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Characters Who Deserved Better Fates in Cyberpunk 2077

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1 month ago

October 22, 2024

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Night City is a truly unforgiving place, and some characters that head to this expansive neon city will find their spirits crushed and their relationships destroyed. Cyberpunk 2077 can be truly brutal, and some of its best characters have harsh fates that they might not entirely deserve. For some characters, they are chewed up and spit back out, whereas others are swallowed whole.

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With Cyberpunk 2077 presenting a Night City that doesn’t forgive, some chooms might want to see which of the best characters involved don’t deserve the fates that they end up with to further showcase just how much of a bad place this sleepless city can be.

7 Alt Cunningham

The Best Netrunner in Night City Who Became Soulkiller’s First Victim

Altiera Cunningham, better known as Alt, the best netrunner in Night City (Cyberpunk 2077) — Credits: CD Projekt Red

Alt Cunningham never had an easy life, and her relationship with Johnny Silverhand was nothing short of complicated. Alt was one of the best, if not the best Netrunner in Night City during the 2000s. However, it wasn’t long until she caught the attention of the evil Arasaka corporation, and they kidnapped her for nefarious reasons.

Alt had her consciousness transferred into the Net by Arasaka, and she remains the first victim of her forcefully created Soulkiller program. A woman with so much potential, forced to fight for survival in the Blackwall, Alt’s identity is all but gone, and all that remains is the digitized consciousness of a powerful cyber-being.

6 Claire Russell

The Afterlife’s Bartender Who Lost Her Husband to Corpo Rivalries

When players meet Claire Russell, they might enjoy her charming demeanor, and respect how she can craft a mean drink behind the Afterlife’s bar. However, there is much more to Claire’s story than she lets on, and those who complete her The Beast In Me side jobs will understand that it hasn’t always been easy for Claire Russell.

Claire fell in love with a man named Dean during her transition, and their love blossomed beautifully. Now as husband and wife, Claire and Dead would engage in a dangerous love for street racing. However, this love would be torn apart when a street racing rival would kill Dean. Now as a widower out for revenge, Claire seeks the man who killed her husband, but will killing him bring a sense of closure?

5 Elizabeth & Jefferson Peralez

A Wholesome Couple Who Campaign For Change, But Have Their Memories Altered

Elizabeth and Jefferson Peralez in Cyberpunk 2077

Night City is in desperate need of real change. The city is a cesspit of crime and corruption, but the mayoral campaign of Jefferson Peralez, with the support of his loving wife Elizabeth, is exactly what Night City needs. However, there are those within organizations in the shadows who would prefer the mayor of Night City be an easily controlled puppet.

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As such, Jefferson and Elizabeth are having their minds involuntarily altered, forcing them into service through subliminal rewirings of their brains which affect their moods, desires, and memories. The Peralez family were good people, and no one deserves to have their identities stolen from them to serve something fiendish.

4 Jackie Welles

A Small-Time Merc Who Just Wanted to Hit the Major Leagues

Jackie Welles always dreamed of leaving Heywood behind for the major leagues, where he could use his talent for the merc life to become a legend in the Afterlife. Jackie’s ambition was grand, and his charming optimism was something to follow and enjoy. That was until a heist went wrong at Arasaka.

Jackie’s death weighs heavy on V, and a character that deserved to make it to the major leagues with his best friend, and prove his abusive father wrong, was left to bleed out in a car. Jackie’s family values were important to his merc career, and now he takes it to the grave, mourned by friends and family, or perhaps worse, digitized by Arasaka for interrogation.

3 Evelyn Parker

A Former Doll Who Dreamed of a Better Life

The enigmatic woman that first recruits V into a job that involves stealing a Relic from Arasaka, Evelyn Parker has a mystery and confidence about her. However, beneath the surface, there’s a terrified woman that just wants to get out of Night City with all the Eurodollars she could muster to escape the cruel life that was thrown at her.

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Evelyn is a doll, which means she’s basically forced into sex work in Night City. When the Voodoo Boys discovered she had failed in acquiring the Relic, they hacked her, reducing her to a vulnerable state that would see her used by the worst of Night City, including the Scavs who forced her into their sick and twisted X-BDs. Unable to live with what she has endured, Evelyn Parker takes her own life.

2 V

A Small-Time Merc Who Doesn’t Want to Fade Away

V and their best friend Jackie had always dreamed of hitting the major leagues and getting their own spot in the afterlife through their merc work. Yet, one heist later involving a Relic and Arasaka would turn everything upside down, where V is killed by their Fixer. Resurrected through the power of the Relic, and told that their mind is being rewritten for the consciousness of Johnny Silverhand, V will do anything it takes to survive.

No matter who V has to work for, they will do it in a desperate effort to survive. V’s condition is terminal, and the idea that they could fade away without being remembered, disappearing into the back of Johnny’s mind as it rewrites V’s, is a fate worse than death. V has been manipulated and abused by seemingly everyone who promised to help them, and Johnny Silverhand is always along for the ride.

1 Song So Mi

A Young Woman Forced Into FIA Service With Corrupting AIs Eating Her Mind

A screenshot of Songbird in Cyberpunk 2077. — Image via CD Projekt Red

Song So Mi was arguably the character who suffered the most thanks to her story in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. She was once a promising young Netrunner, and the FIA took a liking to her as they forced her to become an agent in the service of the New United States of America. Song’s work would devastate her mind and body, forcing cybernetic enhancements to withstand the dangers of the Blackwall.

Song’s body became more machine than woman, and even then, her mind was slowly being invaded by the Blackwall’s Rogue AIs, each and every time she explored it. In her last moments, Song can either be transferred to the Moon to save herself, betraying everyone she ever knew in a chance to survive, or she can lose her mind to the Rogue AIs that have plagued her for years.