Cyberpunk 2077

[Hanimalle]

Despite having reservations at first about the disappointing and limited amount of quickhacks available early in the game, especially since my build was focused mostly on Intelligence, it turns out that once you reach level 16 in that stat, you can unlock a specific perk that lets you craft some really cool (and extremely disturbing when you think about it) stuff, such as the ability to force someone to commit suicide or trigger cyberpsychosis.

It’s really fun to use these on a group of enemies and deal with whatever is left. Given that I found a powerful deck that helps regenerate ram faster along with cyberware and perks that help in this build, I rarely need to use my guns. There’s a final perk that you unlock once you reach 20 in Intelligence to craft the most powerful quickhacks and I’m currently aiming for that, it should be fun to see what awaits there.

[01000100]

First person camera is amazing,

Yeah, this really works for me. It’s a change to have a first person perspective that is fully voiced and animated to this degree. How the game handles conversations is great too, you aren’t locked into “dialogue mode” unless the game asks you to sit down or lean against something or you’re being restrained in someway. And the motions you can do during those conversations can be cool, even if its as simple as drinking/eating, fiddling with something. And V changes posture frequently during these locked in talkie bits, good for immersion.

[Xelias]

That’s my point though. That’s not anti-capitalist in the way Marx was,

I’ve not argued that the cyberpunk genre was communist, I’ve argued that it is anti-capitalist. Which you can, without having to follow Marx’s materialism. The whole point is that it is a rebellion against the system, as a Dystopia it rarely offers a solution and rather focus on pointing out the flaws in the system, often in a very pessimistic vibe.

But I think that direct OPPOSITION to capitalism is a big part of what makes cyberpunk what it is.

I don’t think that any of those books offer specific “post-rebellion” solution, it’s an anarchist mindset that rebels against megacorporation, an example of a world that is no longer salvageable and that shouldn’t be emulated.

(I’ve posted a direct quote from one of the CP2020 books that clearly rebels AGAIST capitalism and Pondsmith said that the thesis of Cyberpunk is “Cyberpunk is a warning, not an aspiration”)

Also, if anything a world controlled by mega corporations that elevated themselves past governements is a ancap world (Or, “libertarian” as Americans call them.) And Cyberpunk is a definite critisism of that world. It’s a dystopia for a reason, one that went way too far off the rail to be fixed through “normal” means.

But heh, Read it however you’d like.

I disagree strongly. Virtually every major cyberpunk genre author has broadly libertarian, liberal or even centrist political leanings.

So, I’m not trying to determine the politics of the Cyberpunk genre. I’m saying that it has an Anti-capitalist message. The politics of that message will obviously diverge from one author to the other. BUT almost every Cyberpunk setting paints a dystopian world of Anarcho-capitalsm, where governements and states have been stubdued by megacorps. That’s a “right wing Libertarian” world shown as a dystopia.

(It’s as if you told me that BioShock was pro-Objectivism because of how much the universe is mirroring Ayn Rand’s stupid ideas.)

given you don’t have corporate kill squads openly patrolling the streets and so on as they could in 2020.

Well, I’ve seen patrols of corporate cops in the street with ED-209-style mechs around the industrial bits of the city & around the corpo towers.

I haven’t read your spoilers, but I did just read something pretty important to this discussion, which is Cyberpunk Red

Hum, none of what you said afterwards relate to the fact that in the game 99% of the opposition is either gangs, or purposefully as a response from a direct attack from V. The corporations are never the enemy in the game. (even Arasaka, you fight “them” because the mc guffin V needs is in their headquarter, not for any reason, at the game’s mid-point a quest needs to firmly point V back towards Arasaka, because otherwise, there’d have been no reason to engage with them again. )

Perhaps you mean paraphrasing rather than word-for-word (it’s the opposite concept)?

Thank you for being patronising. No, I meant Word for Word, I played in English, it’s a massive RPG that you haven’t finished yet, but yet you assume I misunderstood the meaning of “word for word” ?

but I think you’re completely and utterly wrong to think 2020 wasn’t also that, and wrong on a very basic level about how the cyberpunk genre works. You seem to think it’s some sort of progressive, vaguely socialist deal

I’ve pasted earlier a screenshot of one of the book that directly points at capitalism being the issue. The way Cyberpunk 2020 was described was “A Warning.” I do not believe that the cyberpunk genre is either socialist nor progressive. But I believe that it has strong anti-establishment and anti-capitalist views. That the point of a dystopia is to show off the errors and problems of that system. I don’t think that Cyberpunk 77 should’ve been pro-communism, or socialist, that would have been a very hard thing to do. But I think that within the game, there needed to be some message about figthing the system & the power. Cyberpunk as a genre is about showing how the world it creates is fucked up and how technology can be used to destroy people’s life when in the hands of companies with nothing but their own interest in mind.

And that’s pretty much reactionary, because it’s saying the world now (or in 1983 or whenever) is “better” than it will be in the future. And when it’s not saying something like that, cyberpunk as a genre is frequently nihilistic, suggesting little/nothing matters, and it’s all going to shit anyway.

“A warning, not an aspiration” hints that we can do better. That the Dystopia of Cyberpunk ought to be something not to look forward to.

Cyberpunk 2077, oddly enough, cannot be accused of being nihilistic. It’s vision is a lot more positive than most cyberpunk

Thanks for highlighting my point? Indeed. Cyberpunk 77 Lacks the criticism of its world that are present in most other Cyberpunk stories, and almost regards fondly some aspects of its universe.

You seem to think punk is socialist too -

Anticapitalism is not the same as socialism.

nihilism, historically, has been much more a core of punk

Nihilism is a philosophical movement, not a political ideology. Punks have been Anarchist at large mostly in their messages as it is a fight against the powers that be.

has a feeling of being excluded from (and perhaps not even wanting to be part of) the main “line” of society, of the benefits of society. The anger than engenders, and so on.
Something not really present in much “cyberpunk” genre writing, not even in the early days.

that’s no how I would describe punk. But even taking your own definition, it is pretty much what Cyberpunk 2020 was about. Living on the edge of society, angry, looking at a world gone mad.

Direct quote from the first page of CP2020 :

And the first class introduced : Rockerboys.

I don’t think I’ll respond to your next message, between your patronizing attitude and the weird conflation of Anti-capitalism with Socialism I don’t feel like arguing with you is either fruitful or interesting.

Hope you enjoy your holidays.

[Donjo]

“I love the music. Driving through neon lit streets of Night City during rain, while listening to this Jazz radio station is just sublime.”

This is also a distinct high point for me - I’m loving that Night City is way more Mega-City One than I expected, but driving around in first person in the rain with Royal Blue Radio on is sublime in a Blade Runner noir kind of way.

One of my favourite side missions so far has been Delamaine, it demonstrates a lot of the CP2077 mood gamut - from somber, to unsettling, and to absolute whackiness.

[LexW]

I’ve pasted earlier a screenshot of one of the book that directly points at capitalism being the issue. The way Cyberpunk 2020 was described was “A Warning.” I do not believe that the cyberpunk genre is either socialist nor progressive. But I believe that it has strong anti-establishment and anti-capitalist views. That the point of a dystopia is to show off the errors and problems of that system. I don’t think that Cyberpunk 77 should’ve been pro-communism, or socialist, that would have been a very hard thing to do. But I think that within the game, there needed to be some message about figthing the system & the power. Cyberpunk as a genre is about showing how the world it creates is fucked up and how technology can be used to destroy people’s life when in the hands of companies with nothing but their own interest in mind.

Ultimately that’s really a nihilist-anarchist message though, not a genuinely anti-capitalist one, because it doesn’t propose any progression or better world except the reactionary “the world used to be better” (which itself is hardly a “punk” message).

Nihilism is a philosophical movement, not a political ideology. Punks have been Anarchist at large mostly in their messages as it is a fight against the powers that be.

Bollocks, frankly. That’s a cheap dodge of an obvious truth. Fighting something with literally no idea for anything better, just to destroy it, is deeply nihilistic and the worst kind of anarchism, the kind that replaces unpleasant corporate overlords with vile warlords, in the process likely killing vast numbers of people.

Your quote literally repeats what I said - Cyberpunk 2020 is Rebel without a Cause. But you’ve explicitly advocated, earlier in this thread, for it having a cause. You said it wasn’t okay that it wasn’t punk by “today’s standards”, and delineated what they were - in the process describing someone who sounds like a committed leftist, not a “punk” at all.

And that quote doesn’t support your position, because it’s about the whole “Style over Substance” aesthetic, one all versions of Cyberpunk explicitly support. You’re arguing for substance - actual opposition to the (then) megacorporations. But that’s not what it’s about. Rebel without a Cause. It’s right there in the quote. It’s about acting and looking like a rebel without actually being one. And that describes the vast majority of cyberpunk characters - they say they hate the corps, but most of the work they do is, directly or indirectly, for the corps. Sure, it’s often against other corps, but it’s acting as part of the system, not against it.

And the purified hypocrisy on “you conflated two things so I won’t reply” is beyond words. You have conflated a large number of things yourself. Obviously you don’t have to, but good god.

[ToomuchFluffy]

These game are way better at stealth, for sure, but main course of these games are these crafted, long missions that in the end left me more exhausted then elevated.

That’s a good point. I think that’s probably why I have always had some trouble with it as well. It’s more the long-term satisfaction that makes games like Dishonored worth playing for me.

[LexW]

Mechanically I like this blending big open city with specific quests that can be tackled in stealth. Strangely I have more fun in CP2077 then in Disohonored or modern DX. These game are way better at stealth, for sure, but main course of these games are these crafted, long missions that in the end left me more exhausted then elevated.

This is a really interesting point - I’d never really thought about it, but it’s exactly the problem I have with Dishonoured 2 which I played recently. I was wanting the levels to like, stop/finish about 40-60% of the way through where they actually were (in one case, more like 20% of the way through - but that might have been like two missions in one place). They’re exhausting. And it is really rewarding, but it’s too much - I’d love a shorter-level game in a vaguely similar style.

2077’s stealth isn’t perfect but even the heaviest “stealth mission” approaches I’ve taken, I’ve only had to do it for like 15-20 minutes tops, rather than a couple of hours or more as it can be with Dishonoured.

[Godwhacker]

I suppose the difference is that Dishonored is really designed for stealth, whereas this doesn’t quite seem to be. I’ve had too many instances where I’ve knocked a guy out and hidden their body somewhere totally out of sight, yet because it wasn’t in one of the Designated Cyberpunk Corpse Disposal Locations I’ve got an alert saying a body has been discovered. If an enemy gets alerted, all enemies get alerted. I mean- fine, perhaps they’re on the same 5G network or something, but it seems to be an either / or thing.

Thinking about it Metal Gear Solid 5 is really the closest thing to Cyberpunk 2077, except the gameplay mechanics in MGSV are impeccable. Cyberpunk’s world is a lot more interesting, but for minute to minute gameplay MGSV had it nailed.

[LexW]

Yeah I’ve had the same issue with bodies. I think some of it is that enemies patrol in a more aggressive way than a lot of stealth games, but part of it is definitely also either glitches or bodies being unreasonably easy to spot even when well-concealed but not in yes, a “Designated Cyberpunk Corpse Disposal Location”.

It doesn’t feel “better than Dishonoured” or anything, it just highlights that fact that Dishonoured levels are so incredibly long that they make me exhausted (esp. when even trying to go for a ghost run or the like).

Re: alerts - yeah - I mean I think it makes sense, though I’d kind of prefer it if there was a delay where the guy had to get out his phone and text/message/phone everyone unless he was an edgerunner/military/otherwise serious (just like they have to run for the alarm in Dishonoured), because then we could assume he was permanently wired into some kind of wireless network.

DE:HR did really cyberpunk stealth a lot better though, like a lot. It too has some exhausting missions (yes, my desire to play it on max-difficulty non-lethal ghost may have made this worse lol), and an excessive amount of turning on someones computer to find a password or the like (which, if anything, felt 1990s not cyberpunk), but there was a lot of sneaking through corporate offices and so on, whereas in 2077, the vast majority of sneaking is in non-corporate environments, and that feels a bit wrong. There’s a lot of stealth stuff from the tabletop that seems to be missing here, including the equivalent of Ghost in the Shell’s Thermoptic Camouflage.

[Naramsin]

Yeah, bodies are spotted quite aggresively if not in dumpsters etc. I thought it is because of cameras though? I think quickhacking camera off is disabling it only for 3 or 6 minutes? Maybe I should just shoot them with silenced gun?

I don’t rememebr DX:HR and I think I went guns blazing with it. Actually CP2077 stealth sections do reminds me between mission DX:MD and I liked those bits. There were parts of Prague that were hostile and parts that weren’t like in CP, probably like cop station in Detroit in HR.

I don’t know I kinda feel more comfortable with stealth in CP2077. Dumpsters, trunks etc. is a gimmick but it is actually easing me off into levels. Plus I really like given quickhack options, I wouldn’t like stealth without them. Distract enemies, whistle, reboot optics are what making it fun for me.

[Godwhacker]

Distract enemies, whistle, reboot optics are what making it fun for me.

I think reboot optics alerts enemies, or at least they start their “Come out and we won’t hurt you” script. Distraction works a lot better. Either way I usually wind up blasting them in the head with my silent revolver and hiding the corpse. I considered a non-lethal playthrough but I’ve very rarely felt bad about taking people out, since everyone seems to be a criminal of some sort. Deus Ex and Dishonored have a few more situations where there are innocents mixed up with the armed guards, and even the armed guards usually just seem like guys doing a job, so going non-lethal has more of an appeal.

There’s a lot of stealth stuff from the tabletop that seems to be missing here, including the equivalent of Ghost in the Shell’s Thermoptic Camouflage.

It’s there, but I don’t think you can use it. There’s one mission where you get to scan a site using a stealthed drone, and I think there’s been a couple of enemies using it as well… but there’s no cyberware as far as I’m aware.

Ultimately I think the game could have done with another year in development- polish it up, drop support for the old consoles, add the missing features, don’t get sued by investors, don’t draw all the bad press. I think it’ll be better in six months time, but not stellar. That said, it’s still good, and intermittently brilliant.

[Naramsin]

I think reboot optics alerts enemies, or at least they start their “Come out and we won’t hurt you” script. Distraction works a lot better.

I don’t think it does? Definietly doesn’t put everyone on alert like found body. Sure I use generally when out of ideas. In mission when rescuing Saul I couldn’t make past the gate, I distracted one guy on machinery but second on a roof was quick to spot me when I try to move body so I reboot his optics and run with a body to a dumpster through the gate. Or when there is a pair close to each other and I’m just like “Let me reboot your optics while I knock your buddy down, oh you still can’t see shit, go to sleep too”.

I considered a non-lethal playthrough but I’ve very rarely felt bad about taking people out, since everyone seems to be a criminal of some sort.

Doing gigs is often infiltrating a factory of some sort and there are just workers pretending to be offloading cargo and not gurads or gangsters.

I stealthily killed, even using some traps, all these creeps in BD den on mission with Judy to find Evelyn. Fuck those guys.

Ultimately I think the game could have done with another year in development

No question about that.

[ColdSpiral]

I’ve been having some thoughts about the non-lethal mechanics myself. In most games I generally try to avoid killing “guys doing a job” at the very least, and I blame Dishonored’s guard bark "He had a family, you bastard!"
Recently played through Watch Dogs 2 focussing on the non-lethal weapons and hacks, and it was gruelling, but narratively it just made more sense.
Cyberpunk’s enemies are very often irredeemable jerks - gangers and corpo grunts alike, but for the most part, I’ve been keeping the non-lethal optic mod active, occasionally double-tapping goons that really seem to deserve it.
Despite the fact that it doesn’t make much sense* and is a solid cop-out instead of making some tradeoffs in weapon type, there’s a reason why I’ve stuck with it - that kind of tradeoff often isn’t much fun. Challenging, yes, suspenseful, sure, but often you’ve got to go without the cool toys. My attention span is limited - I don’t often go for multiple playthroughs of a game, so I respect that in this regard I can have my non-lethal cake and eat it too.

*There was someone (here, twitter, or somewhere) making a case about weapon element types and mods not making any sense, that these effects (thermal damage, armour piercing, non-lethal or whatever) should be tied to ammo types instead, and it’s a good point. Feels like it would be a mess to implement, particularly in ui/ux terms, but, hypothetically, if the devs go through and implement a mode like Breakpoint’s Ghost Mode, it’d be a feature I’d like to see. The idea of swapping out a revolver’s poison rounds for electric bullets before taking on a heavily-modded foe, or, getting back to the point, loading your shotgun with non-lethal rounds before storming a corpo facility, feels more at home in the setting than a gun that makes regular bullets somehow set people on fire, but doesn’t kill them because you added a processor to it.

As far as the world goes, there’s a lot going on and always things to discover, but it feels less like a living city and more like a theme park. There’s a guy in the Badlands who has been flailing his arms at the bonnet of his broken-down car for days. Try to talk to him and he just says "I don’t know you, piss off"
Firefights break out between gangs and cops, but it always feels “on cue” rather than something emergent. Getting involved often results in both sides turning on you, even if the faction you’re trying to help is one you’re ostensibly on good terms with, like cops or the Aldecaldos.
Appreciate it’d play hell with the plot and turn 2077 into a different game, but it’d be nice if the gangs & corps were more of a dynamic system with shifting borders, rivalries, player reputation mechanics, and generative strategic missions.
I’d like to see far more interactivity and immersion, even to the baseline level of NPCs reacting to your appearance or actions we see in other games - thinking again of Watch Dogs 2, a game I really feel like the CDPR devs should have spent more time playing or outright stolen ideas from.
Random pedestrians break into scuffles on the street, mock you for taking selfies, and grab their phones to start recording if you’re doing something outlandish (although they were also, for some reason, fascinated by scissorlifts, and were convinced that a video of a scissorlift doing its thing was going to go viral). The whole city just feels more natural, even if the behaviours are still scripted.
WD2’s joy of infiltrating a compound with the RC jumper & quadcopter while sitting innocently in your car across the street feels more cyberpunk than much of 2077’s core loop, and it’s a shame the game didn’t let us recover the Flathead drone for a similar purpose. At least the security camera hopping made it in.

[LexW]

*There was someone (here, twitter, or somewhere) making a case about weapon element types and mods not making any sense, that these effects (thermal damage, armour piercing, non-lethal or whatever) should be tied to ammo types instead, and it’s a good point. Feels like it would be a mess to implement, particularly in ui/ux terms, but, hypothetically, if the devs go through and implement a mode like Breakpoint’s Ghost Mode, it’d be a feature I’d like to see.

Yeah that was me (though others may have said the same on Twitter etc.) and I was also thinking of Breakpoint’s Ghost Mode (I’d forgotten it’s name though). I doubt they’ll do it, but I think it would make combat feel a lot less dodgy and mean your inventory no longer rapidly filled up with dozens of nigh-identical weapons with slightly different stats/levels, which felt terrible in TW3, and feels terrible here. Cyberpunk, as an aesthetic, is in part about choosing precisely the right weapon, and modifying it in precisely the right way (or sometimes, making do with a certain weapon, but again modifying/tailoring it to your purpose), not snatching random weapons off the floor and going “Shiny!” for ten minutes before snatching another one. This goes right back to Johnny Mnemonic and so on.

[ColdSpiral]

Cyberpunk, as an aesthetic, is in part about choosing precisely the right weapon, and modifying it in precisely the right way (or sometimes, making do with a certain weapon, but again modifying/tailoring it to your purpose)

Right on. And the potential for that is present in the existence of a crafting & upgrade system, it just needs a solid re-work. As is I’m lumping points into tech partly for skill checks, partly for weapon upgrades to remain competitive, but it isn’t very exciting. Sacrifice a pile of mats for another 30dps, woo. It’d be much better to pick up a weapon that’s only decent, and tailor it into something amazing and personal by way of incremental modification.

[01000100]

I took the stance that I’ll go non-lethal as much as I could, until the situation is deadly and it’s me or them.
Consider the social and economic situations that have led to people joining gangs in real life. These people aren’t born bad or evil, they are shaped by their environment just like everyone else. In Night City this is significantly worse given the social disparity. Anyone who says “just don’t join a gang then” is grossly simplifying the pressures of poverty, the lack of opportunities, peer pressure and educational failings of the most poverty stricken areas.
In short; killing a ganger because they have committed a crime is outrageously over the top. When you scan them in the game often their criminal record is for minor things like extortion, damage of corporate property, thievery. V is simply being a vigilante of the worst kind to kill for those crimes.
Some people in this game are true nasty pieces of shit though, the world is better off without them.
But who am I to judge what that point is and the punishment they deserve?
Basically I try to play games as I believe. I’m frustrated when I’m forced to kill in games that aren’t purely military. CP2077 allows me to practice a little what I preach.
Plus it’s professional to complete a job without kicking up a fuss and causing carnage.

[Rath]

I can’t help but make unfavourable comparisons to Deus Ex at this point, because Cyberpunk unfortunately lacks features that the original DX had twenty years ago - namely, clear indicators for whether an NPC is unconscious or dead.

The original used the full words, Human Revolution and Mankind Divided used skull/zzz’s icons, and I can’t honestly remember what Invisible War did, because why would I at this point. Now, you could argue that Cyberpunks’ NPCs squirming or being unmoving are such indicators and that you don’t need anything more than this purely visual system because it’s immersive, but when you couple this with V’s current (for me at least) complete inability to put a carried body down gently and quietly, frankly I can’t be sure if the body that just launched itself from the floor and halfway across the room, clipping through floors and walls, hanging from the ceilings by one arm or leg and ragdolling all to fuck and leaving bloody smears in their wake are alive or dead.

And I mean come on, you’re a cyborg, your eyes have a HUD. Scanning currently doesn’t reveal whether a downed enemy is flatlined or just taking a nap, and on that note, while I could buy the Short Circuit hack being non-lethal, I’m not convinced that Overheat could be non-lethal when the NPC has fire erupting from every orifice in their skull.

---

I’ve encountered something that confused me during a conversation with Takemura.

At the time I took this shot, I had 17 Intelligence while my lowest other skill was a 6 in Reflexes. What is that /5 about? That conversation option is unselectable, I’ve not encountered such a thing in any other conversation over the last 100-odd hours of play, and why is it unselectable when the option seems to be choosing to decline to do something? I have absolutely no idea what this is about.

---

Here’s a woman and a bloke occupying the same space at the same time.

This isn’t limited to humans either, vehicles frequently do it also, and that hideous cat that now lives in V’s apartment clips through the bonus Shupe stuffed animal on the couch.

[Hanimalle]

https://i.imgur.com/yHvN04a.png

At the time I took this shot, I had 17 Intelligence while my lowest other skill was a 6 in Reflexes. What is that /5 about? That conversation option is unselectable, I’ve not encountered such a thing in any other conversation over the last 100-odd hours of play, and why is it unselectable when the option seems to be choosing to decline to do something? I have absolutely no idea what this is about.

I’m guessing that in order to select that third option, your Intelligence has to be lower than 5. This has been bothering me has well, whenever a skill check comes up, it never shows you the required level, only your level in that skill…

[01000100]

’m guessing that in order to select that third option, your Intelligence has to be lower than 5. This has been bothering me has well, whenever a skill check comes up, it never shows you the required level, only your level in that skill…

This on why the third option is unselectable.

Better design would have choices you don’t meet the requirements for never showing up at all. The origin dialogue choices only appear if applicable after all.

[01000100]

Here’s a woman and a bloke occupying the same space at the same time.

Thats funny, and disturbing…

clear indicators for whether an NPC is unconscious or dead.

Good Point, a little quality of life improvement for sure. I also found it strange there is no night-vision mod for your robo-eyes.

complete inability to put a carried body down gently and quietly,

This has frustrated me too. I think when this happens it tends to kill said person too. I think the problem occurs if during the place down amination the body clips with an object it goes a little haywire. Did some experimenting and this seems to be the only real cause. If there is no objects nearby the action is completed with care and no shattered skulls. I think this problem got put in the “It doesn’t crash the game, we might fix it later,” bug list, if it was even noticed at all in the slew of issues plaguing CP2077