Cyberpunk 2077 has been one of my favorite games of the year, because of something I call: cultural avoidance. I’m reflexively a huge practitioner, and I’m not entirely sure why. But whenever there’s a big cultural phenomenon happening, such as Game of Thrones, The Avengers Saga, Tiktok, whatever it is, I have a strong urge to avoid it like the plague. I guess it comes with a creeping fear that whatever the rage is, I won’t think it’s as good, and then I’ll be the only one who doesn’t like it, consolidated to an eternity of joyless smiling and nodding when the subject inevitably resurfaces. Or worse, I tell them I don’t like it, and they reject me for my lack of adherence to this week's universally praised media scrumpling. Where do these thoughts come from? Probably the same twisted place that keeps telling me it's all right not to exercise, but let’s excuse that Marianas Trench sized digression from the norm, and return to the point of this conversation the two of us are having.
So how was your day? Are you feeling comfortable? That thing you’re doing with your outfit, you should keep doing that. Everyone says it’s like a new trend. Don’t worry about that stuff you had to do later, I sent some people over to take care of it. They’re very thorough.
Now that we’re both comfortable - the cultural avoidance thing.
You see, I avoided Cyberpunk 2077 like I did all those other things, and despite what you might think, it actually worked out incredibly well. I missed the hype, the spoilers, the rage and the tears. I had virtually no expectations of it, other than it was rumored to be so glitchy as to be unplayable.
Friend, it is a fun game. Glitchy? Yes. Gratuitous? At times, you betcha.
Is it a new first person RPG, with a sprawling world, branching storylines and choice-filled dialogue, the likes are hardly seen outside of Bethesda announcing a new edition of Skyrim? If I could yes any yes-er, I would.
Much like Skyrim, the core gameplay loops, i.e., the combat systems of shooting, flailing and hacking, are not all that important to the game. Variety is the main source of entertainment within the combat, much like in Skyrim, so the unremarkable fighting mechanics are often elevated by the fact that you’ll be trying out a new gun, and this one goes “pew-pew”. It’s a little thing, but much appreciated by the time you’ve sunk enough time and upgrades into the game to become an unstoppable juggernaut, and the only diverting part of combat is being able to see how different weapons work.
At its core, Cyberpunk 2077 is another open-world role playing game - not some incredible, paradigm-smashing museum piece. And that’s perfectly fine with me. As a role playing game, the combat and driving are just icing on the rich, chocolatey sponge cake that is the story, which is a bombastic trip through of all the best, most textured areas of Night City, reveling in the bottomless supply of quirk and darkness that the game has to offer. At times, Cyberpunk seems to cut itself with its own edge, and the spectacles of human indecency come off as more gratuitous than gritty, but it all feeds into the central themes of the game, of transhumanism and moralistic ambivalence.
Cyberpunk 2077 is a good game with some flaws, and that’s okay. Reading this back, I can hardly imagine I’m writing about the same game that was lauded as some sort of celestial gift pre-release, then decried as trash-garbage soon after. I guess if you miss the cultural bandwagon, occasionally, you might accidentally have fun.