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

[typical user]

I am careful about blaming CDPR from "having cut" many things from the game. Like the vocal entitled minority who believe they got robbed of hours long prologues for every lifepath.

I do not think they "cut" that much unfinished content from the game, it was rather a problem of marketing promising investors/journalists a new cure for cancer every day,

You've just answered the problem why people feel robbed. They have released 3 separate trailers about each lifepath, two of which take 10 minutes to play through. GTA V had 3 trailers about each protagonist and you can switch them at any time outside the missions, each has separate content and you could easily divide the game by 3 and still get coherent stories.

I haven't played a corpo but can anyone relay how did CDPR justify the fact that this corpo once he lost his job (I guess at Arasaka) got next to no reactivity with Arasaka people in the main quest.

You were literally a corpo-rat no one apart from Jenkins and few people working with him knew you existed. I rather expected Corpo-V to have unique questline of getting back into corpo-life and personal vendetta at Abernathy or Jenkins or letting it go.

 

[Gargaune]

Seriously Jackie stop photobombing in front of my gun.

 

[Bliblablubb]

She sends you messages three times in different intervals after you had met her for the second time. Each of the messages gets more and more bizarre. Maybe, you only really know what this means if you try out both answers you can give her after the first reconnaissance mission.

Oh I got all those texts, but it ends with "you'll see in my next BD".
So if the mission ends there, then I expected a news report about whatever she did maybe? Maybe there is one, like for the Anna something, "The Woman from LaMancha". News played the moment I exited the car and I've never heard it again. TV news always loop the same old stuff forever. TVs aside from the ones during elevator rides in specific missions are such a waste of time. Sad.

 

[Bliblablubb]

Seriously Jackie stop photobombing in front of my gun.

At least Jackie is better at sneaking, not propelling himself into enemies when you stop. Plus, he has mad teleporting skillzzz like anime ninjas of old. Take down one guy and Jackie teleports half across the room to take down the other.... Awww Jaquito.... Oh wait, Panam does that too, AND she has a gre-- ... uuuh, her photobombing inclines the scenery. Yeah.

 

[Fedora Master]

 

[Gerrard]

The Cyberpunk sub went from "OMG this will the the best game ever" to "This is the worst game I ever played" in 1 day after release.

Case in point:

whenwordsarenotenough.pcx

wew the salt in the twitter replies. man it has to suck working at cdpr right now

You think it sucks working at CDPR now, compared to crunching for a year to release this turd?

 

[Gargaune]

elevator rides

A pale sliver of blue-spectrum light wavered upon Andrzej's coffee mug like a DLSS-stricken raytracing artifact. It was late, so late at CDPR that he was the last man standing. The others? Long gone, crawled back to their own homes and beds, an oh-so-brief reprieve from the grind of getting Cyberpunk 2077 to the elusive finish line. But not Andrzej. He had recently failed to deliver on the new and improved police AI, and now he was eager to make a show of his commitment by means of burning the midnight oil.

And yet... the work was so dull. Line after line of faint letters upon a luminescent background, swimming before his eyes in alien patterns, swirling within his mind as they caught form and shape unnatural. Here was a Kaer Codeblock, there was a many-headed switch() dragon... Andrzej slapped himself! He had to get all that fantasy crap out of his head! This wasn't The Witcher, he needed to get into the zone, to resonate with the spirit of what they were making... But he was so tired... Release, that's what he needed! Something to snap his mind out of that tunnel vision.

Why not? After all, there was no one around... And the computer was right there, in front of him... Andrzej minimized his IDE and got to it. Soon, he lost himself in it completely. Yeah, okay, it wasn't exactly quality shit, but any port in a storm and all that. And time flew away from him.

"What the fuck are you doing?"

The sudden question hit Andrzej like a ton of bricks and that soft tone might as well have been divine judgement. He swiveled his office chair around and came face to face with none other than Marcin Iwiński.

"Uh... Err... I was, uh, you know..."

"Are you playing Mass Effect?"

"What?! No! No, absolutely not!"

"That's Mass Effect. On your screen."

"Well... Yes..."

"And you're playing it."

"No! No, I'm, uh... researching! Yes, that's it, I am doing research for Cyberpunk 2077!"

"Right..." Suddenly, Marcin's brow contorted and his gaze became enraptured with... something that was there, on his employee's screen. The executive slowly leaned in to get a better look. "Andrzej," he clapped the quivering programmer's shoulder, "you are a genius!"

"I am?"

"Yes! This is exactly what we need in our game!"

Tentatively emboldened but still fearful of scaring his good fortune away, Andrzej glanced back to the monitor for the instrument of his salvation. He saw none, so he took a long while before venturing a guess.

"You mean... FemShep's ass?"

"No, you idiot, not that! This! Slow-ass fucking elevators!"

 

[moon knight]

You think it sucks working at CDPR now, compared to crunching for a year to release this turd?

Absolutely, it means the crunch was for nothing and now most people think you are lazy or incompetent

 

[Parsimonious cook]

I haven't played a corpo but can anyone relay how did CDPR justify the fact that this corpo once he lost his job (I guess at Arasaka) got next to no reactivity with Arasaka people in the main quest.

You can just walk into the Arasaka park claiming to work for Abanathy! Okay, my Nomad could do that too, because the game bugged out (SURPRISE!), but hey, it's the thought that counts amirite?

When you play as a corpo, you get a side quest in which a former co-worker contacts you and promises you dirt on Abanathy

Spoiler

Its a ruse and the guy tries to capture you and bring you back to Arrasaka. His problem is that he got fired shortly after you did and thinks that getting you will get him his job back. You can simply explain to him that things dont work that way and he should just embrace the life of a hobo instead. Or you can kill him.

As for V´s job in Arasaka, he is a (at best) mid level operative in counter-intelligence department (ie he spies on people who might want to defect/steal shit etc) and aside of doing field work he has some minor management duties (you get to decide whether to abort a deep cover operation of another agent or whether to keep him in the company he infiltrated even though he might be compromised) in Night City branch. In other words he is a guy who is completely unknown to 99% of Arasaka employees in Night City due to the nature of his job. The Arasaka people who you deal with later on have no reason to give a single fuck about a glorified security guard from America. As a corpo you get interesting lines when dealing with Takemura, Oda and Hanako as well.

 

[Echo Mirage]

V's corpo boss also ends up in the columbarium it seems. Adding to the fact no one knows you or in the case of Abanathy, even cares that you exist.

But yes. Corpo dialog has some of the most interesting lines in the game. And the only real time you can show that you know what you are doing.

 

[Turjan]

You have all these hand placed legendary class armor sets in the game that are a remnant from times when the game was still supposed to have classes, I guess. As it is, anyone not familiar with the p&p game will have a hard time understanding what the heck a "solo set" is.

 

[Bliblablubb]

When you play as a corpo, you get a side quest in which a former co-worker contacts you and promises you dirt on Abanathy

That's the dude you can talk to 10 seconds into your lifepath. He even remembers if you properly talked to him or said "duuuude, i got, like, no time nao".

Each lifepath has one short little quest, the Nomad one has the purple hair IGN chick from... many many pages ago. I still liked that one the most, because

Spoiler

you get your adorable crappy car from your Nomad times back. For a Nomad it's like finding a lost family member. The feels.

The StreetKid one is a strangely high level mission, so I thought I was meant to ghost it.... but the mission switched to "kill da guys", which.. takes a while if your anti-materiel rifle does only 200 dmg on a headshot, while everything ohk you.

Spoiler

Killing the endguy was out, so I had to admit being a pussy gonk to him. Crappy reward, but I liked it. It's rare to be put in such a more or less unwinnable situation just to humiliate you. Johnny mocking me was a bonus

 

[Paul_cz]

Absolutely, it means the crunch was for nothing and now most people think you are lazy or incompetent

You are delusional if you think "most people" actually think that.

 

[Renevent]

Absolutely, it means the crunch was for nothing and now most people think you are lazy or incompetent

You are delusional if you think "most people" actually think that.

It's not only delusional but out right false. First and foremost, they got 150% base pay during the crunch, that alone is better than imaginary twitter points. They're also still getting bonuses from the release (it sold very well). In a few months/patches the game will be stable and from a tech perspective it's a good accomplishment. Any company these people will be going to from CDPR will be more than impressed that they worked on a game of Cyber Punk 2077 scale.

The people hee-haw'ing and pretending to feel bad for the engineers who worked on the game are out of their minds.

 

[DJOGamer PT]

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

 

[Danikas]

Moments like this are the best thing about this game sitting down and talking with Takemura about his past, campfire conversation with Panam or this song.




Just wish there was more of this stuff in the game.

 

[Tyranicon]

You have all these hand placed legendary class armor sets in the game that are a remnant from times when the game was still supposed to have classes, I guess. As it is, anyone not familiar with the p&p game will have a hard time understanding what the heck a "solo set" is.

Like I've said before, moving away from classes is massive decline.

Instead, what we got was a wildly unbalanced skill tree with the best perks based around quick hacks and crits.

The absolute state of "RPG" systems in the modern era.

 

[infidel]

I don't know if it's already been posted, apologies, if so. So I've been checking out the Cyberpunk 2020 Humble Bundle out of interest for the tabletop and look what I've found in the Corporation Report 1 book from 1991:

Spoiler

Looks like the ol' dog was ready for this download shit even back in 2020!

And as for young Yorinobu from 2020:

Spoiler

Turns out the guy was the same as Johnny. Hey, no wonder Johnny hates him so much .

Also, Saburo had another son back then but he was removed from the 2077 setting to simplify the story beats. As far as I understood, 2020 setting has some significant differences with what they've cooked up for 2077 but it's still nice to see familiar names in the books.

 

[Parsimonious cook]

Yeah, there were some retcons here and there, but CP2077 is quite respectful to the source material - no wonder since Pondsmith was onboard the whole time.

One detail that is off in Johnny´s flashbacks that has me wondering is the role of Thompson (the media guy who rescues Johnny after Alt´s abduction). In the game, Johnny beats the shit out of Thompson when Alt dies and later tells you that he doesnt even know what happened to Thompson afterwards, since they never worked together again. In CP2020 rulebook, Johnny simply asks Thompson to stop recording, which he does, and then shoots the Arasaka guy who had Alt kidnapped (thus ruining Thompson´s plan to force the Arasaka rep to admit to what Arasaka does with the Soulkiller tech and broadcast the whole thing). Thompson then participates in the bombing of Arasaka tower, he is on Johnny´s team (there are three teams going in and Johnny is not the main guy by any means) and even cracks some jokes about how Johnny ruined his plan back in the day (see the Firestorm Shockwave sourcebook 2).

I wonder why did they axe Thompson like this? Did they just want to have Johnny to beat the shit out of him for "shock value?" It seems like kinda weird decision tbh, but w/e.

The other significant retcon is Shaitan (the dude who gets shot while manning the autocannon on the helicopter before Johnny takes over. In Firestorm Shockwave, Shaitan is a full on cyborg, who is an equal to Adam Smasher and ends up pinning Smasher down in close combat after Johnny sacrifices himself to get Smasher´s attention (Johnny gets cut in two by Smasher´s full auto shotgun in the book). In the game Shaitan is just some dude who gets like five seconds of screen time.

 

[just]

Moments like this are the best thing about this game sitting down and talking with Takemura about his past, campfire conversation with Panam or this song.




Just wish there was more of this stuff in the game.

i'm not ready yet for 1st person gay sex scene

 

[alyvain]

I wonder why did they axe Thompson like this? Did they just want to have Johnny to beat the shit out of him for "shock value?" It seems like kinda weird decision tbh, but w/e.

I've got a hunch they wanted to go with an "unreliable narrator" trope, but lost it somewhere on the way, but maybe it's just that messy

 

[Danikas]

I've got a hunch they wanted to go with an "unreliable narrator" trope, but lost it somewhere on the way, but maybe it's just that messy

Yeah they were going for that if you listen to this alt line.

 

[Sòren]

Yeah, there were some retcons here and there, but CP2077 is quite respectful to the source material - no wonder since Pondsmith was onboard the whole time.

One detail that is off in Johnny´s flashbacks that has me wondering is the role of Thompson (the media guy who rescues Johnny after Alt´s abduction). In the game, Johnny beats the shit out of Thompson when Alt dies and later tells you that he doesnt even know what happened to Thompson afterwards, since they never worked together again. In CP2020 rulebook, Johnny simply asks Thompson to stop recording, which he does, and then shoots the Arasaka guy who had Alt kidnapped (thus ruining Thompson´s plan to force the Arasaka rep to admit to what Arasaka does with the Soulkiller tech and broadcast the whole thing). Thompson then participates in the bombing of Arasaka tower, he is on Johnny´s team (there are three teams going in and Johnny is not the main guy by any means) and even cracks some jokes about how Johnny ruined his plan back in the day (see the Firestorm Shockwave sourcebook 2).

I wonder why did they axe Thompson like this? Did they just want to have Johnny to beat the shit out of him for "shock value?" It seems like kinda weird decision tbh, but w/e.

The other significant retcon is Shaitan (the dude who gets shot while manning the autocannon on the helicopter before Johnny takes over. In Firestorm Shockwave, Shaitan is a full on cyborg, who is an equal to Adam Smasher and ends up pinning Smasher down in close combat after Johnny sacrifices himself to get Smasher´s attention (Johnny gets cut in two by Smasher´s full auto shotgun in the book). In the game Shaitan is just some dude who gets like five seconds of screen time.

i kinda hating talking about the story and characters because it's such a mess and there is not much to it. but in this case, a couple of conversations in game make obvious that what u see is not things that actually happened, but how johnny wants them to be remembered. with him as the hero.

 

[JustMyOnion]

I've actually thought about that right before Alt said it. Johnny was basically the writers looking up narcissistic personality disorder on Wikipedia and turning that into a character. It explains how in his "memories" he can literally one-shot the entire Arasaka security detail through walls with his pistol.

But I still wouldn't rule out retcons for certain details.