Transmission is the final mission in Cyberpunk 2077’s Automated Love storyline and the one where players finally find a legitimate method to save their brains from Johnny Silverhand.
There are a couple of different ways the Transmission mission can go, depending on the choices you make, so you’ll want to make sure you know what you’ve done your homework and are prepared to face the music.
How to start the Transmission mission in Cyberpunk 2077
Transmission begins automatically after the I Walk the Line mission is completed. In I Walk the Line, V works alongside the Voodoo Boys to save Brigitte, the fixer who arranged for a job to steal the biochip containing Johnny’s conscience.
The decisions you make in I Walk the Line have a massive effect on the ending of the Transmission mission, but won’t affect any other missions afterwards. Whether you stay loyal to Placide during this quest or cut a deal with the Netwatch Agent will determine who lives and who dies later on in Transmission.
We’ll go into details later on, but the gist of it is—if you cut a deal with the Netwatch Agent, Placide and all of the Netrunners working for him will die. If you stay loyal to Placide, they can be saved if you so choose.
Cyberpunk 2077: Transmission walkthrough
The goal of this mission is to work alongside Brigitte to extract a memory from Johnny’s consciousness, which she believes is crucial to safely removing his consciousness from V’s. She is looking for a Netrunner named Alt, who supposedly created the Blackwall (a firewall that protects humanity from rogue AIs).
To extract this memory, V will need to submerge themself in an ice bath. After doing so, you’ll enter Cyberspace and speak with Brigitte some more. She explains Johnny’s memory of Alt needs to be pinpointed, and you’ll see a Braindance-type screen that sorts through time and pinpoints the relevant memory.
Once this process is complete, you will take control of Johnny Silverhand during the memory. This memory is where most of Transmission takes place.
Cyberpunk 2077 Transmission walkthrough: Johnny’s memory (Never Fade Away)
Once you’ve reached this phase of Transmission, a new mission called Never Fade Away will take its place until you’ve played through Johnny’s memory.
In Never Fade Away, you’ll be taken back to 2013 and dropped in just as Johnny is finishing a show and fighting with his band members. Classic. After returning to the dressing room, you’ll have a spicy argument with Alt, followed by an even spicier romance cutscene. Even more classic.
During this interaction, Alt expressed her frustration with Johnny’s obsession with Arasaka, and it seems that the two break up. The fight continues to a back alleyway, and just when it seems that an understanding might be reached, Johnny and Alt are attacked.
During the altercation, Johnny is stabbed in the abdomen and Alt is kidnapped. Don’t worry, you didn’t do anything wrong. You can’t change the past, after all.
Finding Rogue
Johnny wakes up in a ripperdoc’s office, and after some deliberation, decides Arasaka was behind the attack. Johnny decides to seek help from Rogue, who players should remember as the woman who was with Johnny when he died in a previous flashback.
Head to the bar Atlantis, and find Rogue upstairs. After speaking to her and getting her to agree to help you find Alt, you’ll be attacked by some Arasaka agents who were towing you. See, it’s not all in Johnny’s head!
You’ll have to fight your way out of the bar and reach Johnny’s Porsche to escape. Johnny’s revolver pops heads with a single shot, so this shouldn’t be difficult at all. After reaching the car and gunning down some agents who followed you onto the road, it’s time to infiltrate Arasaka.
Infiltrating Arasaka
This is another straightforward part of Transmission. You’ll see a cutscene that may look familiar—it is the same riot outside of Arasaka Tower that was playing on the news the day Johnny died. Coincidence? Fight your way into the tower alongside Rogue, Santiago, and Thompson. All you have to do is continue popping heads with Johnny’s revolver until you reach the mainframe, where you will find Alt.
Finding Alt
Inside the mainframe, Johnny will find Alt’s dead body hooked up to some cables. “Body” is an important caveat here, but we’ll get into that later.
You’ll have some tragic dialogue choices to attempt to resuscitate Alt to no avail. Oh, and you’ll get to pop one more head as Johnny. Afterwards, Johnny beats Thompson nearly to death for recording Alt’s body, and then the memory ends.
Cyberpunk 2077 Transmission walkthrough: Enter Blackwall
At this point, Never Fade Away will be completed and Transmission will resume as you return to Cyberspace, where you’ll find Johnny and Brigitte waiting for you. Now Alt has been located, it is revealed she didn’t technically die; only her body did.
Alt is actually the creator of Soulkiller, the technology responsible for depositing Johnny’s mind into V’s in the first place. Not only that, but Alt uploaded her consciousness into cyperspace/Blackwall, so she isn’t really dead.
Cyberpunk 2077 Transmission walkthrough: Speak to Alt
Enter Blackwall, and you’ll find Alt. Rather, a giant, digital, cyber-goddess version of Alt—but you get the idea. Alt will tell V she may be able to help, but not from here.
You’ll need to get into Mikoshi with Johnny’s help before Alt can save your brain, but that comes later. At this point, Transmission is mostly finished—all that’s left is dealing with the Voodoo Boys.
This is where your decisions in I Walk the Line come back to haunt or help you. The different endings of this mission do not have a long-term effect—after Transmission is done, it will not matter which ending you received for this mission.
Cyberpunk 2077 Transmission ending: Siding with Placide
If you stayed loyal to Placide and Brigitte during I Walk the Line, your return to the real world will be a pleasant one. Brigitte and the other Voodoo runners are alive and well, and Placide is making snarky comments as always.
With that said, players are given the opportunity to massacre them all, and they definitely sort of deserve it. As you’ll recall from I Walk the Line, Placide did plant a virus on you and wasn’t planning to let you live after he got what he wanted from you. Still, you don’t have to seek revenge—so long as you didn’t make a deal with the Netwatch agent in I Walk the Line, nobody has to die during Transmission.
Draw your weapon and blast your way out, or peacefully stroll to the Cyberpunk mission’s end. Either way, Transmission will now be completed.
Cyberpunk 2077 Transmission ending: Siding with Netwatch
If you cut a deal with the Netwatch agent during I Walk the Line, then your return to the real world will be bloody. Because you helped Netwatch, they were able to find the Voodoo Boys, and when you wake up from the ice bath, everybody else in the room is dead.
If you get this ending, make sure you loot all of the dead Voodoo runners, especially if you’re going for a Netrunner build. The corpses have some awesome Quickhacks on them.
You’ll have no choice but to shoot your way out, as this is very much your fault and Placide knows it. That brings us to the one real challenge of this ending—Placide. Most of the Voodoo runners are nothing special, but Placide is a fairly tough foe to take down and one you’ll have to beat to finish the mission.
You’ll need to kill Placide and loot the Chapel Access Token from his body. After you have this token, you’ll be able to leave the hideout and finish Transmission.
