Cyberpunk 2077’s latest 1.5 update serves as a soft relaunch for the game on next-gen consoles, with many players hesitantly giving the game a second chance. “Love It or Burn It” reads the new tagline as CD Projekt Red clearly seeks to embrace some of the controversy surrounding the game’s launch in December 2020, asCyberpunk 2077was branded as “unfinished.” This has been the source of the game’s main criticism, but has also protected in it in a way from further analysis of the true game hidden underneath. After all, once the game is fully patched, it still has to stand on its own as a cyberpunk game.
Cyberpunk 2077’s problems do not end with the technical and performanceissues that CDPR is trying to patchout, nor do the game’s problems end with the bad reputation it got after its original launch, which it may never be able to fully shake.Cyberpunk 2077’s problems lie at a fundamental level, which no amount of gameplay patches could fix.
RELATED:Cyberpunk 2077 Players Want Other Fixers To Get Their Own Big Missions
The Problem With Cyberpunk 2077 is Cyberpunk Itself
Cyberpunk 2077isn’t just a big budget,AAA game seven years in the making, but it is also named after the entire genre of fiction it depicts. This leaves the game with the impossible responsibility of being the summit of that genre for the gaming medium, andCyberpunk 2077never quite hits that peak.
Its name is not so much the problem, but the conceits of the cyberpunk genre itself. IfRed Dead Redemptionwas named “Western” or ifSkyrimwas named “Fantasy,” they would still work because those genres are related to setting or aesthetics, and really any style of story can be told within these genres. However, the cyberpunk genre, perhaps more than any other, is entwined with the themes of the stories told within it. A cyberpunk world is a mirror or a metaphor for the themes of the story, often relating to what it means to be human, or the nature of consciousness.Cyberpunk 2077hits all the tenets of the cyberpunk genrelike ticking off a checklist, but never takes any real risks or goes beyond scratching the surface of them. It is a cyberpunk game, yet it falls short in key aspects of the cyberpunk genre.
What It Means To Be Cyberpunk
Cyberpunk 2077is based onthe world of theCyberpunkrole playing gamecreated by Mike Pondsmith in 1988. From this,Cyberpunk 2077gets its name, setting, and particular style of 80s technology-inspired cybernetics. However, the tabletop game got its name from the cyberpunk genre, which was already established at this point, defined by many famous sci-fi novels and movies.
The seminal classics of the cyberpunk genredon’t just share a techno aesthetic; they all had some sort of meta-humanist aspect to them, a question for the audience.Blade Runnerasks how someone can know they’re human.Ghost in the Shellasks if there’s a difference between the consciousness and the body that interacts with the world.The Matrixasks questions of perception vs reality. Even theCyberpunktabletop game has a unique empathy mechanic whereby if a player’s humanity drops to zero, that player character gets taken away from them and becomes an NPC.
Games have embraced meta-narratives before, as titles likeBioShockandSpec-Ops: The Linehad compelling meta-narratives relating to player choice. A big budget cyberpunk RPG with as much anticipation asCyberpunk 2077had before launch would have been the perfect place to do something special like this.
RELATED:Famous Last Words In RPGs
Players Vs Johnny Silverhand
The core concepts for a good meta-narrative cyberpunk story are all there inCyberpunk 2077, as the main plot revolves around the player character, V, having the replicated consciousness of a long dead punk-outlaw implanted into their head. Unfortunately, the game really never goes in-depth into any of the humanistic implications of this. Instead,the engram of Johnny Silverhand in V’s headis mostly treated like a talking time-bomb that can crack jokes as the player tries to defuse it. An engram scenario like the one inCyberpunk 2077would actually be a perfect setup for a deep, meta-textual cyberpunk story, and a video game would be the perfect way to tell it.
The story of a corrupting, violent, and reckless consciousness that invades the main character’s mind, makes their decisions for them, and threatens to take them over completely not only describes Johnny Silverhand, but the player as well. This is a parallel that would be perfect fodder for a cyberpunk genre meta-narrative, yet the game never comments upon it.Cyberpunk 2077’s story tries to present Johnny Silverhand as an uncontrollable force that will most likely get V killed if he takes autonomy over their shared body, but Silverhand never poses nearly the same threat to V as the other invading consciousness, the player, whomarches V into every dangerous side quest possible.
Perhaps the player should have taken the Johnny Silverhand role in the story, serving as the corrupting engram that takes over a character’s body. This would make for a cyberpunk RPG where the choices of the player work in direct opposition to the character’s, serving as an in-depth look into storytelling and how video games specifically include their audience in it. This would have made for a cyberpunk game worthy of the genre title.
The Future For Cyberpunk 2077
Since its launch,Cyberpunk 2077has been in artistic limbo, as players either hated the game for being released in the state that it was, or they were holding off judgement until the game could be viewed as it was meant to be from the start.The new 1.5 patch represents a second lifefor a game that many viewed to be filled with potential but let down on from a technical standpoint. However, now that the dust seems to be settling, and the game is seemingly in its true playable form, players will have to judge not only the game itself, but whether the revival ofCyberpunk 2077was worth all the effort. Its story and characters are compellingly written, but it falls short in several of the major themes indicative of the genre that it is named after.
Cyberpunk 2077is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
