A Redemption Three Years Later

Four years ago, I preordered Cyberpunk 2077: Collector's Edition, which includes the PS4 version of the game, a high quality statue, hardcover art book, and many other goodies, for more than four times of the price of the standard version, eight months earlier than its release. Since I was playing the game on PC, I also bought the game at full price on GoG.com.

I bought them not because I loved Mike Pondsmith's cyberpunk world—I was not even a fan of the cyberpunk genre. I bought them entirely because I believed in CD PROJEKT RED, the Polish developer of the award-winning RPG franchise The Witcher. They not only made good games but also put the player first, releasing numerous free DLCs, and two very high-quality expansions. As the gaming industry was getting devoured by greed corporations bit by bit every day, I appreciated their approach and felt necessary to support the rare goodness remain.

For years before its release, the gaming community was hyping Cyberpunk 2077, as if it was going to be the greatest game ever made. CD PROJEKT RED also helped shaping the narrative by releasing teasers and trailers full of crazy promises. Then, Keanu Reeves was announced to perform as the lead character. There were several delay announcements, which brought some disappointments, but some other took that as a good thing, with expectations of delay means better quality of the final product.

I beat the game in ten days. Probably because my expectations for the game were much lower, I did not feel as disappointed as the community did. I enjoyed my time in Night City, and I liked the emotions the nomad ending brought to me. But the game was far, far from what it was promised. Some people implied there was malice behind the broken promises, but I thought the developer simply bit off more than what they could chew, and—to be honest—I thought the game would never meet the expectations; the hype was out of control, no matter what state the game was in, it would have collapsed on its own weight all the same.

Either way, my faith in CDPR was not answered.

Exactly four years after its initial release, I started replaying the game. Throughout the years CDPR has released many patches to improve the gameplay, as well as a free update for next generation consoles, and its first and final paid expansion, Phantom Liberty. I heard it was very good, so I gave it a try.

Aside from choosing a different character origin and build, I took a different approach this time: no fast travel at all. That means no travel points, no skip rides, and no skips on metro rides. To me, the most impressive part of the game was the city, thus roaming through the city, either by car or by foot, was the proper way to experience it. The Night City's aesthetics were already breathtaking, and given the magnitude, I could not imagine how much work CDPR put in. Six districts, seventeen sub-districts, each has different atmospheres. I also noticed that there was more traffic on the street compared than in 1.0, both pedestrians and vehicles. One of the criticisms against the original game was that the city did not feel like a metropolis due to the quantity of traffic; now the amount of the traffic even annoys me sometimes.

The NPCs' behavior, however, was not as impressive. Some cars were still stopping in the middle of the street for no reason. A good portion of the game consisted of dialogues on a fixed seat, but the animations and transitions between them were clunky. Then there were position or collision glitches. Most of these issues were minor, but they did reduced some of the immersion.

I chose a different ending from my first playthrough, and I enjoyed it, as I also did four years ago. There were no "live happily ever after" endings, and CDPR made sure to portray such melancholy through cutscenes; I felt as if I had really witnessed someone's demise, as the journey came to its end.

After finishing the main game for the second time, I jumped into the DLC right away. The sequence of escaping with the president and the boss fight were cool, but it was not until the dialogue between the president and Solomon Reed, the character performed by acclaimed actor Idris Elba, that I started to notice: the animation and general dialogue performance felt... better? Like the NPCs were interacting with each other and with the surroundings, which was not seen in the main game, where characters stood still with minor gestures. On paper, this doesn't sound like a lot, but in game the experience difference was more than marginal. Despite past success with third-person perspective in The Wither, CDPR chose first-person perspective for Cyberpunk 2077. I believe the focus on dialogue performance was one of their main reason, since this time players play as themselves rather than Geralt of Rivia, who is a character with a predetermined personality; having numerous conversations in first-person perspective would build much stronger immersion than third-person perspective, but in practice the conversion immersion in the main game was okay at best, in my opinion. Small gestures, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues are an important aspect of human communication; when these nuances are subpar, the entire conversation feels bland. It was not the case anymore in Phantom Liberty, in where the conversion finally felt like conversation.

The detail-rich approach wasn't only found on the dialogue performances. Dogtown, the new area added in the DLC was the most detailed district in all of Night City. The streets were dirtier, more things were happening in the middle of the road, which immensely conveyed the chaos and tension of a warlord-controlled district inside a foreign territory. The missions were better too: in the main game, gigs and side quests, unless involved certain characters, were one-off go-where-kill-how-much quests, without proper buildup or follow-up. In the expansion even gigs included multiple steps which occurred in different locations, and NPCs sent texts even after the whole quest was wrapped. All these details successfully built the feeling that players were not merely checking off some question marks on the map, but actually attended those events personally.

The best part of the quests, however, were undoubtedly the main quest, the story of Songbird. Gameplay-wise the quest line included many type of stages, such as snipping, stealth, dialogue-heavy spying, and of course, combats. In the quest before the last confrontation out of two distinctly different paths, the game even turned into a survivor-horror game. Horror is not my favorite genre, so I wouldn't say I enjoyed it, but I appreciate that the developers respected player and made the horror gameplay decently challenging. During the main quests I kept thinking it felt like the Konpeki Plaza heist quest, only longer, more complex, and overall more interesting to play. Narrative-wise it was also outstanding, especially on the writing of characters. Aurore Cassel was only shown a fraction of the campaign's playtime, yet she was one of the most memorable characters, thanks to excellent writing, voice acting, and animation.

But the best written character was definitely Song "Songbird" So Mi. She was friendly, hostile, reliable, helpless, and many more, all of them relatable and believable. The first time she met players in person after several conversations in hologram was an impactful moment, seeing how less of a human she remained. But she certainly showed humanity by continuing to deceive players for her own benifit, yet the fragilities revealed somehow give player a cause to keep helping her. There was no happy ending, as neither she or players were the winner, for we were all pawns, forced to play a game we had no say.

Players were given choices to decide Songbird's fate, however. Unlike almost every quest in the main game, which players had no control over the narrative outcome, in Phantom Liberty there were two completely different routes, each with two endings, in in which Songbird may survive, die, or be worse than death. For the first time in the Night City, the player's decision mattered. These irreversible choices gave the story and immersion so much weight, therefore when Reed walked into the desert solitarily and the intro of Phantom Liberty performed by Dawid Podsiadło and P.T. Adamczyk started playing in the background, it brought much more sorrow than I experienced in the main game.

Most of the Night City, even with the 2.0 updates, did not impress me much, but I loved every second in the Dogtown; the immersion, atmosphere, and all the characters kept me thinking about nothing but them for days, even after witnessing their demises. Before writing this review, I rewatched the trailers CDPR released before the main game was published, and the promise of Night City shown, even after four years of upgrades, was so much more than what it was in reality. Since CDPR had previously announced that there won't be another expansion, it is a matter of fact that, at lease in the game of Cyberpunk 2077, that promise has been broken. Some people are upset about it—rightfully so—but I just felt it was such a shame, because that promise seemed to be a hell of a game.

But, with all of the work put into Phantom Liberty, in my eyes CD PROJEK T RED has already redeemed themselves over the broken promise. I finally got to take a glimpse of what it was supposed to feel like to be a dreamer in the city of dreams, and I enjoyed it immensely. My faith in CDPR has been restored, and if the goodies are tempting enough, I may still preorder their next game.