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

[yellowcake]

I have done my duty and bought the double package now like every other CDP game before, oh well. I am only going to play this only once. Any recommendations as how to get most of the game story wise? Any critical mods?

 

[Ryzer]

I have done my duty and bought the double package now like every other CDP game before, oh well. I am only going to play this only once. Any recommendations as how to get most of the game story wise? Any critical mods?

Just play the game, no choice truly matters anyway.

 

[Jason Liang]

I have done my duty and bought the double package now like every other CDP game before, oh well. I am only going to play this only once. Any recommendations as how to get most of the game story wise? Any critical mods?

I like the Corpo start the best. There is a way to get an early boost with Street Kid, but otherwise Street Kid is pretty underdeveloped.

 

[Lord_Potato]

I have done my duty and bought the double package now like every other CDP game before, oh well. I am only going to play this only once. Any recommendations as how to get most of the game story wise? Any critical mods?

If you want to get access to the secret ending, be a true bro to Johny.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

how to get most of the game story wise

I can think of two things

-Send

Spoiler

Jackie's

body to his family if you want more dialogue. You miss out on visiting his garage and the funeral if you don't. You get some other dialogue if you don't but it's shorter.

-Some conversations with Johnny are important even if the dialogue makes it look like it isn't, so pay attention to those.

Nah, fucked that up too.

 

[Gargaune]

I have done my duty and bought the double package now like every other CDP game before, oh well. I am only going to play this only once. Any recommendations as how to get most of the game story wise? Any critical mods?

Rather counterintuitively, if you wanna get the most out of CBP's main plot, you should ignore the majority of the side content. You'll be restricting your choice of endings and missing out on the open world gameplay, such as it is, but you'll get the most cohesive experience from the critical thread. Without giving any spoilers, this is one of the game's multiple severe design flaws, there's a massive degree of narrative dissonance between the main event and the secondary quests in aggregate, so the more time you spend with the latter, the less you'll connect with the central plot.

 

[Wesp5]

Without giving any spoilers, this is one of the game's multiple severe design flaws, there's a massive degree of narrative dissonance between the main event and the secondary quests in aggregate, so the more time you spend with the latter, the less you'll connect with the central plot.

Isn't this typical for many RPGs? Most of the time it's urgent to save the world or something but in reality you can take all your time doing the side-quests...

 

[Gargaune]

Isn't this typical for many RPGs? Most of the time it's urgent to save the world or something but in reality you can take all your time doing the side-quests...

It's a common problem, but CBP is a particularly egregrious instance of it. The narrative doesn't properly contextualise your situation when dealing with side content while it emphasises it intensely in the main thread, they even play a daily 10-second visual reminder, for fuck's sake. (Who the hell decided that had to be a whooping 10 seconds, by the way?)

The man asked how to get the most out of CBP's story and, unfortunately, that's probably it. If that's your goal, you could beeline the main quest to whatever ending you get, only engage with side content in those few forced downtime moments, then just reload your automatic point-of-no-return save and do the rest from there on.

 

[Lord_Potato]

Isn't this typical for many RPGs? Most of the time it's urgent to save the world or something but in reality you can take all your time doing the side-quests...

It's a common problem, but CBP is a particularly egregrious instance of it. The narrative doesn't properly contextualise your situation when dealing with side content while it emphasises it intensely in the main thread, they even play a daily 10-second visual reminder, for fuck's sake. (Who the hell decided that had to be a whooping 10 seconds, by the way?)

The man asked how to get the most out of CBP's story and, unfortunately, that's probably it. If that's your goal, you could beeline the main quest to whatever ending you get, only engage with side content in those few forced downtime moments, then just reload your automatic point-of-no-return save and do the rest from there on.

Seriously, that's the worst recommendation ever.

CP2077 has tons of quality side-content. Resigning from that in your one and only playthrough is simply dumb. You're deciding not to experience some of the best things the game has to offer.

 

[lukaszek]

main questline is fine but it contains a lot of cutscenes. If you are playing in short bursts you will find it annoying.
side quests are fine, some account to bigger narrative and/or unlock endings.
gigs are short side quests, feel free to skip fixers that annoy you(probably most of them). Myself I liked wakako.
All above feature keanu.

cyberpsychosis are mini boss encounters.
crime radars got goons to kill, pick em as you are missing action

 

[Lord_Potato]

I think the fixer from Dogtown is actually the best. He has gigs for you during and after the main questline of Phantom Liberty, is well integrated into the power structure of the neighbourhood and his quests are genuinely interesting, like the one in which you're impersonating the Cuban assassin.

 

[lukaszek]

I think the fixer from Dogtown is actually the best

i cant get over his voice change like when larian switched cheese vendor

 

[gurugeorge]

Without giving any spoilers, this is one of the game's multiple severe design flaws, there's a massive degree of narrative dissonance between the main event and the secondary quests in aggregate, so the more time you spend with the latter, the less you'll connect with the central plot.

Isn't this typical for many RPGs? Most of the time it's urgent to save the world or something but in reality you can take all your time doing the side-quests...

Yeah, but it's particularly bad when the "big thing" is supposed to be you saving your life on an urgent timeline.

At the end of the day, you basically play CP2077 in a sort of schizo frame of mind where, while you're following the main story and main related side-quests, it's a coherent urgent story, but to experience the rest of the content (which is quite rich and mostly pretty good too) you have to kind of flip a switch in your brain and realize that person x who urgently wanted to speak with you to progress the next part of the MQ/SQ will quite happily wait for an eternity while you take your time pottering about in the open world and doing all sorts of mini and micro quests. It's like jumping back and forth between two timelines or something, a little bit of a whiplash feeling.

That asynchronicity or whatever you call it is probably the best way to handle the problem, but I've always felt they could have done a little better to mask it simply by not having so many "meet me urgently at such-and-such a time and place, I have important, potentially life-saving info" lead-ins. Yet at the same time, those lead-ins do fit, psychologically speaking, if you take the urgency seriously and beeline the MQ and SQs.

On the other, other hand, the game is quite replayable because of all that extra content, so I guess they just planned that most people would beeline, and then have a hankering for the game again at some later date, and then the experience could be different enough to be enjoyable because of all the other content, especially if they don't have the same sense of urgency, having experienced the MQ and SQs already. (That's what happened with me, over the years I've found this to be one of the most replayable games I've ever played because there's just such a ton of mini-content squirreled away in all sorts of nooks and crannies that's enjoyable to play even though it's disconnected from the MQ and SQs.) But then you have the opposite problem, where the urgency feels like a joke and yet you're still forced to go through the big story that you've already lived through immersively on the first playthrough.

It's quite a conundrum and I'm not sure any games with this type of structure have ever solved the problem well (certainly not the Bethesda games, which are all like that, never did).

My feeling has always been that the "rest of the content" should have been the first part of the game, where you build your character up to be a big cheese in Night City, wander around in the open world, go up through the fixers and deal with factions, etc, and then, by the time you're 2/3 of the way through the game, then the MQ/SQs kick in with urgency leading up to a climactic endgame. And I have a feeling that must have probably the original plan, but because of time/resource limitations and having to grab Keanu in a narrow time-frame, they had to make the MQ the bulk of the game for the new player, and truncate and make the rest of the content asynchronous - effectively changing the game from an RPG proper into an action-adventure game with RPG flavouring.

 

[Gargaune]

Seriously, that's the worst recommendation ever.

CP2077 has tons of quality side-content. Resigning from that in your one and only playthrough is simply dumb. You're deciding not to experience some of the best things the game has to offer.

If you're playing for the plot, the severe dissonance between the framing of the main quest and the side content will frustrate you. I actually abandoned Panam's questline half-way through, only came back to complete it out of morbid curiosity after I took the main quest to the end, and have never done Judy's as a result of that irritation. I found Gigs to be far more palatable in that regard, because their light narrative content allowed me to turn my brain off and enjoy some gameplay, whereas drama-heavy side quests were constantly assaulting my suspension of disbelief with how V would get involved in all that meaningless bullshit with the clock ticking down.

Having already completed the game, I have no way of really checking for myself anymore, but I suspect that prioritising the main quest may paint that component in the best light, at the expense of locking yourself out of the Aldecaldos and "secret" Johnny endings. And just because you play it "once" doesn't mean you have to hang it up after you got the end-credits, you can just carry on from that point of no return with the side content. Conversely, trying to maximise side content prior to the main plot's denouement - which is what I usually do myself, for precisely the same reason that I assume a single playthrough - can end up severely diluting that critical thread for a lackluster experience.

My feeling has always been that the "rest of the content" should have been the first part of the game, where you build your character up to be a big cheese in Night City, wander around in the open world, go up through the fixers and deal with factions, etc, and then, by the time you're 2/3 of the way through the game, then the MQ/SQs kick in with urgency leading up to a climactic endgame.

Yes, that would've the proper approach, but even in the current structure they could've still fixed it by just staggering the revelation of how little time V's got left. Instead of Viktor telling you "OMG, I dunno, like 3 weeks" right after the Heist, he could've told you the chip's non-removable and "doing stuff" to you, but that he needs more time to study it. At some point later, after you've chased down some leads, earned some cash and seen a share of side content, he'd call and tell you to drop by when you have some time, but that would be up to the player. When the player chose to comply, he'd do some further tests and break the bad news to you, opening the third and final chapter, where the game zeroes you back in on the main plot.

That way, you could've still had Silverhand's expanded role in the open-world content but removed the motivational conflict between the main and side quests, putting that trigger in the player's hands.

Ironically, this is much better handled (albeit not perfectly) in good ol' Baldur's Gate 2, one of the games that CD Projekt got their start on with the Polish localisation. You're given a fairly urgent task to engage with the side content and raise a bribe to access Spellhold, a sum of money that's obtained very quickly, but it's quite easy to turn a blind eye and keep adventuring to maximise your "preparation" for the task ahead. After all, Imoen's not going anywhere and your own life doesn't come under an urgent threat until after Spellhold, when the plot funnels you into a mostly linear progression. The key difference is that the narrative switch from open-world exploration to urgent main plot is left at the player's discretion.

 

[ind33d]

So what the fuck happened with mods? Are people going to use AI voice acting to finish all the cut Jackie content or what?

 

[Justicar]

So what the fuck happened with mods? Are people going to use AI voice acting to finish all the cut Jackie content or what?

Dunno are they making mods that finish all that cut Leo content from Witcher 1?



Cant wait for the full Jenkins arc

 

[Lord_Potato]

If you're playing for the plot, the severe dissonance between the framing of the main quest and the side content will frustrate you. I actually abandoned Panam's questline half-way through, only came back to complete it out of morbid curiosity after I took the main quest to the end, and have never done Judy's as a result of that irritation. I found Gigs to be far more palatable in that regard, because their light narrative content allowed me to turn my brain off and enjoy some gameplay, whereas drama-heavy side quests were constantly assaulting my suspension of disbelief with how V would get involved in all that meaningless bullshit with the clock ticking down.

You're overthinking it. Since the beginning of the game V has one ambition he strives for: to make a name for himself and become a legend of Night City (in his own words: "I just wanted people to know that I was there. That I mattered").

After he gets infected with Johny, this desire only intensifies. Yes, he knows he has limited time (not clearly defined, months, maybe half a year or more) so he searches for the cure to his affliction, but also keeps doing stuff that increases his fame and streetcred. Because in the end even if all goes dark, Night City will remember.

Him doing sidequests is only natural.

And why the hell you abandonned Panam's questline? Even Johny tells you that to deal with Arasaka you're going to need strong allies. Panam's Nomads are one of strongest factions available to you, and they look after their own people. I remembered Johny's advice and that made me even more eager to help Aldecaldos, because I felt there will be a moment I might require their aid too.

Helped Judy for the same reason, hoping her band of misfits might come useful at certain point too (they didn't really, but I didn't know it beforehand).

 

[gurugeorge]

If you're playing for the plot, the severe dissonance between the framing of the main quest and the side content will frustrate you. I actually abandoned Panam's questline half-way through, only came back to complete it out of morbid curiosity after I took the main quest to the end, and have never done Judy's as a result of that irritation. I found Gigs to be far more palatable in that regard, because their light narrative content allowed me to turn my brain off and enjoy some gameplay, whereas drama-heavy side quests were constantly assaulting my suspension of disbelief with how V would get involved in all that meaningless bullshit with the clock ticking down.

You're overthinking it. Since the beginning of the game V has one ambition he strives for: to make a name for himself and become a legend of Night City (in his own words: "I just wanted people to know that I was there. That I mattered").

After he gets infected with Johny, this desire only intensifies. Yes, he knows he has limited time (not clearly defined, months, maybe half a year or more) so he searches for the cure to his affliction, but also keeps doing stuff that increases his fame and streetcred. Because in the end even if all goes dark, Night City will remember.

Him doing sidequests is only natural.

And why the hell you abandonned Panam's questline? Even Johny tells you that to deal with Arasaka you're going to need strong allies. Panam's Nomads are one of strongest factions available to you, and they look after their own people. I remembered Johny's advice and that made me even more eager to help Aldecaldos even more, because I felt there will be a moment I might require their aid.

Helped Judy for the same reason, hoping her band of misfits might come useful at certain point too (they didn't really, but I didn't know it beforehand).

The trouble is, if you rp V then (for example) you will fairly quickly go to meet Takemura by the pier - but if you do that at each cue, if you go to it immediately, as the urgency would suggest, you are pushed through the MQ/SQ with no time to "keep doing stuff that increases fame and street cred". You can only do that if (e.g.) you leave Taki asynchronously hanging out there for a few weeks

Granted there are a few occasions when you're explicitly given time to potter about (e.g. after first meeting Rogue, or after calling Hands post-Voodoo Boys revelation), but the problem is you get calls waaaaay too quickly after that - again, the urgency keeps impressing itself on you.

 

[Gargaune]

You're overthinking it. Since the beginning of the game V has one ambition he strives for: to make a name for himself and become a legend of Night City (in his own words: "I just wanted people to know that I was there. That I mattered").

After he gets infected with Johny, this desire only intensifies. Yes, he knows he has limited time (not clearly defined, months, maybe half a year or more) so he searches for the cure to his affliction, but also keeps doing stuff that increases his fame and streetcred. Because in the end even if all goes dark, Night City will remember.

Him doing sidequests is only natural.

No, that's not what happens, after the Heist, V's priority is clearly (and, for once, logically!) stated to be the search for a cure. And the timeframe is defined to a matter of weeks, Viktor tells you as much, it's an imminent problem. You're thinking of the endings, where V might choose how to spend what little time they have left or how the Arasaka path grants a half year reprieve, it's those endings that recontextualise the plot into coping with inevitable mortality all the way back to the Heist. But in the thick of it, V is clearly shown believing there has to be a solution, a "cure" for the Relic, and tracking that down is the natural priority, "legacy" is not what's on their mind.

This isn't overthinking it, this is just reading what CDPR wrote, and it's a major and gratuitous mistake in relation to managing their side content. As has already been pointed out, there were much better ways to structure the player's goals and mitigate that conflict. Don't waste your energy trying to backseat-write them out of their own fuckup.

And why the hell you abandonned Panam's questline? Even Johny tells you that to deal with Arasaka you're going to need strong allies. Panam's Nomads are one of strongest factions available to you, and they look after their own people. I remembered Johny's advice and that made me even more eager to help Aldecaldos even more, because I felt there will be a moment I might require their aid.

Because in the setup to that train job, after putting up with an overbearing amount of prime CBP follow marker - click button - consume HEARTFELT CINEMATIC MOMENT™ "gameplay", Panam finally popped the question: "Why are you helping me?" You know, Panam, I was wondering the same thing! You can tell her you're "chooms" (yeah, right) or that you wanna get paid, but I realised I was missing the secret option: because I paid €60 for this thing and I wanna squeeze some content out of it. So it dawned on me that pursuing all these poorly integrated side jobs was diminishing the main quest and I stopped.

Helped Judy for the same reason,

Ah, yes, Judy. "Help me get revenge for Evelyn!" But I did, I whacked the Voodoo Boys. "No, no, I want revenge on the Pimp-Industrial Complex!" Bitch, I've got Johnny Mindflayer sucking on my frontal lobe! I'm pushing daisies in three weeks if I don't airlock the little shit! That fucking peacock basement dweller, I swear...

hoping her band of misfits might come useful at certain point too (they didn't really, but I didn't know it beforehand).

Which only proves my point, you can't justify any of it with Johnny telling you that you'll need "powerful friends", because V just goes around getting involved in all sorts of dumb shit with no reasonable indication that it's pertinent to their problem. You're ignoring Takemura, who's an obvious and direct lead for your purposes, to deal with Panam's daddy issues or chase down interdimensional reptilians for some hobo street preacher. Might as well go door to door with a shirt that says "will befriend for cure to brain-devouring USB stick", even that would be better odds.

This doesn't work. You can get away with the odd incidental side job as V pursues their main goals - staying among the living - but not to this extent. It would work in the run up to the big Heist, or even after if V's condition was still under investigation, absent a ticking clock, but not in the current setup. In Fallout 4, you can just about get away with the Sole Survivor being a bad parent, but in Cyberpunk 2077, V's literally too stupid to live.

 

[Wesp5]

I don't remember the Johnny problem being so urgent. The whole game plays out over a few days, maybe weeks at best, and you hardly change in that time...

 

[Gargaune]

I don't remember the Johnny problem being so urgent.

Maybe because you spent enough time with the side content that the details of V's situation and its emotional impact got a bit... hazy? Which is part of the point I was making? 'Cause the main plot's writing and performances are pretty expressive on the topic:

 

[Itoh]

My feeling has always been that the "rest of the content" should have been the first part of the game, where you build your character up to be a big cheese in Night City, wander around in the open world, go up through the fixers and deal with factions, etc, and then, by the time you're 2/3 of the way through the game, then the MQ/SQs kick in with urgency leading up to a climactic endgame. And I have a feeling that must have probably the original plan, but because of time/resource limitations and having to grab Keanu in a narrow time-frame, they had to make the MQ the bulk of the game for the new player, and truncate and make the rest of the content asynchronous - effectively changing the game from an RPG proper into an action-adventure game with RPG flavouring.

I think this is correct - if you watch the old trailer, you can see that there were originally more characters involved in the heist, and earlier drafts must've involved V making his rep in a larger game. Jackie isn't in this shot, but he appears earlier, so that's a crew of 5-6 people instead of just him and T-Bug.

The ticking clock of the main plot and draw of the side content definitely make for a weird tension that's the worst part of the story, but I don't want to be overly hard on it. I'd say that while CDPR have good writers, some of the best in the mainstream games industry, it feels like there's a lack of polish in editing - individual quests and storylines hold together pretty well, but often aren't properly contextualized or connected.

For a concrete example I'll point to the aftermath of the heist quest - isn't it a bit weird how Arasaka largely just forgets about you after you were caught stealing some of their most valuable tech. Now, I can read between the lines about what happened - it seems like Yorinobu initially wanted to blame you for assassinating his father, then decided to make Goro the prime suspect instead, probably working for some third party, because Goro knew too much. Yori also used the ambiguity of his father's death as an excuse to violate Arasaka's agreement with Night City and bring in additional security forces, which he would not have been able to get away with if V was blamed for it and the case was closed. So there's a line of reasoning there, but it's at least half speculation on my part and the other half isn't properly communicated to the reader, despite it being very important, as Saburo was the world's most powerful man at the time.

I'd like to be optimistic that the Polacks will improve on this particular front, but Phantom Liberty had this problem too. Still, the game and expansion were pretty damn good in spite of this so it's not like I'm mad about it or anything.

 

[Wesp5]

I don't remember the Johnny problem being so urgent.

Maybe because you spent enough time with the side content that the details of V's situation and its emotional impact got a bit... hazy?

Vic talks about a few weeks which is what I thought. How long does the whole game take in game time? In the Panam ending you even leave Night City with time to spare, also Vic isn't correct anyway, as we can see in some DLC endings.

 

[Quillon]

fake urgency, fake urgency never changes

 

[Gargaune]

Vic talks about a few weeks which is what I thought. How long does the whole game take in game time? In the Panam ending you even leave Night City with time to spare, also Vic isn't correct anyway, as we can see in some DLC endings.

We're talking about character motivation, not the diegetic duration of the game's content. V gets told that their situation is urgent, facing imminent death (or complete brainwashing, to be precise), and the events of the main plot show them to be desperate to find a "cure" thereafter. The significance of Viktor's prognosis isn't to restrict the game time (like with Fallout's water chip), but to emphasise the urgency of V's situation at a narrative level, to underline what's driving the character.

But, whereas the main quest is consistent with its treatment of this topic, the overwhelming bulk of the side content does not offer an obvious and logical tie-in to advancing that goal (again, salvation, not legacy, V is explicitly shown not having accepted their fate). This introduces a major conflict with regard to the protagonist's motivations and presents a recurring impediment to the player's suspension of disbelief whenever engaging with said side content.