This is not my first journey into Night City. It of course, all began in the minds of writers, developers, and the imaginations of everyone who read Gibson's seminal Neuromancer. This is my first visit to CD Projekt Red's night city in quite some time, since the upgrades that followed the release of the The Phantom Liberty expansion pack - and having a desire to explore the neon underbelly of a city that cares about nobody, and no thing. My first journey into Night City since experiencing the Edgerunners spin off series, and my sense of immersion is deeper than what it ever was.
image via Steam Store page for game
Night City is a brutal, unforgiving place. If you don't have money. You're no one. If you don't have influence, you're also nobody. If you have neither of these, you cannot do much but wander about looking for something to do. Thankfully, There's no shortage of things to do, but the ones that do pay are dangerous, and that is exactly where you find yourself.
Danger and drama create interesting stories, and Cyberpunk 2077, its side quests, its environment and characters are a celebration of the finest decades of science fiction stories we've been blessed with. Go off and explore. Talk with people. Hack mainframes. Open doors with explosives, or a suggestive tongue.
image via Steam Store page for game
A sense of outrageous stoicism contrasted with despair exists in your available dialogue options.
"Nobody owns me. I'm fine - you should try it." She said, as she knew she was going to die. As the player, it is my job to prevent that death, and I am hopeless to the outcome at least more than once. Playing as a Corpo in Cyberpunk 2077 didn't change the game, it didn't make the story any deeper, it just gave me a new angle to chat with people in unexpected ways.
To show that the background, the sculpting of one's past, makes them who they are in the moment they face. Cyberpunk 2077 might play like Grand Theft Auto with bionic implants, neon-goth cyberpunk aesthetic and clear, plastic blouses, but its roleplaying system goes deeper than most games, and its level design is open ended and invites exploration.
If one path is closed to you, you can be assured that there are a few others. For one given quest, the options were so open ended:
- Bash down the door
- Sneak in
- Disable the security cameras and walk in the front door
- Snipe out the guards, and then sneak in
- Go in all guns blazing
- Do nothing and intercept the objective on the way out / in
This level of freedom is unparalleled in most games produced now, and that fills me with a sadness that I cannot describe in any reasonable terms. There are a few of the "survival" games that try to emulate this, but instead of being lovingly crafted, they're procedural sandboxes that have some of these properties emerge due to the nature of the random seeds used to generate the worlds, but it is not a crafted experience, which is amusing, given the main tasks in those types of games.
image via Steam Store page for game
Speaking of the depth of the mechanics. Cyberpunk 2077 has crafting. It has driving, it has stealth. It has guns. It has cool, and intrigue, and it also illustrates a hedonistic future full of sexualised imagery, low cut tops, and more diversity in fashion than what the future will probably have.
This won't be the last time I pick up this game. I do hope there will be a sequel at some point in the future, and I do hope it won't be attacked with buckets and buckets and buckets of water that dilute the atmosphere.
Atmosphere, and wandering around and exploring the streets, going from job to job and hearing "Don't Walk, Don't Walk, Don't Walk" and "Walk" at pedestrian crossings is such an integral part of the Cyberpunk experience. I love this game. I am so glad it was supported into the software it is now, as opposed to remaining what it was upon release.
I'm curious as to whether the next game in the franchise will end up having a smoother release and be a bit more closer to what they initially hand in mind back when the game was announced way back around 2013. I've heard the game has improved since then, but can be a bit of a shallow experience still with the more RPG side of things. And also the three types of storyline which ultimately all bridge into the same thing after the intro.
I hope it will live to see the light of day. I hope that there will be lesser known actors / actresses in the lead roles. It becomes hard to remove a cast member's legacy from a performance the bigger their previous resume is.
Oh God I forgot about that stuff. Yeah I'm really not a fan of it either. I much prefer when games have completely made up characters, not based on an existing e-celeb or actor. Especially for fictional worlds where you really want to get immersed into it all and feel it. It's much harder when you suddenly go "Oh that's Keanu Reeves, or that's that one YouTube woman."
I'm somewhat the same with film and tv these days, it's a much better experience when you're seeing lesser known actors and can see them as those characters, rather than just The Rock but in a dress this time.
I always see Hugo Weaving as Agent Smith. Even in LOTR. He's Agent Smith. He's always Agent Smith. He never is not Agent Smith.
I've still yet to play it. One of these days, maybe when it's in the bargain bin.
It is making me want to dive back into Deus Ex.
At the end of last year, I reconciled with Cyberpunk. I first played it on PS4 when it was released, and obviously, I didn't have a good experience xd. Then, as time went by, I kept thinking about trying it again at some point.
At the end of 2024, I decided to play it again along with its expansion, but this time on PC, and damn, I loved it. Although what I liked most was all the side content and how fun it was to move around the world. I didn't like the main story very much.
Although I found the expansion to be incredibly good in almost every way.
The expansion was incredible! I too, didnt enjoy the base game's story. But I keep going back for the atmosphere and tension of the world. Everyone has a motive and everyone is on the edge.
I tried this game about a year ago and for whatever reason I got really frustrated during the parts of the game when you are first introduced to hacking the memories or cctv or something where you have to recreate what happened to solve a murder or somthing. I just found it all quite annoying but since I am at a loss as to what I should play now, perhaps I should jump in there and give it another try.
I nearly gave up at that bit on my first play through as well. It was really unintuitive.
Personally I really like playing in generated worlds. Handcrafted worlds are always made with a certain way of approaching them in mind, so I feel like "playing" against the designer. While with generated worlds, I'm most likely the first person to ever see this world, so it makes me feel like a real explorer.
Emergent activities are good. I remember playing so much Soldier of Fortune 2 because it had a level randomizer, and at one stage I was going through it incrementing the random seed by 1. I was a kid who didn't understand maths :P