Recommended Game Story · Cyberpunk 2077 Part 16
Chapters in this story
Spoiler Notice: This is a commentary series covering major events, companion stories, branching paths, and endings of the main game and Phantom Liberty. Each ending is the result of different choices and does not all happen at once. I do not transcribe original dialogue or reenact every scene. Unstated inner thoughts are distinguished as interpretations. AI illustrations are symbolic reconstructions, and V's appearance, gender, and relationships vary depending on the playthrough.
Chapter 1 · When a discarded agent receives a call again
Solomon Reed is an agent who has worked for the FIA for a long time. Even though he was abandoned in a past operation, he could not fully detach himself from his duty to Myers and the country. His appearance as he is called back in Dogtown reveals both his professionalism and his fatigue. He is a person who finishes the job he is assigned, but it is precisely that diligence that allows him to continue protecting a system that has consumed him. He is a character who makes one ask when responsibility becomes loyalty, and when loyalty becomes self-abandonment.
Alex shows more overt dissatisfaction with the time she has spent left behind in Dogtown. Although she has made a career out of the ability to become someone else, she has had few opportunities to choose her own future. Her words wishing for rest and a different life cannot be read merely as jokes to lighten the mood of the operation. It means that a person who had to keep waiting even after the state's mission ended now truly wants time for herself.
In the process of finding Song So-mi, one meets Slider, another figure from the Voodoo Boys, and the risks of contact with the Blackwall are further revealed. Even for a skilled netrunner, the realm to which Song So-mi is connected is no ordinary job. Seeing the damage from this process, one comes to understand that Song So-mi can be both a victim with powerful abilities and a being who puts others at risk. It is difficult to handle subsequent choices with only one of these two explanations.
Reed says he will save Song So-mi. The key point is that his words are a mix of personal responsibility and the mission to return her to the state. He reads as someone who wants to believe that the two goals are compatible. Beyond whether he is a liar or not, V must examine what results his sincerity can actually produce. Even someone who sincerely wants to help me may not acknowledge the freedom I desire.
Chapter 2 · The luxurious prison of Black Sapphire
At the Black Sapphire event, the outside and inside of Dogtown are connected in different ways. Hansen is not a figure who moves solely by force, but a ruler who knows the value of information and deals. While the language of socializing and entertainment is exchanged, technology with immense danger and human bodies become the subjects of negotiation. While the residents below worry about their livelihoods, deals that will change their futures are being made above.
V meets Song So-mi in person at that location and learns more about the price she has paid for repeatedly dealing with the Blackwall within Myers' mission. Her mechanized body is both evidence of her powerful abilities and a trace of how she herself has been turned into a tool for work. If one judges her as inhuman based solely on her appearance, one paradoxically resembles the gaze of the power that treated her as an asset. What she feels and what she fears remain important.
The fact that Song So-mi made a deal with Hansen makes one see the President's crash incident in a completely different light. She sought an exit from control, but she was not in a position where all her plans went according to her will. One must distinguish between the fact that she was involved in the plan and the claim that she intended everything that happened afterward. At the same time, the desperation of her escape does not eliminate the danger she passed on to others.
The neural matrix to be used for treatment is an object on which several people have staked different futures. V hopes for survival, Song So-mi hopes to escape control, and Reed hopes for rescue and the completion of his mission. Everyone is aiming for the same object, but the ends they desire are different. Like the operation at Konpeki Plaza, there is no guarantee that people who share one goal know the same truth. This is why conversations held in luxurious rooms feel unsettling every time.
Data and Writing Guide
This is an original commentary and critique written by the TroubleMaker operations team, referencing public data and with the help of AI. Official introductions and visual materials are from the developer, and the separately marked walkthroughs are community data comparing events and branches. This is not a full reproduction of all dialogue, quests, or choices, and the content distinguished as interpretation in the text is not a definitive explanation of official lore.
Data verification date: 2026-10-17.
CD PROJEKT RED official work introduction
comments 0