The Tragedy of Cyberpunk 2077

tonight i'm [Applause] i'm here to say goodbye to all of you [Applause] [Music] we lost everything we had to pay the price yeah we lost everything we had to play the prize the important part in cyberpunk it's not technology it's like who are you how do you want to play the character this is kind of the role-playing freedom we want to get but you know as always it can also have consequences [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] we'll never fade away we'll never fade away [Music] [Applause] cyberpunk before it was a game it was a genre and before it was a genre it was a mess of emergent ideas and sci-fi literature through the 60s 70s and beyond where the scientific achievement of the 20th century inspired early sci-fi writers to explore distant futures and utopian societies in their work the vietnam war emerging drug culture civil unrest and a growing resistance to establishment and authority fueled authors like philip k dick bruce sterling and walter john williams to envision a future that was far more pessimistic dystopian societies replete with life-changing technology but severe economic and political disparity brought on by an all-powerful elite simply put high-tech low life a storytelling environment right for social commentary and capitalism transhumanism social inequality and the human condition each writer brought something new to the genre which would then bleed into the work of another author cybernetic implants androids cyberspace punk hackers and a bit of film noir for good measure much of the genre's visual language was informed by ridley scott's blade runner and mobius is the long tomorrow while the genre storytelling was shaped by william gibson's neomancer and walter john williams is hardwired eventually all of these works infused a young tabletop game developer in 1989 with the inspiration for a stylish new take on dungeons and dragons cyberpunk the role-playing game of the dark future and that game developer was mike pondsmith growing up with the evolution of the cyberpunk genre pondsmith's interest in technology world news and science fiction prepared him to build the retrofuturistic role of cyberpunk a vision of 2013 seen from the 80s aside from being a timely iteration on d d cyberpunk subverted many pen and paper mechanics for the time or most dnd campaigns encourage players to perform heroic actions cyberpunk encouraged players to commit crimes and be unlawful the game embraced the rule of cool where looking or doing cool mattered more than utility or plausibility effectively turning a common criticism applied to the cyberpunk genre style over substance into a game mechanic and most importantly despite the peril of the world around you cyberpunk was not about saving the world it's about saving yourself the game was an underground hit and propelled pondsmith to make multiple additions in the years to come such as cyberpunk 2020. over the years as he cultivated experience in the video game industry pondsmith dreamed of turning cyberpunk into a video game and met with multiple publishers in the hopes of a licensing agreement every single time the publisher only wanted to deviate from his vision as pondsmith approached his 60s it was safe to say a deal would never happen but then fate intervened in 2012 pont smith received a call from cd projekt the company behind the critically claimed the witcher 1 and 2. they weren't just your average publisher they were fans people who actually played cyberpunk an unlikelihood for a country that fell behind the communist iron curtain and barely had access to games like cyberpunk when it was first released in the west as dreams had it as well as pondsmith and cdpr it was finally time to make a cyberpunk video game [Music] on january 10 2013 game studio cd projekt red burst forth with the magnificent teaser trailer for cyberpunk 2077. i was 13 years old when i first saw this thing man and for some reason i never forgot it a bleak future run amok with violence super cops and cyber psychos paired with archives bullets it left a truly chilling impression and that was the whole idea one of the reasons cdpr announced cyberpunk when it did was because it needed to expand the studio if it were to fulfill their lofty vision for the game what better way to recruit developers than to put out a flashy teaser the effort paid off by 2014 the team behind cyberpunk 2077 grew to around 50 developers from all over the world an international team for an internationally minded game however it would be a long time before cyberpunk 2077 would return to the spotlight cdpr had more immediate fish to fry particularly a little game called the witcher 3. the wonderful witcher 3 wild hunt go out and buy this game right now it has permanently changed the way i play interact with and depreciate video games that's why it's game of the year a miracle despite the previous hurdles of the witcher 1 and 2 cdpr's inexperience as a studio and greater inexperience with the open world genre their largely unsung status in the games industry and multiple frustrating delays the witcher 3 wild hunt went on to be one of the most widely beloved and critically acclaimed games of all time a monumental genre-defining rpg with brilliant storytelling and characters a gripping open world and atmosphere hours upon hours of engaging content and an unforgettable experience it's also my favorite game of all time never before had a studio garnered so much praise with so few games under their belt the witcher 3 should never have worked but not only had it worked it changed the way rpg and open world developers have approached their games for the better part of the last 5 years cdpr had earned their acclaim and it gave them the exact momentum they needed to take on cyberpunk 2077 so why cyberpunk why get excited for a single player rpg in a futuristic blade runner-esque world made by cd projekt red and asking the question i think you'll have your answer the cyberpunk genre may have already had its fair share of video games through the last three decades but none with the same scale depth or potential as a game from the studio behind the witcher 3. co-directed by anna badowski and matteo's conic both of whom had been with the studio since the witcher 1 written by tomasz marchuka jakob jallnik under the story direction of martian blah all veterans of the witcher 3 music composed by witcher 3 maestro's martian prieb chevawovich pt adam jaik and renowned tv composer paul leonard morgan and the art director of final fantasy xv and blade runner blackout 2022 paul dyson the creative effort behind cyberpunk would be dynamite though cdpr would be diving into the deep end of a sub-genre of storytelling and gameplay they had no experience in this was arguably where they did their best work their games have always been ambitious but witcher 3 was perhaps proof that their skill and game design have finally caught up to their ambition and unlike the witcher trilogy which was largely disowned by witcher book author andre sapkowski cyberpunk benefited from not only having its creator on board but the years of experience in the games industry pondsmith had as well cyberpunk was going to work in late 2016 cdpr was issued a seven million dollar research grant by the polish government for the development of multiplayer dynamic ai and reactive city creation technology that changed based on the player's decisions during the loot box fiasco of 2017 when rumors arose that cdpr was considering a live service mile for cyberpunk they pushed back we leave greed for others a bold proclamation and no less expected from the same studio that popularized the free dlc model following the witcher 3. the same studio that struck down fallacious glass door reviews months prior many of which made claims of unnecessary crunch low pay and poor studio morale you can tempt fate but you can't tarnish cdpr's reputation in 2018 cyberpunk 2077 made its grand re-unveiling at a3 with a thrilling blaze of fire into night city behind closed doors the press had their first look at gameplay a few months later that gameplay was shown to the public and over the next two years they would be seeing a lot more wake the [ __ ] up samurai we have a city to burn all right i was expecting the unexpected but i didn't expect kian of [ __ ] reefs and amidst the explosion of his popularity in 2019 no less cdpr had the world eating from its palm and planned to keep it fed all the way to cyberpunk's release date of april 2020. i was bummed because it was going to come out during my finals but then it got delayed to september 2020. you can't rush perfection after all that didn't just become the slogan of cyberpunk's development but of 2020 as well the onset of kova 19 changed everything and straddled the entertainment industry the world over by the summer cyberpunk was delayed again from september to november 19th that's still close to my finals but whatever okay a long wait became longer yet cpr kept its audience engaged in the build-up to the games released with night city wire a monthly content dump interviewing the creative forces behind the game as months of waiting became weeks hype levels virtually shattered the ceiling musical spotlights cyberpunk branded merch and content creator cameos dominated the game's social media craze every gamer had something to say about cyberpunk and nearly all of it was inevitably positive then one final delay from november 19th to december 10th alright cbpr it's basically releasing smack in the middle of my finals now but whatever you already have my money they had it all the way to best buy with a mobius inspired steel book night city postcards and a physical thank you letter this is why i love cd projekt red they care about the consumer and i along with the rest of the world was about to experience their greatest gift yet cyberpunk 2077 at long last but not nearly long enough [Music] night city it's a city of dreams and i'm a big dreamer yet i could never dream of any studio achieving quite what cd projekt red did with night city a multi-layered collaboration of dizzying interlocking skyscrapers piercing the heavens bright protruding neon billboards and signs and brutalist concrete modules stacked over each other to show decades of commercial realty in action only the rich can dream of what the city must look like from the sky but for the average miscreant subjugated to the darkened grimy streets and alleyways on the bottom any privileged view is all but blocked out by the extravaganza above residents are crammed into gargantuan mega blocks sustaining hundreds of people likely inspired by hong kong social housing projects through the 1970s and 80s on the whole those decades apply appropriately well to the aesthetics of cyberpunk big blocky retro features the car design an overabundance of flashy leather clothing displaying a bout of arcade machines punk afros and jewelry and of course the iconic motifs of the cyberpunk genre cyberware cyberbike cyber samurai are all here the more you roam about night city the more you realize this isn't 2077 for our world rather much like the genre it's based on this is the near future of the 80s set almost 100 years later to afford cdpr enough storytelling freedom to not interfere in the events upon smith's rpgs and most dazzlingly all of this is fictional created from the ground up with nothing but its rich inspirations to go off of the decision to let players experience this in first person makes complete sense though i can appreciate distance and horizontal depth in the frame from third person it's only in first person that skyscrapers feel this massive you are quite literally looking up a mere ant crawling through the crack of a sidewalk and that feeling is largely due to the immersion of this perspective if this is pond smith's pen and paper game brought to life then you must be a participant in this experience it makes sense to be removed from geralt in the third person we're tagging along for his journey but the story of v is the story of you though the control offered to the player in first person is overwhelming at first no other creative decision throughout the entire game brings you closer to your story you could have warned me how much it hurts to die trust me real death hurts much much more not so sure about that my first jaunt through night city left me with two unshakable impressions one the production value like holy [ __ ] man we can already imagine the creative labor poured into the construction of the city alone but how about the sheer variety and bombasticity of ads assaulting the player the ever abhorrent windows into a hyper-commercialized future where people are objectified artificiality is glorified and fears are stoked to turn profits the constant radio chatter playing in your apartment and over your commutes always at work to normalize the lunacy of this world over 150 completely original genre-bending songs over several radio stations featuring the likes of run the jewels grimes rat boy eugen blackrock and so many other artists i've never even heard of all participating in an experiment to create music that's decades ahead of its time the wide array of car brands and models all with their own defining features distinct cultural influences and meticulous construction almost as if all these cars were handcrafted by their own engineers some of them probably were an endless variation of clothing and high-tech weaponry a dnd lore's book worth of accidentally written and sometimes hilarious data shards spread throughout the city and of course the general visual gloss of the game's beautiful graphics when the right elements are operating as intended you are granted an indescribably transportive experience the sights and sounds of the future wind rain the buzz of npcs three different radios all playing different music and new shows on the same street deep electronic sounds quaking from overhead and unbeatable immersion when they're not operating as intended the outcome is less impressive and that leads me to my second impression of night city the glitches everyone loves the occasional glitch a t-posing npc a flying car janky animation or dumb ai but not all at once and not as frequently as they occur in cyberpunk the last time i played a game with this many glitches on launch might have been assassin's creed unity not the game i'd ever imagine comparing to a cd projekt's red title at first it was easy to dismiss the state of utter glitchy chaos permeating cyberpunk but over time it's much harder sometimes a few innocent glitches and fewer seconds is all it takes to dismantle a well-built sense of immersion in the game world open world titles on the scale of cyberpunk are no stranger to these types of bugs and even veering back through cdpr's history with launch titles it's little surprise how prevalent they are here still it's a shame they were so inseparable from my experience with the game and perhaps an indication that cyberpunk probably should have been delayed just a bit longer why are you taking pictures of it with your non-existent phone hold up my hand click i wish i could do that with my hand glitches or not the show must go on and so it did just as the witcher games bent the rpg genre to put players in the boots of geralt of rivia cdpr indulges the fantasy of pondsmith's pen and paper game as an action rpg in 2077 complete with character building gearing tactical combat and the preservation of choices and consequences to test the role-playing limits of cyberpunk i created two characters one inspired by ryan gosling and the other by emma stone hopefully this played out more like la la land and not gangster squad there was only two ways to find out [Music] cdpr puts arguably their best idea up front life paths a system that takes the backstory element of pen and paper rpgs and applies it to your choice of three predetermined prologues corpo nomad and street kid of course many crpgs already beat cyberpunk to this idea in recent years but elevated to a fully voiced cinematic level the prospect of having three totally distinct backstories that affect your approach to the narrative is pretty unprecedented corpo puts you in the oxfords of a rich but altogether pathetic and heavily nauseated paper pusher for arisaka nomad gives you a clean slate a gear head out running the law dukes of hazard style street kid embraces the bloody nose down in their luck underdog persona at some point the three prologues converge on the same main narrative path and the way each path gets to that point has mixed results but they do give you a sense of personal ownership of your character nonetheless together the dichotomy of these paths plant you in cyberpunk's thematic playground the american dream the idea that anyone regardless of their status or where they come from can achieve upward mobility and follow their dreams it's a romantic idea but rarely a plausible one least of all in the cyberpunk genre where society's dominated by megacorporations and most people live in poverty oppressed by a cycle of exploitive labor and mindless consumerism a dystopic late-stage capitalism nightmare cyberpunk 2077 is not evaluating whether or not the american dream is dead it's evaluating what happens to a society that refuses to accept when it dies and for the journey he embarks on it's an evaluation of what happens to the individual who tries to pursue it obviously it's not going to go well though the nomad prologue glimpses an optimistic arrival in night city the corporal demonstrates just how easy it is to fall down the bureaucratic ladder while the street kid denotes how hard it is to leave the bottom though your apartment is considerably spacious for the crammed mega blocks of the future far nicer high-rise apartments seemingly mock you miles from your window and despite how long you spent crafting your very own v in the character creator assigning specific stats and considering your long-term success in the game v is no less expendable than any one person roaming the streets of night city not to its corporate overlords anyway to feel small and be small in a city so big there's only one way to stand out become a night city legend and secure a bulletproof legacy of your own by any means necessary here your new life starts now depending on your life path you've either known jackie your whole life or a solid afternoon either way he becomes your best friend and the lighthouse of your trek to stardom in night city jackie is the unquestionable heart and soul of the game's first act he's charismatic he's a gunslinger and he's got stars in his eyes jason hightower breathes incredible presence into this character and effectively swoons you into the same night city fantasy he's so infatuated with luckily our ticket to the major leagues is just around the corner jackie secures us a meeting with dexter deshawn one of night city's top fixers the gig steal a prototype ship the relic from your nobu arasaka the black sheep son of the emperor saboro arasaka naturally some prep work is in order starting with procuring a flathead device from maelstrom so far cyberpunk has demonstrated choice and consequence through superficial character creation but not through gameplay agency not until the pickup you'll pay twice because i say you'll pay twice despite how inconsequential your actions are to the upper echelon of this world the very phenomenon that allowed corpo v to be kicked down the ladder can render your choices meaningful in the right situation you could deliver someone's next big score or be the harbinger of their demise and in the pickup you could be miltek's board killer or the reason meredith stout is unceremoniously opt for her insubordination off-screen it all depends on the choices you make do you meet with militech beforehand take their credit chip and use it to buy the flathead provoking maelstrom with a virus hidden on the card or do you wipe the virus and watch militech spiral into panic as their plane is foiled or do you just walk in buy the flathead and walk out unscathed that is the power of your choice and it's not exclusively presented in the dialogue either it considers the eddies you might have earned performing jobs before the pickup your aptitude in the hacking mini game and if you even took the time to meet stout in the first place the multi-layered approach to choice in this quest resolves to extend considerably well across the game in gameplay are you a guns blazing solo favoring head-on assault and hard-hitting weaponry are you a netrunner leaving a trail of bodies without ever firing a bullet maybe you're a melee ninja adept at cutting down your foes with bladed fury or you're something of a hitman pacifying foes and hiding bodies as you chart a path through an environment are you a hybrid of some of these builds or a jack of all trades again the choice is yours and it's wonderfully afforded by an attribute system with dozens of perks spread across several trees on my first feed i was a melee quick hack hybrid sabotaging enemies vitals to easily chop them down with my katana on my second v i was a hybrid of cold blood and assault a self-sufficient wrecking ball that moved and healed faster the more i killed through cyberware mods you can elevate v to superhuman levels sometimes literally and because of your attributes you might unlock hidden pathways or secret rooms in an environment or qualify for a conversation skill check that unlocks new branches of dialogue players who take advantage of their character builds and attributes will reap the greatest rewards and dungeon like side mission gigs the outcome of boss in cyber psycho fights depend on your proclivity for either lethal or non-lethal and of course quests both within and outside the narrative sport multiple endings based on your decisions no matter how i navigated cyberpunk the value of choice and ensuing consequence boasted promising depth for what would hopefully be a long time to come but now we can also say okay players have all of these different choices to solve a situation so of course there should also sometimes be some consequences and not just on the gameplay side how you solve it but of course you know the story should react to it with the flat head secured and your nib's penthouse scrolled through in evelyn parker's brain dance v and jackie are finally brought to the heist thank you excelsior package activated excelsior oh this just keeps getting better since william gibson's neuromancer the heist has become a fixture of the cyberpunk genre a desperate attempt by underdog criminals to achieve the high life using cutting edge technology and cunning against their oppressors cdpr honors this cyberpunk tradition no less reverently from the dimly lit planning room the classy limo to the royal kenpecki plaza lobby where the players permitted to scout out their surroundings the heist truly feels like one of cyberpunk's more special missions one in which every feeling is deliberately evoked it's also where you find hideo kojima's in-game character which feels like a fitting tribute to the creator of one of the early cyberpunk video games snatcher i digress the heist both physically and figuratively actualizes upward mobility the closer you get to the relic the closer you are to the big score the major leagues challenges abound but nothing that you didn't prepare for finally you arrive at the top the relic is yours but this wouldn't be cyberpunk if you had a happy ending and in a world where anyone can get knocked down the social ladder in an instant you're about to be jolted off with violent force i shot at the major leagues is now a race to the bottom in every conceivable way stealth or guns blazing it doesn't matter you're far too insignificant in the story to alter the outcome you and jack you're practically ants scurrying from the crushing weight of a boot and you would be foolish to think both of you are getting out of this intact in night city this is the inevitable fate of anyone who dares turn against their corporate tyrants the bright beaming heart and soul of cyberpunk is snuffed [Music] the euphoric high of the heist against the perilous low of jackie's death feels like the culmination of a nightmare but we have yet to see what comes next adam zick's score cuts off as we enter the no-tell motel a palpable sense of dread overshadowing everything if you thought even for a second that dex was on your side that you and him have some sort of equal standing you're dead wrong you v were never special no blaze of glory for me [Music] the saga of v has come to an end or did it [ __ ] [ __ ] [Applause] [Music] after ripping down the late memories of johnny silverhand's suicide mission against arasaka crawling our zombified body out of a putrid wasteland of trash as death defying rescue from the emperor's dishonored bodyguard and vicks grim death sentence for v the nuttiest one-hour roller coaster of a 2020 video game comes to a breathtaking stop in our apartment our only bastion of safety yet it's here we come face to face with the walking talking [ __ ] spewing engram of johnny silverhand who is actively overriding our brain they say you should never meet your heroes but johnny is a truly special case as the rockerboy legend of night city johnny is every bit as vile narcissistic and morally bankrupt as the cut of disenfranchised lowlifes the city is engineered to produce where night city's corporate overlords quietly amassed more and more power over its impoverished populace johnny was the lone man shouting expletives into the whirlwind an unhinged terrorist with the compulsion to fearlessly burn every corp to the ground he'll never back down he'll never stop fighting and he'll never leave you alone leave me the [ __ ] alone johnny's abrasive demeanor the timing in which he shows up in your life and his functional position as your new best friend after jackie's passing is all deliberate you're supposed to loathe johnny this person who's poised to steal your life without any rightful claim to it keanu reeves appropriately plays up the tyler durden-esque snobbery as do the writers lean into the god complex of a real night city legend this is your dream literally staring you dead in the eye armpit hair and all someone who succeeded at becoming the thing you and jackie died for and boy as it never looked uglier for me personally this all had the intended effect i hated johnny and the more he invaded my life the more i feared for my own the more i felt the inescapable panic of watching my hopes and dreams slip away my shot at true greatness the whole of my life ahead of me thus while act one had you and jackie viewing night city's legends through the lens of color-coded near-sighted goggles act 2 humanizes the legend in all its ugliness if you still want this life be prepared to trade even more of your humanity for it just as johnny surrendered his to secure his legacy johnny's loathsome presence notwithstanding the time bomb in her head is an obvious problem and goru takamara might have a solution disavowed by arasaka takamara wants revenge on your nobu and knows you are living witness to his patricide and helping him you might gain access to the corpse technology and get the chip safely removed from your head you may also find a more likely solution on the streets either by searching for the biochip creator and renegade anders hellman or by tracking down evelyn to her original clients for the chip time is of the essence and our life is on the line so we'll chase down every lead we can but because this is an rpg there's something i care about a little bit more at the moment the open world [Music] everyday though cyberpunk may have fallout 4 syndrome giving you a time-sensitive main quest while also dangling hours of open-world content in front of your face it's the wanton pursuit of the fixer fantasy that somewhat validates the dive into cyberpunk's side content and the beginning of act 2 is the perfect time to do just that as you explore night city and enter new districts you'll receive calls from a colorful assortment of big time fixers all looking to give you merc work these are the gigs we mentioned earlier and some vary quite significantly convince a corrupt cop to leave the city steel prized ride from rival gang rescue a client from captivity or cross someone's name off a list meanwhile the ncpd has their hands full of well crime and you might be the tidal wave of change to clean the streets as your street cred soars so do the number of missions you're offered with delamine hq goes on a malfunction panic as multiple personality down main vehicles descend on the streets a quest to unlock the secrets hidden on the decrypted cyber attack of the legendary bart moss with nix or a covered up conspiracy about the fate of night city's fallen mayor all the while you're collecting more and more eddies acquiring new gear finding new rides and indulging in the true cyberpunk fantasy and all the while through every quest and gig johnny silverhand continues to breathe down your neck constantly interfering in your judgment promoting apathy and mocking any attempt to form a connection to the people in this world you're a walking corpse you should just wait till your mind shrivels to nothing and frees up space for me the more you interact with him the more you realize the extent to which he sold his humanity for a night city everything has a cost but in a society so irreversibly [ __ ] by capitalist machinations everything has a cost for johnny it was the cost of damnation and for the rest of cyberpunk well take a look initially i presumed the most glaring of cyberpunk's issues began and ended with its bugs for which there were many but through act 2 a curtain hiding dozens of greater failures across cyberpunk was slowly unveiled to me earlier i spoke highly of cdpr's dedication to preserve choice and consequence throughout much of the game all in the spirit of potmas tabletop rpg i was impressed by the web of outcomes in the pickup the versatility of choice through the player's actions the variety of supportable character builds and the side content used to enforce choice and consequence to the player but this foreign to the experience a different impression began to form about everything early on life paths posed to reveal new dialogue branches and depending on the npc your unique life path might open doors otherwise closed to other life paths the truth is not this glamorous life paths are about as consequential as asking a store vendor how business has been going it never matters no matter where you go the multiple endings woven into the pickup is one of the rare few quests in the game to support so many different outcomes and is not representative of the greater whole don't get me wrong not every quest can have sprawling choices and outcomes especially if we consider how cdpr approached choice in the witcher 3 but to feature them so early on in the game with the pickup and so infrequently after that is certainly disappointing disappointing how a game based on one of the first pen and paper games to honor the rule of cool offers absolutely no way for the player to change the cosmetic appearance of their gear their facial appearance their choir vehicles or their weapons if you want good stats you are going to look like a dork moreover the world around you won't care that you look like a dork creating a strange clash in character role-playing and world interaction it's disappointing how uninteresting alternate pathways unlocked by your specific attributes can end up being not like the deus ex series where alternate pathways are not only unique but tailored flavorfully to your skills it's disappointing how meaningless eliminating enemies in lethal or non-lethal actually is there's no apparent system tracking how you defeat enemies and no incentive to pursue one option over the other with the exception of a quest from regina jones where she gives you more eddies if you left more cyber psychos alive than dead well gee that changes everything regina it's disappointing how ineffectual most character builds become over time not that they aren't useful especially on harder difficulties and after you've maxed out a build but most at level combat encounters can be easily won with the common pistol looted off an enemy late into the game there's never an appropriate shift in enemy types nor difficulty to accommodate for the advancement of your skills and it's disappointing how in a game driven by choice gameplay encounters are rarely reactive to that choice the enemy ai and cyberpunk seems only to know how to take cover and shoot with the occasional enemy that has more interesting abilities to work with there's never a moment where enemies react according to your gameplay approach giving combat encounters a static predictive flow but the lack of reaction doesn't stop at the enemies remember that grant cvpr received to develop dynamic ai and city technology that changes based on your decisions you would be hard-pressed to find meaningful proof of either in cyberpunk heck you'd be hard-pressed to find ai that reacts anything like npcs in most aaa games which doubly goes for cyberpunk's bafflingly cobble together police and wanted system where cops spawn directly behind you for a crime and disappear as soon as you drive half a mile away for a game with such an engaging atmosphere there's no understating the lifeless technology that works effortlessly to defuse it that barrier to engagement is further compounded by a nile legible open world map where the vomit of colorful icons not only overwhelms but misleads gig's sidequest and vehicle offers all share the same icon despite how different they are while police hustle scans assault the map with derivative grindy busy work where the witcher 3 maintained a healthy balance of missions from quest givers and emergent quests and exploration cyberpunk essentially forbids you from picking up almost any quest beforehand nor having a saying accepting any of the gigs you drive past in the world as fixers bombard you with unskippable phone calls and walls of expositional text and none of this is to even reiterate on cyberpunk's unrelenting cascade of glitches a constant deterrence against the complete sense of immersion a world with as much depth as night city so rightly deserves in night city everything has a cost and for cdpr the cost was night city itself to say a longer delay would have resolved these issues would demonstrate a misunderstanding of cyberpunk's problems these aren't just the result of poor direction nor rush development but the mixture of these things and trying to climb mount everest as quickly as possible cdpr lost their way and paid the price the effort consumed them just as night city consumes those who embrace it and for trusting cdpr's lofty claims about the game prior to release i paid a hefty sum of my own to be struck by such a mesmerizing first impression only for it to rapidly deteriorate over the game's most critical stretch bothered me something awful i continued to build my character explore complete missions and attempt engagement with the world in the second act but always with the expectation to be disappointed to be disconnected to be consumed by shame all i really needed was an escape [Music] [Music] it was completely dark empty not a star in the sky all i heard was the wind and a few engines in the distance and i sat here waiting for the world to fall away from my mind's rpm to drop to zero did it no i realized that night it wouldn't happen again that my mind would always be on the road even while i was sitting freezing on a cliff [Music] by itself night city can feel as hopeless as the dreamers who wonder there crushed by their ambitions but sometimes it's only from a distance that we can make peace with our suffering and that's exactly what i got with the badlands where the rejects of night city come to play songs around the campfire drink booze and gaze at the stars the bad lanes may suffer from a lot of the same glitch-filled emptiness that permeates night city but wrapped up by the sun-soaked surroundings the flares of dust and wind and the melancholic score i couldn't help but feel nostalgic for a past i never participated in a place where dreams and dreamers go to rest a populace of rusted cogs and a capitalist machine just as burned out as the landscape they find themselves in in the badlands i found my escape if not just for a moment and that was all i needed to be reminded of cyberpunk's hidden beauty the type of beauty that's tragically inaccessible for the majority of the characters in this world and for the badlands in particular inaccessible to pan am palmer i don't know i [ __ ] growing up in a world deprived of resources and stability with nothing but the clothes on her back and the clan she called family the strain of trying to survive in a ruthless world eventually puts pan am at odds with the aldocados as saul conflates ties of love with concerns of self-preservation in night city she becomes frustratingly stuck both in debt and isolation yet it's your partnership with her that introduces you to the bad lanes an environment that defines pan am's free spirit for pan am the all-consuming corporate forces of this world cost her the freedom of the badlands and the stability and love of the aldocados truthfully the more you look around cyberpunk the more you'll realize the toll this society has extracted from everyone crippled by over policing and disregarded by the justice of the law the fate of night city's communities are largely left in the hands of its gangs like sixth street in santo domingo or the voodoo boys in pacifica in opposing night city's corrupt corporate structure the perales family becomes victims of sinister espionage and eventually lose agency over their thoughts and actions burdened by the demand of running a whole company and the ineffective cost reductive infrastructure to support it delamane goes helplessly haywire left destitute by your nobu's reign in the arasaka family takamara is returned to the streets a paralyzing environment not unlike the one he grew up in and much like johnny silverhand the still living legends of night city like rogue or atmosphere have traded nearly every shred of their humanity for immortality among our allies evelyn parker faces a tragic demise for her failure to deliver the relic pass from the clouds a club that deprives men and women of control over their bodies to fingers a degenerate punk who uses his position to exploit his patients and then to a gang of scavs that abuse evelyn for bds the pursuit of upward mobility cost evelyn more than what she had left to lose don't you understand no she was not pronounced dead by trauma team if she'd have had coverage we wouldn't be talking this type of physical grief doesn't end with evelyn either cyber psychos are products of the effects of physical grief joy toys and sex workers are inhumanly exploited and the city's general obsession with body implants strip individuals of their natural beauty and for being even remotely complicit in her schemes judy loses evelyn one of her closest deepest friends in the world for participating in the violent largely uncontrolled night city death races claire loses her husband and only by the rules of the game enveloped by drug addiction river ward's nephew is coerced by a truly sadistic soul a man perpetuating the torturous void instilled in him by his abusive dairyman father and river himself after fraying the bonds with his sister's family loses his position with the ncpd for even daring to illustrate care within its compromised system even v and jackie suffer the consequences of attempting night city social ladder a loss that weighs heavily on misty vic the wells family and you when you go to war as a boy you have a great illusion of immortality other people get killed not you then when you are badly wounded the first time you lose that illusion the sum of devastation is numbing and crops the souls of all those who suffer through it left a grapple with her newfound emptiness and her boiling contempt for all those who betrayed evelyn judy consults our help to kill forrest claire implores us to throw the last win of our race just so she can kill the man who offed her husband river wishes nothing more than to violently punish his nephew's kidnapper and pan am is determined to retaliate against raph and shiv for the theft of her car heck even your nobu embittered by the absence of love within the arasaka family in the cold hostility and place of it feels left with no choice but to perpetuate that hostility towards saboro in the most lethal way possible in a world run by greed and the commodification of body mind and humanity all are made to feel dispensable and so to attach purpose to their suffering they act to correct the skills of justice in the universe but this is a reaction the grief and not the one that invokes catharsis rather where characters find some semblance of peace is where i found it in the badlands and fleeting moments of escapism going diving with judy through the deafening depths of her flooded childhood home stewing jambalaya and kicking it back on haywood's watertowers river and the quiet comfort of a broken down shack with pan am it's one of the reasons i fell embarrassingly in love with this tragically digital character pan am's arc is one of the few in the game where you can bring her closer to peace where you can help men ties with her clan and restore love something she's hesitant to accept for fear she'll lose it again and really with all these characters v's intervention restores something to these characters lives that though your partnership is often based on necessity or the removal of the biochip the defiance of real human connection adds new meaning to v's life through all of act 2 you have been deciding what to make of your grief and what night city has taken from you not just jackie but the unification of your body mind and soul all of which you now share with johnny at times you've pursued the connection we just described at other times you've perhaps continued to chase status or vengeance and in key intervals johnny has intervened to suggest what he thinks will bring you fulfillment you can side with him or against him and for me personally though i always felt johnny was right to rail so heavily against the corporate oppressors of night city i never vibed with his misanthropic anger i always viewed it as a reflection of his attachment from humanity which he willingly gave away but in cyberspace momentarily removed from v i saw his rawest truth get out of my way oh come on don't do this [ __ ] are you still rolling stop that you have to kill him johnny she's dead the well of hatred that defines johnny silverhand is grief it's trauma and regret it doesn't justify how he treats people as he was an [ __ ] long before the loss of alt but now that we can finally see what night city took from johnny we can finally humanize the legend for what it really is human not only was johnny's suicide mission on arisaka motivated by alt but his hatred for the establishment and cynicism towards reality both of which stem from years of years of service in corporate wars where he experienced firsthand how expendable he was to his masters was in mexico when i realized that no matter the conflict corpse always win ordinary people always lose just when i thought johnny was merely the mischievous devil on your shoulder calling out v's naivety and hypocrisy allah created from knight seal republic 2 the latter chunk of act 2 amazingly recontextualizes his character and helps you to understand how beneath his abrasive exterior johnny is a deeply broken man soul killer may have very well shattered his soul with no way to ever put the pieces back together yet slivers of his humanity still reflect off the shards the determination to be the master over his own fate just as he wants for you to be the master over your own which is why when the time comes you'll accept his deletion with dignity you're both in this fight together and it's against the arasaka executives who doomed you both in the first place once again you can choose to contest that but there's no denying what needs to be done the biochip must be removed and if we can't figure out how to do that and soon night city will destroy us [Music] by the game's third act the dust on my cyberpunk impressions had all but settled a staggering set of problems that go deeper than a sea of bugs or glitches but poor direction and design toward a mountain of ambition cdpr couldn't scale before deciding to release their game if you maintained a successful state of denial to these problems up to this point in your playthrough the slim offerings of act three will certainly evoke suspicion quest lines that implied a climactic finish such as the perales family mind control quest seem to trail off into a cliffhanger it's unclear whether this is because these quest lines will be continued in a future dlc or expansion if their ladder parts weren't finished in time for release or if it will be released in a future dlc because it wasn't finished in time each life path is given a unique quest to tie into its respective prologue but these quests are pathetically dispensable especially the corpus quest have a nice night fee i'll be at home that's it really and throughout much of the game and the world itself there is an inescapable trail of cut content such as a sixth character attribute locked interiors throughout the city and a massive inaccessible area of unfinished buildings and streets in pacifica there's also a long list of features shown or discussed in the games 2018 and 2019 press appearances that didn't make it into the game such as wall climbing man displays a flathead companion a more in-depth street cred system that was affected by your clothing interactive ad terminals a system that allowed players to change the appearance of their gear and a garage beneath your apartment i think it's important to consider how frequently developers are forced to cut content from their games usually for budgetary time or design restrictions but in the case of cyberpunk it certainly does an already glitchy inherently flawed game no favors to exclude those ideas in the late game i couldn't say i was surprised to see the game fizzle off into its third act in a way it was entirely fitting that as v approached the precipice of their decline every moment an encounter seemed more and more fleeting what did surprise me about act three was how its first story mission is basically its last in daniel dewey's 2017 donkey series on the witcher games writer martian blah expressed how cdpr tends to cut about 20 off the story for each of their games what he considers a safe margin in the context of a sprawling open world narrative it's not a terrible idea to trim down the story something more games would probably benefit from to be honest but in cyberpunk it seems this cut story is in the run-up to its finale which may have not been for the best i could shrug off the emptiness of the rest of act 3 but not this decision not until i gave johnny one final all-night bender in chipping in [ __ ] it's good to be back [Music] spit blood first thing every morning talk about something else please after setting passenger to johnny's absurd antics rogue and v team up to track down adam smasher legends hunting legends the trail leads nowhere fast but not without uncovering where johnny's body was buried after soul killer a toxic oil field not unlike the wasteland v was dumped in earlier in the game despite their reassurance that he died a timely symbol of rebellion not even that is true arasaka still stands people are more oppressed than ever and the souls that did care about johnny are few in number and all too bitter and so as i sat across from the digital projection of a once prideful rock star now on the verge of ego death i couldn't help but feel a tear in my heart but let's say it was my real crave what would you write here lies johnny silverhand the guy who saved my life v you don't know how much i want that to be true broken and humbled johnny comes to realize one truth we've long been aware of and one we have not there are no legends in night city everyone is equally expendable those who lay claim to status trade their humanity to achieve it and will wither from memory like dust in the badlands when their time has come the only thing that matters and what v has only gleamed up to this point is holding on to your humanity to refuse the corporate machine from grinding a wedge between you and the people you care about to form a real human connection with anyone this world can kill your dreams your body your freedom and your stability but it must never take your soul just as johnny came to this realization i arrived at an epiphany of my own where i once saw the time bomb in v's brain as an obstacle to his pursuit of greatness i now felt the pervasive dread of losing everyone i loved in night city even though it already took so much from v it's my memories i was scared of losing the most thus what remained of act 3 was dedicated to forging memories built to last leaving no stone unturned and staying in touch with all my friends regardless of how distant they'd become and now that johnny and i were finally on the same page i gave him the small comfort of making it up to the people he loved which not gonna lie was pretty awesome [Music] unfortunately no glory lasts forever that finally leads us to the endings of cyberpunk 2077. great you checking out again despite my disappointment in cyberpunk's ultimate handling of choice and consequence i think that here at the end where choice arguably matters the most cdpr absolutely nailed it especially considering how many aaa games have bundled multiple endings in years past v has no time left to spare there's only enough medication left for one last ride either for you or johnny your fate is in your own hands and that's more than what most of night city can say for itself including jackie so what what did jackie decide of here oh you know i'm gonna be a legend in this city [Music] and i'm gonna leave you alone now if you followed only the main story up to this point only two choices will be presented to you help hanako usurp your nobu from arasaka in exchange for the removal of your chip or commit suicide if we never took the time to form a connection with the people of this world to guide v towards the thesis of humanity there's no reason any other choice should be available to you either you will yourself as a tool for the corporate architects of night city or you accept the inevitable boot that sought to crush you we try anything else people will die people die it's the way of things am i worth their sacrifice or you if you let johnny make it up to rogue carrie and himself johnny will offer to take the wheel and drive headfirst into arasaka with rogue where johnny once assaulted arasaka with nothing but vengeful anger he'll now have the purpose and fulfillment of saving your life a selfless sacrifice if you wait a few minutes and have maintained a positive relationship with johnny up to this rooftop accruing at least 70 affection or something johnny will actually volunteer to take on arsaka by himself you've been nicer to him than most and have given him a second chance he's deeply grateful for and more than anyone else johnny understands the danger of dragging innocent souls into arasaka people who deserve better than dying to corporate scum if you took the time to help pan am reconnect their nomad family and restore peace to her troubled life shini aldocados will be at your beck and call you gave pan am an invaluable gift it only makes sense she'd want the same for you all together four different ways into arasaka four different epilogues and six possible endings with loads of small variation between them the choices you make will define v's legacy so let's evaluate each one the devil though this option poses the best odds of survival trusting arasaka would go against everything this world has taught you you've always been expendable to them but because of the property in your head you'll suddenly be special as a corpo there's something disturbingly comforting about gaining the council's audience like it's your twisted destiny as a street kid or nomad this feels more like turning to the dark side hanako's goal is not simply to remove her brother who aims to start a corporate war that will raise his father's empire to cinders but to research saboro and his throne hanukko may claim arasaka upholds family above all else but as we know from your nobu this is only the deeply woven cognitive dissonance against a manipulative relationship based on fear you stop your nobu from starting the war give sabro the key to immortalities of biochip engram and separate from johnny on extremely sour turns you'll regret it lose a friend and you always regret it you then awaken arasaka's space center and embark on the road to recovery between impassive checkups from your doctor the off-putting sterility of your room fever dreams and your isolation in space reality starts to set in this is purgatory you've prolonged the oppression of mankind your closest contacts what little you may have are either unreachable or distraught your life was never saved in fact your life was meaningless you made a deal with the devil and now you pay the price in the end you can emerge from purgatory with one of two choices sign a deal with the devil and be stored in metaphorical hell or return to earth and with what little time you have prove your soul is not gone for good [Music] [Applause] the sun or temperance though johnny used a second chance to let his living friends know what they meant to him it's only in this ending that he achieves full reconciliation with rogue she's lived the empty soulless life of a night city legend for so long but in one final blaze of glory she can reconnect with johnny and dismantle the corporate partnership that finds her johnny and rogue ending this nightmare where it began seems fitting especially if chipping in is blaring in the background adam smasher may kill rogue but you can avenge avenger storming into arasaka solo is much harder but arguably worth the risk nyx nor rogue will have to die regardless you'll unleash alt on mikoshi and inject v with soul killer once in cyberspace you can honor your promise to v johnny will have been the master over his own fate and parts ways with you for good because you entrusted your life in the hands of night city legends you follow in their footsteps you'll have the connections you've formed but not at your leisure you'll live the fantasy you've dreamed of but not for very long and mr blue eyes may think there's a way to prolong your life but the pursuit of greatness is a one-way trip high above the mere mortals of earth there's only one thing that matters finding a way back down to the people you love or burn up like a rock hurtling towards the sun however this is only if johnny honors his promise what if all along this was not v story but johnny's where redemption was only the beginning what if in a new body johnny can become a new person and impart a new legacy in a way no born-again soul could ever accomplish not even v the betrayal is heartbreaking but arguably better than what happens to be in the sun ending there's no time limit on johnny's life nor a limit to the number of chances he has to screw up but johnny won't waste a single one not without the memory of the soul whose fate seemed too grim to bear no longer to perpetuate the rage that consumed him for so long johnny finds an escape and forges a future full of hope [Music] the star this is my personal favorite ending and not just because it's the happiest in fact it might just be the most thematically consistent ending with what we've experienced in the tenets of pond smith's pen and paper game when our journey began in night city either as an outsider an overworked cog and a machine or a soldier a fortune we saw but one means to turn our life around the american dream the fantasy of the major leagues despite our damnedest efforts the pursuit of our dreams destroyed us returning a squarely to the bottom with the rest of an oppressed society jackie's absence has been numbing though we've never been alone to the people who've suffered similar loss not even with johnny when the weight of trudging through this hopeless reality felt the heaviest we found the badlands and pan am for me and many of the nomads who roam there the badlands are an escape and in taking the time to help her both reconnect with the avocados and reclaim her stability and freedom we help pan am escape there all the same since then we've helped everyone find an escape in some small way resulting in lasting soulful fulfillment in the words of mike pondsmith cyberpunk is not about saving the world it's about saving yourself and to me there's no ending that more sensibly honors that thesis than the one in which you entrust your nomad family to help free you from night city this was particularly fitting with my corporal life path as it felt like i was chasing the liberation i've always deserved it may not fulfill the circular storytelling of johnny breaking to arasaka as he did 50 years earlier but there is power to how these common people use the tech of their oppressors to strike a blow against them [Music] within cyberspace there's something profoundly fitting about reminiscing with johnny at the diner table where you two first hatched a plane of survival all that time ago now you both harbor a far greater respect for each other than ever before however as is also the case in pondsmith tenets there are no completely happy endings in cyberpunk in every ending except johnny's you have what six months to live and here in the star ending where the promised line of the horizon is the greatest this revelation is perhaps the most crushing to bear you can give it up to johnny and enter the black wall in your own volition unlike the previous setup where you let johnny take v's body but the reason i chose pan am and the aldocados was for my escape and it wouldn't be fair if all their sacrifice was for johnny's there's an argument to be made that going beyond the black walls and escape as well but one that may extinguish our humanity forever six months is not a long time but it's better than nothing especially if we spend it with the people we love as we return to a world engineered to break our soul johnny bids us one final remark goodbye never stop fighting [Music] [Music] farewell to the city of dreams if you romance someone they'll come with you as pan am and the nomads take you out of the badlands which is pretty nice if you romance pan am like i did congrats we got the best ending possible after you break through the sandstorm and cross the threshold of the badlands you're blessed by a quiet image of ethereal unfitting beauty v and pan am are surrounded by the stars most indiscernible from one another but all equally bright and purposeful in their existence just like v by johnny's lyrics a thing of beauty will never fade away if no solution is ever found and you wither into dust and chrome in six months time your beauty will live on in the memories of the people who are touched by your goodness especially the player who parts ways with fee in the third person for the first time in the game v will never fade away and that's cyberpunk 2077 an utterly dysfunctional work of tech and code redeemed by the humanity found within it's a confusing mess and one that's not easy to reflect on especially given the unbridled promise leading up to the game's release but i'd be lying if i said i didn't have fun so while the saga v has come to an intermediate end the story behind the game has not reached an honest conclusion not until we assess the price of destruction from within cd projekt red what happened to cyberpunk 2077 [Music] the day that i discovered the witcher 2 a full year after watching the teaser trailer for cyberpunk was a day that changed my life not only did it introduce me to my favorite gaming franchise my favorite book series one of my favorite characters and the fantasy genre as a whole but it would eventually lead me closer to the person i am today it wasn't until playing the witcher 2 that i believe video games could be art capable of stirring the human soul in deep unseen ways that was the power of the witcher 2. yet little had i known what it cost cd products red to build the game the brink of bankruptcy mass studio layoffs and intense crunch only for the game to launch in a mostly broken state that would take months of patchwork to fix after playing the witcher 2 and seeing trailers for wild hunt i went back and played the first witcher game never has a game been more rough around the edges but i couldn't say i was disappointed nor that i hadn't experienced one of the most enriching video game narratives ever brought to the rpg genre again similar to the witcher 2 i had no idea what it took to put that game together 5 years of painstaking efforts and long unchecked periods of crunch resulting in one of the most broken rpg releases of the 2000s when the witcher 3 was released it was everything i was hoping it would be and more a flawed masterpiece that has informed just a small part of who i am today and solidified cd projekt red as my favorite game developer of all time needless to say the game also had its fair amount of behind the scenes problems intense months long crunch and an unstable work environment which necessitated moving all 50 developers working on cyberpunk's early pre-production over to the witcher 3 in the run-up to its release for years this has been the cd project's way set sky-high ambitions and burn up like a shooting star trying to achieve them it didn't seem like the worst strategy and helped them to produce one of the most memorable gaming trilogies of all time after all but the toll of the witcher trilogy's chaotic development within the studio left a lot to be desired of course the type of high crunch work environments cdpr facilitated are not uncommon in the tech industry and definitely not in the gaming industry but it wasn't a trend cdpr was keen on continuing and right now we realized that you know to to look after people to look after our team members we really need people to look after people if we have happy team members they can do better job there is less stress and and it goes smoother over the years cdpr's managers implemented a number of policies to improve the atmosphere of the studio a dedicated hr department bonus salaries and a non-obligatory crunch policy their intentions were certainly righteous but had little to no effect on the outcome on the contrary cyberpunk's crunch periods were more frequent and more extensive than maybe any of the witcher games months of crunch leading up to the 2018 demo months of crunch leading up to the 2019 deep dive and a whole year of indefinite crunch for many leading up to the game's constantly delayed release dates including at least four to five months of mandatory six day work weeks across the studio a baffling contradiction of cbpr's non-obligatory crunch promise though i have very limited personal experience with crunch to draw from it's not difficult to imagine how thoroughly exhausted cdpr's devs must have been utterly sapped of both the creative energy that was integral to the world they were building and the problem-solving mentality crucial to fixing bugs the whole ordeal begs the question how did this happen how could cd projekt's executives so fundamentally mismanage their devs ambition alone doesn't do the explanation justice and the poor enforcement of company policy is only a symptom of the greater problem the real ailment at the heart of cd projekt is the same ailment that plagues the cyberpunk world all cyberpunk worlds and that's greed indiscriminate apathetic greed for years city projects struggled to attain the greatness they always believed they were capable of they had many failures along the way but they were arguably worth it for the hard-earned spoils of the witcher 3 and spoils might be putting it lightly cdpr were celebrities widely regarded as one of the greatest game developers of the modern day consequently cd projekt's executives were fueled by pride and from that pride ego and from that ego avarice instead of learning from their toxic development cycles of the past city projects executives pushed for more more innovation than what their game engine in tech could handle more employees than their directors knew where to allocate and more investors than they ever had before despite the hit that cd projekt stocks took every time a delay was announced they only worked harder to bounce back while the time and effort of cdpr's devs were being mercilessly exploited behind the scenes amidst the global pandemic the company blew full speed ahead into its month-long marketing campaign over 2020 eventually propelling them to become the most valued european game company on the stock market marsha nowinski became a billionaire in 2020 after all and he couldn't have done it without us thus the poor chain of communication ramped across the studio the ever fluctuating vision behind the game and the recurrent unrealistic deadlines set to cdpr's devs were all accessories to cd projekt's greed the greatest crimes issue from a desire for excess and not from necessity the leaders of cd projekt believed they were unstoppable yet in only a matter of time everything would stand in their way over the year-long crunch leading up to the game's eventual release devs were forced to cancel features scale down or remove chunks of night city and piece together fundamental mechanics such as the police wanted system in last minute fashion meanwhile external qa testing was uncovering major bugs and glitches up to as late as november especially on cyberpunk's practically unplayable console ports with virtually no time to implement major fixes sata project's managers lied through their teeth insisting that the game was much farther along in its development cycle than where it really was at the eve of its review period cdpr sent out pc review copies to major outlets refused to send out any console review copies and maintained a strict embargo that prevented reviewers from using any footage from their playthrough in the review all with the intent of shirking off an imminent disaster many reviewers criticized cdpr for this move as well as an unfettered plethora of bugs steeped throughout the pc version and in-game sequences that heavily evoked epileptic seizures those reviewers received death threats on social media fueled by months of marketing and cdpr's vague promises the hype bubble grew unimaginably large and when the game released dare i say the turns have never tabled so hard in just one day cyberpunk 2077 both recouped all of its development costs on pre-orders alone and appalled its loyal fan base especially those who bought the game on last gen platforms only a week after its release sony completely yanked cyberpunk from its digital store and rosen law firm of new york filed a class action lawsuit accusing cdpr of failing to deliver on the promises of their game by january cd projekt's stocks plummeted by more than half their original value and another company filed a class action lawsuit and that 2016 grant cdpr received from the polish government to develop dynamic ai and city technology they've since given cdpr until the end of february to fix the bugs or else they'll demand 10 of the company's 2020 profits and to top it off cdpr was issued a 75 000 fine by sao paulo brazil for a massive illegal mural to promote their game by all accounts the release of cyberpunk 2077 has been one of the worst game launches of all time however there's no denying that the cyberpunk 2077 that cd projekt red actually released isn't the game that it spent so long but it should have never [ __ ] happened in the first place and it makes me very disappointed from a company like cd projekt cd projekt red have lost a huge amount of their reputation they took advantage of gamers trust sold over 8 million pre-order copies and then shoved it out there in a state where most people couldn't enjoy it because version of cyberpunk 2077 did not meet the quality standard we wanted it to meet i and the entire leadership team are deeply sorry for this and this video is me publicly owning up to that though i've well divulged my thoughts and disappointment with cyberpunk up to this point in the video i genuinely wasn't sure what to think about the game for weeks of playing it i saw the gaping holes in the experience so many players had pointed out yet i could never admit i wasn't enraptured on some level by the game i knew what cdpr had promised and what was lacking in the final product yet i never completely wavered in my gratitude for what did make it into the game the internal back and forth i struggled with only intensified the further i got into cyberpunk and especially in the ensuing weeks after the game's release where many eager fans once rushed to cdpr's defense at the mere sign of doubt or uncertainty they were now either vindictively bashing the studio for their failures or at the throats of console players for whom they claimed should have expected the game to run poorly list appeared across the internet compiling features and mechanics that were cut from the game some of it was obviously true but a lot of it was not more so it was the wild hopes and expectations of desperately mislead players meanwhile against the hostile atmosphere of its studio cdpr's executives promised to pay out the bonuses their employees would have received if cyberpunk received a higher metacritic score regardless of how low the score would end up being and in the face of fines lawsuits in the uphill battle of post-launch development an anonymous hacker threatened to leak the source code for cdpr's games and personal internal documents from the studio on the internet leading many on social media to either accuse cdpr of falsifying the hack or deserving the subsequent damage that the leak would cause them time and time again confronted by the conflict surrounding all sides of the game i could only ever return to two adjacent thoughts the life-changing profundity that washed over me the first time i beat the witcher 2 and 13 year old me seeing the cyberpunk teaser trailer a whole lifetime ago my mind innocently full of unbridled excitement for what would one day come now standing on the other side of that faded moment the only feeling i could possibly muster was not anger and not resent but shame shame for what had become the tragedy of cyberpunk 2077 where i once believed cdpr was immune to the exploitative labor practices that consumed companies like ea ubisoft or konami sadie project was now enveloped by the irony of their own creation though nowhere near as vile as arasaka cepr's executives embrace the same soul's pursuit as night city's corpos effortlessly at work to squeeze every last drop of blood sweat and tears from their developers while leading their consumers maddeningly astray behind a pro-consumer guise yet the situation that unfolded through the disastrous launch of cyberpunk has arguably grown much bigger than both cd projekt and the gamers bearing pitch and fork against them never before has a game publisher been brought back down to earth more swiftly and more vehemently than cd projekt's in watching martian owinski's apology video a small part of me couldn't help but feel that the once humble game developer turned billionaire co-ceo had been humbled once more it's not unlike the trial v goes through from pursuing status through the relic to losing it all and then finally having the relic be the defining poison that eventually kills them cyberpunk was cd project's relic now it's their poison that's not to say the failure of cyberpunk will doom cdpr some wounds can be healed but by the treacherous social ladder prevalent in a capitalist society the backlash inflicted by an angry elite and angrier consumers may sear them forever alternatively because of how poorly they manage their products and the people making it cd products executives may very well deserve their downfall especially if the financial security they've surely amassed allows them to assume zero accountability for the collateral of their greedy decisions if this is the case cd projekt is not v but saboro arasaka who has garnered enough influence to survive death as an engram and return to their tyrannical throne in a new shape and form i don't mean to vilify marsha nowinski or adam kaczynski but they're definitely not the victims rather the greatest victims in cyberpunk's catastrophe are the developers though built by a crew double the size of the witcher 3's dev team you never need to look far in cyberpunk for the same stroke of genius and passion that was laced throughout the witcher 3 by its brilliant artists and designers martian priest abivovich's deadly subtle scoring pavel sasco's ever surprising quest direction tomas marchuka's gripping storytelling the fantastic vocal performances of tourami lay and gavin dreyer's v emily wuzeller as pan am carla tasara as judy keanu reeves and arguably a career best performance the unbreakable vision of mike pondsmith and especially the unsung creativity of the droves of gameplay designers sound designers visual artists animators and mocap coordinators serve as collective proof of one of the greatest dev teams ever assembled for a video game and yet all of their contributions were undermined and undervalued by the toxic storm siphoned above them for so many the promise of taking part in one of the most ambitious open-world rpgs ever conceived the cultivation of a masterpiece and the pursuit of a dream was all raised to the ground by cd projekt's sins now amidst the turbulent doomed spiral of cdpr these developers who already sacrificed so much of their time energy and passion for cyberpunk are at risk of losing the most from the disaster they will be the ones to work their asses off over the next few months to fix the game they have the most personal data at risk in the cd project hack and if the time comes they'll be the first to be laid off v is not cd pro yet but the devs of cdp are but for that same reason the actions of their bosses never successfully diminished the life breathed into the art they created which is why cyberpunk became a reflection of everything they'd been through and an invaluable story of survival these harrowing journey is that of an expendable cog lost in a machine desperately fighting to prove that they're more than what they suffer through in this way v is indistinguishable from the people of the city they're trapped with because of what the city takes from people everyone from its boldest legends to its weakest despots are determined to outlive their peril immortal not just literally but also in the hearts and memories of as many people as possible this is the only way anyone can convince themselves they'll matter seeing the major leagues check yet in every other way v is entirely and beautifully unique misty's tarot cards that appear throughout the world and at key junctions in the story the deliberate emphasis on greek mythology from t-bug's quotes during the heist to the copy of the iliad found in the final room of most endings and the baccaneco a symbol of rebirth that seems to follow you everywhere combined these details elevate v's ordinary existence with prophetic mysticism a driving sense of importance not because of the things v will do to stand out in this society but what they'll do in spite of it life is so beautifully powerful so much more powerful than death and because of the connections they form along the way v is filled with the strength and courage to survive knowing that they don't have to shackle the weight of their burden alone our lives are not special because of wealth power or immortality but what we do with what little time we have whether it's seeking out moments of escapism spending time with the people we hold dear or fulfilling the wants of our ever cavernous souls it is the very defiance to live that makes this life meaningful so that when our time comes to pass into the afterlife we will have the strength and composure to do so in peace where our time will long not be forgotten living on in the memories with whom we stayed true [Music] that is an exceptionally powerful existentially calming thing for a game to convey especially amidst a time when the overwhelming loss of life has forced us all to confront our notion immortality at one point or another for the devs of cdpr then cyberpunk is a testament to the perseverance of both their own survival and their indelible artistry that no matter what corporate machinations are at work in the world they can never destroy pure substantive art art is our escape and by living vicariously through characters and stories we can find freedom unfound in reality most of all art and all the forms it takes has transformative power to not only give new meaning to our lives but to instill empathetic deep-rooted change in hearts of stone so that we may finally forge a future better than our past in the end the tragedy of cyberpunk 2077 is the corruption of a symbol the betrayal of a loyal following and the unbelievable toll a team of artists endured for the art they created fittingly chronicled by the saga of v an immaculate story about the necessity of connection and holding on to humanity if not for the human suffering it costs to tell it there's truly no romanticizing a disaster of this magnitude nor appropriate circumstances to hope a better future lies ahead of cdpr not until deep systemic change takes root in the company at least but there is room for artistic gratitude personal reflection and the elusive magic of true escapism by embracing these things cyberpunk became a deeply cathartic capsule where i feel trapped depressed and anxious about the future cyberpunk assures me that someday i will find a way over the horizon and outlive the chains that bind me to the past whenever the rest of its audience will get the chance to play the game as it was intended maybe they'll feel the same way too until then i will survive never to forget cdprox failure cdpr sacrifice in cyberpunk 2077's final resounding proverb never stop fighting [Music] hey v you made it to the end of the video i always knew you did it uh sorry everyone i thought this would be funny to pop up on the side of the credits as a as a cyberpunk character just like they do in the video game um but because of that i don't have a typed up script as i usually do for the end of the video um at least for the last few videos so i just wrote what i have to say on some post-it notes so before you click off the video uh stay tuned i have some fun announcements here including information about the next video um also i hope you enjoyed this video as much as i enjoyed making it um this was a creatively exhaustive process but also it was very deeply fulfilling i really pushed myself as hard as i could to make this video especially in the end i've been editing it so much this past like these past few weeks um so yeah i hope you all enjoyed it as much as i have and depending on what content comes out for cyberpunk 2077 in the future whether it's like dlc expansions um i would be down to talk about this game again but obviously time has to pass for that to happen and the game probably has to be in a better state so a couple announcements i stream video games on twitch among other things um in fact i streamed my entire playthrough for cyberpunk 2077 that i used the footage from for this video on twitch um so if you guys want to follow me on twitch that's twitch.tv forward slash sator not our tour saitor i believe the link is like below the webcam here and in the description below of course just directly click on it hit me with a follow um and as well with that on wednesday this wednesday march 3rd i believe um at 8 00 p.m eastern standard time i'll be streaming a art or community q a um so this is just a an opportunity for everyone and anyone to come on come on down to the stream hang out ask me questions about stuff i've done in my videos especially the cyborg video ask me questions about future videos ask my opinions on video games movies star wars the last of us you know whatever you want to talk about and now you don't have to ask me questions it can just be like a free-flowing discussion with everyone in the chat and you know me on the stream um but yeah that'll be on wednesday so i hope to see you all there um it's gonna be a lot of fun i'll post another announcement about it in our community tab uh before we do that you guys should follow me on twitter i tweet updates about videos as well as my thoughts on pop culture media stuff like that a little bit of politics um you can follow me on instagram uh that's also at parks harmon um did i mention my twitter handle was at parks harmon i don't know i did it's below the webcam um i don't usually post on instagram but a bunch of you have followed me recently and actually dm to me a bunch of you dm'd about videos which is amazing i'm so grateful um but uh yeah i'll try to start posting now now that a bunch of people are following me so follow me on instagram and for those who use discord um it would mean the world to me if you join our community server the artorium uh which is basically just a a great big old place for a bunch of like-minded respectful fans of pop culture star wars video games to hang out and just talk about stuff and maybe share stuff and also collaborate on stuff there's a lot of really creative people on the discord and um i'm just i'm i'm in love with everyone i've met in a platonic way uh but um yeah it's an awesome community we just crossed over 100 members so you know please consider joining uh we're always looking for new people and we always want to expand the reach of the server and and the net positivity that we can bring out of it that would really mean a lot to me and then before i talk about the next video i just want to give you all a sincere thank you for um just the support from the last two three months it's actually been insane um when i upload my last video the miles morales video which was back in december we had less than a thousand subscribers on the channel and for those who subscribed like in the last few weeks um this fact will be as mind-blowing to you as it is for me uh literally within the last two three months we've gained like 10 000 subscribers it's insane um and i could not be more grateful you know for as someone who likes to create things and hopes that the things i create can connect with at least someone you know who needs it to have an audience like this even at this size i i can't express my gratitude enough um so deep you know deep profound thank you to all of you for your support i hope i don't disappoint you in the future and i hope um you're excited for all the future content we're gonna do which including the next video i'm not gonna tell you what it is yet because i've actually so far been able to keep it a secret um but i will say it's a video that i've been requested to make several times that's all i'm gonna say thank you everyone you're all beautiful have a wonderful rest of your week march beginning of march now what the heck is that covered anniversary is coming up yeah all right everyone peace out a good one [Music] too

Channel: ArTorr

Views: 313,721

Keywords: Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk 2077 Review, Cyberpunk 2077 Character Creator, Cyberpunk 2077 Trailer, Cyberpunk 2077 PS4, Cyberpunk 2077 Glitch, Cyberpunk 2077 Ending, Cyberpunk Music, Cyberpunk critique, CD Projekt Red Apology, CD Projekt Red Hack, CD Projekt Red lawsuit, CDPR hacked, The Witcher 4, Cyberpunk DLC, Cyberpunk patch, The Witcher PS5, Cyberpunk PS5, Video Essay, Gaming Video Essay, Cyberpunk Lore, BAFTA Nomination, BAFTA 2021, Video game documentary, ArTorr

Id: p2zNCyZTS_M

Length: 89min 3sec (5343 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 01 2021