Do you think Johnny was ever in love with Rogue? Personally, I feel more unrequited feelings from her - that he wished he returned but doesn't. And in 2077, at the end of the game, would you statly he's still canonically in love with Alt? Or what she has become?
I think Johnny didn’t possess the capacity for love. He was married to his rigid beliefs. He wanted to totally upset the world order and that requires making massive, dangerous and oftentimes morally inconsequential choices. I don’t think he could have loved Rogue or Alt and also contend with the fact that he was gonna drop a nuke on Arasaka.
I know he ultimately bombs them because they killed Alt but I think that was the final nail in the coffin, so to speak. He wanted to love Alt, but he didn’t know how. He is grieving her loss and he just channels that grief into more rage and more violence. He had to be a heartless monster because he went to war with the whole fucking world.
I also think that V softens this part of him. He literally cannot do anything unless V lets him, forcing him to finally FINALLY take a good hard look at his choices and how he got to where he is. And its this self reflection that allows him to fall in love.
This leads him to finally understanding what was happening with Rogue. She loved him, despite every terrible awful thing he did and how fucking monstrous he was, she loved him. And he finally sees that. Only, its too late. It’s why during their date Rogue gets up and leaves because what’s the point, now? It’s been 55 years. He’s still dead and she has to carry on.
I think Alt represented everything Johnny thought he should want and she almost motivated him to be a better man than he wound up being. He immortalized her in that sense and, in turn, she loses her human qualities in a VERY similar fashion to her becoming an AI.
It takes the forced, continuous influence of another person for Johnny to grow into someone capable of “human entanglement”. Not to wax poetic about how romantic his relationship with V is, but legit it teaches him love in every sense. He forced himself to be someone capable of maintaining his rigid beliefs and, once those are inaccessible and ultimately ineffective, its V who teaches him how to become a man, flawed and with regrets too numerous to count, but a man capable of so much more than rage and fear all the same.
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