Hey there choomba, welcome to Night City. You new to the Afterlife? Well in that case, allow me to fetch you a house favorite- old fashioned tequila, with a splash of Cerveza and chili garnish. Maybe add a splash of love to it, just for you, from dear old Jackie to sweeten the deal. Don’t worry about the eddies partner, it’s on the house this time.

You remember too, don’t you? How couldn’t you? Everybody here and god knows where else all still remember the dirt-tatted shine of Johnny Silverhand’s guitar from years ago. He promised us the world didn’t he? Leaking brawn out his balls like a terminal illness. Everybody also remembers his gonk ass messing up everyone around him in a blaze of terroristic glory- up and ending as fast as his name had spread- in the rubble of the megacorp building he took every part of himself out on. The only thing people really remembered after that were the burned bridges and funk-to-funky memories he left behind.

But then you walkin’ in here reminded me of the day I saw another chromed-up hotshot like yourself- name of V- clearly a rookie to the biz then- no offense of course. They stumbled in with Jackie, wide-eyed lookin’ at the regulars and fixers alike as if they were all walkin’ talkin’ candy, talking up loud and proud like kids, over a job they was to do over at Konpeki Plaza, but from then on nobody’d a clue over how far they’d go into history. Nary a story more nova than that one.

The legend of V and Silverhand’s dredging from the dead’s been uttered more times than I’ve wiped the counter down from another scopsucker’s puke on it. If there’s any good reason to come visit Night City, it’d be to see the gigs, gags, and the occasional BD’s that the doomed duo kicked dust over as they matured from being at each other’s throats, to best friends that struggled to let each other go at the end of their tragic ordeal. Wasn’t a soul in the city who couldn’t stop thinking over and over about the whole mess long after it was done.

But I won’t lie to you kiddo. NC? Lookin’ the worse for wear these days. You’ll find the promises from years ago were lies. City’s pretty, sure, but I’ll spare the disappointment and give you the detes. NC’s a flat old place with not a lot goin’ on. You’ll find hours n’ hours of work as a merc, but after all’s said and done? Nah, NC’s no replacement for your life as you might’ve heard. Not to say it hasn’t improved in the years since its inception- you’d never recognize the state it was in a few years ago. The occasional pop-in and animation glitches will tear into your visual tech even now, but you won’t be stopped by anything that would break your chrome completely, mind you. The ripperdocs ‘round here have worked hard to snuff out most of the bugs you were taught tale of, and it’s the truth.

Other tricks you ought to be aware of are the trivially easy builds you can cook up in your chrome that’ll flatline all the familiar gangsters and corpo-military slaves quicker than you can recite a single lyric of any of Samurai’s singles. Sitch in NC’ll seem like more than it really is at first, and I wouldn’t blame ya for getting burnt out on all the merc work you’ll be laborin’ over, not just for how easy they’ll all get, but especially because, well, street cred here is a pretty damn binary system. Ain’t gonna matter how much you prove yourself or how blazin’ powerful you grow, everybody in your path’ll still call you a diaper-donned rookie all the same. Well, gonks like us can still dream of an NC with more reactivity to your actions and more freedom of choice than the corpo-sold illusion of it, right?

Things’re better than they were before, but you still ain’t gonna find the promised land here. Listen merc, I’ll say this much: long as you temper your expectations, and klep yourself some patience for underwhelming design bends in this city’s architecture, V and Silverhand’s captivating journey together will live in your mind forever, much like they lived in each other’s.

End of the day, choom? It’s not so much about the city- it’s about the characters you’ll loathe and love, the twists and turns, dead ends, and legends you’ll stumble up and down in as people here swallow and spit you out, ala those classic BD’s, Deus Ex or Vampire Bloodlines, albeit with an altered coat of open-world oriented action-adventure. And if I catch you skipping out on the extra story in Phantom Liberty? Your ass.

So what’ll it be? Gonna walk out of here, sign off with a band of naked nomads and stare at the sun all day? Or are you gonna take an OA shuttle to the stars and build up that thing called legend?