Cyberpunk 2077: criticizing is fine, destroying is not
But why did we take it so to heart? Why did we decide to expose ourselves in this way? It would be nice to be able to tell you that we do it for the whole CD Projekt Red team, the developers so to speak, those who are still spitting blood on the next patch today. But basically, let's face it, what interests us? We don't do trade unionists, and if they don't like what they're doing, they can just quit and start doing something else.
I do it for the game
We do it for the game , here is the truth, for what it is giving us and for what it could give to you, if you stopped stamping your feet hoping for the earthquake and that the dead will escape. The ones we hear around are no longer critical, but bullying that feeds itself and amplifies itself often without solid bases on which to rely. Of course, maximum empathy to those who cannot play it, marred by bugs and above all by much more serious crashes, but the time will come for you too, if you ever want to try again. However, it seems that with Cyberpunk 2077 you have suddenly discovered that video games, often and willingly, are launched incomplete and full of problems. It's right? Absolutely no, but the only thing we can do about it is to avoid compulsive purchase at launch or even better: avoid pre-orders like the plague.Is it really a unique case?
What happened with Cyberpunk 2077 happened with hundreds of other games. Bethesda games had an underlying incompatibility with PlayStation 3, the platform on which they have always crashed due to its peculiar memory management. It happened with Driveclub, a driving game that debuted with 70% fewer functions, but that Sony never thought of withdrawing from the market. And what about No Man's Sky and its constant locks? World of Warcraft showing enemies stuck in place for nearly a year, Batman Arkham Knight and Dishonored 2 on PC or Shadow of Mordor on PlayStation 3 and its nightmare framerate? I understand the younger ones, but how can the older ones have forgotten about Daggerfall? And to hit hard, as you want us to do today with Cyberpunk 2077, many series would not have gone on, many software houses that you hold in the palm of your hand today, would have had no future.Every stab at the game CD Projekt the first Mass Effect brings us to mind, today the starting point of a more than beloved trilogy: venerated. Yet Mass Effect had problems: heads that turned on the spot, eyes that widened during the cut-scenes, an exploration on the Mako in indecent planets, where the only form of life were these monkeys emerged from the Winx that moved in slow motion for who knows what reason. And he was attacked for that, he was also attacked for the combat system. By the standards emerging today, it would have been a six, or maybe even five game. With similar examples we can go on for a long, long time, but we stop here hoping that the concept has arrived.
This is just the beginning
Now we want to talk to you about the game. Of what is defined in turn as a bad GTA, a horrible RPG, a taking for a ride that deserves to be burned at the stake because guilty of all wickedness. Let it be clear that we will never say the word masterpiece, I do not hide that for the writer, for the enthusiast, it is, but the adjective is absolutely forbidden when the critic is talking to you. However, we believe it is fair to remind you of one thing: to get to The Witcher 3, CD Projekt had to develop the first and the second. Cyberpunk 2077 is a first chapter, and from here if given the chance it will only grow. The game has problems, we will be crazy to deny it, some important such as inventory management and above all the police AI which, as it is at present, we will have really avoided inserting it except in a future update.Action RPG
Cyberpunk 2077 is not an action game. Needless to keep laughing at him comparing him with Rockstar games. True, the AI of the inhabitants of Night City is not comparable with those who drag themselves between the streets of Los Santos and Saint Denis, but the missions of GTA and Red Dead Redemption II are comparable to those of Cyberpunk 2077? Absolutely not. Open worlds are not a genre, they never have been. There are open worlds that have the sole role of a rich and intricate scenography, and there are others that are created to respond to every request of the player. Night City belongs to the first category: it is a container of stories, and what stories.In ninety hours, and the writer is still in the middle of his first run, there hasn't been a single side quest, even the most useless ones, without a brief history to explain its existence. The more you advance with the "street cred", the more complex side missions that are unlocked. Some of these are made up of several steps that are activated even after hours, when a surprise call arrives and the storyline that you thought you had finished continues with new motivations, new tasks to complete. And it is full of secret missions, which you activate only by replying to certain messages, only by decrypting drives that disappear among the thousands that you can collect around, some of these also related to the background chosen at the beginning. We unlocked one by simply responding to a car ad, a similar ad to dozens of similar ones; another started by ordering a drink from an anonymous counter run by an Asian, like there are billions on the streets of Night City. Exploring the city brings new epic gear, new hacking programs, new and increasingly powerful weapons.
So many choices, zero barbers
There is so much to do, and to find, that complaining about NPCs is really childish. What role do GTA NPCs play? Which one of the passers-by of any Assassin's Creed? Nobody. Those of Cyberpunk 2077 just crouch, scream, run away when they notice the danger: and that's all they have to do. Night City is here for the atmosphere, it is the glue and not the protagonist. Night City is here to reflect itself in the windshields of screaming cars, in the eyes of characters on which we will only be able to break into lives when they have a very specific role in the narrative web woven by Cd Projekt. The political drift of a mission like Fought the Law, the armed response to free Panam's friend as a sandstorm simmers on the horizon, Judy's quest for braindance snuff. All stuff of extreme quality that allows total freedom of approach.Do you want to make your way through bullets? Ok. Want to hack your way? Ok. Have you invested everything in stealth and if they show you a viewfinder you lose half the energy? In all likelihood, as you explore, you will find different ways to enter, to exit and of course to bring home the result. You may find a file on a PC that allows you to blackmail the owner of the place by totally skipping the raid phase, have enough strength to break through a door in order to reach the goal by going from a completely different way, take advantage of cybernetic systems to jump on the roof of a building and from there act in the shadows without activating a single alarm. Here too, we stop only because we think the concept has arrived, and not because there are no examples.
Understanding the problems
Allow us also a few words about this artificial intelligence, that of the enemies that is the only one that really interests (we have already spread a pitiful veil on that of the police and we can also do it with the one that regulates traffic). Yes, there is a problem, but it is mainly related to bugs and not to the way in which the AI is managed: in fact, if we do not focus only on the enemy who becomes dumbfounded in front of our shots, this one knows how to react rather well moving according to our actions, coming at you and throwing grenades to get you out of cover, even trying to get around you; then there are the netrunners who do an extraordinary job of keeping you in range while always keeping your ass safe.Despite the flaws, on a difficult level, this AI still manages very well to do what every AI in a similar game should do: kill you. We all agree that things should work better, and they will as we have already seen a good step forward in responsiveness and use of covers with the latest patch. But please, don't tell us that the enemies of Fallout and Skyrim are doing better, don't tell us that the enemies of Call of Duty or the first Titanfall are capable of who knows what strokes of genius because it's simply not true. Cyberpunk 2077's AI is inconsistent: sometimes it works well sometimes it doesn't, but to end up immortalized in youtuber's videos, who knows why it's always the bug, as if the twenty enemies had never existed before.
The heir of Deus Ex
Anyone who has been writing video games since 1986 thanks to an Atari 2600 given to him on his birthday, has been doing this job since 1999: he does not exclude being stoned to the point of not recognizing a good game from a bad one game. However, there is a small possibility, allow us the hypothesis, that a certain user has totally lost his head already overwhelmed by an absolutely unhealthy hype, able to make the game pay even for what he never promised. As far as we are concerned, playing Cyberpunk 2077 taking it for what it is, and not for what it is not, the latest work Cd Projekt is the most futuristic Deus Ex since the first game in the series, the one released in 2000 by opera by Ion Storm.This is the first time we have seen such a structure work in an open world, albeit with potential in the making (we admit, however, that it would not drive us crazy to run away from the police for twenty minutes, as happens in other games). Being told that it is a failure even because you cannot enter every door, when it is one of the open worlds with the most interiors ever, it doesn't even make you laugh but suffer. Being told that NPCs should be able to respond by talking about politics and other amenities like in Skyrim, where each city has around twenty characters in total, it's not funny but painful. In fact, we seriously think that as the first game in a new series, CD Projekt has managed to do something extraordinary.
Everyday Future
Every time we start the game this introduces us to an incredible story to live and then tell, new alleys to explore, new documents to read, new jackets to try, new weapons to test. All this in a world of impeccable beauty, where moreover we must also worry about money thanks to a non-dynamic but perfectly balanced economy, which forces us to work hard to access missions, improve the character and even take away some cosmetic whims.We can't wait to close this article to jump back on our favorite bike, tackle the curves in controlled glide, strictly in first person, listening to the synthetic sounds of the radio as we head towards a date, a shop, a corner of Night City never seen before. We all wanted the perfect game, the jack of all trades capable of maximizing every aspect of an RPG, an action game, a platformer, a puzzle game, but maybe stuff like that doesn't even exist, and if any someone comes to mind it is very likely that the memories are playing a very bad joke. With the criticisms we hear about Cyberpunk 2077, in reality, no game would have a chance, not even the one you love most.
Between you and the game
There is so much to correct , mind you, but there is also so much to love. Killing such precious stuff in the crib won't do anyone any good. Killing Cd Projekt after everything he has given us and will surely give us in the future, will not do anyone any good. From gamers to gamers, I ask you with my heart in hand: don't take a step further. As the writer has done in the past with other games, primarily No Man's Sky, we are willing to gamble for credibility and we do it only because we are extremely convinced that we are facing a problematic but no less exceptional product, a product that in a few years everyone will remember as a fundamental game, exactly as happened to the many mentioned in this article.This is not critical, this is a massacre and we don't want to have anything to do with it.
And now get under it, the pen that is about to close this article is ready to be massacred, along with its shitty Cyberpunk 2077 statuette that Cd Projekt gave away two years ago at E3, and the two t-shirts which she bought from her own pocket from the official store. Which is enough, according to some, to throw a twenty-year career down the drain.
