Unfortunately I feel like any message or intent is rendered meaningless when the means to produce the game run so blatantly counter to them. Almost as if the story is just focus group tested branding.

Maybe I’m being overly idealist but I’d rather have genuine braindead centrism over hollow manufactured leftism 9 times out of 10. At least I know I can feel good hating it.

if anyone likes long format video essays on games Sophie already made the correct opinion about cyberpunk

I’m just here to be a Judy Alvarez simp

My favorite part of Cyberpunk 2077 was just walking around and looking at things. The architecture and city layout were fascinating to me. Maybe I’m just lizard brain or something, but it was genuinely amazing that I could drive all the way out of the city and look at the skyline. It was still identifiable all the way out there.

It’s possibly the first game I’ve played where an urban environment seems about the size that it should be. I know it’s actually not, it’s actually quite small compared to a large city, but whatever perspective tricks they did completely fooled my tiny brain.

In terms of atmosphere and aesthetic, it’s one of the best games I’ve ever played. The characters are all memorable. Some of the quests are fantastic, like the talking gun, the AI taxis, that one about the murderer finding Jesus, it all stoked the parts of my brain that enjoy flash and sparkle. The music is really goddamn good.

Everything else though? 5/10 at its best moments. The combat is goofy. It’s way too easy to break the game’s economy. It’s very easy to become an overpowered death god only halfway through. At a certain point I didn’t even have to walk near the enemies. I could hack them all into suicide from 100 meters away.

The overall plot isn’t great either. It has an anti-establishment framework to it but without any of the specific details. The main character’s motivations make absolutely no sense other than some vague desire for money and power. Everyone you meet also seems to like V, sooner or later. There aren’t any characters I remember who hate your guts and refuse to work with you if you’re an asshole to them. The politics of the game are really odd and skewed. It seems to endorse a snarky, individualistic nihilism and tries to contrast that with corporate greed, but in practice it all came across as the same thing to me. Johnny only seems to hate Arasaka for completely personal reasons and ended up doing performative terrorism.

There are even a few plots where you meet characters who have a more genuine anti-establishment ethos, like the mission with the radio signals, and the other characters around you treat it all with derision and mockery. It’s supposed to be funny. Haha, look at these dorks who believe in something.

I think the game’s writing shines with the relationship development between Johnny and V. The gameplay was distinctly lacking though I did play it 2 times in a row to 100% around release with no major patches, the bugs and the horrible driving started to really wear on me and the combat eventually felt very stale. The most interaction I had with the world was doing the random combat areas strewn about. I only ever once fought off the police and I think it’s because I was in a location where they weren’t allowed to spawn from anywhere but outside a single door where I could then funnel them through, every other time I pissed them off they’d just pop into existence and fuck my shit up. The choices only really existed in the first mission and I while my first playthrough I did try to RP as close as I could to a nomad I did find that it was quite nice with how the game sometimes let me remark on that stuff, especially on the nomad mission line. Playing through as a corpo the next run though V acts almost exactly the same and it just ended up being super jarring.

I do agree that the game has gotten to the point where people performatively hate on it because it’s the thing to do, it has a lot of good going for it if CDPR can just make the game more fun to play. The plot is decent enough, it really doesn’t recognize what the punk part of cyberpunk is and I feel like any of the anti-capitalist message that is in the game comes through the setting that was premade and not through CDPR’s stuff. Interacting with Johnny has some really interesting aspects as long as you 100% the game and you’re able to experience the progression as much as possible rather than just rushing and being surprised that he’s suddenly less harsh.