Cyberpunk 2077: Hype, furor, and disillusion

If you’re a video game player, the crescendo of anticipation over nine years for CD Projekt Red’s CYBERPUNK 2077 was inescapable. From the tantalizing trailer featuring a cyborg hailed by gunfire, to production delays that resulted in hysterical death threats against the developers and leading up to the launch crashing into a Reddit-fueled crater of outrage when console players discovered the game riddled with unplayable bugs, you might say it’s the marquee title of 2020 — a year with its surfeit of calamities.

I pre-ordered for PC, as did thousands of other devotees of CD Projekt Red’s monumental Witcher series. The promise of a futuristic world where corporate greed and widespread use of digital implants has created a miasma of underground crime, income disparity, and rampant violence seemed tailor-made for a gaming studio that brought us a beloved mutant monster-hunter. The teasers promised a Blade Runner-like city to explore in a variety of souped-up vehicles, a smorgasbord of cyberware to plug into our player character, V, and none other than Keanu Reeves as a leather-clad cyber-ghost haunting us as we race against time to save ourselves from an unwanted detonator-chip in our brain. Genital selections in character creation, a robust array of hairstyles and facial features, and the developers’ underscored emphasis on the game’s RPG elements — it was all music to those of us who’ve lamented the erosion of the genre in favor of MMORPGs that are money-grabbing massive in content and tight-fisted with stories we actually care about.

The game delivered much of its vaunted promise; and unfortunately, its deficits, too. CYBERPUNK 2077 is an awesome visual treat as you boot it up and find yourself in V’s persona. After choosing one of three available lifepaths, you plunge into teeming Night City, the map overwhelming with icons to pursue. Stuffed around the main questline are countless side-jobs and garbage-strewn alleyways to stealth through; stumbling upon a gibbering cyber-psychotic so overpowered you’ll die after three swipes of its mantis blades is a humbling lesson in how to not bite off more than you can chew. NPCs seem to abound, with the first part of the main quest leading to the introduction of Mr. Reeves as terrorist rock star Johnny Silverhands pulse-pounding fun.

Then something unexpected sets in. The incredibly detailed ambiance of Night City is amazing — I went driving around for over an hour just to soak it in — but after a while, it starts to feel hollow, a labyrinthine façade that never manages to leap fully to life. Everyone walking around is a study in urban dysfunction and appalling fashion choices, yet you rarely feel empathy for them. The plethora of NPCs also never stick around long enough to create lasting bonds. V wanders this dystopian landscape alone for much of the game, unless you count endless phone calls requesting assistance or Johnny’s occasional laconic appearances, oozing sarcasm on your plight. Over time, a prevailing sense of loneliness creeps in as you realize there’s no one who really gives a shit about you in Night City.

Part of the problem resides in an ongoing development conundrum for 21st century gaming, as the increasing demand for state-of-the art spectacle has overcome the essential need for story. Older games like Mass Effect, Elder Scrolls, Dragon Age, and Fallout — deemed by many as classic RPGs — launched to unsteady receptions and countless bugs, too; they also weren’t very attractive visually, unlike CYBERPUNK 2077. But ingenious modders dived under the hood to create works of art that elevated those games to new heights and earned them devoted followings for decades. Rich in lore, with ample storylines, these games also offered something invaluable: a multitude of NPCs to befriend and take along on your adventures, winning or breaking their hearts as you agreed to assist them on their personal quests. In-game companions made the game less solitary in your carnage of foes to reach your destiny. If limited in conversational skills (though mods can fix some of that) the presence of companions highlighted a human need fast-evaporating in our online age: our innate desire for in-person communication and physicality.

CYBERPUNK 2077 revels in its technical achievements. It’s glorious in this respect. The level of attention lavished on details is astounding, even if you’re unable to peruse the lurid magazines on coffee tables. But all the detail stalls when it comes to personality. V is a mess, no matter which lifepath you choose, and the pre-programmed loss of his sole friend during Act One resonates throughout the game. We miss his friend not because he was particularly appealing, but because without him, V becomes a jaded loner without much of a sense of humor and a time-bomb ticking in his head. It’s sad. It gets depressing. His ruthless solitude reflects the world of the game itself — a brutal place, where no one knows how to love. His struggle to save himself has its moments, such as an unexpectedly intimate therapy session with a robotic prostitute, but otherwise there’s scarce tenderness to be found. V is out for himself, as is everyone else — a disturbing reflection of our inexorable cultural drift toward narcissism, greed, and selfishness.

For all of its hyped-up promise of gender fluidity and unfettered sexuality, CYBERPUNK 2077 tends to falter here, too. V can hire select joy-toys as prostitutes and enjoy a PG-montage liaison. No one expects X-rated, but I was still taken aback by the primness of the experience, especially as the character creation allowed me to choose V’s dick size. Not that I can ever see my dick in-game; the nudity censor can be switched off, but not for V, though a glitch can be exploited to screenshot him, her, or they, in the nude, as evidenced by gleeful pics about the web. Dildos abound in game storefronts. Television screens and billboards flash a variety of pornographic ads, but it’s fetishist stage-dressing designed to exploit, not explore. The reluctance to depict real sexuality in an ambitious title like this is disappointing, if not surprising. Sex is a perilous frontier for AAA games that depend on big profit margins and therefore warily side-stepped. You can murder people for hours on end, spattering gore across your screen, but you can’t fuck them. I couldn’t help recalling romances with McCready in Fallout 4 or Dorian in Dragon Age Inquisition, and my elation when I finally lured them to bed. They’d been quite reluctant pills to win over yet so worth my efforts. In CYBERPUNK 2077, it doesn’t matter. Having sex or getting a new cyberware implant carries the same emotional resonance, dialed down to zero.

The lack of NPCs to share your journey with and shallow approach to sex and romance prove that RPGS of yore are still the gold standard that current developers need to actually study, rather than pay token homage to. Video games have evolved into more than a billion-dollar industry glorifying cartoon violence; at their best, they can help illuminate our shared humanity. The multifaceted platform is ideal to bring our diversity to the forefront, wrapped in dazzling graphics, complex characters, and outsized weaponry.

I’m still playing CYBERPUNK 2077 because I’m curious as to how it’ll end. I’ve become invested enough to want to see V reach his/her/their finale. But unlike my player characters in Skyrim, Fallout 4, Dragon Age, or Shepard in Mass Effect, I don’t have any affinity for him. He’s a shooter-shell to me (in awful clothes) and I wish he wasn’t. I want to care about him, to help him find happiness, or at least resolve his dilemma with a semblance of fulfillment. To maybe fall in love inappropriately and retire to a farm to grow mutfruit —

Oops. Wait. That’s another game. One I’ll continue to return to, until some intrepid gaming studio decides to forgo the fancy bells and whistles or catering to the latest NVIDIA card, and hires writers to create stories I’ll play over and over, because they offer something enriching. Until that new game arrives, I’ll rely on the steadfast oldies, modding them to my heart’s content to carve out new experiences that I’ll then embark on with time-honored friends.

Because as technologically superior as CYBERPUNK 2007 inarguably is, I miss slaying dragons with a hot mage lover at my side.