Nowhere to run, it's all undone! Everything Burns! Everything Burns!
Finally I've come around to the moment I've put off for years now, actual years. After seeing the state of the base game, the optimisation issues and realising that this was a game designed for a richer tier of video gamer than myself (and considerable more tolerant for bugs) I put this one on the back burner. But deep in my heart I always knew I'd come around on it. I knew that someday I would buy Cyberpunk 2077 and engage with the dream which was snatched from me and so many others on that faithful day so long ago. And now, as we stand on the cusp of the game's first and only proper expansion, I need to clear my air with this game. Also, as the game was finally optimised enough to run on my hardware, I need to finish this blog before that update comes out which bursts the game out of the range of my hardware once again- because apparently CDPR are simply disgusted at the prospect of having people of my tax bracket among their fans.
First off I'm going to start by saying this won't be the sort of review where I go into the history of the game before release as I usually do, and that's because if you've hung around this blog for any amount of time you'll know that I've done that incessantly over the years. Here's the cliffnotes. CDPR hit it big with The Witcher- promises were that the next game was going to be even bigger. Their mouths ended up writing a lot of cheques that their accounts couldn't cash and when it launched the 'next generation of open world game' dissolved into a better Ubisoft-style game. This was never quite going to be the Grand Theft Auto killer that the team were selling it as, and I bet only Rockstar themselves knew that from the get-go. But let's put all that history behind us and ask- what about the game that did arrive? Is that any good?
Cyberpunk 2077 takes us to the far flung year of 2077 in the 'independent' lands of Night City; techno-powered vice-soaked rotten apple on the West Coast of the New United States. (Although, clearly, Night City itself it not a member of the NUSA) As an adaptation of the old Cyberpunk 2020 Table top role playing game, this world is one seeped in decades of lore and stories pertaining to a society bought and sold by megacorperate mandate. Where capitalism is like an internationally recognised religion that counts just about every single remaining member of the human race as it's congregation. A world of commercialised technological augmentations turning high quality functional prosthetics or skin grafts into ostentatious fashion statements, indulged in to escape the pit swallowing reality of extreme economic inequality, overwhelming disenfranchisement and that ever inescapable sense that you're roaming around the dystopian wastes of an apocalyptic world that doesn't know it's ended yet. The definition of a porcelain mask- delicate and beautiful, but fragile and false: that is the face of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077.
We are brought kicking and screaming into this world through the eyes of V, a two-bit mercenary thug with any of three reasons for being in a city he or she can't escape from. 'The city of dreams'. Through the course of the plot V will be dragged into events beyond their paygrade, thrown to the centre of a massive web of plots, violent aspirations and conspiracy- be broken down to the core and built back up again as something else- something unstoppable... and we'll see V pushed beyond the limits of their understanding to corners of the world they can't reconcile, or are incapable of. All whilst racing a ticking clock in the back of their head threatening to rip away the one thing they seek most of all- more life. Think of Blade Runner if the protagonist was Roy Batty and you'll get both the rough premise and to some degree the thematic emotions the narrative attempts to alight. That of how it is we experience and compartmentalise the trials and irreconcilable limitations of our own lives. Only V is a lot more violent.
As a studio known for the fantasy RPGs following the rigors of an established character, Geralt of Rivia from 'The Witcher' novels, it's quite the change of pace to shift to a player built sci-fi shooter premise. CDPR, ever ones to challenge themselves, took the task to heart by redesigning everything about how their games worked on a fundamental level. Gone is the third person perspective and the elaborately choreographed cinematography for cutscenes- sacrificed in favour of a staunchly rigid locked 1st person perspective designed to tie you fully into the role of your V. And, of course, that means this game is a First Person Shooter- but it does actually go deeper than that. You are in V's eyes for cutscenes, when entering into cars, when being debriefed on missions, when undergoing surgery. You are inhabiting the world through the eyes of V fully until the adventure is complete, as staunchly attached to their psyche as The Construct of Johnny Silverhand is.
So how did that transition from third person swordplay to first person shooter turn out? Increadibly well. If Bethesda are ones to take notes, Cyberpunk is the game to learn from. The way the first person mechanics of Cyberpunk function, from sliding to lean-shooting and snap aiming all the way to the sensation of the weapon in your hands, the feedback of the recoil, the damage response from targets, the brutal carnage of a successful kill- the variation of weapon types, with alternate damage effects or even firing quirks. Smart bullet, wall punching rounds, ricochet shots- it feels so intuitive to play with. Some staunch FPS fans who play games that endeavour to the exact same standard of shooting might scoff their nose about this because doesn't play exactly like Call of Duty or Destiny, and blame the RPG core for holding the game back- but I disagree completely. The game plays it's FPS mechanics flawlessly to it's own strengths. It plays differently to dedicated first person shooters, sure; but it doesn't play worse than them. It feels great, snaps just right, provides every bit of feedback you could want and ties in solid RPG mechanics alongside for good measure. I started off impressed with the combat, but familiarity made me completely satisfied with- I think the combat of Cyberpunk is top tier.
The UI, on the otherhand- not so intuitive. There's a trend I've noticed a lot in modern games, to design these overly hostile looking and cluttered screens of information that pack everything you need to know for a veteran, but to someone just getting started it comes off as particularly unwelcoming. Cyberpunk compounds this with one of the messiest and badly laid-out inventory screens I've ever seen. People who mock Bethesda's inventory systems better lay down their apologies stat because Cyberpunk literally floods all of it's items into a jumbled grid of chaos and asks you to understand it. Thankfully food item buffs are largely useless so you'll probably never have to check out this screen beyond the times you go weapon scrapping. But every now and then you'll get a quest objective that forces you to interact with something in your key items, or read a specific info shard, and those are the most galling objectives in the entire game because of the absolute colossal task of navigating that dumpster heap of a poorly laid-out inventory menu
This is yet another one of those games that surrenders to the pressures of levelling systems, but the way that gun scaling and level matching works isn't quite as bad as some of this generation's less clueless siblings. You get higher level gear and weaponry out in the world quite often, and even legendary weapons don't always offer buffs strong enough to warrant using them over a slightly better machine gun you just picked up; which does feed into the bizarre 'constantly chasing the green arrow' playstyle we've all but assimilated into general gaming culture at this point. There are systems for improving weapon damage but, curiously, later guns do tend to be more interesting anyway. The buzz of finding a smartgun with ammo that literally jumps around corners far beats out the strong punching rifle you'll have jealously hoarded at the beginning of the game. (Firing around a cover without having to poke out your own body is one of those special feeling combat moments you only really get in Cyberpunk.) Also, although it wasn't available at launch, the Transmog system neatly helps relieve the problem players used to have of chasing the strongest clothing gear and ending up dressed like an insane 90's fashion disaster brought back to digital life.
As you progress through the game and start piling on skills, the freedom of your gameplay choices really starts to blossom out. This isn't quite an immersive sim unfortunately, and stealth approaches, whilst fully possibly, don't feel as bespoke or fleshed out as one might expect from a game like Deus Ex. Patrol routes aren't particularly layered or complex, quickhack makes non-human complications all resolvable in the exact same way (pointing with your scanner and disabling) and there's only two animations for stealth takedowns. But providing you're willing to play with the tools that the game does offer you, Cyberpunk encounters can feel drastically different depending on your playstyle. You can engage in a straight room-to-room shoot-up, dashing around impressively cluttered and realistic environments picking shots through a dry-wall of ripped up apartment blocks. You can charge in with drugs and a sledgehammer, soaking up roads and splitting open skulls. Or you can take a hybrid approach, donning the versatile Mantis Blades and a camo-skin implant- jumping about as an invisible assassin, picking off the stragglers in the flurry whilst the survivors search frantically about for their unsee-able opponent. You can even go the 'hacker' route of installing infectious malware into your targets that poisons the victim and then jumps to his nearby buddies, or drives one of them into a cyberpsychosis killing his own friends, or hack someone's system and force them to kill themselves. And, of course, you can switch between all these playstyles depending on how you feel that day. Cyberpunk offers that level of gameplay freedom and moment-to-moment action choices. It is quite special. 
Of course, the gameplay is only a third of the factor when it comes to games like these, there's also the story and the world that story plays out in. Focusing on Night City for a moment, I have to express how impressed and simultaneously disappointed I am in what CDPR delivered for us. Visually, Night City is a total wonder. A techno-futuristic flurry of skyscrapers and billboards, caught between a mix of LA and Tokyo and pulled directly from Ridley Scott as he laid out the sets for Blade Runner. Moving neon billboards, holographic Koi fish, harsh industrial sectors- every district of Night City, and it's surrounding badlands, breathes with a life of their own- distinct and personality rich. You know the districts of the various gangs, the rich, the poor, the rockerboys and the netrunners. In the faceless and homogenous uniformity of a corporate dystopia, CDPR remembered vividly how to retain the colourful variety of the people that live there.
And it goes deeper than looks. We hear the variety in the various fantastic battle themes that engage whenever any of the factions becomes hostile, each unique to the culture or personality of that gang whilst retaining the overall synth-metal theming of the genre and world. We hear authentic voices speaking their authentic dialects and languages, Creole, Japanese, Spanish, Brazillian Portuguese and so on. It truly feels like a hub of world wide cultures, or perhaps more fittingly- a run-down flophouse where all these walks of life have collided in the piss-stained mess of a hovel they call home. Everybody, no matter where they come from, are united by their desire to get out of the rat-race the city traps them under, and you feel that desperation, indignancy and air for rebellion any direction you choose to go in.
Which brings us to the radio and soundtrack- wow! CDPR commissioned a plethora of artists not just to bring the Rocker Boy Johnny Silverhand to life, but to fill the world with in-universe bands playing music in their various styles. In a universe were the power of music is so very important, in it's rebellious spirit mostly, this is a irrefutably important part of the mythos that CDPR needed to devote the amount of serious attention to that they did. I'm not typically one for heavy rock, but I absolutely loved every iota of this game's soundtrack. The artistic heart of every contributing artists is engaged to create music in the mindset of a citizen of the Cyberpunk future, downtrodden and disengaged from the world, screaming their frustrations into powerful and catchy beats. I literally went to work for months banging my head to some of my favourites, 'Resist and Disorder', 'Never fade away', 'Holes in the sun'; every band delivered the assignment to the absolute letter and most went above and beyond the call. What results is, in my opinion, the best in-universe fictional soundtrack in gaming, perhaps in the art of fiction as it stands. How often is this scope of art even attempted, and when has this much heart and passion ever gone into it?
Oh, and the dialect! How could I not mention the dialect! The Cyberpunk franchise employs this curiously distinct timbre to the way people speak, with turns of phrase, manners of structing sentences and unique idioms. This is by no means unique in fiction, but I've never seen another piece of entertainment sell the constructed vernacular quite as strongly as Cyberpunk 2077 does. The natural ease of spoken dialogue, the cohesion between pronunciations and emphasis- I can feel the amount of work the linguistics team put in to make the voices of everyone sound real and natural, creating a world that sounds unlike any other in otherwise normal conversation. You detect the real world influences, the draws from Latin speech patterns, Afro-American speech even hints of that classic transatlantic verbiage- but the result feels distinct and evolved, like a manner of speaking which could easily exist in a melting pot that just never came together in our version of the world. Kudos is required for the effort that went in here.
Perhaps one more controversial angle of the world of Cyberpunk, although one I found so interesting with how different it was to ever other interpretation, is it's fascination with the extremes of commercial oversexualisation. You'll find hyper-sexual billboard advertisements looming down on the streets or being broadcast in every mega-building elevator, read excerpts of gaudy smut novels left lying around in guard-posts covering all walks of life, see the ugliness of a world built off ofsuperficial sex appeal clear on the face of the narrative and the seedy places it drags you. This isn't the exaggerated beauty of hyper-sexualisation, the idealised glimpse of a glittering world were everyone confirms to the uniform standards of conventual beauty, but a hedonistic and lascivious corruption of it, drunk on the heady fumes of vice and debauchery.
Prostitution, drugs, cosmetic surgery- all glorified and beloved pillars of Cyberpunk society highlighting a society where you can change yourself to look however you want, intoxicate yourself to see the world however you wish to and engage in whatever most base desire takes you at any point- and in the depth of all the hedonism and excess you're still empty and soulless on the otherside. At the end of the day it's all just pomp, glitz, smoke and mirrors. Cake for the masses so they don't feel the corperate boot of faceless 'innovation' and 'expansion' slowly squeezing down on their necks. Which is why it's so important for the rebellious screaming music of the Rockerboy movements calling for people to wake up to the world. And so ironic that by the time of the game, 2077; that entire movement is old-hat and washed up, a vestige of a long-gone age enjoyed only by those who can't let the past go- despite the fact their message is just as relevant today as it was in their hey-day.
Damn, I could talk about the spirit of the world all day- but for this blog it's important I highlight the let downs as well. Namely, the interactivity. For all this effort that went into making the world feel so real, it's utterly criminal that CDPR couldn't go the distance to let us live in that world to a convincing degree! We can't buy food from vendors, go for a drink at the bar, visit an overcrowded nightclub in the wrong part of town, shoot-up unspecified narcotics and wake up hazed out in an alley four blocks away with nothing but our long-johns on. We can't even sit down on benches. For all their effect, Night City is functionally nothing more than a backdrop for another Ubisoft style open world. You have police scanner missions, which are just pockets of enemies that attack anyone who get close. They do, increadibly, all have lore and data shards explaining each criminal going-on; but the encounters themselves are never more than a minute long, so why would I care enough to read about what these murderous arseholes were doing wondering around in the viaduct?
Most all of the world boils down to chasing map markers for side quests, scanner missions or the more involved love-child between those two- Gigs. And as you can imagine, that really does pull away from the wonder of exploring the world for yourself. Driving isn't particularly great, the controls feel sluggish or floaty depending on what ride you pick: whatever class of vehicle, the control always just feels wrong. (And no vehicle combat whatsover) You can buy new apartments for V, although there's no benefit to visiting them beyond a small EXP buff for sleeping in your bed. It feels like everything CDPR attempt to put into the guy to create more of a simulation for the world just ended up feeling half-baked and hollow. For all the thousands of Eddies (Eurodollars) you'll make throughout the narrative and side-objectives, there will never be anything worth spending it all on. Which could be construed as a commentary on the emptiness of commercial pursuits but come-on: We know it's just weak design.
Plus there's the police system, a curiously anaemic anomaly considering one of the core-most taglines of the Cyberpunk 2077 marketing was literally "In Night City: What makes you a criminal?" Nothing, apparently! From hours of shooting my way all up and down Night City, reckless driving, blowing up highways and maybe, accidentally, not always causing hostile casualties- I never once saw a Night City Police officer. Oh, I got a wanted level every once in a blue moon- but the actual units themselves took their sweet time getting there so often that I was typically in the next city district over before they showed up. And apparently Night City PD can't splurge on pursuit vehicles for their unit considering the only time I ever saw them chase me in a car was during on side mission for Kerry, and they gave up before I reached the end of the road. There just isn't a police system at all, even after the 'overhaul' it received- That probably shouldn't even have ever been an aspect of the marketing.
The Journey
From the start Cyberpunk places the power of controlled destiny in the hands of the player, by allowing us the chance to choose between three origin stories for our V. Each of these introductions, Street kid, Nomad and Corpo, come with their tailor-made prologues and a unique trait for call-back options in dialogue throughout the game. (And an increadibly tiny side quest which isn't really worth mentioning.) Unfortunately, it's hardly more than a hour before your introduction is over and you're thrust onto the unified story path of every character. This belies how the 'choose who you want to be' presentation is merely a smokescreen that conjures the illusion of choice and consequence without following through on that promise, which is a theme the game continues on until, bizarrely, it's very end- at which point choices suddenly mean something for the first time.
The first act of our play is very prototypical for any crime-fantasy story, but CDPR's talent lies in their ability to elevate the material they work with. Whereas on it's face playing the 'merc looking for his big break' sounds very by-the-numbers, there's a level of authenticity with how the world is portrayed, the nature of opportunity is presented and the stellar performances of the actors engender the worth of the circumstance and situation. Right from the word go you'll come to be embroiled in the relationship between V and their best friend Jackie, the allure of the Night City underworld where everyone is trying to use you with a smile on their face, and the monumental scale of the target- enough even to make the most cocksure and arrogant of your circle sombre up their act a little. It's a delicate balance of high quality writing and higher quality performance that brings the world to life in stunning vivacity.
Of course, this intro also demonstrates the span of reactive choice and consequence available to the player as during the set-up for the heist they are capable of approaching their tasks with any number of alternatives, redundancies and short-cuts to get everything into place. Of course, I endeavour to remind you that this is absolutely not indicative of the rest of the game- but rather a startling standalone reminder of what Cyberpunk 2077 could have been if CDPR had unlimited resources and time. Which they didn't. Still, enjoy the freedom whilst it lasts, because it really does feel great when you have that malleable narrative in the palm of your hands!
Another aspect present in the first act that I like, and is actually present throughout the whole narrative, is the willingness of the story to take a break for quiet moments of emotional vulnerability. Whether to get closer to Jackie before the Heist, learn more about the sort of motivations that drive Johnny Silverhand or, my favourite, delve into the person that V is through brilliantly written and acted introspective confrontations such as the unforgettable one-on-one with the Doll inside of The Clouds. Whereas some games simply can't stomach taking their foot off the gas for a single moment, or don't know what to do with themselves unless the hero is shooting something- Cyberpunk recognises the value in moments of peace. Letting the emotional stakes be set up in the story, the connections between characters be established or the tensions of the campaign be released in a time of still. Some of my absolute high-light moments of the game were great conversations between solid characters who shared little nuggets of themselves in arguments or trauma sharing. In a world of action, it's the peaceful times that ring the loudest.
It isn't until Act 2 where the actual narrative rears it's head and the bigger themes that the narrative wants to carry for the long haul are revealed. Spoilers from here on out in case you haven't even seen the basic premise of Cyberpunk- but in a series of events with consequences larger than you could ever have known in the moment, V is afflicted with a data chip in their head affixed with the engrammatic personality data of the long dead 2020's rockerboy and one-time Arasaka terror bomber, Johnny Silverhand- frontman for the band Samurai and icon for anti-corporate sentiment across the land. Or at least he was. Johnny has kind of faded away in the fifty years he spent dead, all until he woke up in the mind of an unsuspecting mercenary. But of course the penny has to drop- Johnny's psyche is slowly overwriting the host bodies in a process that is slowly starting to make V's own body see his or her mind as a foreign entity, activating the antibodies. Essentially, V's body is slowly killing itself and Johnny Silverhand's engram is slowly taking over the corpse that process is going to leave behind. That is the set-up for the narrative; a ticking clock where the protagonist and the ghost of Johnny Silverhand have to race to win V more time to live. A race against mortality itself.
Now narrative wise Act 2 is a lot messier than the first one. The game loosens it's tight grip on the player and almost immediately events start to drift. Right away I discovered a pretty obvious cohesion error where I could, and did, activate the Delamain side quest when going to retrieve my car, which activates a little friendly back and forth with the ghost of Johnny- a bit jarring since before that point you've never shared a conversation with the man and are fully under the belief that he's trying to kill you. It's a small sequence break in the narrative, but there's actually a few of those dotted about in bizarre places that disrupt an otherwise flawlessly presented and told narrative about facing the inevitable however you can stomach it.
This is also the act when it really starts to dawn that the Choices from part 1 aren't really coming to substantive consequences. Choosing to side with the Corpo scrooge from Act 1 in a tense stand-off scene and proceeding operation, even as it puts you in danger, doesn't net you a valuable contact you can call in a dire moment but a brief bedroom fling. Really? That's the best that could be devised? A few side quest decisions don't appear to present any consequence that we get to see at all, such as the Peralez missions which seem to end at the exact moment the questline got supremely interesting, probably victim to the messy late-development troubles we now know that the game was subject to. But if there's one thing that really started standing out to me in Act 2, it's the voice actor for V.
Now I played the male lead, I would have liked to play both but with the recent announcement that CDPR are soon going to make me incapable of playing the game by cranking up the specs, it looks like I won't have the time to. But from my experience with the male V, I have to say I found the performance to be honestly powerful in it's most emotional moments. That scene where V first learns that the chip is killing him is heartbreaking, as you can hear this ostensibly tough-as-nails street-smart merc beginning to crumble in the face of his impending mortality. It's his ability to sell the razor-sharp thug and the scared lost soul without losing the thread of V that made me had me totally mesmerised during his prominent scenes. Gavin Drea elevated this role with his work.
As the story progresses the narrative presents one of those false junctions that Grand Theft Auto popularised back in it's 3D era. Three distinct paths of questline to follow that all, ultimately, have to be explored before the story can progress. A false choice, if you will. But at least these three questlines play out like small contained stories on their own with self contained narratives, branching side characters who can blossom into strong relationships and even romances if you wish, and some pretty exciting set-piece moments to round them out. Of course, the 'Barge' questline is the most impressive, with hands down the best boss fight in the game near it's conclusion. That fight had everything, build-up, speed, versatile challenge and a venue to die for- highlight of the game right there!
It's in the final act that agency and choice returns to the player. All roads lead to the same funnel from which the choices you made and relationships you've formed will come to play in the form of quite distinct and explosive finales in the race to save your life. Honestly, I was a little shocked by how quickly this final part of the story came upon me. It seemed the story had just started to open up before I was being told to meet my fate and The Embers and getting told to wrap up all of my loose-ends- not that I think the story is horrifically short so to speak, just that the second act really could have used more meat on it's bones to make the whole story feel more full-bodied. As it is I feel the game has a supremely strong intro and a powerful conclusion, with a bit of an aimless middle with glittering moments that shone here and there. There's just no unified purpose in the second act beyond 'following leads', most of which don't really push the needle of the plot further than a small inch, the last of which drags you all the way there. It's not the most satisfying way to lay out a narrative and I suspect it's probably not what CDPR originally planned for. (The Witcher 3 shows they typically know better when it comes to plot composition.)
Luckily what the main plot lacks in, the increadibly fleshed out various character questlines make up in droves. If the side quests lines are sparkling gems, than the character questlines are flawless uncut jewels. Huge and completely contained narratives that each brim with character progression, pathos and set-piece scenes you'll remember. A few of which can prove important enough to change the prospects of whatever ending your hurtling towards. These character quests are tied to strong relationships you find throughout your journey, friends or lovers from various walks of life providing a full perspective of just about every angle of Night City life- and though not all of them have the potential to tie back into the narrative, they all have satisfying conclusions that wrap up their arcs and give you a better understanding of yours and Johnny's journey by perspective.
Now it's only fair, after talking so much about companions, that I focus on the man himself: Johnny Silverhand. Brought to life by Keanu Reeves; Johnny is the perfect encapsulation of meeting an arsehole celebrity who turns out to be more than the persona implied. I cannot understate how perfectly I think this team did writing and performing the personality of Johnny Silverhand to make him a character worth spending the entire breadth of the story around. A shadow of yourself but also a distinct entity, Johnny is like the devil on your shoulder commenting on your choices, critiquing your allegiances and sometimes even taking over the wheel when he feels he's needed. Having him in your head you would expect to have a one way easy street into his inner-most soul, but CDPR knew to make him so much interesting than that.
Johnny is his own personality even within your head. All the ego and narcissism and pomp still radiates out of the perception he wears, a mask so finely crafted it's become who he is- unravelling the actual human beneath that takes time and shared introspection- companionship wrought through conflict and contest. Moments simply talking with Johnny about his thoughts on old believers in SAMURAI, and those prying into his history serving in the corporate war- those are cracks in the armour Johnny's soul is made out of. But then at the same time, Johnny isn't just some book to be read. He's his own person with personality, desires and decades old vendettas. Sometimes it's impossible to distinguish between moments when Johnny is being truly vulnerable with you, and when he's trying to radicalise you into being the same self-destructive anti-corporate soldier he was in life. Maybe he doesn't even know himself. The special moment when you realise you no longer know where V ends and Johnny begins marks the point where you have to take off your hat for Keanu Reeves for doing an incredible job losing himself in the complex and rich role of Johnny Silverhand. I was foolish enough to consider the man just another 'Celebrity casting' when I saw his name: he proved me wrong soundly with his work. Reeves whipped up and summoned the spirit of Silverhand right off the page and brought gaming one of it's most lovably narcissistic anti-heroes ever.
In it's endings Cyberpunk 2077 has quite a fair share of choice, and even though the actual ending acts themselves all funnel towards roughly the same decision lane, the actual disparate final missions themselves are all high octane and thrilling finales. Each decision and ending stays close to the same theme, feeding to an artistically pure message that survived through all the heavy monetary production and fingers from a thousand creatives. Experiencing a few of those endings reminded me of the human souls conjuring these narratives in the same way that some of my favourite games ever do. Now I don't want to over-bake the dessert here; I'm not calling these finales as emotionally rich and cathartic as a Persona finale or anything, but they were fitting. They fit the story being told and gave the send-off we needed them too. They give V, and the player, one last chance to seize their destiny; and that's as far as this game needed to go.
Now I've put it off for a bit but now I should ask the big question: is the game still buggy? Yes, yes and triple yes. Cars still fall through floors, police never seem to show up, faces sometimes stop animating in cars, sometimes my arms become glued to my feet. There's no first person option to look through my rear view mirror (Maybe that would be fixed with Ray Tracing- I don't know, my computer wouldn't even dream of running that), there's no route on your map when racing, there's no goodbye option in conversations- oh, and the increadibly frustrating 'Can't save at this time' bug is still alive and well. But the game runs. That last one is important because the more available this game has become over the years, the more it has been able to nurture that battered reputation and it should be nurtured; because the game they was a great one. It wasn't the one they sold it as, and it wasn't even the game they set out to make, but as the game they ended up with, it's still something to be proud of.
Summary
This has been an important blog for me, a chance to release a grudge I've been holding around for years by getting my hands on the game that aggrieved and, despite it's flaws, forgiving it. Playing the game for myself to completion, seeing all the things they got right against what they got wrong, it's clear that CDPR are still masters of their craft and that were just dealt a bad hand they made the most of. The composition of the world, the authenticity of the emotional themes, the complex life within the script and the blood, sweat and tears put into the performances; Cyberpunk 2077 is an achievement of collaboration which ran afoul when the time came to put it all together. But do the positives outweigh the still present shortcomings? That depends on what you want to see. If you're still holding out hope for the Cyberpunk 2077 we were promised, then nothing this game does will get through to you. If you instead take the game for what it is and judge it by it's merits, then I'd go so far as to call this game a flawed but earnest masterpiece. I will go ahead and recommend Cyberpunk 2077, amazingly, and use the powers invested in me by my arbitrary review system to award the game a respectable -A Grade. I come away from this game with the relief of a man who held in a breath for two years, finally tasting the air and liking the sensation as it tickles on his nose. I like the heart of Cyberpunk, and one day I'd love to see it beating in the body it was built for.
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