Cyberpunk 2077 is finally out after eight years of anticipation. Unfortunately, it seems like the game could have used even more time in the oven before hitting the public. Despite its bugs and glitches, there is still a good story to be enjoyed.
Players experience the world of Night City through V, whose background changes depending on the choices you makes when creating them. They are certainly not the best character in an open-world RPG, but there is still plenty to love about them. At the end of the day, V probably will not be as fondly remembered as Geralt of Rivia from The Witcher 3.
10 Love: Customization
Like most solid open-world RPGs worth their weight in side quests, you fully customize V’s appearance. You can either make them look like you or however you want them to appear. Despite the game taking place almost entirely in the first-person perspective, you can often look in the mirror and see V while looking into a mirror. To be fair, the customization does not cover every available hairstyle or physical feature.
9 Hate: They Are Grouchy
We hope you do not expect V to be a beacon of virtue in the dirty world of Night City. While they can do good things for people in a bind, V is generally grouchy and endlessly sarcastic.
Even if you choose the nicest dialog options, V always finds a way to crack a bad joke or even say something off-putting. Looking at it more positively, it is not necessarily negative for a video game protagonist to be jolly and likable.
8 Love: The Life Paths
The game does several things to encourage replayability. First and foremost, players choose from three different life paths; the nomad, the corpo, and the street kid. Each life path has a distinctly different opening. At the very least it is worth playing the intro three times over just to see how it is different. Unfortunately, these intros are not quite as long as they should be. Maybe it was too much to expect several hours’ worth of differences in the intro.
7 Don’t Love: Pronouns Tied To Voice
The developer made a big deal when they announced that the character’s gender and genitalia would be separately customizable. This seems fine until you realize that the voice options determine which pronouns NPCs use to acknowledge V. Tying pronouns so closely to a character’s voice carries with it some negative implications, and most notably reinforces the idea of someone’s gender identity being determined by their physical features and voice.
6 Love: Johnny Silverhand
If you are still at the beginning of the game and bought into the adventure purely for Johnny Silverhand, do not be alarmed at his absence. He does not show up until the beginning of the second act, but once he shows up, the character constantly makes his presence known. If Johnny Silverhand was not a part of the equation and popping up in V’s brain, V would be a less interesting character.
5 Don’t Love: They Don’t Change
Even though it is an open-world RPG, do not expect your actions to have the same impact on V and the way the world interacts with them as they do in games like Skyrim. Regardless of your choices throughout the campaign, V’s personality does not really change. The dialogue trees are not super-advanced, so do not expect the cutscenes to change in drastic ways. However, it is also not a lot less than you’d find in the average open-world RPG.
4 Love: They Are An Underdog
In a world where corporations control everything and the average person is oppressed on a daily basis, it is nice to play as an underdog like V. After a few short hours of the intro where things look up for them, the rest of the game puts the protagonist in a dire situation.
Not only are they facing a ticking clock counting down to their death, but they are also on the run and accused of a crime they did not commit. These two problems motivate the player to complete the main quest.
3 Don’t Love: Disjointed Voice Acting
While this entry complains about the voice acting, we want to make it clear that we are not blaming the actual actors. This is more due to the nature of dialogue options and the way they fit together. One moment V is screaming and grabbing someone by the throat, only to calmly ask them a question several seconds later. Other games with a similar feature have handled this better, like Mass Effect.
2 Love: First-Person Perspective
This was a point of contention upon the game’s first real reveal. Because of The Witcher 3, everyone assumed Cyberpunk 2077 would also take place in the third-person perspective. When first-person gameplay was shown off, there was a small uproar. Now that the game is out, playing it reveals how much more sense this makes. The more enclosed environments lend themselves to the first-person gameplay. A third-person RPG would create issues with the camera in the tight corridors and alleyways.
1 Don’t Love: The Bugs
The amount of bugs in Cyberpunk 2077 is now old news, and hopefully, it becomes ancient history after CD Projekt Red throws some more patches on the title. Unfortunately, many of these glitches affect V. During our experience, we’ve had things as minor as showing up completely bald in the mirror to the voice acting using the masculine voice when we chose the feminine voice.
