Cyberpunk spoilers
I agree with the first part but I don't really see bailing out as "happily ever after", personally. A "happily for a short time V has left", sure, but not as a fully happy ending. Is there a minuscule chance for V? Maybe. I just can't take it as anything more than wishful thinking considering even the best tech and doctors from Arasaka and NUSA have huge trouble doing anything about the construct.
I don't have a source on hand but I believe Mike Pondsmith said something akin to "Cyberpunk isn’t about saving humanity, it’s about saving yourself" and that's something I really like about the Star. A small ray of good in a terrible world, after everything we've been and seen throughout the game.
I feel like taking the genre as pure doom and gloom makes it less interesting to be honest. Humans have a wonderful ability to find happiness in and make the best of the worst situations one can think of, I don't see why that shouldn't be the case in Cyberpunk. It's one of the very few ways a normal person can "triumph" over corporations and whoever else runs the world in Cyberpunk - by finding a little bit of happiness in a world constructed to suck out your soul.
Sorry if my writing is a bit incoherent on this, I need to think about it a bit more before I can put things into words right.
I do enjoy all of the endings in their own way and, as you said, work well for different kinds of V. I also think they work well as different takes on the genre:
- Devil - you can't win.
- Star - you can find something good even when things are bad.
- Sun - take your chances and go out swinging.
- Temperance - even a loss can lead to something new.
Or something like that. Again, I'm going to need a lot more time to sort out my thoughts about this whole thing.