Cyberpunk 2077 Review
This week Cyberpunk 2077 arrived on Xbox One, PS4, PC, and Stadia. Originally announced via teaser in 2012, the highly anticipated title suffered, and caused, numerous delays before finally releasing to a chorus of praise and sales. The follow up to megahit The Witcher 3, starring Keanu Reeves, set in a neon soaked future ripe for exploration, launching alongside brand new consoles and a new generation of graphics cards, Cyberpunk seemed destined to be one of the greatest games of all time. What developer CD Projekt Red delivered instead is one of the more embarrassing efforts in recent memory.
While making a game about a future filled with the worst of what society has to offer, CD Projekt Red decided to live out those fantasies in the real world for everyone to see. Their transphobia, racism, and worker exploitation are harmful enough on their own but they have also infected the game world, (not so) subtly influencing players who may not be aware of the company’s history. This is not an accident, they’ve been called out publicly for their actions on multiple occasions and they’ve chosen to double and triple down while catering to the same diseased sector of gaming fandom that brought us GamerGate. They also restricted access to the game prerelease, sending out few review keys and hiding the console versions of the game altogether. Considering the product they eventually released, this can only be seen as a deliberate attempt to mislead consumers as to the quality of the game. CD Projekt Red has since apologized for this and encouraged disappointed buyers to seek refunds from the platform holders.
With that said, let’s talk about the actual game and what led to that apology. Cyberpunk 2077 is a first person, open-world RPG based on the popular board game series, Cyberpunk, which first released in 1988. A series of global catastrophes have resulted in a world of extremes, from unlivable wastelands in the Middle East to the excesses of the game’s primary setting Night City. Night City is a fictional megalopolis located on the United States’ west coast. It’s one of the last remaining major cities in the world and is home to obscene luxury and obscene suffering alike. Megacorps run the city and are ruthless in their competition with one another, often ending in violence. As the game’s main character, a mercenary named V, you have the option of coming from a corporate background, the streets of Night City, or the wandering lifestyle of the Nomads, scraping by in the sparsely populated outskirts of the city.
Depending on which backstory you choose, you’ll have a different prologue as well as some story/dialogue changes later on. They all however, lead to the hotel room of the heir to the Arasaka corporation. There you steal and implant into your own brain, the consciousness of long dead rockerboy turned ‘terrorist’ Johnny Silverhand, played by Keanu Reeves. V is the only one who can see or hear Johnny so there are plenty of one on one conversations between your character and Keanu. He delivers his lines exactly as you would expect, not necessarily matching the writer’s intent but bringing the detached charisma his fans know and love. The vocal work outside of Mr. Reeves is a mixed bag ranging from very well done to wow, that was pretty racist. The same goes for the writing as Night City is overflowing with every stereotype you can imagine.
Every ethnic group has their own gang based around the one thing you think you know about said ethnic group and despite the fact that universal translators exist and are readily available, many characters still deliver their lines in broken English rather than their preferred language. Haitians practicing Voodoo, East Asians using martial arts and fighting with swords, Indian cab drivers etc. it’s all very tired and tiring. It cheapens what was an intriguing and history filled backdrop but is not fatal to the Cyberpunk experience. No, the killing blow comes in the form of the technical malpractice committed by the developers. They’ve achieved the rather impressive feat of releasing a ‘last-gen’ game that runs poorly on both last and current gen systems. If you’ve seen social media you know the game is outright unplayable on the base PS4 and Xbox One so I’ll just discuss my experience on the Series X. I’ve encountered crashes, freezes of over ten seconds, audio and visual glitches galore, an erratic frame rate, and a blurry, low detail image. CD Projekt Red has promised several patches over the coming months in hopes of finishing the game they released this week. There is a good experience to be had here, it just needs to be unearthed.
If and when that does happen, what gets uncovered won’t be the revolutionary game many were expecting. I’m ready to go corpo hunting with Keanu by my side but the process won’t be anything I haven’t seen before. Cyberpunk has quest givers scattered throughout Night City. You pick up and complete quests in whatever order you like and on your own schedule, earning money and experience to spend outfitting your character and unlocking abilities in the game’s robust skill tree. The game allows you to pick your own style of play, offering upgrades for melee, shooting, hacking and stealth as well as cybernetic implants that grant nearly superhuman abilities. There are more than enough options in customizing your character to make multiple unique playthroughs a viable goal. Combat itself is...fine? It could use more impact, fewer bullet sponges, and more ways to avoid it altogether but it’s inoffensive in its current state. The AI leaves a lot to be desired and I never found myself thinking “hooray the shooting is about to start” but I say inoffensive because if you’re playing Cyberpunk you’re here mostly for the story.
Having the board game series as the base helps considerably. There’s a wealth of lore for the game to fall back on and they do a good job of leveraging that. The main gives you the feeling of being lived in, and the go anywhere do anything structure drives that home. Even when you’re not doing main story missions, everything feels real and consequential. The choices you make during quests will have lasting effects that make your world unique compared to those who chose a different path. The city is dense with places to discover and things to do, and it’s easy to get lost in side missions for hours at a time. Mission variety is another strong point with the “brain dances” standing out as particularly entertaining. These sequences allow you to relive another person’s dreams or enter the edit mode where it becomes something of a detective mini game, allowing you to scan the environment in audio, visual, or thermal mode to find clues related to your quest.
The bottom line on Cyberpunk 2077 is there is a great, albeit familiar, game here with an immersive setting, deep character customization, an engaging story and memorable characters— it’s just trapped under mountains of baggage. CD Projekt Red’s bigotry and deception poison the well but let’s be clear, even without those issues this game is in a disgraceful state at release. The bugs, crashes, freezes and myriad other technical problems make this a definite NO BUY at least until the next couple patches are released and the quality can be reassessed.