Putting the 'role' back in role-playing games since 2002.
Donate to Codex
Good Old Games
  • Welcome to rpgcodex.net, a site dedicated to discussing computer based role-playing games in a free and open fashion. We're less strict than other forums, but please refer to the rules.

    "This message is awaiting moderator approval": All new users must pass through our moderation queue before they will be able to post normally. Until your account has "passed" your posts will only be visible to yourself (and moderators) until they are approved. Give us a week to get around to approving / deleting / ignoring your mundane opinion on crap before hassling us about it. Once you have passed the moderation period (think of it as a test), you will be able to post normally, just like all the other retards.

Codex Review RPG Codex Review: Cyberpunk 2077

Infinitron

I post news
Staff Member
Joined
Jan 28, 2011
Messages
97,107
Codex Year of the Donut Serpent in the Staglands Dead State Divinity: Original Sin Project: Eternity Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 A Beautifully Desolate Campaign Pillars of Eternity 2: Deadfire Pathfinder: Kingmaker Pathfinder: Wrath I'm very into cock and ball torture I helped put crap in Monomyth
Tags: CD Projekt; Cyberpunk 2077

By the usual standards, CD Projekt's latest mega-AAA hit Cyberpunk 2077 should have been considered a huge success. It reviewed well enough on PC and managed to recoup its entire development cost via pre-orders alone. However, the game's console ports were a disaster, and in a year when we all had enough too much free time on our hands, it was enough to generate a massive negative publicity firestorm for the company, including class action lawsuits and an investigation by the Polish government. Several days ago CD Projekt published a video with CEO Marcin Iwinski apologizing for the poor state of the game, and a few days later it scored a comparatively pathetic seventh place in our all-important Codex GOTY poll. Now would be the perfect time to publish our own official review of Cyberpunk 2077, and thanks to a surprise contribution from esteemed user lukaszek, we actually managed to pull that off. It's a thorough examination of the game, including character building, combat, open world elements, quest design and itemization. Here's an excerpt from the review:

You might wow an NPC in dialogue with your tech knowledge. All it will accomplish is the NPC not coming up with the same solution in the next sentence. In most cases it doesn’t matter what you say, as the outcome will be the same. The quest design formula is usually as follows (main story quests included):
  • You speak with a fixer. It’s either a recorded video message or a long dialog. If you get a chance to speak, there’ll be many options to pick, but nothing will matter, as you’ll get your objectives anyway.
  • You follow the quest compass and there might be a locked door. If it’s locked, you might be able to unlock it. If you can’t – go jump out of the nearest window. Do it at full speed and without checking what’s behind. You will land safely on a balcony and will clearly see how to jump or climb to another open window. Sometimes it will be a ladder in the back of the building, but you get the idea.
  • There will be enemies. Kill them silently, go blasting, sneak past them – it doesn’t matter.
  • Approach the objective. There might be an optional pacifist option here, but that’s rare.
  • Escape the area.
  • Get a phone call.
Every. Single. Time.

On rare occasions the game will surprise you. Instead of following the quest marker on autopilot, there might be hidden objectives for you to unlock if you step off the marked path.

The start of the game is like Dragon Age: Origins. You get 3 origins that all forcefully converge into one path – one of the street kid. Without spoiling too much, you’ll get a choice at the end of the main storyline that mirrors each lifepath, but has nothing to do with your original choice. It’s all about flavor and some unique responses that, as I stated, usually don’t matter. The corp path is quite sad as you’re a suit for a few minutes, but the rest of the game has nothing to do with it. In that prelude, you’ll be forced to play a weakling vomiting from stress in the bathroom, while corp lines are usually about strong-handling NPCs to make them do what you want. Nomads and Street Kids can sort of continue their life. The corp origin also gets the weakest extra quest compared to the other two (although you do get the best tech pistol in the game).

Endings are not like in The Witcher where you have to live with your choices. You get a special save point, and after you end the game, you return to that save with a unique item based on the choice you’d made during the last quest. You can rinse and repeat to experience and obtain everything. A few endings are locked behind certain characters liking you, meaning completing their optional quest chains and not annoying them during dialogues. This is the only lasting consequence to your actions that I’ve found.

For example, consider blasting a powerplant during the main story – all you’ll see is a news flash during the loading screen or while waiting in an elevator. Side quests don’t get even such mentions.​

Read the full article: RPG Codex Review: Cyberpunk 2077
 

Zeriel

Arcane
Joined
Jun 17, 2012
Messages
13,347
I'm impressed that even not mentioning the massive number of unfinished things in the game even including basic UI elements (yeah, I know he talked about the UI, but I mean literally missing assets) it still makes the game sound terrible. :salute:
 

Turjan

Arcane
Joined
Mar 31, 2008
Messages
5,047
Good review, even though your experience regarding technical details of the GTA-like components may differ.

Minor quibble regarding this:
For example, consider blasting a powerplant during the main story – all you’ll see is a news flash during the loading screen or while waiting in an elevator. Side quests don’t get even such mentions.
That's not true. For example, the result of the River quest line gets news coverage. However, the general impression is that the news coverage hardly changes, which gets more obvious the more of the extra content you do. The main quest overwhelms everything else in this regard.
 

Jaedar

Arcane
Patron
Joined
Aug 5, 2009
Messages
9,812
Project: Eternity Shadorwun: Hong Kong Divinity: Original Sin 2 Pathfinder: Kingmaker
Comparing this unfavourably to shit like fallout 4 or skyrim really doesn't bode well.

I really don't understand how cdpr manages to make so many aspects of their games worse with every try.
 

Xeon

Augur
Joined
Apr 9, 2013
Messages
1,858
Aren't reviews made by volunteer members? I mean if someone reviews a new game then he can probably submitted to a mod and get approval for Codex review or something.

Pretty good review. Cheers.
 

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
12,578
edited by Darth Roxor
doesnt give due credit really. While I was hoping to be rejected early he used some dirt psychorat tricks to make me finish this review, then made quite an effort to make it readable
 

Reinar

Scholar
Joined
Oct 20, 2015
Messages
145
So in 2021, if you want to play a good cyberpunk action RPG with cyberware enhancements, hacking and realtime combat, Dex from 2015 is still the game of choice...
 
Last edited by a moderator:

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,561
Location
Tampon Bay
I never understood the preorders anyway. If a game comes out in 6 or 12 months you might as well wait until its ready.

Now you have millions of people who feel buttraped (not that they won't get the DLCs all the same)
 

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
12,578
I'm impressed that even not mentioning the massive number of unfinished things in the game even including basic UI elements (yeah, I know he talked about the UI, but I mean literally missing assets) it still makes the game sound terrible. :salute:
Can't say I was following reviews coverage closely but from what I saw everyone was focused on bugs and not on actual game. I did start writing due to me hating a lot of design choices.
actually I started to write because of gorasul
I was intentionally trying to put bugs aside, trying to see game that could have been/might look like few months from now.

In many cases it was quite impossible. Is it bug? Design choice? Bug that was covered with rushed feature? Game might really look different once issues are resolved 1 year from now, Id say that currently we are having true alpha release. As such I did cover some bugs while leaving others out

Also I cant say my coverage was exhaustive, whole review was like a rant already(Dariusz helped with that) and I did try to close it somehow
 

lukaszek

the determinator
Patron
Joined
Jan 15, 2015
Messages
12,578
Good review, even though your experience regarding technical details of the GTA-like components may differ.
was a while since i played gta. In general I was asking myself why im not playing gta5 instead quite a lot.
In general I felt like gta never tried to be a shooter. Meanwhile cp77 did and failed spectacularly.

That's not true. For example, the result of the River quest line gets news coverage. However, the general impression is that the news coverage hardly changes, which gets more obvious the more of the extra content you do. The main quest overwhelms everything else in this regard.
I dont follow. Line you quoted was to show fake world reactivity. Instead of having part of town without electricity - you get news flash. You get news flashes for a bunch of quests up to the point you get surprised whenever they are missing.
For example taxi quest
one of resolutions is delamain leaving night city. How come there are no mentions about this?
Or maybe I did miss time window to see the news. Too bad you dont get those over radio.

Still my point was how in cp77 game reactivity is basically ending elevator slides
 

Burning Bridges

Enviado de meu SM-G3502T usando Tapatalk
Joined
Apr 21, 2006
Messages
27,561
Location
Tampon Bay
lukaszek I can't say anything about Cyberspace because it does not interest me but GTA V has many problems of its own.

For example it is a gigantic loading screen simulator. It feels really strange when you booted up Windows from your SSD in 10 seconds, then run a shitty Rockstar launcher (which might fail, update etc), then it takes 2-3 minutes to get to the main menu and followed by another 5 monites until you are in the actual game. It is really, really bad, and I doubt Cyberspace has prepared you for this shock.
 

Mefi

Prophet
Patron
Joined
Apr 7, 2005
Messages
1,364
Location
waiting for a train at Perdido Street Station
Not to be overly pedantic about the powerplant thing but you can actually overhear NPCs talking about how they're losing their jobs because some idiot blew up the powerplant. Think it reflects a lot on how the attempt to integrate consequences into the world tend to fall flat because it becomes so easy to miss them. See also unmarked quest follow-ups and so on.
 

Absinthe

Arcane
Joined
Jan 6, 2012
Messages
4,062
The review was kinda shit. It feels like a few gameplay aspects were evaluated in a vacuum and not enough effort was spent trying to convey some sense of what the hell playing the game actually feels like, what the game is supposed to be about, what its appeal was meant to be, and how well it holds up to that. I get that CP2077 was a disjointed mess, but that doesn't mean the review should be too.

Also, I have no idea why you would call a game "mediocre" in the end when every part of the review is basically "this shit sucks." "Mediocre" is what you call a game that is bland and average but playable just fine without any real reasons to really want to play it. This game is just bad.
 

Dishonoredbr

Liturgist
Joined
Jun 13, 2019
Messages
2,074
hqdefault.jpg


This gonna be a good read.
 

Darth Roxor

Royal Dongsmith
Staff Member
Joined
May 29, 2008
Messages
1,878,377
Location
Djibouti
doesnt give due credit really. While I was hoping to be rejected early he used some dirt psychorat tricks to make me finish this review, then made quite an effort to make it readable

Cranium_rat.png


There will be phantom cars within a distance of one block away that will disappear as you approach closer. At the same time, actual cars will appear out of nowhere. I found it the easiest to drive on the opposite side of the road as there was minimal chance of a car spawning there. Meanwhile vehicles will constantly appear out of nowhere from side roads, ramming into you.

You call this out of the ordinary, I just call it an accurate representation of traffic in Poland.
 

Zer0wing

Cipher
Joined
Mar 22, 2017
Messages
2,607
It's a waste of effort to review this game since its simply unifinished and a lot of downsides can be explained as cut content.
The story is the only thing holding the entire game together
WHAT THE ACTUAL FUCK?! THE STORY IS THE FINAL NAIL IN THE COFFIN OF THIS MESS!
 
Last edited:

As an Amazon Associate, rpgcodex.net earns from qualifying purchases.
Back
Top Bottom