It changes the starting mission/story (very very early, tutorial stuff). But only that.
Every now and then you get an extra dialog option based on your background.
That’s it. Definitely not a major impact on the game. In my opinion it’s enough that it at least gives a token nod to it, and you’re reminded of it now and then, but it doesn’t really affect anything that actually matters. It would have been nice if it gave you just one unique ability, or maybe some passive bonus (like discounts at certain stores) but nope.
Thus my bitching about it. For all the work they did building the three short prequel stories for the lifepaths, that all end up in exactly the same place. Sure, there are about 4-5 optional bonus “lifepath” options [ over the entire game mind you ] you can click on for dialog that make almost no difference, and one very short bonus quest “chain”. Which also makes no damn difference.
More effort goes into the Skippy quest, by far, than the entire lifepath. It’s just … one of the more frustrating bits that shows truly how on the rails you are the entire time. For me, it utterly broke down even the illusion of choice, which is a cardinal sin for any game that claims RPG elements.
For another take on it. And it’s something they haven’t ever come back to punch up, or add quality of life improvement to. Heck, if the game offered a single bonus stat point (say Cool for Corpo, Body for Nomad, Reflex for Streetkid), or skill bonus based on your choice it would have made the choice less empty, but no, just absolute waste of the first 10-15 minutes of your game to get you to exactly the same place. A lot MORE if you thought, as they led to to believe, it would be important later on and you looked at every piece of trash in your respective starting areas to figure out how it would play in later.
TL;DR - They could have cut the whole sequences, instead letting you select a Mass Effect style Origin and Background and dumped you right at the main storyline with minimal difference, less frustration, and put in a lot more actual work finishing up a bunch of other abandoned crap instead of giving you an empty promise of actual RP elements.
I’m finding it a bit ironic that I’m clambering through dark vents with a fortune in cyberware, but can’t actually see where I’m going; is there night vision equipment I’m missing? Perhaps a lowly torch (flashlight)?
Agreed, I went through the whole game before without ever having a situation where I couldn’t see. It’s never actually dark. So I’m also thinking gamma/brightness settings.
I’m playing through again, and the missions where I’m boxing is a lot easier than I remember. I went through all of them without losing a single one. The only opponent who did any damage to me was the champ.
Man, I fired up my old save over the weekend, and tried some of the boxing matches. I can’t beat a single one, and I’m over 40th level. I haven’t even gotten any of them below 50% health.
Come to think of it, this was more or less my experience with Witcher 3, where no matter how much I leveled up, I could just about handle trash mobs, and would get wrecked by anything harder. For some reason, I really, really suck at melee in CDProjekt Red games.
Most of the time, you can see the opponent winding up for a punch and then you can dodge to the side and then move back in for a couple of punches. (It’s a little trickier when you’re fighting the twins.)
In the pre-2.0 version, some of the Body perks come in handy (e.g. chance to stun on hit, recover stamina when hitting a stunned opponent), but I don’t know if those exist in the latest version.
I haven’t done boxing yet in my 2.0 playthrough. I found it challenging on my first play, but here are the things that helped.
Get gorilla arms. Total game changer. Even better if you get a mod that lets them do electric damage, because stunning them really messes them up.
Dodging a lot was my key. Dodge them and then strike from an undefended position. That’s the only way I was able to get through the fights.
The last thing I got which actually just made the fights stupidly easy is Sandevistan and related cyberware that lets you get into “bullet time”. You temporarily become The Flash and can run behind them and punch the crap out of them as they react in slow motion. I was doing the John Woo “invincible hitman” trope on my first playthrough, where I focused on big damage pistols, stealth, and time slowing to wipe out everyone. Replacing my cyberdeck with Sandevistan was part of that build, and it had the side effect of turning the boxing matches into a joke.
I did the boxing stuff relatively late, so I was pretty powerful, but the gorilla arms, blood pump, and time-slowing cyberware absolutely trivialized even the final fight.
I’m leaning on quickhacks a lot in this build, so didn’t want to ditch my deck for a Sandivistan. I did see the Gorilla Arms+shock perk advice on Reddit, so I’m going to try that, or at least, the arms. Not sure how much I’d have to respec/level up to get the shock perk, assuming it still exists in 2.0.
You can swap it out for the fights and then swap back afterward.
But I don’t think it’s really that necessary. The gorilla arms and some strategy should probably be enough. I also like the blood pump suggestion from @Johnny_Bravo; being able to activate that in the fight can also win one you’d otherwise lose. (You normally can’t heal yourself in a boxing match since the health items are disabled but cyberware isn’t.)
Here is a list of a bunch of cyberware that can help:
Biomonitor: Restores health every few minutes when life gets below 15%.
Blood Pump: Activate to instantly restore health.
Second Heart: Restores V to full health after taking fatal damage.
Syn-Lungs: Increases stamina regen.
Cataresist: Increases all resistances (including physical resistance).
Pain Editor: Reduces all incoming damage by 10%.
Biodyne berserk: Activate to increase melee damage and all resistances (including physical resistance).
Bionic Lungs: Increases stamina.
Stamina is important, as it’s used up in the fight and when it runs out you have no juice to attack.
You can also take some consumables that give buffs right before the fight, and they’ll still affect you as the fight goes on until their normal expiration. The ones that raise maximum health, health regeneration, and stamina regeneration are best. Also, forget about armor boosts because armor isn’t factored in for these fights.
It is, however, the traditional CD Projekt Red format - after all, Geralt isn’t the protagonist of the Witcher, Ciri is. She even reminds you of that at the end.
I had no idea about Chippin’ In. Silverhand’s song is mentioned in the 1991 Cyberpunk 2020 sourcebook and I had no idea it was connected to anything in the real world.
