I have been playing an excessive amount of Cyberpunk 2077 since it released on December 10th, or technically in my time zone the evening of December 9th. I have a lot of things to say about this game because it legitimate is one of the most interesting gaming experiences I have had this year. That said I feel like I need to address an elephant in the room, because I was absolutely caught unprepared for the amount of dislike some folks have for this game. We all live in our own little sheltered bubbles and up until this point all that I had really seen about the game (and truthfully most of what I am still seeing) is a general sense of disappointment each time the game got delayed but overarching excitement about finally getting their hands on the game. There are apparently a totally different set of circles where this game is the poster child for everything that is wrong with modern game development. I didn’t realize my world was quite as shifted in one specific direction as it apparently is, but as one of my friends put it this weekend intentionally or not we all sort of see the world through our very own periscope. Needless to say I was a bit shocked and angered when I wanted to talk about it this weekend on AggroChat and was effectively met with “how dare I”. We are sorting this out and it will probably lead to an interesting conversation at some point, but for now I find myself roughly twenty hours into what many consider to be a deeply problematic experience.

It should also bear noting that for the most part my play through has largely been smooth. I am playing on the PC and seemingly that is the platform this game was targeted towards. I feel exceptionally sorry for the console players because from what I can tell it is a bug riddled mess. That is not to say my play time is bug free, because there are plenty of weird NPC movement issues like the above example of one just clipping straight into the engine compartment of a vehicle. These however are things I have been dealing with for several decades in Bethesda games and that might be your best frame of reference. Cyberpunk 2077 is essentially Fallout New Vegas set in a grossly dystopian society pulled straight out of Robocop or Judge Dredd. Going in with those expectations and not that this is going to be a Destiny quality shooter is going to greatly improve your experiences.

When I was in high school I discovered William Gibson, and by discovered I mean I had the novel Neuromancer given to me. I became obsessed with the world wrapped within its pages and tore through all of the novels that were in that same vein by the author. The world represented this dark future that admittedly has become more science fact than science fiction as the internet and the culture around it has evolved. The original Cyberpunk setting is deeply rooted in that narrative structure and as someone who can remember the time before the internet, it is representative of the future so many people thought would exist. It is a late stage capitalism narrative where everything has been fetishized and packaged for easy consumption.

Instead of a time of great prosperity, it is a time of corporate servitude. No one has it good and everyone is adversely impacted by this world. That is one of the most interesting things about the game is that it more or less presents this all in a neutral tone. The game shows you the negative impacts that this world is having on everyone, but it is displayed in a manner fitting of this genre. This is just the way of the world and it is up to you as the player to determine what exactly to make of it. So it presents sex workers trying to make their next meal with the same dignity as a “salaryman” trying to avoid ending up face down in a garbage heap when the next corporate take over occurs and they become expendable. Even the penthouse dwellers are negatively impacted by the state of the world which becomes more and more apparent as the game continues.

You play the role of “V” a Merc that does jobs for whoever can afford them. Your character is an assemblage of choices, masculine or feminine body types, masculine or feminine voice, and your choice of genitalia. The last of these choices is really bizarre given that it doesn’t seem to actually factor into the game much. From here you choose a background which include Corporate, Street Kid or Nomad representing three vastly different experiences. Regardless of this choice you effectively end up in the same place where some events transpire to put you on the outs with whatever that faction is and see you partnered up with another “gonk”.

You then are presented with the opportunity of a lifetime, one that you and your partner cannot ignore. For me it seemed like this was the beginning of the game in proper, but instead this is actually just the extended tutorial mission. You have full control over your character and the world begins to open up, but you have yet to arrive at the “actual” game yet. This is essentially the RPG “World One” that seems large and expansive… until you actually make your way through it and see how much larger the scale of everything else is. I am not going to go into story spoilers here, and in truth I am going to try and avoid much in the way of spoilers in general. Some things happen and you have to deal with the results.

Every science fiction setting has a seedy underbelly be it the Hutts in Star Wars or the Black Market chop shops in Blade Runner. Cyberpunk 2077 is a setting where this underbelly is exposed for all to see and the characters appear to just view it as normal. As V you do a lot of pretty horrible things, but it also feels like you are the only force attempting to make things any better for anyone. You take jobs from Fixers and random clientele and are given a series of choices on how to resolve each matter. For example I came up on a scene where a guy was shooting the NCPD with a sniper rifle, and I was asked to “resolve the matter”, which I originally took to mean take him out. However if you play it differently there is a path that allows you to talk them down where you find out that they are just off their cyberpsychosis muting drugs. There is a chance to resolve it relatively peacefully, but you can also just put a bullet in their head and walk away with some fast “Eddies”.

Cyberpunk is also not a game for the weak of stomach or the squeamish. I want to underline that point in bold to make sure you understand that you are going to “see some shit”. There is a concept in the game called the Brain Dance, which is straight out of the movie Strange Days where folks can record their sensory inputs which then get sold as the pornos of the future allowing the viewer to experience everything happening to the original person. Thing is these record a lot of extra data other than just the visual feed, so you learn how to flip them into “edit mode” allowing you to zoom around the outskirts of the recorders perspective picking up on audio and visual elements that maybe the original viewer didn’t even realize they saw. This becomes a tool at many points in the game allowing you to try and piece together what exactly happened in a scene. However these “BDs” as they are referred to by the denizens of Night City, are often of situations that you maybe wouldn’t want to find yourself in. For example fairly early on I found myself editing what was effectively a “snuff film”, where the recorder was executed and I had to attempt to glean information about the “studio” where it was recorded. The end goal was to save someone else who was being held by these same perpetrators, and would likely meet the same fate. It reminded me an awful lot of the movie 8MM, and it was similarly mentally and emotionally jarring. You find yourself developing a sort of clinical detachment as a defense mechanism to what is actually happening in the recording… so that you can scan for objects that might be able to uncover the location

The thing is… where Cyberpunk differs from most games is that when you finally do save the day and rescue the person being held. There is no shiny achievement unlocked where everyone lives happily ever after. Instead you deal with the ramifications of the mental and physical abuse that this person had heaped upon them. You see the impact on this extremely damaged human being and the trickle down effects that it has on all of the people that care for them. Quite honestly over twenty hours later and countless additional missions I am still dealing with the impact of these moments. In Night City… no one is ever “all right”, because you are slowly peeling back multiple layers of stress, abuse and neglect that has played out over the course of the characters lives.

The longer I play… the more distinct I feel like this is not going to be one of those games where your character gets a happy ending either. Instead it feels like I am just trying to do whatever good I can while I am alive and able to make a positive impact in this city. I am sure were your so inclined the game could play out in a completely different manner and take a more “renegade” path. I however choose to largely be a force of good, at least for those who are willing to pay for my services. Truth be told however… I have stacked a pile of bodies high in my path. Those purveyors of snuff braindances… needed to die however and I was their willing executioner. The NCPD has been all too keen on looking the other way if you make their lives easier.

The game also has down right quirky moments. For example I just happened to be walking along the street and this vending machine called out to me, introducing itself as Brendan. It wanted to strike up a friendship with me, and then immediately asked to impose upon me a favor. Someone had parked a trash dumpster in front of its machine, blocking the view of the road which was their favorite pastime. Brendan asked if I would be so kind as to move the trash bin, which required a feat of strength to do so. I now apparently have a vending machine that considers me their best friend because I was the one who took the time to pay attention to its needs.

It is such a weirdly nuanced game that I feel like I have barely scratched the surface of. Night City is so massive in scope that I am not sure if I even have a shot in hell of ever seeing all of it. There are large swaths of the city that are uninteresting, specifically the in between spaces as you transition major districts. That said I have spent a large amount of time just wandering around aimlessly and have encountered quite a few interesting sights. The game loves to also throw random encounters where you can aid the populace by “neutralizing” some threat. The one thing that I find a bit odd, is that there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of lasting consequences of pissing off the various gangs within each area. Maybe I just haven’t encountered that since most every time I have racked up a body count it has been part of a mission.

There were significant issues with this games launch and significant issues with the creation and working conditions. Additionally there are apparently a number of social issues surrounding the game that I had more or less been oblivious to. I purchased this game when it was first announced and I had been avoiding much information about it, because I didn’t want to spoil my experience. However part of what I had been unwittingly avoiding was the outrage surrounding it. I personally am enjoying this game immensely and it saddens me that it is doing so many interesting things, but a chunk of my friends will never experience it because of the other issues associated with the content. I do hope that CDPR makes good on fixing the console versions, because clearly they are in a horrible state. I also hope that maybe the studio grows a bit and realizes the steps they took wrong in this process.

For now however, I find myself deeply attached to a number of characters in this game and I am with them until the end. I hope we will reach some sort of satisfying conclusion, even if it maybe won’t be what I would call a happy ending. This game appears to be uniquely designed for my interests, and it will be interesting to see where it goes from here. The post Cyberpunk 2077 Thoughts appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.