I am a fan of CDProjekt Red, creators of ‘The Witcher’ series of games and the developers of the upcoming ‘Cyberpunk 2077’. Their game, ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’ is the best overall experience I’ve had while gaming. I’m looking forward to their upcoming RPG immensely. But, I do have a bit of trepidation as well. The ratio, to quantify it, would be 90% anticipation, 10% trepidation.
I have three main fears when it comes to this game. I’ll explain below…
The first one is that, as you are creating your own character this time, there won’t be as much depth to your avatar as there was to Geralt. Geralt having a detailed backstory prior to the games, and an even more detailed one by the time I took control of him in ‘The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’ allowed for a wealth of conversational options and interactions with others that made sense. ‘V’, as the avatar in ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ is known – as far as I have been able to determine based on everything released – only has a simple backstory and then you are thrust into Night City, the main area of the game. I wonder how much can be done with this. I’ll be interesting to see how the developers have negated this, if they have.
The second bit of trepidation is that the braindance mechanic – as seen in this footage – will slow the narrative down, as many that got hands-on with the game for a few hours said it wasn’t fun, and that it dragged for them. I wonder if the narrative use of this mechanic will help to lessen what could be sequences that grind the game to a halt. We’ll find out after release.
My last bit of worry pertaining to ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ is concerning how it will run on consoles. I’m not worried about my playthrough, as I have a pretty good PC (Asus ROG Strix B450-F Gaming Motherboard, Ryzen 5 3600, 32gb ram, GeForce GTX 1080-Ti OC). But for those limited to the PS4/Xbox consoles, I wonder if the developers can hit a decent 30 FPS without sacrificing massive detail. Just watch some of the actual game footage embedded below and you’ll likely see what I mean. This could heavily effect perception of the game if the balance isn’t found.
Overall though, I believe that this will – at the very least – be a great game, and even has the potential to become my new favorite if it hits on all cylinders.
We shall see.
Thoughts of a Typical Gamer 