Been playing this game for weeks. I completed it and then started a new game. The game’s story is excellent, but it absolutely does not justify the tedium it makes you endure to experience it. In a 40 minute sitting, I’d spend the entire thing simply having characters dialogue at me. What’s the point of the open world then? Car chases are scripted so that you don’t even have to fire a single shot. The enemies will just eventually blow up. 70% of dialogue choices are just for roleplay and don’t change a thing or make extremely minor changes. The combat and shootouts are mid.
Act 1 is a chore to get through on replay. There are so many touches they could have added to make it interactive. The Flathead robot mission… why not let us pilot the bot in first-person to do all the tasks, like a stealth minigame? I can think of a few games that let you do something similar. Instead, it is 20 or more steps that are essentially “look at this object and wait.”
The best part of the game for me was the middle, where the plot becomes more elaborate, evocative and the relationships with Judy, Panam, Johnny etc develop. But even there the game was navigating me through a seedy open world in order to show me glorified cutscene after cutscene. Then shootouts that were really nothing special.
Witcher 3 was dialogue heavy, nuanced and compelling. It had tedium, but I never felt like the open world was superficial or that the tedium overshadowed the rest of the game. Side tasks like Gwent or contracts were fun and absorbing. The most boring expositional bit was using Witcher sense to explore, but even then at least you were interacting with your surroundings more, not just sitting there being talked at.
Did anyone else feel this way?
I have replayed it a bit and twice extensively but that is mainly because 2.0 changed the way the game works so much I started over.
Cyberpunk is a great game, it has a great story that is marvelous told. That is the games biggest strength and one of its biggest limitations too. Heavy story driven games like cyberpunk don’t mix very good with a open world with its many detractions and side quests. If a game has a strong story that will capture the player, making side quests and open world design a burden, or into something that gets ignored.
Logically viewed everything that V would do after having Jonny implanted in his/her brain should be laser focused on the task to learn more about it and to find a cure or solution. There should be no driving around and playing mommy or daddy for some freaked out cabs or other side quests. Yes, doing side quests could be explained as a way to get resources for the main tasks, but as those side quests are completely optional there is nothing really backing that explanation up.
So you either have to ignore a life threatening condition to play side quests or ignore that huge part of the game and fixate on the main quest.
Cyberpunk has no real “sandbox” moment because the open world really only opens up after you get the world largest cyber brain virus implanted deeply.
I mostly had fun, and felt the work they did to make Night City feel like a proper city, as opposed to the tiny village-sized “city” typical of open world games, really showed. (For example, the fact that people walking down the street had different ages, body types, and walking styles made it easy for me to forgive the occasional pair of NPC clones spawning next to each other.)
But yes, many of the activities/events offered by the game ended up seeming a bit pointless because their outcome was more or less predetermined.
Moreover, the RPG aspect of the game lacked depth, which seemed like a lot of wasted potential given that there were plenty of characters that could have been really interesting to get to know. Instead, the character development was nearly all Silverhand, nearly all the time, and I didn’t even have much influence over how that relationship developed.
Spoilers ahead:
What about Jackie? He was supposed to be my best friend, but I never had experiences with him to make me feel that way, and then he was gone in just a few scenes. What about Panam? She was so determined to make a difference in the lives of the people who mattered to her, yet she all but vanished once we bonded, after just a couple of missions. What about Judy?? Her personal mission-like encounter was really promising. We supposedly fell in love and were planning to leave the city together, yet for the rest of the game, we had no interaction but “dates” consisting of the same half-dozen lines of dialogue and two or three brief animations, repeated over and over again. I’m sure there are more examples, but I think I’ve made my point.
I think the biggest disappointment for me was the ending, though. And the other ending that I got by reloading and picking different options, and then the third ending, and the fourth. They all felt like such empty let-downs that I went online to read about the rest. [Edit: These might have been Phantom Liberty endings; I don’t remember for sure.] Surely there must be some good ones, right? Right?
The only vaguely satisfying ending that I found was a secret one that (IIRC) requires specific choices early in the game, and a very strong bond with Silverhand, and letting the game sit at a particular dialogue screen for several minutes without picking any option. The endings that players are actually meant to experience left me feeling empty, like all the time I had sunk into the game was for nothing after all. I guess that could be considered appropriate for a cyberpunk dystopia, but as an experience and a story, it left me feeling cheated. I wished I had my time back.
So, as I said, I mostly had fun playing it, and it had its share of highlights, but I don’t expect to ever play it again. I hope CD Projekt Red keep much of the technical progress they made with this game (I was so happy that my character’s movement was responsive for a change!) and work more on character development and player agency in the next one.
Tell me you haven’t dug deep into Cyberpunk 2077 without telling me you haven’t dug deep into Cyberpunk 2077.
My dude, the easter eggs have easter eggs.
easter eggs don’t make a game deep or replayable.
If you have to dig that deep, then it’s probably not worth it digging (for me at least).
I always felt like the game was originally never meant to be an open-world game, it’s as if they were going for a mission-to-mission corridor kind of game and wrapped up a world around it to walk around in at a later phase. And many things in the game actually reinforce that idea.
I played the game at launch and the game was absolutely infested with stupid and annoying bugs, so eventually I just skipped all side stuff and just wrapped up the main story, I think that was about half-way through. Back then the open-world most definitely felt like an afterthought.
No events were happening in the world, there were entire parts of the city that were dead and empty. There were even areas blocked off by doors that were “locked” and implied there was something behind it, but some of those places I could just clip through and fall through the world because there was literally nothing behind the door.
There were few things that made it seem like an actual living world, NPCs were just wandering aimlessly, doing nothing. Just making a cool looking area and then dropping a load of copy/paste NPC clones in there doesn’t make a good open-world. If you comitted a crime the police would just spawn behind you, wherever you were. While in contrast some of the story areas seemed more detailed and have more “scripted” things happening, which is part of why I think the game wasn’t originally open-world.
Gameplay wise it was not that special either, gunplay was okay, melee felt quite unsatisfying, and outside of combat there was practically nothing to do other than just driving around. The choices you make at the beginning of the game don’t ever felt like they mattered, like they make it appear it’s a huge backstory thing that would play a role throughout the game. Nope, after the first 15 minutes it’s never mentioned again. The whole cutscene thing with Jackie after the intro feels like it was supposed to be actual gameplay, but was just cut out and changed to a cutscene to skip time.
Also the skill tree barely mattered, there were even skills like being able to breathe underwater longer, even though there wasn’t any underwater content, aside from one Judy mission I believe (which I didn’t get because she wasn’t accessible as a romance option to my character).
The only saving grace of this game was that parts of the story and characters were somewhat interesting, I liked the concept and style of the game. But it felt like a bad game when it came to actual gameplay. And some characters barely got any time to actually become interesting enough to care about.
I’ve been trying to get back in the game a couple of times, but it often just feels so lifeless and lacks any depth.
There is no chance it wasn’t meant to be an open world. The witcher 3 was a very successful open world they made.
Also, CP77 actually is in the style of elden ring that was praised for it, but CP77 came long before it. Most critiques of CP77 missed that part because the game doesn’t throw it at your face.
exactly, it’s well known the original scope was actually TOO big and they had to scale down.
I always felt like the game was originally never meant to be an open-world game, it’s as if they were going for a mission-to-mission corridor kind of game and wrapped up a world around it to walk around in at a later phase.
That’s my take on it too. The story they wanted to tell does not mesh well with an open world game, but since the people loudly wanted something like “RDR 2 but Cyberpunk” they felt obliged to attempt to shoehorn it in.
The whole cutscene thing with Jackie after the intro feels like it was supposed to be actual gameplay, but was just cut out and changed to a cutscene to skip time.
Completely agree. I think having you play through that part would have made a huge impact on how you connect with Jackie. Maybe they felt it would have pushed the Keanu introduction too deep into the game?
I’ve been trying to get back in the game a couple of times, but it often just feels so lifeless and lacks any depth.
They’ve added some touches to the open world, but I think it was too fundamentally broken to be easily patched. The new skill tree from 2.0 is actually good though and I think the combat is pretty fun in its current state, even without going to mods.
Maybe they felt it would have pushed the Keanu introduction too deep into the game?
I was thinking that too. I think during development it might’ve shifted, since I think Keanu originally wasn’t in the game, and they wanted to make him part of the game quite early on.
I would’ve liked if they had extended the Jackie chapter and moved the Silverhand arc to a later act. It would’ve meant that people would just be dropped in the game and let them explore the world carelessly before the story kicks up to next gear. But they probably realised that the game wasn’t good enough to pull off the open-world part, so they decided to get on with the main story right off the start.
Could be, could be. I think your suggestion would make for a better game with less conflict between what the main story is saying and what the game is presenting in the open world. Having the story emphasize how fast V is dying, only for the player to then fuck around with car races and random merc contracts and whatnot really doesn’t work all that well as far as immersion goes.
Jackie’s death would have also been much more impactful if we’d have spent all that time with him playing through those six months.
Yea, this game is extremely shallow.
im replaying the game in vr rn, usinf luke ross real vr mod. it bringsnonly barebones vr capabilities, you still need kbm or controller, but honestly, the open world complaint simply disintegrates in vr. a world this perfectly crafted is simply a joy in vr. since vr is generally slower, the dialogue parts also feel way less slow and tedious, and when modded appropriately difficult, you really start roleplaying to your charavters strength. starting off as a weak ass meatbag, having to stealth everything, chroming up more and more to the point where you go from dying in 4 shots to being able to go beserk bring a real sense of progression to it. currently modding via the new nexus app, as vortex doesnt work on linux, so i cant make a collection yet, but once i have it, i will definitely share it. i have 680 hours rn, 300 of them in vr (120ish i the current run) and i’m enjoying every minute of it
Yeah, it’s no Baldur’s Gate 3, and I do hope they learn more lessons from contemporary CRPGs, but I’d say it has other strengths. I liked the combat, and I liked the story, characters, and world-building. Open worlds in most open world games are pretty shallow, and I’d say both this and The Witcher 3 follow that same template to the same ends, but at the very least, it allows you to approach an objective how you’d like after scouting it out, which feels satisfying. It’s RPG-lite, which manifests as a pretty good action game with some story branching, and I’m not upset about that, as much as I’d prefer they lean into the RPG stuff harder.
Baldurs gate has fucking ruined me.
I haven’t played Cyberpunk, but I already felt that way about The Witcher 3, to some extent. CDPR makes nice looking games with seemingly vibrant and populated worlds, but I feel like interaction with the world and NPCs is pretty thin and boring.
Man, Witcher 3 is an amazing game and a lot of the secondary quests had a pretty alluring story. I read the books too, but the game is really great. Just the combat system is a bit tedious but apart from that the game world and the story was absolutely beautiful
That’s a hot take for sure. What other games do you like taht don’t have boring NPCs.
Replay with mods on PC
You know, I had heard a lot about how much Cyberpunk had improved since launch, but I still couldn’t really convince myself to try it. “Cyberpunk game made by big corporate studio” always just struck me as something of an oxymoron.
With all due respect but no indie studio can create a game of this magnitude. I mean there is a lot of work put into it. Whether it was worth it is a completely different story though.
Act 1 is a chore to get through on replay.
Good news is if you have the DLC you can skip the first act. The DLC start puts you in front of the Church in Pacifica after fighting Placide.
I like Cyberpunk a lot but replayability is shallow like you say. Sometimes I just boot it up to punch npcs though. Make a gorilla arms build and go ham. It’s pretty cathartic.
I’m a weird critter and play things differently from most, I think 😅 My greatest fun tends to be alting hard, trying nearly every imaginable build. Beat up the same jerkwad thirty times just to try out all’ the toys, that kind of thing :3 I did get annoyed at having to wait for the map to open up but I replay beginnings so many times anyway… 🤷 I wanna go back to CP77 pretty badly, too 😅 Am stuck on a laptop that I can’t imagine running it playably but even just driving around was fun for me. Helped me through a rough patch a night or two, actually.
Also liked how well-done the story bits felt, though maybe that’s partly because I was told they’re really good and just expected them to be 🤷 I do remember some bits fondly, though.
