Cyberpunk 2077 review

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. 

Side quests are a large part of the CDPR identity ever since The Witcher 3 blew practically every other RPG out of the water with the quality of every one of it's side missions; and I'm happy to say that Cyberpunk 2077 continues that legacy and then some. There isn't a single throw-away side quest, each has character and payoff at the least or reoccurring chains of quests at the best. Seriously, some of these quests were so good that I found myself thinking back on characters a week later and wondering whatever happened to them. I loved the criminal with the Jesus Complex, and wanted to know more about how the whole thing effected Rachel Casich, or how my choice at the end of the Peralez questline changed their fates, or even what Claire got up to once our races were over. In some ways it's really frustrating that we never seem to leave these characters with everything said and done that needed to be done, but in other ways I can tell that's kind of the point of the story. Night City is this boiling cauldron of activity writhe with all these people trying to either whether the flames or hop out and run- it's totally natural in a world like that to brush by people on their own journeys, catching just a glimpse before their swallowed up by the hustle of the City that Never Sleeps. (Wait, isn't that New York? You get what I mean!)

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.

The second chance

 Sweet dreams are made of these...

"You only get one chance to make a first impression"; that's how the saying goes, doesn't it? One shot to seize everything you ever wanted and all of that nonsense, implying you know what it is that you wanted beforehand, which is an expression that just exemplifies the absolute rarity of this concept that we call 'Second Chances'. Ask your daily person walking the street and they'll probably tell you, if they're speaking from the heart and not just trying to be straight shooter, that second chances don't exist and cannot in the world as we made it. A world of 'self empowerment' and 'seize what you want' revolves around us, with little pity for those that don't slide into that hyper-specific model; you make a mistake and that world just moves on past you and doesn't so much as blink as you slip between the cracks. And that is exactly what Cyberpunk did when it launched, it slipped between the cracks... after scouring a stupid amount of initial sales but still, it should have been more.

The Cyberpunk we were sold was a literal shoe in for 'game of the year'; people were joking about how relieved every game within the same year as their initial announcement must have been when CDPR first delayed the release date, knowing that would be the only way their marketing money wouldn't go to total waste and they might even get an award. I feel physical and spiritual pain whenever I think about the oodles of artists from all walks that we got to see express their exuberance about being involved in the project, to think how it all panned out just makes my heart sink. There's nothing more depressing than that feeling of hope before the disappointment. And even today it sort of feels like their vast efforts were squandered. But not, it would seem, at the cost of Cyberpunk's life. Because lookie there; Cyberpunk has seen a massive resurgence in popularity to purely ridiculous levels just as it was approaching the end of it's support cycle thanks to Edgerunners.

The Edgerunners Anime was announced all the way back during the lead-up to the main game, but by then the thing was so early in development it was clear we shouldn't really be bating our breath for something we might not have seen for months to years yet. (It turned out to be years.) The buzz was very real for the show even in that first reveal, however, which is probably indicative of the huge cross over between fans of games like Cyberpunk, high action punky Role Playing style games, and Shonen Anime lovers. An intersection which has influenced gaming before, I might add, such as inspiring the whole conceptual style of 'Star Wars: The Force Unleashed'. (Yep, Starkiller is an Anime protagonist. Makes sense when you think about it.) Personally I was just in it for the game and anything outside of that was a non-entity to my tunnel-vision; which makes oh so deliciously ironic that now, in 2022; that Anime might just be the most consistently quality thing to come out of the 2077 franchise.

I say 'might' because currently I'm only three episodes in, but people say the series doesn't get any worse from here and I'm inclined to believe them. The visual style of the animation is just delightful, being able to actually place a lot of the scenes geographically thanks to familiarity with the world adds a layer of tangibility to connect the scene with the audience and the side characters are just golden. I mean, one of the reasons I wasn't initially interested even when the promos started showing was because David came across as your prototypical Anime kid with a chip on his shoulder and Alice looked like your punky pixie dream girl. And... yeah, that's pretty much how the show is characterising them so far, but they weave in the tapestry of this fallen and disgraced dystopia so well that you accept their clichés for what they are.

The clichés hardly hurt anything when the Anime looks so beautiful in motion, Good lord you can tell the amount of love and sweat that went into capturing that frenetic energy in every cell of action keeping things feeling fast and loose without losing those solid lines needed to hold the show down for slower and more sombre moments. I also adore the dialogue writing. Not so much in it's content, but in it's style. In dripping in that eighties Cyberpunk lingo which is so distinct from modern language that it's garish, but when provided with such confident consistency you come to buy it as this alternate period's colloquialisms. That can really make a world like this come to life in front of you, just from the use of words like 'Eddies', 'Choom' 'Flatlining' and all that wonderfully colourful intercultural mash-up dialogue. I love it. And apparently my feelings aren't exactly unique considering the near-universal praise that the anime has received.

And with that praise came something very special; a renewal of Interest from the Internet public that good-old CDPR could never have predicted. Cyberpunk 2077 started flying off shelves again and scoring player count numbers in the millions (As in 'over a single million concurrent players' to be precise) as people turned around and finally came around to explore the game they missed because it wasn't worth the asking price. (Okay, maybe that's a little mean. It was probably worth it's asking price but not just to the crowd they originally tried to pawn it to.) Now again, I have been following Cyberpunk very closely and it's still not really the vision we were promised, but it's at least increadibly playable in the modern age, and that has to be worth something. Again Cyberpunk has always been a game that is good, maybe even great in it's best parts, and an 8/10 ain't nothing to scoff at.

This all came so very suddenly that one has to wonder whether or not CDPR has taken to heart the sudden change in fortunes to revise their plan to essentially kill Cyberpunk support before their original vision can be reached. No I don't mean the original pipe dream they sold us on, that game is probably half a decade away and going to be made by a completely different studio who will spend way too much on it and go bankrupt as a result; I'm talking about the quiet promise of matching The Witcher 3's two DLCs. One good and the other game changing. We're getting the allotted 'good' DLC, but the game changer has been put on ice. Although maybe now that Cyberpunk is on the rise again? Unfortunately video game Journalist Paul Tassi has already weighed in on this with his annoying 'logic' and 'facts' to remind us all that games under companies like this are planned out extensively in advance, and CDPR already resigned themselves to moving on so hard that they're literally leaving their proprietary game engine behind after the release of this upcoming DLC. There's not really any coming back from that unfortunately. (Again, unless they totally remake Cyberpunk 2077 from the ground-up in the new engine just to start creating content for it again on that engine.. Which I find doubtful...)

But regardless, it's just nice to see that Cyberpunk 2077 won't quite be going down and out with that totally bitter taste in the gums that it has maintained for quite so long now. Through update after update of 'It's still not quite there yet', and 'its nice but...'  There's a certain level of relief we can all take solace in from the rush of actual goodwill the game is amassing before it sails off into the sunset. At least this means that CDPR will have some recourse to make a Cyberpunk sequel in the future, even if not much of one after all of this mess. I hope they get the chance to come back and bring that multiplayer metagame to life and everything their crazy dreams once bred in their heads; because I've said it before and I'll say it again: that game they thought they had made sounds like a real banger.

Is it time to forgive CD Projekt Red?

 Ooh, the introspective angle!

Despite my gentle policing of myself, I've found myself with Cyberpunk's name in my mouth much more often than I'm rightly comfortable with, and it's getting to the point where I'm actually following CDPR's shenanigans again. Their patches, their streams, their gambles and gambols; their insistence, even whilst sitting in the kitchen of a house completely engulfed in flames, that 'everything is fine'. It's admirable, honestly. I wish I had that level of confidence in anything that I make or do. And whilst I do agree that their game is certainly in a better place than it was at launch, (it'd be mighty hard for that not to be the case) one has to wonder where exactly they're going with all this. Because CDPR are going somewhere, they've made it abundantly clear how Cyberpunk's slipup is not the end of the story and that they're committed to fixing it before moving onto The Witcher 4, or whatever the next big game ends up being; but I just can't figure out what the team need to do to consider Cyberpunk's state 'adequate'.

I say this because CDPR have willingly adopted the lofty responsibility of calling the performance of Cyberpunk essential to their reputation, which is fair. But we already know that the problems with the game were more than bug related, they were over-promise related, so Cyberpunk is never going to become the game that they promised because they've just not got the resources to make that game. So if that's the case, what are they sticking around for? I'm genuinely confused why they haven't moved onto to just getting out the DLCs and quickly moving on to greener pastures, because until they do it seems like they're waging an unwinnable war. But whilst I don't understand it, I respect it, enough to start a discussion when I see a Cyberpunk fan ask, as they often do, if it's not high time we all swallow our pride and forgive CDPR for everything they've done.

I'm not kidding, there was a real reader editorial drummed up recently where someone was arguing that CD have run the gambit, taken their punishment, and should now be given the right to re-enter society judgement-free. I'm was intrigued so I read the article, and the arguments presented were- well, let me just ask you what you think. This individual acknowledged the state of the game at launch, which was unacceptable, and then accounted the many bug-squashing patches that have gone so far as to make the game playable on last gen consoles. I mean, it looks terrible on those platforms thanks to the many necessary downgrades required to hit an acceptable framerate, but the man's right! He seemed to imply from this that the constant criticism has since grown outdated, and even offered the fact that what CDPR did with their launch was nowhere near as bad as what other companies like EA do anyway. (A point which could be argued is entirely moot here, but he made it) Thus we have a fan who is satisfied with the current product, as is their right, and who is wondering why everyone else can't be too.

From such a perspective, the plea is compelling. Afterall, Cyberpunk is still an above average first person adventure game that takes everything that Farcry is doing with their checklist open worlds and really perfects that formula down to a tee. Fixing the bugs makes that game more accessible to players, so why shouldn't they be forgiven? Heck, how long can we hold a grudge against a company for the decision to release this game cripplingly early, even when that likely comes from the offices of the higher ups? I mean, CDPR were once the industries' heroes, weren't they? Who's to say that can't reclaim that position again after their time shutting up and making reparations for the audience? Well, I will say for one that I am still not happy, and I'd imagine a lot of others still aren't either, and that is because as I indicated earlier; this argument misses the point entirely.

Although to be fair that isn't the fault of the person who wrote this article. They've found their enjoyment in this game, which is great, and they likely never understood what all the outrage was about and merely watched the online after-launch coverage to be clued in. The fault really lies at the blame of all the compilation creators who, rather reductively, shrunk down their coverage of Cyberpunk's issues into it's bugs. Yet then again I think this was understandable. Afterall, things not working properly is the easiest to identify and most visible indication of a rushed and unpolished product; but it does obfuscate the real problems lying at the heart of the spinning vortex. Even in an ideal near future wherein every Cyberpunk bug has been squashed and eliminated; we're still left with a final game that lacks the breadth and depth to meet the demands the team themselves knowingly inspired with endless spineless promises, as well as the demands of the very game we've ended up with. Like skin stretched over a figure too large, the body of Cyberpunk is ill-fitted and mechanically ugly.

I remember when Cyberpunk first dropped that trailer with it's extensive mission deepdive that ended with the words "And that was just one mission", before pointedly leading fans to believe we'd see that sort of choice and agency throughout the entire campaign. (You don't) The emphasis that was laid onto the character origins which inspired three separate vignettes during the marketing stage to emphasise their distinct approach, only for launch to reveal that these origins merely affected the prologue and pretty much nothing of the game's main body. The bold claims about how this was "Next generation of Open world game" coupled with shots of the player riding rollercoasters, drinking at bars and racing; painting the image of some sort of evolved world simulation activities. Cleverly hiding the fact that bars can only be enjoyed in story missions and the roller coaster is an odd standout of being one of the only world attractions you can actually interact with. But the racing is at least real. You wanna race? Cyberpunk has you covered.

The impression that those familiar with these sorts of games was left with, an impression encouraged at every level of marketing and even by individual comments from key members of staff, was that this game was Deus Ex in an open world setting. That incredible undertaking that Eidos Montreal have been unable to attempt for all these years? Yeah, CDPR managed it on their first attempt in a fraction of the time. Heck, about the time of the last major chunk of unnarrated gameplay, the Deus Ex twitter even acknowledged the similarities by strategically announcing a sale for the modern Deus Ex games, citing the triggering incident with a vague 'while you wait'-type tongue-in-cheek message. So when it comes to asking when CDPR are going to be in the clear for their screw up, my response is; "When they deliver the game they wasted the last half decade promoting to us. Cause what we got, ain't it."

But ultimately that is just the line in the sand that I've drawn for myself. The path to forgiveness that my own stubbornness has lain before CDPR. And it should perhaps tell you something about myself to note that I fully believe that task to be impossible for the team, because I have no faith in their ability to live up to their promises. You, however, might favour the game they've built with more fondness, and perhaps even have a mind for trusting these beleaguered developers once more. Whatever you do, however, I implore you don't feel sorry for the guys who managed to completely cover development costs through lie-driven pre-orders alone; they really don't need any tears shed on their behalf.

CDPR brings Cyberpunk to real life!

 Ain't corporate corruption just grand?

You can say a lot about CD Projekt Red and the way that the screwed up Cyberpunk and in doing so did a major disservice not just to the game in question but to the genre, all the early reviewers they roped into selling their lies, and the plethora of musical artists which would have made this game a cross-platform epic; but they still can turn around and prove that they do understand Cyberpunk. At least as a concept. Because beneath all the pomp, fast cars, and spiky haircuts; Cyberpunk is about dystopia caused by greed, corruption and the stifling of the individual in favour of corporate supremacy; and CDPR sure know a thing or two about corporate supremacy, now don't they? Of course, I say this in response to the recent news that CDPR Executives have managed to net themselves huge bonuses in the wake of the Cyberpunk fiasco despite, you know, it being a total failure on all fronts except for sales. (I mean, it still was a total failure in sales potential, but the raw numbers still manage to thrash practically every other game on the market so who really cares) Showing very clearly to anyone who listens to CDPR's hogwash about 'We made a mistake' and 'we learnt our lessons' the absolute unspoken truth behind everting: 'We managed to get out pocket books full off of your expense and that's all that matters.'

Now if I'm to play Devil's Advocate, and that's my favourite game to play so I absolutely will, this is pretty par for the course and not against the grain if we're being really honest. Exec bonuses are scheduled in after hitting certain sales landmarks and if there's one thing we've learnt about the Cyberpunk performance train it's that despite the terrible reception, the refunds and getting pulled off of the Playstation store; (It's still off, by the way) the game managed to score a hefty payday for the company. This was, of course, due in part to the fact that the game managed to break-even before it was actually released through pre-orders, which is both crazy and sad. People are still falling for preorders, and I might have been one of them if I wasn't too poor to so much as consider pre-ordering. So all in all I suppose that makes Cyberpunk a success, no? And successes must be rewarded; hence the Exec bonuses. But it's just, how do you say; a really bad optic.

I don't need to tell you that the reviews, the mockery, the refunds, and the pulling from the Playstation store, wasn't just idle trips on the road to success; these are major issues and complications that are the direct result of the very execs who are lining their pockets right now. I know that usually I don't endorse  the separation between employees and management when it comes to praise and criticism, reasoning that theirs is a symbiotic relationship so if one side becomes deserving than the other does too, but for this case in particular we've pretty much received confirmation that management was the sole issue behind the disasters of this launch. They kept upping the ante for promising what the studio would deliver despite the studio in question not having even nearly the scope to live up to it, and then rushed them to complete it in a ludicrous timescale whilst spinning around on their heels and flashing baby-doll eyes at the public. This is pretty much the same crap they conducted during development of 'The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt', but that game actually worked out so they didn't need to reflect on their wrongdoings and just went on the philosophy of "That's how we do things around here. Sorry if you're too baby to understand that!" (I'm being hyperbolic but that is pretty much the soul of their statement when addressed about their bad worker culture before.)

But do you want to know why accepting these bonuses is really bad? Public reception is a factor, but clearly the higher ups over in CDPR can't care about that because if they did it would have effected the way they carry themselves a lot more than it has over the months. No, they know they've burned all roads with the public and have retreated into a 'it doesn't matter because we still win' mentality. What this really shows is a poor sense of leadership in a time of genuine crisis for the company. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know what the consequence of a bad game is; your next title will inevitably underperform because customers are nothing if not vindictive. (A trait I'm rather proud of for our side of the industry, to be honest) This could have been a moment of solidarity, to prove to the employees that management owns up to their mistakes and that which hurts them also hurts management. (Something that Nintendo famously did after the Wii-U fiasco) But they didn't, so they don't. Management clearly thinks themselves fully deserving for their performance and thus is lost another teachable moment, CDPR really isn't going to earn back their reputation, are they?

Maybe I'm the only one who really cares about all this nonsense, the only one who bemoans how years of goodwill has been trampled upon, but I can't help it after honestly looking up to CDPR and what they stood for. Making decisions for the player, prioritising ensuring the consumer is happy in the knowledge how that will benefit them in the long run through reciprocation, it was really revolutionary stuff in an industry as detached and 'us vs them' as this one. And whatsmore I guess it really did work out for them, because it was exactly that goodwill which won Cyberpunk 2077 a spot on the year's bestseller list despite failing to live up to pretty much every single promise it made. (And being broken. That bit too.) I wonder if any other studio will step up to fill that gap? Nah, they'll probably look at all this and rightly conclude it's not worth the backlash. Professional distance is best for everyone, unfortunately.

And at the centre of this is a game built up to be a messiah. One which, it's slowly becoming apparent, was never really worthy of it's fanfare. You may have seen that I've been keeping up with the updates, and thus I've seen the way that every 'fix' has been largely underwhelming or just straight non-functional. (Apart from the fixes to the console versions of the game. Those are actually making that side of the game playable, bit by bit.) Most annoyingly of which being the police fix, which I even said at the time seemed like a stupid idea without a complete reworking. Well guess what, the new 'fix' doesn't even work half the time and when it does the experience isn't all that different anyway. A crime is committed and the police spawn a few feet away from you; it's pathetically rudimentary for an industry that's been doing these sorts of systems for over a decade. (Saints Row, Watch_dogs, GTA) 

This may just be a message, to anyone who's listening, that Cybperunk won't ever be the game you want it to be. The promises and pleading from the studio saying "Don't worry, we learnt our lesson!" and "We can fix it!" was always playing to the optimism in our hearts rather than the rational truth of the game itself, but it's coming about time to face facts: Cyberpunk 2077 was a failure of execution. Even in a future where all the bugs are fixed (which is becoming questionable now that the team have announced their plans to move onto making new content already) there will still be the formulaic and consequence-light story, the just-barely-not-interesting-enough protagonist, the gilded but shockingly uninteractive worldspace, just the absence of a complete heart beating beneath this game. Fragments of a heart exist, which is the most maddening part of it all, but eventually you just have to let go and accept the disappointment. As sad as that even is to have to say.

For me the most terrifying part of all this, and I've already seen the tremblings, is the perception that this game has marked the end of the Cyberpunk genre. Ballooning it to the stratosphere in relevance and then burning it up in the re-entry. That's an idea that is almost bookmarked by this latest action as if to say 'yeah, all that Cyberpunk represents is depthless posturing because beneath it all, there's naught but the cynical ticking of the corporate clock. Rigid and corrupt mechanical hands; the rulers of everything' (Which, in a backwards way, actually does represent the Cyberpunk ethos rather well) But damn you, I refuse to let Cyberpunk die as a genre because I still need my Deus Ex 3! No one better dare announce Cyberpunk a dead genre whilst my boi Adam Jensen is still missing-in-action, that man is an American hero! (Maybe for the next Deus Ex Adam can infiltrate and expose the conspiracy that is CDPR's public image; that'd be pretty cool...)

Cyberpunk 2077 is out

 It time to burn this city down

At the time of this blog being published, Cyberpunk 2077 will officially be out in a worldwide release that promises to break at least a few records due to the anticipation around it. (Though I suspect that those records will have stipulations like "Roleplaying game", "Sci-fi title" and "In the month of December" attached to them.) In fact, for some Cyberpunk will have already been out for around 24 hours, and they'll probably never read this here blog because they're already diving into the city of broken dreams and carving their bloody swathe through it's denizens. And on that day I'll be fully honest with you all, I have no idea what I'll really do with myself. It's like this great relief mired by this miasma of fear, because I don't really know how to react when confronted with the prospect of literally nothing to look forward to. But all that is a bridge one must cross when it comes, for now all I want to do is stoke the flames of anticipation one last time as the wait for this title finally slows to a stop. (And for the sake of the 'no-one' who cares, this was written on Friday the 4th. So last week.)

I've been a fan of roleplaying games for as far back as the days of the PS2, and I'd like to think that a big part of that comes from the promise of the genre. Perhaps you've hung around here before, in which case you'll know that I'm big on escapism, but even before I sought that like the junkie that I am, there was a certain allure to the prospect of living in a world that wasn't your own. Most games that I played at the time served as sort of adventures like you'd see in the movies; short contained bursts of action neatly capped off at the end with a resolution and then it was all over. RPGs somehow felt much more involved then that, promising a world to reside in, characters to stake yourself behind, personalities to embody, and even directions to guide the narrative itself. That's right, I was drawn into the whole 'actions have consequences' argument. (The latter of which is still something I never think has been adequately and exhaustively explored in a single game) 

And as I recently shared, despite living up to all that expectation which I've formed around what an RPG game should be, Cyberpunk was not on my radar at all when it was first announced. To be entirely honest, I was still stuck on that cliffhanger ending for 'The Witcher 2: Assassin of Kings', a game which was already a couple of years old when I played it, so I saw any other project taken on by this indie game developer as a huge distraction. I didn't care about a whole new world with a title as nondescript as 'Cyberpunk', I wanted to know what became of Temeria once the Black Ones invaded! (Ironically, The Witcher 3 would eventually come out and completely skip past that invasion, then relegate all the political intrigue surrounding that event to an easily missed side quest. so I got screwed either way.) But things changed around once the game, which it feels all the world apart from me was waiting for, literally forced itself in front of my eyes during a Microsoft E3 conference. You know, back when conferences still happened in rooms and people actually watched them. (What an alien concept...)

Now the table have completely flipped and I literally cannot function without my hope for this game, which may sound a little unhealthy and it absolutely is, but there's so much promise here I can't help myself. To be clear, much of my excitement is bound past what the game itself can offer, but what it means for the rest of the industry as an example and a validation, should it succeed. I mean, the wider industry is currently wrestling with a debate about whether or not to up the price of standard games another 10 units of your local currency, in order to match some imaginary hike of development costs and standards for their subpar AAA offerings, whilst Cyberpunk hops along as a game which promises to outstrip them all for 49.99. Do you understand how meaningful that is? The sort of message that sends? This will be a game devoid of predatory microtransactions and blood-from-a-stone policies which sink so many other huge titles, (Just look at every Looter-shooter ever) and should this game be the mega hit everyone says it's destined to be, that'll lend weight to the right side of the scales.

But of course, the actual game itself is just as exciting for me. I've never been the sort of person to automatically fall head over in heels for the Sci-fi space, in fact as my tastes grew I found myself more often drawn to fantasy, but even I cannot deny that a good Sci-fi game trumps just about everything else. Of course, Cyberpunk isn't technically science-fiction per se, but the the maturity and authenticity with which they've developed their dystopian look at the future of corporate America rings the same sort of emotional notes with me. I like seeing the sorts of world spaces that exaggerate some aspects to make us think on our own, and Cyberpunk looks to be dripping with that. If it isn't commentary on disparity between the rich and poor, it's the the ever creeping dominance of marketing into our psyches or how corporate bottom lines and lobbying has the tendency to effect more of our daily lives then it really should; Cyberpunk has, in it's marketing alone, touched on all of those themes with enough of a spotlight to be recognisable yet enough of a straight face that it remains ponderable. Which isn't to knock the more farcical way with which similarly themed games such as 'Outer Worlds' handle such topics, but I just have my preference to this style, personally. It rings more true.

On top of that lies the promise of a world that looks so real yet so fantastical that we all just want to be there! One of the first sci-fi worlds to really arrest me was something that my Father insisted I watch, and that was of course, Bladerunner. Now many things make that movie the masterpiece it is, but the just one those, the visual direction, alone stands apart as something truly astounding.  With that movie was born this vision soaked in a neon cityscape of towering monoliths and limitless industrialisation. Since then we've seen so many sci-fi worlds that try to touch upon and evolve that idea, and even some games that try to mimic or grow upon it, but Cyberpunk is the only one which seemed to wave all that away and just try to bring us there. I know it's a bit condescending to call Cyberpunk the Bladerunner videogame, but just look at Little China in Nightcity and tell me that those glittering holographic Koi fish don't encapsulate the very thematic soul of Ridley Scott's cult classic.

It doesn't even end at just the look either, even the gameplay appeals to me and so many others. Having the choice of playstyle revolve around the build of the character and who you want to make them feels like this inexplicable marriage of game design and narrative which brings the Immersive Sim to the open world better than it's ever been done before. (Which, I admit, is sort of a kick in the nuts to 'Watch Dogs: Legion's team given that they were credited by some with pioneering that same thing just a month prior. Not long to hold the crown, I guess.) I like the look of the weighty and expansive skill tree which seems to change things up to the point of severely altering playstyle depending on where you specialise, I love the ingenuity of the weapon design which looks to keep even simple lead-trading interesting, and I adore all the little details they've promised; such as the way that weapon animations evolve with the player's skill level to represent their growing mastery. Heck, I even like the look of that Photomode they unveiled. (Praise the sun!)

Unless something truly horrific has occurred, like the literal end of the world, you'll have access to all that right now and (Hopefully) be basking in the knowledge that the hype was, in fact, validated. And I'm pretty sure there's nothing that can go wrong now, I mean the street date has already been broken and folk are playing it, what else can the Devs do to hold the masses back? Although, I have heard that the game without the Day One patch is pretty buggy, so CDPR could, feasibly, hold us all hostage for a few more days whilst they work on things. (I gotta stop given them ideas!) I await my turn to explore a world of decadence spotted with poverty, progression balanced by regression and freedom surrounded by conformity. But enough rambling, why are you reading this? Go play the game!