Cyberpunk 2077 - 7.6
Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in a vibrant and lively world bustling with crime and chaos. Whether it is the illicit activities of Brain Dances or gang fights that takes your fancy there is plenty to do in the sprawling metropolis of Night City. However, where the game really thrives is not in the fantasy, but rather in the believable world-building at play in the game.
Warning! Spoilers ahead!
Scores:
Originality: 8
Gameplay: 6
Story: 8
Audio: 7
Art: 9
Total Score: 7.6 /10
ORIGINALITY
Many of the technologies dealt with in the game are a very possible reality in the coming decades. Similar vehicles to the ‘AV’ flying taxis, such as the one shot down by V in the Life During Wartime mission, are being developed by numerous companies in the US. Meanwhile, you need look no further than Elon Musk’s Neuralink to see how close we are to the reality of silicon chips being placed in the human brain.
CD Projekt Red’s team put forward an admittedly bleak but nevertheless convincing example of what a future of such technologies might have in store for us. Long from the idealistic suggestions of the future put forward by many games (and, in fact, movie franchises), Cyberpunk is a dark world where anything goes and technologies that should be used to save lives are instead put to use in gang fights and corporate power struggles across a city that seems to have lost its humanity.
Welcome to Night City.
GAMEPLAY
Before I offer my breakdown of the combat system in Cyberpunk 2077, it is worth mentioning that I played the game primarily with blades and kept an assault rifle and pistol as a backup. I was expecting this gameplay style to be most suited to my tastes and believe I ultimately chose right. In particular, the katana’s offer an exciting playstyle allowing the player to run and dodge whilst carving enemies up – this becomes particularly enjoyable in the late game once you have access to a katana with enough damage to one-hit enemies.
However, past the initial excitement this offers, the extended combat system feels somewhat lacklustre. At its core, the gameplay takes on exactly the form that you would expect of an open world action-adventure game in a Cyberpunk setting – and that’s the issue. It never surprises you. The guns that I played with were often simple variations on guns that exist in similar games. Likewise, I found the hacking mechanism, though occasionally useful for the money it offers, was limited in use and quite boring to play. This is especially the case if you want to take on a more stealth-based playthrough as the hacking system will never really challenge you.
Combat system aside, there is a great deal of content in the world. As a player, you are never more than a few blocks away from a side-mission, activity, point of interest or other piece of content. This is truly commendable as it helps add to the lively and chaotic feeling of Night City.
One area where the gameplay has made significant strides since release is in the quantity of bugs in the game. It was hard to scroll through ‘Gaming’ Twitter in December 2020 without finding memes mocking the ridiculousness of many of the bugs that plagued the game. This was much less fun for those who bought the game on PlayStation 4, where it was deemed unplayable, and Sony were forced to offer full refunds for all purchases on the platform only 7 days after release.
During my playthrough I never discovered a game breaking bug. I did fall through the map once or twice on a vehicle and encounter the odd mysteriously flying car, which is not so brilliant for a game that thrives on immersion and world-building. Nevertheless, this is quite the improvement on release and something that CD Projekt Red’s team clearly focused on in the year since release.
Some of the bugs are simply laughable.
STORY
As mentioned above, Cyberpunk 2077 thrives by creating a compelling, yet believable world. A large part of this revolves around both the main character, V’s, storyline and many of the side stories. Again, bear in mind that the story I experienced was a result of the choices that I made and that this can be different in different playthroughs of the game. My story dealt with the nature of humanity. It questioned the morals of technological progress and put forward a stark image of the trajectory that many such technological advancements could take us. On top of that, Johnny Silverhand is a genuine and compelling character who despite his many flaws comes across as very human, living in a world that simply isn’t just to those who live in it.
A good example of how the game makes us questions our morals regarding much of the potential technologies of the future is in the ‘Delamain’ side story. This is an AI-run self-driving taxi service. While not dissimilar to services proposed by Tesla and Uber in the real world, it could be considered a futuristic version of these solutions ‘on steroids’.
At a defined point in the story, the ‘Delamain’ AI reaches out to the main character and asks them to go fetching some missing taxi cars. The story that ensues questions the very nature of AI and human emotion in a way all too relevant to the cutting-edge uses of AI in the world we currently live in. In this regard, Cyberpunk 2077 can very much be interpreted as a piece of modern world culture and its stories are highly reflective of that.
Delamain: A self-driving taxi service on steroids.
AUDIO
The audio in the game is at most times appropriate. Often many of the sound effects cutting between phases or indicating an interface with the character’s UI or brain chip. Likewise, many of the sound effects for the weapons (including the katana) are satisfying.
A noticeable audio choice made by the team on Cyberpunk was not to dub speech or give foreign speakers an unnatural forced accent. This means that if a character is from a certain cultural background where they would likely be speaking a certain language – they do. This means that, from my own knowledge, the game includes entire dialogues in Spanish, Russian, Haitian Creole and Japanese; there are likely others, though these are the only ones that I noticed. These exchanges are then conveyed through subtitles. This is a brilliant audio decision that adds a great deal of emphasis to the global impact of the game and only further bolsters the world building.
I do have to admit though – whilst all of the available radio options felt very believable (featuring death metal and synthpop / cyberpunk EM), I never really found a channel that felt comfortable to drive to!
Night City is beautiful.
ART
Last but not least, we have to discuss art. Cyberpunk is undoubtedly the most ugly, beautiful game I have ever played. The streets are covered in realistic looking grime and graffiti. Paper and other forms of waste float aimlessly about the city. There are construction sites and rubbish dumps in between many of the main promenades. Many characters look wrinkled and worn. Yet, all these features are given an incredible level of detail that works to further the unique feel of the game. Even the game world, which features sprawling roads and winding paths that embrace an alarming level of verticality with little to no comprehension of logic or method fit the chaotic world-building of Cyberpunk 2077.
If you have had your fill of the grotesque detail at ground level, you can look up to see the heights of Night City. In the evenings and nights, this is light up in bright neon and strobe colours that feel in every way superfluous, yet once again completely appropriate to the thematic rampant inequality in the game.
ROUND UP
Cyberpunk 2077 has a genuine, compelling, and interesting world that makes it fun to explore. Plenty of content and an advanced levelling system will keep players coming back, even if the combat system and more bread-and-butter game mechanics leave a great deal to be desired. Any player with a genuine interest in the Cyberpunk genre will have a great time in the game, though those not so interested in many of the quite serious themes that the game deals with will likely struggle to find reasons to revisit the game even during a first playthrough.