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Notes -
I got interested in the Cyberpunk setting a while ago, trawling through the various TTRPG books(and good lord, the Cyberpunk v3.0 books are hilarious to read). Through some odd happenstance soon afterwards, Cyberpunk 2077 went on sale(with the DLC), so I decided to bite the bullet and grab it.
I never had any real dog in that fight, but I was well aware of 2077's rough, bug-laden start, but I was told that the story was so good it gave enough traction for Project RED to finalize and polish things off, getting it into a usable state. So when I finally got to play the damn thing, the first thing that came to mind was 'How the hell did people think this story was good?'
2077 feels schizoprenic - a sandbox game that despretely wants to be a fixed-charachter style single-player game a la the Witcher, but gives you so many illusions of choice you're fooled into thinking you're playing a customizable sandbox - until you get to the point that the polish wears off and you realize all those pretty choices are just meaningless and all those customization options are painfully superfluous. Make your charachter look any way you want them to... except the entire game is almost always in first person. Slot in all the augments... except you're still extremely limited in choices and have to pick and choose. Fuck, I can't even go full chrome - yes, as a matter of fact, I do want to play as fucking Adam Smasher, the flesh is weak, we will be going full Adeptus Mechanicus as I carry around a minigun better suited to a fixed-mounted technical.
Even the story itself is fairly limp-wristed. It's just yet another paint-by-numbers 'learning to accept death' style story that's neither interesting or innovative. The only way you can potentially escape is just going the Soulkiller route and escaping into the net with Alt, but that involves you actually trusting her and oh BOY is that a big ask given what she mentions what'll happen to all the other uploads in Arasaka's servers. (Don't get me started on Soulkiller, every time I consider that fucking thing I damn near loose my mind on the implications thereof.)
Weirdly enough, I only felt that 2077 came into it's own was, yes, with the DLC. Phantom Liberty really felt like the game devs finally 'got it' in terms of storytelling and directing, with every new charachter you encounter being an absolute banger in terms of writing. Forget the two boring romantic options, let me get with Songbird, instead. I can't lie - the intro quest where we first meet her was damn near chef's kiss in perfection, if only for the fact that we finally got the option to tell Johnny to fuck off for once and put him in a goddamn box. Thank you, So Mi, I will pull your boss's ass out of the fire for that alone.
Maybe mods could help save the game in terms of actual gameplay, but, annoyingly enough, mods were severely hit and miss for me in terms of actually working. I'm no virgin to the modding scene, but getting them to work seemed to be an utter crap shoot, much to my annoyance.
So, yeah. Color me one of those that are very, very confused that 2077 got the reception it did or managed to hang on as long as it has. Maybe Keanu Reeves star power really is that good, I dunno.
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