There’s only one mission I remember where you engage with any sort of revolutionary rhetoric. It’s the one where you’re tracking down hidden messages calling for an overthrow of capitalism. Johnny’s there commenting, and despite how he’s supposed to be this militant revolutionary himself, he completely mocks the hidden messages. He goads you to find the rest and where they’re coming from, I think he says they’re probably written by some dumb angsty kid. I thought it seemed really out of tone, but now I realize the game’s writers completely missed the point of the setting.
Then again I’m losing faith in cyberpunk as a genre to begin with. William Gibson turned out to be the biggest liberal on Earth. Mike Pondsmith doesn’t seem much better.
The game does go out of its way to attenuate or neuter a revolutionary message every chance it gets. Hell, V recognizes the problems with unfettered capitalism (conversation with Takemura outside Arasaka warehouses), but defends the status quo every chance they get (convo between johnny and V in Pacifica after Placide). The game always defaults to implying the system is fine for most people.
Not like he is literally dying because of the system. I wish I could play V as a fledgling socialist, honestly.
V isn’t really portrayed as dying because of systemic problems, though, he’s dying because of his weird individual problem of installing a prototype brain chip. He could just as easily have not installed it and been no worse off: the run’s already fucked and he gets killed by Dex anyway.
If there wasn’t such a strong incentive in the system to become wealthy, V possibly wouldn’t ever try to get into problematic situations like the Konpeki heist.
Night City is known as the city of dreams because it offers the rich and powerful all the comforts money can buy, and a quick way there is merc work. If you don’t have money, you’re less than nothing.
Johnny also does this during Judy’s quest line to start a revolution at Clouds, a brothel.
Despite being portrayed as a revolutionary and a rebel, Johnny spends the entire time shitting on Judy and the other sex workers specifically because they’re sex workers - the plan isn’t good, but Johnny’s problems aren’t with the plan at any point.
All cyber, no punk.
