So, finished the game.
What the fuck is this?
I'm genuinely confused as to what is going on with this game. The best way I can describe it is a pair of really high quality pieces of bread holding together a mediocre turd. A shit sandwich, if you will, where the beginning and end of the game seem so emotionally captivating and well done compared to what is in the other 80 percent of the game.
You go dicking around doing various side quests and odd jobs in a way that reminds me of Payday 2. Which is a really good thing, because Payday had interesting design to missions, different ways to complete them, different ways to go about things. The problem is that Cyberpunk 2077 has inherited the repetitive nature of a cookie cutter Far Cry [Insert Number Here] game. The entire game is buffeted by a massive, I mean fucking
MASSIVE amount of filler that has basically been shitted all over the game. Infiltrating the first night club is fun, but the second time, the third time? It's like these people forgot the old adage of 'Quality over quantity.'
Oh, you bet there's plenty to do in the game. The reviewers will rave on about how you can "play the game for 170 hours!!11" while not stopping to ask the fundamental question. Sure, you can play a game for a long time, I've played Skyrim for 2000 hours. But were those precious hours invested into the game actually
fun?
Are you having fun doing the same cookie cutter jobs over and over again? Are you having fun dealing with the pea-brained retarded AI that serves no purpose other than as a walking mannequin? Are you having fun having Johnny Silverhand cucking you both figuratively and literally?
Sure, the combat is fun, it's a
blast, but what's the point? You essentially play as a schizophrenic psycho murderer, roaming Night city befriending a gang in one scene, then brutally murdering them wholesale in the next. I know this has been asked before, but where's the
roleplaying? Why is it that every time I go into a fucking store that my gun is basically disabled, and I can't even shoot the fucker or, y'know, hold a store owner up because I'm roleplaying a criminal in a decadent, degraded criminal dystopia? Half the time you're just a vigilante cop, responding to every call for help from the police, who by the way are portrayed as total assholes in this game. So I go in to clean up the messes they should've handled and they still spawn behind me and shoot me in the back with barely any notice? Jesus fucking Christ, even Skyrim had more interaction than this.
In modded Skyrim, even with how broken it was and how it shit itself every 30 minutes, I still had leagues more fun minute for minute than I did in Cyberpunk 2077. I could slap on the immersive speechcraft mod, and fuck with NPCs how I please, utilizing the same-y voice actors to deliver an immersive experience that couldn't even be found in the vanilla game. I could engage in highway robberies, trick people into looking away as I steal from them, play pranks on them and more. You could play a
role in Skyrim, something that the developers of Cyberpunk forget when they failed to add in a reputation system at the least. But hey, it's just a small indie studio, heh?
It just shocks me. The beginning of the game is mostly as advertised, while the ending, though interesting, simply made me wanting for more. When
I picked the 'working with Arasaka path' and told Silverhand to go fuck himself, and ended up with the space station ending, I was genuinely moved for what I think was the only other time other than Jackie dying or Evelyn just getting wrecked. That ending gave off deep, REAL cyberpunk vibes, akin to the original Bladerunner, while simulating the mind-fuckery that can go on when one is hospitalized and so many variables are unknown.
I couldn't keep myself playing through the mid game, because it's just so bland. Go, kill, steal, etc, and for what? The minutia of the moment to moment gameplay is so sweet, but it doesn't connect to anything greater, there is no "metagame" where taking certain jobs can make some factions pleased and others pissed. Or where attacking one faction in a job means they jump you as you are driving, for example. There is no way to fuck up so many jobs that the fixer writes you off, or even to the point where you can make a fixer your enemy. (as some fixers are associated with factions) The greater context to what you do in the game simply isn't there, and don't even get me started on the shallow ass interactions between you and your companions. The end credits hit me in the gut, not because of the farewells given or the friends made along the way, but because it was the only moment you had where you felt connected to those characters without any threat of a constant, IMMINENT problem that must be solved NOW! Why can't I hang out with my bros, didn't GTA 4 do this?
It's all so tiresome. The lies, the false promises, the taste of what could've been a great game. Gamers have been fucked over too many times. I just can't.
