Cyberpunk 2077 Story Explained: the Heist, the Relic and Johnny Silverhand

Cyberpunk 2077 is CD Projekt Red's open-world game set in Night City, released on 10 December 2020. It's set in late 2076 and 2077, more than 50 years after the nuke that destroyed Arasaka Tower and a few months after the events of Edgerunners. The story follows the mercenary V after one big job goes wrong and leaves a dead terrorist living in their head. This page covers the whole plot in order. Full spoilers. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Before the story begins#

Night City is a free city on the Californian coast, run by corporations and fought over by gangs. Its biggest power is Arasaka, the Japanese security giant whose rebuilt tower stands over the city centre. Arasaka's great rival is Militech. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The game leans on two old events, both covered in the Cyberpunk timeline. In 2013 the rockerboy Johnny Silverhand raided Arasaka to save his ex, the netrunner Alt Cunningham, whose mind was trapped in the Net by her own program, Soulkiller. In 2023 Johnny went back, during the Fourth Corporate War, and a nuke went off in Arasaka Tower. Arasaka copied Johnny's mind before he died. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk RED)

The Net that V's world uses is a ruin of the old one. After the DataKrash let rogue AIs loose, NetWatch sealed them off behind the Blackwall, and nobody is meant to cross it. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Prologue: V and Jackie#

V's start depends on the lifepath chosen. A nomad V leaves their clan and meets Jackie on a smuggling run across the border. A street kid V meets him on a car theft that goes wrong. A corporate V is an Arasaka counter-intelligence agent who is thrown out of the company and saved from Arasaka's hit squad by Jackie, an old friend. Whichever way in, V and Jackie Welles, a big-hearted gunman with family ties to the Valentinos, become partners. (Cyberpunk 2077)

A montage covers the next six months as they make their names. The story picks up in 2077 with a rescue: V and Jackie pull a kidnapped woman out of a scavenger den and hand her to Trauma Team. The ripperdoc Viktor Vektor upgrades V, and Jackie introduces V to the fixer Dexter DeShawn, who has the job of a lifetime. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Act 1: the heist#

Dex's client is Evelyn Parker, and the target is the Relic, a prototype Arasaka biochip, held in Yorinobu Arasaka's suite at the Konpeki Plaza hotel. To prepare, V buys a stolen Militech security bot from Maelstrom, with the Militech agent Meredith Stout pulling strings behind the deal. V then studies a braindance of Yorinobu's suite with the editor Judy Alvarez. (Cyberpunk 2077)

The break-in goes well until Saburo Arasaka, Yorinobu's father, arrives. V and Jackie hide and watch him confront his son about the stolen Relic. Yorinobu strangles him, then tells the guards an intruder did it. Saburo Arasaka is dead, Arasaka locks down the building, and their netrunner T-Bug is killed. The Relic's case is damaged in the escape, so V slots the chip into their own head to keep it alive. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Jackie is shot on the way out and dies in the back of a Delamain cab. V reaches Dex at the No-Tell Motel, and Dex shoots V in the head and has the body dumped in the city landfill. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Interlude: Johnny's war#

Between the acts, V experiences a memory that isn't theirs. It's August 2023, and Johnny Silverhand, with his friend Rogue Amendiares, plans an assault on Arasaka Tower with a nuke. Johnny arms the nuke himself, is shot by Arasaka's cyborg Adam Smasher, and is dragged in front of Saburo Arasaka to be put through Soulkiller. (Cyberpunk 2077)

That's Johnny's version. The tabletop history tells it another way: Militech-backed strike teams, one of them under Morgan Blackhand, carried a Militech nuke in, and Johnny was killed by Smasher in a firefight inside the tower. The game hints that Johnny's memory of the day can't be trusted. (Cyberpunk RED; Cyberpunk 2077)

Act 2: the hunt for a cure#

V wakes up in the landfill, alive. Goro Takemura, Saburo's bodyguard, tracked Dex down, made him lead the way to V's body and shot him. Takemura takes V to Viktor, who gives the bad news. The Relic repaired V's brain, but it's also loading Johnny's engram, and Johnny's mind is overwriting V's. V has weeks to live. Johnny himself starts appearing as a hostile, sneering ghost. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Takemura wants to expose Yorinobu as Saburo's killer, and he offers V a way to Arasaka's tech. From here the story splits into three threads that V can follow in any order. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Evelyn, the Voodoo Boys and Alt#

V goes looking for Evelyn, who has vanished. With Judy's help V traces her through the Clouds dollhouse, run under Tyger Claws protection, and finds her badly hurt after she was sold to scavengers. Evelyn reveals her real client: the Voodoo Boys of Pacifica, who wanted Johnny's engram to reach Alt Cunningham beyond the Blackwall. (Cyberpunk 2077)

To get the Voodoo Boys' help, V deals with a NetWatch agent in Pacifica, choosing whether to betray the gang or the agent. Then their netrunner Brigitte sends V into the Net to contact Alt, now an AI living past the Blackwall. Alt explains that the Relic's changes can't be reversed by any ordinary means, and that what V needs is in Mikoshi, Arasaka's data fortress. What happens to the Voodoo Boys depends on the earlier choice: if V sided with NetWatch, Alt flatlines the gang's netrunners, and if not, she lets them through the Blackwall. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Takemura and Hanako#

Takemura's plan is to kidnap Hanako Arasaka, Saburo's daughter, during a parade in Japantown held in her father's memory, and convince her that Yorinobu is a murderer. V helps him pull it off. Arasaka tracks them to the safehouse, and Adam Smasher leads the raid that takes Hanako back. Before she goes, Hanako believes them, and asks V to meet her at Embers when V is ready. Whether Takemura survives the raid depends on V's choices. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Hellman and the Aldecaldos#

Anders Hellman, the scientist behind the Relic, has defected from Arasaka and is being flown out by Kang Tao. Rogue, now the queen of the fixers at the Afterlife, points V to Panam Palmer of the Aldecaldos. V and Panam knock out a power plant to bring down Hellman's aircraft and catch him in the Badlands. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Hellman confirms the worst. Nothing he knows of can pull Johnny out without killing V. He suggests only Arasaka, and Mikoshi, might help. V decides who gets to keep him. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Johnny and the people of Night City#

Through the act, Johnny and V go from enemies to something closer to friends. Johnny's side jobs bring in his old bandmate Kerry Eurodyne, and Rogue helps track down what happened to Johnny's body. Other side stories tie V to Judy and Panam, the detective River Ward, and the cyberpsychos that MaxTac exists to put down. How V treats Johnny decides which endings open up. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Phantom Liberty#

Partway through Act 2, a netrunner calling herself Songbird offers V a cure in exchange for help. That pulls V into Dogtown, a walled district run by Kurt Hansen's Barghest, where the plane carrying President Rosalind Myers of the New United States has come down. V gets Myers out alive and works with the agent Solomon Reed. The expansion runs alongside the main story and adds its own ending. Its full plot is in the Phantom Liberty story. (Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

Act 3: the point of no return#

With the leads exhausted, V meets Hanako at Embers, then goes up to the roof of Misty's shop with Johnny to choose who to trust with the attack on Arasaka. Hanako offers Arasaka's help in return for help taking down Yorinobu. Panam offers the Aldecaldos. Johnny offers Rogue and his own kind of assault. If V has finished Phantom Liberty on Reed's side, Reed offers the NUSA's doctors. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

The ending explained#

Every route except Reed's leads to Mikoshi. With Hanako, Arasaka removes Yorinobu, and V wakes on an Arasaka space station, offered the choice to become an engram or go home to die. With Panam or Rogue, the attackers storm Arasaka Tower, Adam Smasher is destroyed, and V and Johnny meet Alt inside Mikoshi. (Cyberpunk 2077)

There, Alt tells them the truth: the Relic has damaged V's body for good. V can go back to it and live about six months, or give it to Johnny and cross the Blackwall with Alt. Back in their body, V either leaves Night City with Panam's family or becomes a legend of the Afterlife. Given the body, Johnny leaves the city to start again. Reed's route is the only one that removes the Relic, at a cost. (Cyberpunk 2077; Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty)

The point is that there's no clean win. V was a mercenary who wanted to be a legend, and the city's legends mostly end up dead. Each ending is a choice about what to do with the time that's left. The endings guide covers each one, the secret ending and the suicide ending in full. (Cyberpunk 2077)

Where it fits#

Cyberpunk 2077 follows Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, which ends in 2076 with the death of David Martinez. Edgerunners 2 continues in the same city from 20 October 2026, and CD Projekt Red announced a sequel to the game, Project Orion, on 4 October 2022 and moved it into preproduction in May 2025. For everything else in order, see the games and books guide, and for the full cast, the characters guide. (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners; Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2 premiere date announced alongside new trailer; CD Projekt strategy update; CD Projekt Q1 2025 results)