And I am going to brag!
For the past few years it has felt like Game Development trends had been fighting against common sense in one key way that was making every game just that little bit worse, namely that every game and their mother wanted desperately to be an RPG without the slightest clue of what that even means. It's gotten to such a point that even Todd Howard called in out in an recent interview, albeit in a typically non-confrontation manner, "I can't look at a game that doesn't have XP or levelling", and just take a look at this year's slate for a minute. Forspoken- yep. Diablo 4- obviously. Street Fighter 6- somehow yes. Armored Core- predictably, yes. Hogwarts Legacy- you betcha! Atomic Heart- Unfortunately yes. Forza Motorsport- again, somehow yes. I appreciate an RPG as much as the next guy, don't get me wrong, but there has to be a design faux pas against throwing in systems because 'everyone else does it, so we should to!' Shouldn't there?
And no franchise has highlighted this worse than Assassin's Creed in it's recent foray into RPG mechanics, diluting a traditionally neat and trim style game into a hundred hour slog of rank mediocrity that has burned up player base goodwill more and more with each outing. At the point of today it's hard to say whether Mirage was meant as a nostalgia trip for players or an olive branch for themselves to escape the accusations of having lost all grip on their design prowess. These games destroyed their core gameplay philosophies to create limp action RPGs with paper thin narratives which stretch so tightly you can see the bone structure poking out- and as every other game under the sun does- they have levelled gear because ARPGs have of course poisoned the well too.
Now it bears mentioning that levelled gear does have a decent place within the world of MMO's and ARPGs. Hunting for the right piece of gear that is affixed with the correct subfixes which apply to a certain build are symptoms of games that feature wild and varied build varieties, which is essential for these types of games that are designed to cater to various gameplay fantasies and replay potential. However they carry their own baggage as well, turning inventory management into a core gameplay vertical that has to be managed and worked around to feel fun and non-obtrusive to a player, not to mention the various rules around creating worthwhile loot and subfixes for players to hunt down. The thing that gets me is that all these rules are so situational and tied staunchly to the parent genre, that it's insane how this systems in particular managed to leak out to games that have no clue how to use them!
Cyberpunk was one such game for a long time, featuring a vast supply of fantastically well designed and interesting effect weapons that no one could use because they got out levelled within thirty minutes of gameplay! By the endgame everyone is using the exact same weapons with the exact same perks because creativity does a dive out the window when combat efficiency is on the line. Slap that on top of the sponginess of Cyberpunk enemies necessitating build optimisation, and well done CDPR- you managed to ship with a system that totally invalidated all the design work that went into creating 95% of the game's arsenal. All that fretting over the design philosophies of gun manufacturers in the Dark Future? You might as well have done a Diablo 4 and put so little thought into low level equipment that you fundamentally mislabel every basic sword shape in the game. (Still can't believe Blizzard did that. Shocking.)
With the 2.0 update CDPR did the right thing and got rid of every single level gate in the game, removing levelled weapons, levelled enemies and even cutting armour stats largely out of clothing and placing it more into Cyberwear instead. And with it comes a total revolution to the way that people play the game. Now there's no need to go chasing after every weapon drop praying that its damage output is okay, you can rock anything you have in your stash that feels right. Do you like that assault rifle which fires Smart-round poison bullets? How about that electric shot charge shotgun? Silenced Pistol that crits when used during stealth cloaking? Use anything your little heart desires because every single weapon is now viable and usable by literally anyone and you no longer have to build a character to be obscenely proficient with a single type of weapon in order to have any hope of snuffing an enemy with it! Isn't that just novel!
Taking the challenge of combat out of just 'number topping' has allowed for the actual mechanics built into the many boss fights that Cyberpunk boasts to come out to play. Cyberpsychos are actually a lot of fun to figure out when they don't get caught into a death stun lock because your gun does 20% crit damage on headshots after you outlevelled them. Instead having to keep an eye on stamina drain per shot (even if I'm not exactly clear on what the penalty is for shooting with drained stamina) and managing your limited health pack charges makes for more of a genuine flow to sustained battles where ducking for cover is no longer useless behaviour. And mad props for making the AI capable of healing themselves with stims as well! 90% of RPGs wouldn't dream of doing that, but it really helps solidify the illusion of the level playing field.
As suspected, these giant overhauls to the way the game functions has help make Cyberpunk 2077 shine as a genuinely great shooter which balances it's build variety and RPG heart deftly into a fantastic FPS framework. Perhaps it's still devoid of those finer points of a dedicated shooter like Call of Duty or Battlefield, but honestly I prefer the space to feel endlessly open in my approaches over a pin-perfect snappiness to ADS and TTK, if that's really the tradeoff we're talking about here. I honestly think Cyberpunk is one of the actual best shooters on the market and some of Phantom Liberty's new boss encounters, both in the main story and through the more involved Gig structure of the expansion, solidify that brilliance in crystal amber.
RPG mechanics are a wonderful way to add progression into a video game, but they aren't the only way and sometimes aren't even the best ways. Think back to the Assassin's Creed of yore and tell me which moment felt the best- unlocking and slotting the ability to teleport assassinated with your spear in Assassin's Creed Odyssey, or delivering blueprints to Da Vinci and having him painstakingly craft a new hidden pistol attachment as part of the natural story progression? Oftentimes the RPG levelling tables are used as a way-out of tying meaningful progression into the narrative at the opportune moments to highlight character growth, and Cyberpunk's two faces present this beautifully. Leave the RPging to the RPGs.
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