Revealed on Sunday night by the star of the moment (and forever, in our hearts) Keanu Reeves, the actor will be performing in CDPR’s next ambitious role-playing game. While the trailer which showed off his presence in the game didn’t reveal much, you couldn’t be blamed for believing Reeves’ performance to be a cameo to stir hype around the already highly anticipated title. But according to those in attendance at CDPR’s behind-closed-doors gameplay presentation, Keanu Reeves will be taking up a much large part of the game than we expected.
Reeves will be playing a character called Johnny Silverhand and fans of the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020 (on which 2077 is based) will recognise him as a fairly important character who tried to end the Fourth Corporate War, a massive undertaking in the Cyberpunk universe. Silverhand will be appearing in 2077 as a hologram that’s being projected by a chip placed in the player character’s mind. This hologram will have a prominent relationship with V, who you’ll play as, guiding them through key moments of the game’s narrative and offering advice on how best to proceed.
To be clear, the actual physical Johnny Silverhand is dead, torn apart by an auto-shotgun back in 2020, his body vapourised when Araska HQ is destroyed by a nuclear explosion. In this way, his hologram is almost a digital ghost, a footprint left behind by the character. Figuring out the mystery of why Silverhand is in your head in the first place is reportedly a large part of the game’s central narrative, meaning that players will be blessed with far more Keanu than originally expected.
Last Updated: June 12, 2019
