What do you mean the taxis in Cyberpunk 2077 are plural rep?

What do you mean the taxis in Cyberpunk 2077 are plural rep?

When you first encounter Delamain in Cyberpunk 2077, you aren’t aware of the turmoil that this character will go through. For the uninitiated, Delamain is the AI taxi cab driver in the game, you meet him in the start of the game– V and Jackie get a taxi with him. Delamain even saves V’s life to some degree, taking them and Takemura to Viktor’s clinic. (This is later revealed to be another Delamain personality called Excelsior.)

Cyberpunk has a lot of representation, but I was surprised to see plural rep so early in the game. Sure, there’s Johnny and V-- Which the game gets eerily correct so far as having a stranger in your body goes-- but I haven’t put in the hours to fully finish that story arc yet, so here we are.
This blog post contains spoilers for the quests Tune Up, all versions of Epistrophy and Don’t Lose Your Mind.

At the start of the questline, V’s car gets wrecked by a “glitching” Delamain cab. V is then invited to Delamain HQ in order to discuss a solution to this. Upon which it quickly transpires that cabs are glitching and causing property damage all over night city.

"Fender benders are a dime a dozen in Night City. A Delamain though? A first, I'm guessing. But now he wants to hand out compensation for damages? That's just downright suspect. Way I see it, he's got a the AI equivalent of a gun pointed at his head, and this message is nothing but a coded cry for help. Nobody, and I mean nobody, doles out compensation for a little chipped paintwork. Go and see what this is about - worst case you come out a little richer."

• Journal entry from Tune Up

This is framed as a “personality virus”.
I don't think I need to explain how important personality can be for systems. Considering the entire disorder causes developing different personalities, depending on your definition, seeing someone going through a personality virus that splits them into multiple can hit very close to home.

The personality splits include a fictive, emotion holders and a potential persecutor who you have to damage in order to stop. Epistrophy: Wellsprings is a particularly interesting incident as it includes the personality split that totaled your car in the first place. Epistrophy: Coastview contains a portal reference, which is great on its' own, but even greater when you see it as a potential fictive that Delamain could have split due to the stress of his job. She is, for all intents and purposes, a fictive of GlaDOS who is just as bloodthirsty as the original as she attempts to lure you into a quiet place to murder you.
Each Epistrophy mission shows you a unique piece of Delamain, a unique alter. They all desire freedom and to be taken seriously by their host.

"I kinda like this Delamain. He's comfortable in his own code, not ashamed to be a talking car. He's asked you to find one of his rides in Northside, so I say we do him a favor."

• Journal entry from Epistrophy: Northside

Things tend to get worse before they get better, though, and this is very true for Delamain. Once V retrieves all the divergent vehicles to Delamain, you can either wait 48 hours or discover a huge traffic jam in the city centre. Johnny Silverhand (We'll discuss him and V in another blog post, don't worry.) appears to V to suggest that we call Delamain (host).

"Your buddy Delamain appears to be having some personal issues. How else do you explain his cabs standing in the middle of the road and blocking traffic? better give him a call. Besides, you're short on friends (present imaginary company excluded)."

• Journal from Don't Lose Your Mind

Once called, it is very clear that things have gone very wrong. V encounters a completely chaotic Delamain HQ, full of drones shooting at you, cars driving in circles and personalities begging to be heard by Delamain (host). Meanwhile, Delamain (host) is begging to be reset.

There are 3 options you, the player, are faced with. You can either destroy the core (host) and let the alters be free, merge them all together or reset Delamain.
Merging all the personalities together requires a high intelligence check but is, in my opinion, the best outcome, despite what Johnny says. Johnny wants the core to be destroyed, to let the miscellaneous personalities free. Although this is coming from a man who tried to kill V within the first 5 minutes of knowing them, so I'm not sure his opinion is entirely valid here.
Resetting the core seems like the worst option out of the three, with Delamain forgetting everything he's experienced up until now. This is heartbreaking to see, as he's such a colourful character. Sure, you get rewarded with a car that asks you about human nature, but was it really worth it?

Hacking the core is a lot like integration, which, as a recent corelet, I know a lot about. We recently went through final fusion ourselves in order to heal some traumas that we've been through. Integration can lead to a whole new person, like it did here with Delamain. (Fortunately for me, I'm still Bug, just with a whole lotta new memories and quirks.)

Delamain decides to leave the city, as he doesn't feel comfortable living here anymore. In his stead, he leaves his child, Delamain Jr., who is happy to drive you around. Excelsior, who you get for destroying the core, and Delamain Jr. are fairly similar, if not identical, but that's just a fun fact.
Regardless of how you handle this quest, you get a car. Pretty good going, right?

Delamain holds a special place in my heart as a potentially plural coded character, especially as someone who recently went through integration himself.