Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be the biggest video game launch of the last five years. Developer CD Projekt Red gained a lot of goodwill with the success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, and their new game seemed to have all the makings of a hit as well. However, as the game was delayed three times, it became apparent that the developer was making its employees work through crunch for extended periods of time, and when the game finally launched, people realized that it needed a lot more work. Despite CD Projekt Red’s ongoing efforts to fix the game, the disappointment with Cyberpunk 2077 remains high. Which is a shame, because if you managed to stick through the game despite its myriad glitches, you probably discovered a flawed diamond underneath all the muck.
There’s a lot to not like about Cyberpunk 2077. Many fans expected the game to be as competent and detailed as the Grand Theft Auto franchise, which is a bit unfair since Rockstar Games have decades of experience working on open-world games. While Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City is vast and has gorgeous art direction, it feels frustratingly empty. The crowd just walks around, disappearing beyond eyesight, and their AI is painfully limited. For instance, they don’t react if you point a gun in their face- only when you shoot, do they start cowering and then running away. Still, Night City definitely has character — it feels real and lived in, and most of its denizens either love the city or hate it. Sure, the driving is atrocious, and you can’t even draw weapons while driving, let alone shoot at people, but over time you get used to it.
There’s also the fantastic soundtrack, which includes songs made especially for the game. This makes driving through the city and going to clubs a treat.
What kept me- and I suspect, many others- returning was the game’s story and its characters.
The main narrative is all about going up against massive mega-corporations and trying to survive those encounters, building lasting friendships in the process. You get to meet memorable characters such as Judy, Panam and Takemura, and each of them have distinct personalities and backstories to delve into. The side quests are more of a mixed bag: the ones which run for multiple quests and are focused on specific characters are well done and intriguing. There’s a good variety in genre, running from political espionage to murder investigations and getting a fifty-year old band together for one last gig. The smaller ‘gigs’ however, can be repetitive: you usually have to kill or rescue someone, or steal something and deposit them at drop-off points.
The most crucial relationship your character, V, has in the game is the one with Johnny Silverhand, a rebellious ‘rockerboy’ who disappeared fifty years ago. Johnny’s story progresses beautifully, from having to deal with an unwelcome intruder in your mind to grudgingly tolerating their presence until you both realize that you can both help each other. Late in the game, Johnny realizes that he was an asshole who met a quiet end despite his fame and his brand of music-filled political activism. He makes amends with his loved ones and vows to help save your life. Keanu Reeves’ performance is somewhat stiff, as many probably expected, but he succeeds in making the character his own.
Cyberpunk 2077 can take you anywhere from 35–60+ hours to finish, depending whether you are only playing the main story or if you are trying to finish everything. The endings you can get are suitably grim, except for one path that ends on a hopeful note despite your character facing a similar fate.
As good as the story is, the combat is also fun. It’s challenging at first, but later, depending on your character build and the weapons you acquire, you end up one-shotting most enemies. You can choose to max out two of five skills, or get a more well-rounded build. You can choose from a handgun/assault weapons focused build to a sniper build and, perhaps the most enjoyable one, a melee build, especially one with a katana and/or mantis blades. Hacking is also quite effective. If you have a cyberdeck with enough slots, you can simply hack into cameras and take out enemies room by room with ‘daemons’ such as contagion (which spreads quickly among people and does high damage), overheat, synapse burnout or short circuit.
Of course, I couldn’t avoid bugs in my gameplay experience. Often I would get to a mission objective and then have to wait for the low-resolution placeholder textures to go away as the assets continued to load. I had to reload saves because certain actions wouldn’t trigger, leaving me unable to progress through missions. After the credits finished rolling, the game crashed on me one final time, souring my mood for further gameplay.
Still, Cyberpunk 2077 is a good game once you look beyond the bugs and missing features, and hopefully, it will get better throughout the year as major patches come out.
CD Projekt Red recently released a timeline that revealed they will be working on the game through 2022, so hopefully, we will get sizable new content along with the bug fixes.