The rise of CD projekt red was unprecedented. In just 8 years a small independent studio
went from releasing their largely unnoticed debut game on an outdated and borrowed engine
to releasing one of the most critically and commercially successful games of all time. After The Witcher 3’s success CD projekt
were catapulted into video game stardom, becoming one of the most beloved developers in the
industry. Their fans were unwaveringly loyal, their
reputation was impeccably pristine and their stock price was rising rapidly. Fast forward to mid 2020 and they became Europe’s
most valuable video game company, having surpassed even industry heavyweight Ubisoft. For comparison Ubisoft have published or developed
a grand total of 784 video games. CD projekt meanwhile had, at the time, made
three Witcher games and a couple spin offs. Their journey from a small polish pc game
distributor, who struggled to find funding to create a single low budget role-playing
game, to one of the largest gaming companies in the world, off the back of only a few actually
released games, wasn’t just unusual. It was literally something that had never
happened before or since. Their rise was meteoric and in 2020 CD projekt
sat on top of the video game world, seemingly untouchable and unrivaled, but they wouldn’t
stay there for long. To say that people were excited for Cyberpunk
2077 is a bit of an understatement. I don’t know if hype can be objectively
measured. As far as I know there’s no such thing as
a mathematically derived hype coefficient to make use of here, but I don’t think it’s
an exaggeration to say that Cyberpunk was probably the most eagerly anticipated video
game in history. Of course there were a few wobbles: multiple
delays, negative news coverage about work conditions, announcements of some unwanted
additions, but make no mistake; Cyberpunk never seemed in danger of being derailed and
as the long awaited release date finally drew near excitement reached its boiling point. Hardware was upgraded. Holidays were booked off work. And social commitments were eschewed. With hype levels off the charts, preorder
sales through the roof, and records just waiting and records just waiting to be broken. And so, after all those years of announcements
and expectations, of teasers and trailers, of waiting and anticipating… The day of judgment was finally here… and
what could possibly go wrong? Bugs should have been expected. I mean we’re long past the age when big
budget games come bug free right out the box, particularly open world rpgs, but I don’t
think anyone anticipated the severity of the situation. It’s like the difference between finding
a single spider in your house compared to finding a whole swarm of them. Some of the bugs were relatively minor and
some could even be amusing, but others caused serious problems and the frequency with which
these issues occurred was far beyond even the lowest standards of the modern era. And it wasn’t just bugs that were the issue;
questions were also raised over performance, with the previously announced system requirements
seeming more than a little optimistic but any slight disappointments over performance
faced by PC players were nothing compared to what awaited those who purchased this game
on last gen consoles. One of the best reasons to play games on consoles,
instead of on a pc, is that consoles are reliable. You don’t have to worry about whether your
hardware is still up to the task of running a newly released game. The framerate might be low but it’s usually
quite stable. And you don’t need to concern yourself with
things like crashes. Instead, you can rest assured that at least
you’re buying something that’s been optimized and tested to make sure it runs properly…
that at least the game will work. I have to admit, as someone who plays mostly
on PC I honestly wasn’t even aware that games running on consoles could crash… until
cyberpunk. I haven’t played this game on a console. I don’t know how bad it was, or still is,
but the consequences of how this game ran on last gen consoles speak for themselves. First came the fan outrage, quickly followed
by an onslaught of memes. Which then led into an apology from CD Projekt,
followed by promises of refunds. What came next however was something nobody
could of anticipated as Sony responded by removing cyberpunk from its digital stores
entirely, for both playstation 4 and 5, in what was an unprecedented move that even gaming’s
biggest disappointments hadn’t been subjected to. Microsoft followed suit by adding a warning
to their store page about performances issues, and as of recording this, cyberpunk 2077,
the biggest game of the year, still can’t be purchased digitally for any of Sony’s
consoles. When it will return is still unknown but things
may not even stop here as recent announcements suggest a class action lawsuit is being filed
by company investors and, as this is unknown territory, who knows where we’ll end up. One thing’s for sure though, which is that
for CD projekt it’s a disaster. The developer’s previously soaring stock
price has since plummeted, and regardless of how many copies Cyberpunk may have already
sold, that’s something which will have serious consequences for the company. The console situation is made even worse by
the fact that CD projekt only issued reviewers with PC codes alongside a strict embargo,
so that any issues with the console version were conveniently brushed under the rug and
left as an unhappy little launch day surprise for the unexpecting last gen consumer. And they almost got away with their dastardly
plan too if not for one fatal flaw… which is that on release day people were able to
play the game themselves. Yeah, in retrospect you have to wonder how
they didn’t see that coming or how this situation got to be quite this dire in the
first place. And those are questions I’m sure many people
have been asking these past weeks. The details of this situation are mostly unknown
although I’m sure people have theories and, in time, will attempt to provide explanations. Still that’s not what this video is about. There’s been a lot of talk about CD projekt
these past weeks but I want to focus on something else, which is the actual game. For a lot of the discussion on cyberpunk recently
the game and CD projekt have been treated as one interconnected entity. Disappointment at the game leads to anger
at the developer and anger at the developer leads to disappointment with the game, and
it’s not unreasonable that people react this way, but I’ve always been more interested
in talking about games on the basis of the game itself rather than any fan outrage, political
discussion, or media frenzy that surrounds them. Still I do want to be clear that what CD projekt
have done by misleading their audience, failing to deliver on promises, and mismanaging their
studio is… bad, and regardless of anything else I say in this video, these aren’t things
I wish to defend. But I also believe there’s nothing wrong
with separating the art from artist and in the whirlwind of expectations and emotion
that have surrounded this game’s release that’s something that hasn’t always happened. So forget the controversy that surrounds this
game. Forget the company that made it. Forget what you were promised or what you
expected. And let’s focus on just one question. Is Cyberpunk 2077 actually any good? And if not, why not? Keep in mind, there will be spoilers. First things first. After all these news stories and fan reactions,
and one hundred hours of in game time myself, one conclusion that seems obvious is that
cyberpunk 2077 feels unfinished. Bugs, poor optimization, cut content, broken
promises, all of these things happen even if we wish they didn’t… but not to this
extent. I can’t offer a comparison to other notable
disappointing games of recent years like fallout 76, no mans sky or anthem, because generally,
I do my best to avoid disappointing games. Jumping on the bandwagon to shit on the latest
game that deserves to be shat on might be an easy way to gain views on youtube, but
it’s still not something I have much interest in because life’s short and I want to spend
my time playing games I actually enjoy. Still something I have done over the years
is play a lot of early access game that appeal to my tastes. Games which might be low budget and janky. Games that are only part way through their
development. And games which are obviously unfinished,
and which the developers will happily admit that this is the case. And after 100 hours with cyberpunk it does
seem… a bit like an early access game, and I don’t even mean that as an insult, regardless
of how insulting it may sound, cyberpunk just doesn’t seem finished. It’s full of bugs you’d expect wouldn’t
be difficult to iron out, systems that seem like placeholders that were one day meant
to be replaced, and areas that look like they should have some kind of content that just
hasn’t been added to the game yet. It feels like playing an early access title. The thing is, some of my favorite games of
the last decade have been early access games. That sounds a little like saying ‘but some
of my closest friends are black’ after being called out on a questionable choice of words,
but really, I don’t mind if a game seems unfinished in certain ways if it’s good
in others. And I also don’t mind if a game is a little
janky. Again many of my favorite games have been
janky and buggy, particularly at launch, and over the years I’ve played and enjoyed many
a buggy rpg. In fact I often find the games I end up enjoying
and respecting the most are those which are ambitious but flawed, as opposed to games
that are polished but do little to stand out, and I’ve often found myself wishing that
critics and fans would pay less attention to graphical fidelity and level of presentation
of a title because these often seem less important to me than other areas of game design. I say all this so you understand where I’m
coming from and because I think it’s better to be up front about my taste and past experiences
before saying what I’m about to. Which is that I played Cyberpunk a lot, on
what is, by Cyberpunk standards, a low end PC, but the bugs and technical problems didn’t
ruin my experience. In fact, in some ways, their severity seems
to have been exaggerated to me because, despite the fact that certain bugs or problems were
very frequent, most of the bugs I personally encountered were also quite minor. I also found, much to my surprise, that in
100 hours playtime, I didn’t have a single crash. I’m not sure to what extent this is me getting
lucky, and the fact that console players have been getting crashes makes me even more bewildered,
but I can only speak about the experience I’ve had, and that experience has been entirely
crash free. Which would make the game… more stable than
most. I also feel I need to point out that despite
doing every single side quest and gig in game at least once and many twice, I never encountered
a single quest that I wasn’t able to complete. As someone that’s played a lot of rpgs over
the years that’s pretty rare. I also never encountered a gamebreaking bug,
at least not one that I couldn’t quickly fix by reloading the last autosave. The worst bugs I encountered were: one time
when my characters weapon permanently disappeared and nothing I did allowed me to use a weapon
or interact with anything, one time when I got stuck behind Jackie in a doorway in an
early story mission, one time my car got stuck and I couldn’t exit it, one time an enemy
car got stuck in the ground which meant a quest didn’t update, and one time when an
enemy drone that I had to kill got stuck in the ground in a main story mission. In all of these occurrences I had to reload
the last save to resolve the issue but, as cyberpunk frequently autosaves, these didn’t
seem like game ruining issues. One of the most impactful bugs I encountered
was with Wakako’s phone dialogue. This character is one of the game’s fixers
who gives you side quests and there are many short conversations with them over the phone
but after some unknown point early on in the game, every single one of these conversations
didn’t play either the audio or subtitles correctly meaning I was forced to miss the
majority of these conversations. As for other bugs, they tended to just be
annoying but some were more annoying than others, and I certainly got sick of certain
common issues, like seeing my character being shown as bald in mirrors or enemy loot which
can’t be picked up. Still the real problem with these minor bugs
is that this is an immersive game with a heavy focus on narrative, and seeing characters
walk through cars, or lip animations fail to play pulls you straight out of the experience. These type of bugs occur so regularly that
you’ll find they show up during many important story scenes, and it’s one thing when you’re
just messing around doing side activates and come across some weird visual glitch, but
it’s a great shame when you’re invested in the storyline and a dramatic impactful
moment is interrupted by your characters pants failing to load and their mouth getting stuck
in an open position. When bugs are this common it also introduces
a level of uncertainty over whether issues you encounter are the result of the game working
as intended or because something is broken. During one side quest called Kold Mirage you
need to save a guy who’s getting his brain fried when trying to access a cyberdeck. You can save this character by hacking into
to a nearby computer terminal except when I tried to do this there were no options to
hack the console and I didn’t see any other way to advance the quest. I assumed this was the result of a bug and
that I simply couldn’t complete this quest until it’s fixed, but many hours of game
time later I finally realized the reason I couldn’t hack the terminal was because I
had changed out my characters cyberware and no longer had a cyberdeck. One short trip to a ripperdoc later and the
quest was finished but if bugs weren’t so common in this game I might have realized
at the time what the problem was. Instead bugs are so prevalent in cyberpunk
that they end up seeming like the most likely explanation for all problems of this type
you encounter and this example wasn’t an isolated event. Being unsure whether the problem you face
is the result of bug or if this is how the game is meant to be harms the experience. It feels pointless searching every inch of
an area looking for what you might have missed when you can’t be sure whether you missed
anything at all or whether the quest just bugged out and isn’t updating. And so in cyberpunk bugs end up harming both
story and gameplay, as they lead to wasted time, diminished immersion and a cheapened
narrative, and even as someone who might have got a little lucky overall and has a high
prebuilt tolerance for bugs, I still found the game to be heavily brought down by the
vast quantity of issues encountered. But it wasn’t ruined. So what about everything else?```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````` One of the biggest areas of criticism for
Cyberpunk has been over its roleplaying elements. While the game is based off the cyberpunk
tabletop rpg, doubts were raised before it even released over things like the direction
implied by gameplay trailers or the rebranding of the official cyberpunk 2077 twitter account
which removed mention of the term rpg in favor of the more generic sounding ‘open world
action-adventure story’. So you could say the writing was on the wall
for this one, but really there was a much more obvious indicator for the level of roleplaying
people should expect from the experience, which was, The Witcher 3. As this was the game which introduced many
people to CD projekt, and is likely the game that set expectations about what to expect
from the roleplaying of cyberpunk 2077, it makes sense to me that in order to fairly
analysis Cyberpunk as an rpg that it be compared directly to its spiritual predecessor. So that’s what I’m going to do for the
rest of this segment. Spoilers, the results might shock you. Let’s start with life paths. Your choice between nomad, streetkid or corpo
was promised to be an important decision that would significantly alter the experience but
this was a lie. While each path does have a different 30 minute
prologue that tries to introduce your character’s background and motivations, the prologues
themselves feel like weak introductions to this world and are too short to feel especially
meaningful. Once these prologues are over the story will
then follow the exact same path regardless of your chosen background with the only impact
of lifepath being one short optional side quest per path and some semi regular dialogue
choices that are lifepath unique. This is not enough to make the original decision
of which life path to chose feel important and, as far as I can tell, the dialogue options
will never unlock any new routes in quests or have any other tangible impact on the experience
except for just changing the flavor of what’s said. For example the Corpo options lets you unleash
you inner Karen at certain times and ask the occasional question that I guess is meant
to reflect your greater insight into corporate on goings, but that’s about it. This is disappointing and feels like considerably
less than what was promised. I expected something similar to Dragon Age
Origins, which has 6 origin stories, twice the number of cyberpunk, and yet each comes
with a considerably longer unique prologue that goes on to change the players experience
later in the game in a much more significant way. Still, to be fair to Cyberpunk, I did say
this was a comparison with The Witcher 3, which had no life paths as Geralt, understandably,
always has the same predetermined background. You can import or simulate a save file from
the witcher 2 but even the impact of this is very limited, really only altering the
availability of one side quest as well as slightly changing a few bits of dialogue about
past character fates. And so, as disappointing as Cyberpunk’s
lifepaths are, it’s still somehow the winner in this particular area. 1 – nil cyberpunk. Moving on we have dialogue. Both The witcher and cyberpunk feature regular
dialogue choices and it’s through these kind of options that many rpgs allow players
to role play their character. Both of these games have a more limited selection
of dialogue choices than many other rpgs, which makes sense because both games attempt
to be cinematic and feature voiced protagonists, meaning creating scenes with radically branching
dialogue requires more effort than say, a game that delivers dialogue through static
text boxes. So options for roleplaying through dialogue
are a bit lacking in both. Likewise the player only has limited input
into the personality of both Geralt and V which can diminish the degree to which each
character feels like your character. This is more disappointing in the case of
cyberpunk because Geralt has always been a predefined character, whereas cyberpunk features
a brand new protagonist, which in theory affords the writers more freedom for role playing
options. But this still isn’t evidence of the witcher
being a deeper rpg so this round ends up being a draw. For the record I do think Geralt is the more
enjoyable and likeable main character, but that’s not what this comparison is about
and so for now the score remains 1 – nil cyberpunk. Moving on we have how the games handle narrative
choice and consequence. While you will make hundreds, if not thousands
of dialogue choices in games like these, most of them have no real impact on the story and
simply don’t matter in the grand scheme of things. So now let’s look at the few important choices
that do. This factor can be a little difficult to compare
between the two games simply because The Witcher 3 is longer so it makes sense that it has
more choices which impact its narrative. It can also be hard to know exactly which
choices matter in these types of games even after multiple playthroughs, as players won’t
always experience every outcome and games often employ more than a little smoke and
mirrors in making their choices seem more meaningful than they are. Luckily though people have already compiled
checklists for each game that list all meaningful story choices which can then be compared. I’m not going to summarize these lists,
as that would take too long, but feel free to check them out yourselves. Anyway, from playing both games more than
once and checking these lists my conclusion is that the witcher 3, just about, provides
both more regular, and more meaningful, narrative choices. Cyberpunk does have its moments. For example the early quest the pickup is
really impressive. This chart shows the different ways this quest
can go down, but there are further consequences of your decisions here as your choices will
determine whether Meredith lives or dies, which can open up an extra romance scene later,
and you also have a choice about whether to save Brick which impacts one of the later
side quests where you can meet him again and avoid a combat encounter as a result. Most other quests aren’t as impressive as
this but there are a few more good examples of choice and consequence, including how some
choices are initially hidden by being tied to the player actions in missions instead
of just selecting A or B from a menu, like saving Takemura’s life during Search and
Destroy. Cyberpunk also handles its ending choice better
than The Witcher 3. In cyberpunk there are 4 very different epilogues,
compared to the witcher’s three, but it also has four different final missions sequences
with the ending the player receives being determined by both the choice the player makes
about how to handle the final mission as well as their choice at the end of this mission. Which options are available are determined
through players actions in side quests, as well as one secret option being made available
by having a high enough relationship with Johnny, which all together makes for an impressive
amount of variables and outcomes. The witcher 3 only has one final mission sequence
and I don’t want to spoil that games ending for anyone so I won’t go into any more details
about how the epilogue is determined, but I think it’s fair to say Cyberpunk handles
its ending choices much better. Still how the witcher 3 handles narrative
choice overall is one of its strongest aspects and it ultimately wins out through sheer quantity,
particularly in regards to its large number of side quests that feature some kind of choice. And so after three rounds its one all with
everything to play for. I wonder how many of you watching can see
where I’m going with this by now. Anyway don’t worry if you can’t because
things won’t stay level for long. Next up let’s look at the role playing systems
in each game, starting with character building. Cyberpunk features 5 attributes and 12 skills,
each with their own selection of perks. You also have a number of choices around equipment
including weapons, armor, mods and cyberware. We’ll look at how loot and itemization are
handled separately so for now let’s just focus on the options provided by the systems
themselves. The witcher 3 has no kind of attribute system
but it does have its own skill system that features perk like options that it calls abilities. However while cyberpunk has 12 skills, each
with their own selection of perks, the witcher only has 4: combat, signs, alchemy and general. For each skill both games have a selection
of 20 perks/abilities, which means the witcher has 80 abilities compared to cyberpunk’s
240 perks. Not all perks are equal but both games make
use of similar types, with a mix of percentage modifiers, stat bonuses and a few upgraded
or new abilities. This means that while you chose which abilities
to increase and equip in the witcher, you also do this in cyberpunk and yet there is
a much greater number of options in both skills and perks as well as the added decision over
which attributes to increase. Cyberpunk also has a system where each skill
increases in level through use, akin to the progression system used in the elder scrolls
game, which doesn’t always seem very balanced at the moment as these skill levels seem to
increase a bit slowly, and there are also some questionable aspects of this systems
implementation, like how you get stealth exp for hiding bodies in containers. But overall this system still adds a bit of
further complexity to the games character building which isn’t found in the witcher. So cyberpunk wins this round by a landslide,
offering both more choices and deeper choices, but it’s not just about what systems are
in place; it also matters how the game uses them. Lots of rpgs with skills feature some form
of skill check and these two games are no different. In The Witcher 3 there is one ability that
is used as a skill check in conversations, and that’s the delusion ability, which allows
Geralt to use the sign Axii to sometimes persuade people to do as he wishes through some jedi
mind trick shenanigans. And that’s it, that’s all the skill checks
in the entire hundred hour plus game: one easy to acquire ability that can be used to
avoid a few optional fights. Cyberpunk features conversational skill checks
more regularly, which are connected to the players 5 attributes. A lot of the time these don’t have any real
impact on events and just change the flavor of dialogue, but there are at least some examples
of when using skill checks in conversations opens up new options in quests. Usually this is when the player is given the
option of using their body stat to intimidate various people you encounter and I wish the
game had just taken this same approach with some of its other attributes. It would have been great to be able to use
my cool stat to charm people or my intelligence stat to outsmart someone, but while there
is clear room for improvement, at the very least, cyberpunks skill checks during dialogue
are still better than the very low bar set by the witcher. However cyberpunk’s skill checks aren’t
limited to conversations. You also use your body stat to perform feats
of brute strength like forcing open doors and ripping up turrets, as well as the intelligence
stat to have access to more breach options and ways to hack the environment, as well
as the technical stat to unlock doors. But cyberpunk also features attribute requirements
on cyberware so that your character build unlocks even more options in what you can
equip, and cyberware can unlock even more ways to interact with the environment, like
the leg upgrade which gives you a double jump that can be used to reach new locations. Anyway we’re starting to blur the already
imperfect lines between rounds here but just to make it clear; cyberpunk is the obvious
winner once more moving the score to 3 – 1. Next up let’s look at level design and combat. Part of what makes rpgs rpgs is having multiple
options to approach problems. In tabletop rpgs this often revolves around
how imaginative players are, and maybe how forgiving your dungeon master is, but due
to the more limited focus of video games, computer rpgs will often resort to combat
as the default solution to every problem. And The witcher 3 and cyberpunk aren’t so
different yet one of these games is clearly better than the other. The witcher does have a few ways you can prepare
for battle, like oils and potions that provide a stat buff, and a few different tools in
combat, like signs and bombs, but really every problem is dealt with the same way, by your
sword. Steel or silver, it makes no difference, when
problems come a knocking someone’s getting stabbed. Meanwhile in cyberpunk most combat situations
allow stealth as a perfectly viable alternative to fighting, and as well as just sneaking
you can use hacking to manipulate the environment or to weaken foes before getting combat underway. There’s also a much greater focus placed
on environmental exploration, which means alternative pathways through levels or different
access points to locations. And even combat itself provides more options
with multiple weapon types that can be taken advantage of for different situations. Whether to charge in with a shotgun or sit
back with a sniper rifle is still more choice than the witchers 3’s combat encounters
offer and there’s also melee, grenades, quickhacks, breaching, and activate-able cyberware
that can do things like slow time. Overall it’s clear that when you look at
the core gameplay of each game cyberpunk just offers more choice and more depth. 4 – 1. Lastly we come to loot and itemization. Character progression through gear has become
a major aspect of role playing video games but, unfortunately, this isn’t something
either game does very well. For reasons I will never understand, modern
video games seem to be obsessed with throwing as much loot as possible at players as if
they’re trying cover up any flaws with the game itself by overwhelming players with useless
crap to pick up at all moments in time. Really it’s got to the point where I feel
we need an intervention. Someone needs to take the modern gaming industry
to one side and sit them down with all their friends and ask why this is a thing. Seriously, who decided that picking up useless
crap nonstop is what players want to do in their rpgs or action games? Why would we want some of this stuff? There’s a reason it’s called junk. And what’s the point in having so many weapon
and armor items drop off foes that you have to waste time going in your inventory after
every single combat encounter just to swap gear out for a few measly incremental stat
upgrades? This isn’t satisfying progression; you’re
just turning loot into a chore. Then there’s the damage to immersion that
comes from pilfering every item not nailed down as soon as you enter a building, even
when the owner of these items is standing there staring at you as you do it. “Yes hi, don’t mind me, just putting your
ashtray into my backpack so I can sell it for 3 dollars at a vending machine later,
and oh, is that a condom I see in the corner there, don’t mind if I do, thank you very
much”. Maybe I’m just getting old but this kind
of senseless loot spam seen in so many modern games just makes me feel tired and doesn’t
increase my enjoyment of the experience in any way. Regardless, most of what I’m complaining
about applies to cyberpunk more than the witcher but neither game is innocent. Cyberpunk also disappoints in how it forces
you to constantly switch to the latest armor drop which always seems to result in your
character looking like a complete twat. This is a setting where style is everything,
except for you, who bounces between homeless chic and ‘I was dressed by my toddler’
making the decision to make the whole game first person feel almost a necessity if only
to hide what a an eyesore every outfit you forced wear really is. What’s so annoying about this is that an
armor rating for clothes doesn’t even make sense. I mean why does one t-shirt give more armor
than another? Also if information in game is accurate then
the armor stat itself barely even matters as 10 armor translates to a negligible -1
dps on incoming attacks, making it all pretty pointless. A purely cosmetic system for clothing, with
meaningful stats and progression instead coming from clothing mods would look and function
so much better. But instead we have constant loot spam with
arpg style randomly generated items of the usual tiers and standard stat modifiers, and
while both games are bad Cyberpunk is still worse: The junk items aren’t needed. Weapon upgrades are too frequent and too small,
and clothing upgrades feel like they serve no purpose other than making you look like
a walking embarrassment. Still the witcher 3 has its own glaring issues,
particularly the way it scale quest rewards and random drops to be just below the player’s
level, meaning they’re almost always significantly worse than items you can get by crafting. This meant even in-game items of legendary
status gained through on level quests were often worthless right away as a result of
being scaled too low, and all item progression after the early game simply comes from a small
number of crafted witcher gear despite the fact that game still forces you to loot things
all the time. At least Cyberpunk handles its iconic weapons
better, with random drops also being regularly worth using, and the loot spam does become
less of a problem later on when upgrade frequency slows and you learn to just ignore all junk. Cyberpunk also has progression through cyberware,
which offers a few really interesting upgrades while also providing a good money sink to
help balance the economy. Overall I might give the edge to cyberpunk
for this round but the difference is small enough that it seems fairer to consider it
a draw, bringing the final score to 4 – 1 with cyberpunk the clear winner. This is just on the basis of their roleplaying
elements but as rpgs the only way the witcher 3 could be considered deeper is narrative
choice and consequence, and even that category was very close with the witcher only really
taking it by virtue of being a longer game that features more choices as a result. Meanwhile cyberpunk has deeper character building
with choices that completely change the gameplay experience based on both character build and
how you approach gameplay situations. I have completed the witcher 3 three times
and each time I‘ve tried my best to create different builds, with one playthrough investing
heavily into alchemy and one playthrough investing heavily into signs. And yet in reality all three playthroughs
played out exactly the same with the only real difference being whether I focus on fast
attacks or strong attacks, and even that only has a small impact in practice. But that wasn’t the case in cyberpunk. My first playthrough focused on handguns and
stealth, where I picked up as many headshot and crit bonuses as possible while making
use of time slowing cyberware to make getting those headshots easier. This meant every encounter I had a choice
between going in guns blazing or taking advantage of stealth, with both proving very effective
thanks to my build, and I also focused all my gear, mods and cyberware on getting headshot
and crit synergies to boost my damage high enough that I could one shot enemies even
on hard. And it was fun. However on my second playthrough I went for
a katana wielding hacker and the experience changed completely. Using melee instead of guns radically alters
combat, stealth was still possible but only by relying heavily on hacking, and where before
I built my character as a glass cannon, now I was forced to build my character with a
greater focus on survivability to allow me to soak enough bullets to get up in enemy’s
faces. So, two playthroughs with completely different
gameplay experiences, and there’s potential for many more playstyles and character builds
than this, as while you have enough attributes and perks to heavily invest into two skill
trees, you can mix and match which trees those will be or go for more of a jack of all trades
approach. But it’s not just character building that’s
deeper here. By creating combat encounters as mini arenas
that incorporate environmental exploration, stealth, skill checks, hackable objects and
more, it means cyberpunk incorporates elements of player choice into its gameplay on both
macro and micro scales where you regularly get to think about your approach, weigh options,
and take advantage of your specific character’s skill set. This is the type of thing we need more of
in rpgs, and in modern rpgs in particular. So 4 – 1… seems a reasonably representative
score. You could argue not all of these categories
are of equal importance, and I’m not trying to claim my methodology is perfect. The scoring system isn’t meant to imply
that cyberpunk is four times as much rpg as the witcher, it was just meant to be a fun
and informative way to compare these games but, regardless, I have tried my best to compare
their rpg elements fairly and the differences between them in terms of depth is considerable. So why the hell are so many people complaining
that cyberpunk is a shallow rpg? This is a game from the makers of the witcher
3, and as an rpg its deeper than the witcher 3, so if everyone is complaining that cyberpunk
is too shallow as a role playing game, with many people going as far as to claim cyberpunk
isn’t an rpg at all, then why did nobody have an issue with the witcher? You can dislike cyberpunk for all sorts of
valid reasons. You can consider cyberpunk a shallow rpg. And you can even argue cyberpunk isn’t an
rpg to begin with if you really want, and I won’t mind. But one thing you cannot say is that cyberpunk
is less of an rpg than the witcher was, because it is just not true, not even slightly. So why are so many people saying this? The only explanation I can think of is that
most people’s basis of what is an rpg comes down to whether they like the game. And that if you like a game it doesn’t matter
how shallow its rpg system are, it’s an rpg. And if you dislike a game it doesn’t matter
how deep its system are, it’s not an rpg, but this is stupid. I have looked at a lot of the specific reasons
people have given for why they think cyberpunk isn’t an rpg and some of them are frankly
absurd, but I always think it helps to come back to the same rule of comparing it to the
witcher. So, people complain that, say, cyberpunk isn’t
an rpg because you can’t play on the arcade machines, where as lots of other games have
playable arcades, which is like saying the witcher 3 isn’t an rpg because you can’t
go fishing while lots of other games feature fishing mini games. Or they say it’s not an rpg because you
can’t go out to a club and get drunk and hook up with people, which is like saying
witcher 3 isn’t an rpg because you can’t go to a tavern and get drunk and hook up with
people. Or they say that cyberpunk isn’t an rpg
because you can’t customize your car, which is like saying the witcher isn’t an rpg
because you can’t customize your mount. Do you see my point here? I’m not trying to be facetious, but this
whole debate over what is an rpg is reductive, inconsistent, and ultimately just not helpful. Anyway if you really wanted CD projekt to
make deep rpgs maybe you should have said something when the witcher 2 was released,
because that was the point where the series moved away from its more traditional roots
to introduce things like quick time events, action combat, and a more defined main character. But nobody said anything then. Instead they cheered these changes on, probably
because the level of presentation improved and deep down, that’s the main thing people
actually seem to care about. Just like how nobody complained when the witcher
3 took things even further by embracing a ubisoft style open world because, once more,
the level of presentation improved and, hey, the story was pretty good, so 10/10, greatest
rpg of all time, the game that all rpgs should be like and so on and so on. But now Cd projekt actually release a game
that’s more of an rpg than previously and now everyone has decided to complain about
how deep an rpg it is… probably because with all the bugs and technical problems we
haven’t seen a big jump in level of presentation which I guess means it’s not allowed to
be an rpg anymore. To me this seems like exactly the type of
thing that people say without even thinking about it until it gets to the point where
everyone is just saying it because it’s what everyone else says, regardless of how
true it is. And really, I can’t even understand how
anyone can buy cyberpunk 2077 and expect a truly deep rpg anyway because there hasn’t
been a deep triple A rpg for at least ten years. To find such a thing you’d have to go as
far back as Fallout New Vegas or Dragon Age Origins and these are games that have features
people wouldn’t see as acceptable anymore in a big budget game, like non voiced protagonists,
and below average graphics for their time. I mean, face it. Deep triple A rpgs are dead. They have been for years. And it’s likely audience’s obsession with
graphics and level of presentation that was the very thing that killed them. So if you want to dislike cyberpunk 2077,
don’t try to claim it’s because it’s a shallow rpg. Find a reason to dislike it that’s actually
true, it’s not like there’s a shortage of them out there. Which brings me to the next section of the
video, and again, fair warning, this may not go in the direction you’re anticipating. As incorrect and unhelpful as the claims that
cyberpunk 2077 isn’t an rpg are, I do think they reveal something very important about
audience expectations. You see I think there’s another reason this
whole ‘not an rpg’ thing started, and it’s the same reason why, even when ignoring
bugs, so many people are disappointed with the game itself, and it’s the same reason
that cyberpunk 2077 ended up in the state it did: it’s that Cyberpunk wants to be
everything, and that’s just not possible. It wants to have deep rpg mechanics, good
driving, good shooting, good stealth, open ended level design, branching dialogue and
narratives, cinematic set pieces, customizable characters, and fun side activates, all contained
in an open, immersive simulated world. So it wanted to have the cars and driving
of gta, the stealth and level design of deus ex, the shooting and loot progression of destiny,
the action set pieces of uncharted, the world detail of red dead redemption 2, the story
choices of the witcher 3, the side activates of yakuza and the rpg mechanics of the tabletop
cyberpunk. And yeah, it wasn’t able to do all that. Which people should have been able to see
coming. And that’s my theory for the delays and
the bugs and the deception and the flaws. It’s not anything nefarious or sinister;
it’s not the systemic flaws of capitalism or women developers ruining ma video games
or sabotage from within the company. It’s something much more obvious and no
investigation or inquiry is needed because the reasons are starting us right in our faces,
written out in big bold clear print over every part of the finished product. It’s because this game tried to do too much. It wanted it all and didn’t manage to pull
it off. It wasn’t happy with just being a witcher
3 style game in a cyberpunk setting, it wanted to also take on rockstar at their own game
and win, but rockstar are a master of their craft and they never try to do this much in
a single game. You could say CD projekt should have known
better, and they should of, but it’s also pretty obvious why they didn’t. It’s because people wanted this game to
be everything. This was the title chosen as the gaming messiah
and what do you mean it won’t have driving? Or a hub based world rather than fully open? Or no customizable character? Or no next gen graphics? No people want a deep rpg, and a fully open
cyberpunk world, larger than any world they’ve seen before with the level of detail of a
rockstar game, and the best graphics they’ve ever seen, and dating and arcades and multiple
apartments and porno braindances and recreational narcotics and dynamic weather systems and
controllable drones and cars with weapons built into them and parkour and dynamic beard
growth and cyber gwent and ciri and maybe a steak and a blowjob every time you boot
the game up… if that’s not too much to ask? I’m not saying it’s the audiences fault
by the way. The burden of responsibility for managing
expectations lies with CD projekt and they’re the ones who fucked up. People always want more, whether that’s
realistic or not, and why wouldn’t they? Bigger is better. But it does seem very surreal to me to see
a game that obviously failed by trying to do too much, and then seeing the fan reaction
that’s almost entirely made up of people asking for more. “Why is this thing not a part of the game? Why can’t we do this? Here’s a list of things CD projekt need
to add” and on it goes. It’s as if even when standing in the smoldering
ruins of this overly hyped and overly ambitious mega failure, people still aren’t willing
to let go of their unrealistic expectations and maybe try to view the game for what it
is, rather than what they hoped it would be. Still it’s obvious that cyberpunk 2077 isn’t
the prophesied game of legend so many hoped for. So what is it? I think having focused already on this game
as an rpg it makes sense to look at its other main components individually, so let’s break
the game down into its various aspects, starting with the world itself, which somehow manages
to simultaneously be the most impressive and the most disappointing feature of all. Night City looks incredible. All of my footage is coming from a low end
pc that in many ways won’t really do this game justice, but even with the lowered graphics
this is still a world that is packed full of breathtaking vistas and handcrafted detail. The city has a sense of scale that I don’t
think I’ve ever really felt in a video game before, because while there have been other
big open worlds, I can’t recall another fully open city that actually seems like it
could contain a city sized population. A lot of that is the result of the density
of sky scrapers and mega buildings found in these urban environments. Night city feels almost as expansive vertically
as horizontally, and I can’t believe how frequently you can look up or out to the distance
and see great looking skylines or realistic urban sprawl. And all this is complemented by a sense of
style that nails the cyberpunk aesthetic, making it even more remarkable. There’s an almost neo-brutalism feel to
a lot of cyberpunks architecture, with bright neon lights imposed on top of and next to
great big slabs of sheer concrete geometry. Buildings overhang and interweave as if they’re
growing beyond the constrains of the space that’s meant to contain them, and the holographic
billboards literally never end, stretching up endlessly as far as the eye can see to
act as permanent landmarks that loom over you at all times, reminding you of the cities
presence even when you try to escape it. And speaking of outside the city, even these
spaces look great and contribute to that pervasive feeling of dystopia. Like the miles and miles of beaten down rusted
wind farms, standing decaying and broken, symbols of a once hopeful future that never
came, or the less subtle mountainous landfills; a cities worth of refuse that its inhabitants
can’t even be bothered to move far enough away to remove it from sight. And all this is contrasted by other areas
of futuristic decadence. Attractive blends of Japanese and western
styles, colour and creativity, glitz and glamour, all as diverse as it is deceptive. And it doesn’t stop there; cyberpunk still
looks great when you step off the streets and into its interiors, with great use of
lighting and shadow which accentuates the neon soaked atmosphere of broken dreams and
unbroken dreamers. Simply put, the art design of this game is
as good as it gets. It’s a shame then that this beautifully
crafted world doesn’t hold up under any kind of real scrutiny because as good as it
visuals may be this world has a serious case of ‘look but don’t touch’ that’s been
well documented by audiences already. A lot of this stems from the lackluster AI
of its inhabitants which mean the illusion of a living, breathing world comes crashing
down as soon as you interact with its pieces in any kind of atypical way. Shoot a gun or punch someone and they flail
around or crouch down before usually going back to their nonexistent daily lives. Leave a car in the middle of the road and
traffic will just build up behind it without ever trying to go around. And zoom in at cars in the distance and be
prepared to see a poorly rendered diorama that’s about as convincing a representation
of reality as your average Christmas nativity scene. Still if you really want to see how deep the
‘this isn’t realistic’ rabbit holes goes you’d be better off watching one of
the many gta/cyberpunk comparison videos on youtube, that show, probably to few peoples
surprise, that cyberpunk doesn’t simulate its virtual world as realistically as the
makers of the most immersive simulated worlds in the industry. It’s worth pointing out that there are many
things cyberpunk does that rockstart games don’t, in terms of gameplay and systems,
but even then I don’t think anyone expected the gulf between the two developer’s efforts
to be quite so vast in terms of realism and detail. This echoes back to how at the start of this
video I said cyberpunk felt like an unfinished early access game. A lot of times it’s not just that parts
of cyberpunk are basic or poorly implemented, it’s that things you’d expect don’t
seem to even exist in the first place and what there is often seems more like a temporary
placeholder than something you’d find in a finished triple A title. Just look at the wanted system, where due
to the lackluster AI and pathfinding, cops spawn in directly behind you as if they’ve
just beamed down from the USS Enterprise. If that makes the NCPD sound overpowered don’t
worry because they happen to be as lazy as they are ethereal, and make no real effort
to pursue the player on foot or by vehicle, leaving cyberpunks wanted system feeling even
more half baked than the one seen in grand theft auto, the first one… You know, the one that looked like this. In situations like this you can only assume
that this wanted system wasn’t finished because it’s hard to understand how any
developer could look at this and think: “yeah okay, that seems good enough to me”. In others ways cyberpunk’s open world isn’t
quite as bad but the end result is that while it may look incredible from a far it often
falls to pieces up close, and the level of inconsistency in its presentation, when combined
with the plethora of visual bugs and glitches can be whiplash inducing. Still if an open world sandbox isn’t what
you’re looking for and you’re happy to treat this world like an art gallery, “please
sir, no touching the painting”, then the level of artistic quality in its design is
still as good as open world games get. Ultimately though I don’t think there’s
much of grand theft auto’s DNA within cyberpunk’s genome despite what any initial similarities
would have you believe. Instead cyberpunk’s open world is built
more around the same approach seen in the witcher 3, which was a Ubisoft style design
where the world’s main purpose is to be a good looking backdrop for a range of story
missions and side content. So, if that’s the case, how is Cyberpunk’s
side content? Well where the witcher 3 split its side content
into points of interest and side quests, with the points of interest being simplistic, repetitive
filler while the side quests provide the more substantial offerings, Cyberpunk’s side
content isn’t quite as neatly divided. The side quests do return and are very similar
to those seen in CD projekt’s previous title. There isn’t as many of them as in the witcher,
but what there is is usually of just as high quality, with their main focus being on telling
self contained stories that flesh out many of the games side characters or just offer
a taste of life in Night City. The highlights of Cybepunk’s side quests
are the quest chains that focus on individual characters, where V tends to go on a range
of adventures all while forming a close friendship, or maybe more, with some of the npcs you meet
through the story. Just as in each of their previous games, strong
characters are one of CD projekt’s greatest assets, and the likeable and interesting people
you interact with go a long way to making this content stand out. One criticism I did have was that of the five
main friends you seem to make: River, Judy, Panam, Claire and Kerry, all of them seem
to have a quest chain that revolves, in some way or other, over revenge with, at some point,
the player getting to weigh in on whether revenge is worth it, usually with a choice
about whether to aid them in their quest or not. And there’s nothing wrong with revenge being
used as part of a characters motivation but doing that with every single major side character
really shows a lack of originality. Other than this though these characters, and
most of cyberpunks side quests are pretty good. In addition to these side quests there’s
also police scanners and gigs. Police scanners are really just the cyberpunk
equivalent to the witcher 3’s points of interest. More specifically they are cyberpunks version
of bandit camps, guarded treasure and monster nests: combat focused, repetitive, filler
content that seems to be there more to fill the world out than because this type of activity
is actually interesting to complete. It’s no surprise then that, just as in the
witcher, this content isn’t very good, and while I don’t mind it being included in
the game I wish cyberpunk had made the simple change of just not showing it on the main
map. This would mean this content seem’s less
like a checklist that the player is meant to complete, and more like optional stuff
designed for players to stumble into as they explore the map. Finding these encounters organically would
also make them feel more like a real part of the world, which would be more immersive. So, for example, you would be walking down
the street and then you hear a radio message about an assault in progress nearby, which
would cause it to show up temporarily on the mini map, and then it’s up to you whether
you feel like getting involved and maybe earning some loot and exp, or just continuing on with
your life. Instead, as it currently is, the way this
content is implemented doesn’t even make much sense. Why are occurrences of criminal activity presented
as permanent features on the map? I mean if on day one there’s an assault
in progress how come it’s still there 2 weeks later. Are these just the world’s longest gun fights? And yet, if you simply remove them from the
main map the content itself wouldn’t even need to be changed for this content to feel
more like an actual part of the world, which would improve the experience while still allowing
this content to serve its main purpose of filling out the empty map and making the world
feel more alive. Really, it all comes down to how the content
is framed, but if cyberpunk does this poorly for its police activity, the other main type
of side content, gigs, somehow manages to be even worse. Like police scanners, Gigs show up on the
main map, except when you get anywhere remotely close to them a phone call is initiated with
one of the games fixers who then goes on to give you a brief overview of what they want
you to do and why. These gigs tend to revolve around an activity
like killing someone, rescuing someone, stealing something, or other such mercenary jobs but
this approach has several problems. The first is that fixers often phone you at
really inconvenient times. This is often when you’re in the middle
of another quest, because that’s when you move around the open world. The thing is this is pretty much the worst
possible time for them to call as there’s no chance you’ll be interested in the gig
at this time and it’s also an unwanted interruption to the quest you’re already doing. Cyberpunk also fails to introduce these fixers
very well. Early in the main story you meet with Dexter
Deshawn, which establishes that the relationship between a fixer and a mercenary is very important,
and that there needs to be trust between the two and that working with specific fixers
is sort of a big deal. And yet, in game, all fixers other than Dexter
and Rogue just call you up out of the blue the first time you enter the general area
they operate in and after a 20 second conversation apparently you’re now best friends who trust
each other and work together for life. They then get busy spamming your mail box
with car adverts and phoning you up at the worst possible times to tell you about this
gig you don’t even care about. There’s such a clear missed opportunity
here. Fixers could have been portrayed as important
and interesting characters. You should have unlocked new fixers based
on raising your street cred, because that’s what would contextually make sense, and that
way there’s a greater sense of progression and the game can gate off high level content
in a way that makes sense. Then when your street cred is high enough
for the fixer to want to work with you they should phone you to organize a meeting, which
should then take place in person so the fixer can be properly introduced, to make them seem
like a real person rather than some overly persistent second hand car salesman. This makes even more sense when you consider
that every one of these characters actually exists in person on the map already, so why
not have one introductory quest to meet them. From then onwards the player should get new
gigs by the player phoning the fixer asking for work, so that they don’t interrupt you
at inconvenient times, and at that point the gig should show up as a quest that the player
can go to when they like. Instead, as it currently is in game, you get
spammed with phone calls from people you don’t even know and have no actual reason to be
working with, usually at the worst possible times, and the terrible way this content ends
up being framed is so bad it brings the actual content down with it. When I first played the game I had no idea
who regina jones was and why she kept phoning me about this stuff I had no interest in,
and for a long while this put me off doing gigs at all. The real tragedy of all this is that the content
itself is often quite good. Not in terms of narrative, the stories of
these missions are generally simplistic, although simplistic doesn’t always mean bad. But in terms of gameplay gigs are better than
many actual quests. Really the best way to think of them isn’t
like side quests at all but instead like mini dungeons, a bit like what you might find in
a modern fallout or elder scrolls game. And as mini dungeons they can be a lot of
fun. They present small non linear areas full of
enemies where there are always multiple approaches. Sometimes you’ll need to look around the
environment to find alternative ways into a building. Sometimes you enter non hostile locations
in the world and then can speak to people to find information on what you’re looking
for. Sometimes you find skill checks that unlock
new options. Sometimes there are lots of alternative routes
through an area that’s perfect for taking enemies out one by one from the shadows. Sometimes you need to search around for stuff
to scan to find what exactly you’re looking for. And sometimes, maybe quite often, you just
scout a place out, decide how you want to initiate combat, and then go in hard, guns
blazing, adrenaline pumping and keep shooting until no one but you is left moving. If you care more about gameplay than story
these gigs offer a good time and as simplistic as their stories are, they still often do
a good job at creating the cyberpunk mercenary experience that this game is meant to be all
about. The locations are interesting: night clubs,
gang bases, sleazy hotels, drug labs, these are the places that give you a real taste
of night city, and its by doing these gigs that you end you feeling like a part of it
all. And while this content can sometimes feel
a little too standard and repetitive, there are moments that manage to be unexpected or
feature reactivity to player actions. Stuff like talking to your assassination target
before you kill them, only for them to make you a better deal and then trick you to try
and escape after you agree. Moments such as these go a long way to making
gigs feel more unique, although I do still think cyberpunk focuses a bit too much on
quantity over quality with this content and that this game would have benefited from having
a smaller number of gigs that were more in depth and featured larger areas, more choices
and greater reactivity. But, overall, contrary to my initial impressions,
gigs were more enjoyable than the majority of side content found in big open world games;
it’s just there are major problems with how the game presents them. The fact that they look exactly like normal
side quests on the main map also doesn’t help matters as players will go to these locations
expecting a narrative focused side quest and be disappointed when that’s not what they
get, and the same could be said about purchasing vehicles. Buying a car is not a side quest; please don’t
try to pretend that it is, no one is being fooled. So cyberpunk’s side content is a bit of
a mixed bag but what problems there are stem far more from how the game presents its content
than from the content itself. Of course a lot of this side content is reliant
on combat to support it so let’s move on to that. In some ways the combat in cyberpunk is quite
difficult to judge because the early game plays so differently to the late that it almost
feels like two different games. This isn’t that unusual for an rpg because
this is a genre where creating a sense of progression is often done deliberately, with
characters starting their adventures very weak, struggling to kill even basic enemies
before leveling up, finding some nice gear, and 50 hours later waltzing into combat encounters
against demi gods without even breaking a sweat. Just think back to trying to kill mudcrabs
outside Seyda Neen in Morrowind with 90% of your attacks just straight up missing, compared
to the things you can do in that game towards the end of a playthrough. Still while this might be common for an rpg,
it’s not common for a first person shooter and the sheer number of bullets early game
enemies take in cyberpunk can make these initial encounters feel like a chore. In time this issue seems to sort itself out,
with enemies dying at much more acceptable speeds yet still doing high enough damage
to the player so that the game didn’t feel too easy to me on hard. As a general rule, single enemies pose almost
no threat because bullets cause enemies to stagger, but with multiple enemies players
needs to be aware of their surroundings as carelessly leaving yourself open to fire can
easily result in a quick death. Enemy AI is basic but it is functional, with
foes making attempts to utilize cover and flank the player to try to prevent you from
being too stationary. The variety of weapons and weapon types lead
to a bit of diversity in the gunplay although I do wish you didn’t have to visit a ripperdoc
every time you change weapon type in order to fully unlock its potential with cyberware,
as this ends up being overly time consuming and just encourages people to use a smaller
variety of options. Overall though, with a gun in hand I’d consider
cyberpunk’s combat to be better than the usual low bar set by action rpgs, so long
as you make it through the early game. The sense of progression in character strength
can feel pretty rewarding, particularly if it feels like the result of your specific
character build. But this isn’t necessarily conducive to
good fps gameplay, and that over the top difference between early and late game is even more noticeable
for stealth. With a low cool stat enemies can see you very
easily, making sneaking through locations unseen a real challenge. With a high cool stat, and maybe a couple
detection speed perks thrown in as well, enemies start to seem almost blind and sneaking around
undetected has all the challenge of a relaxing walk in the park. Needing stat investment to be good at stealth
is an okay idea but the difference is a bit too extreme, with stealth gameplay going from
too difficult to too easy with not enough time spent in between. This problem is exacerbated by headshots from
a silenced weapon not doing enough damage to kill enemies without some headshot or stealth
damage perks, which makes you even weaker early on, and shooting enemies in the head
from stealth yet not doing enough damage to actually kill them is just one of those things
that feels wrong. It is rewarding to invest a few levels into
stealth and then finally be able to take down guys undetected with headshots but once more
it’s a question of whether the sense of progression is worth the cost of early game
gameplay. You also can’t kill high level enemies with
stealth takedowns, which feels both unfair and unnecessary as high level enemies are
overpowered enough already. Anyway in the case of both gunplay and stealth,
cyberpunk feels like its prioritizing the rpg systems over the gameplay itself when
this approach probably wasn’t worth it. The sense of progression this provides might
be satisfying but so is fun gameplay and the vast difference between early game and late
game isn’t very immersive either. It’s not realistic for enemies to take hundreds
of bullets to die, or for them to take 5 seconds to see a guy who’s crouched down guy 10
meters away. In addition to shooting and stealth cyberpunk
also has melee and hacking, although both seem more like support act material than main
stage headliners. Melee on melee encounters feel fine but using
a melee weapon to go after enemies with guns is a bit one dimensional. Ranged enemies just stand there shooting and
either you have enough hitpoints to close the distance and slice them to bits up close
or you don’t, in which case you die or have to hide briefly to spam healing items. Melee would be a lot more fun if the game
had more movement options but at least playing melee forces you to be aware of your surroundings
and pick your fights carefully, as charging straight in often ends with your death, and
having to bait enemies into buildings, or flank around and pick people off one by one
adds at least some degree of strategy to encounters. As for hacking in combat, it’s one of those
things where the concept is a bit more exciting in theory than in practice. Hacking mid fight can feel a little cumbersome
as it breaks the flow of the encounter. I suppose this is rather realistic as stopping
to hack someone in the middle of a gun fight doesn’t exactly sound like the best idea
but this did mean I ended up favoring just using breaches and a quickhack as a way to
initiate encounters and get some debuffs and damage off up front before switching to a
different method of dealing damage once the fights actually get underway. I expect with enough investment you can get
to the point where hacking is all you need to clear out groups of enemies with ease,
but it’s not something I’ve fully tested yet and I expect even if true it would just
mean encounters would be overly easy as opposed to genuinely interesting. There’s certainly no epic hacker vs. hacker
duels to look forward to but really that should have been expected. You don’t exactly get many games with good
magic vs. magic showdowns so switching the setting to cyberpunk was unlikely to ever
change that, and that’s really what hacking is in this game, the cyberpunk version of
magic. Still even if cyberpunks combat fails to excel
with any of its individual components it still benefits from the fact that players have more
choice in how to approach combat encounters than most games of this type and in an rpg
this is a very good thing. I know I’m beating a dead roach with the
witcher 3 comparisons at this point but I think if the games were compared on the strength
of their combat then cyberpunk is again a pretty obvious winner even if it does suffer
a little due to inconsistency. I also feel I need to at least mention the
poor implementation of healing items in cyberpunk, because while this is hardly unique to cyberpunk,
this system still seems badly designed and it’s exactly the thing I have criticized
other games for in the past. So, like in many other games, Cyberpunk gives
you way too many healing items but it also allows you to spam these items mid combat
with no penalty. Brute forcing your way through an encounter
this way feels cheap. This problem could be solved by limiting the
number of healing items players can carry, a little like how swallow potions worked in
the witcher, but doing this would mean players are forced to loot the environment more to
keep their healing stock topped off so I would rather the game take a different approach,
like by having healing tied to a specific cyberware slot that is manually activated
and then recharges over time so players can’t just spam healing over and over. This cyberware could then be modded for a
larger heal or a shorter cooldown to allow a little bit of progression and customization
and this approach seems like a more functional and satisfying way to allow limited healing
without any real downside. Anyway, in conclusion, the things cyberpunk
does are often done quite well it’s just there’s a pervasive inconsistency to it
all. The combat is poorly balanced, the side content
is poorly presented, and the open world looks incredible but falls to pieces upon closer
inspection. This harkens back to that feeling that the
game is unfinished and there are other things that support this assessment too, like how
every now and then you come across a really noticeable flaw that seems so obvious it’s
difficult to understand how nobody thought to fix it. For example when driving the minimap is overly
zoomed in, making you often miss turnings you need to take. The vehicle controls in cyberpunk are already
a little too liable to both over and under steer, but the driving would be so much more
manageable if the minimap just zoomed out a little when you enter a car to allow the
gps to be followed reliably. Anyone who plays this game for a decent amount
of time will spot this problem, and its so easy to fix, and yet somehow here it still
is. Other examples include how you can’t rebind
the item pick up key. Most keybinds can be rebound but this was
the only one I really wanted to change and yet you can’t. Why? This is made more annoying by the way cyberpunk
binds both looting items and selecting dialogue responses to the same key meaning you may
not only be forced to use a keybind you don’t want to use but you also might end up selecting
dialogue responses by mistake while using it to loot items during conversations. This also happens with other things bound
to one key, like crouching and skipping dialogue, or dropping bodies and activating cyberware. Then you have your UI design problems, like
how you can’t close the map with a single button and instead have to go from the map
screen to the menu screen and then exit the menu from there. But why doesn’t pressing the map button
a second time just exit the map? There’s no reason for it not to. Having to press two buttons instead of one
to exit a map screen isn’t a big deal, but you’ll encounter these kinds of small quirks
more regularly than you’d expect in a game of this budget and compounded with the bugs
and technical issues it leaves cyberpunk feeling sloppy. Even when trying to ignore some of the games
flaws players might still find themselves pulled out of the experience not by the severity
of cyberpunk’s problems but by the ubiquitous shadow they cast over everything good about
the rest of the game. And so, all this is to say, that the final
part of cyberpunk, the story, certainly has its work cut out for it if it was ever going
to salvage the experience. One common criticism that was levied against
this game before its release was that cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t cyberpunk enough, which seemed
to have more to do with the amount of sunshine shown in trailers than anything else. Having now played the game, this particular
fear seems largely unfounded and cyberpunk’s setting ends up being one of its greatest
assets. That said this is a setting that seems to
place more emphasis on the Punk part of the genre than the Cyber, which is not say there’s
a lack of technology present here but rather that there is a strong sense of style over
logic in a way that seems largely intentional. In Dungeons and Dragons people sometimes refer
to a concept known as the ‘rule of cool’, which is the idea that people are more willing
to suspend their disbelief over a story, concept, or event, if the thing in question seems cool;
that it’s easier to forgive the unrealistic if the unrealism is fun or interesting, and
there’s a sense of this rule at play in the setting of cyberpunk 2077. Which might be why there are old arcade machines
everywhere 57 years into the future, or retro style cars, or katanas that are just as effective
in combat as guns, or Japan being presented as the Asian superpower of the future instead
of China, or characters from the year 2023 aging slower than that actor who plays Johnny
Silverhand. But this applies to parts of the main story
as well. Cyberpunk isn’t a game that has much interest
in exposition. It introduces wild sci fi concepts and then
doesn’t make much of an attempt to fully explain them. Which means this is a story about stealing
a high tech microchip that contains an engram with the personality of a dead rockstar, which
after being inserted into your brain allows you to return from the dead with that rockstar
now appearing as a hologram that speaks to you, and now you’ve only got two weeks to
live and oh my god time to take on one of the most powerful corporations in the world
with just a few buddies and your sheer unmatched fucking awesomeness. The engram is really the standout in this
regard. It’s not just the personality of that rockstar. It’s not a computerized reproduction of
them, it’s them. Like really them, the one and only, which
I guess means the weapon that killed them, soulkiller, is somehow meant to have, literally,
ripped out there soul and somehow stored it on a computer chip, and then somehow their
soul is inserted into someone else, who is now somehow able to resurrect from the dead
like the second coming of Christ because the microchip has somehow prevented a bullet to
the brain, somehow? Do I need to say the word somehow any more,
or is that, somehow, just getting annoying? Anyway I don’t really have a problem with
any of this. What? I’m serious. Maybe I’m just sick of long, boring, exposition
dumps in video games that try to over explain every little detail, or maybes it’s the
consistency with which cyberpunk 2077 prioritizes style above all else that allows for a certain
level of narrative cohesion, or maybe it’s how this whole setting is two steps divorced
from reality: Firstly by being set in the future, but secondly by being based off the
cyberpunk tabletop setting which has its own version of 2020 that isn’t anything like
our 2020 making it easier for the setting to get away with whatever it wants. Or maybe it’s just the rule of cool, but
really the setting of this game just felt too enjoyable to get hung up on how many little
things don’t make perfect sense and hey, what I don’t know won’t hurt me and I
don’t mind just skipping over some of the explanations and pseudo technobabble and giving
the narrative the benefit of the doubt if it means the plot keeps moving forward instead
of slowing to an expository ridden crawl. If all this is something you’re not okay
with then that’s fine, to each their own, but honestly I’ve always been a bit more
of a snow crash then neuromancer kind of guy anyway, and I think there’s room in the
cyberpunk genre for settings that care more about the style and the emotion of the subject
matter than the science fiction. That said if anyone has a problem with cyberpunk
2077’s lack of logic then that seems reasonable to me, particularly in regards to the engram
which could easily be a step too far in how much disbelief it requires to be suspended. One thing I don’t accept though is that
this setting isn’t cyberpunk enough. I mean, dystopian future, high tech low life,
the juxtaposition of scientific advancement against societal breakdown. What exactly is meant to be the problem here? Is it still the sun? Because if it is they should just set every
cyberpunk game in England and you wouldn’t have to worry about too much sunshine ever
again. Look, ubisoft are already doing it. Hang on, wait a second: dystopian future,
high tech low life, the juxtaposition between scientific advancement and societal breakdown. Are we a cyberpunk? Oh wait no, there’s the sun, making its
single, solitary appearance of the year, whew, thank god, I was getting worried there but
now the sun’s here I guess everything must be okay after all. Really though cyberpunk 2077 has plenty of
cyberpunk in it: joytoys, braindances, soulkiller, the blackwall, netwatch, trauma team, cyberware,
cyberpsychosis, the dissolution of traditional sovereign nation states that are replaced
by corporate conglomerates leading to a new age of corporate wars and worker disempowerment,
and so on. Not everything is that original. Not everything is explained well. And not everything is explored in great depth. But its cyberpunk through and through and
the range of different ideas that are presented leads to strong world building and an impressive
amount of diversity to the game quests and sub stories. I can’t help but compare cyberpunk to deus
ex human revolution or mankind divided here, which both focus every part of their narratives
on one single cyberpunk concept to the point where the world building often suffers as
a result. Cyberpunk 2077 may not have as much to say
about any individual idea as the modern deus ex games did, but it does create a more narratively
compelling world in my opinion, and the strong setting is well supported by a solid cast
of characters and consistently high quality writing. The best example of both being Johnny Silverhand. I’m not sure why the announcement that Keanu
Reeves would star in the game generated so much excitement. Celebrity actors in video games aren’t anything
new and no one seemed to care when Patrick Stewart was in Oblivion or Liam Neeson was
in Fallout or John Cleese was in Fable, but this was clearly different. This time is was a real actor, not like those
Oscar nominated hacks, and with the announcement that Ted from Bill and Ted’s excellent adventure
was finally going to show those amateurs how it’s done, everyone apparently saw fit to
lose their collective minds. To be honest, I’m still not sure why that
happened actually, but there we go. From what I can gather Keanu Reeves is like,
the nicest guy ever, and I’m not sure how exactly that was decided or why that would
make the game better but there we are, what do I know? Personally though, I don’t like the trend
of using Hollywood actors in video game, particularly now that face scanning is a thing, meaning
you don’t just have to put up with a distractingly recognizable voice but also their impossible
to ignore likeness staring at you all the time, pulling uncanny valley-esque expressions
while you try to pay attention and not think about unwanted thoughts like “does Norman
Reedus really have such pink nipples in real life or was that more of a creative decision
made about this character who I’ve forgotten the name of because I’m so used to everyone
just referring to them by the actors name, and wait what’s going on here. You want to take my what fluids? You can’t just do that, I’m Norman fucking
Reedus. This is the Reedus and the fetus show baby,
now where’s my boy Mads at.” Anyway, with all that said, when it comes
to Johnny Silverhand I think, for what might be the first time, using a celebrity to play
this role kind of works. Not that there’s ever been much wrong with
past celebrity performances, but, for once, the celebrity status of the actor ends up
actually being advantageous here because this is a character who is meant to be recognizable. Johnny Silverhand himself is a celebrity;
he’s a night city legend, a person people like your character are meant to idolize,
and then here comes Keanu Reeves ready to show the world why you shouldn’t meet your
heroes. Some people have criticized Keanu for coming
across as a little low energy in his performance but that seems unfair to me. I don’t think an aging alcoholic rockstar
should have the bubbly energy of a kids tv presenter in the first place and Keanu delivers
his lines exactly how his character should: with the slow uneven cadence that comes from
years of heavy drinking and the bitter underlying resentment of a man who could have had it
all but ended up gambling everything and losing. Really a lot of the criticism leveled against
Keanu here seems to be more like people’s indirect problems with the actual character,
which is crazy because Johnny Silverhand is great. One of my favorite video games characters
is Kreia from Star Wars Knights of the old republic 2. Some guy with the worst name on youtube made
a 2 hour video about why they think this character is good, which, as of writing this, has over
6 million views. But I don’t have 2 hours, or 6 million viewers,
so I guess I’ll have to try to be more brief. There’s a lot of depth to Kreia’s philosophy
but what makes her great in my eyes is how she goes against rpg party members conventions
to end up being something more than just another party member. Generally speaking, in a game, your party
members are there to support you, in ways both mechanical and narrative. As a result these characters can feel more
like your personal team of cheerleaders, or a squad of pokemon there for you to collect
and battle with, rather than actual people with opinions. But then along comes Kreia with her own well
thought out set of beliefs, who’s more concerned with chastising the player for their decisions
than just trying to support you from the background. And Kreia doesn’t just come across as a
more realistic portrayal of a person as a result, she ends up being a character that
acknowledges your role as video game protagonist with the way she uses real life logic to confront
you on your video game based actions, making the entire game feel less video gamey as well. Johnny Silverhand and Kreia have a lot in
common. Johnny isn’t your friend. He doesn’t want to be in your head. He doesn’t want to share your body. And he doesn’t agree with many of the things
you say and do. All this he’ll happily tell you himself. Often Johnny is an asshole, but sometimes
he has a point. At times he called me out on helping people
when there were more important things to be doing, and if this wasn’t a video game,
where helping people is just what you do to get exp and complete side quests, then Johnny
would be right. He often speaks sense, intermixed with resentment,
anger and apathy, making his interjections as interesting as they are unsupportive. Johnny also has most of the best lines in
the game. Even when not speaking he can manage to steal
the scene, and the way he shows up unexpectedly, sometimes as an unwanted intruder, feels wholly
unique. The entire concept of this unwilling passenger
tagging along in your head feels like a genuinely original idea for an rpg, and as V himself
can often come across as bland and forgettable, another addition in long line of generic voiced
rpg protagonists, the presence of Johnny, and the dynamic this creates between him and
V, almost feels necessary to salvage the weakness of the main character. There are plenty of interesting things that
can be done with this concept. Like the existential dread that comes from
the fear of losing one’s own personality or the element of mystery that comes from
not being sure how much your decisions are your own. It’s a strong premise for telling a really
original story and occasionally cyberpunk plays into this. There are examples of dialogue options that
seem much more like something Johnny would say than V, which are innocently presented
for you to chose or ignore. Things like calling Hellman a corporate whore
may as well be words that come straight from Johnny himself, and I would have loved to
see more done with this, particularly as the story progresses and it makes sense for Johnny’s
personality to have a greater influence over V. Ultimately however the approach cyberpunk
chooses to pursue with this concept is to tell a story of friendship. In some ways this seems the least interesting
option given the unique premise, but in other ways this plays perfectly to CD projects historic
strengths, and when the moments of genuine friendship do come they feel full of real
human emotion. I’m not sure I’ve ever enjoyed choosing
an otherwise unimportant dialogue option in a game quite as much as that one at Johnny’s
grave. In the end it’s hard not to love this character. Johnny is someone who demands respect even
as he struggles to be likeable. This is a man who died for his principles
once already, and here he is, with a second chance at life, still willing to give it all
up and die for those principles all over again just so that you get a chance to live. Other the course of the game we see a lot
of Johnny’s bad side. He is abrasive, and abusive. A bad friend and a worse lover. A rash idealist more likely to fuck the world
up even more than ever make anything better. And a parasitic entity in your brain, sucking
the life, and maybe even personality, out from under you. And yet he’s also a man with principles,
real beliefs he’s willing to stand by, and however mislead you might think those beliefs
are, in a location like night city, a place that cares so little about such things, with
its vapid, soul destroying world of bright lights and empty promises, men like Johnny
aren’t found very often. Cyberpunk 2077 also doesn’t make any excuses
for him. Generally when writers create fictional characters
like this they also try to balance their flaws against some kind of explanation to make their
bad side easier to forgive. Like this guys is a piece of shit but he was
also abused as a child or has PTSD from the war, and so on. But cyberpunk doesn’t do this with Johnny;
he was a cunt long before he loses Alt or himself to Arasaka. Really he is what he is and what you make
of him is left entirely up to you, which makes the ending choice feel particularly impactful
as you decide whether to trust Johnny with the assault on Arasaka tower and how to handle
the difficult decision of who should be left with V’s body knowing that no matter what
you do, V’s time with it will always be limited. The ending epilogues are likely the best sections
of the entire game. Finding yourself at the mercy of Arasaka’s
faceless soulless science division is like something straight from a Kafkaesque nightmare. After everything you’ve been through to
get here knowing this is how it all ends is as frustrating as it is uncomfortable despite
the fact that this is potentially the best ending for V... if Arasaka are to be trusted... If. The other two endings that focus on V are
both poignant and bittersweat making them fitting ways to bring this story to a close,
but it’s the Johnny epilogue that really steals the show, just like the man himself
so often through the story. You can get this ending by choosing to keep
the body as Johnny after playing as him when assaulting arasaka tower with Rogue, or by
choosing to give the body to Johnny after playing as V and following the nomad ending,
and which path you chose to get here will completely alter the feel of what follows,
with the first option making the tone of it much darker. Either way though this section works perfectly. With cutting commentary on night city, the
relationship with the kid showing the growth of Johnny, the symbolism of the guitar, and
a perfect closing line that’s says so much with so few words. It took me over 50 hours of in game time to
get to this point, but for Johnny Silverhand it was over 50 years. 50 years for a chance at redemption… it’s
quite the journey and you really feel that. Some have criticized the endings to Cyberpunk
for being overly negative but this negativity seems justified to me and maybe even required. This is a story about becoming a night city
legend, and night city legends don’t just get to walk away at the end of it and enjoy
a nice little happily ever after. In playing this game you are actively choosing
a blaze of glory over the quiet life, which was made quite clear to you early on, and
there has to be a consequence to that. The flame that burns twice as bright burns
half as long, and V has burned very brightly indeed over the course of the game. After all, he has stolen one of the most valuable
artifacts in the world from one of the most powerful corporations in the world, and has
died once already. Everything after is just borrowed time, and
if any of the endings simply resolved all the problems for both V and Johnny then they
wouldn’t be doing justice to this story or setting. In the end Cyberpunk’s story really does
end up as one of best parts of the experience but it does have a few problems that seem
too large to be ignored. The first is that this story suffers from
poor pacing early on. After a far too brief prologue we cover 6
months in a montage before finding ourselves in the middle of a new story with little introduction
to the world or characters. The narrative would have benefited from having
a couple extra missions early on that take place before meeting Dexter Deshawn in order
to properly set the stage. These missions could do more than just introduce
things that needed an introduction; they could also help establish our characters motivations. There should have been one mission that shows
what it’s like to be at the bottom of night city’s mercenary food chain: for example
a job that goes wrong leading to no reward for V and Jackie, from which we establish
exactly why these characters want to get noticed and move up in the world. Then there could be a follow up mission where
they take on something more risky specifically to try to get noticed by Dexter Deshawn. This second mission could be a resounding
success, which would help contrast with the disaster of what’s to come. These missions would be a chance to flesh
out the world a bit before the story kicks into top gear, while also allowing players
to spend more time with Jackie to make his eventual fate more impactful, and allow for
a real introduction to characters like T Bug. Instead Cyberpunk’s current narrative feels
like its missing a chapter which makes the 6 month montage feel more like it’s been
quickly inserted to try to plaster over an otherwise glaring omission than because it’s
the best way to tell this story. The second problem is that Cyberpunk’s narrative
suffers heavily from the conflict between the main story and the side content, where
the main story creates a sense of urgency that then gets deflated by all the side stuff
you might end up doing along the way. This is a piece of criticism that seems common
in big open games with lots of side content, and which I think is often exaggerated. For example, as it seems I just cannot seem
to stop myself talking about the witcher 3 in this video, in that game this could also
be a problem as the story focuses on Geralt’s quest to find Ciri, but I think it’s a minor
problem that doesn’t take much away from the overall experience and is worthwhile consequence
of creating a game with a more open design. However in the case of cyberpunk this criticism
seems justified. After all at the end of the first act you’re
told you only have around two weeks to live and after this you cough up blood and pass
out periodically, with all the main story’s drama revolving entirely around V’s need
to save himself from his fast approaching death. But you can also spend hours and hours doing
unimportant side activities while completely ignoring the main story and face no consequences
what so ever. Or just sit around in your apartment, skipping
forward 2 weeks in time by sleeping in the world’s most unnatural position, only for…
nothing to happen. What’s so stupid here is that there was
no reason at all for the game to specify that you have only 2 weeks to live. The writers could have just said that V is
going to die and that no one knows exactly how long he has left. This doesn’t take anything away from the
story because even if V will die in an unknown period of time that still provides enough
motivation for this character to want to continue the main story and try to save themselves,
and really that was all that was needed. But this way whether to pursue the main story
above all else, or do side content would be left up to the player with both options feeling
justified enough to avoid conflict. Instead however, as the story currently is,
doing side content just doesn’t make any sense when you’re going to die in a few
days and all the relic malfunctions are just a reminder of this. And yet this whole problem could simply be
sidestepped if the writers had only left the timescale more ambiguous. Lastly I feel it also needs to be at least
acknowledged that the cinematic set pieces that the game features multiple times aren’t
very good, being overly scripted and not even that cinematic. For example when escaping Konpeki plaza with
Jackie you shoot down some drones in a car but the drones don’t even seem to shoot
you back. Or when feeling from Arasaka right after you’re
first saved by Takemura, you shoot enemies on motorcycles but enemies only die at set,
predetermined moments so your shooting doesn’t even feel like it matters. Really scripted cinematic set pieces need
to look less scripted to be cinematic and if you can’t do them well it’s probably
not worth doing them at all. Similarly Cyberpunk also has several boss
fights but its combat doesn’t feel well designed for these fights making them a little
lackluster, which again raises the question of whether they were even worth adding in
the first place. I do think the first person perspective at
least works well by blurring the line between cutscenes and gameplay, which makes the overall
experience more immersive as there’s no separation between playing and watching. That said there is still an awful lot of watching
in this story but, like The Witcher before it, Cyberpunk shows CD projekt can still tell
a good story. The setting is interesting, the characters
and writing are well done, and the presence of Johnny Silverhand helps bring some originality
and uniqueness to a narrative that would be sorely missing these things otherwise. I feel bad for those who struggle to enjoy
cyberpunk’s narrative due to the games other issues because there’s plenty here to enjoy. As for whether that means the story is good
enough to save the entire experience? Well that’s a question people will have
to answer for themselves. Expectations play an important part in how
we view games. For Cyberpunk 2077 those expectations were
set sky high which meant that for most people the game didn’t end up meeting them. But that wasn’t really the case for me. I hadn’t paid much attention to the marketing. I didn’t read any interviews about features
that might not have ended up in the game. And I’m always a bit skeptical of things
that seem overly hyped anyway. Really all I expected was the witcher 3 in
a cyberpunk setting, and what I ended up getting was, basically, the witcher 3 in a cyberpunk
setting, with extra bugs. Of course I did still expect bugs, this is
an open world rpg after all, but I didn’t expect problems to this extent. Still my expectations were mostly met. What’s so strange to me is how other people’s
expectations varied so greatly from my own and how that seems to have colored their view
of this game so vividly. Cyberpunk isn’t the deepest rpg ever made,
but it’s still probably deeper than anyone should realistically expect from a game of
this budget and its depth is greater than the last rpg made by CD projekt. So where has this ‘cyberpunk isn’t an
rpg’ meme even come from? Don’t get me wrong I’m all for holding
rpgs to account. I play a lot of these games and I’m always
in favor of giving a spot light to deep rpgs that may go under acknowledged, or criticizing
shallow rpgs that deserve the criticism. But despite that it still seems important
to recognize when something is true and when it’s not, and just because many people are
repeating something doesn’t make it true. And then we come to the rest of the game. One thing I saw repeatedly mentioned before
cyberpunk was released was that people were worried the game would be too similar to Grand
Theft Auto. But now the game has released everyone seems
outraged that it isn’t similar enough to Grand Theft Auto. These aren’t necessarily the same people
but again I have to wonder what exactly everyone expected? There are many ways cyberpunk’s open world
can be improved but you’re out of your mind if you expected something with the level of
immersion and attention to detail of rockstar’s recent efforts on top of all of the features
you’d expect in a modern triple A rpg. One game can’t do everything and nor should
they try to. At best the result will be a game that does
many things and is mediocre at all of them. And at worst the result will be something
broken and unfinished. There may have been all sorts of things that
went on behind the scenes and contributed to cyberpunk 2077’s downfall, but if you
look only at the game itself and judge it based on what’s in front of us, then the
problem with it seems to be a clear case of over ambition and out of control feature creep. There’s a quote in game that seems to accidentally
sum it up perfectly. I’d love to know how much time was spent
on systems and content that didn’t ultimately make it into the game. Not that cut content isn’t a part of every
big game release, but cyberpunk seems to be an extreme example, and while everyone will,
maybe rightfully, say this game should have been delayed until finished, however long
it takes, I also can’t help but wonder just how long that really would be. By trying to do too much this game ended up
imploding inwards on itself, leaving behind a huge sprawling, sometimes epic game with
moments of occasional brilliance that stand side by side with half baked systems, obvious
design missteps, and enough jank and bugs to make a mid 2000’s eastern European rpg
developer blush. Huh. Can you believe that this was how it all started? I’ve told this story once before but I feel
it bears repeating. When the first witcher game was released it
was buggy and broken. So much so that, for no fault of my own, I
couldn’t play the game. It would crash within 5 minutes every time
I tried to run it, until several months and multiple patches later where it was finally
stable enough to run on my more than good enough graphics card. And when it did run I found a janky and very
enjoyable little rpg. A diamond in the rough, full of charm and
personality, which left me impressed by this little unknown polish game developer who I
was left eager to see more from. Of course, when I first played the the witcher
my expectations were set accordingly, and what a change such a thing can make. You have to wonder how differently this game
would be received if it had released out of nowhere with an early access warning slapped
on the store page. I imagine we’d be seeing a lot of ‘masterpiece’,
‘game of the year’ and ‘greatest rpg of all time’ being thrown around instead
of some of the less charitable things that are currently being said, even if lots of
that praise would still be an exaggeration. I also imagine the sales would be but a fraction
of what they actually were.
1:43:21.970,1193:02:47.295
Expectations have their advantages, though
I’m not sure the same can about exaggerations. The Witcher 3 was a great game, but people
still found a way to exaggerate its greatness and Cyberpunk isn’t a bad game but people
still want to make sure they exaggerate its failings, truth be damned, because this is
the internet and everything needs to be exaggerated and everything has to be taken to extremes. So, if you want to know my conclusion, it’s
that cyberpunk isn’t as good a game as what people hoped it to be but it isn’t as bad
a game as people are making it out to be either. It was over hyped and now it’s over hated,
but really hype and hate aren’t so very different, and neither are especially helpful. I’m sure there’s an important lesson to
be learned here. Something about how there are no heroes, just
disappointments and disappointments to be so be careful what, or who, you idolize and
remember that holds true for more than just video games. But really you shouldn’t let yourself be
a victim of hype because you’re the one who ends up getting burned as a result and
I hope cyberpunk ends up being a wakeup call for people. I also hope it ends up being a wakeup call
for what a company can get away with. You know usually I’d add something here
critical of CD projekt themselves, calling back to what I said in the beginning about
the separation of art and artist and the legitimacy of the criticism people have with what the
company has done, but I think the rest of the internet probably has that covered. I mean if Fallout 76 is any indication then
there will be months, maybe years, of clickbait videos trying to squeeze out every single
last view of this situation until there are more videos covering the topic than bugs in
this games code. So instead I’ll end this by saying this. I like cyberpunk 2077, but it doesn’t get
to just brush away all its problems but trying to pretend it’s only bugs, or that things
might one day be patched and improved. It just doesn’t work that way. This game released unfinished, and it deserves
to have that as part of its legacy no matter how good it could have been or one day might
become. But that still won’t stop me from enjoying
it, and I hope it doesn’t stop other people from enjoying something they might otherwise
enjoy either. After all, the hype has ruined this game for
enough people already. So it would be a great shame to let the hate
ruin it for the rest. Thank you for watching.
