30 Hours With Cyberpunk 2077 Brings Mixed Feelings

Cyberpunk 2077, the most recent game from Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, was first announced in 2012. In the last couple years, its had an onslaught of hype and dripfed information, most of which Ive ignored. The developers have promised unlimited freedom, unparalleled graphics, and cameos from celebrities like Grimes and Keanu Reeves. Much of what Ive seen, though, has been a turnoff, a sign of a game that might be desperate to be edgy. Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed multiple times in the past year, and developers crunched to finish it despite the studios severalpromises they wouldnt. Its courted controversy prior to release for negative depictions of trans people, trucking in racial stereotypes, and the labor practices of its development. Its pre-release life has all been so much noise, the games marketing department and segments of its fanbase desperate to tell you how Good and Cool and Important it is. Youd be excused for being sick of it already, or just ready for everyone to stop talking and put it in your hands.
I havent fallen in love with playing Cyberpunk 2077, but I havent loathed it either. Some moments have been exciting or moving, while others have just felt like stuff to do. Im middle-of-the-road on it so farhaving fun in spots, left wanting the game to be more like what made The Witcher 3 great in others. The game itself wants so badly for you to think its cool, that its the cutting edge of graphics and game design, that it talks about edgy topics like body modification, corporate power, and the internet. It tries too hard, stuffing itself with a tangle of complicated roleplaying game systems; with so many cyberpunk tropes, plots, and slang; with neon and holograms and so many in-game ads, most of them for sex; with car chases and hacking and corporate espionage and double-crossing powerful people; with a world where the human body is made obsolete with money and technology, while also chewed up and spat out for the sake of capital. Theres an admirable diversity of races, sexualities, genders, and body types, but they feel like a veneer. Its not a politically progressive game: these identities are all in service of the games vision of the cyberpunk future, one that can feel implausible and alienating but also has hints of the world we live in today.
There are many parts of it that are as over-the-top and off-putting as its pre-release marketing. But theres some heart in it too. There are sidequests with complicated, human stakes. There are interesting, beautiful areas with subtle touches to appreciate. There are in-game books and TV shows that flesh out the world. The character creator gave me something no other creator has: instead of locking me into male or female, it let me choose a traditionally masculine body type and voice, then give my character a vagina, making my character undeniably a trans man, like me. In a design choice that stayed with me even more, youre given the option to abstain from drinking in scenes with alcohol, complete with specific dialogue options, animations, and responses from other characters. Im walking around Cyberpunks flashy, overwhelming world as a sober trans man, just like I am in real life. That feels incredible, but also hollow as a byproduct of the games obsession with its body mod future. It also doesnt feel like enough to make me love the game as unabashedly as I love The Witcher 3. So far, Cyberpunk isnt The Best Game Ever or The Future Of Video Games, as the hype promised, nor is it just an enraging pile of offensive tropes.
But I still have a lot of game left to play. Kotaku got the game less than a week before embargo, and only on PC. (CDPR has not sent us code for the console version of the game, though weve been asking.) Even putting aside most of my other editorial and job duties, after 30 active hours of play and more spent in menus and glossaries, I feel like Ive barely scratched the surface of Cyberpunks massive world. The game is divided into a prologue and three acts, and Im currently somewhere in Act II, juggling multiple main story quests and a jaw-dropping abundance of side activities, simultaneously about to meet with a street gang, plan next steps with a character bent on revenge, and do various personal quests for characters Ive met. While at first I attempted to mainline the plot for the purposes of review, curiosity about the world and the sidequests got the better of me, as well as the necessity of veering off the main plot for the sake of gaining necessary XP to level up my character. Like The Witcher 3, its a game I want to play slowly, which is at odds with the nature of reviewing. As such, Ive decided to hit on the games main facets here, and present my thoughts on them so far, with a full review to come later.
The PlotIts A Lot
Cyberpunk 2077 is a futuristic, first-person open-world roleplaying game, based on a tabletop RPG that first came out in 1988. Its about a mercenary named V who, unlike the strong personality of The Witchers Geralt, is more of a canvas for the player to paint. Your appearance can be customized with a range of skin colors, hairstyles, and features. Rather than picking between male and female, you choose a traditionally male or female body type and choose between two penis types or one vagina. The pronoun characters use for you is either he or she based on your voice. While theres more flexibility to this than weve seen in other games, tying binary pronouns to voice feels simplistic and retrograde. My V has a vagina and goes by he, but the game doesnt seem to acknowledge that hes a trans man; characters occasionally make reference to his dick or balls, though this could just as easily be metaphorical. In some scenes with hireable sex workers of different genders, I appeared to penetrate themcertainly possible, but with no indication that my character doesnt have a biological dick. At one point a character made mention of the mess that is my Vs hormones, but Im not sure if this is a reference to his body or something that would be said anyway.
V lives in the California metropolis of Night City in the year 2077, when corporations have taken over the world and everyone has filled their bodies with cybernetic implants. How V gets there is dictated by one of your background choices; my V is a nomad, a smuggler who starts the game in the outskirts called the Badlands. That background gives me specific dialogue options throughout the game, such as commenting on the clan of nomads I left behind, or getting quest information from another nomad whose clothes I recognize. Whatever background you choose, a big heist goes wrong, and V finds himself in possession of a hot piece of technology: a biochip that promises a form of immortality. This gets him involved with Johnny Silverhand, a rock star-turned-terrorist who died decades ago and wants revenge. Silverhand looks just like Keanu Reeves, who voices him, and he talks in a way I can best describe as Keanu Reeves is voice acting. Keanu Reeves skulking into a scene to voice act can be distracting, but he can also be interesting and charming. To deal with all this, V makes friends and enemies with various Night City street gangs and power players, working as a gun/hacker/smuggler-for-hire for anyone wholl pay or offer information, be that gangs, individuals, or the Night City Police Department. Main missions Ive played so far have involved glitzy hacking heists in expensive locales, kidnappings requiring lots of explosions, and looking for information in a high-end, high-tech sex club. Ive also used a technology called a Braindance that lets me experience peoples memories in first person, then zoom around inside them with a third-person camera to focus on audio, visual, and heat clues. Its a sometimes clunky but compelling system that youll understand if you saw the 1995 movie Strange Days.
Its all just so cyberpunk, a modern game in love with decades of books, movies, and anime about the nihilistic techno-future. From the jump, everyone talks in incomprehensible slang, the kind of thing I love to let wash over me when reading a William Gibson novel, but maddening as I struggled to parse conversations or find an item with a technobabble name that gave no clue as to what it was. The dialogue can sometimes be ridiculous: I cracked up when, in all seriousness, a character told me they would send me the detes about an emotionally-charged situation.
Many people in the world are afflicted with cyberpsychosis, a mental illness that affects some augmented people due to their implants, a tired trope weve seen in games such as Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The most powerful entities in Night City are mega-corporations that deal in technology, arms, and banking. Specific areas of the city are run by gangs; these characters traffic in fetishistic racial markers and stereotypesthe Tyger Claws wield katanas and control both Japantown and Little China, while the Valentinos make murals to Santa Muerte and control the Latino areas of the city. There are so many factions and companies that I struggled to keep track of them all as they mostly blurred together into what language is the person shooting at me speaking? In some missions I was given the option to doublecross powerful people I had just met, but I barely knew the world well enough to choose sides, much less the characters. The option felt like it was there mostly to give me some cyberpunk things to do.
Night City (which does in fact have day time, as well as changing weather) is over the top. What Ive seen of the game takes place on one giant map, divided into districts, all with different visual themes: City Center is full of corporate plazas and highrises, while Westbrook houses sex markets and pachinko parlors. These areas feel different, and they have their own specific gangs and key figures, but the whole world is huge and noisy and neon, and I often kept my eyes pinned to my mini-map while navigating to missions. While the flashing lights and colorful non-player characters give the feeling of a living city, its also a little empty. There are various commerce hubs where you can do things, but many of its bars, hotels, and shops are just window dressing. And while there are a lot of NPCs on the street, most of them just wander around and give short quips of dialogue when you knock into them. Night Ciy is also covered top to bottom in boobs, from advertisements to poledancers to sex clubs toin an early story missionan injured, naked woman in a bathtub of ice. The sexualization of the world feels juvenile. One important, interesting story scene included an incidental topless holographic dancer, her breasts undulating absurdly in and out of my field of view the entire time. Theres a black market traffic in sexual and snuff Braindances, because of course there is.
Story-wise, Cyberpunk is also a lot, with multi-quest main stories and an astonishing number of activities: meaty side quests from characters; gigs you can do for various agents called fixers; cyberpsychos to deal with as you please; map events you can do for the police, like stopping crimes and assaults; collectibles to search for; and people who need help. Your character has a cell phone; I get floods of calls as I drive around, and sometimes pivotal moments in a quest I was pursuing were interrupted by several NPCs calling and texting me one after another, urgently exhorting me to buy a car from them (you can just steal cars, but ones you buy or own can be called to you), come see them right away, or let me know there was crime nearby I could stop. I found myself feeling the same way I do when people at work wont stop Slack messaging me when Im in the bathroom. Mostly, this was just annoying; once, I missed a followup quest related to the woman in the bathtub that got lost in my quest log until I was at least 10 hours into the game. Its reward was an item that wouldve served me well, if only I hadnt lost it in the rapid-fire arrival of available tasks.
Verdict so far: Thirty hours in, Im not that invested in the stakes of Cyberpunks main plot. There are so many corporations and characters and politics and backstory that are all, basically, excuses to get me to go to X cyberpunk place and do Y cyberpunk task. Theyre the most fun when I stop trying to understand exactly whats happening and just go with them, hacking, doublecrossing, and Braindancing as my mood and companions dictate. Main missions are multi-stepped and varied, featuring interesting characters and cool technology. Some story missions Ive played have had very little combat, opting instead for hacking and sneaking that was ultimately on-rails but was still exciting. A few main missions went vastly different for me than my colleagues who are also playing based on our character builds, whom we chose to ally with, and what we chose to do.
Unlike The Witcher 3s fleshed out, compelling sidequests, many of the minor activities that pop up on my map or into my journal are basic and forgettable, fights against human enemies that lack the visual interest or behavioral quirks of monsters in The Witcher 3. Still, theyre enjoyable enough, with flexible approaches and techno-cool that make them engaging, if not memorable.
SystemsComplex, And Best When You Dont Obsess Over Them
The games main systems are overwhelming. As youd expect from a CDPR game based on a roleplaying game, Cyberpunk 2077s character and leveling system is cumbersome. As my colleague Ian described in his preview over the summer, you have five main statsbody, intelligence, reflexes, technical, and cool (which dictates stealth)each of which have various skill trees attached. The intelligence category, for example, dictates your hacking abilities, and its trees involve skills that let you turn enemy turrets friendly or do more damage with your hacks. You level up through playingrunning around on foot instead of driving, for example, gives you XP in athletics under the body category. Leveling up athletics gives you increased stamina and carrying capacity. As you level, you also earn attribute points, which are put into your main stats, and perk points, which you use to unlock options in the skill trees. Some perks, as well as some actions you can perform in the world, are locked behind the stat of your base attributeyoull need level 20 cool to spend your perk points on the ability to guarantee a critical hit when you attack an enemy while sneaking. Youll only be able to force open doors with a certain level of body, or hack certain terminals through a grid-based minigame with a high enough intelligence. Some weapons and equipment can only be used if your base stats are at a certain level, or if you have a certain perk. Basic XP flows pretty naturally, but I earned attribute and perk points slowly. My character currently has a total level of 16. Ive cobbled it all together with a hefty amount of simply exploring, as well as completing a handful of gigs and over 30 side and main quests.
Im currently at level 25 street cred, another system that runs alongside this. You raise street cred by completing gigs for Night City fixers. You need to raise your street cred to purchase certain weapons and clothing, which help a lot in main missions. (You can also craft gear with the requisite parts, blueprints, and perks that unlock higher-level crafting.) All this incentivized me to go off the beaten path, slowing down my story progress but compelling me to explore Night City. Gigs, missions, and hacking also earn you money, which youll need to buy this gear. Youll also need money to buy body augmentations called cyberware and new abilities, called quickhacks, for your hacking implant, called a cyberdeck.
Initially, this was all bewildering. The multi-tiered system of attribute and perk points felt like putting a safe in a locked room, with the additional requirement of street cred being a key hidden in a fake rock somewhere on the grounds. I learned to enjoy these systems, counterintuitively, by deciding not to try to figure them out. Like Night City itself, I let the whole thing wash over me, giving up on planning a build and putting my points into whatever I needed at the time. When facing a mission with a gate I couldnt open, I used an attribute point to raise my stats so I could. Ive spent a lot of my perk points in the handgun tree in the reflexes attribute, simply because I found a pistol I like and use a lot. Youre not locked into any one tree or build (though theres an expensive item you can buy that will let you entirely respec), so Ive never felt like Ive hamstrung myself with this willy-nilly approach. As Ive earned myself better weapons, clothing, and equipment, what perks I dont have feel like they matter less. Theres almost always some way I can make do with what Ive got.
Approaching it this way not only slowly taught me the convoluted system, but made it fun. While the cyberdecks RAM and buffer and slots and quickhacks all felt like a bunch of irrelevant nonsense that could have been explained more simply, they offer an exciting range of possibilities now that I can afford them and see them in action. In one side mission where I had to sneak something past a hostile gang, I used one quickhack ability to reboot a characters optics and sneak by, then a different quickhack to hijack a vending machine, lure enemies to it one by one, and take them out silently. I might not have the street cred to buy the best weapons or the cyberware to double-jump and shoot arm projectiles, but I can whittle down enemies with my sniper rifle, hack into the security system to open a door, then finish the stragglers off at close range with the homing shots of the Smart technology shotgun, using a cyberware implant I have.
Verdict so far: If you love menus and numbers, youll love what Cyberpunk has on offer. If you, like me, loathe these things, you can really just not worry about them too much. (By the time you play, youll also probably be able to avail yourself of the kinds of guides that were vital to me when parsing The Witcher 3s mutagens, crafting, and skill trees.) Theres a lot of fun to be had if you make the games many systems your priority, but you can also just let the various trees do their thing in the moment.
Combat and GameplayMessy, But It Works
Cyberpunk is neither a great shooter nor a great stealth game, but Im okay with that. Enemies take a lot of hits to put down, and in combat they tend to hang back or race from side to side with few interesting tactics. This can make the AI seem unintelligent, but it also lets me chip away at their health bars fairly safely, while giving me the breathing room to switch weapons, suck down health and stat-boosting items, and employ my quickhacks. Different guns have different situational skills; I dont currently have any Tech weapons that let me fire through cover, but my Smart weapons can hone in on enemies once I have them in view, and my Power weapons can bounce bullets around. Fights can feel more like a lengthy war of attrition than a high-octane battle, which might change as I get new weapons and abilities. For now, I like the somewhat slow pace.
Stealth is viable but not robust; I rarely managed to stealth an entire mission. As Ian found in his preview, it can be hard to tell if Im fully in cover, often getting me spotted. Though time slows when you switch to your hacking mode and hover over enemies to see your quickhack options, enemies would notice me if I took too long. While the stealth gameplay and hacking options look a lot like my beloved Deus Ex, I havent found myself able to play the way I would in those games. Stealth has been more useful to me in the prep phase of missions: I can hack into a camera to hop through an areas surveillance network, opening doors and disabling turrets, then pick through an areas enemies doing non-lethal takedowns and hiding a few bodies before Im inevitably spotted and a shootout ensues.
Some missions dont involve much combat at all. Sometimes theyll be about parsing through Braindances for clues. Other times theyll be more about hacking. A series of side missions I picked up involves chasing down self-driving cars. (The driving, a main feature of a game awash in unique rides, can be maddening; vehicles are difficult to control with keyboard and mouse, though my colleagues say theyre slightly better with a controller. In one side mission, I got a motorcycle through moving, personal circumstances, only to immediately ruin the moment by losing control of the overly-sensitive bike, smashing through several pedestrians, and getting the cops on my tail.)
Verdict so far: Ive mixed and matched stealth, hacking, and pure combat in most missions Ive played, from main story to side missions. None of these systems are standout, but they work together to create something thats messy and chaotic, but ultimately enjoyable.
The Games DiversitySome Surprises, But Not That Deep
Cyberpunks racial, gender, and sexual diversity have been complicated topics in all the games pre-release leadup. Its a relief not to be in the all-white world of The Witcher 3, and theres a realistic range of languages, body types, skin colors, gender presentations, and sexualities. The snippets of all this that we saw pre-release made many potential players, myself included, anxious about how these identities would be deployed in the game. Much of it seemed offensive or trope-y, the surface appearance of diversity without much thought or sensitivity behind it. As a white, queer trans man, I can only speak to some of the portrayals from my experience, and theres plenty of the game I havent seen yet. But so far, all the games representation, the kinds of things many of us rightly demand from video games, feels employed more for color in the games futuristic world, or because its been used in cyberpunk media before. The world is heavily influenced by Japanese culture, because cyberpunk works do that. There are queer people because everyone in the games world indulges their sexual desires to their fullest. There are trans people because everyones modifying their bodies in all kinds of ways. The worlds diversity doesnt feel forced, but race, queerness, or transness dont feel like topics the developers are interested in specifically addressing or exploring. Similar to how I felt about The Last of Us 2,Cyberpunks diversity is more visible than weve seen in many big-budget games before, but it doesnt feel like it matters.
As for race and ethnicity, I havent yet seen every depiction in the game. For instance, I havent yet encountered much of the Voodoo Boys gang, whose roots in the tabletop game involve white people culturally appropriating Haitian culture. In the video game, they appear, from what Ive seen, to be Haitian. But the centrality of the various gangs identities around race opens the door for simplistic, trope-laden portrayals. This, alongside the many East Asian influences the game draws on, means the world is actually admirably multi-lingual; subtitles translate into your chosen language in real time, which is cool, even if the text flickering between languages can sometimes be hard to read. But some Japanese characters speak in awkward proverbs. One clothing vendor spoke in stilted tones about sakura blossoms; V has the option to confront her by saying Japanese people dont really talk this way, and she relents, admitting she does it to con tourists. Its a moment that skirts close to acknowledging the cyberpunk genres fetishization of East Asian cultures, but its fleeting. From what Ive seen so far, Cyberpunk seems content to use race mainly to give groups visual or linguistic markings, without considering these identities very deeply. I look forward to other writers exploring these portrayals in depth.
I can speak best to Cyberpunks already controversial use of trans people. As seen in pre-release information, a lot of trans content is consigned to in-game ads, such as the soft drink ad featuring a female-appearing character with a giant cock bulging from her leotard. The game has yet to indicate if there are any other trans men in the world besides my version of V; I suspect Im the only one, and Im torn between relief and hoping to be proven wrong. I have encountered at least one other trans character: at one point I happened upon a dressing room conversation between a woman who identified herself as cis and a character who had a traditionally male appearance but a feminine voice, who bemoaned theatrically, Im a woman; that demands sacrifice. Her companion replied, See, Ive always been a woman, angering the trans character. Oh, so this is what fucking sororal solidarity looks like now? she snapped. Her companion replied, Welcome to real life, sister. As a trans person, this was a complicated, weird moment to overhear. The conversation comes after a key story scene, in an area you have to pass through to continue the quest; you could easily walk by it, but its hard to miss. Im not sure why the developers seemed to want me to see it. On the one hand, Ive heard versions of this conversation play out between cis and trans women in my real life, and had versions of it myself as a trans man with cis men. On the other hand, I could easily see the trans characters appearance and voice being played for laughs. Of course, there was no option to rush up to the trans woman and say Im trans, too! Both characters fell silent and didnt have any more dialogue.
Another pre-release controversy involved an ad for an in-game TV show called Watson Whore, in which a feminine-appearing person pukes over a toilet, with a dick visible through their tight underwear. In-game, a TV ad for the show used he to refer to the character, which surprised me when I overheard it. I found a diary for the Watson Whore that talks about wearing dresses while also discussing showing off for someone because I could tell he loves pretty boys. That same diary also mentions that the Watson Whore made a move on town hall to protest the fuckin disgraceful neglect of war vets…chanted my fuckin throat raw half the way down there. Like the dressing room conversation, I was torn: the thought of a gender-creative sex worker going to protests was exciting, but the seeming mismatch between the Watson Whores appearance and identity made me suspicious. I dont know what CDPRs intention with the character was; it doesnt feel like a celebration of diversity given the studios track record, but for all I know it could be. All of this has just been side content, at least so far.
Verdict so far: While Cyberpunk draws on diversity, it doesnt really do anything with that, in ways that are disappointing if you hoped for more, or anger-inducing if youre sick of watching people who dont share your identity use it as a trope or gimmick. Diversity of all kinds feels like its in Cyberpunk because it got caught in the tide of stuff CDPR wanted to put inside the game. Personally, the trans content Ive seen so far didnt deeply offend me, but thats my own stomach for such things. But Im not necessarily interested in knowing what a game studio thinks about my existence; I dont need Cyberpunkor any gameto tell me about myself. Still, I dont think Im alone in wishing the game were doing better with the identities it portrays, and I understand anyone who feels like they just dont have the energy for this shit.
The WorldNothing Beats A Lore Book
The Witcher 3 explored themes of what it means to be human and how we care for each other in the face of evil. That evil could be seen spreading across the land through human war, as well as the superstition and hatred the Conjunction of the Spheres brought in through monsters and clashing fantasy races. Even when The Witchers fantasy jargon turned me off, I empathized with the people struggling to survive on The Continent, and it made me think about my own life in new ways.
But its hard to understand why people live the way they do in Cyberpunk, what motivates them besides the surface level concerns of money and status. Lore books and news broadcasts flesh out in detail how the world got to be the way it is. Theyre easily missable, but they also feel vital for understanding things that happen in the plot. A ton of work has clearly gone into them, and theyre a joy to read. Through them, the game touches on topical issues like environmental collapse, celebrity, union-busting, the unaffordability of health care, bioengineered food and synthetic meat (one book opines, its hard to imagine nowa world where things used to grow out of the ground without our help), religion, the effects of the internet, viruses and pandemics, and colonizing space. These ideas filter into the world through advertisements for water and cybernetic upgrades to do well at your new job, through anti-homeless spikes on all the benches and veterans begging for change, through conversations about the cyberpsychosis and PTSD so many people seem to suffer from, through sidequests about corrupt politicians and police forces closing ranks. As one email I found reads, Night Citys a fucking dystopian cesspool…The 20th centurys worst fever-dream nightmares have come true before our very eyes.
But Cyberpunk so far has nothing to say about how humanity made those fever dreams a reality. It can be traced historically through the games abundant lore, but the lived experience of it hasnt felt real to me. The game isnt some kind of warning about the future; it seems to take as a given that the world will descend into a money-obsessed techno-dystopia, with how people let things get this way a lesser concern than how they can make a living in their reality. People hate corporations, but also worship them and want to be part of them. Johnny Silverhand rails against them at one point, but the scene felt like it was trying to convince me rather than giving me room to share those views. An in-game radio host told me that people in Night City either die on the job or die of hunger, before summing it up as First world problems, am I right? In one sidequest, I rescued a character from a gang that wanted to force them to get technological implants. At the most basic level, this made no sense: performing medical procedures on a rando is certainly a complicated, expensive way to screw with them in a world where most people seem to live in poverty, despite, as one book told me, an 80 hour work week being considered a good option for people with families. It made me wonder how everyone has the time, energy, and money to parktake of the worlds prodigious sex trade.
Cyberpunk draws on the trappings of so many vital issues in todays world, but it doesnt engage with them deeply. Theyre color, ultimately. Even in main quest scenes where Ive gone head to head against powerful figures, I didnt come away with some new understanding about capitalism, technology, power, or violence. As with the games diversity, these big issues are hugely present in the game, but it isnt really about them.
Verdict so far: In a deeply 2020 way, Im both disappointed and relieved by this. Right now, I dont need a game that really wants to make me feel the sting of rich and powerful politicians leaving me to die when the going gets tough, instead of just mentioning that they have through lore. It might be a missed opportunity to use the games main story to say big things, but Ive also enjoyed exploring it at my own pace, learning about the games politics and history by digging into the crevices of its map rather than having the story tell me what to think of them. All this might change as the game goes on, but right now I think Id be just as happy to let it stay in the background.
My Overall Verdict So Far
So far, as much as I wanted it to be, Cyberpunk 2077 isnt The Witcher but in the future. I havent yet found the heart of the game, that core that would make me want to curl up and live in it like I do The Witcher 3. Few quests have moved me the way that game did. I dont enjoy being V the way I enjoyed being Geralt. Even the most eye-catching futuristic vistas havent irresistibly called me to see if I can get to them. Ive enjoyed some characters, but they havent been as relatable as The Witchers. Theres been no game-changing Bloody Baron quest, at least yetmissions have been exciting and deliciously cyberpunk-y, but nothing thats rocked me emotionally.
But there are hints of something here, surely motivated by my love for The Witcher as well as whats in the game itself. I couldnt sense it when I stuck to the story, but I started to find snippets of it when I let that story fade into the background. There was a sidequest that was personal and moving, at the end of which I thought I was making the right choice but actually made the complete wrong one. (I reloaded; cant fool me again, CDPR game!) In another, I had to decide the results of an investigation that I suspect will have political ramifications for Night City, and I felt the full weight of the responsibility on me as characters waited expectantly for my dialogue choice. I awkwardly hit on a character after a dramatic, involved quest; she rebuffed me, but I hope I get to try again. One in-game and real-life night, I took V back to his apartment to go to bed before going to bed myself, only to get sucked into a real-world half-hour of watching news and commercials on Vs TV, marvelling at the world-building and details as much as the welcome mind-numbing effect of zoning out in front of the TV. Wandering Night Citys business district, I found a tree that wasnt a hologram like so many others in the game, encased in a glass plaza complete with piped-in birdsong, which I wouldnt have noticed if I hadnt read a lore book that informed me that all birds in Night City have been killed. I spent a long time just standing around in this peaceful, easily-missed oasis. Theres a wonderful sense of possibility as I zoom over the games bridges on my difficult-to-steer motorcycle, the radio pounding and the neon lights welcoming me. The game lets me be a sober trans guy.
Separated from its marketing, hype, and expectations, so far Cyberpunk 2077 just feels like a huge, scope-ambitious video game, with tons of attention paid to its lore and scenery and lots of dramatic things to do. Its not the best game Ive ever played, as so many fans seem to hope it will be. Despite the controversy thats swirled around it and its own missteps, it hasnt yet inspired me to immediately consign it to the trash heap of retrograde video game shit. In many ways, it feels like its about itselfits genre and source materials, the work that went into it, the flexibility it wants to give the playerfrom its character creator to its in-the-moment play. Saying its just a video game doesnt quite explain what I find compelling about it, nor what I find complicated. But after all the hype, and despite a certain disappointment of my own hopes, Im also relieved to find that its just a video game. Im ready to escape the years of being told what Cyberpunk is and find out what it is for myself, as I imagine many of you reading are too. Well see what it turns out to be for me, and Im curious to find out what it turns out to be for you.read more