CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[Zed Duke of Banville]

How that joke went? "If he's hot, then it's called being sexy. If he's not, then it's called being creepy/sexual abuse"?

It's no joke.

It's no joke, but it is subject to change retroactively.

 

[theLorry]

Just play this as walking and photographer simulator and its very good sadly they didnt put enough effort into the actual meaty content game needed at least 1 more main questline and more side quests for major characters. Right now the game has about half of Witcher 3 content in terms of worthwhile side quests. There is Panam questline, Judy questline, River questline, Johnny questline and that's about it. Compared to what we had in Witcher 3 at launch it's a disappointment but anyway as I said its a good photographer simulator.

Spoiler

I'll probably get the game in a couple of year's time for the visuals if nothing else. I prefer perpetual nighttime in my cyberpunk, though, so I wonder if the game would turn completely nonsensical if it was modded to never have any daylight at all. How much of the content is actually tied to specific hours of the day?

 

[Danikas]

I'll probably get the game in a couple of year's time for the visuals if nothing else. I prefer perpetual nighttime in my cyberpunk, though, so I wonder if the game would turn completely nonsensical if it was modded to never have any daylight at all. How much of the content is actually tied to specific hours of the day?

Almost nothing is tied to daytime actually many quests are set during the night and majority of the rest you can do at any time you want. The game looks the best in night-time anyway.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

See that megabuilding? You can climb it. (Maybe. Like, you know, if a mission takes you there. In a slow elevator.)

what about a really really tall ladder? I mean the game already has Kojima in it.

 

[somewhatgiggly]

Your brain is broken at that point, made clear by the frustrating, repeatedly failed testing after the Johnny-ectomy. I got the impression that anything uploaded to Mikoshi at that point would be further degraded. It's a given that you wouldn't be given the CEO level storage option, or likely anything but be forgotten after transfer.

Johnny has lost everything by the time he gets on that bus. Rogue dumps him if she even lives, he hates himself and is reminded of a sense of betrayal every time he looks in the mirror.

There are only least-bad endings. The secret/kamikaze run at least saves your friends and offers revenge on Smasher.

All they have to do is literally put a note on his file. Or a category for fast-track resurrection, with an asterisk of 'owes Arasaka 5 years or equivalent labor'.

Being subsumed into Alt or Mikoshi are equally bad.

Being absorbed into an AI is very different from being put in storage as an engram. With the latter, you have a chance of returning to the world, with the AI you cease to exist as you.

Self-sacrifice for Johnny could be seen as noble,

Or that's what the engram wanted you to think

Goro's tone is chilling at the last meeting, almost fearful in Corpo CYA mode, and has returned to the Arasaka fold, having seen what his boss was willing to do to his own Prodigal Son.

He was a little shit anyway, fuck him - and he knew his life was over one way or another. Also, he probably felt it was a noble self-sacrifice (echoing the sacrifice Johnny asks of you, in a different way) - a kind of redemption for him, having fucked up the family so much. I must admit I've only seen the Goro version once on YT, but I didn't get that impression, I felt he was just solemn and sympathetic to a friend making a difficult decision.

Returning to Earth to live out a short, brain damaged life on Arasaka's leash (and those endgame voicemails need fixing) is clearly worse, or at least less human than the final Avocado path of love and family out on the range. It's implied that hope for a 'cure' is nil in either case. Frankly, you were dead anyway. The time after getting shot was gravy.

But as an engram you have a chance of resurrection in a body as a human being again, in fact a chance of literal immortality; no chance of that on any of the other paths.

But it depends I suppose. My V felt that returning to earth as a plain human with dignity intact, and Johnny out of her head, was better than any of that cyberbollocks, even if it was short - she was heartily sick of it by the end of the game, kind of in Luddite mode. Bittersweet ending to be sure, but not the worst. In fact, I don't think you can really rank the endings, they are all fairly bittersweet - except the one where Johnny gets to ride off into the sunset having taken over your body, that's pretty cheerful. For him. The Panam ending would prob be best if you were a male V really in love with her, but my V was femme and just thought of her as a close friend.

And then of course there's the matter of not wanting to risk the lives of the friends you'd made - Panam, the Afterlife people, etc. Avoiding unnecessary death there is another good aspect of that ending.

Yea becoming an engram is a option. It's not the best option. And what do you tell everyone along the way? wait a few years - come back as a glorified security bot? Or wait decades? V will be like Johnny, almost, coming back decades later to Panam and Judy and River and the rest. If they even make it that long.

I like Afterlife, there might be a chance there, still. V is still kicking six months later, probably got some high end drugs or nanomachines to fix him up a bit out of a gig. But in the Corpo ending, V is getting fucked. He also has less of a reputation now that he would in Nomad or Afterlife, meaning he has to work for it somehow - how? Attacking Militech? And so he's in a rough position overall.

 

[gurugeorge]

Yea becoming an engram is a option. It's not the best option. And what do you tell everyone along the way? wait a few years - come back as a glorified security bot? Or wait decades? V will be like Johnny, almost, coming back decades later to Panam and Judy and River and the rest. If they even make it that long.

I like Afterlife, there might be a chance there, still. V is still kicking six months later, probably got some high end drugs or nanomachines to fix him up a bit out of a gig. But in the Corpo ending, V is getting fucked. He also has less of a reputation now that he would in Nomad or Afterlife, meaning he has to work for it somehow - how? Attacking Militech? And so he's in a rough position overall.

It seems to be a non-trivial problem to solve the uploading and re-downloading problem - with all Arasaka's resources

Spoiler

they've only done it with Saburo so far, by the end of the game, and that's probably got something to do with genetic similarity between him and his son.

Clearly V's problem (which arose from an accident) is unique and difficult, and seems to be genuinely beyond their abilities to solve with tech at the level it is at that time.

I actually doubt the validity of the idea of uploading altogether, I don't think it will ever be possible in the way people dreamed about in the "wired" 80s and 90s. But supposing it is, then it's a fairly safe bet (on the internal logic of the game) that the tech will improve to the point that all those rich people stored in Mikoshi, having bet on future immortality, and an engrammed V, will be given bodies again.

It's interesting: apparently Jeffrey Epstein was a transhumanist who hoped to be rich enough to be an early adopter of this kind of treatment when it came around. So he leapt at the chance of running a honeypot operation for Mossad

One wonders how many of the elites have the same dream nowadays.

 

[typical user]

Since we are in the land of spoilers I will avoid putting anything into spoiler tags.

It's silly accepting Relic can change DNA of V's body and make him die in 6 months because of "different" engram/soul and then saying Arasaka can't provide you a new body. If the Relic has such capabilities then shouldn't it be very easy to reverse-engineer the process and replicate it for new body and possibly allow for immortality regardless of this limitation? Why putting this problem in the story anyway?

Another thing is how you approach engrams / souls. Personally I treat Yorinobu as brainwashed with Saburo memories. One of the issues Arasaka encountered with Soulkiller 2.0 was high sucide rate. I think if true immortality would be possible instead of conditioning with the recorded memories then I think people would at some point decide to kill themselves or refuse to be reborn or soulkilled. It's a spiritual dilemna if one believes in a soul or not. It's a shame this game copies Altered Carbon but doesn't ask the questions itself nor doesn't provide different answers through ingame characters. V at one point throws out of his hat a question to Johnny asking him if he believes in god in Sinnerman quest, Silverhand brushes it off with his signature "fuck, please kill me (don't make me answer)". Also the game is afraid to say if Johnny is real or becomes real by changing V's mind or is merely a virus AI in V's implants designed to fry his brain and hijack the body with the recorded memories. Game is leaving the interpretation for the player who can treat Johnny in those two different ways. Guess it's the only true relationship since Johnny can admit that he is real/fake depending on your dialog options... But that doesn't change the endings narrative.

I chose the Arasaka ending since that is the most logical and safe bet. Your other options are to trust rogue AI which consumed Alt Cunningham and assault the place. Also it's kinda stupid Victor leaves gun besides pills and Misty doesn't react when you put it beside her but then both are bitter if you kill yourself. I think it would be better if V was left alone on his way to his apartment and have to make a choice in front of the mirror with the gun placed on a sink or something.

Also it's cliche your apartment has a view on AV pad of V's mansion from The Sun ending.

 

[DeepOcean]

Make clone of V, create V engram, place engram on clone, problem solved.

 

[lukaszek]

Make clone of V, create V engram, place engram on clone, problem solved.

make lots of invitro babies sound easier

 

[Elhoim]

I'll probably get the game in a couple of year's time for the visuals if nothing else. I prefer perpetual nighttime in my cyberpunk, though, so I wonder if the game would turn completely nonsensical if it was modded to never have any daylight at all. How much of the content is actually tied to specific hours of the day?

What's funny is that actual night time in "Night City" is very short in the game, IIRC. Kinda like starting at 9-10 PM and sunrise at 5.

 

[theLorry]

I'll probably get the game in a couple of year's time for the visuals if nothing else. I prefer perpetual nighttime in my cyberpunk, though, so I wonder if the game would turn completely nonsensical if it was modded to never have any daylight at all. How much of the content is actually tied to specific hours of the day?

Almost nothing is tied to daytime actually many quests are set during the night and majority of the rest you can do at any time you want. The game looks the best in night-time anyway.

That sounds good, since there is no question about the game looking better and more atmospheric when dark. Now someone just have to make a "night only" mod for me...

What's funny is that actual night time in "Night City" is very short in the game, IIRC. Kinda like starting at 9-10 PM and sunrise at 5.

That seems strangely short when CDPR obviously put so much effort into making the city look good at night. I remember them saying they didn't want the classic cyberpunk "cliché" look with constant rainy nights, but still. For comparison, Night City is on about the same latitude as Fresno, and there the the shortest days of the year are less than 10 hours.

 

[Semiurge]

Just play this as walking and photographer simulator and its very good sadly they didnt put enough effort into the actual meaty content game needed at least 1 more main questline and more side quests for major characters. Right now the game has about half of Witcher 3 content in terms of worthwhile side quests. There is Panam questline, Judy questline, River questline, Johnny questline and that's about it. Compared to what we had in Witcher 3 at launch it's a disappointment but anyway as I said its a good photographer simulator.

Who the fuck threw those mannequins around the place?

Seriously, everything in CP77 looks plastic and stiff despite the city supposedly being a composite of different materials. Witcher 3 looks more natural than that and it's not because of the grass, dirty roads and wooden shacks you mostly see.

 

[True Ukrainian]

I think you have your nostalgia glasses on. Cyberpunk looks far more impressive compared to Witcher 3. The urban density alone is something W3 doesn't match.

 

[tritosine2k]

I think you have your nostalgia glasses on. Cyberpunk looks far more impressive compared to Witcher 3. The urban density alone is something W3 doesn't match.

On the other hand with locked inner city there would be more varied outskirts /outdoors, hardly compensated by, locked doors, trifling gangs framedrops even on uberpc (with bad draw distance ffs).
Theres no underground commuting and that would run well on midgen console too.
Just bring back loading screens, AFAICT streaming geometry is pure hype, hot air because bad LOD implementation(s), so bet is on streaming something else.

 

[ADL]

Much like Star Citizen, underneath all the jank and bugs, you have to get really lucky to have a session where everything works to see what they're going for and when that happens, it's pretty impressive on a technical level. That being said, at least Star Citizen has good gameplay systems to make it worth the gamble of loading into it in the first place. Cyberpunk 2077 is under-developed in it's released state and the game itself is unimpressive.

 

[True Ukrainian]

Cyberpunk would have been better with separate locked hubs connected by the Night City's rail system. Something like Yakuza.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I'll probably get the game in a couple of year's time for the visuals if nothing else. I prefer perpetual nighttime in my cyberpunk, though, so I wonder if the game would turn completely nonsensical if it was modded to never have any daylight at all. How much of the content is actually tied to specific hours of the day?

What's funny is that actual night time in "Night City" is very short in the game, IIRC. Kinda like starting at 9-10 PM and sunrise at 5.

Actual darkness in Cyberpunk 2077 lasts only about 6 hours, despite it being impossible to last less than about nine-and-a-quarter hours based on Night City's location, and even then only on the Summer Solstice:

Of course, the developers were intent on having the the exterior environment be sunny most of the time, despite the physical impossibility and in direct contravention of the explicit aesthetics of the original Cyberpunk:

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Cyberpunk would have been better with separate locked hubs connected by the Night City's rail system. Something like Yakuza.

Most open world could be like that. Less time spent on creating content for open world and more time working on quests and characters.

Less time spent of creating AI for npcs, trafic, police system , etc and more time spent on fleshing out character building and itemization or whatever. But nowdays is open world or nothing..

 

[agris]

Only if you’re addicted to playing AAA garbage

 

[DeepOcean]

Makes cyberpunk game.
Decides to have the day to take way longer than the night.
While the city looks WAY more atmospheric at night.
Reason: Wanna avoid cliche.
They also managed to avoid common sense on the process.
Managing to avoid common sense seems to be a recurring thing on CDPR lately.

 

[Manjuice Nutella]

On an absolute side note, yesterday I was picking up 3 different girls at the same time, on that Johnny Silverhand drink (old fashioned + chilli/tabasco in case of yesterday, splashed with beer).

Though I get 24h hangovers everytime, it is absolutely delicious. You all should try it one time.

 

[somewhatgiggly]

Since we are in the land of spoilers I will avoid putting anything into spoiler tags.

It's silly accepting Relic can change DNA of V's body and make him die in 6 months because of "different" engram/soul and then saying Arasaka can't provide you a new body. If the Relic has such capabilities then shouldn't it be very easy to reverse-engineer the process and replicate it for new body and possibly allow for immortality regardless of this limitation? Why putting this problem in the story anyway?

Another thing is how you approach engrams / souls. Personally I treat Yorinobu as brainwashed with Saburo memories. One of the issues Arasaka encountered with Soulkiller 2.0 was high sucide rate. I think if true immortality would be possible instead of conditioning with the recorded memories then I think people would at some point decide to kill themselves or refuse to be reborn or soulkilled. It's a spiritual dilemna if one believes in a soul or not. It's a shame this game copies Altered Carbon but doesn't ask the questions itself nor doesn't provide different answers through ingame characters. V at one point throws out of his hat a question to Johnny asking him if he believes in god in Sinnerman quest, Silverhand brushes it off with his signature "fuck, please kill me (don't make me answer)". Also the game is afraid to say if Johnny is real or becomes real by changing V's mind or is merely a virus AI in V's implants designed to fry his brain and hijack the body with the recorded memories. Game is leaving the interpretation for the player who can treat Johnny in those two different ways. Guess it's the only true relationship since Johnny can admit that he is real/fake depending on your dialog options... But that doesn't change the endings narrative.

I chose the Arasaka ending since that is the most logical and safe bet. Your other options are to trust rogue AI which consumed Alt Cunningham and assault the place. Also it's kinda stupid Victor leaves gun besides pills and Misty doesn't react when you put it beside her but then both are bitter if you kill yourself. I think it would be better if V was left alone on his way to his apartment and have to make a choice in front of the mirror with the gun placed on a sink or something.

Also it's cliche your apartment has a view on AV pad of V's mansion from The Sun ending.

The Engram is just a copy of memories. Is that enough for a person to 'live'? Or 'be'? Alt says it best, Johnny is Data now, code. She can read him as easily as a programmer can read their screen. V becomes data, and is flushed back into his rotting body.

They dealt with this in SOMA, too. You could have two copies of the same person about. One in storage, one running around, or two people running around. It's obviously not one person, and I am a Materialist, so sure, copying memories will make a person, but it's a copy. The nanosecond they are cognizant, there is divergence, two new people, from the same root, sure, but differing. But we're not mentally prepared for that, so obviously, we must be the original, right? After all, we didn't experience death, one moment we're in a chair, the next, in a new environment.

V died, the Relic did some emergency nanorepair to keep him alive, but that included altering his body to be Johnny. (Good thing Biometrics don't matter in this game?) All Arasaka had to do was basically stem-cell clone V a new body or brain, or reconstruct something, or allow for the Engram to control a meat body via some special Man-Machine Interface. But eh.

 

[Fedora Master]

You are, once again, putting more thought into this than the devs.

 

[gurugeorge]

Since we are in the land of spoilers I will avoid putting anything into spoiler tags.

It's silly accepting Relic can change DNA of V's body and make him die in 6 months because of "different" engram/soul and then saying Arasaka can't provide you a new body. If the Relic has such capabilities then shouldn't it be very easy to reverse-engineer the process and replicate it for new body and possibly allow for immortality regardless of this limitation? Why putting this problem in the story anyway?

Another thing is how you approach engrams / souls. Personally I treat Yorinobu as brainwashed with Saburo memories. One of the issues Arasaka encountered with Soulkiller 2.0 was high sucide rate. I think if true immortality would be possible instead of conditioning with the recorded memories then I think people would at some point decide to kill themselves or refuse to be reborn or soulkilled. It's a spiritual dilemna if one believes in a soul or not. It's a shame this game copies Altered Carbon but doesn't ask the questions itself nor doesn't provide different answers through ingame characters. V at one point throws out of his hat a question to Johnny asking him if he believes in god in Sinnerman quest, Silverhand brushes it off with his signature "fuck, please kill me (don't make me answer)". Also the game is afraid to say if Johnny is real or becomes real by changing V's mind or is merely a virus AI in V's implants designed to fry his brain and hijack the body with the recorded memories. Game is leaving the interpretation for the player who can treat Johnny in those two different ways. Guess it's the only true relationship since Johnny can admit that he is real/fake depending on your dialog options... But that doesn't change the endings narrative.

I chose the Arasaka ending since that is the most logical and safe bet. Your other options are to trust rogue AI which consumed Alt Cunningham and assault the place. Also it's kinda stupid Victor leaves gun besides pills and Misty doesn't react when you put it beside her but then both are bitter if you kill yourself. I think it would be better if V was left alone on his way to his apartment and have to make a choice in front of the mirror with the gun placed on a sink or something.

Also it's cliche your apartment has a view on AV pad of V's mansion from The Sun ending.

The Engram is just a copy of memories. Is that enough for a person to 'live'? Or 'be'? Alt says it best, Johnny is Data now, code. She can read him as easily as a programmer can read their screen. V becomes data, and is flushed back into his rotting body.

They dealt with this in SOMA, too. You could have two copies of the same person about. One in storage, one running around, or two people running around. It's obviously not one person, and I am a Materialist, so sure, copying memories will make a person, but it's a copy. The nanosecond they are cognizant, there is divergence, two new people, from the same root, sure, but differing. But we're not mentally prepared for that, so obviously, we must be the original, right? After all, we didn't experience death, one moment we're in a chair, the next, in a new environment.

V died, the Relic did some emergency nanorepair to keep him alive, but that included altering his body to be Johnny. (Good thing Biometrics don't matter in this game?) All Arasaka had to do was basically stem-cell clone V a new body or brain, or reconstruct something, or allow for the Engram to control a meat body via some special Man-Machine Interface. But eh.

In the 1980s, the philosopher Derek Parfitt wrote an interesting book called Reasons and Persons. It wasn't based around cybershit and uploading so much as various ways the earlier Star Trek teleporter could go wrong ("pattern buffer" errors ), to pretty much the same effect as cybershit, in a way that questions our idea of what personhood is - would a copy be the same or a different person? etc., etc. It has a bit of cyberpunk possibilities, but he he'd been working on the ideas since the Star Trek teleporter.

Lots of "intuition pumps" to winkle out how our normal concepts about these things work, and how they vary, and what the alternatives are. It's a very British empiricist take, with all the good and bad that entails, but it's fearsomely interesting and detailed if you like philosophy.

 

[Semiurge]

I think you have your nostalgia glasses on. Cyberpunk looks far more impressive compared to Witcher 3. The urban density alone is something W3 doesn't match.

It's not about the density, or number of polygons. There's something wrong about how surfaces are shaded during day, and it makes them look like plastic in screenshots. In essence, I'm not convinced that I'm looking at a living, breathing city in those screenshots. I see plastic people in a plastic world. Needs more dirt and sharpening filter.