It's been... what, 5 years now since we've first heard of Cyberpunk 2077? And when it made its first big appearance again at E3 this month it came out with more treat. In case you don't know what I'm talking about, it's about that The Witcher 3 GOTY Edition codes in the trailer. That's what happen when rich studio being awesome, thanks to their success with The Sims 4. I can't wait to see their next update on Battlefield—
Ah wait, wrong company.
"Every walkthrough you do will play differently because of the 'choices matter' nature."
To avoid misunderstanding, that's not a quote by one of the developers, by the way. It's me concluding what Mike Pondsmith and the Associate Design Director Kyle Rowley said. I'm not sure how will that look and feel like, but if it's what I think it is—every decision you make even the smallest ones will affect the main character, V's, life path—the amount of replayability would be innumerable that you'll probably won't go through all the paths before you're done with the game. We've heard a lot about this promise before, but let's see how CDPR deliver their's in this one.
There are 3 classes you can choose from the get go; Solo, Netrunner, and Techie. with yet-to-be-revealed range of abilities around those archetypes that you can swap around and combine the perks and abilities to suit your whim on what your character will be and how you approach combat, or pretty much everything. You can even look at people's 'status' similar to Watch Dogs where you hack their phone and see who they are and what they are up to. I suspect Cyberpunk will have a more futuristic way of doing so.
"Vertical" Open World?
Now CD Projekt Red is more open about their project. The world of Cyberpunk 2077 may going to be big, but the developer preferred to call—and make it—"dense". They emphasizes that the open world environment is going to be vertical, unlike The Witcher 3 or other open world games, most of which are sprawl horizontally.
I imagine it'll look and feels like Dredd movie where one sky scraper building is the equivalent of half of Novigrad, where the higher the floor the more rich people who lives in. Looking at those faces after they tried the demo at E3 made me so jealous.
While making interactive and entertaining loading screen is a good choice, CDPR took another way; no loading screens. After the initial load into the game, you can go anywhere seamlessly without loading screens interference.
With the fluid class system that let you choose your way in combat, whether you prefer a more sneaky hacky approach or go full Mirror's Edge-style cybernetic ninja running on a wall, I think the game having no loading screen make it better, because your combat won't be limited in a particular cell.
The Team, Including Mike Pondsmith, Are Happy With Their Project
On one interview with Mike Pondsmith I like to see that the man seems to be a chill and cooler dude than Andrzej Sapkowski. And I don't think he'd get salty over CDPR for "not giving his work enough credit", unlike somebody. Look, I don't mean to spew hate over an old man, but being bitter about video game and a company that helped his work to be more famous just bring pout to gamers faces.
In case you didn't know, Mike Pondsmith is the author of RPG Cyberpunk 2020, which is the game Cyberpunk 2077 based on. It's really neat that CDPR make it "2077" and wait 2077 days to reveal it again since the first time they announced the project, which was around 5 years ago.
Second thing that CDPR put emphasize on the most about the game is that this is not an FPS game, rather it's more of a first person RPG, with shooter elements. Listening to them talking about the combat gameplay, one might think that despite their statement, it would still make it feels like an FPS. But if it's not, well then I guess the RPG level might be way deeper than you might expect.
However, this design choice is bothering a lot of people. Well, if you expecting combat system similar to The Witcher 3, which is best done in third-person view, of course you'll think the combat won't be as good. CDPR decided to make it first person because according to the Level Designer Miles Tost, it fits their storytelling, new dialogue system, the combat gameplay, and how they do cutscenes a lot better.
When I see people getting worked up about the first person perspective and doubts the melee gameplay will be good, all that popped in my mind is Dishonored or Dying Light. Those games did quite well with their first person combat. Not the best, but good, and the games were so immersive. The studio is a bunch of experienced people in creating and designing a world, but the people concerned about it maybe also experienced in RPG. So I'm not sure which is better, but, I think I'll trust the studio's decision and see how it goes.
If there’s an RPG fans around maybe you could give me some idea of why a first person RPG sounds like a bad idea? Because I don’t know much about RPG.
The Character Customization is Also a Little Deeper Than I Thought
Just like you would expect from a character creation in games would be, you can customize V's appearance and stats similar to other RPG games—Intelligence, Strength, Constitution, etc. But they didn't stop there, there's also stats from the tabletop RPG as well like Empathy. Okay, I've never heard of that before and it sounds like it'll be a new experience I'll gladly explore.
The ability to choose V's gender is great enough feature already, but again, CDPR don't stop there. You can choose V's background story too, which persumably will affect V's storyline and/or characters reactions towards him/her differently in some ways. We've seen this from Dragon Age, now let's see how Cyberpunk will pull this off, their style.
The fact that it's a cyberpunk themed game makes it exciting to be able to have sick robotic upgrades for V such as upgrade your legs to run faster or run on the wall, maybe upgrade V's eyes too to see through walls, and I'd love that mantis-blade thing from the girl in the first trailer.
Ciri's dialogue that made everyone speculated her appearance in Cyberpunk 2077.
I Should Stop Asking About Ciri
On one of the hundreds of interviews CDPR did, one of them had the game director Adam Badowski asnwered the question whether Ciri will make an appearance in Cyberpunk 2077 somehow and his reaction was he seemed like he'd break down and lose his sh*t if someone ask that question one more time. He probably will, if he hear about my friend wondering if we could romance Ciri.
Someone is going places.
It's kind of surprising, to be honest. Given how CDPR liked to 'goof around' with fans. I really thought they had some elaborate way to make this Ciri cameo since The Witcher 3, since how Ciri described the world she fled in was like a clear, visual hint of this.
Adult Contents Warning, Parents!
I thought the level of nudity in The Witcher 3 was as far as a non-porn game will go. Turns out Cyberpunk 2077 will have you walking around the city and be able to have a one night stand with some robo-girls you meet on the street. And robo-boys too? I don't know, everything I heard about this from people who played the demo was "15 minutes into the game and bewbs". Well, that's 80+ hours more of gameplay right there.
I wonder if the love interest will have a significant impact on V's story. Well, considering the straight out bold "choices matter" from Mike Pondsmith, I think there will, which is cool because I want my V to be a brutal killing machine who works for money but also have some lovey-dovey side s/he shows around his/her lover. Pretty much like that white-haired guy with two swords, what's his name again?
Anyway, when I say for adults it's not only about the nudity, but also the game as a whole because of its clear, and bold violence that some people surprised seeing them happen in broad daylight. The Night City is, as you expect from a cyberpunk theme, ruled by Mega Corporation with gangs in rivalry or hand in hand. Or something in between. That gives the impression of that's just how much of a dangerous place Cyberpunk's Night City is. A shitty place to live in, but a great place to play in as a mercenary, which is what V's profession is.
You Can Cause Chaos Like GTA, But This is "Not a GTA"
This is a violent game where you can shoot, kill, drive a car and run over pedestrians, perform brutal beheading and dismemberment, etc if you choose to. But, according to the quest designer Patrick Mills, you can cause chaos to some degree but it's not the game of that. The whole "it's not like what it looks like" thing is giving me uncertainty of how the game will play out, but that's one of the reasons why it's the most anticipated game right now.
The fact that you can drive a car around the city give you the thought that the city must be horizontally huge. But, the developer remarked that it should be "enough", not "big". Well that's an issue in open world games we've been having—big empty map.
There are certain things that concern me, but it's more of a problem on my part instead of the game's design choices, such as which kidney I should sell so I could get a new gaming rig plus Cyberpunk 2077 by the time it releases around June 2019.
Let me know in the comment of what you think of Cyberpunk 2077. Is there something you wish to see? Does the first person perspective concern you? What else do you expect from the game? This is what I think of the upcoming game so far. Thanks for putting up with my crap, and stay awesome! Beep.
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Images credit: Cyberpunk 2077, Dishonored 2 gif.
DISCLAIMER: All artworks in this post (except for the cited ones) are belongs to me and I don't allow you, your partner, your cassowary, or your waifu to use them without my consent. Think I'm a smug? Fine by me. Happened before. Hate it if it happen again.