It all started when my Fiancée and I took our pup to get his hair cut about a couple of months ago. We went to a pre-owned game shop and my Fiancée found it – a copy of CyberPunk 2077. It’s only $25, she said. I said yes. I’m glad we didn’t pay full price for it.
If you want to avoid spoilers, do not read any further.
Where do I start?
As with everything, theme is king.
After Johnny Silverhand’s Ingram inhabits V’s mind, the burning question becomes – which one of these minds will win the battle of wills to control V’s body?
The next question is – what is the nature of existence?
Johnny is so hell-bent on his quest to destroy Arasoka that even this Ingram of him wants to kill you immediately. He wants control. He wants to make Arasoka pay for all its crimes.
V, on the other hand, doesn’t have a burning hatred for all things Arasoka, and this is her body.
Had they stuck with this antagonistic relationship through the entire game, maybe it wouldn’t have been so underwhelming.
What did they decide –
V’s body will die anyway, so it doesn’t matter who survives the choice!
Boring – yawn. Who cares, V dies anyway.
Instead of exploring the idea of what it means to exist, where there is an epic confrontation between Johnny and V, fighting over control of her body, they decide decided a very lame mechanic. Either V or Johnny decides to take the bridge to become part of cyberspace or inhabit V’s body – nice and peaceful-like.
As I said, underwhelmed.
Can some of these video game companies learn about storytelling?
The fight between Johnny and V should be the dark moment of her soul. She now has to fight to maintain her body, it’s do or die.
The biggest disappointment was there was never an antagonist in the story. There was never someone trying to pull the strings to make the story go along, and never a moment where everything was on the line.
And what do they give you at the end?
A ridiculous cut scene where V, or Johnny in V’s body, is in orbit, flying towards an Arasoka space station with a single pistol. Again, it doesn’t matter which person ends up in the real world and which one is in CyberSpace, because Johnny’s desire for revenge is the last visual in the game.
Your choices don’t matter.
The story never really delivers on the burning questions because there was never a tug of war between Johnny and V. It doesn’t show how different things would have been if Johnny or V ends up winning in the end. It doesn’t even make sense.
V was fighting for her life for most of the story, and at the last choice between her and Johnny, she will try to prevent Johnny from going into CyberSpace.
It sucked.
And what did they give as a message instead?
Arasoka, and all corporations and corpos, are evil!
We played for 370 hours for a message we can read in five seconds on an Anti-Capitalist Twitter account.
Boring.
I don’t recommend the game.
Thanks for reading my blog, and have a great day, guys!
Amazing Gaming Productions 