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?
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?
2 Comments
I completed all the side jobs up until the like big Act 2 finale. That includes all character specific missions and the like. Post-game it looks like there’s ten or so side jobs that have popped up, all of which unlabeled haha. Something like The Hunt was so scary and intense to me until it lost all of its momentum with a fade to black and the trauma team showed up. Even to have no one show up and have Rivers and V sitting in the warehouse praying for the time to tick down until help arrived would’ve been so much more intense and wouldn’t have felt as such a cop out to me. Something like the Samurai storyline felt too short with me wanting to learn more about the band members or at least to have played more than one song on stage. The Aldecaldo arc felt more down to Earth, but less substantive when I got to the end of that line. It’s possible my opinion on the Aldecaldo’s may change if I play that ending, but it didn’t leave a lasting impression personally. Are there any must play missions that were make or break for you?
goober
4 months ago