my current johnny wip ..

If he were a romance option, it wouldn't even be close; he'd be the most popular option. Ao3 backs this up. But the game doesn't let us choose him.

The four options the game gives us are fine as far as romance goes--they lack the depth of old-school Bioware and Larian. Panam, Judy, and Kerry are beautifully written, wonderfully messy characters. Oh yeah, then there's River (no seriously, CDPR did him dirty). But once you play through their stories, you're kinda done with them. Sure, you get some random texts, a handful of repeatable dialog, a repeatable date--but that's such a tiny sliver of your game time.

Johnny's with you for most of the game. Over the course of many hours, you get to see him warm up to V (a stand-in for you, the player), playfully trade barbs with them, and then solemly swear to off himself in order to save their/your pathetic ass.

If you think about it for more than two seconds, V has this near-psychotic level of intimacy with Johnny. The "guy in my head" trope makes a lot of narrative sense, especially in video games. It's a more interesting story when the main character has someone to talk to, rather than internal monolog or muttering to themselves. But if you overthink the trope to a concerning degree, as I have--you understand that Johnny is forced to quietly look away while V is taking a shit, showering, flicking the bean, getting random boners, violently puking blood, etc. This is way more intimacy than I have with my husband of 15 years. We close the door when we use the bathroom.

They're sharing dreams, seeing each other's memories. They pick up each other's habits. V can play the guitar. Johnny's less of an asshole and learns how to let go. They're changing each other for the better.

All the other romances in CP77 feel so damn shallow next to Johnny and V. That's not the fault of the romancable characters. It's that they've been through some very fucked-up shit together, and I don't know how you don't trauma-bond over all that. V and Johnny are the only two souls on earth who know what it's like to be an engram on a chip inside a corpse's head.

Their story is so beautiful, tragic, and fucked-up that I don't want it to end.

It's honestly pretty unsettling for Rogue and Kerry because V will be acting like normal and then arbitrarily reach for their drink with their left hand and for just a moment it's like Johnny is sitting there right in front of them. It's especially apparent when V's using the Malorian because not only do they shoot like Johnny but their entire stance and body language changes when they use that gun only for V to switch weapons and suddenly they're back to being just V and not the ghost of Silverhand's past.