V (character)

"You are V, a cyberpunk. In a world of cyber enhanced street warriors, tech-savvy netrunners and corporate life-hackers, today is your first step to becoming an urban legend."

- CD Projekt Red

V is the player controlled protagonist of the upcoming video game Cyberpunk 2077. V's gender, appearance, skills and history are all customizable and have an impact on the story.

Birth Record and Background Check
This part of Cyberpunk 2077 is a deep character customization system. The process starts with the player either selecting a preset character or creating a custom character. When creating a custom character, the player can select a gender and customize their character; customization can include depictions of breasts, buttocks, and genitalia, as well as various sizes and combinations of genitals. Options also include picking between a male or female sounding voice, while also adjusting the pitch.

Lifepath History
The player then selects V's Lifepath history, by choosing Nomad, Street Kid, or Corporate.

Each lifepath will start in a different starting location in Night City and V will be in a different place in life overall. V will have a different introductory questline, and equipment which will be strongly be connected to your specific origin story and will be introduced to the characters differently. Lifepaths will stretch the entirety of the game, and not only will it open up different dialogue options like previously stated, but you will also unlock specific side quests based off your Lifepath. After the intro questlines are completed, they then lead into a compilation cutscene of Jackie and V sticking together for a while doing jobs before it reaches the starting point in the game. At this point the game follows a similar narrative path.
 * Nomad: "Roaming the Badlands, looting scrapyards, raiding fuel depots – life on the road wasn’t easy, But growing up in a nomad clan has its perks. Honesty, integrity and a love of freedom – qualities that few in Night City possess and no amount of money can buy."
 * V starts outside of Night City in the Badlands and stops to get some vehicle work done in a small town by a mechanic named Mike. V is leaving the Nomad family, and going to Night City to start over. V needs to meet their contact before heading into the city, this ends up being Jackie Welles who will help smuggle the contraband and V into the city. They get caught up at the border and get stopped by Arasaka border patrol, that informs them the contraband they were smuggling is corporate property. V and Jackie end up in a high speed chase into a Biotechnica protein farm.
 * Street Kid: "They say if you wanna understand the streets, you gotta live 'em. Gangs, fixers, dolls, small-time pushers – you were raised by them all. Down here the law of the jungle dictates the weak serve the strong – the only law in Night City you have yet to break."
 * V starts out in El Coyote Cojo, Heywood, with a broken nose needing to get it fixed. V tries helping out a Pepe the bartender by trying to help with their debt they own to a new Fixer in town, Kirk Sawyer. The Kirk then tasks V to steal a Rayfield Aerondight S9 from a corpo agent. After meeting up with Padre, who ends up giving V a ride to the location, V tries using the device given to them, before leaving V is stopped by Jackie Welles who is also attempting to steal the car as well. The NCPD capture them and then ordered by Kaoru Fujioka to dispose of them.
 * Corporate: "Few leave the corporate world with their lives – fewer still with their souls intact. You’ve been there – you’ve bent the rules, exploited secrets and weaponized information. There’s no such thing as fair game. Only winners and losers."
 * V starts out as an Arasaka counterintelligence operative agent in the Arasaka Tower, Corpo Plaza. V is stressed about the job, but still goes to see their boss Arthur Jenkins about dealing with the ESA in Frankfurt. Jenkins ends the meeting by flatlining the representatives. He gets a call from his boss Susan Abernathy, who was dissatisfied with how he handled the situation and threatens his job. Jenkins already fed up with her backstabbing him before, tasks V with killing her in way that couldn't be traced back. V takes an AV on their way to Lizzie's Bar to meet with their contact. Here V meets up with long time friend Jackie Welles as they sit down to discuss business. V gets cornered by other Arasaka agents and gets stripped of their corporate status.

Biometric Scan
In the Biometric Scan the player can modify V's face through presets.

Quotes

 * "Talkin' about somebody else, Jack. I'm cleaner than a cunt at a convent."

Development
The character of V was unveiled at the E3 2018 show where CD Projekt Red developers revealed the game for the first time since 2013. Players are going to find themselves in the role of V, an up and coming cyberpunk in Night City. Rather than having a pre-defined character, similar to Geralt of Rivia from the Witcher franchise, CDPR elected to allow players to define their own character.

V will be the handle that all NPCs will refer the player character as, but players will be able to name V with a first and last name. Players will also be able to choose their future path with multiple branching quest-lines as well as flesh out their life-story (major life event, their reason for going to Night City, etc.) furthering the immersion and role-playing aspects. A broad skill system means that there are no traditional classes, so players are free to experiment with abilities and perks.

Trivia

 * Male V went through multiple redesigns over the course of the develop, by looking at the various trailers and gameplay footage you can see each new design CDPR went with for that time.
 * CDPR designed the game so that the game's content and gameplay experience would be identical for both genders. However, V's dialogue, mannerisms, and how others treat V may vary depending on which one you pick.
 * Besides the basic cyberware, V can go through the entire game without getting any cybernetic enhancements.