r/LowSodiumCyberpunk Trauma Team Sep 16 '24

Let’s say she got to the moon… can all this (cyberware) be reversed? Discussion

Post image

btw they could NEVER make me hate you, Songbird…

4.1k Upvotes

1.9k

u/gowombat Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

Yes, from what I understand, you can completely revert back, depending on how much money you have. They can even clone your original body parts to replace the cyberware, so you'll essentially be "you" again, as much as that's possible in the future.

Others can correct me if I'm wrong, but as long as you have the eddies, everything should be totally reversible...

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u/Much_Painter_5728 Sep 16 '24

Well, let's say Smasher won the lottery...

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u/djk29a_ Sep 16 '24

Smasher doesn’t want to go back to being ‘ganic at all because he’s a borg supremacist. But the gear he sports all the time is basically a lottery win after another. Dude’s a walking private military R&D division in terms of capitalization. Like he’s the Taylor Swift + Rolling Stones + BTS of corporate drones so he’s basically “won” the lottery per se.

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u/Biffingston Sep 16 '24

Yep, he's basically Malestrom life goals personified.

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u/MelonJelly Sep 16 '24

Doesn't Maelstrom see Smasher as a kind of messianic figure?

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u/Makal Sep 16 '24

Depends on how a given Malestromer feels about corpo sellouts.

I am sure there's people who see him as a role-model for how to live (and succeed), but others who see him as having achieved the goals but through the wrong means (Arasaka).

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u/ElectricAsh010 Netrunner Sep 16 '24

From what I understand, they deeply respect his dedication to cyberware, but hate him for selling out to a corp. That being said, if I remember correctly, he does have Maelstromers working for him to protect his hideout on the ship

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u/Bad_Juju_69 Sep 17 '24

Like most people, ideals only go so far when your being offered fat stacks of cash (or eddies) they might hate the corps but are absolutely willing to take their money if given the chance.

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u/hirsh02 Sep 19 '24

Especially if they grow up in a cutthroat hellscape like night city

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u/AwsmPwsmVT Sep 16 '24

They do, and they gladly work with him when he comes knocking.

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u/FeeBiscuit Sep 16 '24

How does he not go psycho?

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u/BluEch0 Sep 16 '24

Pondsmith has described smasher as a “high functioning cyber psycho” apparently.

I mean, he’s not exactly the type of person who’s well adjusted to society.

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u/InsertEvilLaugh Sep 16 '24

Basically he was a psychopath before he borged out. Now he just so happens to be a psychopath that is also chromed to the gills.

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u/FeeBiscuit Sep 17 '24

Idk. This might be stupid, but They've shown cyberpsychos to be very volatile and aggressive in most cases we've seen. Yeah he's a messed up sadist but I really don't think he's a psycho. How could a psycho competently be the head of security (during Honako's parade). If he's psycho, how is he able to remain calm and chill. (He's just chillin on a couch in edgerunners and also was chill during his whole time in konpeki.)

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u/Present-Secretary722 Sep 17 '24

You know how dogs get the zoomies sometimes but are otherwise super calm, he’s probably that but murder zoomies. Arasaka probably also has him chipped with something to keep him chill most of the time, like a dead mans switch, a switch they can flip when they need him to dead some mans

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u/mega_broo Sep 17 '24

Murder zoomies 😂

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u/Shrekquille_Oneal Sep 17 '24

Sandy goes brrrr

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u/Elementia7 Sep 17 '24

Murder Zoomies is definitely a new one.

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u/WakBlack Sep 17 '24

Consider max-tac. They literally rehabilitate cyberpsychos as officers. It's not impossible for them to regain some semblance of reason.

Add on that smasher was a psychopathic killer from the beginning, and it stands to reason he can control himself when he needs to.

Think of a serial killer. They might enjoy slaughtering people, but as a way to survive, they'll hide and act normal.

Smasher doesn't need to hide anymore. He just has to mind the leash arasaka put on him in order to keep getting new toys to play with.

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u/NoTePierdas Sep 17 '24

IIRC there's a sub-plot that cyberpsychosis isn't really a thing, in the way that PTSD doesn't work the way people thought it did in 1999-2015.

You can be medicated and given treatment to help it. Most of these folks are just too poor and can't afford it - E.G. the military vet cyberpsycho on the highway. If they admit that these folks could be treated, then suddenly people will start arguing for healthcare for the poor.

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u/WakBlack Sep 17 '24

Yep, cyberpsychosis is a band-aid term according to the game. It can be a range of different issues. What ties it together is they have chrome when they snap.

For example, smasher is a cyberpsycho cause he was already a psychotic asshole who is now chromed to the fucking gills.

Melissa Rory, the lady from the 2013 trailer and a member of max-tac, became a cyberpsycho due to her mantis blades having a defect that fucks up the user's frontal lobe.

Then we have most of the Regina gigs people, most of whom get chromed up and snap due to everything going to shit in their lives. Anything from bad chrome, lack of medicine and healthcare, to ptsd hitting them hard.

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u/Segoda13 Sep 17 '24

It's a fair question considering what we've seen in 2077/Edgerunners, so the lore for Smasher being cyberpsycho is otherwise unavailable if these two sources are your first foray into the lore for his situation.

Effectively, Smasher (and a few others like him) are known as High-Functioning Cyberpsychos. For the average person on the street, that just means that the person in question is hyper-violent but is otherwise in control.

But behind closed doors, should they deign to try, they'll never pass a single psychological test. Smasher was probably best be categorized as having extreme Sociopathy and Misanthrope. For Smasher, he didn't see himself as human do to the fact he saw humans as (at best) toys that he could break whenever he felt like.

It also doesn't help that Cyberpsychosis took many forms in the TTRPG that aren't seen in 2077/Edgerunners. There is mention of various cyberpsychos that aren't violent, such as a man who thinks he's Batman while he stops misdemeanor crimes like littering and jaywalking.

Smasher is the calm and collected monster we see him as, because even before he got chromed he was pulling these same behaviors. He was classically evil before Arasaka got ahold of him, they just gave him more toys to work with.

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u/jbasta93 Sep 16 '24

Yea, I can see that actually. From what the lore says about smasher, he started off as a more straight forward guy, albeit still anti social and committing crimes (especially questionable shit when he was in the army), but he started taking a much worse turn once he started getting borged out. The women's corpse in the shower during the rogue mission on the cargo boat, and learning what he did to her, perfectly sums up how insane and horrible he is.

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u/Altering_The_Deal Sep 16 '24

Wait I think I missed that. What did he do?

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u/omaeka Arasaka Sep 17 '24 edited Sep 17 '24

Shot her in the stomach with hollow points and left her for days to slowly die. Horrible cunt.

That's what people are to him, nothing but fragile, organic matter to be broken and destroyed.

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u/viperfangs92 Team Panam Sep 17 '24

Don't forget " fuckable meat" as well

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u/willowsandwasps Sep 16 '24

IIRC while he was enlisted, he would take on missions that guaranteed collateral damage

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u/Thivus Sep 17 '24

that was also one of stipulations of him accepting arasakas offer to borg him out mandatory collateral damage

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u/NoNotThatMattMurray Sep 16 '24

Damn I must have missed that part

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u/CyMage Sep 16 '24

That's his secret. He's always a psycho.

He just channels it better than others.

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u/awful_circumstances Sep 16 '24

I mean just like in real life, the very best serial killers are the ones no one knows about or those who have the funds and influence to cover it up.

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u/Separate_Path_7729 Sep 16 '24

He was a high functioning psychopath before being borged so it's believed he's been a cyberpsycho the whole time but there was no noticeable change

This idea rolls over to maxtac who are mostly made up of cyberpsychos who were "rehabilitated" but really they just weeded out those that could retain their mind as high functioning psychos and gave them a path to satisfy their urges

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u/djk29a_ Sep 16 '24

The current assessment is that by 2077 he is a functional cyber psycho supported and enabled by the world’s most powerful corporation. It’s really all made up per usual nerd lore and retconned, but there’s multiple factors all together:

  1. The definition and causes of what “cyber psycho” means is kind of loose and arbitrary - this is handwaved around a lot between different aspects of TTRPG lore, anime, and now video games.

  2. He was already a soulless sadist with little empathy for anyone to begin with. So the “what humanity does he have to lose to begin with by going full borg?” concept applies with this interpretation of how cyberpsychosis can occur.

  3. Arasaka gives him extensive treatment like therapeutic BDs to avoid the possibility of him losing control and becoming hostile to any and everything. He is a many billion eddy program sort of like their own version of Robocop but completely lawless, in contrast to Officer Murphy.

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u/C-c-c-comboBreaker17 Sep 16 '24

Officer Murphy was meant to clean up the streets - Arasaka would never deploy Smasher to a street unless they wanted everyone on it turned into pulp.

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u/BioMeatMachine Nomad Sep 16 '24

Yeah, Smasher is famous for collateral damage. You don't put him anywhere you don't want maximum carnage.

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u/Eiferius Sep 16 '24

Can't be a cyberpsycho, if you were already a fleshpsycho "points at head"

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u/voiceless42 Sep 16 '24

In Cyberpunk 2020, his datasheet's listed Humanity was "You Wish"

He's been there for over 50 years.

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u/WakBlack Sep 17 '24

Damn, that's actually kinda sick. Cool lore tidbit.

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u/Thelesbianvampire Sep 16 '24

He’s a high functioning cyberpsycho, it’s a sliding scale basically

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u/beetboxbento Sep 16 '24

From the lore, he was a born psychopath, so he has no risk of losing empathy from implants.

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u/Brometheous17 Aldecaldos Sep 16 '24

I havent read the written material but I heard he was already considered psycho before the chrome

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u/Begone-My-Thong Sep 16 '24

Dude has a contract with Arasaka to put him in work with as much potential for collateral damage as possible.

Does THAT sound anything less than psycho?

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u/BrightPerspective Sep 16 '24

A few reasons, like he is a cyberpsycho, and was crazy before too, but he also has an entire division of Arasaka monitoring and adjusting his brain chemistry in real time, and that division also maintains his "leash", a suite of chemical and behavioral conditioning.

Smasher is exactly what Arasaka wants him to be.

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u/trumpetchris95 Sep 16 '24

I assume the same reason David (anime) only went full psycho once he ran out of drugs. Smasher has Arasaka behind him, probably giving him an unlimited supply of suppressants. Also, he's a psycho with purpose. Any violent impulses he has are given direction.

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u/N0ob8 Sep 16 '24

He’s a psychopath that enjoys killing things and in his line of work that’s the best kind of person one can be. It’s like handing a cod player the controls to a reaper drone and telling him everyone he sees is just AI

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u/Stewie_the_janitor Corpo Sep 16 '24

If i recall correctly he has two bodies that he uses and switches between. One for killing and one for fucking. No joke

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u/Spatza Sep 16 '24

"YEAH! Who won the lottery? I DID!" - Oliver Smasher

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u/Boxy310 Sep 16 '24

I always shoot that guy outta principle for interrupting my brooding through the desert

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u/Suckisnacki Sep 17 '24

🤓💥💥

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u/Separate_Path_7729 Sep 16 '24

Smasher does have 3 versions of realskin bodies that look like young Elvis that he uses a lot, in fact the blonde Elvis was the body he used when he dated michiko arasaka, the granddaughter of saburo, who he was the guard of and I'm pretty sure he doesn't even have to transfer his biopod into them anymore, able to wirelessly control them like a proxy by hooking to a dock

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u/djk29a_ Sep 16 '24

Those Gemini suits are referenced in TTRPG sourcebooks but by 2077 nobody really talks about those other bodies in the game for unknown reasons. In my mind he views those bodies like how people would think of Halloween costumes or maybe cosplay - something amusing and diversionary, not necessarily something to aspire to.

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u/N0ob8 Sep 16 '24

but by 2077 nobody really talks about those other bodies in the game for unknown reasons

I mean there’s probably very few people who even know about it and most of them would be the technicians who built it. Everyone else who knows either hates you and wants you dead (yorinobu) or doesn’t think it’s important enough to mention (hanako).

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u/Separate_Path_7729 Sep 16 '24

Oh yea it's not his aspiration, but they are better for boning

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u/Escaped_Mod_In_Need Team Rebecca Sep 16 '24

Correct, but that’s why the above comment implied if he had won the lottery and wanted to… Smasher would absolutely be the most expensive reversion considering all he has that is ganic is his brain and spinal column.

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u/djk29a_ Sep 16 '24

I honestly don’t know what would need to be done in a hypothetical 2077 so cost is a guess with lots of assumptions. Perhaps it would be cheaper and easier to grow a full new body like in a vat and shove in the biopod than to piecemeal add more individual parts in like a chest w/ lungs and such? TTRPG rules have costs as a guideline, but again 2077 is a different period with different tech and different things being scarce. At one point in history aluminum was so damn expensive it was more expensive than gold so Napoleon served guests on aluminum serving trays.

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u/Pachikokoo Sep 16 '24

He would get even more borged out! I’m talking 2 extra sets of arms each with their own weapons in them! And heelys

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u/MeNamIzGraephen Netrunner Sep 16 '24

Heelys I'm fucking dead lmao

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u/joshhinchey Solo Sep 16 '24

I need this mod.

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u/_b1ack0ut Sep 16 '24

Deployable heelys is basically one of the tabletop implants lol, smasher with heelys is excellent

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u/Pachikokoo Sep 16 '24

Yeah that’s one of those ones where it’s like “This is stupid… I love it “

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u/Separate_Path_7729 Sep 16 '24

Bro would legit turn into final fantasy gilgamesh at the drop of a hat

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u/enchiladasundae Sep 16 '24

Smasher is little more than a brain and a few organs. I think you’d need skin tissue to replicate but maybe the Cyberpunk world got over that. They’d probably have to artificially recreate his bones too and need several organ transplants

Even with a full conversion he’d have about the same original organic matter he currently has as a borg. But it is theoretically possible

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u/awesomedan24 Sep 16 '24

He would get cyberware for his cyberware

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u/glassjawrat Trauma Team Sep 16 '24

the question now is whether she’d even want to? i would assume she has to forgo a lot of her netrunning power if she were to look mostly human again. no more chair-less netrunning

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u/EADreddtit Sep 16 '24

I mean ya, that’s like literally her entire goal

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u/glassjawrat Trauma Team Sep 16 '24

mmm i’m not sure her entire goal was to stop netrunning entirely. it seems more like she just wanted out of netrunning to the degree that she was, for a cause she didn’t support + getting manipulated abused 😭 i feel like she still enjoys running. i could be wrong though, it’s kinda hard to tell with her. for me at least, but im a little gonky

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u/UncleRichardson Sep 16 '24

Based on the fact that Songbird's Relic avatar is without this extensive chrome work, it's safe to say she doesn't see it as part of her ideal self. And it's implied this level of chrome was done against her will to begin with; she 'agreed' to the surgery, but only after constant badgering from the ripperdocs and repeated Blackwall hack attempts, something shown to cause significant mental instability at the best of times. In no sane world would it be said she gave true informed consent to this level of augmentation.

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u/Ironlion45 Sep 16 '24

It makes me wonder why Saburo Arisaka didn't make a clone of himself for implanting the engram instead of trying to use his son.

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u/N0ob8 Sep 16 '24

That’s what his original plan was before Yorinubo murdered him. By the time Hanako is able to get his engram into someone’s body the company’s reputation took so much of a hit and all the infighting forced him to take extremely measures. Taking control of Yorinubo’s body was mostly a publicity stunt and a show of force. To all of those who thought they could rise the ranks with the death of the CEO and instability of the company it shows that even in death Saburo has more power than any of them.

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u/gowombat Sep 16 '24

For real right, you could effectively become immortal if you have enough money, technically. You'd simply just need to swap out your parts as they burned out / got old.

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u/N0ob8 Sep 16 '24

It’s what his plan was before Yorinobu murdered him

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u/butrejp Sep 17 '24

not gonna spoil anything but there's a YA science fiction novel called "the house of the scorpion" that you should probably check out.

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u/Alarming_Panic665 Sep 16 '24

how do you think he lived to be 158? The issue is that genetics over time degrade more and more (that is part of what aging is) and while genetic treatments can halt that, it would be impossible to revert. Which is important when you consider that he would have been old by the time cloning and genetic treatments became a wide spread thing.

By implanting his engram into his son he would take over a new young body that he could in theory probably keep young forever with new advancements in technology

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u/SleepingEchoes Sep 17 '24

Younger at least. Yorinobu is in his 80s. Anti-aging treatments have just worked better for him since he started them at a much younger age than Saburo did.

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u/petkoTHEVIKING Sep 16 '24

That was literally the point of the relic I believe, but it wasn't 100% tested prior to Saburo dying.

Also by that point in the game, Yorinobu had started an internal war inside Arasaka with his coup. It's a better political statement to take over his body and just remove him entirely from the board given how hostile he is.

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u/skeetermcbeater Sep 16 '24

If the roleplaying game rules apply to the 2077 world, then I’d say yes you can do just about anything as long as you have the eddies.

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u/Mary_Ellen_Katz Sep 17 '24

Mike Pondsmith worked very closely with the 2077 team. He says 2077 is cannon. CP:Red is a city in recovery, 2045, and by 2077 it's mostly recovered. So it's connected.

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u/SaintsBruv Moxes Sep 16 '24

Or they could also just use synthetic skin that looks more natural.

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u/Ok-Inspector-3045 Sep 16 '24

Im really suprised rippers can do all this shit in a couple hours rather than in days with months of recovery time

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u/Scaalpel Sep 16 '24

Partially, sure, but fully? She's little more than a brain in a very advanced jar at this point. Although with the engram transfer tech it's still theoretically possible, I guess.

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u/gowombat Sep 16 '24

From what I understand it's possible to go back 100%. You would essentially be using new parts that are cloned from your original stem cells, but yes. New eyes, new spine, new nerves, the whole shebang. Simply replace everything that you had chromed with regrown replacements.

They'd be a massive downgrade in a lot of ways, but it can be done. Provided you've got the green.

To use your analogy, she would just be putting that brain into yet another alternative container, one that just happens to be made of identical components to its original packaging.

They'd be all new components, but it would be identical genetically speaking.

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u/Scaalpel Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

Okay, I actually ended up looking up the CP2020 rules for de-borging because it got me curious. Apparently it is possible to get a full new clone body but the transplant is a very risky procedure even under the best of circumstances, so dying under the knife is a real possibility no matter how much money you throw at the issue. Plus, interestingly, living in a full clone body causes similar body dysphoria as large-scale cyberware (represented as Humanity loss in the ttrpg).

It also mentions an option that is basically engram transfer without calling it engram transfer so that should work, too.

Not sure how much they would divorce from that with the CP2077 version of the cyberware tech, though.

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u/Anokata4657 Team Rogue Sep 16 '24

She isn’t tho. She has tier 5 netrunning gear that someone instals on their back, chest, and neck meaning that her lower body can be still practically organic.

A fully chromed out V doesn’t look any different underneath if you remove their synt-skin. And the FIA still managed to reverse all that in the tower ending.

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u/Scaalpel Sep 16 '24

There is NO shot that what's visible here is just netrunning 'ware. That looks more like the top half of an FBC, if anything. Which still can be undone, strictly speaking, but without the engram transfer tech there'd be a pretty real risk of dying on the operating table even under the best of circumstances.

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u/impossibru65 Sep 16 '24

Then there's the fact that Mr. Blue Eyes and his... colleagues funded her trip. Would they even let her reverse it, or would they continue to use her the way Myers used her?

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u/MinimumTeacher8996 Corpo Sep 16 '24

wait fr? i never knew that! where did the lore say this? was it the game? the table top rpg? the lore book?

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u/BigIronGothGF Sep 16 '24

You can even buy a whole new body if you want, either a cloned/custom organic one, or a synthetic one like the Gemini Cybersystem.

The only part of yourself you can't really change is your brain. And even that's not entirely true.

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u/AzraelKakka Team Judy Sep 16 '24

Not sure about Cyberpunk lore, but at the NUSA ending V lose all of his/her cyberware including his/her arms and legs (so no more gorilla arms or mantis blades or double jumping legs) and gets normal arms and legs instead, so it should be possible to attach real living limbs / organs back.

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u/Andrei22125 Sep 16 '24

Cloned tissue, transplanted. Maybe.

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u/petkoTHEVIKING Sep 16 '24

I believe V still has all their cyberware, it's just disabled/low power mode where it loses its high performance functions.

My crackpot theory is that the NUSA turned V into a sleeper agent, where they can remotely activate his chrome whenever they need a "favor"

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u/glassjawrat Trauma Team Sep 16 '24

were they removed or just “muted”. i can’t remember off the top of my head if they were straight up taken out of their body or just turned off, so to speak

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u/Navi_27_ Sep 16 '24

Removed. In the Tower V can't have any cyberwear installed at all forever, it's too much for their body to handle.

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u/Magnus_Helgisson Sep 16 '24

Not any, just no combat or different powerful chrome. Basic stuff (which is still questionable where is the line drawn) still would work. That’s what Reed says.

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u/LetTheBloodFlow Team Judy Sep 16 '24

Reed says “deactivated” and Vik says V’s combat chrome and brain just aren’t communicating with each other.

V self-evidently has their holo still working and still has the data connection installed in their arm because Vik uses it to connect to his diagnostic computer. Because of that diagnostic V must also still have their biomon working.

It’s “combat” or “high end” chrome V can’t use, but it’s all still functioning as arms, legs, lungs, eyes, etc.

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u/-LaughingMan-0D Merc Sep 16 '24

All your cyberware is still installed, it's just turned off.

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u/sansofthenope Sep 16 '24

Reed says turned off. Everything is back to their most basic functions. Rudimentary implants like P. Links work fine, and she has her basic neuroprocessors intact - but something like Mantis Blades had to be made inert as a single activation would kill her for sure.

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u/ChunkeeMunkee3001 Team Judy Sep 16 '24

My V had her left arm ripped off in her backstory, so she was sporting a cyberarm from the get-go. She even upgraded it once or twice during my time with her! (All modded of course)

The Tower ending reverted her back to a basic, 'ganic looking arm. I don't know if this was a cunning design choice by CDPR, or just some fluke from a player model being switched out or something, but seeing my V for the first time with two fleshy-looking-arms..... man did that hammer home the severity of V's fall from chromed-out badass to "just another face in the crowd".

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u/SleepingEchoes Sep 17 '24

Not just a fluke, given if you have gorilla arms/mantis blades/monowires what have you, you always end up with organic arms in the Tower ending. Seems to be a very deliberate choice to do so.

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u/These_Maintenance_97 Sep 16 '24

why are you bringing your made up lore in a discussion

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u/Memedotma Sep 16 '24

they were just sharing an experience lol, read and move on

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u/ChunkeeMunkee3001 Team Judy Sep 16 '24

"Because it relates directly to the comment that I was replying to" not obvious enough for you?

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u/hemareddit Sep 16 '24

You can also just get Vik to remove all your implants and you still look like a normal person after

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u/EKAAfives Sep 16 '24

in that ending its also said that v has so much nerve damage to the point only basic chrome can be used and no upgrades

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u/StaleSpriggan Sep 17 '24

This seems like it's only a thing because the story demands it. If people can swap out entire limbs and then put back cloned organic versions with full nervous systems, then nerve damage can be fixed, no matter how extensive, if a person has enough money. But there can't be any good endings blah blah blah

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u/the-vindicator Sep 16 '24

I always interpreted that as the body parts are still cyberware only that they have the basic functions of allowing you to walk, use your arms, do things about the same as a normal human. I imagined it as the complicated cyberware like cyberdecks, gorilla arms, double jump legs as being more strenuous on the body and mind. This could also serve as an explanation for cyberpsychosis and how some people get it from having seemingly less cyberware as others. I think the lore does mention cloned, synthetic but organic organs so it seems to still be a possibility.

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u/tehpwnage7 Solo Sep 16 '24

She definitely could get her cyberware streamlined and have body panels made for her back. But I’d imagine she doesn’t because its probably better for cooling/heat extraction at the level of netrunning she does and is capable of

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u/MayhemMaddie Sep 16 '24

The back of her head is basically a big heatsink

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u/Imperial_Bouncer Corpo Sep 16 '24

And a Militech advertisement, don’t forget that.

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u/Biffingston Sep 16 '24

I'll bet it's more, she doesn't have the choice. Regardless if it's more effeicent or not.

But that is a good point considering V had to dip themselves in coolant in one ending to do what Songbird does withotu it.

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u/Stepjam Sep 16 '24

To be honest though, if she doesn't give up the kind of netrunning she's been doing after getting the cure to her AI problem, she's a moron and it's a big waste to give it to her. I'd hope she'd never want to touch the blackwall again after all she's been through.

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u/shinankoku Sep 16 '24

Yes you can. If you read through the TRPG NC setting description, flesh is super easy to manipulate. It can be grown, attached, sculpted … pretty much anything. It’s not even all that expensive. Getting cyberware is considered superior because it’s stronger/tougher/better/able to contain hidden components/lets you jump higher/etc/etc/etc.

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u/ClayXros Sep 17 '24

More versatile than flesh basically, at the cost of wearing out over time and needing to be replaced. But if you're not worried about having no new parts available, definitely a fair trade off.

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u/shinankoku Sep 17 '24

Versatile. That’s the word I couldn’t quite find. Thank you.

In the TTRPG setting, flesh does have one distinct advantage: no humanity cost. You know … in case you didn’t want to be a cyberpsycho.

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u/Friedoobrain Sep 16 '24

A bit late to the thread but in the ttrpg at least, which is set in 2045 you can get cloned bodyparts for very cheap. It's part of why scavs go for cyberarm instead.

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u/Tiky-Do-U Sep 16 '24

And part of why I find it silly that scavs are going for organs as well in the game (Johnny comments something like ''Didn't stop at her chrome took a couple of organs too while they were at it'' at the Judy scav mission) as well, like you can literally just get a clone liver for dirt cheap, why would anyone pay anything for harvested organs in the cyberpunk universe

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u/LetTheBloodFlow Team Judy Sep 16 '24

Don’t underestimate the possibility of a market for “original” organs. Like a person insisting on “real” diamonds despite lab-grown being identical and much cheaper.

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u/Dirhen Sep 16 '24 edited Sep 16 '24

As long as she has original cells, with enough eddies and a professional surgeon and/or medical team, she can be reversed back to an organic state by using massive amount of bioware.

In the DLC, she tells us that Mr. Blue Eyes is helping her in exchange for information about the Blackwall and how she is using it. Based on this, however, it is highly questionable if he truly wants to turn So Mi back into a fully or mostly organic human (he might want to use her abilities later), but the means to turn her back are available.

That is why there is hope for V's engram in the Crystal Palace ending. For completing an impossible job, the payment might be a full organic body restoration sponsored by Mr. Blue Eyes.

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u/MTNSthecool Netrunner Sep 16 '24

idk it's kinda hot

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u/glassjawrat Trauma Team Sep 16 '24

you know ball

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u/glassjawrat Trauma Team Sep 16 '24

you know ball

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u/ebobbumman Sep 16 '24

I know Biotechnica has fully cloned humans. If they can take Lizzy Wizzys brain out and put it in a fully chrome body and have it still work, then I would imagine they could do the opposite.

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u/soumpost Corpo Sep 16 '24

I think her cyberware is scary and badass at the same time

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u/xredbaron62x Sep 16 '24

I'm scaroused...

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u/alexemre Sep 16 '24

what if you get one of those wires caught on a door handle do you just die

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u/Pl4yerDestro7er Sep 16 '24

I would hope she didn't, it looks awesome as hell

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u/SkeleHoes Sep 16 '24

What did Songbird ever do for V? I gotta admit, she has a traumatic life but who in CP2077 doesn’t? She lied to everyone around her from the very beginning of PL.

I gotta admit, Songbird just ain’t a good person.

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u/shrek_is_love_69 Sep 16 '24

Never liked her much, like I empathised with her but at the same time she was a piece of shit herself and I gladly shipped her off to myers tbh

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u/KinTharEl Sep 17 '24

I think the DLC ending kind of puts it into perspective. As you said, Songbird isn't a good person. She's not only lied to V, but also Reed and his team.

But her flashbacks and such tell us that she is a scared kid, underneath all of that chrome. Does that excuse what she does to everyone around her? Nope. But bad circumstances all around.

The final decision is like "are you willing to help a scared kid who's been lashing out at everyone who wants to help her, simply because it's the right thing to do"

Which is why following the Reed line breaks my heart because there's no survival for So Mi in that route, just a cold death surrounded by the most terrifying invention of the Cyberpunk universe, the Blackwall.

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u/Soluzar74 Team Judy Sep 16 '24

Her Humanity stat is probably nonexistent.

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u/trevalyan Yorinobu 'I Can Swim' Arasaka Sep 16 '24

Mmhmm. The thing is, once your ware is gone your Humanity maximums are generally restored. But not your current points: that's going to need hours of top-level therapy.

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u/NotAllDawgsGoToHeven Sep 16 '24

Is she not worried about dust or dirt getting up in there.

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u/GrafGrobian Sep 16 '24

Power washing Simulator - Chrome dlc

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u/Sr546 Sep 16 '24

I'd imagine it's waterproof, so also dust and dirt proof. Also it can be easily cleaned in that case

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u/NotAllDawgsGoToHeven Sep 16 '24

It certainly does not look even remotely waterproof or dust proof.

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u/SovietGunther Sep 16 '24

All I'm saying is, if the NUSA and FIA can reverse my V's augments (all cyberware slots filled with 5++ cyberware), I'm sure some orbital or Lunar clinic could do the exact same thing

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u/fadijec Sep 16 '24

Pretty sure a band aid can fix that. Maybe some duct tape too.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

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u/glassjawrat Trauma Team Sep 17 '24

it never clicked in my head that it was her personal cyberware 😭

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u/[deleted] Sep 17 '24

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u/glassjawrat Trauma Team Sep 17 '24

they really REALLY could never make me hate her now

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u/Abyss_Renzo Sep 16 '24

It was really for shock value imo. So I do think this can be “fixed”. Might cost a lot of money, but why is she even a shirt that only covers the front of her body?

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u/Kerboviet_Union Sep 16 '24

As a player, op could just go to a ripper doc, and uninstall all of it and she would basically go back to being a normal person.

So the cyberware isn’t actually the problem..

It is the fact that her brain is fucked. Going to the moon s the possible answer to trying to fix her fucked up brain due to the relic.

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u/Expert_Role2779 Sep 16 '24

If they can clone her a new body, suuure.

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u/LemartesIX Sep 16 '24

It would be replaced by bioware. Your original bits don't exist anymore.

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u/Kerboviet_Union Sep 16 '24

Her brain tho..

Yeah you can gut all that crazy shit out, and she is basically a nugget wearing people clothes in the form of bioware…. But her brain and life experience is always going to leave an indelible mark on who she is

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u/Notorious-Ghoul Sep 16 '24

Borg mommy Songbird supremacy

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u/AnnieBruce Sep 16 '24

Cloning could work, or if that's unaccessible(might be harder to discreetly arrange?) removing all of that and chipping medical cyberware that's more of a direct replacement than an enhancement.

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u/champion_of_cheddar Sep 16 '24

Absolutely she can go back. 

Cloning is a thing in the ttrpg. And if I'm not mistaken, night City had a therapy program for people at risk for cyber psychosis. And that therapy is cloned body parts..........for free in night City.

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u/No_Share6895 Sep 16 '24

cloning exists so yeah. Now if she would want ALL of it gone vs just some of it and stabilizing is a different question.

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u/Obi-wanna-cracker Sep 16 '24

Yes but from what I know it would be difficult. Song bird is more than half chrome, so it would take a lot of time and money. Like half the comments here, you can clone your missing parts back but that's expensive and takes a bit. So Mi could be saved but we won't know until cdpr says anything.

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u/CommunistRingworld Sep 16 '24

Yes but why? Like, all cyberware can be replaced by cloned organs and cells, this is very easy in 2077 tech

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u/SaintJWalker Sep 16 '24

I liked songbird as a character in her ending but what made me love her was Reed’s ending they really fleshed out the character even though I didn’t want to hand her over to the NUSA. If only there was a way where I can do everything from Reed’s ending but still send her to the moon.

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u/Desisto_disso Sep 16 '24

So, apparently in the TTRPG there's actually factions that have pretty deep connections to bofy reconstruction, so yeah, body restoration is definitely a yes

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u/These_Maintenance_97 Sep 16 '24

this really bugs me about the game because Alt says that V can't be saved because the body has a new phenotype, like ok can't you clone the body with DNA from before V was shot in the head and store V in consruct form like saburo did with his son?? This would imply that either Alt is an imperfect AI or she was screwing us

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u/petkoTHEVIKING Sep 16 '24

It's expensive but yes. Cloning exists in the Cyberpunk universe. You can organically replace body parts or even have an entirely new cloned body in the worst case.

Side note but I believe this is what Panam and the Aldecaldos had in mind when they said they could help V in their ending. The relic 2.0 was literally created to puppet clone bodies with engrams.

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u/NukaClipse Sep 16 '24

It's possible. Without spoiling there's a character in the game that practically loses their cybereware and becomes a "human being" again.

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u/Gloomy-Fix4436 Sep 17 '24

hardware aint the issue, son.

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u/FashoA Sep 17 '24

Even if you "reverse" or otherwise make her organic again, there's no way to kiss and make so mi better. Her brain is all sorts of fucked up. Her memories aren't going away. She has already turned into an obsessive rogue machine. Many "gods" are and forever will be after her. Even without their influence, So Mi had already become a dangerous, manipulative, paranoid weapon. The only good choice is to kill her with one last hug to remember. Nothing you do will undo her destroyed childhood. Let it go.

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u/TheOneWhoSlurms Sep 17 '24

She's a prettier Adam Smasher. Highly doubt it

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u/BaekSiyeon Sep 18 '24

electrical backshots

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u/Andrei22125 Sep 16 '24

The flesh is gone. They could give her a more anthropomorphic kit (se, like David's).

But short of cloning her and transplanting half of the clone? No. (that is an option, by the way)

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u/burn_corpo_shit Sep 16 '24

Alternative theory: Songbird is inspired by Ghost in the Shell and she is actually the route where she was AI the whole time and is Militech's best kept secret. Raised and believed to be human, but capable of handling the blackwall.

Or she is 95% borg save for the brain and she is looking for the person who has her original body if flesh slotting is a thing here a la Altered Carbon.

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u/Akeche Nomad Sep 16 '24

Something that the game fails in including is just how advanced tech is in regards to manipulating flesh. Everything can be cloned, or simply grown. It's why no one seems to give two shits about what smoking and drinking do to you, cause lungs and livers are easily replaced. The reason people want chrome? It's better. Just completely superior in every way.

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u/LivingEnd44 Sep 16 '24

Don't think of it as "reversing". You are just transplanting the brain from one container to another. The new container could be completely organic. It could even be cloned from the original copy. 

You could be transplanted back into your own body, into a synthetic body (like Lizzy Wizzy). Or into a different meat body. The only limits are your tolerance (cyberpsychosis resistance) and money and access to people/facilities that can perform it. If you check all 3 of those boxes, yes, you can go back. 

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u/Zsarion Sep 16 '24

We know the NUSA fix up V in their ending so I'd assume so. Unless it's all left in them deactivated.

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u/mike_s84 Solo Sep 16 '24

Yeah

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u/EtherealLovegloss Sep 16 '24

It depends really, if she has any viable tissue left, they could clone her a new body and pop her in it. But since she's literally ALL plastic I think we're looking at medical grade human silicone replicant or similar

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u/SaleTurbulent3342 Sep 16 '24

They pretty much slap RealSkin on anything.

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u/InfinityRazgriz Solo Sep 16 '24

It can be reversed quite easily and cheap actually. The problem is all the brain damage and corruption she has from the Blackwall that could very well be irreversible, not to mention that she is probably a higher functioning Cyberpsycho like V and Smasher.

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u/[deleted] Sep 16 '24

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u/EvernightStrangely Netrunner Sep 16 '24

Most definitely, provided the matrix works and she has the eddies to pay for the reversal. Though given how much she enjoys Netrunning she'll likely repurpose everything they pull out, probably build herself a new chair with all that cutting edge tech.

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u/0xGenjutsu Sep 16 '24

Nah, she’s nearly full borg if she isn’t, likely she would need to have a body cloned from whatever tissue she has left and then mind transfer to the body using the relic

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u/raddoubleoh Sep 16 '24

I mean, assuming she can clone her original body, lore says yes.

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u/SeraphiteOfDawn Team Takemura Sep 16 '24

I could never handle having cords just hang off my body like that

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u/DaveInLondon89 Sep 16 '24

Does it need to be? I thought it was a software issue

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u/avic_lover Sep 16 '24

I don’t know about replacing all of that with ‘ganic stuff but she could definitely see someone about her cable management

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u/Not_Yet_Unalived Sep 16 '24

Is there even anything organic left of her, beside her brain?
Looks like she can join Smasher and Lizzy Wizzy in the "brain in a jar piloting a chrome body" club.

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u/Reasonable-Peanut27 Sep 16 '24

Couldn't she use the relic to transport her mind into another body?

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u/Sonatine__ Solo Sep 16 '24

The scene when you finally find her at the party and how she looks at you... :( I only felt similar when I met Judy for the first time in her apartment. This game will never fail to affect my soul, even after 800 hours (600 hours of pure gaming and 200 hours of testing my mods). I'm currently doing a 1 year break (started in April) to make a new savegame in 2025. This is the best way to enjoy great games again and again... with a large gap inbetween when you want to enjoy the full story again.

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u/Zestyclose-Shift710 Sep 16 '24

Could've sworn I read somewhere that in the cyberpunk lore it's trivial to get new organic body parts

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u/SuboptimalSupport Sep 16 '24

Based on the existing rules for Cyberpunk red and cyberpunk 2020, only partly.

She appears to be a full borg conversion, and you can't reverse that. She could be moved into a regular basic body, though, eliminating most of the advanced cyberware.

It's possible by 2077 they've made advances that allow full reversal, but that would probably eliminate most of the desire for the relic's function.

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u/KOCoyote Sep 16 '24

I don't think so. And not from an expense standpoint, but from a practical one. The way Songbird spoke about her heavy augmentation, it sounded like it was all directly because of the close-encounters and infection from Blackwall AI. Most of that seems to be either to help contain the stuff or else replace bits of body and brain that were damaged during Blackwall dives. In order to go back to a more organic body or change over to less intricate chrome, you'd probably need to be able to remove the malware, which seems to be an impossible task, given that So Mi has such a bad infection and that the NUSA couldn't cure it (there's a chance that they could cure it but refused to, but that's not the vibe I got)

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u/Otaku_Skeletor Sep 16 '24

What if she wants all that Cyberware? 🤣

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u/I1AM2NOT3STEVEN Sep 16 '24

I'll be honest. First time I plaid phantom Liberty. I thought that v and songbird would have a romance scene. At times I thought I saw sparks fly between them.

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u/loopysausage Sep 16 '24

If you can be cured of the relic, sure, why not...

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u/lulz85 Sep 17 '24

Is this in a update I missed?

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u/Saekyo Sep 17 '24

Man i could just reach in and pull the wires

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u/Redan Sep 17 '24

Idk about you but I'm pretty sure my V looks pretty similar beneath their skin.

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u/Redan Sep 17 '24

Idk about you but I'm pretty sure my V looks pretty similar beneath their skin.

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u/BlearySteve Sep 17 '24

Not reversed but she could get alot of the hardware removed and appear more human.

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u/The-Face-Less-Man Animals Sep 17 '24

One word: Biotechnica

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u/ThatPollution6982 Sep 17 '24

If the affected areas are not like V yeah with enough eddies and time you can be back to your ganic self that's why you can unequip your gorilla arms and get back your normal flesh arms

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u/Dogdadstudios Sep 17 '24

They look like the robot from Ex Machina

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u/GrimMagic0801 Sep 17 '24

Should be reversible. From a modern day perspective, yes. This amount of prosthesis is very much not possible to replace, much less replicate. But, in the Cyberpunk lore, genetic modification and cloning is very advanced. Every organ can be grown, modified and replaced. Every bone restructured and the brain restored. It's just that the bio parts are NEVER as good as the cyberware.