You know, in the lead up to this game, I was coming off the back of a year or two in which I felt like I was the only one who could see utterly-predictable disasters coming for things I had absolutely no affection for, and in the aftermath I absolutely huffed schadenfreude off the back of fan meltdowns. The Game of Thrones finale, r/thanoswasright actually banning half the userbase at random... I thought for sure Cyberpunk 2077 would be that again.
Then it happened and it was just... sad. I don\'t know why; I never had any affection for the company\'s games. Maybe it was just, I don\'t know, everyone seemed more tired and defeated than righteously angry about it? Even this review, which is tinged with a bit of affection, doesn\'t mention a single thing you actually like about the game except some of the characters.
I\'m glad that at least a fair number of them have a version of this thing they wanted to love they can at least like now, is I guess my point, and hey, if it knocks CD Projekt Red off what I\'ve always seen as a completely-undeserved pedestal in the process, maybe it did some good for me too.
Out of genuine curiosity, Cdpr seems to be learning and toning down the sexism (at least within the Witcher series), so what would be the line between hypocrisy and \'we are learning from our mistakes\'?
Other than that, the dlc seems to have given this broken game some gas, and my friends keep poking me to play it as well, so seeing your Review is sparking my curiosity further. If there is a discount I will try it out and write something as well.
Also, spectral, I think that by the time Witcher 3 was out, Blizzard was starting it\'s major downfall alongside lots of other companies. So there was a communal hope that cdpr would be the savior or gaming, but the long, really long delays in launching cyberpunk made people\'s hopes dwindle, and many realized that this hope would turn sour.
We are a far cry from the women-as-collectible-Pokemon-cards from the first Witcher game, but there still seems to be this arbitrary delineation between "the bad sexism the bad people do" and the kind of casual objectification which the game decides is absolutely fine. Yes, this giant billboard with the ass on it is sexist. Oh, by the way, meet Panam, one of the game's main characters. (wink wink)
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I suspect the issue is that CDPR only seems to understand what sexism is in the most obvious simplistic sense; it lacks an understanding of stereotyping, objectification, male gaze and all that more nuanced stuff. If they were forced to swap all the genders of all its characters, the double-standards would be plain to see, and then gamers would be complain about having to look at male pole dancers, naked men, guys asses etc.
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I see, thanks!
I know its frowned upon, but there were a bunch of other things that couldn't make it past the review's character limit, and I thought I'd mention them here.
So yes, the driving is annoying and tedious most of the time. Motorbikes and parked cars no longer glitch and catapult themselves around the city, but no amount of patches have fixed the general unresponsiveness and shitty satnav system. Hacking is a shallow system that consists of attacking enemies or security with magic spells that blind, enrage or damage them, which feels more inconvenient than just clobbering or shooting them to death. The clobbering and shooting itself was serviceable. The real step forward in 2077, one small but really compelling feature, is the nature of dialogue.
In 2077, the World doesn't just stop still when you initiate a conversation, this isn't Skyrim with dead-eyed interlocuters staring at you. Conversations are dynamic, and can happen whilst you wander cross a carpark, cook a BBQ, search a dumpster, or dance in a nightclub. One conversation I was having involved a woman who was fidgeting about, getting up, sitting down, pacing, resting, lighting cigarettes, and naturally reflecting her mood in her behaviour, depending on what we spoke about. These conversations feel way more natural than any other RPG I've ever played, and do a great deal to make the characters feel like real people, as opposed to machines that regurgitate backstory. More of that please!
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A Review 3 Years in the Making
On release in December 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was in a borderline unplayable state. After three years of updates and fixes, the game is finally... tolerable. My Playstation 4 still screams in mechanical fury, like a jet engine who has just found me in bed with Mrs jet engine. And for all that processing effort, I still see screen-tearing, slow loading textures, terrible driving, frozen NP Cs and constant wonkiness that show how unpolished this game still is
Storywise, 2077 puts you in the body of V, a crook-for-hire living in a futuristic dystopian society where violence and vice rule the streets, and your survival depends on you grafting mechanical parts onto yourself. During a heist, V is infected by a microchip carrying the mind and soul of a long dead rockstar/terrorist called Johnny Silverhand, and spends the rest of the game trying to stop Johnny's ghost slowly killing their brain. Keanu Reeves lends his likeness and voice to Silverhand; if you asked me who I would cast to the role of a volatile, extroverted, metal-head freedom fighter, Reeves would be lower on my list than Anthony Hopkins. Reeves is NOT a good voice actor, and certainly not a good fit for the part. He sounds too old, emotionally muted and awkward to play the otherwise fun digital devil who sits on your shoulder.
The rest of the characters run the whole gamut. Some are horrendously obnoxious, some are so lovely I want to put little picture of them in frames about my house. It's unfortunate that the game's first few hours are spent with V and Jackie, my least two favourite. Everyone else is an improvement thereon out. that said, tip one to writers; people who speak English with perfect fluency do not pepper their conversation with native words or frequently use sentences like, "As you Americans say...". Tip two; there is a line where, once you've crossed it, the more a character swears, the less cool they look.
Bugs aside, 2077 is the most beautiful dystopia I've seen in a game. It is such a bright, colourful, 80s looking vision that manages to avoid looking like Blade Runner, despite that being an obvious inspiration. It is let down a bit by the decision to poster half the city in crass, sexist adverting. The game wants to make a point about the prevalence of raw commodified sexism, but it is a point undermined by the fact that, as in The Witcher series, CDPR as a company love to spread hot boobs all over their games anyway. Hypocrisy aside, its plain annoying to keep seeing such vulgarity constantly on display, in the form of a 100 foot tall asses projected onto skyscrapers.
2077 is flawed in almost every respect, but it is a thing I still enjoy. It's like an old piece of family furniture; decrepit, scuffed, wonky, but still just about sturdy enough to stand up by itself, and still appreciated just enough that you can't quite bring yourself to discard it.