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[nenjin]

Finally finished my playthrough. 160 hours, everything but the umpteen million "open world" brawls completed. Call that closer to 140 probably, deducting all the faffing around time.

I got the worst ending.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Devil ending. It's somewhat poetic in my opinion. Arasaka did exactly what they said they would do, and they still couldn't save you. So your choices are become an engram, or die of cancer (basically.) I can see why it's considered the worse ending, because it's technically the safest one, the kind of ending a regular person could expect. Much like real life, you can turn to the experts and ultimately there's still nothing to be done. I get the impression the writers of the game have lost family members recently, there's several bits in the game about growing old, dying, family members....man what a downer of a game in general in terms of themes.

I'll probably take some time to post more thoughts but my quicklist is.....

-Visually the game is quite an achievement. And it should be, considering how many different outfits worked on the visuals. I think the end credits ran for almost 40 minutes or something.
-So many missed opportunities and unfinished content. That's the real tragedy of this game. The framework is all there, the bones on which to support a lot of amazing things. But there just wasn't the time to do it.
-The story, voice acting and emotional elements are the strongest point of this game by far even if it was all cut back from what was originally planned. Not all of it hit for me but a lot of it did, even if it was the "pull at your heart strings / make you miserable" kinda stories. At many points I felt like they really nailed the aesthetic, the vibe and the overall feel of Cyberpunk. However I think they get a little heavy handed with the political / social / gender identity politics at times.
-That said, it's clear that many parts of the story were rushed. The game can take 10 minutes to drop story and dialog on you in walking sequences and yet skip past huge chunks of escapes or condense important dramatic moments into just a minute. There is definitely a sense of warring priorities with the story.
-Gameplay wise, most things fell flat after about 40 or so hours. My last probably 40 hours was just amassing legendary and iconic weapons I'd never use, and continuing to hunt for the perfect fashion.
-Itemization is oof. You really feel it in the cyberware, where there's just these huge glaring omissions of options, particularly in the body, arm and leg departments. Programs to run as a hacker also were fully revealed in about hour 30 or whatever. The level scaling leads almost all gear to feeling rather pointless. I think I toted around one of the same iconic weapons I found and upgraded around hour 50 through the entire playthrough, and it never seemed to really be any less effective despite the fact it ended the game with half the damage output of weapons I'd just picked up.
-Mechanically there's so much that's still bugged that it's hard to take anything about it as an RPG very seriously. If it's not perks being silently busted, it's mods calculating nonsense numbers that give you no real sense of performance. Or it's fights so trivial that they're essentially just a speed bump to the looting and the story. In the "final combat sequence", I killed

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

the 10 guys before Adam Smasher with a single cast of Contagion. Smasher himself took me about 10 seconds to kill after dropping one Cyberware Malfunction, one Reboot Optics and 4 blasts from a Double Barrel on him.

All in all I don't regret my time with CP2077, I got immersed and I got some real feels out of it. But I weep for the game as a whole and the people that worked on it. This game needed another 2 years at least to deliver on half of what it implies it could be.

At this point I don't have many hopes for CP2077 filling out its clothes. If I were CDPR, my focus would probably be on fixing bugs and crashes and maybe finishing implementation on one or two systems. I sorta doubt we'll see the game fill out all its short comings before they move on to something else.

[Jimmy]

At this point I don't have many hopes for CP2077 filling out its clothes. If I were CDPR, my focus would probably be on fixing bugs and crashes and maybe finishing implementation on one or two systems. I sorta doubt we'll see the game fill out all its short comings before they move on to something else.

Agreed. I can't imagine getting a bunch of expansions to the game ala Hearts of Stone or Blood and Wine that round out the main character's story, because really, there's simply not as much soul in the game as there was in the Witcher III.

V's search for a way to survive never appealed to me as much as Geralt's quest to find Ciri. On the one hand, we've got a snarky, street smart tough out for themself, mostly at the expense of everyone around them, in keeping with their dystopian world of dog-eat-dog capitalism. On the other, we have a grizzled warrior with a heart of gold desperately trying to put his family back together against the backdrop of a world ravaged by war. V's journey is inherently selfish, whereas Geralt is motivated by his desire to rebuild the connections to those he loves.

It's no coincidence that the best ending for the Witcher III comes from Geralt refusing to return Ciri to her father, leading her to follow in his footsteps as his adopted daughter and heir. There's a strong undercurrent of the idea of family to the plot of the Witcher III, which is a profoundly relatable concept that resonates with the majority of the players of the game, even if they don't recognize it. Not just Geralt's journey reflects this theme, either. Quests such as the Bloody Baron, or the entire Hearts of Stone DLC, for example, also feature family as a central motif.

What concept forms the soul of Cyberpunk, then? I don't really know. I've been playing it for dozens of hours and I can't really define that idea. Perhaps that's why it doesn't grip me the way the Witcher III did.

[nenjin]

I think the overall message of CP2077 is "People and family good, systems bad."

Because all the positive things in CP2077 seem to revolve around family. Jackie's mom. The Aldecaldos. The loose and troubled bonds of friendship in Samurai. Hell even Maelstrom has some sort of bizarre family structure.

That's contrasted to, as you said, the dog-eat-dog philosophy of the world. Individual success and ambition means you end up throwing someone under a bus to get ahead. Family seems to be the exception to that, that sacrosanct thing that rises above biz.

I dunno, I'm mostly rambling. While I don't know if I connected as deeply with the Witcher, I definitely felt better playing it. If the Witcher was made up of a lot of "gray" themes hung off a stable and likeable character, CP2077 is a lot of browns draped off a character who, by dint of the story, you find it hard to sympathize with. Even being the nicest person you can in this world, V is still an opportunist. A mercenary. A thief.

While it made for an interesting story, at the end of the day, when your protagonist's life can be summed up as:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

If you weren't a dirt bag / criminal, none of this would have happened to you.

It's hard to find sympathy or really even appreciation for them. V is basically a hired gun with repeated bouts of bad luck, poor judgment and the scripted inability to walk away at any point. It makes it hard to sympathize or root for them. He's analogous to Walter White from Breaking Bad IMO. You like them as a character but you wish pretty much the complete opposite of the show for them.

[nenjin]

And in case anyone missed the news (Just an excuse for a fresh thread title...) About a week or two ago CDPR got hacked and had some of the source code for the game stolen.

These guys just cannot catch a break.

[forsaken1111]

Said source code was apparently for witcher 3 and CP2077, and was confirmed sold on the dark webz to unknown parties

[BigD145]

It's hard to find sympathy or really even appreciation for them. V is basically a hired gun with repeated bouts of bad luck, poor judgment and the scripted inability to walk away at any point. It makes it hard to sympathize or root for them. He's analogous to Walter White from Breaking Bad IMO. You like them as a character but you wish pretty much the complete opposite of the show for them.

You're not supposed to like Walter. He's a horrible person. He'd do equally terrible things to others in any other location. He's a narcisistic garbage human being. You should constantly want Walter caught, tried, and imprisoned before the end of every episode and before he screws up someone elses life. He's unrepentent about all his actions. He lets Jesse's girlfriend die (walt knew exactly how to save her and he just watches her die and later claims zero responsibility) to keep Jesse as a drug making assistant and that's one of the least bad things Walt does.

[dragdeler]

Up next: Michael Douglas in falling down was a terrible employee. I wonder where people get the holier than thou attitude and if they ever heard of sex drugs and rocknroll. I find it super easy to identify with WW or JS because without them the show would be boring. Not to mention how shallow it seems to boil down their becoming to "well they shouldn't have"

[BigD145]

Walter never grows or learns anything. THAT'S boring. He's not interested in partaking, sex, or music. Walter is written very consistently through the series. The next story beat becomes very predictable because you know what Walter will do. Walt gets a new lab assistant in the laundromat lab. He's so likeable. They're hitting it off so well. Yeah, but he's not Jesse and Walt can't accept that. You see it coming a hundred miles away. Jesse kind of has that chance to break out, and he's the drug user with a lover, but he's also pretty irredeemable himself. One big dumpster fire and one trash can fire. They go looking for more trash to burn. That's the show. Similar story beats every episode. So much effort put into the two cartel assassins. Nope, pretty much a red herring.

Silverhand would absolutely loathe Walter and I don't even like Johnny's character. Johnny would likely say Walt has never lived.

[dragdeler]

Maybe Johnny would hate Walt because he's greedy, that may well be. I just don't get the anger, breaking bad, cyberpunk and falling down all share this theme of despair, and taking control no matter the cost or consequences. To me it seems like you're upset that there is no character arc in the sense of personal growth, nor happy end. And I feel strongly these stories would be utterly pointless and vanilla if that was the outcome. Sure bring out the creative writing curriculum, won't change a damn thing to a certain demographic prefering to seek beauty in the grotesque.

[nenjin]

Maybe Johnny would hate Walt because he's greedy, that may well be. I just don't get the anger, breaking bad, cyberpunk and falling down all share this theme of despair, and taking control no matter the cost or consequences. To me it seems like you're upset that there is no character arc in the sense of personal growth, nor happy end. And I feel strongly these stories would be utterly pointless and vanilla if that was the outcome. Sure bring out the creative writing curriculum, won't change a damn thing to a certain demographic prefering to seek beauty in the grotesque.

For me it's not anger, if that was directed at me. It's just tragic. You have the option of being redeemable in a lot of quests but ultimately:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

You have zero control over V's trajectory in the game. The best you can hope for in the end is to be the ONLY ONE that dies, rather than your friends trying to help you and dying alongside you. Which I guess is kind of altruistic and noble in its own right, but considering it's a bed you completely made yourself....

It's the kind of thing that me as an edgy teenager would have gobbled up. However me as an adult, I found myself wanting an out. A chance at actual redemption.

I think this is why the Witcher and CP2077 are two completely different breeds of story. Geralt is likeable. He's a do-gooder put in complex situations and he doesn't always take the high road but the option is almost always there.

V is a punk. A thief. A mercenary. A criminal with a soft, friendly voice who still does terrible things for the sake of money and fame. There were plenty of gigs in CP2077 when I was like "uhm, I don't really want to assassinate someone for money?" But the game was like "Cool. You call me when you're ready to do that then." So you end up being exactly what the game requires you to be if you want to see the content, there's not a lot of ways to interact with the missions. And the game just kinda.....glosses over that morality most of the time.

The original vision of CP2077 was supposed to be a kind of detective story set in Night City. What it became was basically a depressing version of GTA where you're a career thug but you're also made to feel bad about half of what happens in the world around you or that you choose to do. (If you've got a soul anyways.) CP2077 is like "I want you to gun down 30 people so you can make so money" and in the next moment, wants to make you feel the feels and the suffering of all these characters you got involved with and their outcomes. GTA doesn't try to play both sides of the fence, but CP2077 does. And it's not that it doesn't work, it's just that you aren't left feeling good at the end of the game. It's really a question of whether you're resigned to your fate or not, because there is no real changing it.

Hell, the game even tries to make you feel bad for Johnny by the end of it.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

There's a whole set of missions about Johnny basically making contact with old friends, one last hurrah before you (probably) get the biochip ripped out of your head and he effectively dies again. Johnny manages to grow a bit as a person through the course of the story, doing the whole "reflecting on the life I lived." V doesn't really get that.

And Johnny is a pretty big piece of shit in a lot of ways.

And just so no one misunderstands me....the game's story and tones are totally compliant with Cyberpunk as a setting. Risky decisions, violence, how cheap human life is in the future and bad outcomes. CDPR tapped into that and executed it correctly IMO.

I guess in playing the game though, I realized my appetite for misery porn is way down from where it used to be.

----

Walter never grows or learns anything. THAT'S boring.

Sorry I gotta respond to this.

He learns shitloads throughout the show and changes. You're not a fan of that it's obvious but you can't deny that he learns stuff. He learns not to fear his own death. He learns the strength and will in order to survive and flourish in the criminal underworld. He learns to lie, to kill, to sacrifice people for what he wants. It's a complete transformation over the course of the show. Even though you're like "Shit dude, no", that's the appeal and the arc of the show, watching him both become stronger and a more terrible person at the same time.

If BB started 40% in to the series, that grounding would not be there because you'd have never known Walt as a simpler, better person to appreciate what he became.

All I feel V really learns over the course of CP2077 is to regret ever being a criminal or having delusions of grandeur about being a career criminal in Night City. Not exactly the same kind of payoff.

[dragdeler]

It's the kind of thing that me as an edgy teenager would have gobbled up. However me as an adult, I found myself wanting an out. A chance at actual redemption.

I can only scratch my head in confusion. Adults need a sanitized depiction of reality that is fair, and that not only presumes people are inherently good, but also never fails to bring them back to the right path? Man am I glad I never got past my rebellious phase.


Nomad was an exile, streetkid had a bad upbringing, corpo lost his job and with him being corpo well that kind of made 90% of his identity. They were never meant to make it out alive, not in that world, and especially not dexter's job, heck even Evelyn was basically a throwaway. I just fail to see the issue with some of these criticisms... Like remember when CDPR were accused of objectifying transpeople, like dude every fucking ad in the game is completly oversexed because the point is to extrapolate current trends for shock value. Call it cheap if you want, I know I bring my fair share of turbonerd snobism to the table as well... But when one is so unpleased with outcome of the story, that suddenly supernormal tropes like foreshadowing are worth scorn, I smile inside and think well that must have caused some unpleasant feelings.

Anyway, it would have done the game so much good to "scrap" all the rpg stuff, into a system where money. decides. everything. I mean we sure had enough inventory, cyberware and modslots to implement the few abilities found in the skillsection... Instead we got buff galore, because the game had to be borderlands as well as GTA and the witcher, because overpromising, because marketing. Again is it the adult thing to judge a game by it's salespitch or it's actual content?

edit: think about it: if you can't afford/carry all different playstyles at once, the game actually would have more replay value than through the 3 different prologues.

Now I hear your pain, trust me I also savescum untill I get the best possible outcome for all characters involved. But I don't think it's in any way constructive criticism unless you want every developper to behave like Ubisoft, because one will allways be able to find somebody who holds the exact opposite of any given opinion, what are developpers to make of this noise? One could argue they may have tried to do all at once, because they tried to please everybody, one could argue that the game was never meant to have a super broad mass appeal, but then the stupid presales got in the way... I'm totally fine with the different endings in the game being as they are.

Also two things about Johnny, couldn't he be:
A: So hardened that he is out of touch with his own emotions?
B: Not a whole engram?

[Jimmy]

Wow, I think I finally get it!

Thanks guys, this discussion really made it click for me. It's not about family. Cyberpunk is about your legacy. THAT'S what I was missing.

It makes sense now. Johnny's role in the game is representing the idea of a person who has gone and made a legacy, written their name across history by their actions. Like a modern Alexander the Great, or perhaps more accurately Guy Fawkes, he made his legacy by spitting in the eye of Arasaka.

Jackie's funeral is about his legacy. Going through his stuff, choosing the words you speak at his eulogy, is about honoring the man's legacy.

Hell, the game's full of little vignettes about this theme. Vic, the ripper doc who set out to be a heavyweight boxing champion, only to come second and give up his dream of creating his legacy in the boxing ring, instead watching old fights in his basement practice and dreaming of the glory that never will be. Afterlife, the bar that honors your legacy by naming your favorite drink after you when you die.

In comparison, I'd argue that Breaking Bad was always about the central theme of control. Walter White loses control of his life when he gets his diagnosis of cancer. To take back control, he modifies the moral code he lives by to give him the tools to keep control of his life. Jesse stands in opposition to Walter. He's completely out of control. He doesn't think things through, his personal life is a mess, he constantly slips back into drug use as a crutch for his mess.

When something happens to Walter that threatens his control, Walter does whatever it takes to regain it. Whether that's getting rid of his dealer Tuco Salamanca when he becomes increasingly erratic in his behavior, bringing his wife Skyler into his secret life and controlling her so completely she has a mental breakdown, or even choosing how to die in the series finale, his story is always about ensuring he has the upper hand in every situation. Little things like Walter's interaction with the police officer when he's pulled over and ticketed for his broken windscreen, then pepper sprayed when he refuses to submit, show how badly Walter reacts to any situation that doesn't allow him to be in control.

I think one of the best examples of the theme of control, though, is when Walter wires Hector Salamanca's wheelchair with explosives to kill Gustavo. He's showing the man respect through the lens of his own personal philosophy. Hector, like Walter, knows he will die soon. Walter gives Hector the power to control his life one final time, settle the score with an old enemy, and choose the way they die. The death of Hector is an amazing foreshadowing of Walter's own death in the series, and a brilliant climax to the story arc for that season.

[dragdeler]

Hehe, also it has been a while since I watched it but wasn't Walter kind of bummed out when he learned he was in remission?

[nenjin]

I can only scratch my head in confusion. Adults need a sanitized depiction of reality that is fair, and that not only presumes people are inherently good, but also never fails to bring them back to the right path? Man am I glad I never got past my rebellious phase.

I mean...that's on you? What I wanted were options. What I got felt like railroading in terms of a story. Arguably yeah, the smartest thing would have been to not do crime. But then you have no game as they constructed it. And that's really the rub isn't it? That's how they constructed it. No matter how you try to wriggle out of it, there is no good ending, or even the chance for one. Unless you consider:

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Johnny taking over your body and your consciousness existing in the cloud.

A good ending.

I just fail to see the issue with some of these criticisms...

Compare to the Witcher. There's nothing heroic about V, aside from occasionally actually doing some good in the course of being bad and making money. He's not likeable, unless you count that weird Jersey-esqe drawl of an accent he's got. He's not charismatic. And on top of all this, you don't get the chance to be any better than the "fast train to sad town" allows. It's a design choice, done for an effect and that effect worked, in that it got an emotional response from me. Maybe if they'd had more time, there would have been other choices to make. Other endings. But what we got was "what flavor of awful do you want to end the game on?" V doesn't learn anything. They don't grow. They don't change. They have like no agency other than pulling a trigger. So many things in CP2077 felt like a veteran roleplayer being put in a front of a new GM where you just knew the point was to betray you. Some of that was expected. But it carries through the entire game and it's even rubbed in your face a few times. Again, I guess if you love misery porn, this is aces across the board.

When something happens to Walter that threatens his control, Walter does whatever it takes to regain it. Whether that's getting rid of his dealer Tuco Salamanca when he becomes increasingly erratic in his behavior, bringing his wife Skyler into his secret life and controlling her so completely she has a mental breakdown, or even choosing how to die in the series finale, his story is always about ensuring he has the upper hand in every situation. Little things like Walter's interaction with the police officer when he's pulled over and ticketed for his broken windscreen, then pepper sprayed when he refuses to submit, show how badly Walter reacts to any situation that doesn't allow him to be in control.

Walter White had agency. What he did with that agency maybe wasn't too pleasant. But he had choices he could make, in many directions. (I remember some of the choices he made in the show I was like "But why?") V doesn't get that. They go from job to job, doing what they're told and the options that they're offered are almost all terrible. (Remember the quest about the politician who thinks he's being manipulated? That one ends badly no matter which direction you take it.)

It's like the only winning move is to not play at all.

But I don't think it's in any way constructive criticism unless you want every developper to behave like Ubisoft, because one will allways be able to find somebody who holds the exact opposite of any given opinion, what are developpers to make of this noise? One could argue they may have tried to do all at once, because they tried to please everybody, one could argue that the game was never meant to have a super broad mass appeal, but then the stupid presales got in the way... I'm totally fine with the different endings in the game being as they are.

When Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines manages to be more upbeat, it does make a body wonder how much of the misery-koolaid they sat down to drink before they penned it out. What difference would it have made to the entire game, at the end of the day, that after 100+ hours, maybe one of the endings isn't a total shit show? It's not that I didn't LIKE the ending or APPRECIATE the craft that went into it. But it left me feeling like most of my time was spent on a nihilistic game where nothing actually matters because in the end, you just die. Pathetically in some cases. I don't exactly play video games to feel shitty, or if I do, I keep it to shorter bursts. It took me a while to actually finish CP2077 because I knew it wouldn't end well. I was just a little surprised how hard they twisted the knife in one of the endings, and how all roads eventually lead to suck. It was well crafted, someone clearly cared a lot about giving these endings emotional weight and they succeeded. Just wonder if a slightly less fucked up set of endings might not have also been good. Video games and media don't ALWAYS need to be an even more fucked up reflection of life.

To put it another way, a friend of mine often says "Real life is miserable enough. Why would I spend my free time being miserable as well?" The older I get, the truer that seems to be for me personally.

Also two things about Johnny, couldn't he be:
A: So hardened that he is out of touch with his own emotions?
B: Not a whole engram?

A: He kinds of admits to it in his swan song, then immediately has feels. So.
B: Techno voodoo none of us can answer.

Hehe, also it has been a while since I watched it but wasn't Walter kind of bummed out when he learned he was in remission?

Yes, because he had to reflect on all the things he did "for my family" when he thought he was dying. Then promptly goes 'in for a penny, in for a pound.'

[dragdeler]

It's all in here: "No matter how you try to wriggle out of it, there is no good ending, or even the chance for one." Walter had some sort of out and didn't take it, Michael Douglas could have gone to prison but went for the murder suicide(it was a trick should say suicide by cop, but I'll spare you they "are they the bad guy though" take), that's what makes them tragic, yes they're the bad guys that's kind of the premise, in for a penny in for pound sums it up nicely, sunk cost fallacy if you will. To me that's a discrete nod: people will take or risk their lives out of despair, because they see no alternative, but just because they don't see any that might not necessarely be true.

Cyberpunk took a little twist by saying everything's fucked anyway, to me the despair is refreshingly honest, and that's why you'd want to see the world burn, because there is nothing there to be mourned, except subtle double twist, you might not be able to save yourself, but... and I'm not only talking about saving Johnny here. What's the historical significance, what's to be expected down the road in the world where: either a famous rockstar terrorist was the first to be resurrected because he just hated the corpos so much he came back to fight a second time, either the richest and most powerful man in the world became immortal, by absorbing his childs body? Sure technologic progress can not really be stopped, but that bit of time that Johnny would buy the world, that change of narrative, they might mean something down the road. Or maybe years later when he is long dead some freaks make a cult and he is retroactively declared the father of the revolution in some agit prop?


(I could bite myself for not having used the word legacy earlier)

To put it another way, a friend of mine often says "Real life is miserable enough. Why would I spend my free time being miserable as well?" The older I get, the truer that seems to be for me personally.

The point is duely noted, me personally I can't stand songs with whiney lyrics, or books with a lot of graphical descriptions of violence, especially the sexual kind... This game just makes me feel vindicated ^^, it's just sad that the set crumbles so fast when one starts scratching a bit at the tech.