It’s pretty incredible to see how rockin’ this main quest line is. For how tired and generic Zero Dawn felt, this truly exceeded my expectations of what would happen with the sequel. Each main quest felt like an episode of a television show, episodic in nature and getting to the core of an idea over the course of that hour of quest.

No main quest was truly alike, we had multiple antagonists, warring factions, competing ideas and a whole host of fresh concepts to recontectualize the first game’s lore. Characters felt more varied and human. Returning characters had motivations and ties to the narrative that didn’t just feel wedged in.

Part of me wondered if the death of Lance Reddick shook up the narrative of this game and led to why it stood out so much. As much as I don’t like the idea of selling RPG’s as a continued narrative, I can’t help but feel like this game has so much more function to it than its predecessor.

The pounding music, the beautiful scenery, varied side quests and additional trinkets — there’s so much to explore if this game is your jam and you want more. As someone who didn’t like the bow mechanics and gameplay of the franchise everything surrounding that was just so much juicer.

I didn’t have to do the cauldrons! I didn’t have to grind for hours! The skill tree didn’t really have any perks I wanted, so I got to ignore it as well. I felt free to just get to what I wanted in the game and it would supply it for me. While side-quests weren’t always my jam, I found myself stopping off for them sometimes just to see how it would affect a character or give additional context that would color my view of them.

Learning about new characters and revisiting legacy characters felt heart warming, letting me dig into conversation with them as much as I wanted. If I wanted to know every single thought a main character had about the current narrative moment, I could swing by the Core and ask them! I could walk into a tavern and sit down and just listen to the individual bar themes!

I could participate in the clunky melee combat with the melee pits that broke for me. Or like get stuck on the geometry of mountains. Sometimes I had to fight against the generated climbing structures as Aloy would clip through the ground or animations would slip through structures.

Multiple times I stumbled into out of bounds areas and slipped through the ground but I still have so many good things to say. Absolutely a step in the right direction for RPGs, I really just want to see more ideas at this point and maybe the DLC will provide that.

Cyberpunk unfortunately does not hit the whammy bar enough.

Right now, we’re in a moment of abundance when it comes to open-world RPGs and it feels like our levels of general tolerance for the genre has crashed into the ground.

Outside of viewing this game from the extensive promises over the past decade before release, this is a game that just doesn’t live up to its potential, let alone to the TTRPG’s source material, as weird as it may be.

This is a fairly barren world. The gigs are fairly monotonous and do not feel as inspired as a science fiction world like 2077 should be able to be. The norm for RPG has become an acceptance of fetch quests and lackluster dialogue that really doesn’t push the character relationships forward.

Companions feel one-note and aside from a few standout moments, don’t have the depth for tackling queer relationships or even having conversations with the player.

On top of that, I never felt like I was truly in a ‘role’ playing game. Playing V rarely led to unique situations or even creative ways to build out the character in my mind. At one point or another, I hit a wall — the skill tree wasn’t equipped for my aspirational gameplay: the silent assassin who shuts down and eliminates her targets with hacking in a blink of the eye. Nor did lifepaths and skill proficiency truly affect dialogue or quest lines. With combat, CONTAGION was my best friend and even with every sort of hacking skill in 1.0 & again in 2.0, I couldn’t fully capture that character I had in mind.

This isn’t to say CDPR’s previous forays are bad! They are a great place to observe success from. In my opinion, Witcher 3 didn’t really have good gameplay — it was kind of clunky, frustrating and easy to die on harder difficulties. But what it lacked there, it made up with in emotionally complex characters, impeccably smart and diverse side quests and a whole sea of interesting places to dive into. I was Geralt. I was Ciri.

Here? It feels like V is a side piece in her own game. And yet, even with that being the case, no character truly gets a wondrous moment to take the stage. Quests come across as weak and thrown together while our characters feel disillusioned to the world they’re in.

Give me a story where V has to do a job for the Trauma Team, force me to choose to resuscitate someone I have direct orders not to save and force my hand a little more. Science fiction is so nested in anger and fear about this dark future portrayed here and yet very few of the moments in the game seem to capture that.

The whole religious prisoner side story is a great example of using the space properly. There’s a full concept and execution that feels at home in 2077.

And yet even the main story kind of felt like it was still grinding its gears. Not every moment needs to be action packed, but give me some compelling dialogue. Give me tension in relationships, illusion of player choice, something to make it feel like the story is actually playing out. Stakes should be able to be present even in dialogue! A rising and falling action does not have to be through shooting and macho macho stuff, but also through arguments, tiffs and the back in forth of melancholic life.

Night City is a space for so many unique stories and yet, all we get are some big explosions and some boobs here and there? Like hello?

Heck it’s a true crime that the Silverhand endings (no spoilers) don’t use the Samurai music during the boss fight. The one thing we’ve come to associate him with, and it doesn’t even follow him into the climax of the story. The game we get here feels sullen, dead on arrival and rushed out the door. Even after multiple years of updates, the base game feels so underwhelming.

I don’t want to leave the game lying on the ripperdoc’s table like this. I don’t like the idea of feeling cheated out of a good sci-fi game and yet, I feel like I am. I went into this hoping the game would make a statement only to find Cyberpunk didn’t know what it wanted to be.

If I had the time, I’d really want to mod in my own gigs or something, rewrite some of the dialogue and try to expand on my issues with the game currently.

As always, you don’t have to agree with me!! Stories are highly personal experiences and I’m always curious to know what others thought. Plus, it’s always possible my opinion could change on a replay in a couple years. Here hoping?

I'm still shocked after all these years this is the first time I played the DLC. It was a wonderful addition to the main game that felt more like cut content than anything else.

Seeing Ellie & Riley in this light is literally everything I need right now; I wish there was more. 😭😭😭

I guess I should replay Last of Us Part II now? If only I had the time LOL