What up Choom?
The year is 2077, and dystopian America is filled with megacorporations, criminal activity, and Cyberware. When I first started playing the newly revived game “Cyberpunk 2077” I was wondering just what role I’d play in this world, I really hadn’t seen much of anything like this since maybe the old Blade Runner movie that my dad watched when I was a kid. Well, CD Projekt Red decided that I’d experience this world through a mercenary named V. While the player could ultimately choose one of three backstories to begin the game from, each of your previous lives ended up fucked (As most lives in Night City often do). I picked the start of a Nomad, and where you’d assume maybe some type of monk, that is not exactly correct. Nomads in the Cyberpunk universe were more like the drivers in Mad Max.
While these Nomads are a good inclination on what life is like outside of these corporate megacities like that of the game’s central location, they don’t spend a lot of time dealing with Nomad life out on the open road.
What the game tends to focus on, is the relationship V has (Or should I say, Johnny has? Don’t worry it’ll make sense in a second) with a massive corporation called “Arasaka”. I got a chance to enjoy the games beginning as it explored a heist gone bad. I am a big fan of putting characters through as many shit situations as possible, so I really enjoyed the beginning of this game. Essentially, the heist was to recover an experimental Cyberware relic that I assumed was some type of enhancement to the user’s brain – Something like Elon Musk’s Neuralink. In order to maintain hold of the item, V ends up having to put the relic into their own head. What follows is the catalyst to the entire story. Inside of that relic there was a downloaded construct of a former terrorist’s memory. This rockstar turned terrorist, played by Keanu Reeves, is Johnny Silverhand. The remainder of the game is spent with V and Johnny trying to figure out what they’re going to do about their new shared space because removing the chip normally would kill them both.
The story was long enough to me that it really felt like a journey, and the characters I met along the way seemed to be fleshed out, with stories of their own to take care of. The game introduced me to multiple options that could potentially save V from the seemingly inevitable fate of death with Johnny taking over their body permanently. Playing through a character who is essentially dying is always a treat because they usually do everything to their full capabilities or without any real semblance of self-preservation. This continues to be the driving force of my experience as I took on insane tasks and missions with the sole purpose being “Maybe V will live?”
The missions in the main story gripped me to where I played through most of them without exploring the rest of Night City. I came up to what I didn’t know was the finale of the game and before I stepped onto an elevator which would trigger about two hour’s worth of a game ending mission, I got a pop up notification.
This was perfect for anyone who gets tunnel vision and nose dives into the thick of whatever story is happening. The pop up gave me the opportunity to turn around and explore what this massive world had to offer. Night City isn’t just the background of V’s struggle, it’s a living cyberpunk city with tons of characters and storylines that are much more human. One of the most memorable missions for me came from a side mission with who is essentially a cyberpunk porn editor named Judy Alvarez. The game has romance paths set up with certain characters, Judy being one of them, but you can also just do these side missions as their friends. This mission is around thirty minutes to complete and features no real threat or direct combat at all. It was very surprising to me just how much time the team at CD Projekt Red took to make the world feel real. In this mission, you scuba dive with Judy to visit the town she grew up in. This town was in a valley and is now completely submerged under a lake. It was nice to take a little while to just enjoy the humanity put into the game and listen to Judy tell me about growing up.
I linked the Mission below, but like I said it’s about thirty minutes long and without context will likely be a little boring to watch:
After exploring for a while and watching an Anime made in the same universe called “Cyberpunk Edgerunners” which wasn’t exactly a prequel to the game but more or less just a series of events that happened before the main games story, I felt like I had experienced Night City just enough to satisfy my curiosity to the point where I felt comfortable ending the game. I’d love to gush about just how good “Cyberpunk Edgerunners” really was, but that would take up a whole separate post on its own. Though I do want to mention that because the Anime was so well received, CD Projekt Red added a bunch of things into the base game as references or easter eggs that alluded to the show. Of course, I had to wander the map and find them all.
The game does a really good job at capturing the humanity of it’s characters throughout the story and especially the side missions. I feel V’s struggle, I feel Johnny’s anger and distrust for corporations, I feel the emotions that the other characters have towards their life and towards Night City as a whole. What at first felt like a linear ‘Complete the missions’ type of game, actually turned out to be one of the most fulfilling playable instances of character personality I’ve ever had the chance to enjoy. V is scared. Though they’re a badass merc running through a fictional dystopia and killing ninety percent of the people they come in contact with, they still feel real and relatable. Thier personality is able to rise above the things that the player does in action sequences to tell the story of someone who feels the weight of being down on their luck.
I don’t enjoy media that comes across as underdeveloped. I enjoy complex characters and complex worldbuilding that takes the consumer on a journey that we feel is acceptable of spending our time on. After jumping from the main mission and taking in the vastness of Night City, I realized that while I did enjoy the main story, I wouldn’t have held the game in such high esteem upon completion had I not done the dozens of hours’ worth of side missions that fleshed out the world. It would have been so easy for me to miss what I didn’t realize would be one of my favorite games and it made me want to step off the gas petal just a little bit because exploring the story world is just as important as telling the story itself.
Featured Image:
Official Box Art of Female V from Cyberpunk 2077 by CD Projekt Red. All Rights Reserved.
