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Oh, River… one of my least favourite characters in Cyberpunk 2077! Or, at least, he WAS, until i stumbled across a theory surrounding his cut content.
In this video, I dig into a promising theory of the lost plotline of River Ward, including how he was supposed to be a potentially close friend to V. Dataminers and Dev’s alike have spoken of some interesting details and findings about this idea, and I gotta say, its changed my outlook on River immensely.
Whatever the truth may be, I look at River with far less annoyance than I did before. Now, honestly, I kinda just feel sad! Like, I’ll always wonder what could’ve been. Let me know what you think of the cut content theory presented in this video, as well as your thoughts on River.
Thank you so much for watching, and I’ll see you again in the next one. GOOOBYEEE!
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I wish we got the "River saves V" thing…. i can even see how it could be done without removing Takemura…
Takemura could be easily included in the part where Rogue tracks Helman. How?
Make him find Dex, torture him for info off screen, and end up involved because tracking Helman would give him access to V for the Arasaka questline. (Cause Dex would prob tell him V is the one who was in Konpeki, so he'd know you saw the whole murder thing)
Garrus Vakarian was a great comparison that I doubt I would have thought of. And this is coming from a guy with N7 in his avatar.
Another well made cyberpunk lore video. Thanks!!
I think a major reason for my distaste for the river romance was because there were so many other characters that could've used that romance spot so much better like Meredith stout or so mi
My first encounter with River was a nuke dropped on me. I expected a few quests but when he started flirting with me I was shocked
my problem with him is they made him look like trailer trash lol…didn't like interactions with him and i tried to get through his dialog as quickly as possible
One rule: Never bang cops.
I agree with you that River's a character that had potential, but was the victim of last-minute decisions. I never hated River, but it felt like he was an afterthought. Like the devs needed a het male relationship for femmeV, and he was "available." As well written as Judy's arc is, or Panam's, River's feels totally lacking. Worse, if your V is not interested in guys, it gets very awkward. Now knowing what was done to bring in Goro by cutting out some of River's content, it does make more sense. But I'll always feel like River was done dirty
To me it felt like river was never supposed to be a romance character but just a regular side quest. Only when CDPR ran out of time they tagged on a rushed romance option in the end because they cut the 4th romance character entirely.
Mannn the romance felt so off to me. Getting home from the murder factory and banging quietly so we don’t wake the kids in the next room didn’t exactly put me in the mood. I ended up dumping him for Judy even though I prefer men.
Even disregarding the extra development, Takemura was just hotter imo. It was a real act of DILF-phobia to deprive me of that romance
River as a character is cool and he’s cute but there’s not much too him
It's sad to think that it was cut, I liked his romance a lot, the normalcy and humanity was very immersive and developing for my ex-corpo run. Rather than impacting V's life directly in a huge way and being some "savior", V backseats and gets to observe who he is. Maybe too realistic and boring for some people's tastes, but it changed who my V was for the rest of my playthrough.
River feels like Garrus. They are kinda the same….
To me River felt like a Dennis Reynolds from its always sunny in philadephia, especially at dinner with female V. But over all i enjoyed his character
I am and will forever be pissed Takemura isn't a romance option. LET ME ANNOY HIM CDPR, GOD DAMN IT. IT'S MY LOVE LANGUAGE. ♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ
Literally the biggest tragedy of the game.
I liked River a lot but 1000% agree the romance hits you like a sucker punch in the back of the head and I was like BRO I literally just met you and also am already dating Judy. I just wanted to bro out with him more than anything, like having food was fun and some of my favourite bits in the game are the dumber things like grabbing a drink with someone—but mainly annoying Takemura is the best best bits (づ￣ ³￣)づ
River's whole thing just does a breakneck romance for a female V without actually giving you a chance to even establish if you're interested (I mean if you're a lesbian it's borderline traumatizing. If you know, you know. Even as a bi person, I was like… jaysus, can we just have a beer, this got way too intense way too fast). And it's unfortunate, because his character definitely had a very different kind of nuance that just gets lost in it. Imo it would work a lot better if there's some kind of optional mission after his main story where you get to go do something stupid / wild (ie. like when you and Kerry go fuck up that dude's boat, lmao) and you can either opt to go down a flirty line or just be homies, and THEN you can do the whole water tower thing, so at least there's some in-between. Judy's had a nice progression like that where you get to actually chill with her, but also River is kind of the only one who doesn't have his storyline heavily woven into the main one, so I think we miss out on a LOT because he's more of a side-side character, whereas Judy, Panam, and Kerry all have pretty heavily involved main-plot parts of the game on top of their own storylines.
But I goddamn want that sexy tempura boi. #NeverForgive (╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻
Male V seems to be the main character anyway.
Speaking of Garrus Vakarian vibes…do you think you'll ever get around to doing a series of deep dive videos for the Mass Effect universe and its characters in the same vein of these Cyberpunk essays? Is that something you'd be interested in doing?
Wow
I think River was a good charicter but needed to be developed more for his new role and played a part in the main story.
Part of what I like the least about River is he doesn't even seem to care if you treat him like trash, I was rude to him in every dialog option and he STILL wanted to get with me. Why? It made him feel so much less like a "real" character to me and just as someone put there to be a romance option
IMO, the issue of River romance is not really that it is so sudden and comes out of left field – I can easily imagine him being so impressed by V (she is really an impressive person and even if player chooses to not confide much to him during the quests, you can easily assume that River is talented and shrewd enough to dig stuff about V on his own) that he just fall for her completely.
The issue is that devs wanted to have their cake but also ate it. They still tried to frame this out of left field romance/crush/infatuation as something that supposed to be natural and expected. Basically, what this romance needs is one precursor scene to Water tower where River drops the bomb on V in some random place at some random time and then it leads to this awkward family dinner/water tower scene only if V reciprocates/doesn't shoot him down immediately.
Soapcheck
Rah, rah-ah-ah-ah
Roma, roma-ma
Gaga, ooh-la-la
River's a bad romance
XD
Cancelled Crystal Palace DLC cries Ignorance is bliss
I was waiting for you to mention the Breaking Bad reference on his roof! And that hilariously bad family photo at the hospital before it got patched out
Sobchek is a reference to Big Lebowski Walter character (Sobcheck Securities)
My first play through went as Male V, I romanced Panam, but I haven’t gotten to the dinner scene yet with River, to me, Male V and River just felt like a buddy cop dynamic, while River is the grizzled vet and V being the rookie essentially, despite my V already being max level with 50 street cred haha, but I agree with everyone, either Takemura should’ve been the romance option for Female V or have River take Takemura’s place so he could get more development
The Peralez questline abrupt ending works in it favor imo, it just leaves you with so many questions that a danger is looming around and you can't do anything about it.
River on the other hand suffers a lot from the whole cut & rework of his character. It would have been great if they added at least 1 or 2 missions of him becoming a PI (or vigilant?), instead of it being just text exchanges and only available if you romance him…
I've long held the suspicion that the wild cgi trailers we got in the lead up to release were all based on earlier versions of the plot. If so, I wonder if originally it wasn't going to be V that killed DeShawn (in the hotel), and River/Sobcheck eventually finding V in the scrapyard hunting down an already dead Dex. Possibly there was going to be more going on between the end of the heist and getting killed? That section of the game has always felt extremely weird, like a 40ish minute block of dialogue and cutscenes with almost nothing else going on. Act structure of the game is so weird, too– there had to have been more going on in act 1 at some point.
I’m glad it was cut.