Cyberpunk 2077 Critique

one of the most hyped games ever cyberpunk 2077 launched late last year and now that the smoke has cleared it's time to give it the holy [ __ ] treatment just for the record i've beaten cyberpunk three times and i've clocked over 120 hours of total playtime and in this video i'm gonna take a deep hard look at cdpr's latest action rpg and the analysis will cover a large amount of topics that goes way beyond anything i've ever done before so if you enjoy the effort i put into this video please show your appreciation by hitting that thumbs up button at some point as you're watching there's a lot more to say about the lead up to cyberpunk 2077 but i hate long intros and i really just want to get right into the meat and potatoes of the analysis so we're going to leave it at that i hope you enjoy the video this is your one and only spoiler warning [Music] cyberpunk 2077 begins by having players make their character and choose a life path which is a brief origin story to set up where v came from and define her basic identity there are three options which seem very different at first glance first you've got corpo which features v working for arisaka and counter intelligence high stakes high danger kind of thing do anything you can to get to the top of that corporate ladder on the other hand you have street kid who dumps the off on well the streets go figure and nomad presents v living outside night city as a wandering transient roaming the badlands in her trusty car it sounds like a great idea to kick off the game by presenting origin stories like many games do especially in cyberpunk as the character v is entirely player created unlike games that have a predefined character like let's say geralt or solid snake it makes a lot of sense here as it gives players an immediate sense of ownership to the right from the very beginning and makes everything else that comes afterward feel more personal because they've made a choice it also acts as the perfect jumping off point as players will be designing these appearances well and make many choices and conversation throughout the game that speak to his or her character thus they may be influenced by that origin story to roleplay in this capacity or since there are rpg mechanics in this title could diverge from that path by role-playing in a way that may conflict with that identification for example explore dialogue options and attribute points that may not exactly align with their initial life path choice beyond the initial choice of life paths little results from the system though as they all ultimately converge in this infamous montage afterwards most of players will get is optional dialogue choices most of the time blue to flesh out the conversation seldom yellow which are naturally more impactful as they push the conversation forwards rather than sideways not to mention give you some much-needed consistency in her characterization that matches up with player expectations cyberpunk has some great writing across the board and when these moments pop up they do do a good job identifying v and her chosen role and it feels like at first they provide directions to steer conversations towards different outcomes and possibly new outcomes as well yet if we're honest most of them are pretty one-dimensional the decision to splice in life path voice work around these normal conversations just isn't preferable and i can recall many moments where my corpo v would blurt out some cutthroat demand with a nasty tone right after acting like a hot tempered city kid it certainly was appropriate for my no [ __ ] talking executive badass flying around in personal planes drinking champagne on the house corporate v but it didn't actually portray the real v inside the game as her normal tone it was so far removed from it the effects can be weird since these splitting choices tend to happen in the middle of conversations not at the start to which they could have been used for the entire dialogue sequence to match the tone throughout and this dichotomy results in so many irrational moments of v unless you pick the street kid life path however it's probably a necessary trade-off since voice actors would have otherwise had to record every land of dialogue in three different ways to create that continuity which doesn't seem impossible but still pretty impractical even for a game of this scope what i think people wanted more of were those moments that life paths actually affected the gameplay and you can see glimmers of this from time to time in the game moments where v gets another gameplay option or a unique alternative based on what life path they are even if they aren't large in scope one good example of this is the interaction with meredith stout a really interesting character who receives a personally in my opinion a disgracefully small amount of screen time if he's been asked to retrieve a flathead robot from the maelstrom gang and the player has the option of meeting with meredith beforehand for additional information meredith then offers the player an option for paying for the robot with a militech credit chip which is the second largest corporation in the game and rival to arisaka if the player is corpo not only do players get two additional options for unique dialogue but a third option which exposes the credit ship as having a virus obviously corpo v would know the length someone like meredith would go to because she's been in her shoes as shown in the corporal life path intro so she knows that ship probably has a virus so this is naturally a moment that totally makes sense for the life path system if players are no matter street kid they do not get this little sequence however they could still figure out that the chip is rigged by going into the shard menu in the inventory v can then enter all foods and either warn royce about the fraudulent ship which leads to meredith getting killed off or you could debug the chip yourself shoot royce during the deal fight the maelstrom gang and keep the money for yourself which keeps meredith alive obviously life paths don't impact the final choice in any way you can do them regardless if you're corporal or not but the credit chip scenario works out both ways players get a small benefit for their life path and the game presents a scenario that promotes that sense of personalization advertised in the life path introduction sadly the game never takes it much further than this in fact this is one of only a handful of quests in the game where life paths can alter the actual outcome of a mission from a player perspective after playing all three life paths i found most consequences extremely momentary and inconsequential for example getting the location of anna hamel and the kabuki market plaza without paying this guy because i was just a nomad this isn't exactly meaningless as early on money is tight and it's not pointless as it could be a great starting point to expand lifepath choices since this is early on in the game but it really never does that cyberpunk doesn't take lifepass anywhere far enough get a car for cheap because you're nomad get an option for a 10 minute quest because your corpo make a few dialogue choices here and there nothing seriously impacts main characters nor do any main story outcomes become excluded changed or affected by them and nothing at all is taken into account for the ending life pass hints at the start of something great in cyberpunk but it doesn't present enough unique scenarios where they are utilized even though the runtime of the game does warrant it clocking in around 15 hours cyber is a short game with a mostly linear storyline and the game contains about 30 quests which isn't an extremely high number if you play just the story it's a very condensed experience so the entire game could have honestly been built around life paths such that each playthrough felt unique offering players a reason to go back to the other origin stories beyond the feeling that they've missed a few dialogue options beyond getting a guard to open up the gates in the quest just because you're corpo that's not nearly the amount of role playing people expect you can imagine many scenarios that could have benefited from life paths having unique characters carry over that help you tackle different challenges unique vendors contacts and gang affiliations as corpo v i expected the entire story to actually be a playground where i could blackmail and betray work my way back into arisaka after getting double-crossed or maybe just sell myself out to militech and play ball with a rival corporation and most importantly plot my revenge scheme against abernathy but alas life paths feel like so much wasted potential because there's none of that possibility a simple story setter at best and frankly just not impactful enough as the game progresses but worst of all they're also a tease introducing intriguing characters like jenkins only to drop them as soon as it's over personally i thought jenkins was going to be one of the main villains in the game as he has a very menacing mysterious presence to him when you first meet him but he just ends up dead without you being able to stop it so in the end i was really let down that cyberpunk doesn't embrace more role-playing to build a more immersive player-driven experience on the back of these origin stories one of the things i remember most about my time after completing my first playthrough of cyberpunk 2077 was discussing the game with various friends we sat around comparing game experiences shocked at how similar all of our introductions and frankly entire playthroughs were despite choosing different life paths moments were few and far between that we each had something different to say about how things happened where we went and what way we interacted with the world and its people and how we got to the end and that's a very strange thing indeed in a game in which the first thing you do is define your origin story making me feel like the entire system was a huge afterthought it needs to go deeper but beyond that there is another option though what they could have done is they could have given players unique traits stats and proficiencies towards certain play styles and abilities in each life path this has some serious downsides but it's worth mentioning the corpo lifepath sets up the perfect stealth espionage v the nomad path presents a v with expertise in technology and street kid v is a shoe-in for combat or melee build each life path could have showcased v strengths in each of those capacities and taught the player those skills in a unique way maybe even acting as a more interactive tutorial sequence than the combat training shard jackie gives you in the car which takes the cake as one of the most boring generic tutorials i've ever had to sit through obviously players shouldn't be forced to choose a playstyle before they've had a chance to experience the game mechanics but it's not like players would be required to stay in those roles as there are plenty of dialogue options to explore and builds players can create to branch off once they get going in the game personally i would not design live pass in this fashion as it takes away some of the feeling of personalization i just felt like it was worth mentioning because anything is better than the system we received perhaps the origin stories were going to be more meaningful but maybe the team was just too ambitious in making them fit inside the story of cyberpunk because the mistake they made was that they made them seem more important than what they really were without giving enough substance or repercussions to players for choosing one over the other it's as if they made a lot of beginnings but then they forgot about how those beginnings were going to spill out over the rest of the game and as a touted feature raved upon leading up to cyberpunk it's a massive disappointment when held up to a microscope and something many other role-playing games like dragon age do much much better so after playing through the life path of your choice the montage happens and i think this will forever go down as one of the worst decisions made in regards to cyberpunk 2077 the first problem i have with it is that it just creates a very disjointed segway into the rest of the game that disrespects the origin stories because afterwards there's really no looking back instead of getting to experience how their choice of life path impacts v's developments her bond with jackie and her ultimate rise to the top of the merck market all they do is get to watch those events happen instead and that is not nearly the most effective way of developing characters and stories not only is it extremely sudden and jarring but it also paints a very clear message that insults the very idea of life paths no matter what path you choose it's no longer important because the story just presses on with jackie and v who have seemingly gotten to the big leagues as best friends the game uses the montage as a tool to build that relationship in a matter of seconds and it's rather cocky that the game expects you to be drawn to jackie when in fact the player hasn't spent more than a few minutes with him nor have they seen the ups and downs of their relationship through that six-month window which the storytellers also assume the player accepts that just everything turned out fine the game should never use a montage to try and earn character development or trust it's something that players need to experience firsthand and come to their own conclusions to make that feel substantial and it is with such profound irony that when players hear jackie say look at all we've done to get here chumba that that is exactly what happened we literally just saw a slideshow of it happen rather than taking part of it that is insulting storytelling luckily jackie happens to be one of the best characters in this game for the time he's in it so if there was ever a game to be lucky enough to get away with doing this in regards to jackie it is cyberpunk jackie is easy to like he's always got your back at least that's what we can gather from the little time we've spent with him a character that would have been even more strong should players have gotten a chance to play the montage over the course of a few hours rather than watching it fly by within minutes with pretty much zero context act one officially kicks off cyberpunk proper as the montage ends the duo has arrived in japan town six months later seemingly as hotshot marks which again feels pretty jarring since we just got blindsided by the montage anyway the game takes the time to slip in a tutorial before the two enter the building which seems a lot more exciting than it is i mean given the name militech training shard i was expecting something a lot more fancy than the generic scripted boring tutorial that was presented to me which while accomplishing its job of teaching players the basic mechanics of the game does not make it interactive or interesting in the slightest the best tutorials and games make an effort to make it worth the players time to participate and most of the time that means either designing a unique environment that teaches them those mechanics or blending it and seamlessly with the environment of the game so that players don't even know if it's a tutorial because if you can't tell if you're playing a tutorial or level 1 that's probably a pretty god damn good sign often the worst tutorials and games are the ones that just make no attempt to cover up the fact that this is a tutorial and here it's exactly that thankfully the game allows you to skip it completely and i would recommend doing so once inside the building the rescue turns out to be an extremely well-paced little quest that has a little bit of everything you'd want first you sneak through the building and take out some guards then there's a small yet pretty refined little gunfight in the main area followed by a sort of mini boss who shoots grenades and finishes with some pretty cool interactive storytelling with the victim and the trauma team outside on the balcony taken collectively it's a concise little mission that flows very well and it's pretty unfortunate that most other gigs in cyberpunk are not crafted uh this well at all most gigs will have you arrive at a location marked on your map and either have you save someone steal something or kill someone and the way in which you do so in these activities is very repetitive generally the flow goes like this arrive sneak or kill grab item x at the area immediately you may encounter some optional hacking along the way but it's usually very quick get in and get out context is typically set up through a telephone call which is fine i mean you're a merc after all and you work for money but that doesn't make it engaging and to wrap them up it's your typical read this data shard if you care after completing every gig in the game i can honestly say uh they're just not that engaging whatsoever a tremendous amount of these gigs are present in cyberpunk they're filled to the brim on the map some fare a little bit better when they combine combat and good level design or give you an interesting circumstance or context to set up the gig in the first place but that tends to be exercised by the game's mainer side quests and i'd classify the rescue as a gig because there's no lead up to the affair and it's not based around characters that the player actively knows even though it plays like a well-written side quest how do i know this well first of all the environment was designed very carefully these pillars provide cover to v tables allow her to slide into safety and the hallway gets to the line of sight she needs to deal with that bad guy at the end of the hall structurally it all makes sense given how many enemies are present and how large the playing area is but smart level design only gets you so far it's unique game mechanics that are the trick to tying it all together and they're here a destructible wall that you can destroy and be shot through the biometric reader to analyze sandra's condition in the bathtub and the trauma team interaction on the terrace these are things that amplify the mission yet oddly enough they're pretty much never found anywhere else in the game even using the refrigerator as a stealth kill finisher is something that you don't see very much if at all ever i would have loved to see these mechanics expanded during the story as they are essentially dropped cold turkey from here on out destructibility is one of the bigger letdowns and while you can blow up cars and dressers and whatnot you can actually destroy infrastructure in this game in fact if you try destroying something that the game doesn't want you to hit your weapon will misfire it's a very awkward thing to see you think that the tire of a car would be something you could shoot out at the very least but no you cannot obviously destructibility is a tender subject because the game designers still need the levels to function when the player tears them to pieces so typically you see destruction elements sanction the specific parts of buildings so that the entire joint doesn't come crashing down on the freeway but even that is missing in the game now trauma team's the other blatant mission throughout cyberpunk and i think many people imagined that they have a bigger presence in the game personally i was hoping for trauma team to be implemented as a death mechanic trauma would be the perfect revival service and that you can have them come out and save you when you die for a monthly fee they could have even made it exclusive to the corporate path especially because the lore is already written for the various packages that provide the clientele this could have come with a cool down so to speak to avoid watering down enemy encounters and breaking immersion but they didn't even have to go that far all they had to do was weave them into the story missions more and increase their presence on the streets which they don't you'll at best see them occasionally at a crime scene taped off with no interaction available for players and that's really about it along the same token max tech unfortunately gets the same treatment as trauma team and their presence is hardly felt or seen we first see maxtec on the drive home with jackie after the rescue mission dropped off in the rain soaked streets obliterating a couple of nasty thugs apex predators as jackie says in three playthroughs through cyberpunk i did not see any apex predators in fact i never encountered them in any meaningful way beyond them teleporting behind me when i got a four-star wanted level which we'll get into later it makes you wonder why night city has any crime in the first place if every police officer and drone instantly appears on your ass like houdini when you do something naughty i mean with that kind of response time night city should be the safest place on earth but we'll talk about the ai later don't you worry it's coming so after the rescue v heads back to her apartment which you cannot customize upgrade buy a new one bring friends over etc before sleeping sideways on the bed who sleeps sideways on a bed i mean did they not have time to draft up a collision mesh with the pillow so they said ah [ __ ] it let's just have her sleep sideways take a nap anyway after the beauty rest jackie wants to meet up to discuss what eventually becomes one of the cornerstone quests of act one which is called the pickup again it's not unlikely that jackie has secured a top tier gig at this point but it's definitely a little bit jarring considering their king street cred status has come from the montage the fixer in question is dexter deshawn a character that i thought was going to be a huge part of the game but like many things in cyberpunk he sees a very short time in the spotlight v takes a quick stop at victor's first her friend in ripperdoc who gives her some new cybernetics for the job and this is kind of a cool moment it's here that we get our first up-close look at implants in cyberpunk cyberpunk's draw from anyway has always been that dark mystique of where technology and punk intersect the neon lights the fashion where high-tech crosses with low life where the science has taken over the biology all taking place in that beautifully dangerous dark night city we're treated to a really detailed animation of v getting a new eye implant as well as a new robotic modification to her right hand there's no gameplay to it but it's really cool to watch the machines install the cyberware not only does it just draw you in naturally with the first person perspective allowing you to have a very intimate look at everything very up close but you also get some great character building with victor who turns out to be quite an important character in the game truth be told cyberware is a key feature in this title and there's an impressive amount of fight and purchase to enhance the things you want to it's way too expensive most of the time but it's there it's just a damn shame every time you install new implants you select them from a menu and you don't get to see that installation first hand the only limb you can aesthetically modify is your arm but those are based off presets with no customization options to change the way your character looks this is a massive letdown not only lore wise but armor is also tied to clothing which makes it difficult for you to role play how you want to look while still being effective in combat inventory management is a pretty big thing in cyberpunk as loot is shower to you like confetti so you'll often be in the menu looking at your character and breaking it down there's also mirrors you can view yourself so even though this is not a first person game it's not out of the question that we want to have more control over our cosmetics especially with the thematic of being in a cyberpunk world speaking of the menu the ui is pretty atrocious and it seems unfinished i'll just be real it's sleek responsive and it looks nice but it has the functionality of an easy bake oven let me mention just a couple of the dozens of issues there's no way to mark items for selling in bulk no way to sort clothing by armor level the compare window blocks the view of the rest of your inventory which is super annoying there's no compatibility chart for weapon attachments and the game's crafting system is one of the dumbest i've ever seen not only is there zero visual or audio feedback when you craft something but there's no way to craft in bulk at all this is a basic feature the game needs especially if you want to upgrade component rarities which currently isn't even worth it because it takes so freaking long i mean do you really want me to sit here for six hours breaking this stuff down i imagine creating a very pleasant functional and stylish ui is not easy but it definitely feels rushed and developed last minute anyway after leaving victor we need to meet up with dex and it's here we get one of our first looks at a fixer in cyberpunk someone who sets up jobs behind the scenes for mercs i think dexter's mission sets him up perfectly and i wish the other fixers received the same treatment as he does one of my initial complaints about fixers in general with cyberpunk was that you're not given the opportunity to meet them first before getting bombarded with jobs on the phone every time you go to a new district they call me mr hands if you're looking for pacifica jobs call me fixers call you immediately and instantly without any context somehow they got your number from someone i don't know and now they have 40 different jobs for you and this is after you've already publicly botched one of the most important jobs that's ever taken place in night city the heist in act one and it feels especially cheap when they call you five seconds before you approach the mission location as if they somehow had satellite coordinates and gps of you 24 hours a day would have been nice to just receive a message from a fixer asking you to meet them in privates wherein you could get to know them the district they control the region and select missions based off a list based off of your current street credit as you recruit more street cred the loyalty towards those certain fixers could go up and you'd be rewarded with more dangerous contracts with higher payouts that seems very very obvious but unfortunately all fixer interactions are filtered through scripted telephone calls and even though you can go search for fixtures out in person they almost have nothing important to say or interesting to say when you meet up with them so in my opinion fixers are not really a relationship they're just a face that give you a checklist of things to do dex's introduction is perfect because you get that intimate interaction plus the game upholds the integrity of a fixer not wanting to meet out in the open which is the argument against allowing players to meet fixers in the first place after all he never steps foot out of his limo so totally makes sense but none of the other fixers are given this time and personalization at all dexter on the surface makes a very interesting and formidable character i admits and his general suave badassery makes it pretty difficult to think about double crossing him and double cross we can as we have the option to speak to the client of the job meredith stout before heading out to do the job the pickup mission at the all foods plants is simply the best quest in the game no doubt about it because there's around five or six options for how this thing will play out all based off what you decide to do and that's the key element that's missing from a lot of choices in cyberpunk for example there's a quest in the samurai storyline where you need to go into a maelstrom club to meet with best isis otherwise known as nancy if you went into all foods and allied with maelstrom dumb dumb remembers you at the door and lets you in which is a cool thing in itself you then meet with royce and you can steal the data you need silently if initially royce died and you didn't rescue brick patricia will meet you at the door and lead you to a back room and you'll have to fight your way out if royce died and you rescued brick you can leave with nancy peacefully these three outcomes provide that sense of repercussion that make us feel like our actions have at least a minor consequence even if the game doesn't sprinkle them throughout the game as generously as one would desire another example of this is shown with evelyn parker someone that caught my eye early on with her very strong screen presence and really cool character design evelyn becomes missing early on in the game and you need to find her and she's linked to a guy named woodman who works in the cloud's dollhouse you have the option to interrogate him bribe him or kill him to extract the information to find her but you can also threaten him if you happen to have stumbled upon and killed the cyber psycho jatoro shobo prior to meeting with him but is this true role playing players have made a choice and the immediate result is different however does the outcome actually change no and kind of as for the straight and no regardless of how you approach it and the dialogue choices you make the outcome is always the same evelyn is raped by woodmen sold the fingers and then commits suicide when you find her you cannot stop this from happening how it gets there is nice window dressing and it's better than nothing but ultimately it doesn't change anything however for the kind of there is a cause and effect here if you let woodman live you'll have the opportunity during the quest called x factor to confront him after speaking with maiko at clouds it's here that you can indulge judy's lust to zero him or you can convince her that it's ultimately not worth it so again while things can be altered once again changing the fate of evelyn in this particular instance is still out of the question the story beats take small zigzags in lieu of your choices but the outcomes are always totally outside your control and that's kind of what i'm trying to get at the same goes for the character oda which you have to fight later on in the game [Music] hey i managed is he dead he's breathing you're not in trouble for now please be show him mercy after you take him down takamura asks you to spare his life remember every boss in this game has a down state and they won't actually die until you finish them off if you do he could potentially show up during the end of the game again this choice doesn't affect the story whatsoever it just adds a little dash of flavor to cyber's end game and the exact same thing happens with the quest dream on when you work with the perez family to investigate a break-in once we discover they've been brainwashed which the wife elizabeth already knows which is a cool plot twist in itself v can either tell their husband jefferson what's going down or can agree to keep her mouth shut whether v sides with elizabeth or not the outcome still does not change either way v is blocked by the prez family and everything you did funnels down to the same outcome the only thing that differs is the message jefferson gives you when the credits roll down if you want to encourage players to role play in their gameplay as in actually embody a character of their choosing act in accordance with that behavior carve out a play through unique to them they need to believe what they're doing is actually going to potentially have effects beyond seeing another yellow text option or simply providing an homage as the credits roll down effects beyond the causation into the realm of outcomes one of the best ways you can do this is to hold players accountable for their decisions by creating repercussions that will ultimately affect them in some way enough of this [ __ ] what'd you do to her you freak now either you put a muzzle on this creature or put her down it's impossible to have a conversation with her around cyberpunk does do this occasionally such as when you have the option to punch fingers in the face if you do this you will not be able to use them as a ripper doc for the rest of the story it's a very small thing but it's a consequence and it stops us in the moment to consider what the consequence might be for making that choice and that consequence has a direct impact on v granted it's very tiny but it is there still that's called role playing you could also say that v's neighbor barry is another example of this who you can save from killing himself if you want to unfortunately regarding fingers cyberpunk makes one of the more cardinal sins of messing with the morality of it and this happens a few times in the game you see before meeting fingers the game depicts him as this very miserable despicable monster who prays on his customers and spits them out the other side at one point you can read a shard about how he would take the implants off dead clientele and resell them to the new girls who he often offered for sexual favors this guy is a nasty guy so it's natural players already have a negative disposition towards this guy based off what the game provides us so then you actually meet him and judy's with you egging you on and knock the living crap out of him pushing you further into a state of self-righteousness so you do and there goes your chance at some of the best cyberware in night city players shouldn't be rewarded for showing pity or playing the moral card but why punish them when they have no way of telling that they'll be punished for it there's no foreshadowing or warning at all to think there'll be a downside to hitting this guy and if you do there's no way to make it up to him still to the game's credit at least that consequence is there and that's what's important cyber shows glimmers of these moments from time to time so it's unfair to label the choice factor as completely obsolete in this game however it's still easy to criticize cyberpunk as it has many more cases of the opposite and one of those echoes in the next quest called the heist which is the culmination of v's time in the very short opening act our first objective is to meet with evelyn to walk through the brain dance to locate the biochip in yuranabu's suite which is what we're after i was extremely excited about the brain dance mechanic initially as i assumed it would be super interactive almost like an in-game virtual reality for better or worse it's essentially a detective simulator i don't mind the idea of skipping through time to look for clues detroit become human has the same system and it works really well and i do like how you can swap between the first person cutscene in the floating camera mode but i was hoping it wouldn't be so scripted and more deep and you'd be able to brain dance outside the game's main story as a recreational tool i have to imagine there were some plans to let players design their own sequences of brain dancing kind of like being a futuristic level designer but with scripting so you could go back in these scenarios and have multiple ways to experience them and then perhaps upload them to a network where other players could download them solve them or edit the dances themselves and then re-upload them to kind of keep the sequence going i assumed at least you'd be able to share them because judy gives you a portable braindance headset but alas you can't actually use it out in the world and the dances are tied to the main story only for the most part there's a couple things inside but for the most part brain dances are exclusive to main missions the concept is phenomenal but overall in practice i think they're really quite slow fairly boring and lack any dynamic elements to them having three playthroughs under my belt the braindance sequences were ultimately the thing i look forward to the least because mostly there are static unchanging on-rails simulations in a game where you mostly have a lot more freedom so after we locate the biochip evelyn pulls us aside and asks us to kick dex out of the deal now on my first playthrough i told her to [ __ ] off because i didn't want to jeopardize my relationship with dex i assumed like many people he'd be a major player throughout the remainder of the game as he was the hot shot fixer in town so i figured let's keep loyal to him and that's going to be really important right plus i met him beforehand and he gave me the job in the first place so there was this little bias to my decision something that designers can lean on to trigger certain loyalties from players i also figured that if i did go with evelyn i'd be in more danger either way since dex seems like a more intimidating figure that i wouldn't want to [ __ ] with little did i know the choice doesn't actually make any difference though again it's one of those things where the illusion is there it seems like you can influence the direction of the game but the end result is actually set in stone the only thing you can really affect is the immediate dialogue exchange in how you negotiate your payouts there are no ripples that cascade outwards both the heist and the outcomes of dexter and evelyn end in the same way no matter what the player does i felt pretty let down in my second playthrough in this regard as i had done everything opposite to what i did here and all that changed was the window dressing being one of the main missions in cyber i was hoping for more opportunity to influence how it played out who i sided with and ultimately where it led so we had the lizzie's bar to meet up with dex to finalize the mission and here we meet t-bug for the first time i hate to keep saying this but t-bug like many characters in act one are stage setters only brought in for a few scenarios and it just killed off just as fast her snappy personality was something that played well off of jackie i thought so i naturally came to like the two of them quite a bit during this mission so when they both died a couple minutes later it was like okay this is kind of a waste while driving to the hotel one of the things that stood out like a sore thumb was the terrible and i mean downright terrible driving physics present in cyberpunk 2077 of all the open world games i've ever played cyber's artificial driving intelligence is some of the worst i've ever seen in fact it could be the worst part of what makes car dynamics satisfying is physics and providing that sense of weight and momentum while driving cyberpunk has none of that cars basically slide around like they're on an ice rink and have absolutely no sense of gathering momentum from 0 to 60. your car does but no other cars in the game do they also lack the most basic feature of a vehicle they don't turn naturally it sounds like something so stupid and simple to point out but it's like the cars in night city don't have steering wheels cars instead jolt around 90 degree angles when they need to turn which is so weird to see the way i like to think about it is that the streets of night city were designed as a theme park ride underneath the ground there's a giant system of magnets that literally pulls cars throughout the city when they need to make a left turn the magnet rotates on the car's axis and jerks it off into a new direction that's honestly how it looks and that's really depressing actually what makes a great open world game is the sense that people are going about their days and things function as realistic as possible that there's life to the city that it's natural and any way a game can make us feel that the more immersive that environment becomes after playing cyber i went back to grand theft auto 5 just to see the differences initially my mission was only to examine how the cars functioned and of course i found the difference night and day but then i started to realize all the other small things that made los santos immersive in the way that red dead redemption 2 was as well those things added up real quick npcs that had routines dynamic events in the world dynamic weather people that would react to things the way they should and a lot lot more you can feel it almost instantly in these games and that is the same stuff that makes night city feel more hollow in comparison because it simply doesn't have them i guess this is a good time as any to discuss night city as a whole personally the overall aesthetics are quite wonderful and it is god damn beautiful i know they took a lot of time building the core structure of the game because it really is special night city has a lot of beautiful sights and small details that make it very visually appealing in fact it's probably one of the most unique game worlds i've ever seen but it feels more like an immersive backdrop than a living breathing ecosystem a good game shouldn't just be pretty scenery as the structure of a city is only one part of what makes it interesting the more important piece is how players feel inside of it game developers should be asking themselves a very simple question when designing any open world game can you make me feel like i'm not in a video game in the case of cyber the answer is often no the way i see it is that i can stop and admire night city for far longer than i can actually get lost in it and that is a pretty profound statement night city is gorgeous but it's very easy to be plucked out of its world because it doesn't feel like it has a lot of dimension to it bugs no it goes beyond that my beef is with the city itself people a lot of the people you see in that city are blank faces with very rudimentary schedules and when i say schedule i'm being very generous not many have anything interesting to say some of them don't even have lip syncing or speech at all you can walk straight up to an npc talking and their mouth might not even be moving and other npcs you stroll up to sometimes don't even say a word shoot a bullet up into the air witness every single npc crotch at the exact same time in the exact same position it just makes you feel like everyone inside night city is a decoration rather than a person events almost everything is one big revolving scripted pattern weather a basic day night cycle nothing special outside this mission in the desert that has a sandstorm it's this kind of effort that's vacant from night city and what makes it feel less immersive than it should be there's a lot to look at and listen to and some astounding scripted events you'll find if you keep your eyes open but not enough things to interact with you can't play arcades you can't order and eat food you can't ride the unfinished train system there's no garage for you to store your vehicles there's no casino even though akako has pachinko machines that stare you in the face when you go visit her and the police won't chase you if you commit a crime in fact the police spawn behind you and start shooting the second you do anything suspicious in this game the game is so illogical with his intelligence that you can literally bump into someone on the street and the cops will try to blow off your head for it and if you try to run from them they'll overheat you and set you on fire for bumping into little jimmy on the street what system is governing the things inside cyberpunk i've even run to the police after being shot by a thug and the police started shooting at me i can't excuse it's a rational game design because it just makes no sense but i can almost wave it off because getting away from the cops in this game is as simple as running around a corner there's no crime system period end of paragraph try blowing someone's head off and running back to the cops after they de-aggroed they won't even flinch at you in fact there's no tracking intelligence period they simply appear behind you the second you commit a crime i guess one of the features the developers forgot to mention was that the cops of night city had developed teleportation i'm not trying to make fun of the game i'm just trying to shake it loose because it's the contrast of what the game offers and what's expected that burns and there's always a huge disparity cdpr makes the world look like it offers all sorts of cool content but you really can't interact with it the world evokes a very strong hyper sexual nature but the developers censor nudity and there's only one male and one female hooker in the entire game this place should be the literal red light district of night city you can buy a motorcycle but you can't do a wheelie and the city is beautiful until you zoom in with overwatch and see jittering sprites being yanked along a flat dead horizon you don't believe me well buddy fast forward 24 hours and see if anyone has actually moved an inch [Music] dissonance is like an ocean wave in cyberpunk it just keeps coming back all of these things eventually add up and combined with a horrible ai and lack of dynamic interesting events in the city it just pulls you out of its immersive qualities that's why i mentioned earlier that cyberpunk is structurally well designed but systematically barren granted the density is there in fact at night in certain districts like japan town there can be a huge amount of people coming and going but behaviorally they act like zombies and its features as a whole are very limiting small things you'd expect to find as baseline features organic events gang reputations being able to listen to the radio when you walk around having more buildings accessible to explore getting a tattoo they're simply not there and that's not even touching on how players can actually interact with these things which is often completely null and void and one thing to point out as well is that not to mention the game seems to ignore the fact that v cross the most powerful and dangerous corporation in night city shouldn't there be arasaka hit squads coming after her that would be the perfect setup for a random event when walking about especially at night that's just one idea it's a beautiful painting perfect for snapping pictures in photo mode but nearly impossible to run around night city and pretend it doesn't scream i'm a video game eventually jackie and v get inside the hotel during which the heist proper can kick off and it's here we start to ramp up the story by introducing yuronobu and the biochip the pair gets their first glance at adam smasher who has an absolutely awesome design i figured he'd be the main villain in the game smashers hyped up heavily through the entire game especially during act 2 by johnny and rogue a real menace obviously he killed johnny in the first place that he just cannot wait to get revenge on when v gets taken over by john after the heist that urge becomes even greater which of course the game pays off at the end seeing as how smasher is essentially the final boss of the game but there's really no build up he never comes around in fact the game justify his absence by giving him the alibi that he's gone into hiding rogue says this at one point when johnny asks if she ever tried to track him down after he died i don't have a problem making smash of the main villain outside yorinobu which again isn't very present either even if it does speak to johnny's needs more than these which we'll get into this eventually but why not make him a more integral part of the actual story it's like the game gives you the opening act and the end but then leaves out the middle when he bursts in during the finale and kills rogue it feels like a big letdown just from a development standpoint nothing has been built up certainly not rogue who will forever go down as being totally kick-ass and one of the best characters in this game but for smasher it just doesn't feel right if i was to rate the boss fights in cyberpunk i'd rate them as acceptable but not terrific most boss fights have very simple mechanics scan them hit their weak spot dodge the rush down mechanic or projectile use an optional quick hack that's pretty much it personally i was hoping for enemies to have much more unique abilities and tactics which would make them more interesting naturally occasionally the game will throw a fantastic boss at you like oda the sith lord darth maul of cyberpunk with a fantastic introduction i may add but his abilities are fairly derivative like his warp attack that other netrunners also have used throughout the game overall there's just a distinct lack of variety in how you go about fighting these bosses typically stealth is neutered and melee sub-optimal as many bosses have the awful mechanic of knocking you back as soon as you get too close to them never were there any discernible combos or tactics needed to fight these bosses effectively just shoot dodge when they get too close reboot and repeats i understand boss fights are difficult to implement but it's not impossible like a lot of things in cyberpunk adam smasher and its bosses are way more style than substance it would have been nice to see the environments get used more to make unique challenges in having enemy cyberware more of a threat unfortunately the game can't take advantage of this because the game has no counter measures the player can invest into beyond i spy which only allows you to see when an enemy is trying to attempt to hack you not deal with it once it's happened so most of what you get is someone overheating you which then you just rush the net runner or clear line of sight so no ultra cool hacking battles like perhaps many of us thought would be included bosses can also be quite polarizing as level scaling does not exist on my first playthrough i mostly stuck to the main story and found the difficulty curve pretty damn good on hard always getting a nice challenge when i hit up a second playthrough i decided to complete every gig at the start of act 2. mostly this was because i wanted to cram in as much as i could before visiting dex to give me the feeling that v deserved to be there which i'm not even going to get into that by the time i got to oda matilda and of course smasher i dropped them all basically in two seconds so depending on how much cyberpunk content you finish as you play through the campaign the game may be extremely easy incredibly hard or somewhere in between personally i do not like level scaling in most games but in this instance the game actually may have benefited from it at least the bosses so at the end of act 1 jackie dies and gives v the biochip which essentially makes her a living time bomb kicking off the rest of the story as johnny silverhand takes center stage jackie's death to me didn't feel out of place given the situation but i feel like there could have been so much more to his character and their relationship i think a lot of people might agree with me when i say that t-bug v and jackie's seem like the perfect trio to live out the fantasy of a badass cyberpunk gang starting off in the show doing odd jobs together making scratch building contracts and ultimately becoming the top mercs in the city ironically this is exactly what the montage actually shows and it's sad that we never get to experience it so when jackie dies it feels like so much was left on the table that could have been it's up to you whether you feel like the story of cyberpunk is best presented in the way that it is with act 2 starting up and johnny basically taking over the game personally the more i play cyber the more i feel like it presents two separate stories that have little to do with each other outside the biochip which is the segway that barely holds them together act one honestly feels very rushed and the heist might have been better placed later on in the story with the montage basically being act one this section would have been perfect at around four to five hours where jackie and v build up their reputation enough to ultimately meet dexter who then presents them with a series of jobs to prove themselves then the heist happens in act two jackie and v barely escape the hotel perhaps jackie still dies which would have been a little bit more appropriate since he's had an entire act of screen time then again dexter kills v i'm okay with this given he knows if arisaka finds v and tortures her she could give him up and v self-revised with the biochip and the robot dump but in this timeline the relic appears to have saved her life without johnny coming to be yet the open world opens up allowing v to do all the gigs she wants to rebuild her reputation and deal with the loss of jackie but as she does so she starts having these hallucinations they start off fame and they get worse then unbearable as she jumps in act three johnny suddenly manifests himself into the situation and v realizes the biochip isn't saving her it's what's actually killing her and there you go voila you have everything you'd ever want a fleshed out intro for developing characters context and motivations a free roaming act 2 and an extremely high-stakes incentive to reach the finale for me this would have been a great way of telling the overall story of cyber as it has so many benefits one so that characters don't need to get cycled out so fast too so that it makes more sense for fixers wanting to contact v for jobs i mean in the current build she royally screws up the heist and 30 minutes later all the fixtures in night city want to hire her please and three so that the repercussion of v's death isn't immediate terminal illness which i feel is a cheap way to design a story the problem with act 2 as a whole is that v knows she's dying yet the game gives her a map with 500 gigs on it to which every fixer is calling you to help with you want to do the side missions and it'll take a while because the game has zones of varying difficulty that you need to progress through but should you knowing narratively speaking you could drop dead at any moment you know you're dying but you're out buying a car is this how v should be spending her time separate the video game from the story for a second because both should matter and support one another it's the same as playing a game where the mission is to find your missing sun but you're off in the wilderness building fences to gain experience points so it's not fair to single out cyber for this problem it's a general issue with video games to try and have your cake and eat it too with this particular story set up but it's not unfair to criticize it as there are much better ways of tackling urgency versus investment just take a look at majora's mask or horizon zero dawn for example thus act 2 is a very contradictory atmosphere that most players will pick up on and it feels very odd especially because it's a linear story that pulls you into conflicting directions and that is character progress aka leveling up that old xp bar versus story progress finding a cure for v they're not exclusive and that's where the dissonance comes in you get massive pacing and character motivation problems this creates a very suffocating method of storytelling when players are dropped off into an open world where they can act freely but the story is pushing them towards a completely different place so after the heist ghost hits up we take the solemn ride in the delamane where we dispose of jackie's body before we meet up with dex it's a nice touch that we get to choose where the body is sense as it will have some slight ramifications later on when we eventually get to dexter we are ambushed and killed which throws the entire game on its head since v's biochip will reboot her system with silverhands and graham installed dexter getting his head blown off at the landfill is a shocking though not exactly surprising turn of events that happened shortly after who we have to assume was killed because v was found alive so there's no more need for deshawn it's a death that makes sense for takamura considering he believes the two are behind the murder and that's basically his entire motivation but it still bothers me because i feel like so much more could have been done with deshawn cyberpunk just loves to kill off characters presumed even to be important and dex will be the first of many to come i would have loved extra to live actually because i feel like he has the potential to be a very strong character but i think the game does get away with it mostly because it feels like it really hasn't invested that much into him anyway the car shootout that follows is one of i believe four in the game and they're really quite good there's nothing magical here shooting bad guys in the face out of a car going 100 miles an hour is just fun period no matter how you slice it it's a real travesty though that there's no lean out mechanic when driving yourself and i think that many people expected that considering a car shootout sequence kicks off the game initially in the first place right granted it's all incredibly scripted you can sit there without shooting and the car will smash into the wall anyway but that's no excuse for not including the feature many games even a decade old allow you to do this still this set piece is pretty cool for what it offers once again though it's mostly smoke and mirrors when takamura ultimately learns the truth about v it sets in motion the next major plot beat which is getting revenge on your orinobu act 2 in total for some i think could be argued as the strongest act in the game despite having extreme narrative dissonance on account of v's terminal illness as it conflicts heavily with the amount of content there is to see in night city but it has the most story content lots of side missions and gives you more freedom than any other act however it is also where the story changes from one about v to arguably one more about johnny silverhand i have to admit writing this section on johnny has been the hardest part of this entire video because i tend to go back and forth on this subject keanu reeves did a pretty good job with what he had in general but i often feel like the studio made huge concessions to make his role larger than it initially was which changed the story like many who struggled to come to terms with cyberpunk's overarching story i assumed johnny was to have a much smaller role before acquiring reeves and that was only expanded outwards after the fact as i mentioned earlier cyberpunk feels like a game split in two with a suspiciously forward intro a jump cutting montage to stitch the underdeveloped life path system together and a final act one mission that could have easily been pushed far into the game's playtime and everything that comes after this point feels like it kind of belongs in another storyline as if the developers were forced to retool the entire story to fit in this new presence of silverhand on the whole johnny has just enough development to be considered a decent character on both sides but i hardly call him likable on my initial playthrough he was annoying argumentative and demanding and i pretty much tried to steer as far away as i could from him obviously this isn't possible as he shows up randomly and frankly very often even in small gigs or side quests you cannot simply ignore him as he's such a big part of the game that doesn't stop the writing from painting him though very unlikable which is possible based on how v interacts with him 10 times over during the first few hours of act 2. i have a hard time with this because on one hand a great deal of players are going to resist johnny on the sheer premise that they're role-playing these story not silverhands this will lead him to becoming very standoffish towards him and his responses then can be very condescending and patronizing if this was the only side to johnny i would have honestly disliked him but to the game's credit it's not cyber is best played at least twice because underneath all those annoying douchebag moments of johnny there's actually a real character here like any good rpg if you work for it you'll find small moments abound little conversations you can have with him at various points where he actually opens up and it's kind of touching in the final moments of the game as such it's possible that players will have already bonded with him as a result however let's not lie to ourselves johnny's character is painfully inconsistent either way it's not uncommon to go from a scene where v was screaming at him to get the [ __ ] out of my head and johnny telling v to go commit suicide to a scene where johnny appears out of nowhere and starts shooting with v like their best friends who had known each other for years [Music] act 2 is most likely the period where most players will want to take a break from the story stuff and focus on enjoying the open world as someone who has cleared off every single map marker in this game for the exception of buying cars i was ultimately fairly let down in terms of variety and quality of the content for the most part cyberpunk's main attractions are completing the cyber psycho quest chain the perez family mystery and the romance and companion quests which all can be completed in act 2. i think pretty quickly players will realize that cyber's insanely littered map has a lot of filler to the point where they almost might mistake it for some sort of madness designed by ubisoft personally i think it was a mistake to pepper the map with quests that magically activate based off your proximity and anything in baby blue could best be described as very cookie cutter i'm referring to gigs which are fine for leveling up and getting gear but once you've done a handful you've done all 90 as they retread the same basic gameplay loop the more i play cyberpunk the more i tend to enjoy the combat but i'd be lying if i said it doesn't highlight how beaten to death the open world setting is it's clear the development wanted to build a lavish futuristic city which they did but didn't know how to populate it with enough meaningful things to do night city is stunning but the lack of random events and over-reliance on carbon copy gigs makes it feel much less alive than it initially seems flying through the various gigs and scanner jobs is more akin to checking off a list than anything and there were times where i would do jobs just to simply get them off my map as there was no option to permanently filter certain icons off of it one of the more noticeable exclusions is gangs which can be best described as background fodder for certain side missions gangs should have been used like other games use faction systems wherein a unique storyline weapons cars tattoos and implants could be accessible for having high reputation with one the game could have held you accountable for how you interact with other gangs and if you had low rep with one there'd be a chance for them to maybe suddenly attack you on the streets or better yet show up during a mission outside of a brief stance with the voodoo boys and pacifica later on not much ever comes from gangs which is highly disappointing so with act 1 behind us we find ourselves with takamora who becomes our new companion for pretty much the rest of the game and is arguably one of the strongest characters in cyberpunk act 2 sees the player complete a variety of quests featuring the game's main story characters evelyn judy panam and takamora and these are what i would consider the bread and butter of cyberpunk we discussed evelyn prior and i think most players at the beginning of act 2 will spend a couple hours tracking her down now that she's missing working through her tragic tale which is depressing yet riveting evelyn gets caught up in the worst kind of trouble more than players would probably ever see coming and when she commits suicide it feels tragic i guess this would be a good time to stop and talk about cyber's combat at this point as at this point in the story it will begin to ramp up for players personally i like the combat and i don't think it gets enough credit as if you compare the actual movement mechanics and the gun play the other similar titles like for instance the outer worlds or mankind divided it is actually a huge step forward as someone who plays mostly running gun i feel like the gun play corrects a lot of the standard no-nos of other rpg shooters for one weapons actually feel like weapons not peashooters two those weapon designs are very original and they actually look like sci-fi guns from the future and three the movement system and a cupping animation set feels very light on its feet the way v can move is almost akin to mirror's edge not as fancy but it's still snappy and very agile these double jumps slow time slide and quick dashes are all easy to use and they're very effective and when you get the hang of being mobile in this game it actually feels pretty fantastic as you can almost create your own parkour and john wick moments it's got a little bit of max pain a dash of the matrix and some very satisfying feedback for all the guns maybe not the melee combat but definitely the guns i found melee combat the most underwhelming in this game mostly because katana combat is nothing more than brainless spammy nonsense even though it feels so cool to slice someone's head off at the very minimum i expected some sort of combo system and without it the melee combat feels very basic and uninspired the game has the tools to make it shine for example the mantis blades make you feel like a damn predator but like all close range combat it just devolves into a spam left click until enemy die and this goes for the mono wire as well which takes the kick as the dumbest weapon in the game with the coolest concept these melee weapons should have had multiple attacks windups finishers and so forth they should also blend in with stealth allowing v to rush forward while in cover to impale someone with the mantis blades while holding his mouth shut with the other hand dragging him back in the shadows as he reels around like a wounded snake and while we're at it why not have the mono wire act as a whip allowing v the option to lash out to disarm enemies and what happened to using it as a long distance hacking device these are super basic ideas that you would expect to see as standard features but they're all absent when the only thing you can do with any melee weapon in a 60 video game is press left to attack and right click the block something is very very wrong so with the lack of melee options i stuck mostly to hacking and shooting which the game does very well although if you do a lot of optional content in act 2 you'll become an overpowered god way too soon and the game just turns out to be extremely easy personally i had to jack up the difficulty to hard at the minimum to even get a mild challenge in this game and i think that is attributed to a extremely overpowered hacking mechanics allow you to kill an entire squad of enemies without even being seen b an overabundance of healing items c the inconsistent pacing and enemy scaling i mentioned before and d the very rudimentary artificial intelligence another thing i was really let down by in the gameplay progression department was skills the thing i was looking forward to most in cyber was having really cool abilities that were tailored to certain play styles and attributes part of the fun in any game of this caliber is getting cool views period it doesn't matter if it's tied behind progression trees skills attributes or doli doubts as the game goes on when we level up we need exciting new stuff to play with so you can imagine i was very disappointed to see that most of the trees in this game contain very vanilla and generic upgrades like increased damage increased critical strike more health and more armor they speak to a game that has so much filler shoot while carrying a body increase damage while carrying a body who is ever going to do this stuff remain undetectable underwater is this a joke there's only one mission located anywhere near water in this game stealing info off the docks when are you ever going to swim in this game immune to shock it's redundant you can get an implant that does the same thing will you ever though of course not it's a waste just like the skill there's even a skill where dodging costs no stamina and another where dodging gives you stamina what just combine them just like you should combine the two grenade damage perks that are essentially the same increased armor while grappling someone what the hell reduced vertical recoil isn't a fun skill it's just pure lazy how about reduced fall damage are you excited yet i can't even begin to describe how many games i've played where all the skill trees end up like this and cyberpunk should not have been one of them i guess the words i'm searching for are bloated and thin which are two words you don't often hear together because they're opposites pointless would be another word i throw in there as well consumables like skills struggle with irrelevancy as well why is there an oxygen consumable in a game where no one is ever going to swim granted the bills you can make in cyberpunk are pretty fun technomancer warlock shadowrunner john wick with cold blood but most of them suffer from build fatalism wherein indeed there is a diverse array of perks available but engagements largely all go down the same way because they're frankly very one-dimensional one beat a game should never skip is this idea that gameplay variety shouldn't be linear it should change and develop as the game goes on meaning you shouldn't feel as if our three and hour 50 play the exact same way there should be progression especially if supporting systems such as cyberware also are based primarily on increasing stats versus changing mechanical systems of gameplay thankfully the game does have a couple cool weapon systems in place like smart weapons tech weapons power weapons and a ricochet mechanic of course the ability to shoot through walls as well with the power weapons but those don't actually have anything to do with skills built for progression ultimately the perk system is probably the best indication of the original path of game wanted to take something massively ambitious but one that had no chance in the time they had so it was cut way back in order for it to become practical to finish which is why so much of the perk system isn't exactly relevant for the content the game offers all because it's based around stat boosters and that sucks because number crunching isn't exactly fun for a lot of people it doesn't change the way you play the game it just makes you stronger in what you're already doing that's enhancement not variety what this leads to is a strong sense of damage creep because players are solely invested in increasing the number that flashes on the screen when they shoot not the ways in which that number can actually pop up this is why the normal difficulty is so trivial in this game because you're simply one tapping everything in the head for 50 000 damage [Music] because all the skills you're investing in stack on each other as a one-dimensional system and because the artificial intelligence lacks the versatility to make engagements a real challenge it simply creates a very rudimentary and easy game i understand cdpr are best when it comes to making characters and stories but the solution is pretty obvious make less skills but more interesting skills it's not rocket science squash the rate of experience if you have to quality trumps quantity when it comes to character progression so with evelyn's arc wrapped up we're now on our way to meet rogue and start panam's side story before we continue with the main story because why not there's no implications for taking our sweet time in this game and nothing ever comes from v's illness if we just want to stop and ride the ferris wheel with johnny in the meantime so panam is our first pit stop [ __ ] in return info on your cargo help in getting back what's yours i don't know i [ __ ] oh and speaking of bugs maybe we should go ahead and address some of them right about now what seems to be conveying a signal to a van out front know who it might be we never set up any transmitter and i don't know a thing about any van but my guess is it's ssis hey see that car it'll take you someplace safe thank you look out for yourself oh my bad kind of spaced out welcome to the dew drop in where everything don't do this anything available short notice oh yeah got one on the ground floor is that okay they're supposed to pass down this street we just sit tight till they show up and follow what the hell is this there they are step one on him don't let him get away watch out it's not about the skin a bit spicy maybe get together you know jag or something [Music] said that remembering johnny that way helped her focus on what was important so i'm gonna knock one back you're healthy and to the mission good luck v after 10 hours of side questing and one nice bumping grind in a tank we meet with takamora who has arranged a meeting with oda to convince him of yurinobo's wrongdoing when he refuses it sets up both the next plot beat and of course him as the next obvious boss once we get to the parade prior to getting there i want to shout out a particularly great side mission that is totally optional and it's called gimme danger gimme danger has a pretty neat exchange between v and taka where you get unique dialogue depending on some prior decisions and how you respond to his banter dictates how he acts to you and future missions and it's here you can really bond with him if you choose the right dialogue it's a nice touch and i love when games aren't afraid to put substantial content like this into a game that people can miss because that is one of the joys of stopping the smell of roses in any video game speaking of takamura is undoubtedly one of the best characters in this game period not only is he oddly humorous with an unusual charm but he brings a sense of companionship that was lost with jackie even though he starts off as our antagonist frankly i found much more to liken him than johnny down the right path he becomes a close friend and that relationship isn't surface level chit chat there's a certain loyalty to his character i really liked and he also provides some of the game's only comedic relief you can antagonize him and bust his balls in a text and he'll snap back and say there's a saying in my homeland let me remember it oh yeah yourself kind of funny on its own and then the next day he'll hit you back up and apologize it's kind of a little fun interaction best of all he's snobby and he likes good food and i cracked my ass up when he nearly spit out this chicken yakitori i mean i don't blame the guy this looks like dog [ __ ] who doesn't know how to make chicken yakitori [Music] [Laughter] [Music] that ain't hard you freaking bum one thing i really appreciate about cyber is the game actually makes an attempt at pacing act 2 with the use of character motives characters will often send texts explaining what they're up to and provide updates to their progress also at the end of missions they'll sometimes say that they'll call you when they have an update for the next mission which goes a long way in curbing the sensation of disbelief in a ticking time bomb story the moment i learn something new i'll let you know because one of the main issues of having an open world is that players lose agency of the main story because they can put it on hold while they mess around so it's nice the developers put this in the game because it allows you to do what you want to do without feeling like you're ignoring the narrative which once again is based on terminal illness yes you can trick the system by skipping forward in time but it's just one of those nice to haves because it makes the transition between missions feel more natural and frankly just makes more sense for the story and the player so to round out act 2 we have a couple more story missions to go through which all culminate with takamura at the parade first we're going to pay a visit to the voodoo boys in pacifica one of the districts that is clearly unfinished there will forever be discussion regarding how much is unfinished in cyberpunk and the exhaustive list of its missing features some of which promised some cancelled some mentioned in passing some things are more obvious than others not being able to jump out of a moving car everything that has to do with water the artificial intelligence and of course sections of the map that have little to no content pacifica is the biggest letdown because there's just nothing to do which you can assume the team just didn't have the time to fill up the area or it's going to be used for future dlc or both the voodoo boys encounter is actually fairly strong and makes a great introduction with the quest i walk the line we're given the chance to meet brigitte if we can find the netrunner in the grand imperial mall of all the combat encounters in cyber this mall is arguably one of the better ones as there are tons of options players have and there's plenty of room both vertical and horizontal to move around the best cyberpunk environments promotes variety and are ones where if you're paying attention you can sneak through the entire gameplay area and get to your destination pretty much unseen this is important for stealth players because once you're seen in cyberpunk every single guard in the area gets alerted which is very unrealistic and pretty frustrating you can sort of justify it with cyberpunk as we have to assume all the guards in the area are perhaps linked together in the same neural network so if one sees you it's natural for all the others to know instantly but that doesn't exactly make it a fun gameplay mechanic especially when environments are usually very small because if you get spotted there's no undoing it unless you leave the area you're fighting your way out the mall is different because it's larger and enemies are spaced out much more giving you the breathing room to stop analyze a good route and move around in fact you can sneak all the way to the van and through the cinema without growing any guards or the boss before you reach the netrunner and that's pretty good level design when you get to the netrunner he finds that v has been infected with malware that will kill her after the mission another reason to hate the already very unlikable placeed he offers to remove the virus if you let him leave with his data which then will make all the enemies in the area non-hostile this is a nice touch for those who snuck into the mall as they can now walk out freely if you attack the netrunner the malware infects and kills everyone which lets you walk out freely as well which is the same outcome so again like with many things in cyberpunk choices offer immediate flavor differences but the outcome usually stays the same however in the next mission consequences do get set in place which makes the choice feel more substantial than it initially seems if you sold out to netwatch brigitte and her netrunners die in the invasion and the voodoo boys will become hostile once you get out of the freezing bathtub which means you'll have to fight them before escaping if you refuse the agents you can leave the hideout peacefully and no one has to die this is one of the game's better cause and effect moments even though the player has no reason to go back to pacifica see brigitte or interact with the voodoo boys ever again after this point which ultimately makes it feel phoned in when the game immediately warps to the next plot point i personally like this small stint with silverhand here seeing as how we're meeting alt and discovering what ultimately happened to her ironically alt is one of the most important characters in the entire game most certainly in the finale period even though the player will only have had a handful of conversations with her frankly though it's all very circumstantial as if the game wasn't depending a hundred percent on her to kick off the next story beats so even though you can kind of roll your eyes at the plot motivation here and it's very sudden i guess we can attribute the jarring happenstance because she wants to get back at arisaka and v's plan will let her infiltrate mikoshi when v leaves pacifica our next order of business is to find hellman meet up with takamora and plan the parade to get hanukko i actually think this is one of the better gameplay sections in the game as you'll be meeting with rogue and following panam's questline not only to find anderson but also to help the nomads in the process which is a really cool side quest in itself as one of the last major jobs in the game act 2 ends with a parade job and quite possibly has some of the best gameplay in cyberpunk not only do you get a fun sneaky gameplay section to kill the snipers but we also get a series of awesome events at the end of the chapter as i mentioned previously oda is the best boss fight in this game despite the lack of build up there is some briefly but i think the pure spectacle of it is the reason why it's interesting after the fight takamura finds hanako to which we later learn she knew about her brother's crime all along where after we're treated to the single best linear shooting section in act 2. there aren't many times in cyber where you see a new environmental mechanic used because frankly i think they just didn't have enough time to develop them flashlights yeah flashlights it's such a simple thing but the enemies having flashlights in this dimly lit apartment makes this corridor shootout actually pretty immersive and it makes me wonder why v doesn't get some sort of vision option to amplify her core stealth gameplay flashlights mounted on guns could have easily been used to blind enemies thermal vision could have been used in conjunction with smoke grenades to see body heat and radio vision for easily identifying electronics to hack pressing tab and using the scanner is nice and everything but it's just one example again of how much more fleshed out the interactivity of this game could have been the best part about this section is that goro is presumed to be dead by johnny and no on-screen indicator pops up that says you have the option to go looking for him and if players don't save him he dies fighting the soldiers which is quite possibly the best demonstration of cause and effect offered in this game the end of act 2 sees us hashing out a plan with hanukko's doll which i may add is a really cool aspect of cyber that i wish they used more we also get one last scene with johnny in this abandoned apartment one of the softer conversations of the game happens here and this is one of the last times you'll have to sit and chat with johnny before the game ends but it's only really here to solidify or create distance between the two as none of your choices here impact the ending whatsoever which again can be said for every single decision the player has made up into this point [Music] nocturne op55n1 a combination of letters and numbers most synonymous with cyberpunk 2077 the calm before the storm the kickoff to cyber's closing moments now personally i was pretty shocked when i first saw this pop-up window that basically said i was at the end of the game a mere 17 hours had gone by an extremely small amount of time for what i thought would be at least a 50 hour main story adventure and i have to ask is 17 hours enough time to tell an unforgettable cyberpunk story where you can truly feel that everything is fully explained and developed that all the character arcs come full circle and then it's paced properly to crescendo into a finale that delivers everything you expected forget about the open world activities for a second gigs crafting driving around and stuff focus on just those big story moments in scale and i think if you try to do that you'll realize that there aren't really that many really you have just one or two quests for the main story in act one and one in act three those act as the setup and the conclusion though which leaves act 2 for the development of that material and while it delivers the bulk of the story content it's inflated with psych content that while for the most part is really good doesn't advance or elaborate on the main conflict of the game most of the time because even if there were 10 missions with judy or panam they're about building companionships which adds supplementary content to the story or the ending it doesn't advance our quest to deal with the bio chip this is why cyberpunk often feels like it doesn't have the proper build up for important moments rather jumping from one to the next because the story simply does not have enough time to do so i don't have a problem with short stories in fact i prefer them but not in a game that has such massive ambitions for its story its characters its choices and most importantly its endings after meeting hanukko at embers we head over to victor's clinic where misty takes us up to the roof for the game's final player choice the first thing to note about this moment staring out on the balcony into the beauty of night city is that the ending is predicated on nothing else but this choice players essentially choose their ending and that is that which is a big letdown knowing that all of the actions of the player up until this moment have been funneled down into this single decision there's a total of five innings to choose from starting with a default option wherein v allies with arasaka this ending has you agree with hanako's plan to expose yuronobu's corruption to the board of directors so she can take the throne and as repayments v gets surgery to remove the engram and hopefully not die in the process if v saved takamura in the ambush earlier he's going to be present in the finale so we awaken shortly after inside a sterile spaceship where we meet helman who tells us that the test successfully extracted johnny from us but it's done irreparable damage and we're no longer going to live it's the game's slap in the face moment so to speak the game then presents two options join soul killer and become one with the matrix or fly back to earth knowing you'll die in six months in these positions soul killer seems like the best option here as there's a hope a better solution can be found while in the care of arasaka because if she goes to earth it's clear the corporation will definitely cut ties with her and she'll have no chance to save herself either way though it's not a happy ending the second ending has you teaming up with pan am to coordinate assault on arisaka which is only possible if you completed her entire story arc when we eventually make contact with alts we're given the option to keep our body or give it to johnny if we choose to keep it we'll be able to sneak out of night city with panama and start anew this is obviously the best ending in the game although v's condition is still terminal so it's not like this is the classic quote-unquote happy ending if v chooses to let johnny have her body instead we get a unique cutscene featuring well johnny the third ending has v given her body to johnny to team up with rogan weyland to launch the attack on arisaka tower essentially to finish the job they started 50 years ago it shares some similarities with the previous ending and that you're kind of just teaming up with different companions once again though we do fight smasher and we see rogue killed which sucks but hey someone always has to die this leads v into essentially the role of taking care of the afterlife and replace of rogue if we choose to keep our body and the epilogue in this path shows v launching a heist in space and her still terminal state speaking of these little scenes i find the third person perspective strange if you're going to feature a character like this then make all the cutscenes third person because it's weird to have a constant frame of the screen for 15 hours and then suddenly here's your character who we all know looks like a hobo underneath that spacesuit yeah i'm not going to get into the armor system of this game we all know it's bad this ending though differs thematically from the other two it seems anyway in that we're returning to night city as a mercenary because we're throwing away the chance to spend our last days in peace or finding a cure to save ourselves it's subtle but it does make this ending feel like the classic quote unquote going out in a blaze of glory moment so those are the three main endings but there's also a couple more in there as well there's another variation on the panam ending a secret ending and one in which v simply commits suicide on the balcony as she says could also just put all this to rest the implication of this ending is that v shoots herself and essentially kills silverhand in the process which is downright depressing but i guess it's kind of important if you think about it in every other ending someone gets killed off and if we choose to kill ourselves we'll ensure that no one else has to die so it's almost like we're saving others by taking our own life the voicemails during the ensuing credits are especially tragic the secret ending is enabled by completing a series of steps to attain a certain level of friendship with johnny you then have to stare at the gun after misty takes you up to the balcony wherein johnny will take over v's body and lead the attack himself johnny will have to take on waves of enemies and if you die you'll be sent to the credits immediately overall none of the endings truly give you that happily ever after moment and that is something i think most people look for to wrap up their favorite stories because they've gotten invested into those characters cyberpunk is grim bleak and hopeless i get it but that doesn't mean the ending has to be that way too the fact that players can spend so much time with their v only to find out that there was never a way out of the situation is really quite sad obviously there are endings that are far better than others but they really boil down to the same conclusion do you want to die now or later one of the running themes of cyber is that the promise of fame and fortune could push good people into bad situations there's always give and take in night city and few can have their cake and eat it too jackie becomes the first casualty followed by evelyn who dies a horrible death trying to beat the system judy never dies but we read about all the [ __ ] that's happened to her too and it's bad it never ends river's story and the farm boy abductions the cyber psychos not even the most influential man in night city is safe everyone is trying to make it in night city and everyone becomes a victim of it and v is no different with the afterlife ending these perseverance on the path to the top doesn't change anything it'll only bring her and the people she cares about more pain so the ultimate message of cyber does make sense but it's somber and gloomy all the same kudos to the team for making the journey dark few games have the balls but i personally don't like hopeless stories because why replay the game knowing nothing will change knowing that the final words will always end up sour i don't mind tragedy in games in fact it could be highly effective especially in the final moments of a story the ending to the last of us is a prime example but that might not be the best idea in a game that's based off of player choices because they should have some say in the ending beyond it being simply despair i beat cyberpunk three times i played each life path to the end exploring every option i could possibly find thinking i had to have missed something looking for that hopeful ending but it never came cyberpunk 2077 is not the first game i'd reach for if i want to play a great rpg in fact we might as well call it a story driven action shooter it has many problems with tone and storytelling and it's very inconsistent across the board such that the entire game feels like it was pieced together at various stages of development a lot is missing and nearly all of it could use a bit of work work in the sense of polish of course but more so development if you want to experience what it's truly like to netrun see better exploration take part in detailed body modification in an rpg turn to deus ex if you want to feel part of a living breathing world full of variety it's time to hit up grand theft auto if you want to experience true stealth go for hitman if you're hungry for first person mechanics mirror's edge and dishonored will do the trick and if you want to see how choices are done right in games look no further than detroit become human all of the games i just listed have their flaws some very very obvious but they are exceptional in what they do correct cyberpunk does a lot poor some things good occasionally wows you often disappoints yet ultimately never has that moment where you say to yourself damn this is the best i've ever seen perhaps cdpr's growth was faster than they possibly imagined and with it came lofty expectations and huge ambitions to make the best game that's ever been made i can imagine the very first meeting they had for cyberpunk 2077 all the developers gathered around the office planning this massive game thinking they could do no wrong and transcend everything that came before it the years probably went on fast much too fast and those ambitions likely grew out of control by then as the deadline crept in i imagine the team became aware that they weren't going to be able to put out the game they initially envisioned so cuts were made and lots of them features were peeled back and things were redesigned to make it practical to meet the release date when keanu came on board the boat was probably already beginning to sink the team probably grew excited at this point at the prospect of what they could now do with silverhand and decided to change the direction of a development that was already showing signs of red flags so they worked to their credit i'm sure very hard for two years until 2020 reared its ugly head and as they looked up they realized the only thing they could do was cobble the various game ideas that had been reshaped and retooled together in a way that made sense for a video game i truly believe this is why the three acts of cyberpunk 2077 feel so inconsistent and dare i say odd taking collectively this led the characters having to be killed off fast character development to be squeezed thin during act 1 and a completely new direction for the game takes place when v receives the biochip regardless of it being the best placement for that event in the total story so johnny comes in takes over the game's central story arc throw in some romances a couple side quests pack the rest of the playtime with filler and keep the player mostly on rails until the credits roll down hoping that in the process they don't notice the downgrades to the features role playing content and artificial intelligence that were surely made making a game of this scope is definitely no easy feat and i'm sure the developers sacrificed a lot to make this game happen night city deserves to be commended not the world building but at least the design in its core structure the music is great and the writing is for the most part excellent but i'll never forgive them for the abundance of mediocre game implementations and all the promise features of which many were ripped out or neutered life paths are poorly integrated the structure is faulty choices are mostly an illusion the fact that nothing you do prior to the balcony scene has any impact on what happens in the finale speaks volumes the only logical conclusion one might draw is that cyberpunk 2077 should not have come out this early it promises a lot and it fails to deliver on the majority tainted by incompletion and a dozen different ideas and systems that almost come together but ultimately don't is there any game out there that has truly lived up to expectations one that you could look back on and say yes they did everything right probably not every game has its flaws nothing is perfect because that's impossible but that doesn't mean games can't be made a lot better than cyberpunk 2077 cd projekt red built a great foundation for a fantastic concept for a video game all they had to do was finish it [Music] you

Channel: Downward Thrust

Views: 199,427

Keywords: cyberpunk 2077, cyberpunk, cyberpunk review, cyberpunk 2077 review, cyberpunk 2077 critique, cyberpunk critique, cyberpunk 2077 analysis, cyberpunk analysis, cyberpunk the ultimate critique, downward thrust, cyberpunk 2077 sucks, cyberpunk sucks, cyberpunk crowbcat, cyberpunk games, cdpr, cyberpunk cdpr, cyberpunk 2077 dlc, cyberbug 2077, cyberpunk 2077 patch, cyber, punk, witcher 3 vs cyberpunk, cyberpunk vs the witcher 3, the witcher games, cyberpunk 2077 explained

Id: N2qLPFSdQGY

Length: 83min 58sec (5038 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 06 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ruinous_hemomancy]

Good, good. Let the long flow through you.

Edit: it has spoilers so unfortunately I'm not going to watch it. I still want to play 2077 but I'll probably get it when GOTY comes out, and the game is way cheaper than currently.

[u/YoungYoda711]

Longman bad and all that

[u/Tony6Shot]

Oh good, I'll have to watch this. I think he did a good job deconstructing the game with his first vid on CP.

[u/YourPrivateNightmare]

His powers are increasing

[u/Frank_Leroux]

I really liked this. CP2077 isn't a terrible game, and I've played about 150 hours of it and had fun. But even apart from the overhyped marketing there are big issues with this game, and I think Tonald really laid them out in a concise manner.