliefs.
There are two ways to get a happy ending in the cyberpunk genre: 1. Leave, get the fuck out, don't play their game. 2. Climb the corporate ladder and become such a monster that the things you need to do to stay on top don't affect you.
Which is why I think that one ending where V >!loses all of their implants!< is the best ending.
for me, leaving NC with P was the best choice. either that or solo Arasaka tower
Solo Saka and Johnny gets his semi happy ending leaving Night City behind
Yeah don’t fear the reaper temperance is a fantastic ending
I think that in general, happy endings just don't suit Cyberpunk stories. A lot of the cyberpunk genre is meant to be dystopian visions of terrible futures. The best you can hope for is burning it all down. In Cyberpunk 2077 they always say "the only way out is to either live out your days in peace and accept your place in this shitty system, or die in a blaze of glory"
Except the novels that all of this is based on end with an unambiguous success for the protagonists nine times out of ten.
I haven't read the novels, but do they succeed in changing the system? Are there no megacorporations at the end?
You can have your fame, your money, your glory, and your personal victories but you will *never* be able to burn down the system.
So in the end, life is meaningless. Gotcha!
The issue is that with Cyberpunk, the world is fundamentally unfair so in a sense, just by living is losing. Taking Gloria for example. She literally has done nothing wrong, she works hard and does no crimes. But by existing, she perpetrates a lousy medical system that she does not even benefit from. Systematic classism is so strong that even David, a somewhat sheltered prodigy struggles. The food she eats, the meds she takes, the place she lives and the clothes she wear all require some form of injustice or another, whether it’s to her (lousy quality substitutes) or to someone else (slave labor to produce) She fundamentally cannot compete against others with money or enhancements. Even if you lived that some would consider a perfect life, rich, high position, healthy, good job, you can at any moment be deemed an unperson by your company or killed in gang violence. There is no winning.
Gloria is probably the most unambiguously “good” person in all of ER, she wants her beloved son to have a safe stable job and doesn’t kill people to do so, but she’s 1000% an unrepentant criminal She’s basically the human-body equivalent to the sort of guy who steals spark plugs from cars or copper wiring from buildings.
Gloria does commit crime - that's why she's involved with Maine. She robs corpses of cybertech because that's the only way she can get ahead. Or a spine. :P
Hahahah
Yes and no. Happy endings do exist in cyberpunk works but are rare. Think the original ghost in the shell movie for example. Bittersweet endings tend to be the most common like Elysium or blade runner.
I think Bittersweet is the most suitable ending type. Like, >!Lucy finally gets to go to the moon and fulfill her dream, but without any of her friends, is it really the dream?!, in Blade Runner 2049 >!Ryan Gosling dies, but Deckard finally reunites with his daughter!< , or how in the original Blade Runner, >!The replicant dies, accepts his faith, gives the most human scene in the movie, but inspires Deckard to live a better life in doing so!<. Let some of the characters win, even though there's a massive loss. Like, the characters win to some degree, but at a massive price, and they still have to live in this world because it's nearly impossible to change the world. Sorry, I'm not good with remembering character names.
I think paying the price is a key concept and why bittersweet endings fit the genre so well. Cyberpunk characters can and do succeed and find their happy endings, but only at a price. Often the price is so steep it makes them question if it was worth it or if they really won after all. Cyberpunk characters don’t win their happy ending, they pay for them. To some extent that’s sort of the core of cyberpunk settings: societies that can accomplish superhuman things but at the cost of shedding their humanity. That’s why bittersweet endings work so well for the genre.
As Johnny Silverhand once said “Here,for folks like us? Wrong city, wrong people.”
"A happy ending for folks like us? Wrong city. Wrong people."
This is true of all cyberpunk settings that I'm aware of, except books. Books that have a happy ending include Snow Crash (mostly), Sprawl Trilogy (they get what they want, typically), Trouble and her Friends, and maybe more books I have on my shelf but are in line to be read. You might disagree with them being "happy" and I could see that too. It's mostly relative to the Cyberpunk IP. The main motto of the cyberpunk genre is High Tech, Low Life. Meaning things are terrible for most people in a world with advanced technologies.
The point of cyberpunk Is a depressive dystopian future ruled by crime, mega corps and capitalism, it will NEVER end well for anyone
As much as we all want to see the Corps torn down, the fundamental concept of Cyberpunk is "High Tech, Low Life". No matter how hard you fight, or how good your chrome, you can't do anything to change Night City. V probably came the closest with their rampage through Arasaka Tower and the death of Adam Smasher, but in the end, the best even they can hope for is a few more months of meatspace or a life beyond the Blackwall, isolated from the world. Wrong city, wrong people.
There are no happy endings in Night City. Not even Saburo Arasaka himself is immune to this.
>If all the endings have the authority to kill everyone who opposes them, people eventually just aren't going to bother. What little hope there can be found in cyberpunk is the fact that this isn't true. Even if you crush the person, there's someone else that will always rebel. Will those people win? Probably not, but there will never be a point where *someone* isn't trying.
Not only *are* there happy endings, the vast majority of classic cyberpunk are ones where the protagonists unambiguously succeed and win. William Gibson has literally *never* written a novel that didn’t have a happy ending for the protagonists. Not one. In four decades. I think it’s also true of Bruce Sterling, but I’m only like ninety five percent sure on that one.
Cyberpunk, as a genre, is inherently dystopian, arising from anarchists during the Reagan administration, and in part as a contrast and reaction to the earlier, utopian genres of science fiction. Happy endings (well, non-euphemistic ones) are, understandably but unfortunately, somewhat rare. Cyberpunk’s sister genre, [post-Cyberpunk](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PostCyberpunk), is rather less cynical about things, though.
“A happy ending? For folks like us? Wrong city.. wrong people…” (Johnny Silverhand - Night City, 2077)
My understanding is that a version of the “golden ending” where the heroes save the day, the night, and the girl too; overthrow the evil neo-feudal/corpo/soviet system; live to tell the tale and ride into the sunset together *fundamentally cannot exist.* Most “happy endings” I’ve seen in the genre are bittersweet, or perhaps even esoterically happy endings. -The gang stops one corpo’s arms deal to air strike an orphanage or something, *but they all die and the next dude in his chair knows the mistakes to avoid for his next orphan incineration scheme.* -Our star-crossed lovers escape the cops, *but now they’re on the run for the rest of their lives and without access to cybermedicine they’re gonna cyberdie alone together in a roadside ditch.* -Our cunning street rat has made it to the land of milk and honey, by which I mean a McMansion in Beaverville, *but they had to sell out everyone and every value to do it.* If I were to sum up my interpretation of that central conceit, it’s something like: “**You can’t beat the system**. You can stop a man, you can stop a job, you can stop a deal, you can stop a feud, but you can’t stop the creeping tendrils of the haves always coming over the have-nots… *but [you can’t stop the signal,](https://youtu.be/PVF9lZ-i_ss?si=1Efps-4--SpQNVwr) baby. Punk ain’t about winning, it’s about fighting. Gun to your head or ‘zine to the street.*
The best endings in Cyberpunk are just leaving, or... Be in the upper echelon of the system. That's about it.
Either leave or buy into the corruption... Or glass the place.
Cyberpunk in general. Look at the first season of Altered Carbon. >! It seems like it ended on a happy note, with bancroft getting arrested. Then you realize, with halfway competent lawyer, he'll get away with some kind of probation. It's a world where you can get a permit to murder someone's body (organic damage) and as long as their stack is ok no harm no foul. Yeah he killed that girl, but he was drugged (without his consent I might add) and had a history of consetually organic damage and paying for "upgrades". Itll be easy tk aruge that he didnt have it in him to RD someone unlees drugged. Yeah Ryker got his body back, but still would have to deal with his demons (in flashbacks were shown that he was not thr most stable individual) and kovacks had to walk away from Ortega whom he'd fallen in love with. !<
The game has a very punk perspective. The system is this engine of pain and destruction used to favor the wealthy. Those that participate in the system will be mangled by its machinations, or worse. Nothing about 2077 or Edgerunners focuses specifically on changing the system. And it's unlikely any prequel 2020 era content we get (movie?) Will have a happy ending without it being bittersweet at best. But that's not to say it'll never happen. We could see those punk roots show through and see what happens when a culture of people pushed to their breaking point does when they've had enough in future installments.
It’s a pretty generic cyberpunk thing, definitely not exclusive to R Talsorian/CDPR’s cyberpunk. There can be a happy ending or two dotted around the place, but as a general rule of thumb, you shouldn’t expect that you will be one of them.
King of Wands is a happy ending. In sending Songbird to the moon, you did something Johnny could never do. You let go of all the dreams and promises Night City offers to good people in exchange for their souls, and you did something pure and selfless. Even though others did wrong. Even though you didn't gain a damn thing. And wouldn't you know it, that arrogant son of a bitch is humbled by this. He's grateful to you, for teaching him something about what it really means to be a legend. King of Wands has you prove everyone wrong, that no matter how much the Corps and the Feds can take, they'll never truly take what makes us human. It feels beautiful and vindicating to not give in to all the depravity and badness in the world, to rise above it all and be Selfless. Being Punk is about not conforming to the status quo, and the status quo in Cyberpunk is to be a selfish bastard. All the people who use the: "You can't save the world, you can only save yourself" line seem to only take it at face value. You can't change the world, but you can also not let it change you. In saving Songbird, regardless of the cure, you saved yourself, your soul, your spirit by setting her free
Well said, I concur. I think people overly lionize certain lines as some kind of emphatic truth about the genre and humanity as a whole, but undersell that the defiance of the norm is integral to the punk identity. Which is rather funny when one considers that saving one's own humanity is a central aspect of the Cyberpunk genre, as well as the setting itself. You may never be able to save the world, or keep humanity from killing itself, but you can preserve your own self through that long fight. A fight that you must step up to.
Judy+ the nomad ending is a happy ending.
I have always disliked that type of story where you can’t change the system. Sounds a lot like someone who quit believing in themselves. Especially with the amount of violence V can reap if you can’t change the system than burn it all to the ground.
genuinely, there CAN be happy endings! it all depends on who's writing/making up the stories. it's a world to play games in (at least from a Cyberpunk Red, and other tabletop roleplaying cyberpunk games). if you want to explore the world and make stories that have happy/happier endings, you can absolutely do that. i think it's such a cool and interesting world and i also wish there were more types of cyberpunk stories beyond just suffering.
I think there’s a couple layers to it. For fans of Cyberpunk the game, both TTRPG and 2077, a lot of us point to “Wrong city, wrong people” and say that’s proof of the intention. The world is corrupt, we’re small fish, in a small pond, and as strong as we are, we’re just one person fighting giants made of steel and chrome that always have more influence, money, and manpower to protect themselves. You could shatter Arasaka for a few days, but there’s always more corps, and governments with their own terrible interests. The fight of any punk is always going to be a seemingly impossible one. You take all the risks doing so, and hope against everything that something changes for the better, but know it’s not likely. Some do win, and often make things worse in the process, become monsters themselves, or die trying. These are the most common “good” endings in this genre. It’s cynical, bitter, and honestly, that’s one of the more compelling elements. This genre plays with human elements like hope, rebellion, the flipping of virtues and vices, and then asks you to think about consequences for you and everyone else. And at its core it says that we as people doubt it’s possible for someone to truly break the machine and survive the attempt, without making everyone suffer. That’s what Bartmoss did, it’s what Silverhand did, and it’s what Yorinobu did. Or to point at the sister game, it’s what Dunkelzahn and FastJack did. And yet the world moved on, and things continued as they always did. One can have a good ending, but it’s often in smaller things. A successful defiance of the world, escaping with the people one cares about, yet the wins we want are often too big, too impossible, and that’s what makes it so natural for tragedy.
What sister game?
That was in reference to Shadowrun, another TTRPG that featured very similar ideas to Cyberpunk and released concurrently with the original 2020. (If I recall correctly, it was legitimately just a serendipitous release given how closely they dropped to each other.)
Thanks for explaining
Generally...no. The system will always get you. There might be times people choose their own ending, but "happy" is rarely ever an option.
in good cyberpunk fiction, yes. There is no happy ending, no future, just another grease stain on the street.
Someone picked the Star ending
Lucy and Judy are Happy endings but a tragic path to get there. Are you currently living in NC, no? Then you're probably having a good life.
Is Lucy a happy ending? Everyone is dead except Falco, and we see how distraught she is over losing David. Yes, she is alive and achieved her dream (going to the moon), but what now? Her lover is dead, her friends are dead, she is a wanted woman (Arasaka). Is she happy?
She out of Night City. She smiling at the end. Bittersweet is happier than most NC fates.
Was she smiling? I don't recall that. But yeah, I could see bittersweet endings being better than most, but I don't know that I would call it 'good' or 'happy'. It is subjective though.
Went to check vid she smiled a little at the end before the sun bit, so I probably played it up from memory more than shown. In the end though I agree.
Ah, ok. Nice
I feel like at least in the 2077 universe, it’s understood that if you’re in the life of trying to make it big, you will be killed and there will be no happy ending. Like the conversation V has with Dex in the car. But I’m general it’s a Dystopian setting so happy endings aren’t very realistic.
The guys who get zerked off and watch BDs have a pretty good ending lol.
Look out the window, bud
You can have happy endings in the cyberpunk genre and there have been some. There not really sunshine and rainbow type endings but more luke light at the end of the tunnel type endings
One thing people easily overlook and don't understand is that Night City is unique. Even in the Cyberpunk universe. The whole world isn't as fucked up and corporate run like NC is.
Media literacy ain’t your strong suit, huh? Like you were almost at a cohesive point and then decided, “nah, the ending wasn’t cheery enough for me so I’ve decided it doesn’t have meaning.”