What is Soulkiller in Johnny Silverhand flashback scenes in Cyberpunk 2077, that the actual word "Soulkiller" appears in Cyberpunk 2077. It's immediately noticeable and intimidating, as it effectively ends the life of one of Night City's most famous legends and kickstarts the narrative into its dramatic second act.
Cyberpunk 2077 features a lot of grimy, unethical technology, but rather than it being black market or underground hardware, it's often being developed at the heart of corporations instead. Given Cyberpunk 2077's penchant for introducing V to plenty of shady criminals over the course of the game, there's still information to be gleaned about the Arasaka Corportation's secret tech, and Johnny Silverhand himself has a lot to say about the process - it's what created him as a construct, after all.
What Soulkiller is in Cyberpunk 2077 ultimately boils down to a history lesson on the development of technology in the game's world. At the time of V's story in Cyberpunk 2077, humanity has become well-equipped with cyberware, with most of the population able to jack in to various tech in order to integrate it with their minds. As humans and technology continue to fuse and become more inextricable from each other, debates over where the soul is, where it would be located if it exists, and how that concept ports over into a world full of cyberware begins to become a major topic of discussion among certain groups. Ultimately, one of the best netrunners in the history of Night City, Alt Cunningham, develops a program that can create a digital copy of a person's mind. That tech is eventually stolen by Arasaka and developed into Soulkiller.
What Is Soulkiller in Cyberpunk 2077?
By the time V's journey in Cyberpunk 2077 begins, Araska has already developed Soulkiller for over 50 years. Essentially, Soulkiller is a virus that creates a digital copy of a person's mind, requiring a truly massive database in order to store the recording. While this on its own would be promising tech, it's the next step of the Soulkiller process that's truly insidious, as the program then completely wipes away the human body's personality - essentially, its soul, which is what gives the virus its name. All that's left is a functional body with no mind that eventually withers away.
Cyberpunk 2077's Soulkiller is incredibly advanced technology, and as such can only feasibly be used by corporations with access to mainframe setups that would let it function at full capacity. That's why Arasaka both steals it in the first place and continues to be the only company with access to it - Alt Cunningham was a genius, and most netrunners without ties to corporations simply don't have the technology needed to develop out something similar. It's because of Soulkiller in Cyberpunk 2077 that Johnny Silverhand's construct is on the biochip that V eventually finds in their head, and apparently the combination of Soulkiller and the chip's design makes it so that digital constructs can now overwrite human brains.
Soulkiller is one of the most unethical programs present in Cyberpunk 2077, a game that has no qualms exploring the darker side of the intersection between humanity and technology. At least it lets Johnny Silverhand feature prominently in V's story... but it's probably still not worth it.
