Woohoo! Even three days since the show’s doors opened, we were still undecided about our favourite game from E3. Having watched 50 minutes of Cyberpunk 2077 play in front of us, there is no more question.
Based on the tabletop RPG, Cyberpunk 2020, and developed by the team behind The Witcher series, CD project Red, this new RPG is by far the best we’ve seen at the Los Angeles show.
Cyberpunk 2077 may be a first-person shooter game, but with equivalent respect as Fallout and Deus Ex. Gone is the third-person perspective of The Witcher 3, but the game demo showed that there are good reasons for the exchange.
Character driven
Much of the action is based on gunplay, through the eyes of the main character “V”, and the interactions with the world and the NPCs around you are much more personal than ever, making it more adaptable. to the first-person perspective.
Something with great elements
V can be male or female, it’s up to you, hence the name shortening, and you can fully customize your character right from the start. It is an RPG in every way, with features and statistics. You can even choose a backstory before you start.
Then throughout the game, you can upgrade and customize your character. We saw in the demo that even innocent pieces of clothing offer different reinforcements and benefits. V’s jacket that hung in his room at the beginning (V was a woman in the E3 demo) offers protection against poisons and the like. We were told that there are many more examples in the main game as well.
A great element of the game is the cybernetic implants – it’s called Cyberpunk after all – and they also give you incredible abilities every time you have them installed or updated. In that sense, the game reminds us a lot of Deus Ex: Mankind Divided. In fact, there are many other similarities, with digital readouts on the heads of the characters, different ways of completing missions, etc.
A true sci-fi epic
However, Cyberpunk 2077 differs in many other ways. It’s much brighter and more colorful, it’s bigger and with vehicle driving elements, and it’s a completely open world. No loading screens, no automatic scrolling between locations. Indeed, it’s a futuristic, first-person Grand Theft Auto with an even more vibrant, interactive, and thriving community of characters, buildings, and people roaming around at all times.
CD RED
The game is set in Night City, a region in Northern California from 2077, and the setting appears to be a character unto itself. It reminds us a lot of Judge Dredd’s Mega-City One, with huge expanding mega-blocks, within one of which V resides. And each mega-block is an additional open-world location, with which you can explore and interact at any time. .
In our demo, we then traveled from our room on the block, down the elevator, and out onto the street with no stuttering or obvious burden. Then we made our way through dozens of people gathering to meet up with a friend and fellow gun to hire Jackie, then we headed to a fixer to get a mission, then to a ripper to install some new cybernetics, then to the car. Jackie’s to drive to a mission locations, and so on.
Not once are we faced with a loading screen or even a cut scene. Everything seemed to be under the control of the CD project Red staff member playing the game. To say that we were impressed would be a huge understatement. Our mouths were wide open the entire time.
Brutal but so rewarding
Even the action is impressive, especially for a development studio not typically known for shooters. Having been blown away by what we’ve seen of Fallout 76 so far, Cyberpunk 2077’s combat is on a different level. Brutal too.
In the main mission, we had to buy a spider robot from a team of heavily cyber thieves, but it quickly went south and V and Jackie had to fight their way out of the building the transaction was taking place in. Different weapons were displayed, plus multiple occasions of legs being violently separated from the bodies.
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It seems shocking at times, but in context for this very adult game. Like The Witcher 3, there are nudity, swearing, and gore, which won’t be to everyone’s taste, but they work for what the developer is trying to achieve. We think it may be a bit unnecessary at times, with a few four-letter word-laden phrases making many people embarrassed about our demo, but we can forgive you for the quality of the rest of the experience.
First impressions
We don’t really have to sum up our first impressions of Cyberpunk 2077, it’s all up on pretty much everything we’ve already said.
There are few games that have impressed us this much this year, perhaps the latest The Us of Part II, and we were hoping that we will be talking lyrically about Cyberpunk 2077 for several months until its release date.
Unfortunately, at this time, we have no idea when it could be. There have been rumors of a summer 2019 release, but that seems too unrealistic to us. In fact, we wouldn’t be surprised, considering the amount of depth and detail that encompasses every aspect of its open-world environment, if we were told that it will be a launch title for PS5 and Xbox Two.
However, we hope not, we are not sure we can wait that long. With that said, it’s based on Cyberpunk 2020, maybe that’s the biggest clue for the release date right there.
