I have been very interested in Cyberpunk 2077 (hereinafter referred to as 2077) since the promotion began in 2018. However, due to the poor performance of the console after the release of the main body, I did not enter the game at the first time when I only had a PS4 at the time. In the past few years, I still heard praises of this game from the core and friends around me from time to time, which made me curious and patient about this game. Last year, the large DLC “Shadows of the Past” was released and received a good response. This made me decide to enter Night City four years after the game was released. Overall, I am very satisfied with my nearly 80-hour adventure, but I am also glad that I saved my first experience of this game until today when the production team has finished the game.
Now, let me share my observations and experiences of “2077”.
Levels and Battles
I’m a stealth hacker. If you look at the closed levels in the game from this perspective, the level design does have the flavor of immersive simulation, especially the new “Deus Ex”. The level design fits the main direction of several character builds, providing enough freedom for players of different builds to use their favorite methods to attack the level. For me, hacking into the camera, looking for flaws and planning routes, and then going around the back of the enemy one by one and twisting their necks are all feelings I haven’t experienced for a long time. Of course, if you really want to compare, the levels of “2077” are still much worse than those of serious immersive simulation games in terms of design density and freedom, but it’s enough to make me feel interesting.
This hacking mini-game is really boring. Compared with the hacking system in “Deus Ex”, it is far inferior both in terms of playing and looking.
On the other hand, there are many places in the game that force players to fight head-on. The first time I encountered a forced head-on battle, I was a little overwhelmed. Later, I began to slowly strengthen my head-on combat ability in the build. On normal difficulty, the head-on combat experience is not interesting, but it doesn’t make me bored. Since I focus on intelligence, my main weapon is naturally a smart weapon. The design of smart weapons is quite interesting for people like me who don’t play FPS very often: you don’t need to aim too carefully, just hold down the trigger button and you’re done! In addition, I always pretend to have a double jump kick, so once the head-on combat starts, I start holding down the trigger button and jumping around, which is quite lively.
I heard from a friend who played the game for the first time that the character development and weapon systems have been greatly improved in 2.0. This may be the reason why my level and combat experience was okay this time. This is also the main reason why I am glad that I stayed until now to play “2077”. However, there were still many rough performances in the battle that made me laugh and cry. For example, when Adeka was fighting for the Scorpion on multiple lines, I watched the two sides of the battle standing in the battlefield formed by several cars, shooting and shouting at each other without dodging or evading. That scene was really funny.
Urban Design
As the stage of the entire game, I love the design of Night City. In general, I can feel that the production team designed Night City as a city with nearly 7 million people, rather than a theme park with game levels. This made me not want to teleport when moving between mission points, but to turn on the temperature radio, drive slowly by myself, and take a look at the scenery of the city. (Of course, this is also influenced by the fact that I had just completed Dragon’s Dogma 2, which had extremely scarce means of teleportation, when I played 2077)
I would like to describe the design of the entire city as chaotic yet orderly. The towering skyscrapers are built in the city center in an extremely dense manner, leaving only extremely narrow and oppressive passages for people and cars on the ground to walk. The crowded overpasses also show the barbaric growth of the city. But on the other hand, the road tunnels, the pedestrian bridge system that can be seen everywhere, and the rail transit system that runs through the city reflect that the ineffective urban planning is still playing its role. Under the combination of these elements, a densely populated but disorderly growing city is vividly displayed.
Of course, the art design of Night City is also first-rate. This has been praised more than once in the past four years. I don’t know much about art, so I won’t teach you how to do it. From a feeling point of view, even with my limited experience in cyberpunk, I can clearly feel that different styles of cyberpunk art are organically integrated into Night City. This is really amazing.
Side Quests
The story design of the game’s side quests is quite interesting. As I have heard in recent years, each story involves a theme under the cyberpunk genre – labor and human alienation, class solidification, AI self-awareness, conspiracy theories, etc. The one that impressed me most was the mission where the mayoral candidate was attacked at home. I unraveled the mystery and found a huge but vague conspiracy, which made my back tingle. Secondly, some of the side quests are slightly interrelated. The result of an unrelated side quest in the previous one will affect the options available to me to solve another side quest. This is also very interesting.
On the other hand, from the perspective of process and level design, the quality of the side quests in “2077” is very mixed. Some of the more carefully designed side quests do have quite long story lines, and some of them will design some levels of varying sizes that require some thinking. But some side quests are done very casually, and they are really just accepted and the goal is completed, and there is not even a closing dialogue. Not to mention the large number of “open world quests” with blue icons used to fill the time, such as commissions, cyberpsychosis and NCPD quests. Although there are some scattered story branches and simple levels in these quest lines, most of them give me a feeling of “going there to kill a few”. After playing these quests for about 25%, I lost my patience to continue playing.
Another point worth mentioning is that the new side quests and commissions in Shadows of the Past are much more complex and interesting than the side quests and commissions in the main game in all aspects. In Dogtown, except for the side quests with yellow exclamation marks, all the commissions with blue exclamation marks given by Mr. Hands have stories and levels that are no less high-quality than the important side quests in the main game, and even have related performance designs and dilemmas that are closely related to the environment of Dogtown. Whether it is the stupid police officer who messed up his work for the gang, the independent boxer who didn’t want to fight in the underworld, or the underground illegal child athlete training base, they all left a deep impression on me. The interesting stories of these quests themselves also strengthen the shaping of the mixed environment of Dogtown, a no-man’s land.
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Next, let’s talk about the characters. In V’s desperate adventure, as a player, I met all kinds of flesh-and-blood people with V and experienced various stories with them. This human touch is my favorite part of this game: in this huge, empty, cold and dangerous city, there are so many interesting people.
Although I like the characters in this game very much, I have to say that the character creation of “2077” has been affected by rushing and cutting like other parts of the game. In my opinion, except for Johnny and Panam/Alcardo, the personal stories of other major characters have obvious signs of cutting. This caused a gap in the character arcs of these characters and affected the character creation. But in terms of character creation, CDPR has used the limited good steel on the blade and tried its best to show the content that can move players the most. Therefore, even those characters whose stories have been obviously cut are still enough to move me.
Next, let me share with you the people who impressed me the most in the story.
First, let’s talk about Johnny Silverhand. As the second protagonist, Johnny, who accompanies V until the end of the story, gets the most exposure. In addition to the occasional plot in the main story that allows the player to fully control Johnny, Johnny also often makes jokes during side quests. And Keanu Reeves’ outstanding performance also makes this character even more charming.
The relationship between V and Johnny has been changing as the story progresses. At the beginning, the two of them disliked each other. Silverhand, who was fearless, thought that V was nothing. And for V, you stupid idiot who wants to kill me, get out of my mind! But as the adventure deepened, the two gradually got to know each other better. Silverhand had experienced a lot in the past, so he often liked to comment on what V encountered with the feeling of a person who had experienced it. Some of these things made sense, and some didn’t make sense. At the same time, even after experiencing so much before his death, he still had a kind of innocent childishness. Although sometimes people still want to slap him hard, it is hard to hate such a person.
Because of his immaturity, Johnny has also grown up along the way. I can feel that the many things he has experienced with V have made him gradually adapt to and accept the world 50 years later, and finally made him understand his situation. This is probably why he is willing to return his body to V in the end.
Another character I like very much is Panam. Panam should be the character least affected by the deletion among the main NPCs. The whole story line is presented very completely: Panam left the family because of the conflict with the current leader Thor. But whether it is her, her friends in the family, or even Thor, they still care about each other. So once something happens at home, Panam is more anxious than anyone else, and when Panam encounters problems, his friends are willing to lend a hand. At the end of the story, Panam, who has been hit by many obstacles in Night City, understands that he still cares about this family. After making a big profit in the end. Panam also naturally returned to the family and was elected as the new leader.
In this process, Panam’s straightforward personality was fully demonstrated. As long as she is determined, she will never give in and will persist to the end. This personality is very consistent with her background as a wanderer and the chivalrous feeling of the Adecado organization. In the past, I have rarely seen such a stubborn and straightforward female character in stories created in Europe and the United States, so it is quite impressive.
Finally, let’s talk about Judy. Relatively speaking, Judy’s story is a more tragic one. Her past (hometown) and present (best friend Xiao Ai) were crushed by the rolling wheels of capitalism embodied in Night City. While she was sad, she rose up to resist, but no matter what means she used, she would end in failure. After all this, she was not defeated. Although she made up her mind to leave Night City, she continued to live her life.
I have to say that Judy’s storyline was greatly affected by the cuts. For example, the tragic ending of the Cloudtop struggle was only mentioned in one sentence, which was obviously cut. But the whole character story was still too shocking when it developed to the diving section at the end. I have to admit that at first I just followed Judy’s love line because she was pretty. But later I was gradually attracted by her lively appearance and delicate personality. V and Judy, two lonely people, were still able to depend on each other in the end, and they left Night City together in the star ending I chose for V, which was also a good destination for Judy.
Shadows of the Past
Given the independence of the DLC “Shadows of the Past”, I will open a separate section here to talk about my experience.
“Shadows of the Past” itself is a typical spy war story, so typical that even I, who haven’t seen much, can recognize a lot of classic elements. I have to say that the theme of cyberpunk is indeed all-encompassing, and it doesn’t seem to feel abrupt to embed any classic theme. In terms of quality alone, the story of “Shadows of the Past” is better than the original story in terms of completeness and details. Some small dialogues that create rich characters are also designed very carefully.
Like the original novel, the focus of this story is on people. The people in the story, whether it is Reed, Zhaomei, Alex, or even the Lord of Dogtown, Hansen, and President Miles, are all entangled by the shadows of the past. Faced with this situation, Zhaomei angrily chooses to break free by any means, while Reed tepidly chooses to atone within the principles. Under these conflicts of cause and effect, this drama of subverting Dogtown is staged.
Like the main storyline, Shadows of the Past also attaches great importance to the player’s choice: players are asked to choose between Reed and Lark, two people who are both pitiful and hateful. I finally chose to help Lark. First of all, the V I portrayed did not have such a strong will to survive (I will talk about this in detail later), so I didn’t care who could save “me”. Secondly, as the story progressed, I became more and more dissatisfied with Miles and NUSA. When Lark told me about her past and the reasons, my disgust for NUSA further amplified my empathy for Lark. So in the end, even when Zhao Mei confessed to me that the AI Matrix could only save one person, I still helped to the end without hesitation.
Although it is a pity for Reed, as Johnny said, for him who has been awkward all his life, this may be a relief – at least this time he can choose his own way of death.
Main story & ending
In terms of structure, the main story of 2077 is a cyberpunk “gang” story that I expected (although this part of expectation also comes from the fact that it has been slightly spoiled countless times since its release) – the protagonist is inexplicably involved in a life-and-death event and fights for his own survival. Of course, there is no perfect ending in the end. The main story is relatively straightforward. Although the performance, atmosphere and details are all good, the whole story does not unfold unexpectedly. The three main lines presented to the players at the beginning are more to lead the players to understand different aspects of Night City and let V get acquainted with some important people to lead their own stories later.
In contrast, I think the focus of the story experience of “2077” lies in choice. Facing this sudden disaster, the thoughts of the player who plays V determine the different experiences of each player. In the end, I would like to talk about my experience from the perspective of “choice”.
First of all, after reading the comments section of several 2077-related radio stations on Jihe, I feel that when I play V, I have a different starting point from most people: I don’t have such a strong sense of survival for the imminent death. When I heard Lao Wei say that V was not going to die soon, I even felt relieved: it’s like this, I feel that the chance of survival is not great, and living a little longer is a gain. In this case, I will find something to do, such as finding out the mastermind behind my fate, or finding a company that I don’t like to disgust – I feel that you are the only one who doesn’t like me.
With this in mind, V and I plunged into this world together, experienced many adventures, witnessed the warmth and coldness of human feelings and the bloodthirsty society, and even got a glimpse of the deeper darkness behind the world that was already scary on the surface. Most importantly, during this adventure, V met a group of friends who cared about each other: Old Wei and Misty, Judy, Panam and Adecado’s brothers, the River family, Kerry and Johnny’s other old teammates, etc. For my V, compared to the illusory life, this group of friends is more important and I am more unwilling to disappoint them.
This can be said to be the biggest consideration for me to choose the ending. For my V, cooperating with Arasaka and committing suicide are both betrayals to his friends. After entering the shrine, facing a body with only six months left to live, I still chose to continue facing it. Regardless of whether there will be a turnaround in the future, at least I still want to spend the last moments of my life with my friends decently – of course, I think so after watching the ending of Silver Hand. Seeing my friends eagerly trying to contact V but unable to find him, I really can’t bear it.
As for the two endings after entering the Arata Tower, I actually like both of them. The space capsule performance at the end of the Sun Ending is very shocking. And the follow-up of this ending makes me feel that this may be the orthodox ending that continues to the sequel. But in terms of flow, I think the Star Ending is the most suitable for my V. This comes from the sense of belonging to Adecado after completing the story line of Adecado: in this secluded city, V, who has almost lost everything and is dying, finally found a place to call home. Although he couldn’t find a way to save his life in the end, V, who found his belonging, was still able to fly away with his lover (I chose Judy, who wanted to leave Night City in the first place) and his family. Looking at the phone calls from my friends at the end, I felt that there was no better ending than this.
As for the tower ending added in the DLC, I quite like the mood of V turning around and walking towards the crowd. But from the text, V’s basic personality determines that she is absolutely unwilling to become an ordinary person. On the other hand, when V woke up two years later and called her friends, the description of the changes in her friends was simply OOC in my opinion. I understand that this is probably to make the two years that V lost more important, and this kind of thing happens in life. But this kind of transformation without a beginning or an end really offends me. So I don’t like this ending very much.
Conclusion
When the rating ban for 2077 was lifted in December 2020, Japanese science fiction writer Shohei Fujita wrote a very wonderful review of 2077 for IGN Japan. At that time, I didn’t know that this work would be released in such a rough form, so I was just shocked by the extremely emotional conclusion of the article. At the end of the article, Fujita quoted the first line of lyrics from the British band Archive’s “Bullets”, the soundtrack of the trailer when 2077 first appeared in 2012, to conclude:
” Come touch me like I’m an ordinary man… “
To my surprise, this line of lyrics I saw four years ago just reflects my feelings about Cyberpunk 2077. Under this roaring city that devours everything, there are countless ordinary yet special people. They cling to each other and struggle to survive in the bizarre. The most simple emotions between people shine brightly in that dim and chaotic future. And the contact with these people eventually shaped the character V that I played. This is why I am so fascinated by this work that still has many flaws even after four years of repairs.