Tag: Cyberpunk 2077

I decided to see Reed’s ending as well, disappointingly the only one DLC added. I couldn’t find a save just before Songbird’s shuttle, so I started from Hansen’s death.

There is a surprisingly long Alien Isolation sequence, where you need to avoid an invincible spider bot that crawls into ventilation shafts. Yeah, exactly like Alien.

That’s the only ending you don’t need to fight Adam Smasher. A shame, I wanted to use the talking SMG on him.
V gets rid of the implant, but stays in coma for two years, and loses the ability to use cyber tech. I wonder if it’s a setup for a sequel, so we could level him up from zero again.

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Completed Cyberpunk.
I can’t complain much about the arsenal, there are plenty of cool and fun unique weapons to play with. Only category that puzzles me are the machine guns: there are just two types of LMGs, the second was added in the DLC, I think. And there is exactly one HMG type in the entire game. And it’s not a minigun. Was it even worth having it as a category?
If you side with Arasaka, you discover that the Patriarch was preserved as AI. He takes over his son’s body as a punishment, and continues to rule the corporation. Arasaka can’t help you, but offers to turn you into AI until they find you a suitable body.

Adam Smasher is not a bad boss, but also not a very good one. I think that the weak points were added only with Phantom Liberty expansion. Without them, it would be a slog, because he seems to be immune to headshots, my forte, and is a complete bullet sponge. At least he can’t kill you at this point.
The problem with the story is that it’s wide, but not very deep. There are just a few quests on the main plot line, the last time you saw Smasher was some 60 hours ago, and the only reason you fight is that he’s the bodyguard of Yorinobu. Nothing personal.
If you side with Rogue, then you go through the same “jungle” in the Arasaka Tower, then Smasher kills her, making it a bit more personal. Alt says that either V continues to deteriorate or Johnny takes over his body, and V becomes an AI. They really needed to make AI out of V, it seems.
If you side with Panam, Saul dies instead of Rogue, then again you get the choice who inherits the body. If left it to V, and he escaped with Panam across the border to live whatever he has left.
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Completed Phantom Liberty by siding with Songbird all the way, because I thought it will be the most difficult. You get number of options to betray her in the process, and then you can shoot Reed dead in a cutscene. It’s a good spy thriller, and the best Cyberpunk 2077 story, but every Cyberpunk 2077 story has to be a W40K story: meaning it all has to return to status-quo.
One nice detail. If you side with Songbird, Alex survives, and she actually calls you later.
Whole Panam romance didn’t work for me. I’m not gonna analyze why, just gonna say it worked in Metro Last Light, and hell it worked in Kingdom Come, and even Wolfenstein, but not here.
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The Brazilian spies sidequest is what I’d expected from more quests in this game. You’re asked to track a spy that was MIA half a year ago, but not his tracker came back online. Only it’s not the spy, but his interrogator who fell out of favour that activated the tracker. You’re asked to kill her, but you also can let her go. Then one of the spies asks you to destroy the tracker, because it all was a government coverup, while the second spy wants justice.
What really sets the main story of Phantom Liberty apart is the murder of the French twins. And I’m sure it’s deliberate, as you have voice lines to protest it. By that point, you’ve killed a thousand people, probably, but most of them faceless. But the twins, you get to know, they are funny, and not even particularly evil, just kid hackers. Then your companions murder them.
In any case, Songbird gets possessed by a rogue AI. Either you help her, female spy assassinates the colonel, and you escape with Songbird, or you try to incapacitate Songbird, colonel kills Alex, Songbird goes full Darth Vader, and you escape alone. The benefit of the later is that you get to fight and kill Hansen yourself, and it’s a good boss fight. He chases you with a machine gun, then throws his unique Yakut knife at you and tries to beat you in a hand to hand combat. Fun times.
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The problem with Cyberpunk story that it’s gameplay is in dissonance with it. The story is that Relic is killing V, and he doesn’t have much time left, but in reality, you can play however much you want. Of they wanted death breathing down the neck, they could just do time limit like in Fallout 1.
Story of Phantom Liberty is pretty good, though. Songbird is a superhacker working for the US president, and like V, she’s dying due to access to Forbidden Knowledge. She strikes a deal with Hansen, a bald rogue colonel who controls part of Night City. A clear reference to Kurtz from Apocalypse Now. A bald rogue colonel. President’s jet is downed, but she also makes sure president is rescued, by guiding you towards an undercover agent, Reed, whom she and the President betrayed some years ago.

There’s a lot of “power fantasy” for sure, “gun porn”, to be exact. The marvel at the “Sam Fisher’s” gun, or how you can unplug a unique sniper rifle and carry it away.

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Before getting to Point of No Return, I need to finish Phantom Liberty DLC. It replaces Johnny with an Asian chick, Songbird.

The story is that you need to save one girlboss, the President, whose plane was shot down, while getting instructions from another girlboss.

Because it’s an end-game content, and the character is maxed out most likely, they introduce a new perk tree, that can only be upgraded through perks you find in the new zone, Dogtown. A lot of the new perks are focused around buffing the cybernetic weapons you can install in your arms, as they are indeed pointless. Whole point of them could be that they are concealed, but then you are rarely penalized even for carrying an antitank rifle in public.
The way they recreated the fight with a robot tank from Ghost in the Shell is great. It’s a good boss all in all, that has weak points and multiple phases, but you also can just whack it little by little.

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One sidequest that annoyed me was when a husband asks you to assassinate the killer of his wife who’s getting released early. Only the husband gets killed in the assassination attempt instead. Turns out the killer is participating in a reality show since he Found God. What annoyed me is not the theme or the characters, but the fact that the only way to progress is to follow the crew around. I’d rather shoot Joshua and just complete the contract, because that’s who my V is. I remember Witcher to be more nuanced, but maybe it’s just me.
I’m pretty sure the sex scene in the tank is a direct reference to Hardwired, the first cyberpunk I red without knowing what cyberpunk is.
Judy says that after I kicked Maiko, the Tiger Claws gang trashed the brothel, so she’s leaving town.
The serial killer quest is nice. And by that I mean unsettling, all the visions of cows with gas masks.
One thing that disappoints me slightly is weapon variety. On the surface, there are lots of weapons: regular firearms, smart autoaiming ones and tech that can be charged and shoot through walls. But enemies mostly drop the regular ones, and I have seen only one kind of LMG the entire game. Would be nice to have a smart LMG like in Aliens, I kind of expected that.
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Got my first Sandevistan from a inconspicuous sidequest regarding capturing a snuff movie director titled Monster Hunter. It’s a legendary cyberware featured heavily in the Edgerunners anime, and basically the best slomo in the game. There’s also a quest referencing Edgerunners, that awards you… a jacket.
Since meeting with Hanako is
From Panam’s quest line got a unique silenced sniper rifle. It’s a big deal, as usually you can’t put silencers on them.
Most of the quests are entertaining, but quite linear. Taking over Clouds brothel is as bit more nuanced. It’s run by Tiger Claws gang, and you sneak into mansion of its owner while two more of the gang leaders are present. Maiko, one of the prostitutes, has change of plan, and proposes to replace the leader with her. I don’t like change of plans, so Maiko went down. Killing her for good makes good-hearted Judy very upset, but I was lucky I kept a non-lethan revolver from my “replicant” hunt.
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Since I mostly focus on sniper rifles, Oda boss fight gave me a lot of trouble. Two things surprisingly helped, though: you can double jump above most of the attacks, and the double barrelled rifle I’ve got from Panam’s questline had a damage-over-time, so I could see where he’s hiding to regenerate, since he was still losing HP.
You get your revenge on Woodman for Evi pretty quickly. No dialog or anything, just a shot on the parking lot.

Fist fight questline is common: Witcher 3 had it, Kingdom Come had, probably other games I’ve forgot. But that is the first time I received a howitzer for my troubles 😅

Found Skippy Smart Pistol, which is a fun reference to Microsoft Office assistant, but as far as Smart Weapons go in Cyberpunk, they don’t kill enemies fast enough. It does give you a choice of targeting limbs or the head, and I hoped it will help me with capturing cyberpsychos, but it just shoots them in the limbs until dead 😬

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The rogue limousines quests line is also fun. Here’s the thing. The goal can stay always the same: return a rogue AI car to the fold. But the story is always different. One bitches about how Father AI doesn’t love it. Another sets an ambush for you. Third engages in good old ramming. And they all have different personalities.
One aspect that the game doesn’t explain well, is that you can have either “spells” or slowmo, but not both. Or more precisely, controlled slomo, because there are also implants that trigger it at the start of combat or when your health drops dangerously low.
Once you get a sniper rifle, most of the encounters become much easier. You can also get a smart sniper rifle, and yes, it can headshot for you. The only downside is that it’s a single shot. Or even better, you can get a tech sniper rifle that shoots through walls.
Ev offs herself in a bathtub. As Johnie says, so much for saving her.
Cyberpsychos questline continues to deliver. So far there was a ninja revenge story from the 70s, a prepper that overdid it and blew his family with a misplaced mine, and a guy trapped in an exoskeleton against his will.
Out of the implants, the double jump really stands out, as you can get over most fences easily, or on a roof to get a respite from enemy fire.
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Curious that the story repeats “Gladiator”: no-good son kills his Emperor father in a fit of rage, then puts the blame on the protagonist.

“Magic” is surprisingly effective, considering I’m not running a hacking build. As you don’t get slomo right away, bringing up magic menu is a good alternative to assess the situation, and you don’t need to aim precisely for the “spell” to hit.
Since it’s an ARPG, not a shooter, head shots aren’t guaranteed kill. But I did try to boost them with perks as much as possible.
As you try to locate Evelyn, there are morbid detail that’s easy to miss: the prostitute you were talking to earlier was taken to be disposed there too. Another reason not to spare anyone in the Power Plant.
Maybe I went to haitians too early, but in the Mall I managed to barely scratch the Sasquach miniboss. Luckily it’s possible to sneak past her, and then to make a deal with the agent, as I didn’t find a reason to kill him.
Annoying haitian hackers all get fried, and I dealt with Placide myself.
My favorite line of sidequests is catching cyberpsychos, a major theme in the Edgerunners series. Each has a little narrative, my favorite so far is “Smoke on the Water”, which is basically “Taken”, but with no happy ending. You’re supposed to only incapacitate them, which can prove difficult, and only later I joticed that rhe turret psycho did diez despite me finishing him off with fists. But it was too late to reload and the quest chain didn’t fail outright.
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There’s such a thing as “presence” in some games. Earlier Far Cry games had it, and Metro trilogy, and newer Resident Evil games. Cyberpunk has it too. It’s in the small details: how NPCs look at you, how your character places a hand over his eyes to shield them from a bright light, or puts one leg on the other when he sits.
Storywise, it’s also very convincing. You spend a few hours of real time doing jobs with Jackie before he’s killed. Compare that to Far Cry 6, where your “childhood friends” are killed 5 minutes in, and as a player you have absolutely no connection to them.
Or how V is not the chosen: when the jobs goes south, Jackie plugs the chip into his brain, and only because he was carrying the case, and just before his death you transfer the data to your brain.
The role system is interesting: you have attributes and perks, which you level as you gain experience, but you also have passive skills, that level up as you use them.
Weapons are strangely abundant. I’m used to not being able to pick anything but trash from dead enemies, but here, while sometimes they are broken, I assembled an entire arsenal just a few hours in.

Even five years in, the game is far from perfect. It crashed on me once already, and I’ve only been playing it for 2 hours.
At one point, I got a side mission to “rescue Brick”, although I’m not sure who’s that, which I failed, because I couldn’t find where should I rescue him from. When I reloaded, I didn’t get that mission anymore.
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