At the conclusion of the initial teaser trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, first announced to the world on the 10th of January 2013, CD Projekt Red got ahead of the initial excitement by completely shuttering any speculation over the game’s projected release date. It was the phrase “when it’s ready” that tempered any and all expectations, including those that suggested it could arrive hot on the heels of the team’s most successful venture to date, the critically acclaimed role-playing game Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. With the Witcher 3, CD Projekt had created a wonderful fantasy adventure that was backed by a host of memorable characters and driven by a compelling narrative. And despite the game serving as the final chapter in the story of Geralt of Rivia, the burgeoning popularity of the White Wolf wasn’t so easily ignored. Following in the wake of its release came over a dozen free DLC add-ons, two lavish expansion packs, and even the development of a standalone version of the inimitable tavern pastime Gwent, which in turn earned its own narratively driven spin-off in the form of Thronebreaker. The team at CD Projekt were spinning gold, and much of the good that was to come from their final outing with Geralt could be traced back to the heartfelt note of thanks written to players found inside the cover of every boxed copy. 

In the period between the arrival of the Witcher 3 and then of Cyberpunk 2077, the heaps of praise and goodwill generated by CD Projekt’s post-release support of the former had helped position them as purveyors of an alternative consumer experience. In an industry where exploitative monetisation mechanics were all too commonplace and single-player titles threatened to be reduced to that of an afterthought, they represented the counterculture. All you had to do was keep an eye out for the red cardinal. Most important however was the fact that the ideals championed by the company’s gaming enterprises were proving to be immensely profitable. As reflected by their rapidly rising stock, the umbrella that housed every game-centric asset, from their Witcher portfolio to the GOG digital storefront, had grown immensely following Geralt of Rivia’s arrival upon the mainstream stage. And by the time that Cyberpunk 2077 had emerged at the forefront of our collective attention, CD Projekt RED was already recognised as the most valuable video game developer in all of Europe. Inevitably, the time soon arrived to deliver a follow up to the Witcher 3, if not thematically then at least in terms of scope and scale. Mirroring the successes of the past was always going to be a difficult enough task on paper. Before the discussion surrounding Cyberpunk could focus solely on its merit as a piece of software, there were plenty of other issues to take into account. Some seven years and multiple delays later, marred by controversy and mired in expectation, Cyberpunk 2077 arrived at the tail end of devastatingly grim year that had been dominated by a global pandemic, and it did so enveloped by a noticeably different kind of furore.

Of course, those special few games that bear the ‘triple-a’ moniker are often subject to the most intense scrutiny, and Cyberpunk is certainly no different. The first criticism that can be levelled at this behemoth is one that takes into account the way in which it was created. Cyberpunk 2077, at least partially, was produced in an environment that relied on employees to work enforced overtime in order to meet certain developmental deadlines. You can perhaps attribute the dependance on crunch in part to pandemic-induced workplace turmoil, but you can’t forgive the way in which it impacted the physical and mental health of those subjected to it. Having already been delayed on multiple occasions by the time that the final deadline for the game had been decided upon internally, it’s difficult to fully grasp the callousness that allowed for the game’s management team to tolerate such a concerning reality. As a final insult, and as to be expected from such a morally abusive practice, the hours of crunch poured into the various stages of development of Cyberpunk left no telling impact on the state of its release build. Crunch, once again, proving to be just as dangerous as it is completely unnecessary. The game’s eventual release gave it no relief from ridicule, either. In the wake of a largely positive but otherwise wildly fluctuating reception, a story published on Game Informer by journalist Liana Ruppert called out the game’s ‘braindance’ sections for giving her a seizure as she attempted to undertake her review. Not long after, Cyberpunk’s first official patch brought with it a seizure warning before the main menu, as well as a toning down of the sparkling effect associated with every similar sequence. The problem was easily fixed, but curious was the fact that it was purposely designed to mimic the same flashing patterns used by medical professionals to induce epileptic responses. And they’re just aren’t any points to be scored for authenticity when such authentic replication comes at the expense of your consumers’ well-being. 

NIGHT CITY IS POSITIVELY ENCHANTING TO LOOK AT, BUT A LACK OF INTERACTIVE FEATURES OFTEN LEAVES YOU FEELING LIKE A GUEST WITHIN ITS BORDERS

To top it all off, on December 17th 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was officially delisted from the PlayStation store, becoming the first game of its calibre to be condemned in such a manner. Evident almost from the moment it had finished installing was the dreadful quality of its performance, especially on console systems. Thrown in amongst a litany of crashes, texture pop-in and frame-drops were many other instances of technical breakage rarely seen in a big budget release, many of which were completely insurmountable. The arrival of a new generation of consoles doesn’t instantly antiquate those that they will gradually come to replace—but it seems CD Projekt neglected to consider that the majority of their userbase would be playing the game on the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, not their newer counterparts. The first statement from CD Projekt called for players that were dissatisfied with their product to contact PlayStation support and ask for a refund directly. Sony didn’t like that. The next statement from CD Projekt confirmed the game’s delisting, and it came alongside a commitment to righting the wrongs they had been wilfully complicit in perpetuating. Speaking at an investors call prior to release, company CEO Adam Kaciński relayed that the game performed “surprisingly well” on older hardware, perhaps forgetting that the front and spine of the game box had the PS4 and Xbox One logos printed on it, and not that of the PS5 or Series X. Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t the first game to have an awful release, and it certainly won’t be the last, but the extent of its woes are a direct reflection of the company’s great deception. No pre-release footage was ever filmed on a PS4, after all. And no other media prior to the review cycle had managed to avoid CD Projekt’s explicit curation. Cyberpunk 2077 was not fit for purpose, and as of writing, it still remains unavailable for purchase through PlayStation store.

To put it lightly, Cyberpunk 2077 is a peculiar beast. While it invites so many different ideas and presents so many unique themes, its metropolitan labyrinths are so irrevocably tainted that it’s often difficult to see past the scribbled lines of the game into what lies beyond them. The story of Cyberpunk 2077 sees your character assume the role of a Night City mercenary, and following a botched heist within the opening act, they become paired with a data shard that projects the reconstituted digital form of a deceased rockstar into their reality. This is Johnny Silverhand, and the more of the game you choose to experience, the more time you’ll have to get to know one another. Silverhand’s got his own ideas and his own aspirations, but not his own free will. Whether he likes it or not, you’re his vessel, with this bubbling conflict between a rebellious digital avatar vying for control and the hapless hired gun fending him off representing Cyberpunk’s most interesting dynamic. Acted in voice, motion and appearance by Keanu Reeves, Silverhand is a distillation of the resistance fought against the Night City machine. While the Samurai frontman is at the heart of Cyberpunk’s story, it’s this very idea of the city eating away at the soul that continues to simmer even as Johnny reverts to the backseat. Silverhand isn’t the only one to get lost in the maze—throughout your time in Night City, you’ll meet plenty of other characters that are entrenched in the muck and grime of unwitting servitude, each trying to avoid being fed through the moving cogs. What’s left for you to find in Night City isn’t presented with an operatic verve and your actions aren’t heralded with rounds of applause. Barely having recovered from the effects of the last corporate war, the city that remains smoulders like the sole standing tower of a besieged castle. It is a monument to the death of free will and an erasure of culture, brilliantly reflected in everything from conversational dialogue to aesthetic design. By juxtaposing its aspirational facade alongside the much harsher reality, Night City grows exponentially beyond the bounds of what you can see. And the more time you spend roaming the streets, the more stories that the environment begins to tell you. Cyberpunk doesn’t struggle when it comes to identifying a particular theme and then delivering it with its darkest possible interpretation. Night City is captivating, and what makes it so abundantly terrifying is the way in which every atrocity that you’re exposed to has been completely normalised within its borders.

Night City itself is dazzling to behold, but is let down by a slew of problems with its textures and fidelity. At least on console, even when using a PlayStation 5 or Xbox Series X, Cyberpunk’s neon paradise frequently struggles to hold itself together, its visual loading processes noticeably buckling as it packs and unpacks assets without pause. Most evident are the issues with texture pop-in, which is as common an occurrence in Night City as corporate brutality. In some of the denser areas of the map, it was impossible to avoid the sight of pedestrians slowly reassembling themselves piece by piece. While on rarer occasions, cars in my vicinity would cycle through various amorphous styles over a matter of seconds before finally settling on their defined shape, the civilian driver at the wheel remaining completely nonplussed throughout. Next to that were a host of similar problems along the same vein, like my character’s gun regularly drawing in an invisible state, street signage being so blurry that it was completely illegible, and civilians completely popping out of existence altogether. In terms of its graphical fidelity, there was just no way to look upon the skyline of Night City with perfect clarity. The further that you pull away the camera, the easier it is to notice how the towering black obelisks in the background are patchy and inconsistent, or how the advertisements looking down at you from the clouds are all jagged and pixelated. That’s not to say that the design ethos of Cyberpunk is lacking, because that’s actually one of its strongest facets. While it was a challenge for me to see Night City in the way that CD Projekt may have intended, there was certainly plenty to love about some of its intricacies. 

Vehicles, for one, are simply fascinating to look at. Sports cars intimidate with their laser-red neon, sedans lumber through the streets like pearlescent tanks and police cars are patched with hunks of battle-worn scrap metal. Across every interior is an overload of pulsing dials and flashing meters, whirring contraptions born of the same commitment to excess as the rest of the city. Weapons meanwhile vary between robust, militarised slabs of carbon fibre and flash, multicoloured hunks of plastic accented with shining metal trims. Whenever your V first equips a new weapon, there’s an inspection animation that plays where they pull pack the hammer, spin the barrel or extend the stock. And it’s almost a shame to only ever be treated to this animation once per weapon, with V examining every imperfection in a way that expertly highlights the level of detail behind each design. Though there’s little in Cyberpunk that stands out just as much as its fashion culture. Night City is full of so many unique looks and styles that I often stopped in my tracks just to admire them. Generic civilians can cut just as much of a presence as established characters on looks alone, their chrome-plated visage and shimmering gold shawls a facade that’s completely detached from the squalor they’re often surrounded by. The longer you spend in a specific region of the map, the more you’ll come to mirror its inhabitants tastes in clothing. There are plenty of unique items that are unfortunately unobtainable, but it was still enjoyable to see my V adapt her look to match every area. When cleaning up missions in Kabuki, a lowly district with a large gang presence and a high crime rate, I formed an outfit consisting of a weathered band shirt, studded high-tops and neon cargo pants. Later on I found myself working through the City Centre, and while the jobs weren’t so different, the prevailing style certainly was. By the time I had finished, all of my weapons were painted with subdued matte black finishes, and I had traded in my t-shirt and pants for a razor-sharp shirt and slacks. Though, as Cyberpunk frustratingly ties stats directly to clothing items without offering a layered armour system, you’re rarely given the chance to properly curate your own ideal ensemble. For much of my time with the game, my look consisted of cobbled together rags and mismatched accessories that I was almost forced to wear in order to take advantage of their stat boosting capabilities. And that’s particularly grating when you find the perfect piece of aesthetic vanity, only for it to be completed outclassed by something much more unappealing almost immediately. Looks really are everything in Night City, and that’s regularly to the game’s detriment. 

When it comes to character building, Cyberpunk offers little in the way of innovation. The more you do in Night City, the more experience points you’ll accrue, and the more perks you will unlock that can bolster your specific style of play. It’s simple and it’s functional, but it’s also incredibly uninspiring and plainly by the book. Where Cyberpunk at least poses something a little different is in the optional body modifications that you can invest in, anatomical hardware upgrades that can make you tougher to kill, lighter on your feet, or even able to briefly dilate time. Body modification is common in the world of Cyberpunk, with the replacement of human skin for hardened chrome available to every single citizen provided that they’ve got the cash for it. While some are content with only altering parts of themselves in moderation, others tend to go a little further, trading in every little bit of their flesh piece by piece for something altogether more prominent. The best that the game can offer when it comes to physical alteration is resigned to the character creator, and as soon as you have settled on your initial look, you’ll be unable to access that level of customisation again. Night City isn’t home to a single barber or tattoo parlour despite its abundance of interactive mirrors, and just like there’s no option to alter the way you look hours into your adventure, there’s also no way to plate yourself in steel or drape your skin in gold. It’s perplexing that your modifications aren’t visible on your character, especially when the city’s inhabitants wear their own adornments with such confidence. You’re not limited when it comes to choice, at least. Installing impact absorbent shocks in your legs will protect you from fall damage to a degree, opening up a completely new avenue of attack. Adding a synaptic accelerator meanwhile slows down time when you’re spotted by an enemy, giving you a much larger window to conceal yourself during stealth encounters. But there’s no sign of any metal musculature winding up your legs, or a rigid exoskeletal harness affixed to your upper spine. Cyberware is undoubtedly the most unique aspect of the game when it comes to character customisation, which is why it’s frustrating to see it used in such an inconsequential fashion. Omitting the visual aspect of the cybernetic experience largely undercuts a lot of the kit’s usefulness, relegating much of the lesser items to the same level as basic character perks. And most egregiously, it deprives the player of making the same sort of choice that the narrative continually reiterates, completely undercutting its own message of humanity against the interchangeability of the physical form.

While character levelling ferries you down several uninspired skill trees and progression paths, there’s at least a bit of inventiveness when it comes to combat. Gunfire on the streets of Night City is just as much a part of its biophony as the revving of engines and the bellowing of virtual adverts. If you’re looking to experience every drop of content in Cyberpunk then you’ll be getting into plenty of fights along the way, so it pays to be prepared. Typically, you can build your character around many of the usual archetypes that you’d expect from the genre. Where things differ in Cyberpunk though is in how your build revolves around key pieces of cyberware. Perk points may support your method of approach by increasing your health, armour, stamina or speed, but your choice of augmented gadgets and weapons will be what serves as the defining aspect of your play-style. Take the gorilla arms cybernetics for example, along with the berserker implant. Without them, your standard unarmed melee build will see encounters play out like laboured slugfests, but with them both slotted into your high-level build, you’ll be an unstoppable force of chaotic lunges that promptly turns gangs of enemies into clouds of red mist. At the opposite end of the spectrum is something like monowire, which is a great tool to use for a more covert approach. Combine monowire with a speed implant, and your overly cautious assassin build is now just as deft as it is deadly, with even security cameras barely able to catch a glimpse of your shadow. My choice of approach centred around using quickhacks, and by the time that I had decked myself out in legendary augmentations, mods and equipment, I was able to tilt the balance of each encounter completely in my favour. First, I’d throw out a ping to detect every enemy in the vicinity. Then, I’d breach the network to lower the resistances of the enemies connected to it. Lastly, I’d begin injecting my hacks into the system, watching eagerly from the shadows as damaging viruses leapt from enemy to enemy and back again, leaving them crippled, defenceless and completely at my mercy. When your build begins to take shape, combat really excels at delivering on its promise of an unchecked power fantasy. And while it isn’t nuanced, it’s certainly entertaining. Weapon feedback may not be as satisfying as it could be, and enemy AI a little too slow on the uptake, but unleashing your full suite of cybernetic abilities is tremendously enjoyable. The game’s combat isn’t necessarily a success in variety or even execution. Unlike much else of what it brings to the table, the achievement here is that it’s at least different enough to stand out on its own.

CYBERPUNK’S PACING IS FAR TOO QUICK FOR THE STORY THAT IT TELLS. YOUR ROLE OFTEN FEELS NEGLIGIBLE & MAJOR EVENTS AREN’T GIVEN ENOUGH TIME TO SIMMER

Cyberpunk doesn’t present each of its themes in an individual, tabulated fashion. Instead, the greater themes of unchecked corporate power and self-dissociation are only a single pair of fangs on the jaws of the very same monster. The problem isn’t that any single aspect of this hedonistic, corrupt and filth-ridden future is being distinctly undersold. It’s that whenever you begin to peer under the veil and see for yourself what the game has steadily built up, you’re almost certainly going to be met with a jarring technical issue that completely breaks your immersion. Just like that, a passive commentary on lives spent scrounging for scraps in the shadow of corporate castles becomes another moment where character models revert to their mannequin form, and where bursts of real emotion are superseded by stunted, hollow words. What’s more, if you choose to avoid most of the side content and cruise all the way to the end in the quickest possible manner, there’s not that much of a game there at all. Perhaps due to the internal upheaval that saw a complete change in character perspective late on in its development cycle, Cyberpunk is riddled with severe pacing problems, imbalanced systems and a distinct lack of substantial things to do. And it even struggles to settle on a solidified context for your character’s role alongside the events of the game. Central to the progression of the story is the fact that the shard containing the engram of Johnny Silverhand is steadily killing you—it’s why many of the main missions play out in a hurried manner, with V often clinging to her life often on an hour by hour basis. Completely counterintuitive to this is V’s existence outside of the narrative bubble, a position in which she’s almost completely detached from the consequences of her rapidly deteriorating condition. There’s such a major dissonance between what the main missions show you and what occurs during side content that it almost feels though you’re playing as two different characters entirely. One moment I’m fighting for my right to live and coughing blood into my palms, the next I’m buying luxury sports cars and transcribing tarot graffiti. This is content that CD Projekt designed to be experienced, but that just doesn’t fit alongside a narrative that revels in reminding you of your rapidly perishing mortality. All that’s really accomplished by pressuring progression out of the player is that the credits are likely to come around quicker. Given that the game is already as short as it is, there’s little to be gained by drawing attention to the clock constantly ticking over in the background, and no narrative justification ever makes you truly believe in the fate that awaits you.

Rather than tinker with the familiar, CD Projekt brings what is essentially the same dialogue system from the Witcher 3 back to the table once again in Cyberpunk. As Geralt of Rivia, you would always be presented with two different types of text to choose from: yellow text, which would forward the conversation with the most necessary responses; and blue text, which you could use to find out optional information that would keep the conversation rolling. Decision making here usually came in the form of binary choices. Geralt, after all, was a pre-established protagonist, and keeping his choices in line with what you’d expect from him was necessary to maintaining a consistency in his character. In Cyberpunk, V is much more malleable than Geralt, but you are given no more freedom of choice for it. The dialogue system is essentially identical to that of the Witcher, while also occasionally throwing out an optional selection related to your chosen life path. Generally, you’re given multiple different alternatives for pushing the conversation forward, but are rarely afforded the chance to usher it in another direction entirely. Much of the problem is rooted in Cyberpunk’s mission design not being robust enough to accommodate anything beyond the most predictable outcomes. This is a stealth is optional type of experience where your decision making is never called in to question primarily because the game lacks the ability to react to it. The consequence of this is having every important decision pinned to dialogue choices that are only found in very specific instances—and having anything else you’ve done up until that point being rendered completely moot. Cyberpunk has multiple endings of course, and they’re all predicated on how you choose to navigate a single meeting with a character you’re barely familiar with. No matter which one of the game’s four distinct conclusions that you achieve, you’ll always be reverted back to a time before the finale anyway, and are denied the chance to experience the consequences of your choices. Without any weight to your actions and resigned to only the basest of outcomes, much of your involvement in the story feels outright meaningless. As for your iteration of V, with so few opportunities in which to shape them, it was difficult to foster the kind of bond that made the whole experience feel that much more personal.

There’s just no avoiding the absolute worst of what Cyberpunk 2077 has to offer. It’s fundamentally broken and so deeply flawed that I wonder whether or not patches are even capable of saving it. It runs poorly, it crashes often and the entire narratively-driven experience plays out like it has been chopped apart and pieced back together again. Even when you’re lucky enough to sidestep technical issues, there are still yet more barricades ahead of you. Vehicle handling is dreadful, the economy is poorly balanced and the inventory interface makes finding specific items absolutely torturous. What Cyberpunk strives to accomplish it inevitably fails at, and what qualities it has that are in any way redeeming are almost completely hidden beneath a mountain of problems. One criticism that I can’t level at Cyberpunk is that it doesn’t have much to say. Night City exists during a time of aftermath, where corporations have long since consolidated their power and the average civilian drifts about sapped of their spirit and devoid of their free will. Night City showed me poverty and brutality. It showed me prejudice and corruption. And it did so through wonderful environmental direction, a steady tonal consistency and a complete dedication to its portrayal of the lone, powerless punk fighting for their right to live. Perhaps if the game had been given the right amount of time that its development required, then maybe it could’ve shown me a lot more than just that.