Would you rather live in peace, as a working game at launch? Or go down for all times in a blaze of glory? CD Projekt Red chose to latter, and it seems like it's ultimately worked out for them? And that's perhaps the problem.
Wake the fuck up Johnny, we've got dots to follow.
The year is 2021...Cyberpunk 2077 is too large to be transmitted over a disc. Johnny Mnemonic has to do what no man should, and deliver copies of the game to Best Buy bargain bins the world over.
Would you rather live in peace, as a working game at launch? Or go down for all times in a blaze of glory?
CD Projekt Red chose to latter, and it seems like it's ultimately worked out for them? And that's perhaps the problem.
I find it hard to get excited for games anymore. Cyberpunk was maybe the last game I can remember seeking out tidbits of - closed door demos at E3, with journalists extolling the potential choices and consequences waiting for a game that always seemed 2 or 3 years away. It was fun to be excited. Watch Dogs was a more distant memory. We could be hopeful that the people who made the Witcher 3, the new hotness, would change video games yet again.
Fast forward to 2023, Cyberpunk is a hot game post being ice-cold, Idris is hot off of the iconic Apple TV series HIJACK, one of the few Apple shows to feature a non-white person on the cover. It's a perfect storm. What could go wrong?
Well V. That's where things get interesting.
Theoretically this is going to pan out to be a great year for games. Starfield finally came out, and there are no dragons flying backwards! Atomic Heart came out, and was an actual game! Capcom not only released Street Fighter 6 and Resident Evil 4, but they also gave us Battle Network. How could this not be the best year ever? To rival 2004?
Well, I think Cyberpunk is oddly enough a great example why 2023 feels kind of hollow. I ended up playing some Starfield this morning, looked at my outposts, said "I don't feel like figuring out why this poorly constructed mechanic isn't working", and then booted up...Cyberpunk? Another AAA game that feels hollow, for all its flash and promise. Night City still manages to bury its promise of fantastical riches behind its corporate reality.
An important thing to note about my relationship to Cyberpunk is that this is one of the few games I seriously considered refunding at launch, and it was playable for me. My disappointment and anger stemmed from a variety of things, but largely around the fact that Cyberpunk isn't really an immersive sim, and I found the storytelling (especially in 2020) embarrassing, if not disgusting. I'm glad the community hates Fingers, but I have more disdain for the creative process that carried him from concept to shipping, while managing less nuance than No Russian.
Suffice it to say, I'd argue the game shares more in common with Watch Dogs than it does Deus Ex. In terms of comps:
- Watch Dogs: A dystopian cyberpunk near-future Chicago sees a gravelly voiced man hack his way through a grimdark storyline. Features cars that drive like boats, the ability to hack things in the environment, and is more remembered for a visual downgrade than being a good game.
- Remember Me: Remember Me? No? The Life is Strange people did the braindance mechanic wrapped in a bad Uncharted game focused on melee combat. I think? I don't remember.
- A Far Cry game: I don't even know which Far Cry I should list here. Landing on New Dawn because I forgot it existed. Maybe Rage 2 would be a better comp...
And watching the Watch Dogs trailer linked above, in the first minute we get a character on comms called T-Bone, a mention of fixers, rain swept streets. Aiden Pearce should make a cameo in Cyberpunk 2078. He'd love Night City.
Cyberpunk replaces T-Bone with T-Bug, but the minute to minute remains similar. Hack cars! Hack cameras! Break the law! Be...edgy. You've got a city to burn.
Now I have a new relationship with Cyberpunk, free of any real expectations. With Patch 2.0, the gameplay seems like it's...better? But more in that the game feels closer to what it should've been at launch.
And that's the key. Patch 2.0 is maybe an okay 1.0. 1.0 was, I don't even know the word, a scam? A disgrace? A team held at gunpoint to ship something they didn't believe in?
The money was made! And ultimately, that will likely mean more to the folks who drive the industry than 6 months to a year of CD Projekt Red going from a prestige studio to whatever they can be considered now. We've gone from "don't pre-order" to "consider purchasing in 2 years", while titles still get lauded at launch, as consumers brace for battlepasses and other new "friendly" forms of monetization.
Unfortunately, tweaking skill trees and making the game itself play better doesn't fix the storytelling, the lack of choice and consequence, and weird counterpoints to roleplaying in general. NCPD calling me to do jobs for them with no motivation is a confusing note among a cacophony of other ones. But my car shows up without clipping out of the world, so I guess that's better?
If I were to fix Cyberpunk, I'd make it a Far Cry game. I'm choosing all the orange dialogue to get out of these conversations anyway, so why give me the choice? It's a close relative to Fallout 4's "Yes, No, Sarcasm, Question" system of dialogue, except...with even less choice?
I've started just tuning out during dialogue sequences, to the point where I've died and hit a fail state because I forgot to press the X button. It's morbidly funny, especially when my inability to hit X to use an AirHypo leads to a full on animated death scene for myself and my driver.
So, my solution this playthrough is to play as Johnny Mnemonic. For those unfamiliar, Keanu Reeves gives one of his most emotive performances as a corpo scumbag complaining about having to "be down here with the dogs and the garbage" to save the world.
And it works! It reminds me of playing Far Cry 3. I get to be an asshole, helping assholes fight other assholes, and maybe I'll get to burn a weed plantation while Skrillex plays before a character gets very close to me in first person.
But that's the thing, man. Cyberpunk is different. It's edgy. It shows you things you've never seen in games before, like genitalia and trans fetishization. Also, you can shoot lots of guys. But the gangs bro, they're built different. And your compadre calls you ese so you know it's real.
And so the illusion of Night City is quickly shattered by a world that feels closer to something like Skellige or Riften than Deus Ex Human Revolution's Detroit. And although that game has its fair share of problems, it gets closer to an honest depiction of desolation in American cities than the dildo-strewn landscape of Cyberpunk.
Sooner or later the cast you begin with all goes their separate ways, and you're out of a linear prologue into the open world. I guess. A few hours past the prologue I've just started treating it like GTA, no emphasis on saving and loading unless I accidentally activate something that pisses everyone off in a club named Clouds.
This time, I'm putting off Fingers a bit, but I'm already at that point in the Evelyn Parker questline. And I don't really care. Johnny Mnemonic is definitely more worn than he was at Arasaka Corp, he's grizzled, he hasn't shaved. Room service is less a demand than an aspiration, as long as he can save himself from certain death.
Wow, maybe this is just a Johnny Mnemonic game...
I'll likely be writing a bit more about Cyberpunk, and certainly about this "follow the dot" era of game design. For an environment as detailed as Night City, I sure find myself following dots and poorly drawn lines more than taking an interest in the world itself. And that's a shame. But it does make the game more enjoyable, as I'm no longer searching for something that isn't there - depth. 🤷
Comments ()