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Game Description:
Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your characterâs cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.
Become a cyberpunk, an urban mercenary equipped with cybernetic enhancements and build your legend on the streets of Night City. Create your character from scratch and choose their background out of three unique Lifepaths. Take the role of a gang-wise Street Kid, freedom-loving Nomad, or a ruthless Corpo.
Enter the massive open world of Night City, a place that sets new standards in terms of visuals, complexity and depth. Explore the bustling megalopolis of the future and its extensive districts, each with exceptional visual flavor, inhabitants and chances to earn cash. Interact with members of powerful gangs who rule the streets of Night City.
Take the riskiest job of your life and go after a prototype implant that is the key to immortality. Guided by the legendary Rockerboy, Johnny Silverhand (played by Keanu Reeves), you will change the course of the corporate-ruled world forever. All this while listening to an intoxicating soundtrack from artists like Run the Jewels, Refused, Grimes, A$AP Rocky, Gazelle Twin, Ilan Rubin, Richard Devine, Nina Kraviz, Deadly Hunta, Rat Boy, and Tina Guo.
Game features:
Dive into an open-world RPG and explore a futuristic city where anything goes.
Create a unique character, along with their looks and background. Craft your own destiny by making tough choices as the immersing story follows.
Utilize a wide arsenal of high-tech weapons against your opponents.
Drive futuristic vehicles through the city streets or race to earn cash.
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You mentioning the number problem reminded me of the Final Fantasy 16 trailer, where it seems to be a straight up Devil May Cry style game with the progression being new weapon types and spells.
Dang~, don't think I've ever seen you need an entire separate episode for your end-of-game mini-review before.
Granted… I kinda get why with this game, alas.
It's a game that had every reason to be good. Every opportunity to be great. Everyone wanted this to be fantastic.
But CDPR seems to have finally caved into corporate greed on some level and this game was not ready to be seen, even if the awful console launch didn't happen. There are SO MANY systems that they PROMISED would be there. So many features that don't exist, don't work or were likely only given the absolute minimum time to create.
That effing police system was supposed to be awesome with all these unique mechanics and stuff. It ended up seeming like a game director came to a dev and said "You have 2 days to make a police system by yourself. Go." So we got teleporting officers and some stars and that's it. About as half assed as can be. And I guarantee no one felt good doing that on the dev team.
And it is like that throughout the game. There are stories that are super compelling and ALMOST make you forget what you're playing… Until an NPC clips through a wall in a cut scene. Or their dick flops out. Or a car starts levitating in the background. Or a weapon gets stuck to their hand. And that's not to forget the times you DON'T enjoy a quest and you get the same bugs. It's ROUGH. The setting of the game is the best character to me. And you can't even do much with said setting.
So many times one can see that there could have been a great game here, but instead we got a game that frankly makes Fallout 76 look like a real game. CDPR out-Bethesda'd Bethesda.
I spent SO LONG hearing from everyone and their mother about how hype this game was, and we all KNEW it would never live up to the hype. It couldn't. But for it to fall THIS flat? I don't think anyone saw this coming. But now, all we have left is a bad taste in our mouths, and yet another classic company that seemingly can't be given the benefit of the doubt anymore.
(On a related tangent, it seems like effing CAPCOM is the most reliable classic developer left. That's insane to me. )
Edit: The loss of Jackie so early on is so frustrating. So is the lack of characterization of Johnny. One feels like he never gets replaced and his loss takes away from the game. The other doesn't add enough to the game to justify his presence half the time and ends up feeling incomplete.
Thanks for your detailed review, always a treat those.
I agree with most things you've said and disagree with some, but overall I also found this game disappointing.
I especially liked your remark about modularization. It was also something that bothered me in this game but I haven't had a name for it until I've heard you talk about it.
It's all just so modular, piecemeal, schematic.
The beginning and the ending are definetely the best parts of the game.
I've played a corpo that decided to work with Arasaka at the end, so it was a similar arc to yours – kicked out of corpo at the start, came back to corpo at the end.
And I really like how they handled that ending as well. It was somber and sad but thematically cohesive and very well put together.
It could have been a great game if not for the whole open-world stuff.
Sorry if I sound like a dead beat and just repeat mainstream opinion at you, but based on initial 22 minutes I get a feeling you'd enjoy Red Dead 2. It had really good character writing, even in NPCs that didn't have that much screen time, side quest ones even. Open world was good, too, it rewarded exploration, albeit in different manner to Breath of the Wild. Had some very light RPG elements as well, though compared to full blown western style RPGs it was minor.
Edit: re open world in Andromeda problem – RDR2 dealt with it by having missions make you approach them from a specific position or direction, which made encounters varied and interesting, while also making spaces look natural in the setting.
This was great. I completely agree with the open world aspect, and I think that after Witcher 3 CDPR was mislead into believing that people loved the game because of its open world. I mean, people may have liked it, but if every other aspect of the game was Assassin’s Creed then it wouldn’t have the legacy that it does today. Apparently Cyberpunk’s setting is smaller than Witcher’s by popular demand, but hopefully they go further than that for their next game.
Nice work. All valid points raised. I am not here to to defend the game, and I am not here to bash the game either. I think I was lucky with my playthrough, as I did not get into the hype for this game at all. Its only after beating it, that I looked into what was said about this game pre-release. For the people that bought into that, I can se how this game failed to deliver. I think the game had good intensions, but somewhere along the line it either grew too large in scope to hit deadline or there was the correct tocus on what parts to have ready for launch. I will be interested to see what they do with the game over the coming year. Enjoy your next game.
I would argue that if you're gonna have shooting skills as a stat in your RPG, then you're RPG is not allowed to be a good shooter.
The thing about character stats and skills and whatnot is that it allows for games to detach your success rate in the game from your skill as a player, and tie it into your character's skills instead.
Which is why in Fallout 3 if you're good at the lockpicking minigame, you simply don't need to put ANY points into the skill at all.
But shooting, instead of it allowing you to shoot well if you're good as at shooters, games will expect players to always be good at shooters, so they'll botch the shooter mechanics instead, until you put points into your character's shooting skill.
Yeah, i agree to your review. I already shared my thoughts on this in the last part. It's a game about wrong decisions and missed opportunities. It has his moments, especially in the beginning, but never gets great. It's such a pity.
I still think that RPG is the most nebulous game genre descriptor. You define RPGs "by the choices you can make, both mechanically and in the story" but that's very subjective imo. Also, pretty much all games have mechanical choices that are somehow related to the game world. What story based games are not RPGs? Is GTA an RPG? Is Darkwood an RPG? Is Grimrock an RPG? Most people define game genres by their mechanics which seems more objective. Pathologic 2 lacks character creation, mechanical character progression, abilities, different endings based on your actions throughout the game… I have called Patho 2 an RPG when promoting it to friends who like RPGs but it makes me cringe a little. Patho 2 is too different (and good :D) to be called an RPG.
Edit: Later in the video you say that RPG is a genreless genre. Yeah that makes sense. It's also totally subjective and up to the player whether they can role-play. Some people don't role-play in RPGs and instead do what's fun or mechanically beneficial to them. It's the player who chooses to role-play or not. Is the genre defined by the intention of the devs? Whether they intended to do an RPG or not.
The game is based on the Cyberpunk 2020 PnP game from the 90s. Johnny Silverhand comes up in an introductory adventure, and then again at the end of an optional "corp war" campaign which continues the kinda official backstory of the setting. He is not actually an essential main character for the PnP game that turns up all the time. Fun fact: The whole main plot of CP 2077 is based on these two things – the introductory adventure and the ending of the corp war. The text for this in the books is maybe four pages added together. And they didn't even get this right in the video game… including Silverhand's personality, what happened, how Soulkiller works etc. I just don't… ah well…