Loving the Thing Everyone Hates--My Parting Cyberpunk Thoughts

It's hard to put into words exactly how I feel about my experience with Cyberpunk 2077--it's very strange to feel so fascinated by a world that I willingly put an obscene amount of time into it because I wanted to squeeze out every last secret and experience.  At the same time, the level of disgust that people have for Cyberpunk makes it difficult to fully enjoy my obsession.  Every social media post or article about Cyberpunk seems to draw nothing but scorn from the masses of people who want to express their disappointment that it hasn't lived up to the hype.  My experience wasn't colored by the hype--I only loosely followed information about the game prior to release, so in some ways, ignorance is bliss.  I think if people went into the game without the hyped version playing through their minds, they would have a different experience.  I'm not saying Cyberpunk is perfect--there are problems--but I don't think it's the disaster that it's made out to be either (right now at least, I think that story was different several months ago).

I've felt the grasp of my obsession finally starting to wane (after four full playthroughs...yikes!) and I'm trying to wrap my mind around what works and needs improvement to help lift Cyberpunk out of the scorn-heap.

What Works

It's easy to find beauty in Night City.

1.) The world and world building is amazing.  You can't deny the magic of Night City--it's beautiful and completely dysfunctional.  I've been so obsessed with this world that I purchased the accompanying art/lorebook (The World of Cyberpunk 2077) and the level of detail that went into creating the game world is awesome.  Unfortunately, the depth of the world I got from the lorebook seems lacking in the actual game.  Something that is unfortunate is that the game doesn't draw much attention to the background, the history, and many of the details of the world (I actually forgot there was a database until my second playthrough).

2.) The main storyline and many of the chaining side missions that revolve around characters and their stories are great.  The main storyline forces players to make some heavy decisions that are thought provoking--I really enjoyed the way it played out and the branching options at the end.  I know many people are critical of the fact that they don't feel like the story was branching enough or that there were enough choices that impacted outcomes, but I didn't feel that way.

3.) Memorable characters.  Johnny Silverhand starts off as this obnoxious asshole who's actively trying to kill and possess V, but by the end of the story, you actually find yourself liking him.  Judy Alvarez is one of the most well-written characters in the game and one who fans obviously adore (there are sooo many threads about needing more Judy content...people are definitely attached).  There's Panam and the nomads; Takemura; Jackie Welles...and many others.    

Problems

1.) For me, the strongest and most enjoyable parts of CDPR's games are the characters--they've gotten fabulously good at designing likeable, fascinating, and flawed characters.  You'll meet several of these characters in Cyberpunk and the main storyline revolves around the most memorable.  Unfortunately, I think Cyberpunk is a case of too much world and not enough character.  There is a ridiculous amount of map marker side content (which, is arguably skippable) that feels like pointless filler (you can reach max street cred by only completing a fraction of them).  It's repetitive and can get quite boring if it's all you focus on (and, I think many players have found themselves quitting because they have focused too much on side content and they've missed out on the best parts of the game--the scripted main and side storylines).  It's a problem that plagues Cyberpunk and many open-world games.

The world in Cyberpunk could benefit from CDPR playing to their strengths--more great characters with complex, morally grey stories that play out through well-written chaining missions (the character story missions are great; Sinnerman and the one with Jefferson Peralez are both fun and interesting--there just needs to be more like those!).  I think that the decision to try to shorten the length of the main storyline (compared to The Witcher 3) was a mistake that left the world feeling oddly empty.  If DLC does happen, I hope it adds in new characters and stories to try to flesh out some of that emptiness.  Night City desperately needs an injection of personality--more corpo intrigue, more morally grey decision making--and fewer map marker/checklist tasks.

Recently, I've been replaying Red Dead Redemption 2 (and I have seen a lot of people make comparisons between the two) and thinking about what makes the open-world work well in that game.  I think it comes down to variety--players can choose from a menu of different activities which help fill  the massive world with engaging activities.  You can hunt or fish, you can gamble, you can explore, there are collectibles to find, there are random encounters...there's tons to do!  Cyberpunk could benefit from having a greater menu of options for players to choose from--simply completing gigs and scanner hustles gets dry quickly--Night City needs more life and more options for player activities to make the world feel more...alive.

2.) I waited to play Cyberpunk until I had read that the game was stable and that the majority of the bugs/glitches had been fixed.  There are still bugs and glitches (fortunately, the ones I encountered were all minor annoyances and nothing game breaking or progress blocking) that detract from the ultimate experience.  An example of some bugs--a legendary/iconic weapon plan I was after didn't drop due to a bug (I didn't know about this bug at the time or else I would've re-loaded--by the time I found out about it...way too late to do anything), certain characters don't do what they're supposed to do during a mission (like enter a car), I had a weird phone call bug in Watson where missions would overlap (that one was obnoxious).  (UPDATE: I wrote this pre-patch 1.3 and a large portion of the patch deals with bug fixes.  I haven't played since 1.3, but know that the bug issue is probably still going to need to be stamped out) 

3.) Weird AI/enemy behavior.  For example--one of my favorite quickhacks is system reset, a non-lethal quickhack that allows you to remotely disable enemies from a distance.  At higher rarities (and with the correct, legendary OS installed) it will jump between enemies within a certain distance.  I am a big fan of using it to disable two closely grouped enemies (that would be impossible to stealthily take down--usually it's two enemies who are facing each other).  My problem isn't with the hack itself (I love it), but with the way enemies react to the hack.  Two of their compadres just got the bejeezus zapped out of them and they don't immediately freak out--eventually someone might see the bodies and enter an alarmed state, but that's it.  The hack makes a loud electrical sound when applied.  The behavior should be more frenzied.

I want to say that I want more danger--more risk of getting attacked, more risk of police encounters, more gangs attacking (because I've greatly thinned their ranks....).  Not constant combat, but higher risk.

I think I've squeezed every ounce out of Cyberpunk for now and will be giving it a break until some new content drops (fingers crossed about that happening somewhat soon).  It's my sincere hope that fleshing out the world gets a lot of focus.