Cyberpunk 2077, PC review (No Spoiler) - One life is not enough

For many it has been eight years of waiting since that announcement of CD PROJEKT RED, for me many more.
I was fantasizing with my pals from the RPG party back in 2004, we wanted a D&D that went further Baldur’s gate, we wanted a MMORPG di Vampire The Masquerade that included the whole world of darkness (we were in shock for that new universe called "World of Warcraft“) And as aficionados of RPG Cyberpunk 2020 we wanted a futuristic game with flying machines, cyber equipment and a disruptive dystopia.

Now, in 2020 that dream has come true.

A little bit of Cyberpunk history

Before starting with the actual review we must do an excursus of the fiction imagined by Pondsmithcreator of cyberpunk 2020.

First of all, I recommend reading Neuromancer di Gibson, and then continue on the entire literary work of Philip K. Dick , entered the mood you can really understand that in this dystopian future all that matters is the style and not the substance, that technology and man go hand in hand and that progress is the servant of the ambitions of man himself.

With these assumptions, one of the most beautiful role-playing games will be created, putting ourselves at the table with friends and friends we will live a 2020 different from ours, made up of infamous cities and full of underworld like in the films of the 80s, everything will remember the Detroit haunted by criminals like in the movie Robocop or the large metropolises and the Martian colony in Act of Force, the world is ruled by huge corporations that make governments weak and not very influential, cops fall like flies and will have to defeat armed gangs of assassins and mercenaries equipped with cyber implants, artificial intelligences also rule this bleak world of holographic and neon advertisements, profiling every single person and treating humans as mere numbers ready to inflate the coffers of large corporations.

In 2077 something has changed, the world is increasingly divided and large corporations now have an almost uncontrolled dominion of daily life, humans are fighting for crumbs and outside the megacities there are only degraded rural areas where there is a fight for survival in a post-atomic scenario, yes you read that right, in fact a few decades earlier the world was devastated by a nuclear disaster of global significance and nothing is the same as before.

Borders have been redrawn, entire nations have fallen, and trade between continents has become more difficult than ever. Globalization, like him, has failed, badly.

Within the new metropolises, entire factions of all social, ethnic and cultural backgrounds will compete for territories, as a bridge will be the mercenaries who will have to maintain balance through the tasks provided by the Fixers, the most influential figures of the entire cyberpunk imaginary.

Power is managed through the Fixers, these individuals know everything, they keep the corporations, politicians and criminals by the balls, through their range of influences and knowledge they maneuver as pawns the mercenaries in their pay and indirectly rule Nightcity. Let the dances begin.

The Narration

Before we begin, I remind our readers that Cyberpunk is not "a futuristic gta" but a full blown RPG with strong railroading and a good action shooter component.

After completing the creation of the character (I'll tell you about it later) we can choose between 3 Backgrounds: Nomadic, Street life, Corporate..

For my adventure I chose to take on the role of a corporate, the character for all will be called V and will have its own initial history (different for each background), its network of friendships, its knowledge, familiarity with certain places and a basic mission: survive in this shark tank called Night City.

V will be catapulted into a series of vicissitudes that will upset his life, he will gradually lose all conviction and certainty, he will pass from the upper floors of a corporation (in my case) to ruin and having to reinvent a career with his longtime friend. Jackie, he will then become a mercenary.

From this point on, anything I would write about the plot would become pure spoiler, so I will try to analyze the narrative by going with the lead.

During the entire narrative arc we will be catapulted into a simply fantastic adventure, the strength of the title lies in its history and under Pondsmith's supervision, the writers worked excellently.

If I can make a risky comparison, imagine the plot of "The Hangover" but without the comic verve, our V will have to fight a series of concatenations and vicissitudes traced by a Deus Ex Machina that if it were not so mean I would dare to say that yes enjoy seeing us suffer.

We will go from hatching plots against corporate organizations to having to solve failures of an artificial intelligence that drives taxis, we will find love and discover true friendship in a place where these feelings are strongly extreme or ostracized, we will drive very powerful machines, we will modify ours body - we will chromate it speaking in the jargon of the game - and we will become mercenaries who resolve fearsome contracts against / with the underworld.

In our adventure, as you may have guessed from the dozens of Spots, there will be Keanu Reeves who will play the role of Johnny Silverhand, somehow (I can't spoil it for you) will accompany you for the duration of the very long second act, will have a co-star role and, even if it will give you the possibility of choice, will guide you in an inexorable spiral of catastrophic / unpredictable events , like a true Rocker.

In all this the game will put us in front of ethical choices and strong implications, I will talk about them in the next paragraph.

The philosophy of the game

Writing a review without spoilers is very difficult, here too I will try to talk to you about the philosophy behind the game without making big revelations and then move on to the technical part.

Let's start with some main concepts, Cyberpunk dystopia was covered by Asimov, Dick, Gibson and many other authors of non-fiction and genre literature, those books deal with the man / machine relationship, robotics and artificial intelligences, overcoming the limits of man and exasperating the control of the powerful and capitalism. In cyberpunk there is all of this and it is delightfully narrated.

In the game we will be literally bombarded with advertisements (MASTER work), they will be present everywhere, on the TV visible with a chip in the cerebral cortex, in the elevators, in every bar, as a hologram everywhere, in the shards (small usb keys scattered around), on computers , in the sky on propulsion submarines and projected towards the stratosphere initially developing on the facades of buildings, they are literally everywhere.

The game shows a what if of a future where consumerism and capitalism override the real needs of people, I also see it with a view to denouncing the drift of the ads to which we are literally getting used to present everywhere (probably one will also appear after this paragraph) and into a future that doesn't seem so dystopian if projected into our world in 50 years.

Another point concerns excesses, having to show off a look and belonging at any cost, be yourself but exceeding, finding the most flamboyant dress or the most fashionable suit, exasperating the concept of fashion and taking it far beyond the week of the Milanese fashion, in Night City the look is literally seen in everything, even in the changes made to your body, to the prostheses or to the new eyeballs with LEDs. Damn, it seems like a pc gamer paradise with all those lights and few are disturbed by the "chrome" (ie the implants), except the doctors called "scalpels", they will almost always be reluctant to cybernetic systems, but I don't want to let you spoiler on this flavor of the plot that fades into the background.

Beyond aesthetics and consumerism, the game deals with issues related to ethics, starting from more than just concepts such as "be whatever the hell you want" regardless of gender, transsexual, homosexual, genderfluid? No problem, there is no need to point it out, no one is seen "really as different" in Cyberpunk, the uniqueness lies in other aspects, basically on the look. Even the patriarchal and "macho" management goes a bit to fade behind very strong women with roles of power everywhere. That's the spirit.

The other ethical issues concern sex and excess.

As you explore Night City you will notice that a good 30% of the shops are sex-themed, however, a lot of spice is being put on how sex is lived in this future, the shop windows of each district are full of "Dolls", girls / girls who are close to perfection who are all and for all cybernetic, sentient and real sex machines ( always of human origin).

These Dolls also have an option to load emotional Microchips (there would also be the quote to the Subsonica) who are able to capture the darkest passions from cybernetic systems and project the client towards new horizons of pleasure, bypassing the concept of sex and elevating it to the extreme of pleasure, beyond the mere sexual gesture .

Always remaining on the field of sex, what we understand from the narration is that many people approach the theme of sexuality and the viewing of pornography through the braindance, I'll talk about it later in the gameplay paragraph but in short, it's a video recording that involves all the senses through sensory immersion. A sort of "VERY augmented virtual reality".

And it is precisely with braindance that the screenwriters dig deep into the mental illness of a society totally misled by excess, in the game on several occasions the intimate horror of the snuff movie will also be narrated, or the augmented reality shooting of murders and others. bestiality that I do not want to write to relive comfortably from home, feeling the strength of the executioner or the victim depending on the mood, no longer being spectators of a gruesome scene but virtual advocates.

This is where the game's critique of the excess of the future comes in shattering, people who can't get enough of it and find new ways to amuse the lowest instincts, all of which are shown with a thrilling realism, really.

Another side of the Cyberpunk philosophy that I appreciated is how the sobering corporate power play is portrayed, in 2077 in Night City corporations behave exactly as our companies would behave in their conditions, hyper power influenced by money and data.

Precisely on the data there is the second denunciation of the game in its narrative, data that are more important than the euro-dollar of the game, knowing the movements, tastes, habits, relationships and connections of each individual citizen gives unimaginable power.
On this point it is better to pause and start thinking as we are feeding our sensitive data into the world that belongs to us, the big techs in 2077 could have the excessive power they have in a game that is pure fiction but which can prove to be a sad oracle of a not very rosy future, where a leading data storage company can put governments, nations and continents in check.

It's just a game, but the philosophy behind the ethics designed by the writers poses questions before our eyes that we will have to give weight to, at least think about them with awareness. A cross-section that if brought to our times and our future is creepy.

The Gameplay

Closed the chapter on philosophy and storytelling let's move on to the favorite part of gamers, the action!

In cyberpunk 2077 the action never fails, really.

You can play with the approach that suits you best, are you a player who loves stealth? No problem. Are you a pacifist who does not want to fight? No problem. Do you love hacking and the ability to "hack people"? No problem. Do you want to shoot wildly or hit with your fists in your hands or with a katana? No problem. Do you want to create unique objects by disassembling and reassembling the junk you will find around? No problem. Do you want to mix all of this? NO PROBLEM!

The game will give us carte blanche on whatever specialization we choose, in my run I tried to build a character netrunner (hackers to keep it simple) which in its own way is infallible sniper.

I was able to do it and I had a lot of fun.

After choosing the background we will immediately notice that we will have to give the characteristic points that will unlock related talents more or less useful, all in the style of a respectable role-playing game, the possibilities of specialization are confusing, there are endless possibilities and we can adapt our fantasies and our favorite gameplay to any style that suits us.

The game allows constant advancement based on contracts, missions or story progress and experience points earned by progressing, plus the more we use skills, the more we accumulate points of specialization in certain skills that will unlock new branches of talent and new game possibilities.

In the game as we explore the vast Open World we will come across dozens of clashes with rival factions or simple criminals, all the clashes will lead to a wild looting (and to a backpack that is nothing short of huge, even too much), there will therefore be an eternal replacement of new war material, objects, clothing and shard.

Same thing for the official missions provided by our fixers (I talked about it in the first paragraphs), through the quests we will have the opportunity to discover something more about the characters of the missions with narratives never left to chance and full of details, the thing that has left me amazed is the complete flexibility in facing any danger.

An applause goes to the management of "cyberware", that is the cybernetic grafts that will make us "chromed" and more powerful, we will be able to choose from many options from any scalpel in the city (for an effective value better than Viktor Vektor) that will bring us closer and closer to the world of machines.

Practical example of the game: more or less in the middle of my adventure (about level 15) I had already developed several skills as a Netrunner, there was a member of the Animals who, as he saw me, put an end to my existence with a blow, on the third restart at checkpoint I started acting cunning. I hacked the cameras from outside and through them I framed the boss who was bothering me, I used the "cyberpsychosis" attack that forced the victim to shoot zero on his teammates killing them all, always remotely electrocuted and arrived in front of him I used the hack "block movement" which allowed me for 6 seconds to hit him with the headshot and finish him.

Nothing new in the world of video games, somehow something similar could be done on Watch Dogs and Deus Ex but not with this flexibility and expertise.

Crafting is a bit woody and it looks a lot like that of The Witcher 3, you need some time to hone your talent in creating and upgrading an ever better equipment, without considering that on average looting enemies is almost always more convenient , except for the specialization in crafting talent, in that case you will be able to create extraordinary items and unique hacks accessible only with that branch of talents.

Always with regard to looting, the game experience is enriched by shards, data databases scattered throughout the game (I will have looted at least 1000), inside there are valuable information on Night City, on the completion of missions and on the flavor regarding the setting , in my opinion not reading the shards halves the quality of the gaming experience and does not give credit to the enormous amount of work done by the script department that has created a subsystem of Lore to make any dungeon master in the world dizzy.

In the Gameplay sector there are several pain points that I will deal with better in the paragraph "The 10 things I did not like" but first we need to talk about the Artistic Direction of the game

The Artistic Direction

Now we come to my favorite point, the art direction of the game.

The boys and girls of CDPR have spared no expense, in the game there are cameos of excellence, there is a certain Kojima which appears randomly in the game as npc, a certain Keanu Reeves who will co-star with her Johnny Silverhand, Lizzy Wizzy is the most famous pop star of Night City and is played by Grimes, without forgetting all the actors and actresses featured in the original dub and the prominent artists who contributed to the soundtrack (more on that later).

Beyond the cast, Pondsmith, the original creator, is assisting the artistic direction and storytelling. of the legendary RPGIn short, CDPR has not limited itself and has aimed directly at the sun, getting burned on several shots but hitting the target on many crucial points in what is in effect a watershed in the world of video games.

The game is masterfully directed, on the one hand the whole world was promised during the creation of the game, on the other hand many expectations turned out to be more optimistic than expected.

It starts immediately with a not bad climax and then stops abruptly showing a long cutscene that accelerates a phase that - if narrated - would have lengthened the broth a lot, or V's entry into the world of mercenaries. That sequence is divinely composed and prepares us for the second act that will immediately dampen the rhythm, offering us a defined line of missions that will lead to the epilogue.
This turn of narrative pace is the best that could have happened to us, we will finally be able to start exploring the night city without too much pressure and we will get lost in a world building never seen before.

Night City swallows you, it is a cursed anthill with different districts with different peculiarities, when you think you have learned the map a little you slip into an alley and you are forced to change your mind, behind every counter or on the benches the city is alive more than ever , the npc have dialogues with each other and if you stop to listen you understand that there is more than a mere empty shell, everything that should be a single outline even if it doesn't have a direct interaction is there that reminds you of the mood of the game.

Another detail I would like to focus on is the attention to detail, every corner of the map is covered with advertisements made ad hoc by cdpr graphic designers and many freelance artists, there is unprecedented variety and there is a complete desecration and distortion of the concept of advertising, it's as if Taffo's social media manager went on an acid trip and started creating advertisements for every company, simply out of his mind.

The attention to detail is present in all the places that we will see, from the expressions of the NPCs to the quality of the interiors of the shop windows, from the diegetic noises or from the sound of objects to the hundreds of easter eggs present in the game, from the content of the shards to the possibility of talk in video call with the NPCs about this and that with completely random conversations that make the game more and more alive.

Honorable mention at the progress of the plot towards the end, if in the first tens of hours of the game there is a sort of railroading of the quests on which you can decide the right order or the outcome of some missions towards the end we will really have a choice and decide how to end the story, reminding us that each ending has its own dignity and it all depends on how we decided to play our character, as if it were a great RPG with a very, very self-centered Master, but still an excellent Master.

To top it off, the graphics are simply spectacular.

I played on PC with the following configuration:

• Motherboard: Asus x570 Prime Pro
• NVME: 1TB pcie4 sabrent
• 64 GB ram and 3600 crucial
• Ryzen 7 3800x con OC
• Nvidia Palit gtx1080 (Unfortunately the 3080 are nowhere to be found)
• Case Fractal meshify (not needed, but it's beautiful)

Although the configuration is solid the GPU has its years, yet with the right settings I was able to play in 4k at 30 fps with a combination of medium and low (judge by the screenshots the yield), going down to 2k and setting many parameters to high I managed to touch the fixed 60 fps with a slight overclock.

The game world has a quality never seen before in the videogame medium, at times it will seem to live inside a high fidelity rendering and the first person vision helps a lot the immersion in the game. Nice work cdpr, and say that I was skeptical as a third person lover.

The game has its bugs and it is better to talk about it in the paragraph “10 things I didn't like”, you will judge.

The soundtrack

Anyone who knows me knows about my past in close contact with bands, I have photographed dozens of bands on tour and photographed hundreds of concerts and festivals, i refused who are the backbone of the "rock" part of the title I got to know them and share the stage with them (albeit behind the scenes as a photographer) and I was very, very skeptical about their presence and the other bands / DJs.

I changed my mind, everything works great, their music is a reminiscence of Johnny Silverhand's past and 2020, time and place more suited to the genre.

The soundtrack is mostly a mixture of Industrial, techno e EBM (not to be confused with EDM, that's another stuff, you know the video memes with the goths with the pipes on their heads? They dance that stuff there, EBM), all very reminiscent the era of the rave of the 90s and at some points the busy places of a Berlin of other times of the 80s, the fights - even the most insipid - always have the right music and have loaded me like a spring.

The selection of the radio on the means (e we'll spend a lot of time on it) is very varied, there is practically music for every taste and I have not found a song that can be out of tune, although many genres are not among my strings.

In my run I listened to a lot of electronics and I left room for the "Radio Ritual”Which gave voice to many Polish underground black and death metal bands, with even a piece of converge, “I Won't Let You Go” which stunned me when I recognized them on the in-game radio.

During the commercials on the screens there is even music composed by VHS Glitch e Perturbator, two artists that I would have liked to have been present in the main ost but I understand the reasons for their exclusion, you just need to see the “behind the music” on Youtube.

The sampling of game sounds such as shotguns, katana shots, cars, motorbikes and NPC dialogue are always of the highest quality.

The dubbing Español is finally at the level, perhaps the voice that is most out of place is that of Luca Ward in the role of Johnny Silverhand, at times he seems to do the homework with very little emphasis but he is still a voice in the olympus of the Españoles dubbers, the voice actor of V man (the one I could hear for now) has played his dubbing great, congratulations very lively.

For once you can play with dubbing in Español "without cringiare" (urca, I feel young to use these terms)

The 10 things I didn't like

If in the tones I was flattering it is for my approach to video games focused a lot on narrative (as demonstrated in the review of Red Dead Redemption 2) but I do not have the blinders, a game like Cyberpunk has set itself as a spokesperson for the perfect game, if not. settle at least these 10 points the perfect score will remain a mirage:

1. The world is alive, it feels, but the npc that act as a side dish, when they have no dialogue they are off, you can literally jump on them and annoy them that they won't react unless you attack them.
2. 90% of the shops are empty and / or locked, I can get lost in the world but at least I want to enter and observe, besides you can also live 15 days without sleeping or eating, in a realistic ARPG like cyberpunk it is almost unacceptable for the suspension of disbelief.
3. It is not acceptable that if you literally reverse at 1km / h and touch a passer-by, you will die and the police appear, it is not realistic.
4. Driving the vehicles is cumbersome, it almost gives the nerves, except for the bike which is already acceptable and enjoyable.
5. Traffic management is from face-palm, it is clearly seen that it is all scripted to get you through, except when you are bottled up, it gives a very annoying Deus Ex Machina feeling.
6. The fights are not balanced, sometimes even a little repetitive. Ex: Beat a fearsome boss, then walking you meet some useless scum that kill you with a single shot, it's not believable! This is mainly due to the progression of enemy NPCs with your level, often proving to be unbalanced.
7. In sex scenes you could be more daring, especially after many players have spent more than two hours personalizing their genitals. (point suggested by a colleague who wants to remain anonymous)
8. I found melee fights cumbersome and visually ugly, I hope they will improve over time.
9. The Crafting system makes life easier only for players who develop that branch of talent, for others it is almost useless given the generous looting in the fights.
10. Police AI is simply ridiculousindeed, I correct myself, artificial intelligence often misfires.

1 Bonus: The stealth approach is from the older generation, I was expecting something more innovative and engaging.

Bonus 2: The PC version still has some glitch and (at least to me) only two quests got stuck with conspicuous bugs (one at the beginning of the game, another is a secondary one that concerned the mayor and espionage), to solve unfortunately I had to restart the game by loading the previous saves.

All 10 points that I have listed are fixable by the development team, I am aware that at launch no game is perfect, but after all the references I was really hoping to see just some glitches and not optimization errors that even seem trivial to inexperienced eyes.

Thrown in this way at the end of the review, these defects seem strongly disabling towards the goodness of the title but it is not so, the amount of things to do, the visual impact and the complete immersion that you have in the game leave most of the features in the background. ugliness, trust and try the game, at least on pc or on Stadia, you will understand for yourself what I mean.

My tips

My main advice is: experience it as a role-playing game.

Read also: What is an RPG? How does it work?

Identify yourself with V, create a character who deviates from your person, make him do things that would leave you stunned, follow a moral line and / or a personal code. Live it all as an alternative life, other than your own, you will enjoy the game great.

As for the Build I will write several on our site, you will find them here, as far as I can tell you in a few words: choose a career that can satisfy you and that is close to your style of play, do not spend random skill points and ponder the management skills.

Finally, the greatest advice I can give you is explore the game world, get lost and feel Night City alive. Only in this way will you have 100% fun, don't ruse the ending, no one runs after you. For real.

Last concluding technical considerations

The review will remain open to changes, a similar job needs time to blossom in all its peculiarities, I leave you a final note and I will update you in the coming months based on the changes made by the CDPR team.

Cyberpunk 2077 could have been the title of the decade, but it has some gaps that limit my final vote by almost a point, I reserve the right to give 10 if by February 2021 the whole game will have fixed the biggest problems regarding optimization for PC, at present I can't give it full marks even if for the narrative power and the visual impact it deserves a 10 with honors.

Come on guys, you can do it, I believe in you. Good fix!

Summing up

In summary, Cyberpunk 2077 doesn't bring any really innovative mechanics, but it's not a drama. The title takes the best mechanics of all the open worlds released in the last ten years and draws heavily on them creating a unique and highly immersive experience; Getting lost in Night City is a unique pleasure and leaves us speechless as we turn an alley or look out from a balcony, the world is pulsating and we will hardly be bored. Furthermore, one thing is certain, the title will only improve over time by giving us the best ARPG of all time, I'm pretty sure and confident about this.

And finally: to understand the world of Cyberpunk 2077 one life is not enough. You will understand in due course.

Goodnight Night City, see you next Choom trip.