StewpendousMan
2020
(Played on a laptop with an RTX 2060.)
In the spirit of a game that contains a whole bunch of systems and stuff that varies wildly in quality, here are my unorganized, wildly-varying-in-quality thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077.
• I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Patch 1.4, took a break, and finished it a few months after 1.5 went live. Sure, this balanced out the crit-goblin build, but only further enabled the quickhacking-goblin build, as torching some poor bastard using your mind no longer automatically reveals your position to enemies. The most salient change I noticed was that the radio in vehicles had the audio drastically rebalanced so that I could actually hear musical thumps and wubs while driving my sick-ass Akiracycle and doing sick-ass handbrake turns, which I think is the experience the entire driving physics engine was initially balanced around.
• I encountered a moderate amount of glitches of varying sizes. I still can’t tell if the cargo van I saw implanted nose-down in one of Night City’s riverside plazas was a bug or some environmental storytelling thing.
• The main theme of the game seems to be choice. Ever notice how V can choose whether or not to drink/do drugs when the opportunity presents itself, but Johnny can’t? That is a very good and very tiny thing. The quality of so many of Cyberpunk 2077’s individual elements seems to be independent of their size and significance in the game as a whole, which is absolutely wild.
• The RPG systems are huge in scope and extremely uneven in execution. It’s pretty good that some skill trees are entirely self-contained builds (Be a ninja who gets completely unique combat options! Use Cold Blood and make yourself temporarily stronger by chaining kills!), but so many other options are flaccid and have negligible impact on the experience, of the “5% boost to assault rifle accuracy” flavor. I get that some choices matter more than others, but… man.
• This probably connects to why the gunplay feels like oatmeal. Possible fix for the sequel: each variety of gun has a distinct and unique mechanic. Assault rifles can fire around corners somehow, shotguns can blast open doors, sniper rifles stay sniper rifles? I don’t know, CDPR, y’all got Keanu Reeves to star in a video game, figure something out.
• You know what this game feels like? Mass Effect.
• From beginning to end, I was impressed by the unrelenting dedication to first-person stuff. You notice very quickly that not only does every big story event happen in first person, but tiny things do too – and with mostly lovingly-crafted animations. Huffing a health inhaler during combat, munching on takoyaki during a conversation, coughing up blood in the shower, taking a pill to get Keanu Reeves to quiet down for a bit. And you always, always, are prompted to press a button to take a seat before a sit-down sort of conversation. There are things that are abstracted, but there is a conscious effort to give so many actions at least a little bit of weight via animation. In a game where so many concrete things feel floaty and loose, it is a more-than-token effort towards something grounded.
• My personal favorite moment in the game happened when I was on a boat ride with a sort-of friend whom I would later sort-of have sex with. This boat ride happens late in the game, long after it is established that Keanu Reeves’ digital ghost of a character will regularly pop out of the ether in cinematic ways to comment on the action in a way that only your character can see. My sort-of friend was playing his guitar and I was idly looking off into the sunset off the port side when I realized that Keanu’s character had materialized right in the center of my vision, reclining on the rail of the boat. I stared into the face of God, blinked, and realized: this game had subconsciously trained me to know exactly when and where the freak who lived in my head would show up.
• The writing and characters are all over the place. There’s fascinating structure here, especially among the four romantic leads – like clockwork, you get the chance to see their strengths and weaknesses as you navigate their questlines. And the endings do form a moving portrait of the choices we make in the face of impossible situations. And it also feels like a lot is missing: The first and second acts are puzzle boxes of interacting b-plots and sidequests, while the third unceremoniously dumps you at the doorstep of the finale as soon as it starts. As the star of the show, Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand is menacing, tragic, and compelling, but not all of the other characters (even ones who get as much screentime) are as consistently well-written.
• By my count, the game contains nearly 40 critical-path story quests, over 90 non-critical side quests, and over 80 tertiary “gigs” that mostly offer cash and loot for completion. Of these, I estimate that two-thirds of the story quests, over half of the side quests, and roughly two-thirds of the gigs contain combat. Of these combat-containing gigs, I estimate that 80% of them take place in fully-realized, Deus Ex-style maps. That’s somewhere around one hundred fully-designed combat encounters of varying scales, that must account for a variety of approaches that even System Shock 2, in its wildest dreams, could not even begin to imagine. And none of them noticeably suck.
• The music kinda bangs. And even on my 2060-ass laptop at suboptimal settings for that sweet 60 FPS, the graphics are absolutely nutso.
• The combat isn’t Halo. The RPG elements aren’t Dragon Quest. The driving ain’t Gran Turismo, and even the writing isn’t Metal Gear Solid. So: how do you feel about abundance in video games? What do you want the games you buy to be? This may be a neon-soaked Vegas buffet of a game that doesn't do much exceptionally well, but it was cheap at $20, and there are nuggets of goodness mixed in with the empty calories. As humanity barrels along an ending path that’s gonna make Night City look like the Big Rock Candy Mountains, it’s hard for me to fault the impulse behind this game or anyone who plays it for an ass-blasting AAA Video Game experience.
• I think the sequel to this is gonna kick ass if CD Projekt Red actually hires enough people.
In the spirit of a game that contains a whole bunch of systems and stuff that varies wildly in quality, here are my unorganized, wildly-varying-in-quality thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077.
• I started playing Cyberpunk 2077 on Patch 1.4, took a break, and finished it a few months after 1.5 went live. Sure, this balanced out the crit-goblin build, but only further enabled the quickhacking-goblin build, as torching some poor bastard using your mind no longer automatically reveals your position to enemies. The most salient change I noticed was that the radio in vehicles had the audio drastically rebalanced so that I could actually hear musical thumps and wubs while driving my sick-ass Akiracycle and doing sick-ass handbrake turns, which I think is the experience the entire driving physics engine was initially balanced around.
• I encountered a moderate amount of glitches of varying sizes. I still can’t tell if the cargo van I saw implanted nose-down in one of Night City’s riverside plazas was a bug or some environmental storytelling thing.
• The main theme of the game seems to be choice. Ever notice how V can choose whether or not to drink/do drugs when the opportunity presents itself, but Johnny can’t? That is a very good and very tiny thing. The quality of so many of Cyberpunk 2077’s individual elements seems to be independent of their size and significance in the game as a whole, which is absolutely wild.
• The RPG systems are huge in scope and extremely uneven in execution. It’s pretty good that some skill trees are entirely self-contained builds (Be a ninja who gets completely unique combat options! Use Cold Blood and make yourself temporarily stronger by chaining kills!), but so many other options are flaccid and have negligible impact on the experience, of the “5% boost to assault rifle accuracy” flavor. I get that some choices matter more than others, but… man.
• This probably connects to why the gunplay feels like oatmeal. Possible fix for the sequel: each variety of gun has a distinct and unique mechanic. Assault rifles can fire around corners somehow, shotguns can blast open doors, sniper rifles stay sniper rifles? I don’t know, CDPR, y’all got Keanu Reeves to star in a video game, figure something out.
• You know what this game feels like? Mass Effect.
• From beginning to end, I was impressed by the unrelenting dedication to first-person stuff. You notice very quickly that not only does every big story event happen in first person, but tiny things do too – and with mostly lovingly-crafted animations. Huffing a health inhaler during combat, munching on takoyaki during a conversation, coughing up blood in the shower, taking a pill to get Keanu Reeves to quiet down for a bit. And you always, always, are prompted to press a button to take a seat before a sit-down sort of conversation. There are things that are abstracted, but there is a conscious effort to give so many actions at least a little bit of weight via animation. In a game where so many concrete things feel floaty and loose, it is a more-than-token effort towards something grounded.
• My personal favorite moment in the game happened when I was on a boat ride with a sort-of friend whom I would later sort-of have sex with. This boat ride happens late in the game, long after it is established that Keanu Reeves’ digital ghost of a character will regularly pop out of the ether in cinematic ways to comment on the action in a way that only your character can see. My sort-of friend was playing his guitar and I was idly looking off into the sunset off the port side when I realized that Keanu’s character had materialized right in the center of my vision, reclining on the rail of the boat. I stared into the face of God, blinked, and realized: this game had subconsciously trained me to know exactly when and where the freak who lived in my head would show up.
• The writing and characters are all over the place. There’s fascinating structure here, especially among the four romantic leads – like clockwork, you get the chance to see their strengths and weaknesses as you navigate their questlines. And the endings do form a moving portrait of the choices we make in the face of impossible situations. And it also feels like a lot is missing: The first and second acts are puzzle boxes of interacting b-plots and sidequests, while the third unceremoniously dumps you at the doorstep of the finale as soon as it starts. As the star of the show, Keanu Reeves’ Johnny Silverhand is menacing, tragic, and compelling, but not all of the other characters (even ones who get as much screentime) are as consistently well-written.
• By my count, the game contains nearly 40 critical-path story quests, over 90 non-critical side quests, and over 80 tertiary “gigs” that mostly offer cash and loot for completion. Of these, I estimate that two-thirds of the story quests, over half of the side quests, and roughly two-thirds of the gigs contain combat. Of these combat-containing gigs, I estimate that 80% of them take place in fully-realized, Deus Ex-style maps. That’s somewhere around one hundred fully-designed combat encounters of varying scales, that must account for a variety of approaches that even System Shock 2, in its wildest dreams, could not even begin to imagine. And none of them noticeably suck.
• The music kinda bangs. And even on my 2060-ass laptop at suboptimal settings for that sweet 60 FPS, the graphics are absolutely nutso.
• The combat isn’t Halo. The RPG elements aren’t Dragon Quest. The driving ain’t Gran Turismo, and even the writing isn’t Metal Gear Solid. So: how do you feel about abundance in video games? What do you want the games you buy to be? This may be a neon-soaked Vegas buffet of a game that doesn't do much exceptionally well, but it was cheap at $20, and there are nuggets of goodness mixed in with the empty calories. As humanity barrels along an ending path that’s gonna make Night City look like the Big Rock Candy Mountains, it’s hard for me to fault the impulse behind this game or anyone who plays it for an ass-blasting AAA Video Game experience.
• I think the sequel to this is gonna kick ass if CD Projekt Red actually hires enough people.
(Played on Switch with varying degrees of functionality in my left hand, due to breaking a finger in the middle of my playthrough. Cannot recommend the controller remapping functionality enough - I played a chunk of this game with one vertically-held JoyCon.)
My LoZ experience is pretty limited. Prior to this, I'd only completed the original NES and Breath of the Wild all the way through, and got 95% through a Wind Waker HD run. But boy howdy, it's not hard to see that Nintendo is already starting to figure out how exactly they will iterate on a formula, a recipe they would follow time and time again: what does our new hardware let us do? What about this entry in a tentpole series will be fundamentally different from what came before?
Shiny new graphics capabilities allowed for stronger backgrounds (including actual vistas from the tops of high places) and more sprites, leading to a separate-but-linked "Dark World" overworld that's a key plot point. Dungeons that are visually distinct from each other at a glance. Bosses and enemies that go hard and fast. A wildly expanded lineup of tools and goodies for Link, some of which are - gasp - optional. An overworld that feels both larger and smaller than the original NES outing (and somehow, both ways are improvements.)
The designers have learned a thing or two as well. Bomb supplies are increased and bombable walls in dungeons are easily visible at a glance. Rupees are easier to come by - if not flowing like water, than at least flowing like... lukewarm nacho cheese sauce? Moving diagonally makes battles sharper, and your sword, your blessed sword, now makes a satisfying arc in front of you to help you hack through baddies. Dungeons, now boasting multiple floors, are an order of magnitude better than LoZ - attention is paid to design such that exploration more frequently leads to progress. I can't remember how many times I got a key or other needed object, decided to keep exploring forwards instead of doubling back to try a separate path, and found myself precisely where I needed to be.
Most of what's new is good, but not all. One too many bosses, particularly in the game's second half, flirt with bullet hell status, though there's definitely a fumbling towards the get-gadget-beat-boss-with-gadget cadence of later games. The empty bottle mechanic, which lets you customize a loadout of various healing items and stinging insects, is a great idea that would only fully blossom in later games where refilling potions wasn't such a money-grinding pain in the ass. The magic meter doesn't feel well-tuned, and a few critical bits of progress are left in obscure places that are only slightly preferable to the bombing-random-walls gambit that LoZ sometimes fell victim to.
It's almost enough to make me want to play an N64 LoZ.
My LoZ experience is pretty limited. Prior to this, I'd only completed the original NES and Breath of the Wild all the way through, and got 95% through a Wind Waker HD run. But boy howdy, it's not hard to see that Nintendo is already starting to figure out how exactly they will iterate on a formula, a recipe they would follow time and time again: what does our new hardware let us do? What about this entry in a tentpole series will be fundamentally different from what came before?
Shiny new graphics capabilities allowed for stronger backgrounds (including actual vistas from the tops of high places) and more sprites, leading to a separate-but-linked "Dark World" overworld that's a key plot point. Dungeons that are visually distinct from each other at a glance. Bosses and enemies that go hard and fast. A wildly expanded lineup of tools and goodies for Link, some of which are - gasp - optional. An overworld that feels both larger and smaller than the original NES outing (and somehow, both ways are improvements.)
The designers have learned a thing or two as well. Bomb supplies are increased and bombable walls in dungeons are easily visible at a glance. Rupees are easier to come by - if not flowing like water, than at least flowing like... lukewarm nacho cheese sauce? Moving diagonally makes battles sharper, and your sword, your blessed sword, now makes a satisfying arc in front of you to help you hack through baddies. Dungeons, now boasting multiple floors, are an order of magnitude better than LoZ - attention is paid to design such that exploration more frequently leads to progress. I can't remember how many times I got a key or other needed object, decided to keep exploring forwards instead of doubling back to try a separate path, and found myself precisely where I needed to be.
Most of what's new is good, but not all. One too many bosses, particularly in the game's second half, flirt with bullet hell status, though there's definitely a fumbling towards the get-gadget-beat-boss-with-gadget cadence of later games. The empty bottle mechanic, which lets you customize a loadout of various healing items and stinging insects, is a great idea that would only fully blossom in later games where refilling potions wasn't such a money-grinding pain in the ass. The magic meter doesn't feel well-tuned, and a few critical bits of progress are left in obscure places that are only slightly preferable to the bombing-random-walls gambit that LoZ sometimes fell victim to.
It's almost enough to make me want to play an N64 LoZ.