CD Projekt Red
GAME
Cyberpunk 2077 is huge, ambitious and safe!
Cyberpunk 2077, the long-awaited game by Witcher studio CD Projekt Red, is about a place called Night City. But in its version, the past is never far away. Cyberpunk 2077 was announced in 2012, and it’s based on a tabletop series that launched in 1988. After years of work and reportedly months of brutal crunch time, CD Projekt Red has delivered on an incredibly ambitious vision: a vast virtual city with a complex narrative and roleplaying system.
It’s done that by playing all those elements extremely safe and straight. Cyberpunk 2077 is a frequently satisfying and sometimes impressive game, but despite its setting in the fast-moving future, it’s almost never a surprising one.
Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in the eponymous year 2077 and the aforementioned Night City, a California megalopolis where interlocking freeways thread between skyscrapers and street markets. (Imagine Los Angeles with mile-high holo-billboards and pedestrian-friendly urban planning.) Following a de facto breakup of America, this failed urban utopia has become an autonomous zone dominated by gangs and multinational corporations. Every street-level surface has been plastered with sexed-up ads and nihilistic graffiti, while the ultra-rich have retreated into cavernous hotels and apartments with a literally gilded servant class. Most citizens are disposable, and all bodies are malleable, ripe for dramatic cybernetic modding that blends flesh with chrome.
Your protagonist is a mercenary named V, hailing from one of three possible backgrounds: 2077’s small corporate overclass, Night City’s teeming slums, or the nomadic groups outside the city. My V was a neon-haired corporate raider, for instance, and got a short origin-story mission about being dragged into a bloody interdepartmental conflict. After this introduction, V becomes one of countless freelancers drifting through Night City’s demimonde. Then they join a heist arranged by a flinty femme fatale, and naturally, the job falls apart.
V witnesses a cold-blooded crime by one of Night City’s biggest power players. In the ensuing chaos and coverup, they end up with a piece of dangerous experimental technology. They also resurrect the digital ghost of a Night City legend: metal-armed punk rocker terrorist Johnny Silverhand, voiced by Keanu Reeves. While suffering Johnny’s cynical quips and frustrated outbursts, they have to figure out who built the tech and how to stop its deadly effects, appealing to criminals and corporate loyalists who will all but inevitably stab them in the back. This is just one thread in a narrative that’s big even by the standard of most open-world games. I finished Cyberpunk 2077 in 40 hours, which covered most of the major side missions and a fair amount of cruising around Night City, but left a lot of smaller tasks undone. Every neighborhood is packed with jobs to discover, conversations to overhear, and random crimes to stop. As you get more powerful, local fixers and crime bosses start reaching out for help. (They also keep trying to sell you secondhand cars, which, frankly, seems like something a decent capo should delegate.) Beyond the divergent opening missions, you’ll find a couple of major endgame story branches, depending on where you place your loyalties.
Out on Thursday 10th December 2020