Cyberpunk 2077 [split from video games]

[sifth]

So I ran into a fun bug today. I'm playing as a Nomad, so I'm not sure if this side quest is available for players who started as a street kid or a corpo, but there was a fun little side quest, that allowed me to buy the car from the Nomad opening, from a lady in the junk yard, for only 100 eddies. However the glitch is, that when I was driving to this side quest my bike went over a ramp and froze in mid air. I tried doing this again after I reloaded the game and it froze yet again, in the exact same spot. I'm playing on the PS5, so I have no idea if this is only an issue for that version of the game.

[Ran]

That quest is one of the ones where a streamer has a cameo (the lady is modelled on, and voiced by, Alanah Pearce). The others are CohhCarnage (Garry the Prophet) and Jesse Cox (the gentleman with the malfunctioning Mr. Stud, who apparently also lent his voice to a troll in Witcher 3). Hideo Kojima's in Konpeki Plaza, too, but I don't think he's interactable.

ETA: Did a mission for the first time where I had enough Body to rip out a turret's autocannon. Very, very satisfying. Check your inventory image when you do -- it's hilarious how enormous the thing looks.

2nd ETA: Anyone else met Skippy? 

[Werthead]

9 hours ago, sifth said:

So I ran into a fun bug today. I'm playing as a Nomad, so I'm not sure if this side quest is available for players who started as a street kid or a corpo, but there was a fun little side quest, that allowed me to buy the car from the Nomad opening, from a lady in the junk yard, for only 100 eddies. However the glitch is, that when I was driving to this side quest my bike went over a ramp and froze in mid air. I tried doing this again after I reloaded the game and it froze yet again, in the exact same spot. I'm playing on the PS5, so I have no idea if this is only an issue for that version of the game.

There's an odd interaction between bikes and the junk piles. I stick religiously to the roads. If you do get stuck, you should be able to get off, run up the road and re-summon the bike. It's annoying.

Quote

That quest is one of the ones where a streamer has a cameo (the lady is modelled on, and voiced by, Alanah Pearce). The others are CohhCarnage (Garry the Prophet) and Jesse Cox (the gentleman with the malfunctioning Mr. Stud, who apparently also leant his voice to a troll in Witcher 3). Hideo Kojima's in Konpeki Plaza, too, but I don't think he's interactable.

Kojima is interactable, I believe. You can pitch him video game ideas. There's also a Death Stranding bridge baby pod that turns up later on (it's in the police station River takes you to).

[Ran]

Ugh! Makes me even more mad that I missed him!

[Werthead]

Ha.

Spoiler

I now have Johnny's old gun, old clothes (modded up to ridiculous levels) and even gotten his old band back together. #maximumkeanu

 

[Fez]

I may have waited too long on getting back to the main story. I'm at the start of Act III now and before continuing the main story further I know I want to do Rogue's quests first. But she wants me to wait for her call right now. And I don't have any other side jobs open to me at all anymore; except for the fist fights that I can't do and a single 'very high danger' side quest that I got hours and hours ago somehow. I know there's a skip time button, but that seems lame. Think I may have to just do gigs again for a while.

Also, on romances,

Spoiler

 

I very nearly went for River. I didn't want to, but that final quest of his was so well done with the kids and the VR game and their goofy voices, and he seemed to take it pretty hard when I turned him down. But I'd already set my eyes on Judy, who I'd already done all her quests but her last one. When I did get to do that, I thought it wasn't as fun as River's (though hey, I finally went into the water!), but as a character I think she's a lot more interesting.

I think the game did a reasonably good at having Judy's attitude towards V change over time as you get to know her. And it did a good job at hiding the gameplay mechanics so it didn't just feel like "agree with the character all the time and get to have sex in the end" the way Bioware romances often do.

 

 

[sifth]

10 hours ago, Fez said:

I may have waited too long on getting back to the main story. I'm at the start of Act III now and before continuing the main story further I know I want to do Rogue's quests first. But she wants me to wait for her call right now. And I don't have any other side jobs open to me at all anymore; except for the fist fights that I can't do and a single 'very high danger' side quest that I got hours and hours ago somehow. I know there's a skip time button, but that seems lame. Think I may have to just do gigs again for a while.

Also, on romances,

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I very nearly went for River. I didn't want to, but that final quest of his was so well done with the kids and the VR game and their goofy voices, and he seemed to take it pretty hard when I turned him down. But I'd already set my eyes on Judy, who I'd already done all her quests but her last one. When I did get to do that, I thought it wasn't as fun as River's (though hey, I finally went into the water!), but as a character I think she's a lot more interesting.

I think the game did a reasonably good at having Judy's attitude towards V change over time as you get to know her. And it did a good job at hiding the gameplay mechanics so it didn't just feel like "agree with the character all the time and get to have sex in the end" the way Bioware romances often do.

 

 

Just speed up time. I usually do that whenever a character asks me to expect a call from them. I usually speed up time 24 hours and just walk down a block and usually get a character from the character. If that doesn't work, I speed up time another 24 hours and do it again, until it finally happens. A few times I needed to reload the game as well, but only once or twice.

[Ran]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

Ha.

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I now have Johnny's old gun, old clothes (modded up to ridiculous levels) and even gotten his old band back together. #maximumkeanu

 

Ditto.

Spoiler

Though sadly Johnny's gun had no crit bonuses of any kind so I think I won't be using it other than to feel badass on occasion. 

 

[Fez]

Act III spoilers

Spoiler

 

Heh. I had no idea the very first main job of Act 3 was the point of no return already. CDPR really wasn't joking when they said the main story was shorter than Witcher 3. I thought TW3 was too long, but this feels like they went a bit too far in the opposite direction. There's certainly plenty of story in the big side jobs, but I'd like more story about Arasaka than I feel like I'm going to get. I'm not done yet. I decided to go with Panam's offer of help and am still at the camp getting ready. But since it was the point of no return already, I'm not expecting too many more hours of game.

Pretty sure I did all the side jobs in the game. Though I'm not certain. Besides the big set pieces there were a few awesome one-offs; I think my favorite was the PI work for the bartender at Mama Welle's place, where Johnny was narrating every couple steps like it was a Raymond Chandler novel.

 

 

[Ran]

I've got one more side mission I want to do, after completing the cyberpsychos and most every gig available besides a couple that sadly bugged out on me. There's a Mercernary SOS job where I can find the building and kill everyone on, around, or in it (with Overwatch or quickhacks) but I get no call for the mission, no details, no gig title, and no way to enter the building as all entries are locked. And there's "Killing in the Name", which is known to be bugged but I didn't realize it so pushed on with other stuff rather than reload to run it so that it didn't bug. Almost had the same happen with a Badlands gig whose name I forget, about getting a guy to a driver -- turns out that you need to ignore the GPS directions to the meet and just aim your car straight at it, cutting across the scrub to get to the pickup point.

So, before heading into Act III myself --

Should I spend all my cash on cyberware, clothing upgrades, and so on on the assumption there won't be another opportunity?

And about how long is the final act, playtime wise?

[C.T. Phipps]

I have a quest that's bugged in that none of the doors open to get into the building to do it.

I just finished Judy's questline and feel like I made an error.

I sided with Maiko because I thought it would avoid a bloodbath but nothing changes at Clouds.

[Fez]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

And about how long is the final act, playtime wise?

So, Act 3 is really, really short.

Spoiler

The very first mission of Act 3, going to the restaurant, triggers the point-of-no-return. A few minutes into it, you get branching paths, apparently based on which side jobs you did. The path I took, it was about 2 hours from that choice to end credits.

 

Ending Spoilers

Spoiler

 

So I went the Panam route, and chose to bring V back to her body. Overall I'm reasonably satisfied with the ending. Nothing felt particularly rushed and I liked the epilogue a lot. My one disappointment was that it left all the plot threads about Arasaka dangling, and made all the Takamura Act 2 missions pointless.

Also, it felt the ending was caught a little bit between trying to be a happy ending (and looking up the other endings, I think this is the happiest ending) and trying to be a dystopia downer ending, and it doesn't totally nail either. Doing this "You've got 6 months" thing, but at the same time "Hey, maybe we'll figure out a cure together" talk seems a bit like trying to have your cake and eat it too by the writers.

Also, the fact that in very final scene the game switched to third person perspective tells me that the developers knew that first person scenes don't carry as much emotional weight. And it baffles me that they decide to go for first for the rest. Especially since there was no gameplay that justified it. I remember years ago in interviews CDPR talked about how they needed first person so they could make some areas more confining feeling, and there was going to be gameplay mechanics like wall-running that needed it. But I guess all that was cut. I wish they went back to third person after that.

 

 

[Werthead]

I'm at 70 hours, which makes the game comfortably longer than The Witcher 3 (which I finished in 89 hours, but that was including the two huge expansions and doing very few of the optional hunts). And I do think the game's delineation of "side quests" and "main quests" is dubious. Panam and Judy's storylines feel like they have such a huge impact on V and the endgame that they should be considered part of the main quest. Not doing them feels as weird as just not doing the companion side-quests in Mass Effect 2 or 3 and then feeling  puzzled when absolutely everyone dies. River feels a lot more optional, because he doesn't really play a key role in the main storyline so doesn't dovetail into it as much (and I don't think I've even met the love interest for a gay male V yet).

One odd thing I've found a few times are side-jobs and gigs that only pop up when you're in close proximity to them and then vanish when you move away. That was weird and I'm not sure if that's supposed to happen or a bug. I found one like that today and it led into a really eerie house of horror situation (ending in one of the most brutally hard fights in the game against someone who was canny enough to shut me off from hacking cameras). 

With regards for loose ends in the final quest, that's probably a feature. CP77 is going to have the same release trajectory as The Witcher 3, so there'll be a moderate-sized side-expansion ~6 months after the main game comes out and then a much more massive expansion, really a sequel in the same engine about 12 months later. And I think most people agree that the entire Blood and Wine episode - which is between 20 and 30 hours long by itself - is one of the best things about The Witcher 3, especially how it recontextualises the ending of the main game (Broken Steel did something similar for Fallout 3, but that was more down to Bethesda really fucking up the ending to the point it didn't make sense).

[Fez]

18 minutes ago, Werthead said:

I'm at 70 hours, which makes the game comfortably longer than The Witcher 3 (which I finished in 89 hours, but that was including the two huge expansions and doing very few of the optional hunts). And I do think the game's delineation of "side quests" and "main quests" is dubious. Panam and Judy's storylines feel like they have such a huge impact on V and the endgame that they should be considered part of the main quest. Not doing them feels as weird as just not doing the companion side-quests in Mass Effect 2 or 3 and then feeling  puzzled when absolutely everyone dies. River feels a lot more optional, because he doesn't really play a key role in the main storyline so doesn't dovetail into it as much (and I don't think I've even met the love interest for a gay male V yet).

One odd thing I've found a few times are side-jobs and gigs that only pop up when you're in close proximity to them and then vanish when you move away. That was weird and I'm not sure if that's supposed to happen or a bug. I found one like that today and it led into a really eerie house of horror situation (ending in one of the most brutally hard fights in the game against someone who was canny enough to shut me off from hacking cameras). 

With regards for loose ends in the final quest, that's probably a feature. CP77 is going to have the same release trajectory as The Witcher 3, so there'll be a moderate-sized side-expansion ~6 months after the main game comes out and then a much more massive expansion, really a sequel in the same engine about 12 months later. And I think most people agree that the entire Blood and Wine episode - which is between 20 and 30 hours long by itself - is one of the best things about The Witcher 3, especially how it recontextualises the ending of the main game (Broken Steel did something similar for Fallout 3, but that was more down to Bethesda really fucking up the ending to the point it didn't make sense).

Kerry is gay male V's love interest apparently. And supposedly just as underdeveloped as River. Lot more work went in Judy and Panam.

Regarding the game's future, I agree that TW3 path is likely. Though the timeline may be delayed by a need to spend the next few months fixing the old console versions. Also, while a B&W style post-game DLC would be great, I'm not sure that really possible (the post-game part, not the big and awesome part). TW3 had multiple endings, but in all of them Geralt was always in pretty much the same position in terms of being able to go do another adventure. Whereas V...

Spoiler

 

is either: dead by suicide, in the net while Johnny now has his/her body, a stored engram in Arasaka's computers, a corporate lackey, going off into space (and maybe about to die), or going into Arizona.

It'd be easy enough to ignore the suicide ending (and maybe also the Arasaka engram one), but Johnny taking over the body seems like a very valid ending. And I'm not sure CDPR would be willing to put in the work of having a DLC that works with that ending and with V still in their body (also, not sure they'd be able to get Keanu back). Maybe they just ignore that too, but that doesn't seem totally fair to those players.

And even the 3 endings where V is alive and in their body are in such different places that getting them all to the same DLC point seems like tough writing. The easy path would be to canonize an ending, likely the Panam one since that's the only one that really suggests a future to be had, but I'd surprised if they declare that just one of all these endings is the real one.

 

 

[Werthead]

32 minutes ago, Fez said:

Kerry is gay male V's love interest apparently. And supposedly just as underdeveloped as River. Lot more work went in Judy and Panam.

Regarding the game's future, I agree that TW3 path is likely. Though the timeline may be delayed by a need to spend the next few months fixing the old console versions. Also, while a B&W style post-game DLC would be great, I'm not sure that really possible (the post-game part, not the big and awesome part). TW3 had multiple endings, but in all of them Geralt was always in pretty much the same position in terms of being able to go do another adventure. Whereas V...

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is either: dead by suicide, in the net while Johnny now has his/her body, a stored engram in Arasaka's computers, a corporate lackey, going off into space (and maybe about to die), or going into Arizona.

It'd be easy enough to ignore the suicide ending (and maybe also the Arasaka engram one), but Johnny taking over the body seems like a very valid ending. And I'm not sure CDPR would be willing to put in the work of having a DLC that works with that ending and with V still in their body (also, not sure they'd be able to get Keanu back). Maybe they just ignore that too, but that doesn't seem totally fair to those players.

And even the 3 endings where V is alive and in their body are in such different places that getting them all to the same DLC point seems like tough writing. The easy path would be to canonize an ending, likely the Panam one since that's the only one that really suggests a future to be had, but I'd surprised if they declare that just one of all these endings is the real one.

 

 

Oh, I have met him then. That's an odd choice.

I agree the ending choice is problematic, although going to 

Spoiler

Arizona makes sense if they choose to do a new map. Night City is the signature city of the CP77 P&P game but it's certainly not the only place in the setting, and Blood & Wine's new map was superb. However, there's enough unused real estate on the CP77 map for them to do more there.

The other approach is the GTA4 thing where they took small side-characters from the main game and made them the star of their own expansion game, like the random guy who works in nightclub and one of the biker criminals you meet suddenly getting their own full story in the expansions (and the biker guy getting offed about 3 seconds into GTA5, which was an odd choice).

 

[Fez]

51 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Oh, I have met him then. That's an odd choice.

I agree the ending choice is problematic, although going to 

  Reveal hidden contents

Arizona makes sense if they choose to do a new map. Night City is the signature city of the CP77 P&P game but it's certainly not the only place in the setting, and Blood & Wine's new map was superb. However, there's enough unused real estate on the CP77 map for them to do more there.

The other approach is the GTA4 thing where they took small side-characters from the main game and made them the star of their own expansion game, like the random guy who works in nightclub and one of the biker criminals you meet suddenly getting their own full story in the expansions (and the biker guy getting offed about 3 seconds into GTA5, which was an odd choice).

 

Spoiler

 

TBH, I'd be pretty disappointed by a DLC where I was playing a different character. I've gotten attached to V, and Judy, and Panam (and Mitch even) and want to see a continuation of that story. I'd certainly expect any DLC to probably mostly sideline potential romance characters until the end of it, just like B&W, but that'd be fine so long as the ending is good.

Thinking on it some more, one possible option for a post-game DLC that does help unify the endings would be for it to be set on the Crystal Place space station. The Rogue/Johnny ending has V going there on one last heist already, so they could setup a hook for Nomad ending V to find a reason to need to go there too. It'd be a stretch for Arasaka ending V (alive, and maybe also engramed but put into a new temporary body) to go there, but it wouldn't be the clunkiest writing compared to parts of the base game either. Suicided V can be safely ignored. It still leaves the issue of Johnny taking V's body, but it may be an easier pill swallow that be de-canonized if all living Vs can move forward in the plot.

The Rogue/Johnny V ending even has someone suggesting there's a slight chance that V will find a way to live if they do the heist. So that can be the setup. Each of the 3 living Vs finds out there's a chance at a cure up there in a short intro (mirroring the short lifepath intros of the base game; Arasaka=corpo, Rogue/Johnny=streetkid; Panam=nomad), and then there's a pretty unified DLC experience for everyone.

 

 

[Ran]

@Fez

I'm of the same mind as you as to the general approach to DLC. Don't canonize an ending, just have the start of DLC shunt you to the same starting point where applicable. Ultimately the bulk of the DLC should take place in Night City, IMO. 

[Ran]

Also, finished just north of 100 hours. Money well-spent for me, as I (and Linda, my backseat driver during the main story missions) thoroughly enjoyed it despite flaws in terms of bugs and some pacing issues which are probably inevitable in this sort of game.

Spoilers for my ending:

Spoiler

Put Johnny in the driver's seat and had him go after Arasaka with Rogue and Weyland. Turned Adam Smasher into mincemeat within 20 seconds with hacks and Skippy (hahaha, wish I had a line of dialog about that; also poetic, as it's an Arasaka prototype). Finished him off with Rogue's gun, Pride.

Had to choose between going back to life in a dying body or giving it to Johnny, and went back to my life, waking up with Kerry who I had romanced earlier (I really think he was introduced too late and that whole line of story should have been a main Side quest alongside the Judy, Panam and the Voodoo Boys rather than being introduced in the back half of the game; ditto River). The Sun ending achievement, legend of the Afterlife, new top merc in Night City... and off to the Crystal Palace for the mysterious Mr. Blue Eyes, who had promised he might be able to save me.

Takemura was apparently preparing to kill himself, presumably as he was blamed for my having destroyed Mikoshi and the engram project, and cursed me out so that -- and Rogue dying -- were just about the saddest things in this ending (well, besides also being in the process of dying). 

Two story threads I wanted for information on, and one lore thing:

Spoiler

Just what exactly did Rogue do to survive the raid on Arasaka? Johnny thinks she cut deals with the corpos, but they don't prevent her from going after Smasher. My one thought was that she specifically cut a deal with Militech -- makers of the bomber she used to get us into the tower, and Arasaka's major rival -- to protect her from Arasaka's wrath.

The other bit tied back to the Peralazes, namely Johnny's speculation that a rogue AI was behind it all. Wonder if that's right, and if Mr Blue Eyes is basically a doll for said AI.

Oh, and the lore thing: what happened to Morgan Black hand, who seems to have vanished?

 

[Fez]

52 minutes ago, Ran said:

Two story threads I wanted for information on, and one lore thing:

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Just what exactly did Rogue do to survive the trays on Arasaka? Johnny thinks she cut deals with the corpos, but they don't preveny her from going after Smasher. My one thought was that she specifically cut a deal with Militech -- makers of the bomber she used to get us into the tower, and Arasaka's major rival -- to protect her from Arasaka's wrath.

The other bit tied back to the Peralazes, namely Johnny's speculation that a rogue AI was behind it all. Wonder if that's right, and if Mr Blue Eyes is basically a doll for said AI.

 

Spoiler

I assume Rogue cut a deal with one of the corps too, but I suspect we won't get much follow-up on that point.

One the other hand, I think everything with the Peralazes is part of the setup for DLC. Using TW3 terminology, I don't know if it be the Heart of Stone or the Blood & Wine DLC, but I think it'll be one of them. There's too much setup that isn't paid off in the base game, spread across too many parts of the game:

• There's everything about the Peralazes mission itself, and the fact that Mr Blue Eyes can be seen watching you during it.
• Mr Blue Eyes is in one of the endings.
• The chip in Sandra Dorset's mission that can be hacked talks about Night Corp using a Rogue AI to reprogram its employees.
• Garry the Prophet talks about listening in on the plans of "the blue eyed people" through a faulty chip; one of the things he says is that live in space and control politicians. After doing his last side job, he's gone and someone says that the "the blue eyed people" took him away.
• ETA: Also, Jefferson can call you during the end credit voice mails, which is not something every side job quest giver does, even some of the other semi-big ones. Delamain didn't call me, neither did any fixers.

To me that certainly reads like setting up the seeds for an expansion. And CDPR does that kind of seeding too; Gaunter O'Dimm had a cameo in the base game of TW3. Although he was much less prominent than Mr Blue Eyes, since Mr Blue Eyes is in one of the actual endings.

 

[Ran]

@Fez

Spoiler

Wait, Garry the Prophet has actual jobs he'll ask you to do? All he ever asked me for was money.