It’s one thing to read a cyberpunk novel or watch a cyberpunk movie and “get” the moral of the story, which is usually “misuse of technology is bad”.
But it’s another thing to actually spend time in that world; to feel the effects of corporate corruption on your community, to experience the addiction to mind- and body-altering technologies, to watch loved ones - who you’ve spent hours looking directly in the eye and having conversations with - have their lives taken from them unfairly so that the richest person in the world can get 0.0001% richer.
I’d always been wary of techno-corpo bullshit. But that game instilled an all-new level of hatred in me; a hatred toward billionaires and megacorporations, toward oligarchs and aristocrats, toward those with the resources to change things for the better but too apathetic to stick their necks out.
Honestly, I don’t think it hit me the same way, and I wish it did. I already went into it agreeing with everything you said from our real world. It’s still a great game and I enjoyed it, but it didn’t change my view on anything because it’s just a heightened version of our real world. If you were paying attention to our world then CP2077 mostly wouldn’t change your opinion. Hell, if anything it’s a nicer view of our future than I have based on our current path. There’s almost more social mobility in that game than there is in real life America currently.
That is to say, Johnny not only was right, but is right.
The first time I played through it, it didn’t really sink in. When I got to the ending where
Spoiler
You you give up Songbird in exchange for your cure and you find that they are able to heal you only by removing your cybernetics
I booted the game back up the next day, but just couldn’t bring myself to continue with my character. It felt like I finally got them out of that world. I didn’t pick it back up again for another month and started with a fresh character because of how hard it sunk in.
Yeah, I first finished with the ending where >!I’m gliding to somewhere beautiful with the woman I love. !<
Right after that, I did the one where >!I sign myself off to the corpo, so my physical body is about to be destroyed, and I just walk there as a cow to a butcher. !<
That hit hard. Especially listening to the same messages from different people: “haven’t heard of you, I hope you are in a good place!” I was depressed for a couple days since, until I did a third ending where >!I give a kid my guitar. !<
This is what I call “choices matter”! Many endings, which have their own missions that lead to some actual changes and bend the narrative, not just several pre-made cutscenes.
What I especially love about the endings is that there isn’t any “good” ending in the game. Some are worse than others, but there’s never a net positive for V. No matter what, there is a human cost to victory. Night City would never allow some lowly merc to have a happy ending. Arguably, the “third option” can be seen as the “best” ending, as it costs the fewest amount of lives. But holy shit, the voicemails you get in that ending are heartbreaking.
Also, I think this is just an Mbin issue, but the spoiler tags don’t work if there’s a space before the closing tag.
I think “the sun” variation where you take Rogue with you is the best ending. It’s still sad, but you do get to realize your dreams and do crazy awesome merc shit in the Path of Glory epilogue.
For me the best and canonical ending is the secret ending and letting Johnny take the body. Mostly because I tend to play a solo tank build and that building is a joke even on very hard. Also because johnny is V’s bro by the end so i give him the body. Makes no sense to just waste some preem 'ganic material like that by letting V just die.
For me that was the first ending I got, Rogue’s path followed by the Sun. I felt like absolute shit afterwards personally. I took Johnny’s offer because I was appealed by the idea of redemption, but instead he dragged Rogue down with him one last time. And then in Path Of Glory V had learned nothing, discarded all the character growth and ignored every lesson to instead let Night City consume her like it does everyone else that fails to realize it’s a festering swamp you must leave behind at all costs. That’s why the two endings that have a positive undertone - The Star and Temperance - involve the main character leaving Night City behind.
Yeah, they’ve all got serious drawbacks at best. The most terrible ending is the Phantom Liberty one where you take Reed’s help, imo. You literally squeak out with nothing more than your life, and you’re a shell of your former self.
I think Temperance was the first ending I got, but I’ve played it so many times it’s hard to remember now, haha.
The Tower is bad, but The Devil may be worse. Once you know what Yorinobu is up to, the one ending where he’s stopped before he can pull it off is pretty bad.
Spoiler tags aren’t working for me either, I don’t think they’re correct for Lemmy markdown. It should look like this:
::: spoiler Spoiler Title
Spoiler textbody goes here
:::
And hopefully work like:
Spoiler Title
Spoiler text body goes here
Anyway for Cyberpunk endings I agree, and happy endings don’t really go with the setting. Personally the one I felt best about was doing the “Don’t Fear The Reaper” secret ending path into the Temperance ending, for me that was an awesome and fitting resolution. But I had grown quite close with Johnny over my playthrough. Caveat that I haven’t finished the DLC yet and I know it adds endings, so maybe I’ll like one of those better.
That’s exactly why I think the game has value despite being a mediocre experience as a game. Adam Something did a video recently on how terrible it is, and while he’s not strictly wrong, he missed a deeper point. Yes, the traffic modeling is terrible. It’s terrible in many of the same ways that real traffic is terrible. That doesn’t make for a good game, but it does make a different point.
Also, if you want to ride motorcycles, that game is worth a play for traveling around on one. Not because the physics of the game motorcycles are good–they’re shit–but because it can teach you how to learn to avoid target fixation. Car pulls out in front of you and your eyes will naturally focus on the car. Then you will just as naturally hit the car. If you learn to dart your eyes to the side, you will tend to miss it. Very valuable skill for actual riding. They accidentally made a target fixation trainer.
That used to be a more popular sentiment but somehow CDPR manages to get a bunch of goodwill and the ‘labor of love’ award after… fixing all the bugs that still existed in their botched releae.
I have to agree with Frezik too. At least for me, the graphics and storyline are top notch but the gameplay and other mechanics are pretty average. And the open world is stunning to traverse but you realize if you explore a bit more deeply that it’s pretty dead and there’s not much to discover.
I literally had to delete an account because I made a comment on reddit before I left about how I didn’t think cyberpunk has ever really lived up to the hype despite what people say about it now.
Cyberpunk 2077.
It’s one thing to read a cyberpunk novel or watch a cyberpunk movie and “get” the moral of the story, which is usually “misuse of technology is bad”.
But it’s another thing to actually spend time in that world; to feel the effects of corporate corruption on your community, to experience the addiction to mind- and body-altering technologies, to watch loved ones - who you’ve spent hours looking directly in the eye and having conversations with - have their lives taken from them unfairly so that the richest person in the world can get 0.0001% richer.
I’d always been wary of techno-corpo bullshit. But that game instilled an all-new level of hatred in me; a hatred toward billionaires and megacorporations, toward oligarchs and aristocrats, toward those with the resources to change things for the better but too apathetic to stick their necks out.
Johnny Silverhand was right.
it’s not apathy though. their greed is directly and indirectly responsible for this. fixing things would mean they would be poorer.
it’s even more angering.
Honestly, I don’t think it hit me the same way, and I wish it did. I already went into it agreeing with everything you said from our real world. It’s still a great game and I enjoyed it, but it didn’t change my view on anything because it’s just a heightened version of our real world. If you were paying attention to our world then CP2077 mostly wouldn’t change your opinion. Hell, if anything it’s a nicer view of our future than I have based on our current path. There’s almost more social mobility in that game than there is in real life America currently.
That is to say, Johnny not only was right, but is right.
The first time I played through it, it didn’t really sink in. When I got to the ending where
Spoiler
You you give up Songbird in exchange for your cure and you find that they are able to heal you only by removing your cybernetics
I booted the game back up the next day, but just couldn’t bring myself to continue with my character. It felt like I finally got them out of that world. I didn’t pick it back up again for another month and started with a fresh character because of how hard it sunk in.
Your mind has been corrupted !
Whoops. Been a minute since I played lol
That shit is straight Art. Top 3 personally.
And the other 2?
Yeah, I first finished with the ending where >!I’m gliding to somewhere beautiful with the woman I love. !<
Right after that, I did the one where >!I sign myself off to the corpo, so my physical body is about to be destroyed, and I just walk there as a cow to a butcher. !<
That hit hard. Especially listening to the same messages from different people: “haven’t heard of you, I hope you are in a good place!” I was depressed for a couple days since, until I did a third ending where >!I give a kid my guitar. !<
This is what I call “choices matter”! Many endings, which have their own missions that lead to some actual changes and bend the narrative, not just several pre-made cutscenes.
What I especially love about the endings is that there isn’t any “good” ending in the game. Some are worse than others, but there’s never a net positive for V. No matter what, there is a human cost to victory. Night City would never allow some lowly merc to have a happy ending. Arguably, the “third option” can be seen as the “best” ending, as it costs the fewest amount of lives. But holy shit, the voicemails you get in that ending are heartbreaking.
Also, I think this is just an Mbin issue, but the spoiler tags don’t work if there’s a space before the closing tag.
I think “the sun” variation where you take Rogue with you is the best ending. It’s still sad, but you do get to realize your dreams and do crazy awesome merc shit in the Path of Glory epilogue.
For me the best and canonical ending is the secret ending and letting Johnny take the body. Mostly because I tend to play a solo tank build and that building is a joke even on very hard. Also because johnny is V’s bro by the end so i give him the body. Makes no sense to just waste some preem 'ganic material like that by letting V just die.
For me that was the first ending I got, Rogue’s path followed by the Sun. I felt like absolute shit afterwards personally. I took Johnny’s offer because I was appealed by the idea of redemption, but instead he dragged Rogue down with him one last time. And then in Path Of Glory V had learned nothing, discarded all the character growth and ignored every lesson to instead let Night City consume her like it does everyone else that fails to realize it’s a festering swamp you must leave behind at all costs. That’s why the two endings that have a positive undertone - The Star and Temperance - involve the main character leaving Night City behind.
Yeah, they’ve all got serious drawbacks at best. The most terrible ending is the Phantom Liberty one where you take Reed’s help, imo. You literally squeak out with nothing more than your life, and you’re a shell of your former self.
I think Temperance was the first ending I got, but I’ve played it so many times it’s hard to remember now, haha.
The Tower is bad, but The Devil may be worse. Once you know what Yorinobu is up to, the one ending where he’s stopped before he can pull it off is pretty bad.
Spoiler tags aren’t working for me either, I don’t think they’re correct for Lemmy markdown. It should look like this:
::: spoiler Spoiler TitleSpoiler text body goes here:::And hopefully work like:
Spoiler Title
Spoiler text body goes here
Anyway for Cyberpunk endings I agree, and happy endings don’t really go with the setting. Personally the one I felt best about was doing the “Don’t Fear The Reaper” secret ending path into the Temperance ending, for me that was an awesome and fitting resolution. But I had grown quite close with Johnny over my playthrough. Caveat that I haven’t finished the DLC yet and I know it adds endings, so maybe I’ll like one of those better.
in Lemmy Sync they work
That formatting is what Reddit uses and Sync still has the code to process it.
That’s exactly why I think the game has value despite being a mediocre experience as a game. Adam Something did a video recently on how terrible it is, and while he’s not strictly wrong, he missed a deeper point. Yes, the traffic modeling is terrible. It’s terrible in many of the same ways that real traffic is terrible. That doesn’t make for a good game, but it does make a different point.
Also, if you want to ride motorcycles, that game is worth a play for traveling around on one. Not because the physics of the game motorcycles are good–they’re shit–but because it can teach you how to learn to avoid target fixation. Car pulls out in front of you and your eyes will naturally focus on the car. Then you will just as naturally hit the car. If you learn to dart your eyes to the side, you will tend to miss it. Very valuable skill for actual riding. They accidentally made a target fixation trainer.
Wtf
That used to be a more popular sentiment but somehow CDPR manages to get a bunch of goodwill and the ‘labor of love’ award after… fixing all the bugs that still existed in their botched releae.
I have to agree with Frezik too. At least for me, the graphics and storyline are top notch but the gameplay and other mechanics are pretty average. And the open world is stunning to traverse but you realize if you explore a bit more deeply that it’s pretty dead and there’s not much to discover.
I literally had to delete an account because I made a comment on reddit before I left about how I didn’t think cyberpunk has ever really lived up to the hype despite what people say about it now.
Mile wide, inch deep