Comment on For me, Cyberpunk 2077 was uninteractive and has low replayablility value.
mox@lemmy.sdf.org 3 days ago
I mostly had fun, and felt the work they did to make Night City feel like a proper city, as opposed to the tiny village-sized “city” typical of open world games, really showed. (For example, the fact that people walking down the street had different ages, body types, and walking styles made it easy for me to forgive the occasional pair of NPC clones spawning next to each other.)
But yes, many of the activities/events offered by the game ended up seeming a bit pointless because their outcome was more or less predetermined.
Moreover, the RPG aspect of the game lacked depth, which seemed like a lot of wasted potential given that there were plenty of characters that could have been really interesting to get to know. Instead, the character development was nearly all Silverhand, nearly all the time, and I didn’t even have much influence over how that relationship developed.
Spoilers ahead:
What about Jackie? He was supposed to be my best friend, but I never had experiences with him to make me feel that way, and then he was gone in just a few scenes. What about Panam? She was so determined to make a difference in the lives of the people who mattered to her, yet she all but vanished once we bonded, after just a couple of missions. What about Judy?? Her personal mission-like-encounter was really promising. We supposedly fell in love and were planning to leave the city together, yet for the rest of the game, we had no interaction but “dates” consisting of the same half-dozen lines of dialogue and two or three brief animations repeated over and over again. I’m sure there are more examples, but I think I’ve made my point.
I think the biggest disappointment for me was the ending, though. And the other ending that I got by reloading and picking different options, and then the third ending, and the fourth. They all felt like such empty let-downs that I went online to read about the rest. Surely there must be some good ones, right? Right?
The only vaguely satisfying ending that I found was a secret one that (IIRC) requires very specific choices early in the game, and a very strong bond with Silverhand, and letting the game sit at a particular dialogue screen without making a choice for an extended period of time. The endings that players are actually meant to experience left me feeling empty, like all the time I had sunk into the game was for nothing after all. I guess that could be considered appropriate for a cyberpunk dystopia, but as an experience, it left me feeling cheated. I wished I had my time back.
So, as I said, I mostly had fun playing it, and it had its share of highlights, but I don’t expect to ever play it again. I hope CD Projekt Red keep much of the technical progress they made with this game (I was so happy that my character’s movement was responsive for a change!) and work more on character development in the next one.
TheFriar@lemm.ee 3 days ago
Ah, see, I love the game. I’ve been replaying it, actually. I think the endings, yeah, they’re all pretty sad. Even the one ending where
Tap for spoiler
You actually get the cure, it’s a massive, massive bummer. Life moves on without V, and they are stuck. They try to go back to their life, and they realized it’s all gone when they got what they were trying for the whole time. Every ending but one is genuinely sad.
And that’s super duper rare, it feels like. I truly appreciate that everything was a gut punch. I really like my V, and when I’ve replayed it I make them the same way (looks-wise, I have made different builds). The male voice actor was not for me. I think he sounded like a douchebag and I couldn’t root for my own character. And that first play through I was honestly a little disappointed with the game. But when I found “my” V, I was much more invested.
I love the difficult choices they saddle you with. It was a big part of the game for me because they really made you feel like there were no right options, or two right options, and you weren’t just choosing black or white, you were choosing moral grayness or moral grayness. And you had to sit with those choices and, as OP pointed out, watch the consequences unfold for the—I feel, very well-written and acted—NPCs.
I really love the game. It and RDR2 are my favorites. I was never a gamer growing up. In my thirties I started playing games, but I am a huge story person—books, movies, tv shows—and I think the stories and the characters made it. So when I found games that let me really get a sense of these characters, even if there is a lot of dialogue, it’s like I’m playing a really long movie. That’s ideal for me. I could see how some people who game heavily wouldn’t like it though. But I fuckin love that game and its spiritual twin (IMO), RDR2. Both maybe “limited” for true gamers, but for some filthy cazh like me, fuckin excellent and highly enjoyable.