Cyberpunk 2077 — Six months later…

We’re coming up on six months since Cyberpunk 2077 was released. Never in my long history as a gamer, have I seen a game launched to such controversy. The controversy related mainly to performance issues on older consoles — namely the Xbox One and the PS4. I didn’t dive in until just after Christmas, so I went all out to get an Xbox Series X to mitigate this problem. It wasn’t easy, they were selling the moment they were in stock on most online retailers, but just before Christmas using a shopping app, I managed to bag a console.

The game drew a lot of criticism for its bugs, glitches and performance issues. However, I found myself playing it exclusively for well over two months. To date I’ve racked up over 330 hours of play. In that time I’ve completed the game with every single ending and started a second play-through with a completely different character build to the first. In that time I’ve completed the Xbox Achievements for 1000 Gamer points. So what gives? Is it a good game or not?

People tend to want simple answers to complex questions. In my opinion, there isn’t a simple answer to this question.

I first got interested in playing Cyberpunk 2077 around a hundred years ago when CD Projekt Red were still focused on DLC content for ‘The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt’. That, was an amazing game. I played Witcher 3 to death and got so invested in the story I started reading the books and became something of an Andrej Sawposki fan. I even watched the Netflix series, though I don’t think it really did the books justice if I’m honest.

As the years went on and CDPR started releasing more and more footage of the game, building the hype — like many people I got more and more excited about playing it. To the point where I was really aching to play it and ended up desperate to get a Series X for literally no other reason.

When I got it and started playing, was I disappointed? Well, if I’m honest no. The game delivered more or less what I was hoping for. A lot of people compare Cyberpunk to GTA, but I think that’s really unfair. There are certain things that Rockstar are particularly good at and certain things that CDPR excel at. The truth is, that CDPR is strongest in the storytelling department. The true strength of Cyberpunk is its compelling story and engaging characters.

The Game of Thrones series was often cited for its horrific violence, but the thing that really drew viewers in and had them coming back for more, time and time again was the characters and the relationships between them. I think there’s an element of that in Cyberpunk. The most interesting relationship in the game is that between Johnny Silverhand and V. I know everyone has their own idea of what the canonical story is, I do! I really think corpo female V is canon and the ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ with V leaving with Alt is the most canonical ending. I hope that wasn’t a spoiler, I won’t say any more so it’s ambiguous and vague, but those who’ve played through the game will get what I mean.

Combat is enjoyable, satisfying and interesting… Except for the boxing matches. They are literally a pain in the ass. I mean, even for a long-term hardcore gamer - that Razor Hughes guy is proper ‘throwing the controller’ material.

RPG systems are suitably complex and offer you a choice of genuinely varied play styles. Vehicles systems, driving and fast travel work perfectly well.

So, all that’s good right? Yes it IS! If you stick to the script, Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent game. The developers tell a compelling story and offer you satisfying game mechanics to use to advance it.

There has to be a ‘but’?

Of course! The thing is, if you took Johnny, Vic, Pan Am, Judy, Kerry, River and all the other great characters you meet out of the game it would lose a lot of its appeal. You can really feel this towards the end of the game when you’ve finished the story and are just mopping up missions to clear the map and get the achievements. Some of the side quests and ‘gigs’ ARE genuinely interesting and enjoying, but a lot of them are pretty ‘meh’. Sure, you’ll do them for the XP and loot, but they’re often not actually THAT fun. You’ll find yourself starting out this game and because of the RPG mechanic frustratingly having to really pick your missions carefully, because at the lower levels high level opponents will wipe the floor with you. Then at the end of the game, with the right build and weapons you become like an almost indestructible god who can wade through swarms of enemies, slaughtering them left right and centre. The only challenge is then the ‘Don’t Fear the Reaper’ ending, but if you’ve hit level 45 and have a decent combat built and reasonable weapon — it really isn’t that hard. The RPG element works well, but it can feel forced and arbitrary. I noticed this even more than I did in Witcher 3. It doesn’t spoil the experience, but it is noticeable and perhaps a little regrettable.

Is that it? Well no. We can’t talk about Cyberpunk 2077 without talking about bugs. Whilst playing the game you’ll likely experience weird physics, characters or vehicles glitching in and out and sometimes you’ll lose all the play since your last save due to a crash or a quest not ending properly. I’ve only played this on Series X and I’m told that’s one of the better experiences. I can’t imagine what it’s like on the Xbox, I suspect the experience is ‘not good’. I know some PC players complained of corrupted save files if they’d allowed their file to go over a certain size? Some of the glitches were actually quite fun and useful in the game. It’s patched now, but there was a time when you could drop a melee weapon into the arena for the boxing matches and equip it from the floor — making the fights MUCH easier. There was also until recently a glitch which allowed you to AFK athletics XP and another which allowed you to gain infinite money by duplicating and buying and selling a painting.

Those two particular glitches are actually the worst ones to patch. Athletics XP is painfully slow to accrue the normal way and now the glitch is passed there are no short cuts. You end up feeling like you can’t drive or ride anywhere because you ALWAYS need more athletics XP. It feels like the intended game mechanic is more broken than the glitch people were using to fix it. A game is supposed to be fun. Grinding athletics XP by running around town for six hours is categorically NOT fun. The same is also true of the painting glitch. Some of the in-game items are insanely expensive and particularly the quest to buy all in-game cars. Legendary cyberware also wipes chunks out of your bank account. I actually wondered if, though the dupe glitch was unintended — the buying and selling thing was a game mechanic to allow players a means of accruing money. Now that’s gone I can see earning enough to max out vehicles and cyberware will become a herculean task.

At the end of all this, having finally put Cyberpunk 2077 down, I feel like I’ve had a truly magical, memorable and enjoyable experience. I’ll always look back on my Cyberpunk playthrough with fond memories. If they provide some more content in the form of interesting DLC, I may even dive back in!

So what went wrong? Well, personally I think CDPR were a little bit too ambitious with their project. When you consider all the features that were hinted at or even promised, we got less of a game than we were told we were getting and it was buggy as hell. I think the public and the press would have been more forgiving if the game had either been cut-back, but polished to a shine, or buggy, but delivered everything CDPR had promised. The fact that it was both buggy and arguably incomplete was really the issue. CDPR really sold Cyberpunk as being a particularly deep game, and it is. But only in places. If you venture down into the canyon of mainline story quests — you’ll find depth. However, a lot of Night City is very superficial and shallow. There are a lot of locked doors, closed shops and NPC characters with repetitive, meaningless dialogue. The life path choice at the start offers you a different prologue and a few different dialogue options but little more. The mono-wire became a laser whip rather than a remote hacking tool and mantis blades no longer allow you to wall run.

You also can’t customise your character’s appearance after creation and the cutscenes where you see your character interacting are now limited to the end of the game. These are little things, but they all add up.

Some people say CDPR should have put more people on CP earlier, or they should have released later. Personally I think they’d hyped it to the point where they really HAD to release to capitalise on their marketing efforts properly. If they’d delayed it another 6 months hype might have died down and that could have hurt sales. They’ve been busy trying to fix their issues since and have promised us more content. All while dealing with the fallout of a massive cyber attack that saw them lose files and development time.

For me Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game. It’s not all it was promised to be, I don’t think it’s that by a long shot. However, I think what was promised was probably far too ambitious for a small team working on a game where they effectively ended up working on the engine at more or less the same time as the game. Yes, it’s flawed. Yes there are bugs and glitches. No it doesn’t have the depth and scope as the game we were promised. I accept that on all three counts. However, it’s still a fantastic, immersive open-world game with a Cyberpunk theme and compelling characters and story. I’m sure CDPR will polish, fix and expand it over the next few months, but whatever — It’s still one of my favourite games. My biggest criticism is that it isn’t all that was promised and that could have addressed by either making sure nothing was cut and everything was fixed before they released it — or them being more honest and modest with their marketing campaign. Of course I can’t speak for those playing (or attempting to play) on last gen consoles.

Martyn Stanley