CAGE or FPGE for CP2077

[chuckdm]

So first of all, obviously, spoilers for the game's endings. There, you're warned.

 

For Fallout: New Vegas we have mods like Continue After Game Ending (CAGE) and Functional Post Game Ending (FPGE). These mods add a LOT of replayability and flexibility to FONV, because they eliminate the constant tension between completing the narratively time-sensitive main quest and doing potentially time-wasting side quests. By allowing you to complete any side quests at your leisure, after the main quest is finished, then you simply eliminate this whole problem and the whole game makes much better sense.

 

However, there's a critical difference between a game like FONV and CP2077. Specifically, the Courier survives in every ending FONV has to offer. In CP2077, V doesn't technically survive any of them. We are told V dies in six months in every "good" ending and in the "bad" endings she dies before the credits roll. (I play female V always but insert he or they or whatever works for you.) Thus, there's not really any ending where something like CAGE or FPGE works because V is either dead or very quickly dying.

 

The solution, I think, is something akin to the Citadel Epilogue Mod for Mass Effect 3. Essentially, remove all the options in favor of a single ending, and rewrite it slightly to remove any indication that V doesn't live happily ever after. (Or at least, until she catches another bullet. V is a merc in Night City, after all. There's no way she's gonna live to see her 50th birthday regardless.) And I think the best option for this is actually the "secret" ending - the one where V and Johnny solo Arasaka Tower. Why? Because both V and Johnny need to survive for this to work.

 

You see, a post-ending mod wouldn't be able to strip Johnny out of all the side quests where he makes an appearance. A quest like Space Oddity doesn't work without Johnny still hitching a ride in V's head, and there's literally over a hundred little quests just like it. It would simply be too hard to strip Johnny out of the game. As such, our new single ending has to be a scenario where both Johnny and V survive so that both can be always present for the side quests.

 

With that established, here's my suggestion. The fight to Mikoshi proceeds as normal, then when V and Johnny arrive, the mod kicks in. Alt suggests that rather than trying to choose, V and Johnny can continue to cohabitate in V's head. How you ask? By using the relic to their advantage. Rather than trying to override V's mind with Johnny's engram, Alt makes a new engram. A new engram that's a perfect copy of V's current mental state - half V, half Johnny. Alt then places this new engram on the relic, and "reboots" V's body (essentially defibrillates her) causing the relic to begin the process of overwriting V's mind with the new hybrid engram. The screen fades to black, and then we get a "6 months later" screen while V is placed in an artificial coma to allow the relic to finish overwriting her organic brain with the new hybrid engram. V wakes up in Viktor's shop, good as new, ready to continue her adventure.

 

So that's my suggestion. I have literally zero of the skills required to do any of this, but I think it's a clean solution to the irrational tension between the urgency of the main quest and the side quests, and it also gives us a genuinely good ending where V actually survives, and she doesn't even have to kick Johnny out to do it.

 

Thoughts? Volunteers?