Here’s the dialogue tree you need
When Cyberpunk 2077 came out, folks tried their hardest to suss out the rumored “secret ending.”
As sites started to post their guides, all they had to go on was secondhand information from the official guide, which noted several ways that you “might” get the secret ending: it was inconclusive at best. It turns out there’s a reason for that: CD Project Red actually changed the entire process late in development, and the details never really changed hands. Until now.
A user over on Reddit managed to contact Piggyback.com, the folks responsible for the “official guide.” Since then the outfit has clarified the change with CD Projekt Red, which now involves specific dialogue tree choices with a specific character.
You can find the full statement from Piggyback below, as well as a link to the dialogue tree in the gallery. Note the bolded spoiler buffer!
I contacted Piggyback about the secret ending. This was their response [Reddit]
(Spoilers in the gallery below)
“Dear —–,
Thank you for your email. We have gotten in touch with CD Projekt Red to clarify this issue. It turns out the development team did make changes to the secret ending’s availability. There is now one additional condition, though this has nothing to do with your overall synergy percentage with Johnny.
In short, during SJ-35 (“Chippin’ In”), when you have a long conversation with Johnny near his grave in the oil fields, you now need to follow a very specific dialogue path to unlock the secret ending, as illustrated in the following diagram. The idea is that you shouldn’t be too harsh or too nice with Johnny, otherwise he will not consider you as a true friend. You have to be honest to earn his full respect and friendship.
Note that these are the only dialogue lines in the game that affect the availability of the secret ending – all others (including those mentioned in the video you linked in your email) are irrelevant.
If you haven’t followed one of these paths during your playthrough, this unfortunately means you will need to replay that mission, ideally using a previous save file of “Chippin’ In” if you still have one. We are very sorry for the inconvenience, however this was a change that we were not aware of at the time of going to press. We will make the information available to all guide users in the near future in the “guide updates” section of our interactive map.
We thank you very much for your feedback and hope you enjoy the guide despite this unexpected change. We wish you the best for the New Year.
Best regards,
The Piggyback Team”
So basically, there is a lot of leeway here. Nothing else, even the obscure requirements noted in the previous guide, seem to matter. Instead, you just need to say certain things to Johnny during the SJ-35 mission “Chippin’ In.”
One thing: once you hit this point, you do need to select the dialogue option “the guy that saved my life” to unlock this whole process. It’s best to just save your game when this mission starts if you’re on another playthrough, just in case.
