Double standards
Thursday, 13 Mar 2025
Exclusive insights, data, and analysis for financial market experts.
Search
Have an existing account?
Sign In
Difference is Johnny actually grows and becomes a somewhat better person if you help him. Also his mission (helping V survive) literally involves self-sacrifice.
Meanwhile the Emperor never grows or changes as a person, and it would most certainly never put others’ survival before its own.
Nah I told Johnny how full of shit he was every step of the way. And he was always quite honest about hating me and the situation we were in. And he’s mostly lying to himself. To me, it’s quite transparent what kind of person he is. But by the end of the game, he did the right thing. He came around. Not like the Emperor at all.
at least johnny realizes he is an asshole if you play your cards right. if you play your cards right with the emperor you get squid dick and not dying
Johnny has no pretense. He’s a total bastard and makes zero attempt to hide it. That doesn’t make him a better person but it does mean that he’s completely different from the Emperor.
Simply incomparable. Silverhand is well aware of his shortcomings and makes no attempt to hide them, it’s the reason why he pushes people away. While he acts like a proper shithead for a time after waking up, he shows a lot of growth throughout the scenario (depending on your interactions with him). There’s a lot of depth to the character, and a lot more nuances. It’s easy to understand the guy and his inner working as just being another flawed human born into a dystopian and dysfunctionnal society.
The emperor tho…
V: Hey Johnny! 🖕🏽
Johnny: 🖕🏽
Tav: Hey Emp! 🖕🏽
Emperor: I could have dominated you like I did my best friend, you fucking meat puppet.
These two aren’t really comparable beyond a surface level.
Also the emperor coming back with a full on dragon thrall and my dream guardian to attack me
You haven’t actually played Cyberpunk 2077, have you?
1 will hate you for not being a tool while the other will respect you for not being a tool.
Media literacy is dead, and we here dance on its grave.
Double standards?
More like shit comparison, these two are apples and oranges apart.
Johnny grows up and becomes self aware about his asshole nature if you play it right and doesn’t require your blind obedience to do so.
The emperor however demands blind trust and full obedience and if it’s not given he turns on you and joins the enemy.
Johnny was completely aware of being a jackass and doesn’t tries to gaslight you into thinking that he’s only doing that for you own good, Emperor lies every single time you point out the holes in his “story” and the only time he’s honest with you it’s when you reject his advances and he show his true colors and tell you exactly how he did enthralled Lady Stelmane. He tries to pretend he is good willed but the game makes sure you know a real good Illithid with Omeluum.
Johnny is flawed.
The Emperor is a monster.
At this rate you could probably use the emperor as a test to see who would stay in an abusive relationship or not.
They are incomparable.
Johnny isn’t much of a manipulator. When you two first ‘meet’ it’s the lowest point your relationship can ever be in, and if after he promised to kill you and wear you body as a meat puppet you find yourself with his dick stuck down your throat? Well, that’s on you.
Meanwhile, you have ample opportunities to call Johnny out on his bs, learn about why he is the way he is, and help him genuinely grow from this experience. Frankly, if you don’t do that, it just means that you, yourself, is the same kind of a stubborn aggressive idiot that Johnny is at the beginning.
Emperor isn’t like that at all. Whatever progression your relationship with him may seem to have is just something he manufactured to manipulate you. Everything you learn about him are half truths twisted to manipulate him. If you keep calling him out he won’t grow and change, he will just stop pretending.
Johnny isn’t the best person ever, but he is aware of his shortcomings, considerably more honest with V and himself, and is capable of actual growth and change. The Emperor is just there to manipulate you with very little nuance and no capacity for change.
I’m never going to forgive Emperor for catfishing me.
All the comments are already flaming you but you can really tell who plays other games but BG# and who doesn’t. The closest thing to the Emperor is Songbird from the DLC, but even then I can emphatize with her. The Emperor is just a bad person.
Wake the fuck up Samurai, we’ve got the sword coast to burn
To me, being an eldritch tentacle monster is his one redeeming quality, but to each his own I guess.
Depending how you interact with Johnny, especially in trusting him when it counts to him but setting boundaries when it’s important, he changes quite a bit. He goes from selfish and fully focused on his own survival, to praising how V sticks up or comforts certain people, encouraging V to pursue things that make V happy, developing a genuine friendship with V as well as acknowledging that V has changed his outlook on life.
Johnny goes from “I’d prefer if you’d die for me” to “I’d die for you, even if it bought you just a little bit more time.” The Emperor and Johnny only share similar qualities in the beginning, but Johnny progresses and matures, not seeing the players as a means to an end but as a genuinely good person who can make a difference without having to nuke the population.
I value conviction a lot and Johnny has a strong moral code. The emperor is a backstabbing cockroach that doesn’t believe in anything beyond his own self preservation
If Johnny was like the emperor he wouldve sided with Arasaka if he realized it was the only way to survive. If you give Johnny your body instead of basically letting him pass into the afterlife, he seems actually quite upset at that decision
Well.
Johnny could be a dick. And he’s far from being saint. Yet he is always honest with V. And in the end might sacrifice himself for V.
On the other hand Emp – subtle, manipulative and spoke half-truths. And in the end cares only for himself.
Very comparable.
Johnny can be convinced to give up his own well-being for the MC’s.
The Emperor will throw a hissy fit and side with the baddies.
I have yet to see Johnny turn to Arasaka because V refused to go with his plan.
I don’t like Johnny either.
This post and all of your replies are so super cringey, dude.
Johnny doesn’t purposefully withhold information and lie to you every step of the way.
Yeah Johnny is a dick and does some pretty shitty things to V but he gets on the level pretty quickly and evolves as a person, and at the end of the day he does have V’s best interest at heart. Yes you can make an enemy out of him but you have to go out of your way kinda to make that happen
Almost every word out of the emperor’s beak is a lie if not misleading. If you don’t go along with him he threatens you and makes it clear that you and your friends are all pawns for his grand design.
These are not at all the same situation
Silverhand is not nearly as much as a snake about it all ngl
Ya but the guardian went from being a hot Menzo Borenzo goth gf to being squidboi. There was no coming back from that. I almost didn’t romo Shart because i was so stoked about the gaurdian dream sessions. Only for the reveal. Sad Tav noises.
Nah Johnny started of trying to kill you, eventually decides you might be a useful piece of shit, and finally gets to the point that he respects/cares about you.
The emperor has no arc. Show me the ending where the emperor decides to sacrifice himself so that you can live.
terrible comparison, they’re nothing alike!
I really don’t get all of the hate for the Emperor. You can just give him the netherstones and suggest to him he takes over the netherbrain instead of kill it and he refuses. He kills the Netherbrain as he said he would and leaves peacefully. What better metric is there of the purity of his intent?
You can also go against his wishes in many cases and he’s just fine with it. He may argue with you and try to convince you, but you can put your foot down and he’ll give in. He could dominate you and just make you do whatever he wants, but he doesn’t.
He also doesn’t really lie to you. His manipulations are all in your common interest, because he knows he obviously can’t just tell you he’s a mind flayer from the start. He’s actually *really* forthcoming with information.
In the events of the game, he does literally nothing wrong. He only turns against you if *you* betray *him*. Is he going to go off and do evil in the future? Maybe, but there’s nothing in the game to suggest that.
And he’s not the only example of a “good” mind flayer in the game either. If the emperor isn’t allowed to be good, why is Omeluum?
The difference here is Johnny isn’t Johnny. He’s a program that simulates Johnny Silverhand a program that was deliberately tampered with and misremembers things as a result, the emperor is just himself
The thing is… Deep down, Johnny is a good person; the emperor is not.
The Emperor just needs to smash out a guitar solo or two. A Silverhand / Emperor vocal dual could work.
Leave my boy Jhonny alone. Gonk
No one can make me hate Johnny Silverhand. Not even Johnny Silverhand.
I keep seeing people say that Johnny grows as a person or he’s aware that he’s a bad person, but that’s only on his 3rd chance.
The 1st he blows by trying to kill you or when he talks shit about Evelyn, take your pic. And the second one he blows by directly telling you he will do you no wrong before potentially ruining your relationship by getting with random people and gives you severe brain damage along the way, which is really weird since he supposedly wants to save your life.
Then he has the gall to say that he didn’t fuck up your friendship so he’s definitely not aware of how fucked up he is. There’s also a real argument to be made that he only gets better as a person bc he’s merging with you.
TLDR: Johnny might be better than the emperor but there is little to no reason to give him another chance
Tbf it isn’t the real Johnny and good lord that makes it so much better.
One is chain smoker The other eats brains
I got to bang the Emperor. The cowards didn’t let me bang Johnny.
I literally just had someone the other day write a 2 page treatise to me on how I’m wrong and the Emperor is just misunderstood, after I called him (The Emperor) an evil, lying, manipulative, sociopath who only acts in his own self interest.
It was exhausting, because they were both claiming that there’s multiple interpretations of the character, while simultaneously saying that my interpretation was wrong, and there’s was right.
It’s like, look, you wanna fuck your abusive squid boyfriend, that’s fine… I’m gonna treat him like the piece of garbage he is.