Cyberpunk 2.0

 Anthem's dream

So here we are. After all these great many years mocking and prodding and laughing and weeping and being lightly gas-lit as to the quality of Cyberpunk original, we stand on the cusp of a game that CDPR can feel proud of. Okay, that's being a bit cattish- I actually think that from a narrative stand-point Cyberpunk is a genuinely fantastic experience and though great swathes of the narrative were ceded to the dulcet tones of Keanu Reeves' Johnny Silverhand- I loved exercising that story and thought Reeves did a fantastic job! Still, it's hard to swallow the game around as being anything more than the best faux-RPG ever made in a subgenre resplendent with Far Cry's and Assassin Creed's and all those other titles that try to walk the line between genuine gameplay systems and more standardised action gameplay. It failed to really went beyond just the narrow scope of story consequence or the small number of ways to interact with the glorious and fascinating Cyberpunk world beyond shooting holes in it- I just didn't really feel like a RPG character.

Cyberpunk's 2.0 update, to coincide with the release of their first and last DLC, seems to be on the way to solve that exact problem and in doing so I honestly find that promise to be more interesting than Phantom Liberty itself. I'll still probably pick up Phantom Liberty just to see how CDPR have managed to expand upon what I consider to be a fairly open-and-shut narrative, but the thing that's really going to bring me back are all these crazy overhauls to the very core of the game which, whilst not amending the woefully underutilised open world like I might hope, (They couldn't make a more immersive world for the life of them, huh.) still, at least, zap a dose of interest back into the prospect of playing the game in a different way again.

Back when I played Cyberpunk, I did find myself slipping into the rhythm of a playstyle suited to the way I was enjoying myself, specifically I was a quick-hack casual stealth enjoyer- but that more came about as a realisation of that game's itemisation, rather than a navigation of the painfully overstuffed and under built RPG tree. Cyberpunk's RPG tree is an ARPG-like nightmare of obtuse stat increases and actually intriguing stat upgrades locked behind upgrade paths you have to dig out with a magnifying glass and a fine tooth comb. Why are successive levels of item crafting all presented in separate nodes like this is a game of 'find the right stat to improve'? It's asinine, unspecific and it makes the process of levelling up feel more like a chore to navigate than an exciting boost in personal power.

I wasn't actually expecting CDPR to address this at all, particularly after that candid comment where the team tried to gaslight the entire gaming world into believing that the original release was actually totally fine and the tidal wave of negativity spawned from that most vacuous of foes 'The Haters'! But lo-and-behold- a totally reworked perk system that scraps stat increases in favour of new abilities and substantial change so that you can really build a... well- build. Finally, the prospect of starting again in the City of Dreams doesn't feel so daunting to consider now that I won't have to wait until level 30 midway through the game before I actually feel distinct somewhat. Genuinely the most exciting part of the entire update for me, right there.

Of course, the second most interesting change to the game comes in the introduction of car combat, a very surprising proposition given the rather stern declaration that the original game had perfectly serviceable car combat made around about the time of launch. (Fact check: The game featured a couple on-the-rails shooting sections that were so standard and lacking in depth that they couldn't even be called 'RPG action moments.') What we have in front of us are actual car combat scenes, with shooting from the windows of cars and car based weaponry where appropriate- it looks pretty cool! Of course, I wonder how much opportunity anyone will get to actually engage with these systems given that the main game rather purposefully featured no car combat outside of those scripted scenes. (Did they add in car combat moments retroactively or will this be unique to the new DLC district?)

And to match that the team are 'rehauling' the police system. Which is a marble-mouthed way of saying that they developed a police system for their crime game finally. The tweaks they made over the years did little to nothing for the game and personally I only met the Police a couple of times during a playthrough and both times they were more "Damn it, I can't save because of these annoying gnats that are shooting pebbles at me" then an actual factor to be considered in gameplay. Now we have an actual progressive police aggro system which is, fancy this, exactly like Grand Theft Auto! Higher 'heat' means more cops, eventually MaxTac come after you- (Which is cool. I don't even remember if MaxTac exist in the main game outside of that one cutscene from the intro.) and at the topmost level the team even teased 'minibosses'. (Whatever that shapes up as.)

Finally the Cyberware system is getting something of a reworking in order to make the act of embracing the transhuman question just that little bit more involved than it previously was. Which to remind everyone, just kind of shaped up as 'interact with the menu and select your new super power'! It's not quite clear the extent to which CDPR are going to go here, some have speculated about more visual repercussions for implant overloads and there's even going to be some sort of limiting system with limitbreak potential that sounds... peculiar to say the least. All I want is for Cyberware to do a little more than act exactly like 'ARPG gems' and I'll be happy. Because I didn't buy Cyberpunk to play an ARPG. I came to play Cyberpunk.

I like Cyberpunk 2077, and if the game had been left the way it was patched to be I would have considered to be a good game, not excellent, but certainly good. I feel like this might be CDPR's attempt to establish excellence back into their portfolio and in that pursuit I'm willing to give it the second chance. Too often I've seen grand statements from headline hungry articles that 'Cyberpunk is Back!' everytime CDPR so much as fix a typo in their captions, but this will be the real test to see whether or not cranking up the system requirements and rewriting the face of the game was enough to create an experience that at least feels like the game that CDPR pretended the base game was all those years ago. Even now that dream still bounces around my head at night, and even now I wonder if the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing us that miracles don't exist. We will see. Soon.