V’s Adventure Will Be Your Own
While V’s story in Cyberpunk 2077 will always follow the same main story beats, the way in which players reach these, approach missions, and generally spend their time in Night City is set to be unique to each player from the very beginning.
Not only will players be able to freely customize exactly how V looks with an extensive character creator, but you’ll also have to choose their Lifepath at the very beginning of the game.
Your Lifepath is essentially how V started out in life, whether they’ve been a career-driven Corpo, or a Street Kid that’s made a number of handy — albeit dodgy — acquaintances. Or are you a Nomad who’s lived most of their lives out in the Badlands and has seldom stepped into Night City?
Your choice of Lifepath will change a lot during the opening sections of the game and will open up unique, additional dialogue options when talking to certain characters.
Then you’ve got the body mods you can apply to V to grant them a plethora of different abilities, which combined with the arsenal of outlandish weapons allows you to tackle missions and other combat scenarios in a completely different way to your friend.
CDPR’s Got a Fantastic Track Record
Reasons to be Hyped for Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077’s developer, CD Projekt Red (CDPR), has a rather fantastic track record when it comes to its stable of past releases. While The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt was the pinnacle of the developers success, earlier titles in the series — while not quite as polished — delivered stunning visuals (for their time) and deep, engaging quests and writing.
Then you’ve got spin-offs like Thronebreaker and GWENT, which showcased just how capable CDPR was of delivering the goods across a range of genres.
Cyberpunk 2077, however, will mark a turning point for CDPR. It’s the first game from the developer that isn’t in some way linked to Geralt and the Witcher universe.
While this may seem like a cause for concern for some, CDPR’s already shown it’s more than capable of delivering fantastic, immersive experiences when it’s given the time it needs. Given Cyberpunk 2077’s suffered more than three delays, it’s fair to say CDPR’s had the time it (hopefully) needs to iron out any last remaining wrinkles in the experience.
Free DLC Coming After Launch
When The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released, the enormous game wasn’t just left for players to enjoy at their leisure. Instead, CDPR — always looking to deliver on fans’ expectations — had a pipeline of additional, free DLC that was released on a weekly basis for all players.
From weapons, armor sets, beards and hairstyles right through to contract missions, quests, and New Game Plus, the 16(!) bits of DLC ensured players constantly had something new and exciting to discover. Not to mention it provided a little distraction from the meaty main story, allowing Geralt to venture off the beaten path, or just don some fancy new threads.
Back in September, it was confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 would also be receiving post-launch DLC in a similar fashion The Witcher 3 did.
The details on all of this was supposed to come before launch, but following the final delay, CD Projekt Red President and Co-CEO Adam Kiciński stated that “The initial plan was to do it before release, but after the recent delay, we decided to wait for the release to provide gamers with the game and then start talking about future projects. So, after release.”
While we await the details on the DLC drops with baited breath, it’s certainly good to know there’s plenty of freebies to look forward to in the months that follow.
First-Person Gameplay in the Immersive Night City
Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t just the first time that developer CDPR is moving away from The Witcher universe. It’s also its first foray into the first-person perspective.
While The Witcher series adopted a third-person viewpoint, allowing players to watch Geralt hack and slash his way through countless monsters and bandits alike, Cyberpunk 2077 places you firmly in the shoes of V, allowing you to soak up all the sights and sounds of Night City as if you were actually strolling down the streets yourself.
The amount of detail we’ve already seen present in the world and character models of Cyberpunk 2077 is staggering. I mean, you can see the seams and stitching in Jonny Silverhand’s shoes in the image above! It’s clear that CDPR’s not been cutting any corners here.
Night City looks like a living, breathing world, that’ll live on whether you’re there or not. NPCs will still go about their days, completing their usual routines of going to work… or engaging in dodgy dealings.
As intriguing as V’s story sounds to me, I can’t wait to simply just wander around the world of Night City, spectating everyday life and uncovering the many hidden secrets it inevitably has tucked away.
Next-Gen Upgrades Coming 2021, Optimizations for Now
Reasons to be Hyped for Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 is officially releasing on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC on December 10 and will benefit from enhancements for both the PS4 Pro and Xbox One X alike.
In addition to this, CDPR have confirmed that the game will play with some minor optimizations on PS5 and Xbox Series X on launch day, for those that have been lucky enough to get their hands on one of the next-gen consoles.
Now that doesn’t mean you’re going to get a full 4K 60 FPS experience on day one. Instead, you might see a steadier framerate and faster load times. Nothing groundbreaking, but a nice performance bump all the same.
What PS5 and Xbox Series X owners will be more interested in, is the full next-gen version that’s in the pipeline for sometime next year. CDPR hasn’t provided any further details on either the launch day optimizations or the next-gen version of the game just yet, but knowing it’s on the way is more than enough to get us hyped.
The thought of playing Cyberpunk 2077 with all the enhancements and additional power of next-gen consoles is a mouth-watering one. Here’s hoping the wait won’t be too long.
Substantial Cyberpunk 2077 Multiplayer Mode on the Horizon
Separate to the free post-launch DLC and next-gen updates to Cyberpunk 2077 is a multiplayer mode that’s set to be its own standalone product.
During a recent financial conference call, CEO Adam Kiciński gave us an insight into just how substantial this upcoming multiplayer mode would be.
“But from our perspective, it’s — is another independent production and independent team of people works on it.”
The fact that there’s an entirely separate team working on the multiplayer mode highlights just how much of an undertaking the mode is set to be, and given Kiciński’s emphasis on the mode being a “separate dedicated production, a big production.” only further piques our interest.
The most obvious route the multiplayer mode could go would be something akin to Rockstar’s GTA Online and Read Dead Online modes. The entirety of Night City and its surroundings become a playground for players to come together, take on different missions and generally mess around in this futuristic, dystopian sandbox.
This is CDPR though, and chances are the developer will want to push the envelope of what a multiplayer mode can be with Cyberpunk 2077’s. The developer’s already shown it likes to approach industry-standard affairs differently, such as its 16 free post-launch DLC drops for The Witcher 3 during a time when Season Passes and paid DLC was rife.
Gwent — The Witcher 3’s in-game card game — is another example, with a massive amount of content in the base game to keep fans of the card game happy for hours on end. Few other developers have poured quite so much time into a side activity of their AAA titles quite like CD Projekt Red did with Gwent.
Given CDPR’s history of ambitious undertakings, Cyberpunk 2077’s upcoming multiplayer is well worth getting excited about, and will no doubt have us players flocking back to Night City to check it out when it does release. Though exactly when that’ll be remains to be seen.
Cyberpunk 2077 releases on Xbox One, PC and PS4 on December 10.
