Cyberpunk 2077 release discussion

The Game Room
801

Naturally, now I have to go look at the list of Samurai songs listed on the wiki:

I see dozens. Let us look at the highlighted ones; most of the titles are at least potentially identifiable as that of real-world songs:

  • Archangel — ??? It’s the name of a B-side by the Walker Brothers, as well as a handful of more recent songs and albums
  • The Ballad of Buck Ravers — ???
  • A Like Supreme — John Coltrane, A Love Supreme
  • Chippin’ In — already discussed
  • Never Fade Away — Air Supply (?)
  • Black Dog — Led Zeppelin
802

The mission where you sabotage the float before the parade was very different for me. At least the first part of it. When I played the mission a few years back, Takemura and I started out by staking the place out to figure the best way to break in and we had some dialogue where I learned more about him. Maybe I selected something different this time, but we never staked out the building together. When I arrived he basically said, “Good luck,” and I just broke in and ran the mission as normal.

803

He tells you that he’s going off to stake out the building and you can choose to either join him now (in which case you have the conversation) or later.

804

I did that mission not long ago on 2.01 and had the long conversation where we talked about the city and our childhoods and magic cats and stuff. So it’s definitely still in the game.

805

I beat Phantom Liberty and found the ending a little underwhelming. At least with the original game, I felt as though all the endings lent themselves a certain finality no matter which one of them you got. For PL, I just had an “Is this it?” moment. It doesn’t help that the end choices felt too similar to the original game. With regards to a certain character, I couldn’t help but think, “Didn’t I make this choice with Johnny in the last game?”

806

For those who have been playing the super-patched version: is the new perk system a big improvement, a slight improvement, or disappointing?

807

I enjoyed it, but it’s waaaay too easy to overlevel and trivialize everything. The upgrade trees are definitely builds now, though, and most individual perks are an impactful gameplay change rather than piddly percentages.

In my first runthrough, in 1.0, I was never able to finish the boxing questline. In this build I knocked the guy down almost immediately.

Still, fun! Absolutely worth going back to.

808

I think the new perk system makes things more interesting. You can go all-in on certain aspects of the game instead of being minor bonuses.

809

From my experience with the old version, going all-in on the quickhack perks seemed like much more than minor bonuses but going all-in on the Agility perks (say) seemed kind of pointless.

810

Yeah, it was hit or miss. Now they all seem pretty impactful to me.

I like how some of the new perks can completely transform your abilities. For example, I went the netrunner route on this playthrough. Most of what I do involves quickhack combat. Quickhacks are like spells you’d cast in a fantasy game, and they use up RAM, which is like mana points. If you invest in smart gun perks, then you can regenerate RAM by killing enemies with a smart gun. So, I can use a quickhack to set a guy on fire, and as he’s burning I shoot him, which regenerates my RAM to use on the next guy.

There are also perks (in Phantom Liberty at least) that can make it so that hitting a guy with a monowire attack will automatically load a “control” quickhack. So I can hit someone and that makes the person blind, or makes them walk slowly, or disables their gun, etc. It makes it so that shooting a gun and using melee is part of the hacking system, rather than something totally separate. I think it’s absolutely brilliant. And that’s just one small aspect of the perk system.

I think this Reddit thread explained it well.

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/16iyl4x/people_saying_the_old_skill_trees_are_better_than/

The new skill trees appear to be thoughtfully constructed and flow well together to create tailored builds. Not to mention the actual gameplay changes and new abilities you can unlock in each. Every skill tree offers meaningful upgrades such as the Quake and Wrecking Ball abilities in the Body tree, that ACTUALLY change how you play the game. There was nothing in the old skill trees that altered gameplay like these 2 abilities, and these are just a fraction of all the new ones being added.

That’s the key to me. They don’t just give you boosts, they can allow you to change the way you play the game. To me, that’s the sign of a great perk/talent/build system.

811

Minor Bump to the Thread - I finished my second play through of the Phantom Liberty DLC which I found quite impressive especially in conjunction with the game finally feeling in a good place in terms of the perks / cyberware / skills. But I felt like talking about about the ramifications and personalities of the major NPCS which are of course a big spoiler. Do you think we should spin off a thread for it, with a big fat SPOILER tag, or are we comfortable talking about it here?

812

If you talk about it here, please spoiler the spoilers. I haven’t gotten around to finishing it yet.

813

I’m fine with here. This has been out long enough I’d think the spoiler ship has sailed.

I think there must me a limit on when you have to worry about “spoilers.” Do I need to spoiler tag discussions of who Luke Skywalker’s dad is?

Of course, you can make a note that what you are about to write may be a spoiler.

YMMV.

814

Phantom Liberty has only been out for a few months.

815

Baldur’s Gate 3 has been out for 6 months and folks still use spoilers, and technically a lot of BG3 (particularly the story) was available for years before release in early access, so I’d say the statute of limitations isn’t even close here.

816

While I do not think this needs a new thread it seems best to err on the side of safe and spoiler tag anything that may be a spoiler.

Of course, a new thread could be started if there is too much to discuss that spoiler tags become a bit much to bother with.

817

Fair enough. So warning, major spoilers for the Plot Line of Phantom Liberty (from here on PL).

The Endings

For those who have played it, or those who don’t care about spoilers - the main thrust to me is to have a parallel story to V/Johnny’s situation. You have multiple new characters introduced, but the choices come down to siding with Songbird, or siding with Reed.

Now… the endings (double spoilers!) seem to push that helping Songbird is the “happier” ending. Not that there are really happy endings in the base game or the DLC, but happy-er at least. In the “Put Songbird on the Shuttle ending” Alex lives, and Reed, because you Killed him (triple spoilers) isn’t at least caught between his loyalty to his subordinates while trying to show loyalty to his superiors who certainly don’t show any loyalty in turn. Songbird is theoretically free, and hopefully saved from their fate (although I doubt they’re free or safe any more than V is in the prior endings of the game). V is just as screwed as they were at the beginning.

In the second save Songbird option, you choose to turn in Songbird to Reed after she confesses her fraud to you. Done this way Songbird is “alive” but back in the arms of government, Reed remains alive and apparently is no longer doing field work, V has a solution that the game seems bound and determined to make sound horrible but I had issues with, and Johnny is screwed.

If you work with Reed, Songbird freaks out, and Alex dies (more on this) and depending on your choice you can kill her (her choice) which Reed reluctantly accepts, or bring her in alive, which earns you extra cash and recognition, including a choice of doing the same new ending as above.

My Feelings

So, of course, the parallel with Vs/Johnny’s situation is strong. Both Songbird and V are dying, there’s very little they can do about it, and it’s a question of just how far they will go to stay alive.
But emotionally and story-wise, Songbird just didn’t come off as sympathetic to me. It’s really, really obviously fishy from veeeery early in the quest regarding Songbird’s role in the events, and eventually she comes partially clean with you (long after you notice it yourself). She’s the one responsible for the entire shit show. And while I’m somewhat sympathetic for her being made into a living WMD - she’s always felt free to betray others for her own ends. Very Cyberpunk of course. She’s betrayed Reed (historically), betrayed the president (setting up the DLC), betrayed the person she betrayed the president too, betrayed you, betrayed the partners who are risking their lives to save her (unto death, although they again have their own motivations). Oh, and causally massacred a huge number of civilians.

Now, to be fair, there is a huge amount of wiggle room involved - how much she is directly responsible for, and how much is covert or overt influence of the AIs is arguable… but no. At the end I was infinitely happier with the endings in which I helped Reed stop her.

Still, all the characters involved are at a minimum interesting, well voiced and acted, and the story felt both complete and contained while still very much a part of the larger Night City story and Johnny/V’s saga. One of the best DLC for a game I’ve experienced in a long time.

818

What’s the best starting point for the DLC? A save-game from just before the last mission? Is it worth rolling a new character from scratch? Non-spoiler answers requested, of course.

819

It is obvious from the beginning that she is fucking with you. Unfortunately, it is not written that you can do anything about it, besides betray her, of course. She never even has the courtesy to try to help connect you with Mr. Blue Eyes or any of her off-world contacts.

Diasgree :slight_smile: My take is, when all the cards are down, Reed is ultimately a loyal NUSA stooge just like Takemura is an Arasaka stooge, all deliberate parallels. If it is a choice between them and Songbird, better to side with Songbird. Depends on how you are role-playing V, of course.

If I am not mistaken, there are hints in the Songbird ending that you have helped de-stabilize things enough that it could lead to another Corporate War (Arasaka vs. Militech) and other unimaginable chaos? (Just like Johnny would have wanted)

820

Speaking of cyberpunk dilemmas, I don’t think this is is in the DLC or a spoiler, there is that side job where you can either save your mission partner’s life OR get away with the goods to save all the poor orphans etc., which is what he yells at you to do. If you do the former, he will complain that a bunch of equipment was damaged, it’s scripted that way. But I know I neutralized all the Arasaka henchmen and drove that truck away without a scratch :slight_smile: