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

[toro]

some music for this thread

 

[Gargaune]

I'm thinking more of the moral comeuppance V gets for refusing to buy into Johnny's smash the corps idea. If V distrusts Johnny and works with Arasaka, he literally gets nothing other than imprisonment in a digital prison.

If V lets Johnny completely devour him and goes on the suicide mission, V manages to become a legend, which is the quest V and his original BFF set out on in chapter one.

There's a moral judgement that doing what Johnny wants would be what the "real" V would have wanted at the start of the game.

I think the key takeaway is that V's dead no matter what they do, our protagonist's fate is sealed the moment Dex pulls the trigger. Everything that comes after is just borrowed time, a brief reprieve - whether it's eating a bullet, giving in to Johnny, removing the Relic for an extra six months or any of the other options, V's time is up, the only question is how they deal with that. Viktor foreshadows this in Chapter 3, when V discovers the boxing match he's been watching is just a rerun and asks why, he says that sometimes you can't help rooting for the guy just because you admire the fight even though you know he's gonna lose.

 

[Wasteland]

Instead, the writers make it very clear you're supposed to idolize Johnny and suck up to him.

Maybe this is me reading too much into things, but I'm not convinced that was the case. For example, there's even this bit where you control Johnny in one of his flashbacks and, after Alt is kidnapped by Arasaka, you can choose to say something like "No, this all about me!" I kinda felt like Johnny was meant to embody a romanticised vision of rebellion but that there was also a deliberate subtext that he, or at least the engram, was a dangerous, violent psychopath, severely disconnected from reality. Even in the beginning, when Viktor brings V up to speed, the protagonist's reaction is panic that there's a "dead terrorist" in their head.

Johnny is a cyberpsycho. A high functioning one, but still completely insane. His rant during the flashback about everything being about him is just the most obvious sign. Alt outright tells you not to trust Johnny's memories since they're papered over with layers of self justification and delusion.

Johnny gets parts of his own history wrong, the tags he gifts you aren't from a friend and he wasn't the bad ass commando during the Arasaka raid. Everything he experienced is seen through the lens of narcissism.

Turning against Johnny makes sense in this scenario and makes for good character conflict, but the game casts you as the bad guy for refusing to worship Johnny. That's the real problem.

V is himself distinctly amoral, to put it mildly, long before he ever meets Johnny Silverhand. The occasional expositional flourish notwithstanding, it isn't obvious that Silverhand's "terrorist" is worse than or even really all that much more unhinged than V's glory-seeking killer-for-hire. They're both narcissistic sociopaths. At least Johnny nominally believes in something. I like to think of the V/Johnny relationship as sort of a dystopian Christmas Carol, where each character represents a different life stage of the other, the "ghosts of Christmas future and past," if you will. Through V, Johnny's ghost manages to repair or make amends for or at least find peace with the friendships he destroyed, and through the cautionary tale of Johnny, V finds something approaching purpose and perspective. Or something like that, provided you pick the appropriate ending.

Maybe what I describe is an artifact of the game's original design, which reportedly had the player create characters "inspired by" prominent figures in Night City, among them Johnny Silverhand. V, then, could have ended up modeled after Silverhand to a degree that CDPR might have otherwise avoided. It seems to me that you could write a fascinating tale of two personalities warring within the same skull, but as it stands, V and Silverhand are too similar to give that conflict legs. Also, of course, fleshing out the inner conflict with Johnny would require more meaningful player choice, likely costing resources that CDPR didn't have or wasn't willing to expend. The game's story is rushed and almost pointedly truncated, as it is.

It's an interesting discussion; I enjoy reading it, but I think we're probably giving CDPR too much credit. Many commentators have observed that the game's theme resolves into a pretty shallow, "fuck the corporations," and although you can pass the time reading into various details or characterizations, there probably isn't much more meaning than that to be plumbed. And maybe that's the point, after all, given the hopelessness of the setting--in an oppressive world where everyone's out for himself, you might as well blow up the corporations at the top of the hierarchy. One might charitably argue that the writers are smirking at the playerbase, "You expected more than glib nihilism? lol, welcome to Night City."

 

[AwesomeButton]

Does anyone know what stat are gigs tied to right now? It can't be street cred because I have lvl 33 and I have only three gigs visible in Northside. Could it be character level? I'm level 22. Main quest progression? I am done with Hellman, done with Judy/Evelyin's line, and I've just accepted the GIM mission from the Voodoo boys. I still haven't been into Arasaka's warehouse with Takemura to insert the virus.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Aren't gigs supplied in batches? I think you have to do all gigs in any given batch for the fixer to give you the next batch.

 

[just]

i liked ryan gigs as much as you can like someone playing for manure

 

[Fedora Master]

It took me until just now to realize its called "Vexelstrom", not "Vexelstorm", as in "Wechselstrom". Yikes.

 

[jackofshadows]

Does anyone know what stat are gigs tied to right now? It can't be street cred because I have lvl 33 and I have only three gigs visible in Northside. Could it be character level? I'm level 22. Main quest progression? I am done with Hellman, done with Judy/Evelyin's line, and I've just accepted the GIM mission from the Voodoo boys. I still haven't been into Arasaka's warehouse with Takemura to insert the virus.

They're tied to each fixer so just do more for whichever you want and they'll give you more. Exception - the dlc gigs, the progress is there tied to the plot (local) quests.

 

[lightbane]

Finally decided to give this a try, now that the expansion is out. I tried it with fitgirl's demo. My PC is not powerful enough to run it at max, but the game swings between 20-40 FPS so it's good enough for me, sort of. I'll decide once/when the screen is cluttered of NPCs. Speaking of: Flashes everywhere, even at lowest setting, but that's part of the city I guess. I tried playing as a Nomad. Despite the improvement to vehicles, the intro sectionh as no vehicular combat, but instead a Call of Duty-esque section that was already in long ago. It's also bugged as I'm killed halfway by a random projectile while the NPC companion is talking, thankfully the bug was bypassed by switching difficulty to Normal. Afterwards, there's a confusing montage that feels like I should be playing, and then a mission that later I learned that all character types share. Now I get why the game is said to be janky. I've seen enemies suddenly change position when I perform a counter on them so that the enemy's body was "in place". The translation to Spanish is... Interesting, as it seems to be latino, not bothering with the slang words, or even adding new ones that are not said by the NPCs themselves, funnily enough.
I'll consider getting a better computer or buying this. For now, I'll test it further with the "demo".

 

[Lovely Feather Pillow]

Can someone explain what you do for fun in this game outside of the main story?

 

[jackofshadows]

Can someone explain what you do for fun in this game outside of the main story?

To me, gigs are where the actual game is at. Sort of Deus Ex small missions where you given plenty of freedom action wise. To me these missions fun either way: guns blazing or sneaky hack/kill style. Try them at least a little.

 

[gurugeorge]

Can someone explain what you do for fun in this game outside of the main story?

Basically just explore and come across things (gigs, police gigs, random altercations, random secrets, of which there are tons dotted around everywhere).

The game fails to be an RPG because it has no particular form of progression (e.g. fixers, factions, etc.) or sense of achievement (other than the intrinsic satisfaction of discovery/completionism) attached to doing that, but if you enjoy the combat, then in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay loop satisfaction, it's alright. And even random little altercations usually have a flavour shard left on the scene, telling of some gangoon betrayal or some horrible bit of human trafficking or whatever, none of which are necessarily stellar bits of writing in and of themselves (though some actually are good), but the accumulation of which builds up a good background sense of the world's hopelessness. Also, there are a bazillion amusing passing conversations that NPCs have that you can chance upon. It's not as fleshed-out as it could have been, and should have been, but it's certainly not completely shallow either.

Another thing I've noticed (this being my third "proper" time pootling about in the game, actually progressing a character): the day/night cycle means that the "set encounters" can feel quite different. There have been several occasions when I've done a little random scenario and suddenly realized, "Oh yeah, this was the same as that memorable encounter on my last playthrough". Case in point: there's a shard trail that reveals there's a guy needing to escape the vengeance of a gang, and his sis tells him to meet up by the waterfront where she's got a boat or something, but the gang catches up with him at the rendezvous point, and they're hanging around in the aftermath. On one playthrough, I followed the trail to the rendezvous point from a clue in a shard in a previous encounter, and came across it by day, actually trying to see if I could help the guy. On this playthrough, I came across it just in the course of wandering about at night, and didn't realize it was that scenario till I read a shard on his body. The encounter felt totally different just on account of the different psychological context and day/night difference. (There are actually quite a few small "interconnected shard stories" that aren't even flagged as missions, you just find them if you follow your nose.)

Also, Night City is just vast. I keep thinking, "Hmm, I'm going to really start recognizing the whole city's pattern and it's going to get boring wandering around because I'll have seen everything and know it all." But while I'm certainly recognizing little chunks here and there, I keep coming at them from different angles, and the whole thing still isn't really joined-up in my mind, so it still feels even bigger and more mysterious than it actually is.

The game really takes advantage of, and uses well that syndrome where you get used to the familiar "aspect" of a place from one angle (e.g. an intersection where you live), and when you come at it from another angle, it has a fresh "aspect." IOW, the city is big enough for a game, but it feels even bigger because of this aspect of the design (from the knotty intertwining of the streets, alleys, etc.).

A lot of it depends on how susceptible you are to getting immersed from an accumulation of background detail, which gives you a sense of the world you're in that you then bring to encounters. It works pretty well for me in that sense.

I should add: when people talk about replayability in a CRPG, I've never found them particularly replayable on the whole, only from the point of view of trying out different builds. But this is perhaps the most replayable game I've ever played. Which is extremely paradoxical because in its backbone it's also one of the most linear, story-driven games I've every played. But it's because of Night City itself being as above described. Because it's a giant sandbox that you can just wander around and have fun in (again, if you enjoy the various forms of combat, which I do) - it actually functions as highly replayable for me.

*sigh* That fact makes one wistful about what could have been - if it had had lifepaths, fixer progression, faction progression, etc., and the sandbox had a bit more structure and if you could have built actual sandcastles in it, it would have been amazing. But even as it is, it's still good, light-hearted fun.

 

[moon knight]

I wonder if they will keep this version of Night City in the sequel

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Gigs are the best part of the game from a purely mechanical gameplay perspective, it's just that most of them are so small scale they could fit in a matchbox, like the Beta acid recovery one, an almost literal scale model of a Deus Ex style gameplay loop.

But there are some decent ones that clearly got more love too, like the one about stealing data from Soviet agents posing as fixers.

 

[Yosharian]

Enemies seem really spongy until you get O'Five and start head-shotting them with fucking explosive rounds that blow the top half of their body away

 

[moon knight]

https://www.nexusmods.com/cyberpunk2077/mods/9388

Based modders. The switch to UE5 from CDPR is a tragedy, modders won't be able to fix their shit anymore

 

[Utgard-Loki]

"hey bro, i heard you like skippy, so you can have him back. without the AI, PSYCHE!"
they just can't help themselves, can they? they just have to spit on their customers every chance they get.

 

[Cryomancer]

Guys, I"m playing in Linux with proton and the game is assuming that I'm using steamdeck and hence the control scheme is controller. Any way to switch to pc? Appears for me to use touchpad to read messages and I have to google every single keyinput

 

[Rhobar121]

Guys, I"m playing in Linux with proton and the game is assuming that I'm using steamdeck and hence the control scheme is controller. Any way to switch to pc? Appears for me to use touchpad to read messages and I have to google every single keyinput

This reminds me of Dark Souls. You had to write down which button does what.

 

[Fedora Master]

I"m playing in Linux

Don't.

 

[Ryzer]

I feel like they created the city first, then wondered what to do with it and then started to insert points of interests and fill the city with life when it should have been the other way around.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

Holy shit, Myers must have some serious chrome under that pant suit, cos it took 20 Body to restrain her. Also, fucking gorilla arms Body check bonus doesn't work half the time, and half the time it appears to be doubled.

 

[Cryomancer]

This reminds me of Dark Souls. You had to write down which button does what.

Dark Souls controls are easy. Now in PC, I press T as google said that I need to press to answer the phone and ... He turn off.

Don't.

I will not install M$ bloatware/spyware.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I feel like they created the city first, then wondered what to do with it and then started to insert points of interests and fill the city with life when it should have been the other way around.

I have no idea what order they created anything, but it may be as you say even if they intended to go the other way around simply by virtue of all the rewriting.

That being said, for major events, sure. You should have an idea of what you want to do with a game's overall plot before you start building it, but if you want an interesting open world setting, I think you would need to build it then populate it, outside of the broad design strokes, e.g. we have an event like this somewhere, we have a dungeon laid out like this, etc.

 

[mediocrepoet]

This reminds me of Dark Souls. You had to write down which button does what.

Dark Souls controls are easy. Now in PC, I press T as google said that I need to press to answer the phone and ... He turn off.

I don't have a Steam Deck, so I don't know if this is related, but in the 2.1 patch notes that are floating around the net, they listed something about having controller prompts display even if you're on M+K and fixing that.

They also have one about fixing the visual glitch that persists after selecting a certain dialog option with Johnny during the main plot. Which would be great because I have that issue.