Cyberpunk 2077 just got a glossy new update, and even though it seemed like a lot of fanfare for not very much substance, I was convinced enough to download the game once more. The first thing I did was head to my apartment to customise my V, a feature that, I remember with dismay, was not available at launch. That was also the last thing I did, because in booting the game back up I remembered that I had done everything.
That might not be exactly true - I still have a lot of random bullshit to do for the police, but aside from taking down Psychos, I ignored basically every police task in the game. My V ain’t no snitch. I also could do the final mission again, seeing as the game’s reaction to the various endings is simply to boot you back to before it began, but I’ve already seen every ending. That leaves me with not much to do but wander around looking pretty, and having spent over 100 hours using the game as a fashion shoot simulator, I need something a bit more compelling to pull me back in.
The other option, of course, is to start an entirely new playthrough, but that has its complications too. In both playthroughs to date, I played as a female V. First time around I romanced Judy Alvarez in one of the best in-game romances I’ve ever seen. Second time around, against my better judgement, I decided to take “fuck the police” literally and got with River. His romance is pretty by the numbers, even if his weird abducted child with cow nightmares mission is one of the game’s best hidden secrets.
In both cases, I tried to go all the way with Panam only to be left wanting. I prefer characters to have genuine sexualities rather than be driven by the whims of the player, but with how sparse the options are in Cyberpunk 2077, it’s hard to take. That’s the whole reason Cyberbang 2069 was developed after all, to explore some of the ignored potential love interests.
It’s worth remembering how odd romance is in Cyberpunk 2077. On the face of it, it’s simple but limited. River and Judy are your options for a female V, and Panam and Kerry for a male V. However, it’s not that straightforward. River will romance a V with a female body regardless of their voice, while Panam Will romance a V with a male body regardless of their voice. Judy, however, requires a female body and a female voice, while Kerry requires a male body and male voice. Why? I have absolutely no idea.
It’s not even like they wanted to make Judy a Gold Star, or a TERF, or make a nuanced commentary on the fluid nature of sexuality and genital preference. You can be a female bodied V with a female voice, but have a penis, and still romance Judy. Pronouns are tied to voice, which feels like an extremely weird choice, as well as underlining how surprising it is that a game set in 2077, allegedly forward facing, and with heavy themes of body customisation and transhumanism, did not allow you to use gender neutral pronouns, as well as peppering the world with binary gender signs.
Even stranger, when you romance Judy, the sex scene heavily implies you have a vagina, even though it is not required for the questline to unlock. Similarly, Panam’s shows V jackhammering into her with a penis, even though genitals again have no bearing on whether you can romance her or not.
This leaves me with no real desire to play again. There’s no story DLC - just a handful of new fixer missions - and while I could play as a male V and finally land Panam (I did a similar thing in Mass Effect for Jack after all), that holds no interest for me when the main thing to pull me back in was the ability to customise V throughout the game. If I’m not playing as the V I want, then what’s the point? I may yet see Panam’s romance through to the end - and have already driven off into the desert with her in one of the game’s endings - but another playthrough just isn’t compelling right now, and I’ve already seen what River and Judy have to offer.
This is all part of a bigger problem for Cyberpunk 2077. Everything we’ve been given in this new update, promoted with an hour-long stream to really sell it, would have been there at launch were it not for all the cut corners. Cyberpunk 2077 was a Towering Inferno of a video game, and over a year after launch it’s throwing a parade for fixing the electrical wires. These improvements can’t fix the game’s underlying options - in fact, in many ways they expose them. The greatest RPG of all time and depending on an unchangeable (still unchangeable, even with the new customisation) choice made at the character creator, you might only have one love interest to choose from.
Cyberpunk’s 1.5 update holds some intrigue, and being able to give my character a mid-game makeover is interesting, but it doesn’t feel as if it offers anything new, and reminds me of what was never there in the first place. It’s nice that I can finally change my V’s blue ponytail, but that’s not enough to inspire another playthrough when I’ve seen it all before.
