The release of Cyberpunk 2077 was easily one of the most anticipated events of the year, and what a year it was!
And boy did it not disappoint but perhaps for all of the wrong reasons.
That’s because there is no game more emblematic of the weird and strange time that is 2020 than Cyberpunk 2077, a game that started development back in 2011 and still retains all of the conventions of that era – to its detriment.
Envisioned for the now previous-gen consoles with ports to PCs and next-gen consoles as well, the debut of CD Projekt Red’s latest masterpiece on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One was less than stellar.
In fact, for many people, the game did not run up to par with constant crashes breaking immersion and glitches even breaking entire quests and features. Two massive patches later and the game is still somewhat laughable on previous-gen consoles.
Things got so bad, in fact, that CD Projekt Red offered consumers a refund on their game and Sony even pulled it from retail on the online PlayStation store.
Nonetheless, having sold some 8 million copies as of press, the game has made back its development and market many times over (a fact not lost on CD Projekt Red and one of the first things they touted about the game’s launch).
Yet, in a year when many people are out of work and feelings are strained already, Cyberpunk 2077’s broken launch on previous-gen consoles, combined with its laughably dated gameplay mechanics, has soured many gamers that used to be frequent passengers on the hype train. Whether this will last or not remains a question for the future but more than a few people with PS4s and Xbox Ones feel like they were ripped off in order to fund the “future promise” of a game that will likely only be realized on next-gen hardware.
Those with long memories will recall that Skyrim launched on the original PlayStation 3 and later achieved its zenith with updates and subsequent re-releases to everything but a Nokia handheld. That’s one way of saying that holding out hope for Cyberpunk 2077 is not a fool’s errand. Even so, there are some really odd mechanical choices in the game that have many of us scratching our heads here.
For one, it seems to borrow heavily from the conventions of MMORPGs: Tons of quests and factions with areas on the map where enemies are “tougher” and areas where they are “easier.” But, oddly, it forgets that genre’s attention to details with things like factions. There are many factions in the game, one of which, the Aldecaldos, you can possibly join as part of the narrative. That’s cool and all but, over 100 hours deep and having completed all of the Aldecaldo related quests, I still aggro’d them when I bothered them in Night City. Completing quests for factions, killing their members, or anything related to factions has absolutely no impact whatsoever on their opinion of you. You’re not rewarded for choosing to complete one faction’s quests over another and everything has this odd, disconnected vibe that, again, hearkens back to an MMORPG that lets you (and wants you) to take your time.
Except for here it is simply filler material since no one is paying a monthly sub to play this. There are many such conventions in the game where your choice doesn’t really matter in the greater scheme of things outside of trying to win over a dead rockstar with adolescent political ramblings and a genocidal bent. All of this is to say that the glitches are just one of the many things that Cyberpunk 2077 has going against it right now.
Given that, it was a fun time and, like many have said, one of the best Fallout games I have ever experienced (and I’m a huge Fallout fan). But it is not GTAV, not even close, a game that came out two years after the idea for Cyberpunk 2077 was born.
Have you had a chance to play Cyberpunk 2077? What’s your opinion of the game? What do you think of the controversy surrounding its release? Let us know your thoughts on this in the comments section below.
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