Cyberpunk: Where did it all go wrong?
Cyberpunk is quite possibly the most eagerly anticipated game since Grand Theft Auto 5 back in 2013. Many were looking forward to it as the light at the end of the bleak, dark tunnel that is 2020. Yet, it’s getting quite the battering online from critics and gamers complaining of bugs and glitches galore, some even saying it’s prone to crashing on PS4. As someone who has played it on a PS4, I can tell you the game has generally played quite smoothly. Though it hasn’t crashed (yet), it still has a lot of flaws and much to criticize. A game with expectations as high as this cannot possibly deliver on all its promises, but you can’t help but think they could give us something a bit more special than this.
The real tragedy of this game is how shockingly average it is… by 2011 standards. Cyberpunk was supposed to be CD Project Red’s first magnum opus, putting them on the same footing as developers like Rockstar and Naughty Dog. Every day for the last few months, it seemed there was a new tidbit of information about how Cyberpunk would be a game unlike any other. At times it felt like we weren’t talking about a game, but more of a virtual world you could enter and interact with in any way you wanted. Strike up a conversation with any NPC, modify your vehicle into a terrifying death-mobile and forge your Night City destiny by lying, cheating, and shooting your way through it however you want. Well, you can do some of that in Cyberpunk. Even then, your choices are very limited.
To start with some positives, the voice acting is excellent. Keanu Reeves gives a charismatic and layered performance and every other actor injects life and soul into their character. Whether you choose a male or female V, the voice actor imbues it with a lot of personality and resolution. It really conveys the world-weariness, vulnerability, and humanity lying beneath V’s increasingly robotic visage. All the other characters are written and acted superbly. The stellar characterization and bonds the player can form along the way feel sadly out of place in a game that otherwise comes across as quite empty.
There’s a vast and impressive upgrading system wherein you can upgrade your weapons, skills, and cyberwar. I must admit it is fun watching V transform from a recognizable human to a Terminator-like cyborg with pincer-like swords protruding from the arms and a shiny chrome exoskeleton. As the various character attributes improve, gameplay mechanics like hacking can feel quite tedious early on but become incredibly satisfying towards the end.
The character customisation can keep you occupied for hours on end. Yes, you can modify every aspect of your character’s appearance, from jawline and genitals and pubic hair, although you have no control over body size or shape. Sadly, you can’t walk into a barbershop and magically grow seven inches of hair or grow a thick beard. This is a shame because touches like this are what make Rockstar games so immersive. But where the game really comes into its own are the various cybernetic implants you acquire over time, leveling up, while making you look like Robocop, after raiding Madonna’s wardrobe.
Now, for the many negatives. I have some mixed feelings about the game’s setting and not many good ones. On the one hand, Night City looks and feels like a living, breathing metropolis, teeming with side quests, activities, and hidden easter eggs. On the other hand, when you get a bit more up close and personal, Night City feels disappointingly hollow and run-of-the-mill. People were getting very excited about the map’s verticality and the various ways you could interact with any random NPC on the street. While the map is big, there’s not much going on.
The lack of shops, things to do or see in the city, outside of side jobs, and crimes you can thwart are staggering at first. There are very few stores you can enter and buy things and hardly any offer anything new or original. It just doesn’t feel like a place you can get truly lost in.
Combat, while fun, is incredibly flawed. You end up carrying around about 20 different weapons at once. It wouldn’t be so bad, except they all run out of ammo after two minutes because every enemy takes two magazines of rounds to the torso before they go down. Although, that’s okay because the enemies tend to stand there and wait for you to shoot them anyway. I often found myself using a pistol or sniper to get myself out of tricky situations. While I’m on the subject, don’t bother trying to customise or craft your weapons because it makes no difference at all.
If you try to talk to an NPC in the street, you may get a response such as “Okay, chill, man.” The AI is not very sophisticated and mostly goes through the same motions over and over again. It makes the world feel flat and lifeless, not a real place populated by real people, but a ghost town full of zombies that repeat the same lines over and over again. Any immersion is completely lost if you try to talk to them.
If you use a computer to go on the internet, you’ll see a list of bland, anonymous news sites, nothing more. Things like this may seem like small nitpicks, but they are the kind of thing that make games like Grand Theft Auto 5 feel alive, with a world that felt as if it had its own culture, ecosystem, and structure (last Rockstar comparison, I promise). Without little touches like this, the player can feel like they are driving around in an anonymous concrete jungle with no personality or interactivity.
Now, onto the matter, everyone seems to be talking about. There are plenty of videos online of the game glitching out on old-gen consoles, my favourite being when the main character randomly bursts out of whatever vehicle they’re driving to do a Christ-like pose on the bonnet. Graphics, frame rates, and textures are also absolutely terrible on old-gen consoles.
It has been painfully apparent at various points during my playthrough that the game is not fully complete and needed a longer gestation period. Luckily, I played on a PS4 Pro, so the poor graphics, bugs, and glitches weren’t as bad for me as they have been for others. Like much of Cyberpunk, it doesn’t particularly stand out from other games of this size and scope.
Despite my complaints, there is a good game in there trying to get out. There aren’t many glaring problems, more just a litany of minor details that bring down a game with massive potential if only the gameplay had been better. Even taking aside the issues people have experienced, once CDPR has sorted them, there still a lot of work that needs to be done. If open-world games full of collectibles, complex characters, detail, and side quests are more your thing, you can do a lot better than this one.
They weren’t just ignoring the problem. They were well aware of it and tried to cover it up, by not showing footage of the game being played on old-gen consoles. So, people playing on these consoles had no idea of the glitch-ridden abomination they were letting themselves in for. After this, people will have a hard time trusting CDPR again.
It’s a shame because it’s from a game company I’ve been a big fan of and that I think has a lot of talent behind it. CDPR needs to fix the damage, first, by releasing another game like The Witcher 3. The blowback from Cyberpunk will eventually die down, and CDPR can prove they honestly care about gamer experiences once again.
There are plenty of other game companies that lost trust and respect, who routinely show they care more about the paycheck than the experiences they provide. I won’t name any names, but suffice it to say, not all of them care enough to change anything, so what’s there to say CDPR will be any different.
Well, nothing. CDPR is a relatively new company that was slowly but surely becoming more established, yet they’ve shot themselves in the foot before they ever really put themselves on the map. It’s a sad indictment of the industry that consumers got duped into pre-ordering a game that just wasn’t ready for release. To be clear, I don’t blame any of the media outlets like some people do. This crisis of faith is on CDPR’s shoulders. Taking the game off shelves has done nothing to restore trust. They only did this after the backlash, their stock had plunged, and employees spoke out against them, showing they don’t care about players who forked out hard-earned cash for a glitch-ridden nightmare.
From now on, people will probably hesitate to believe the hype around upcoming AAA games. I’ve spoken to a few people who have said they’ll never pre-order another game again, and I don’t blame them because neither will I.
I also feel incredibly sorry for both the developers and the writers, who did a great job, especially the writers who wrote sharp dialogue and crafted rich characters. The company gave them mixed messages about what they were doing, and I’m sure they’re heartbroken to see the negative coverage the game is getting after all their hard work over the past few years.
