Oh, how do I sum up my excitement for this impending game? Shall I compare thee to a Game of the Year? It's unfeasible- nay unreasonable- ray irresponsible, for me to feel the way I do about Cyberpunk 2077, but what can I say? The Hype hath claimed and swallowed me up, completely and totally. There's nothing left of me but a congealed mass of blusterous blobulous liquid Anticipation and it it both brilliant and disgusting. Disgusting, that one as familiar with the gaming industry as I, as familiar with hype culture as I, as familiar with the general capacity of this life to disappoint as I, would be helpless to resist this games rugged charm and good looks. But here I am. More the fool, ever the romantic. Will I have my heart broken? Most definitely. But will it be worth it? I don't know... I just don't know...
But anyway, there was another Night City Wire livestream. Let's talk about it.
So this is the way that CDPR have settled on to ramp up the hype before final release and I have to admit, this is the exact reason why I saw the last delay coming from a mile away. I hate to toot my own horn (outright lie, I sing my correct predictions from the rooftops) but I knew there wasn't nearly enough marketing to launch a potential Game of the Year on. It would have been foolish to do so back in April. Right now CDPR have the entire industry hanging off their word as they continue to keep people astounded and delighted simply by cherry picking topics and sacrificing little kibble-chunks to us ravenous hordes over here. Actually- cherry picking makes it sound like significant thought went in. This is more 'random dart board topics'. I mean look at today's lineup; Gunplay, lifepaths and music? (One of these things is not like the other.) But in their defence I suppose it does keep things varied and ensures that no one person will be bored by the proceedings. And on another hand, for someone like me, it keeps me engrossed throughout because I find literally every facet of this game fascinating; I'm like a marketing junkie out here- digging through dumpsters trying to scrounge up a news fix.
Now my favourite thing from this whole presentation was, funnily enough, the first thing that they showed off, and that was the lifepaths. This is the feature that I've been so hyped for due to it living up to my initial gut assumption. You know, that guess you make when you first hear of something, before you've ever had the chance to set expectations or limits, and you just assume something wildly unreasonable? (There's that word again.) Well I thought it would be wild if each lifepath started with its own intro and we've already been confirmed that this will be the case. During the livestream, however, we got to take a look at those lifepaths and see just how good a job the team did of making each route feel unique enough to pull us back in for another playthrough.
Straight away you can just feel the shift in vibes, not just from the environments but they way they act and the slimmers of story that we've been peppered with. The Streetkid path featured these projects with a noticeable latin influence around them, and the flow of the plot looked action-driven and exciting. The Nomad path took a more sombre tone, and featured gorgeous open desert landscapes and at least one breathtaking shot of Nightcity. The Corpo path boasted domineering oppressive towers and this feeling of foreboding as something serious feels like it's about to upset the steady power balance that everyone relies on. It's almost like loading up three different games to play brand new stories, and to think that these backgrounds are all going to have their own ways of influencing the shared main plot is simply mad to me right now. How was it like to write this script and pay attention to three contrasting character routes in the same protagonist? Thrilling, I'd imagine.
Next up is something that I am personally so interested by, even if no one else in the Cyberpunk community is; the music. Let me try and sell this to you; CDPR went out of their way to commission artists to compile a whole game's worth of in-universe music to flesh out this game, arguing that music is an essential part of the Cyberpunk aesthetic. They're right, of course, but simply pursuing this alone completely breaks a new precedent in world building that I've never seen done by any other medium, let alone another game. Sure, movies commission entire albums from bands from time to time, but never from multiple bands for the sole purpose of emulating a fictional musical ecosystem and capturing that thematic world. It's just- a sublime proposition, and I only wish I was more musically inclined to fully comprehend what the impact of even proposing this has. Fail or succeed, new world-building ground has been crossed by this game.
And I mean that, not even Rockstar have taken the lengths that CDPR did for this game, and they're the grandfathers of world building. Those guys built the presses to print the books on worldbuilding. Yet today the students are planning the curriculum for the old masters, and I'm chomping at the bit to peak in the auditorium and steal notes. (Did I take that analogy too far? It felt too far.) And yes, I know that Ubisoft's 'Beyond Good and Evil 2' technically proposed this idea to the public first, (whilst simultaneously attempting to outsource this work to the public and conveniently forgetting to mention anything about compensation) but that game has disappeared off the face of the earth lately whilst 'Cyberpunk' is seemingly just around the corner. CDPR get's the point for this one, sorry.
As for the scene in particular, I was fascinated to hear the singer of this Swedish Hardcore punk band (Refused) spill about the trials of playing the singing voice of Keanu Reeves' Johnny Silverhand. In many ways, his is a more difficult job than any of the other artists who were asked to make their own songs in the Cyperpunk world and/or style. As Dennis Lyxzén explained, it's about capturing the voice of this fictional musician and figuring out his agenda, seeing his world through his eyes. I didn't even think about that, it's wild! And then there were the more technical aspects of selling the performance, such as trying to subtly tweak his performing accent to match Johnny's accent close enough. All this just to sell the illusion that only those who really invest themselves (like moi) will care about. It's just another example of the many ways that Cyberpunk represents the oft-unseen otherside of the modern gaming industry's AAA spectrum. Whereas on one hand you have heavily funded titles built for the sole purpose of raking as much money as possible, here is a game that I'm fully convinced is being funded to be the best product it can be. There are extremes being taken here that just don't need to be. They didn't need to work to get the accent right. They didn't need to reach out to native speakers for all the different cultures that Night City would be representing in order to nail their particular brand of Creole, or to make a joke about a character's poor Portuguese. These are the actions of passionate developers in a team driven to impress themselves, just as much as they are to impress fans or their investors. Sorry, I'll stop kissing ass for a moment here to wrap this up.
Finally, the livestream got to the various weapons that Nightcity would be featuring, and again I left the segment a satisfied fan. I started off trying to pick holes. "Only three weapon types?" I thought "That's a bit low." But, silly me, that merely counts the three sub-divisions of guns through which the team divide their arsenal because of course it is. Tech weapons are the flashy power guns that look like they buzz with tech and pack the power to shoot through cover. (Not all cover, I presume. Else I'll get a repeat of that one Dishonored moment that I keep bringing up and will never let go. I accidentally sniped the guy across the block with a pistol, though, it's a story worth retelling.) Power weapons are close to the conventional lead-throwers of today, with the additional ability to shoot bullets so powerful they can ricochet off walls. (My dreams of becoming Revolver Ocelot get closer everyday.) And Smart weapons are exactly what anyone who watched Aliens thinks they are, auto-targeting guns with curving bullets, with the added bonus that now they're any entire class of weaponry. (Wait, now my fantasies about becoming Vasquez are coming true too- which do I pick first?)
So already that's a decent selection of weapon variety but they perhaps lack the versatility of elemental based equipment that some gam- except that elemental effects do come in play due to the modding. Oh yeah, there's weapon modding too. And a whole slew of dangerous looking melee weapons from the Mantis Blades, (which we're all familiar with) to the Gorilla arms. (Perfect for punching holes through walls... Oh wait, isn't that Adam Jensen's thing? How can this game do everything?) There's even at least one thermal katana, and it was this point that I encountered my first genuine moment of disappointment when I realised that CDPR had named an assault rifle 'Masamune' instead of the present, functioning, katanas. (Do you people have no respect for RPG cliches?)
Oh, and there's weapon rarity too. With legendary weapons said to be the most powerful, and specific, not spawning in shops or inside crates but on specific locations like, and I love this, the inventory of an important NPC. Each of these weapons were implied to have unique effects, (Sound off New Vegas fans) and thus us true collect-a-holics are going to have to come to terms with taking the life of someone who might not deserve it in order to sate our sick addiction to completionism. (Heavy 'La Longue Carabine' flashbacks. I couldn't do it in the end.) Basically what I'm trying to say is that the gunplay looks perfectly supplied, I no longer have any ground to speculate on if this game will have enough variety to keep combat fresh. And V still has that slick arsenal-room from the 2018 gameplay trailer that I loved so much. (You guys.)
In summation, after going through it all I can't help but feel a little bittersweet. I read about all of these amazing, trailblazing, steps that CDPR are walking and I can't help but think; even if I ever get into this industry, (In a writing capacity) I'll never have the honour of touching a project as driven and committed as this one. As a player that makes me feel blessed, but as a writer that's a bit of a downer. It's like looking at the peak of an age. It makes me want to shirk the natural course of things and feed myself to the First Flame, to extend this age just that little bit longer. (Okay, I've been up rewatching this Cyberpunk footage too long, I've devolving into Dark Souls references again. Let's wrap this up.) I wish I could thank CDPR for reminding me what it was like to feel like an excited kid again, but I get the feeling, with all this pomp and ceremony, that they know that's the sort of environment they're making. It's just nice to feel a smile on my face as I write these, you don't always have that as much as you might think you do. Is there anything else I sho- right! Can't wait, need to play, let's collectively wish away October. (It was a crap-tier month anyway. Sorry if you have a Birthday then, your sacrifice is appreciated.)
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