I’ve been initiated into the Aldecado clan and earned my jacket.

I feel like the characters, how they all relate to and react to the city is part of what defines them. If they love it or hate it, want to stay or leave, they’re all built by it. And NC itself as a character, as something that never changes. If the other characters have arcs, develop, NC doesn’t, it’s a constant. Streetkid V left NC to go to Atlanta but they came back home, it wasn’t better anywhere else. In their conversation with Padre, they talk about how NC and Haywood in particular never change, “ever watered by the same blood”. It has its own will and intention, “You're either somebody on you fizzle out into nothin'. Night City don't let you choose.” - it’s not the people, it’s not the system, it’s the city itself. It imposes its will on you, it doesn’t give you a quiet life, you go out in a blaze of glory like Johnny, or you’re nothing and nobody. This pushes everyone, constantly, to be making these fucked up decisions, doing things that risk their lives for the benefit of the city, for the glory of the city. Jackie dies for a name, Johnny dies trying to make a change. V’s only redemption is to give up trying to live up to the whims of the city and go their own way. 

Johnny struggles with the same-ness of NC, he’s come back after sacrificing himself for the cause - make some real change, take down Arasaka, shake up the world. He says “Night City never changes. Arasaka's still a despotic machine and the world's on a collision course with chaos.” In the mission the Ballad of Buck Ravers, he’s annoyed about meeting his biggest fan because he’s clinging to the past, listening to the same old songs, saying the same old phrases but making no impact. He says he “Blew Saka tower to smithereens, and it’s still standing. Just the same.” He wants people to change, wants the city to change but it just doesn’t. It’s the same shit with different packaging. After giving everything up, it made no difference at all. 

Judy only finds peace when she leaves. In her conversations with V via text she sends V a photo of herself by a campfire and from her grandparents house, she’s happy for the first time ever. Night City displaced her from her childhood home, destroyed it, and then ate her alive. She was so unhappy and you could feel it all the time, her tense, hunched over posture, her grief, her guardedness. Out on the world, she’s happy. Night City eats her up and spits her out. 

River's identity as a cop is tied to being a city official. But his family were failed by that same system, victims of violent crime, and that trauma is so high up in his consciousness he tells the whole story to V after only knowing them for a short time. His sister and her children have an ‘ok’ life in a trailer park in the suburbs, but he’s absent because he dedicates everything to NC and his work. He’s left disillusioned when he discovers his fellow officers are corrupt, he has to untangle his identity from NC and find a new path. He wants to make they city better, to make a difference, and maybe he can do that on an individual level, but I felt like he was never going to make an impact on a larger scale. This reminds me of Batman and Gotham too - wanting to fix the city’s ills but ultimately the city remains the same, it’s too resilient to these attempts to change it, it bounces back. So his new identity is as a PI, but I think more importantly as someone who’s actually present for his family. 

The Aldecados, they define themselves as outside of NC and better for it. Nomad V and Panam come to NC to seek their fortune, to make it big, but I feel like both of them find their happiest endings when they leave again and go back to the nomad life. Obviously, in a cyberpunk world, there’s not many happy endings going around, but I feel like this is the ‘best’ outcome for V, living their remaining days in the badlands, free from NC’s destructive influence. Because making it big in Night City, that doesn’t mean a good life or a fulfilling life, it means an ending with a bang, an exciting death that people will remember you for. Like Jackie.