Hi, Yes Hello. I lurk on this account a lot but It’s been awhile since I made a text post! So here’s one! As someone who writes for Johnny *a lot*, and have analyzed this man and know him better then myself--OP has it right on the money, but I also would like to add a bit to this.
Cyberpunk 2077 does an amazing job at showing that peoples memories aren’t always the most accurate, because they are purely from your point of view. Most people can understand they own flaws, but Johnny’s a narcissist. Now, it’s worth noting that--As per Mike Pondsmith’s Words--Some of Johnny’s memories being wrong is due to a mixture of rad damage and the soulkiller process being imperfect, because Arasaka are hacks who haven’t perfected the process. But, for the most part, his view of the Arasaka Tower bombing is his own self-worshipping view of himself as the badass action hero. He wants to view himself as going out like a huge, awesome badass. But, if you really look at the facts, while Johnny was a soldier--Johnny is nowhere near the level of Shaitan, Rogue, Morgan or Adam Smasher. Morgan Blackhand is a legend for a reason--So is Rogue, and Adam. Not just cause they survived, but because they survived shit nobody else should have. Johnny’s a badass, but he’s not at that level. There’s a reason he always brings help to any fight he goes into, he’s not a solo. He was in the army, and trained to work with a team because of it. He even sees himself as being the person to solely put together the op, hell, not even mentioning Militech--Like he could get his hands on a mini-nuke and AV’s like that by himself. It is true that Johnny put together his own team and helped organize parts of the raid, but most of it was Morgan or Militech themselves.
Johnny sees Shaitan get blown away because, in Johnny’s eyes, Shaitan is a means to an end. Rogue helps, sure, but she never really does anything either. He even writes her out of the process of saving Alt. Murphy’s there, because Johnny likes and remembers Murphy, and even rewrites in his own head the whole view of what happened with freeing Alt--There’s a reason there’s no conversation with Alt in the game when she’s freed, because Johnny didn’t see Murphy’s conversation with her in the Net. He probably had no idea it even happened. Johnny even, perhaps in an attempt to make his own deeds seem more believable, makes Adam Smasher simply be wearing a normal Arasaka outfit instead of a huge power armored specialized conversion. Which ironically makes the fact he gets direct shots at Adam with a gun that has bullets big enough to puncture through engine blocks and kill elephants (The last malorian fired rounds that are equivalent to .577 Nitro Express, which for non-gunnuts is a bullet used to one shot elephants and grizzly’s. If Adam wasn’t wearing the heavy armor of the DaiOni, that’d at least stagger him or make him flinch.)
And then there’s the *whole* ending part, where Saburo shows up while his HUGE AWESOME MUSHROOM CLOUD IS IN THE BACK, FUCK YEAH, and like an 80′s action movie villain monologues about how much of a nuisance Johnny’s been (like he’d really care that much more then him being a minor memory--He barely remembers him in his personal diary. The fact Saburo remembers Johnny at all is probably due to the fact they kept his engram for testing.) and how they are gonna use his brain for all sorts of stuff. Johnny’s body was recovered of course, but I doubt Johnny was still alive after getting nearly cut in half by Adam Smasher to have a conversation with Saburo Arasaka. Plus, I like how he remembers Adam vowing to kill him--how he’d ‘get him someday’ despite the fact Johnny and Adam have likely never crossed paths prior to this.
Warning: Gonna get into Johnny angst from here on out so, warning.
However, I do wanna note that not all of Johnny’s memories are inaccurate. For instance, I think it’s often overlooked how close Johnny’s memories in Never Fade Away are too The Tabletop Version. Because Johnny, at his core, is a man who loathes himself a lot--For letting Alt die. He remembers those events far closer to their reality because he no doubt spent hours, days, and even more pouring over those events. Thinking about how he failed Alt, how he couldn’t save her. And later on, probably thinking about how he ended up being the reason for her physical death. There’s obvious differences, like for instance, there’s no scene in Johnny’s apartment, there’s none of the set up for the Arasaka Tower Raid, we just cut to the elevator and skip over most of the details besides ‘shot some guys with tha chooms’. He even incorrectly remembers Akira being alive, likely cause he saw his body in the room and in his memory assumes he must have killed him--Why else would he be dead?
Johnny remembers the events of those nights so clearly because, he’s never let himself forget. And he’s never stopped hating himself for letting her die.
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