Cyberpunk 2077 Imagines A Beautiful, Dystopian Future That We Could One Day Inherit

I don¡¯t know what time it is. It seems like the darkest hour of night. But I¡¯m walking around the streets of Night City, which is alive and buzzing -- a vivid metro where the beautiful cityscape is bathed in colourful neon lights and vibrant, interactive billboards.

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The first few moments of Cyberpunk 2077 is an assault on the senses. Walking through the streets, you see people sporting robotic arms and electric circuits through their skin. Cars still run on the road but a few do fly through the city¡¯s skyline. It's all magically confusing, as you try to wrap your head around it all.

Before long you of course realize the year is 2077 and you're living the life of V -- a mercenary for hire who gets any kind of job done, for a price -- in a world where technology has taken over the lives of humans, and humanity is dwindling, yet somehow surviving.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been in the works for a really long time (it was announced first sometime in 2012) and after several delays, it is finally here, albeit with a ton of bugs, but is the gaming experience worth it? Let¡¯s find out

Choosing your life

The game starts by asking you to choose a life path for yourself from three options -- Nomad, Corpo and Street Kid.

Nomad is an individual from the outskirts of the Night City to make a name in the unforgiving city. As a Corpo, you¡¯ll work as a counter-intel agent for Arasaka, trying to climb up the corporate ladder, while using corporate tactics to make people work for you. Street Kid is someone who knows the city like the back of his/her hand.

Each life path also gives players additional response options specific to their life path that can help them extract more information. Each option you choose will impact how the story will end. It is a great way to execute the game as it allows every player to have his/her own experience, discoveries and endings.

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Customising your character

Next comes creating your character, where you can change the way he/she/they can look. Even though the game is mostly in first-person, they¡¯ve added a bunch of facial and body customisation options. Whether it is cybernetic elements on the face, eyes, the choice of hairstyle, eyes, mouth, and even the choice and size of genitals, and the option of not having genitals at all, your character can be truly unique. This completely blew my mind, as the possibilities seem endless!

Make sure you spend a good time making the right character because once done, you cannot change this (I had to learn this the hard way).

A beautiful, breathtaking but brutal open world

The open world in the game is truly mind-blowing. Whether it is the downtown, the markets in the city or the deserted outskirts that have mountainous heaps of electronic trash coming from humanity's obsession with tech, the level of detail is truly commendable.

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The city looks the most daunting at night with colourful neon signs and billboards showcasing pornographic content for VR strip experiences, or adverts for getting the best cybernetics in the world -- it surely looks like a world that¡¯s way ahead of us.

In many aspects, the game reminded me of the movie Blade Runner 2049 or even the original Blade Runner that came all the way in 1982 in the way the architecture of the city looked, the Japanese kanji neon signs, and of course, crime-infested alleyways. The fact that you're actively immersed in that world, of course, makes it all the more exciting in Cyperpunk 2077.

However, it does have elements that show that it still has some roots in the past -- traffic everywhere, cars still running on the road (unlike what Hollywood movies have taught us about the future) with most of them seem to be running on gasoline, and people still walking, instead of flying or hovering.

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Navigating through the streets you¡¯ll come across NPCs heightening the game's effect and making it come alive almost, as these NPCs live their own life completely unbeknownst to you. For example, while entering my apartment in the game, I often cross a bunch of men body building and talking about something that happened in the building on that day, or while entering the red light area of the city, sex workers try to flirt with you -- it isn¡¯t something that will blow your mind, but they try to add some feedback for the open world and make the immersion more believable.

Losing existence while trying to survive

The primary story in the game revolves around one Johnny Silverhands -- a rockstar turned anti-corporate terrorist (played by the beloved Keanu Reeves) whose consciousness (that was stored in a chip) somehow gets into V (your character¡¯s) head.

This chip makes Johnny Silverhands appear in V¡¯s vision, while also taking control of his mind, overwriting V¡¯s memories and by extension, his existence.

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The whole game is about V trying to find Johnny Silverhands and with luck, stopping the overwriting process that continues to delete V¡¯s existence.

In the initial phases of the main story, both V and Johnny completely hate each other, however as the story progresses, it turns both of them into a badass duo where one is fighting for justice from a major corporation who wronged him while the other is just trying to decode Johnny¡¯s mystery in order to stay alive.

I really enjoyed seeing this dual personality struggle, especially in one scene where Johnny Silverhands tries to make V smoke, who is apparently a non-smoker and how it's on you to decide if you want to bend for V or maintain your ground. It really made me think of the inner demons people have within them and how only a few succeed in taming them.

Levelling up

Levelling up gives you ¡®Attribute Points¡¯ that you can use to upgrade your attributes in different categories like Body (strength), Reflex (responsiveness), Intelligence, Technical Ability (hacking abilities), and Cool (for stealth). Additionally, you also get Perk Points to unlock perks in the aforementioned abilities.

The character also has their own ¡®Street Cred¡¯ -- reputation within the city. Completing missions and side missions increase your character¡¯s Street Cred. This will enable you to unlock new missions, as well as offer newer stock of equipment at vendors.

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Even though you don¡¯t really need your character to be at a certain level to use a high-end weapon or vehicle, it will come in handy when you wish to buy something particularly fancy in a store.

Moreover, the Street Cred will be really helpful in getting your hands on feature-loaded Cyberware (cybernetics that offers better abilities and enhances the overall gaming experience) that not only require a high-level street cred but also actual ¡®eddies¡¯ in your account. Cyberware can help you enhance your aim accuracy with better optics, or add abilities to help you jump higher (double jump) or add mantis-like claws straight into your arms, helping you take down opponents without pulling your gun out.

Combat experience

Gameplay-wise, the Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot to offer. You have the option of using guns, swords or simply your hacking skills to get your job done. You have the option to either be extremely stealthy in your approach, quietly taking down opponents or use hacking tools to clear your path or use your tactical skills for a more aggressive approach.

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I experienced some sponging while shooting down enemies, even after taking consecutive headshots, and sometimes it was just easier to slice them open with my katana instead of shooting at them.

Enemies try to hack in your body that causes it to overheat, which was extremely annoying and made me avoid my ¡®all-guns-blazing¡¯ play style. But after a few hours into the game, you can better understand what would work in your favour.

Driving in the game definitely will take some time getting used to. In many places I found it very similar to GTA V (you also have the ability to steal people's vehicles), however, the trickiest is navigating through narrow streets with people crossing and trying really, really hard not to run over them.

Bugs at every corner

No game is completely bug-free on the day of its launch, and Cyberpunk 2077 is no exception. Game optimisation aside, Cyberpunk 2077 has quite a few bugs that could pull you out from the whole experience. My system wasn't the most specced out -- I was running it on a Core i5 6600K with 32GB of DDR4 memory at 3200GHz and an RX570 GPU. The game ran on my Crucial P1 NVMe SSD.

I kept the game on low-medium settings, getting around 45-50fps and despite the low setting tier, the game looked phenomenal, however, bugs and glitches persisted.

From glitches that made notifications stick to the screen to weird moments with non-player characters not sitting the way they¡¯re supposed to, to times when the character is half on top of the roof of the car and half within, there are quite a few bugs, and for a game that¡¯s been in development for nearly a decade now, it surely feels disappointing.

But what many people fail to miss is the sheer depth of the game, with the huge city and several active elements that are constantly in the background, so some bugs are bound to exist. And while it's nothing that cannot be fixed in a few updates, I just would have loved it if it didn¡¯t have that many bugs on day one.

Playing in a world we could one day live in

After spending hours in the simulated future city, the only question that comes to my mind is, should I recommend buying this game today? This is a difficult question to answer as the game, no matter how good it looks and plays, is still a work in progress for PS4 and Xbox One due to its bugs.

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There are bugs that might at times make the game truly unplayable, although it is worth mentioning that CD Projekt Red has promised a series of updates on the consoles for better optimising it on the platform.

But if we look at the PC version now or even the console versions few weeks or months down the road when the updates have fixed some of its major blunders, what is left behind is a spectacular open world that¡¯s not just home to a crazy story, but is a lens into the world we could one day live in -- a world that surely looks all glorious and beautiful from the outside, but extremely dark on the inside.

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Whether it is the dwindling line between man and machine or the heaps of e-trash in the city¡¯s horizons that appear like picturesque mountain ranges or a world where the value of the human life is worth nothing -- a lot is wrong with this world -- and yet it manages to show us some facets, some instances through its story that the core essence of humanity in this godforsaken world is not completely gone, not yet.