Cyberpunk 2077: Everyone wants to live forever

Intro:

Well, here we are the end of IR. What a ride it has been! My writing skills have improved by quite a margin. I have covered so many games in so little time as well. It has been a blast. There are games that I would never have played without this blog. Well, I think it is fitting to end with a game primarily about wanting to continue living in the face of certain inventible death. Cyberpunk 2077 also has had a rocky release and existence that I believe is fitting for IR’s closure. Let us get started.

Story:

Please keep in mind that I will be talking about my playthrough and it might not match yours.

In the far-flung future of 2077, Night City is a cutthroat metropolis where the poor and the middle class live in squalor and social decay. The only thing keeping the populace in line is the endless output of porn and soft drinks on such a scale- that would make Huxley blush. However, that is enough about modern society, what about Cyberpunk 2077? V was part of the corporate higher-ups until he is betrayed and kicked out onto the streets. With the help of his old friend Jackie Welles, the two survive on the streets of Night City until a heist goes hilariously wrong. V then discovers that a biochip containing Keanu Reeves has taken up residency in his brain and is slowly killing him. Thus begins a desperate attempt to prevent the inventible.

The inescapable Keanu Reeves

Ahh Keanu Reeves. The internet’s collective crush and boyfriend. At least until hot vampire, MILF came along and everyone lost their bloody minds. Never the less, I was not entirely convinced at first because Keanu Reeves is too easy on the eyes. Johnny Silverhand looks like a cute Labrador in the form of a man (i.e. Keanu Reeves). But the performance won me over. The nihilistic, chaotic but never the less human desire for change and survival was brought across beautifully.

Johnny Silverhand and V play a curious role in the themes of Cyberpunk 2077, in this case, the human need to survive. Both represent the death to the other, seeking survival. V getting rid of Johnny will kill the latter. However, Johnny is slowly eating away at V's state of being, replacing his personality and soul until Johnny replaces V, essentially killing him. What doesn’t help is that constant chip malfunctions and Johnny raring his beautiful form at us. Death is constant in Night City, and the inevitable destination for V, as personified by the chip and Johnny.

V is the word

V, despite being as far away from the reliability scale as one could hope for, is humanized through this motivation. We all want to live, we have hopes, dreams, and needs that keep us going despite everything. Maybe we even want to live just to spite those who try to grind us down (as personified through Night City and Johnny). V is a highly motivated protagonist, driven to save himself from the inventible. He is not always likable; V is a flawed human who tries to make the best of a bad situation. He is kind to those who deserve it but rude to those who do not. I found myself liking him because I can understand want he wants, who V is, and how Johnny Silverhand is slowly destroying V like a horrific mind virus.

Jackie, Judy, and others

All the characters involved in this epic tale for survival are just as fleshed out. Judy Alvarez desperately tries to do something good in a city where ‘good’ is an ambiguous and often alien concept. She attempts to take control of her friend’s lives but it backfires badly. She is ground down so terribly that she abandons Night City entirely, escaping the grind and tale for survival for bliss in Oregon. Judy survives the stresses of the modern city by escaping to the country, where comfort and happiness are total and constant.

Jackie in contrast tries to rise above the poor and middle class, to become the greatest in Night City. He's trying to beat the system and do more than just survive. But that plan backfires immensely. Where Judy escapes, Jackie flies too close to the sun. I think this quote sums up this theme perfectly “This city doesn’t give you a choice. You either burn alive or you never existed at all.” Every single character either fails or fades away into happy obscurity. People remember your failures and destruction but never your survival and successes.

Night City’s story

Night City is a place drenched in poverty, crime, and sex. It is essentially the classic cyberpunk dystopian city. Complete with theHuxleyan use of porn and pleasurable- shallow actives that distract the populous from doing anything that might threaten the status quo. But Night City feels like a lived-in, breathing city we might see or recognize in the real world. The complete lack of social services is apparent throughout the streets of Watson and the Badlands, where trash bags and abandoned-rusty cars litter the side roads, all suggest negligence and abandonment.

These stand in stark contrast to Westbrook, where the streets are clean and polished to a shine. CD Projekt can convey so much history through how clean the streets are. The architecture that tells of Pacifica’s sense of tragic failure, the hollow hotels and theme parks that should have been the equivalent of Disneyland in Saudi Arabia that got abandoned, and left to become…Caracas.

Missions

I love the sheer variety and scope of story missions Cyberpunk has to offer. They often have ongoing stories that revolve around the main quest line. These can be anything from the humorous, like driving a man with a malfunctioning penis augment to a ripper doc. To the disturbing, like that time a woman might be losing her mind. They also contribute to the sense of life and immersion that is so important in immersive sims like Cyberpunk 2077.

People have their lives to lead, hopes and dreams that sometimes cross with V’s. More often than not, side missions can bleed into the main themes of Cyberpunk 2077, such as one particular side quest involving a mayoral candidate. Those who have played Cyberpunk 2077 will understand what I am talking about. The prevalence of the themes of consciousness and free will in even relevantly minor stories display a consistency in the writing, which makes the overall experience more compelling.

Gameplay:

Cyberpunk has everything one would expect from an immersive sim. Mountains of guns, upgrades, and play styles that one simply experience in one setting. That isn’t even to say of the sheer quantity of quest lines and activities that populate Night City. Honestly, a lot of it is pretty damn good except for a few…shortcomings and dumb stuff. Like the AI for example.

The dumb AI

Picture the scene: I am V driving through the Watson area on my way to Pacifica. I am waiting for the traffic light to go green so I can continue. I am bobbing my head to Chippin in, feeling like a badass. The light turns green, but nothing happens. The cars stay perfectly still. I wait for a little bit, but they stay frozen forever. I have no choice but to smash my car through two lanes worth of cars to continue. Picture another: I am about to hunt my first Cyberpsycho, he is a scary monster, fearsome in his mad mixture of neon colors and assault rifles.

All because I parked slightly in the road.

But he wastes his entire ammo supply in the ground and walls before standing still stupidly while I secure an easy win. These two examples are just some of the reoccurring problems Cyberpunk has with its AI. It is easily the worst aspect of the game as a whole, as it turns high stakes shoot outs into complete jokes and ruins the immersion in an instant.

Shoot up the city

Night City is drowning in a sea of guns, katanas, and Mantis Blades. At least that’s what I have to assume the case after every mission. When I have to dismantle most of my inventory that always gets filled with worse weapons than my current loadout. I would only ever get a better weapon on the occupation. Besides, that was never too far apart for me to start struggling. I tried crafting and upgrading my gear but the incentive to do so was minimal when there was no requirement to do so and better weapons arrived with just enough frequency.

However, with that being said, the guns pack a satisfying punch and have just enough variance to cater to anyone's preference, anything from weapons that fire heat-seeking bullets to the Mantis Blades, which make quick work of foes. I also loved the augmentations one could make the arsenal non-lethal. There is creativity in the areas that few games claim to have, but the player drowns under the sheer amount of useless stuff.

The starting areas

There are three life paths: Street Kid, Corpo, and Nomad. Sadly, asides from basic alternative interactions one can make during conversations, nothing matters. there are no gameplay changes with your life path nor does it pesto special skills, like being gun/ tech-savvy if Corpo or a competent street brawler if Street Kid. You all end up in the same location with the same skills regardless and your story is unaffected once the prologue ends. It is rather disappointing considering the writing as a whole and the early advertising.

So many upgrades

When you look at the upgrade menu, you might be a little intimidated. I went for a mixed build after my net runner build failed to accommodate for the fact there was no way to recover after getting spotted. Honestly, I would suggest mixing up with a little bit of everything. The difficulty curve sadly drops fast as a result, once you can turn off cameras and shoot guns I found myself breezing through most of the challenges rated higher than moderate. I never went to the high difficulty quest missions as I got the idea I was not welcome there, with a dark crimson color scheme and capitalization. I would recommend playing Cyberpunk on the hardest difficulty. It will offer a more satisfying experience and not make you want to finish the game out of the fear that you are over-levelled.

Street cred

Street cred is the currency you gain from completing quests, performing certain actions within said quest lines (not killing for example), or getting rid of unpopular figures. These then allow you to gain access to certain items and cyber enhancements. That is kind of it sadly, there is no effect street cred appears to have on how people perceive you. It is just something you gain like a second exp par. Rather disappointing considering the implications of the name, it should have unlocked other dialogue options or alternative quest paths.

Art style and Graphics:

Night City feels like a real city just on the edge of total societal collapse. It’s drenched in sex, crime, and trash to the point where I wonder what happened to waste management. I am reminded of Cape Town. The sharp divides between the rich and poor, the latter being ignored and forced to live in crime-ridden squalor. There is a sense of tragic failure to Night City, the hope of something glorious that has faded into failure and just hanging onto life. The graphical fidelity is top-notch (when the game loads properly) and helps convey this sense of dejection and determination.

Performance:

Do I need to talk about all the performance problems Cyberpunk 2077 has faced since its release? You know of the graphical glitches, the slow load in for textures, falling through the map. Textures glitching out, T posing models, cars spawning on cars, cars that stop moving for no reason. Models glitching out so they are not in places they are supposed to be. I could go on and on. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the worst performing games from last year I have played from a respected publisher.

Conclusion:

When Cyberpunk 2077 works, I love it. During the time it works, it is a masterpiece of science fiction, the sort that inspires me and fuels my creative juices. When AI works, I had the time of my life with the combat and exploration. When it works, I would have had no problems putting Cyberpunk 2077 in my Hall of Fame. However, when it breaks, I am left with the painful reminder of a product that is barely holding itself together. That CD Projekt might have lied to the public and rushed the console ports to sale. I am frustrated by the broken aspects of Cyberpunk and enthralled by the story.

A goodbye

Thus, I end the difficult life of the Imaginative Ramblings blog. Thank you to everyone who read and followed my work despite everything. I had fun and I would have loved to have kept doing this. But I can’t. I have to keep going, looking for work in these interesting times, studying for my degree, etc. I wish all of you the best and a hopeful Au revoir.