Cyberpunk 2077: Far from Cyberpunk and Further from RPG
A review of Cyberpunk 2077 through the lens of the cyberpunk and RPG genres
The release of CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 has not passed under even the least-aware gamer’s radar. The new CD Projekt Red(CDPR) flagship project has made the rounds in an expansive marketing system that has mis-sold the game to a detrimental degree. The release, which was meant for November, is unpolished in terms of story and role-playing game(RPG) elements, and unrefined in terms of its core gameplay.
I have no qualms about the bugs or optimization problems. My system ran it fine with no problems that couldn’t be resolved on my end. I’m more intrigued by the pitfalls around the game’s narrative and bare RPG aspects.
Cyberpunk as a genre is a very loaded topic to tackle. It is not unprecedented to have games in the cyberpunk genre. Considering the predecessors like Detroit: Become Human and the Deus Ex series, CDPR’s news release could have followed in those games’ footsteps. However, those games weren’t touted as redefining the roleplaying game landscape or having extremely intricate AI and worldbuilding. Cyberpunk as a genre, born from the myriad genre-defining features like Blade Runner(1982) and William Gibson’s Neuromancer, usually contains a science fiction story that questions human relation to technology or cybernetics. Blade Runner(1982) saw Deckard question humanity in the face of lifelike artificial intelligence. The Matrix (1999) executes its themes through Neo’s heroic journey as a way to emphasize reality in a net-focused future.
Cyberpunk 2020, the tabletop predecessor to the videogame, explores the technological hellscape of a corporate-dominated world and how players fit into the dystopia. Cyberpunk 2077 is no more cyberpunk than Star Wars is historical fiction despite taking place “a long time ago.” While CDPR’s cyberpunk foray does feature corporate domination and high-tech interfacing, it is only set dressing with game mechanics like hacking for what is plainly a sci-fi skinned, barebones version of Grand Theft Auto. The cyberpunk of CDPR’s latest project is hardly introspective and asks nothing of the player to associate the cyber ideas with the narrative.
While Cyberpunk 2077 is obviously it’s own game, the Grand Theft Auto comparison is derived from how the world interacts with the player and how travel around the world is facilitated through vehicles. I find the gameplay and gunplay similar, though what is stripped down is definitely the wanted system; you can’t sneeze without a cop teleporting on top of you.
Cyberpunk as set dressing isn’t unfamiliar in media. This fact itself doesn’t hinder the experience of Cyberpunk 2077, though the title of the game implies it to be more than a superficial backdrop to a shoot ’em up. It’s common to see cyberpunk used as a set dressing in television shows like Altered Carbon season 2 or in music videos like Lil Nas X’s Panini. Games like Fallout and Far Cry have used cyberpunk as an aesthetic choice to demonstrate a shift in gameplay and narrative, like when confronting synths in Fallout or the zany hyper-stylized design of Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon. Cyberpunk 2077 uses cyberpunk aesthetically, similarly to a magic system to flesh out their fantasy world.
The player’s agency when confronted with technology or cybernetics is nonexistent. In a cyberpunk narrative, like the two Blade Runner movies or The Matrix series, the characters interact and react to the technology available to them, or at best the technology that defines them. Certain characters in The Matrix films are unable to jack-in to the Matrix, born of flesh and blood, so they interact with the world differently. Cyberpunk as a genre should draw importance to the connection of humanity and technology; Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t allow the player to choose how the technology is used, nor do they get a choice in rejecting it entirely. There is little in the way of genre-defining characteristics in the narrative or player-based gameplay that link it directly to cyberpunk. Instead, technology is thrust on the player at every corner and the player’s agency is derived from who they get to kill with it, not what futuristic ideas they interact with. Likewise, it’s far more cyberpunk to play Skyrim on a refrigerator than it is to play Cyberpunk 2077.
Character Creation and Narrative
Creating a character is a defining moment for an RPG. While Cyberpunk 2077 does feature a lot of great character options, it fails to compete with games nearly a decade older.
The player character, “V,” is such a non-entity that it has diminishing returns on the playability of this character and customization options, whether cosmetic or story. In games like Skyrim, a blank slate character is more than enough to build an engaging story and persona around. CDPR struggles to allow the player to actually write upon that slate. While given the freedom to roam Night City, it is a puzzling matter to craft a life for the player in the nearly empty character narratives of the game. In CDPR’s Witcher series, the monster hunter Geralt of Rivia is already a fleshed-out character with relationships and history to be uncovered while also swashbuckling and monster hunting. Players’ agency in Witcher is mostly defined by choices that affect relationships to Geralt and political intrigue between countries or lords. “V”, on the other hand, is such a blank slate the developers felt it necessary to tightly handhold the player’s story engagement. V will never be what the player wants and is instead held on a short leash, restricted to what the developers require for the story as they are pulled along by the writers.
If there is a more intricate and branching roleplay narrative it isn’t apparent; I’ve played through the first hours of the game multiple times and finished the first act to try to get different results, but it’s useless. Not even the option of a pacifist play through.
When creating a character, the player is first given 3 options for background and starting scenario. Each background has a blurb about what they mean and what V was doing in this initial story. After customizing a character by giving them the biggest physics-enabled penis possible and dumping points into the stat system, the player is thrust into a starting scenario relative to one of Nomad, Street Kid, or Corpo. Nomads begin in the desert with a vehicle and are part of a smuggling plan gone awry, which ultimately leaves the player without their vehicle and resolution to the smuggling run. Street Kids start on the streets with some hustle and bustle and a penultimate tussle with the same cinematic intro as Nomad. Corpos start in a corporate building and are subsequently removed from the Corpo story and given the same cinematic intro as the previous starting scenarios. Either way, the player is going to start in the same place behind the façade of choice that is the background selection. The bland player character, V, has the vague and undefined goal of “becoming renowned” in Night City; what that means, without a proper reputation or karma system in place, is unclear.
CDPR put a lot of effort into marketing and hyping up the character customization, but it’s really just a vacuous attempt to be as refined and in-depth as the character creation systems in games like Black Desert Online or the face modeling in Fallout. While the face has a menagerie of options, the body is far removed from the idea of customization. The only options that modify the body shape are whatever sexually dimorphic body-type chosen and reproductive organs the player chooses subsequently. The body is cookie cutter and milquetoast. A basic semi-athletic build for the female and a more than fit Dorito-shaped type for the male are the only options that physically change the silhouette. Furthermore, skin color options are abysmal. At first glance it might have been a problem of color correction or graphics settings outside the game, however upon viewing and playing the game across platforms it is apparent that the skin colors are off. The palest skin is either anemic or jaundiced with unhealthy undertones. The single dark skin option is the shade of gangrenous Hershey’s milk chocolate. Anything in between comes off as bargain bin crayons called “flesh.” The most involved character customization efforts were in wiggly penis size and shape, which is unfortunately far more involved than either breast or vulva could ever achieve. Perhaps the developers are only familiar with one arrangement of labia and limited cup sizes ranging from a subtle wide-set B, C, or D. Sadly, it seems, they are more familiar with their own obviously superior organs.
Overall Degree of RPG
Role-playing games have a diverse and intricate catalogue, therefore it is hard to say what isn’t an RPG and what is. Players will play games however they enjoy, but certain games allow that to a degree that is far more narrative-focused and world-changing. Cyberpunk 2077 tries to do the latter, and though the game features heavily inspired RPG elements, it’s dimension stops there. The RPG elements most prevalent are skill trees with involved point-buy systems, gun customization for character progression, and branching dialogue options that give players agency in the main and side stories. These are key design features for modern RPGs, but Cyberpunk 2077 fails at expanding on those options.
V, the player character, is a blank slate character no different than the Last Dragonborn from Skyrim in which the player can create and mold themselves around the role to play the game. The player doesn’t even need to become the Dragonborn if they ignore the right quest. However, CDPR did not give the player the agency to craft how V interacts with the world.
I don’t entirely enjoy comparing it to Skyrim in an RPG setting. Skyrim isn’t the best RPG, but Bethesda’s fifth Elder Scrolls game really raised the bar for how an RPG should be designed. Not even Bethesda could keep up with it: Fallout 4 and subsequent games in that series were not as role play intensive as Skyrim or Oblivion Entertainment’s Fallout: New Vegas.
The most apparent slight in terms of agency is dialogue options. When Fallout 4 was released it was called out for the terrible dialogue wheel with little to no descriptor of what was going to be said by the player. This was easily modded within the first week of the game’s release. Cyberpunk 2077 has the same feature, but it’s worse somehow. The dialogue choices are sparse, not nearly as diverse as options in Fallout: New Vegas or LA Noire. Some characters provide optional, non-narrative based dialogue options, but none of those choices open up new narrative responses, despite attempts to befriend or encourage relationships. Furthermore, the selectable dialogue is rarely, if ever, what V actually says. The player could choose an innocuous “sorry” or dignified “no thank you” and with no preamble whatsoever, V would subsequently derail the conversation and get killed with an antagonistic “sorry you’re such a dumb-ass.”
It’s disappointing to see another RPG get bogged down by overdesigned features. The game has a lot of fun gameplay with beautiful scenery and intriguing worldbuilding, but the key elements that define an RPG are ineffective. Whether it’s crafting a character for the futuristic Night City or exploring the streets and deserts, CD Projekt Red has opted to nix the freedom of choice and replace it with something akin to a sci-fi mad libs.
