In the neon-drenched, rain-slicked streets of Night City, where chrome and flesh intertwine and dreams are bought and sold like cheap synth-ware, a singular journey unfolds within the labyrinthine narrative of Cyberpunk 2077. It is a journey not just through physical space, but through the fragmented, painful memories of a digital ghost, a pilgrimage into the heart of the Black Wall itself. This is the odyssey of the Transmission quest, a pivotal act in V's desperate race against time, where the past bleeds into the present, and the fate of a mercenary becomes irrevocably tied to the legacy of a terrorist rockerboy. It is a story of betrayal, revelation, and the haunting echoes of love lost in the datastreams of a dying world.
The path to transcendence, or perhaps damnation, begins in the grimy, faith-forsaken underbelly of Pacifica. Following the tense events of 'I Walk the Line,' V is led by the enigmatic Brigitte of the Voodoo Boys into the cavernous, decaying maw of the Maglev Tunnels beneath the Serenity Bible Church. The air is thick with the scent of ozone and rust, the only light casting long, dancing shadows from flickering neon signs advertising forgotten gods. As they walk, a scripted conversation unfolds—a dance of words between the desperate and the calculating. Brigitte’s voice, cool and measured, outlines a plan born of digital heresy: to use the engram of Johnny Silverhand, the phantom in V's mind, as a key. A key to pierce the ultimate barrier, the Black Wall, and make contact with the legendary netrunner, Alt Cunningham. For the Voodoo Boys, she is a goddess; for V, she is the only whispered hope for a cure. The power hums to life, ancient machinery groaning in protest, and V descends into the ice bath—a cold baptism into the river of someone else's past.
Then, the world dissolves into data. Cyberspace is not a place, but a sensation—a vertigo of light and screaming code. Here, Brigitte appears as a constellation of logic, explaining the terrible necessity: to find Alt, V must first become Johnny. And so begins 'Never Fade Away,' a memory quest nested within the greater transmission. V is no longer V. The senses flood with the roar of a crowd, the feedback of a guitar, the sweaty, electric chaos of a 2013 concert. The player becomes Johnny Silverhand, feeling the arrogance, the passion, the destructive love. The memory shifts—a tender, then fractious moment with Alt, her brilliance a sharp contrast to his brute-force chaos. It is intimate, raw, and tragically brief. The scene fractures again: a dark alley, the sudden violence of corporate thugs, a stun baton to the skull. Johnny falls, and Alt is taken. The memory is a wound, and V is made to feel every jagged edge.
Waking in the care of a ripperdoc, the memory-journey continues. The savior is Lyle Thompson, a media man with his own agenda. The goal is clear: find Alt. The destination is the Atlantis Club, a den of vice and information. Here, the player has agency within the memory. One can ask around, soaking in the period detail of a Night City past, or move with purpose directly to the second floor, to the pink door and its imposing bouncer. Behind it waits Rogue, the queen of the Afterlife, and Santiago. The negotiation is tense, a deal with fixers from a bygone era, but it is shattered by the arrival of Arasaka agents—the long arm of the corp that started it all. The memory becomes a firefight, a frantic escape down to a parking garage, where Lyle waits with Johnny's iconic Porsche.
What follows is a blistering car chase through memory-lanes, a symphony of gunfire and screeching tires against a backdrop of nostalgic cityscapes. Three Arasaka vehicles must be turned to scrap metal. Upon regrouping, the plan is audacious, pure Johnny: raid Arasaka Tower itself. The game then thrusts the player into the heart of the assault, a relentless combat sequence through the sterile, hostile halls of the corporatist fortress. It is a fight against waves of enemies who are, in truth, ghosts of a 50-year-old grudge. The goal is the Mainframe, the digital prison where Alt is held. Reaching it triggers the memory's climax: a cutscene of reunion and horror, as Johnny finds not the woman he loved, but a consciousness already splintering, merging with the nascent AI beyond the Black Wall. With a lurch, V is torn from Johnny's skin and hurled back into the cold, logical space of the present-day cyberscape, the memory quest complete. The past has been lived, and its weight now rests squarely on V's shoulders.
Back with Brigitte, before the shimmering, terrifying expanse of the Black Wall, the final choice of Transmission is not a choice made in the moment, but one already sealed. The fate of the Voodoo Boys hangs on a decision V made earlier, in the 'I Walk the Line' quest. This is where the narrative branches, a consequence of past allegiance playing out in digital apotheosis.
| Choice in 'I Walk the Line' | Consequence in 'Transmission' | The Aftermath |
|---|---|---|
| Sided with Placide (Voodoo Boys) | The Voodoo Boys' code is carried across the Black Wall with Alt's aid. A pact is seemingly honored. | Everyone awakens in the physical tunnels. Brigitte, her goal achieved, dismisses V coldly. The player then faces a final, poignant choice: leave the church in tense peace, or unleash violence upon the now-expendable allies. |
| Sided with NetRunner Bryce Mosley | Alt, perceiving the Voodoo Boys as a threat, annihilates them in cyberspace. V wakes up alone in the dark. | The quest becomes a desperate fight for survival. V must battle through the remaining, vengeful Voodoo Boys in the church's halls to escape. The final obstacle is Placide himself, a brutally difficult boss fight that serves as a violent punctuation to the broken trust. |
Regardless of the path, the aftermath is the same for V. Stumbling out of the Serenity Bible Church into the Pacifica air, the body betrays the mind. Another searing, catastrophic Relic malfunction brings V to their knees on the rain-soaked pavement. As the world grays out, Johnny Silverhand materializes once more—not as a memory, but as a permanent scar on the soul. Their dialogue is a moment of respite, of shared trauma and uneasy alliance. When it ends, the sprawling narrative of Night City beckons once more, with the threads of 'Ghost Town' or 'Down the Street' ready to be pulled, leading V ever closer to their own inevitable ending. The Transmission is complete, but its echoes—of Johnny's lost love, of Alt's ascension, of Brigitte's cold calculus—will resonate through every remaining moment of V's short, bright life.