Cyberpunk 2077 [split from video games]

[Ran]

I didn't know if you were still on the same playthrough or had started a second after the patch.

In any case, yeah, unfortunately to get those things sorted means starting a new game. Like the mission "Getting Warmer", where you rescue the netrunner in a Tyger Claw building, never let me get inside of it in my first play through, so I did the mission the second playthrough. Or "Killing in the Name" where I managed to do something that broke the mission  right at the start and didn't let it progress, so I had to roll back an hour of gameplay to make it work right.

So, some stuff to look forward to for your next playthrough. The Caliburn's a gorgeous car.

[IlyaP]

7 minutes ago, Ran said:

I didn't know if you were still on the same playthrough or had started a second after the patch.

In any case, yeah, unfortunately to get those things sorted means starting a new game. Like the mission "Getting Warmer", where you rescue the netrunner in a Tyger Claw building, never let me get inside of it in my first play through, so I did the mission the second playthrough. Or "Killing in the Name" where I managed to do something that broke the mission  right at the start and didn't let it progress, so I had to roll back an hour of gameplay to make it work right.

So, some stuff to look forward to for your next playthrough. The Caliburn's a gorgeous car.

Does it handle any better than the rest of the cars? 

Also, I found something that left me wondering: the car purchasing missions? How is it remotely possible that they can all be afforded? After all missions have been completed, and even after all local "criminals on X intersection are doing Y, go kick their asses" sort of things are done, it doesn't seem remotely possible to be able to afford all the cars and bikes in the game. 

Unless this is one of those patch bugs? 

[Ran]

1 minute ago, IlyaP said:

Does it handle any better than the rest of the cars? 

The best-handling car is the Shion Coyote, a Nomad car. But the Caliburn is pretty good, and is the fastest car in the game (the Coyote is second fastest, and does have better handling). It's also looks and sounds gorgeous to boot.

1 minute ago, IlyaP said:

Also, I found something that left me wondering: the car purchasing missions? How is it remotely possible that they can all be afforded? After all missions have been completed, and even after all local "criminals on X intersection are doing Y, go kick their asses" sort of things are done, it doesn't seem remotely possible to be able to afford all the cars and bikes in the game. 

Autojock is the most difficult achievement in the game. People got it too easily early on because of a couple of bugs that allowed infinite money that have since been patched. You need to get about $1.8 million in eddies to be able to afford them all, which is possible to do but basically requires you to do a complete playthrough entirely focused on getting it. Here is a guide that gives a sense of what you need to do to be able to rack up that much cash in the game. Ìt's a definite grind, involving lots of datamining, looting, and crafting.

[IlyaP]

12 minutes ago, Ran said:

Ìt's a definite grind, involving lots of datamining, looting, and crafting.

It's like you found the 3 words that were going to make me sad and want to run away. I've played enough EA games to find those words despiriting at this point. 

That said: this guide looks very very cool. 

Do you expect that any of this will change after the next patch/DLC? Also: do we even know when either of those things will be? I'm happy to pay for new DLCs, but...when are they due, if at all? (My dayjob keeps me too busy to try and keep up with this stuff.)

[IlyaP]

Also, thank you @Ran, for indulging my questions. I've dropped 118 hours at this point and I LOVE the game, enough to have spent time trying to assemble a Pacifica Station track on Spotify. 

[Ran]

14 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

It's like you found the 3 words that were going to make me sad and want to run away. I've played enough EA games to find those words despiriting at this point. 

Alternatively, save yourself the trouble and just get a cheat engine or save game editor to give yourself the money. WeMod supports CP2077 and apparently you can edit how much money you have. 

14 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

 

Do you expect that any of this will change after the next patch/DLC?

I think it sounded like some of the rumored DC dealt with the gangs, and might perhaps give some new missions types or at least random gang encounters or something. But the general idea that Autojock needs a very focused effort, no, I don't think that'll change with the free DLC. With the expansions, maybe, as they would presumably add new missions, open up areas that are presently closed that give more encounters, loot, datamining opportunities, and so on.

14 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Also: do we even know when either of those things will be? I'm happy to pay for new DLCs, but...when are they due, if at all? (My dayjob keeps me too busy to try and keep up with this stuff.)

Q1 2022 is more free DLC. It looks like the first paid expansion is at least Q2 2022, and I'd guess more like Q3 or Q4.

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Q1 2022 is more free DLC. It looks like the first paid expansion is at least Q2 2022, and I'd guess more like Q3 or Q4.

Another year to get a DLC to a game I've already beaten. 

Jeezus. 

Was the delay between DLCs this long for the Witcher games?!

[karaddin]

I think Heart of Stone was within the first year, but I'm not sure.

The Caliburn is smaller than the Coyote at least, I think it's the best car for trying to zip better traffic in the city and easily the fastest on a highway. I used a "mod" for my second play through to try improve handling, it's actually just an ini file to adjust some values and I think it was a bit better.

[Fez]

3 hours ago, IlyaP said:

Another year to get a DLC to a game I've already beaten. 

Jeezus. 

Was the delay between DLCs this long for the Witcher games?!

Heart of Stone was 5 months post-release and Blood and Wine was 1 year post-release. So Cyberpunk is facing a much larger delay, and in general AAA games don't have such large gaps before their first content DLC drops. However there are/were 4 big issues here: 1) COVID slowing development down in general; 2) The game coming in so hot that there was likely almost zero pre-release work on DLC; 3) The game having such major technical issues on the old consoles that a lot of time needed to focus on that first; 4) CDPR apparently being bad at project management now. Then there were smaller issues like the 2 weeks where they got no work down last year because the company was hacked and access to dev tools was temporarily cut off. It's been a perfect storm of problems.

[Ran]

Yeah, they've had some real bad luck and QC issues.

Personally, if you did just one play through, a second play through is totally worthwhile and rewarding -- do a different character build with a  different background and make some deliberate changes in some of your choices to see parts of the story you didn't see.

[IlyaP]

16 hours ago, Ran said:

Personally, if you did just one play through, a second play through is totally worthwhile and rewarding -- do a different character build with a  different background and make some deliberate changes in some of your choices to see parts of the story you didn't see.

Did you find that a second playthrough with a different playstyle resulted in the feeling of a new game and not just a replay of what you'd already played through before?

[Ran]

35 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

Did you find that a second playthrough with a different playstyle resulted in the feeling of a new game and not just a replay of what you'd already played through before?

For me, yes. My Corpo first run was as a stealthy netrunner mixing quickhacking, stealth takedowns, and silenced pistols, my Nomad second run was as a tank-y shotgun-and-baseball-bat wielding maniac and it felt really different. 

[karaddin]

My first run was an unfocused run mixing katanas, mantis blades, the overwatch sniper rifle and the widow maker precision rifle with maxed out crafting. It ended up doing a lot of "shoot through walls" combat. I did not figure out what sandevistan or berserker were as I was only looking at cyberdeck recommendations so I still had low int hacking. Was also Street kid.

2nd was a stealth netrunner with maxed crafting again as I really like all the iconic weapons so it's hard to ignore it. I barely got into direct combat but when I did it was mostly with a silenced pistol with massive out of combat boosts so it was all just 1 shots other than boss fights. Once I had legendary sonic blast the "revealing location" issue was a thing of the past, I used contagion and overheat for when I wanted non lethal and cyberpsychosis + suicide for Scavs etc. With all the perks and the legendary cyberdeck you can hit 2 with suicide, then 2 with CP and then immediately do another 2 with suicide basically so it cuts through groups as fast as contagion plus giving the Scavs the death they deserve. This one was a Corpo play through and a bit less hostile to Arasaka.

3rd play through is a nomad fully specialising into blades and actually using sandevistan. At just past 20 and over 40 street cred it feels like a very different kind of godlike as I sprint into a group of enemies and can basically take them all down before their bodies are hitting the ground. They all feel very different to each other.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

I got this in March and played it a bit, but I was so knee deep in my last two courses in my PhD program (both stats), plus my comprehensive exam, I just didn't get the time to spend with Cyberpunk that I wanted. I'm playing it again now, and I love it just as much as I did then. I don't notice any of the patches implemented since I first played as I never experienced issues.

I guess I have to say that people who claim this is the worst game ever (no one here that I've seen) are fucking stupid. I can see people not loving this game, but in what world is this game considered below average? 

I will say that after the end of the first act, a certain set of friends that you no longer work with make the game SO much better. I think the weakness of the game, for me, was that crew.

Anyway, I'm enjoying the Panam missions--she's just super cool. I like Judy's and Goro's stories so far as well. They're really great. Any time I go work with any of them, I'm like, "man, they should've just started with these guys."

More than anything, I love just running around and shooting shit in this game. I never like doing that the most in RPGs. Hacking into those little boxes is cool. I love crafting. This game hits my OCD just right.

[karaddin]

I will say that the edgy marketing that the social media team employed, including a certain in game advertisement, put off a lot of people of similar ideological bent to me. That kind of priming can certainly lead some people to not give it a fair assessment even if they give it a try in the first place, I'm just glad I saw enough positive comments to give it a chance myself.

Part of why I think it's unfortunate is that with the exception of that one billboard the edgy marketing isn't remotely representative of the game itself or it's spirit. The characters with a defined sexuality feel real to me in a way that playersexual characters don't. Judy is a lesbian, it's woven through her character from top to bottom without it being what her character is about. And with doing that right comes also accepting the other characters preferences are real as well, if Judy is genuinely gay then I also need to respect that Panam is straight and I do - to the point of finding mods to make them romanceable to be disrespectful to the characters and the creative team. Doing it to Judy has an extra layer of homophobia on top of it, but I still don't like it for Panam or River.

The game is also far closer to a good depiction of sex workers than any similar premise or setting in a AAA game has managed, at least that I've seen. The Mox are the only gang that are hard coded as friendly, the sex workers are presented as people with agency and violence against them is always framed as terrible. Yes it still does depict a lot of horrid shit directed at them, it's not perfect, but the worst are the Scavs who will do that to anyone they can get away with even including people like Sandra Dorset. When Johnny says something whorephobic it is without fail framed as some of the worst parts of Johnny who is a raging asshole, and even he behaves himself when he's in the drivers seat and interacting with a sex worker later on.

So yeah, it's not a perfect game but it certainly doesn't deserve the dismissal and assumptions invited by that marketing approach.

[Ran]

Cyberpunk 2077  is nominated in two categories of the Games Awards: Best Roleplaying Game and Best Score and Music

[IlyaP]

18 hours ago, karaddin said:

Judy is a lesbian, it's woven through her character from top to bottom without it being what her character is about. And with doing that right comes also accepting the other characters preferences are real as well, if Judy is genuinely gay then I also need to respect that Panam is straight and I do - to the point of finding mods to make them romanceable to be disrespectful to the characters and the creative team. Doing it to Judy has an extra layer of homophobia on top of it, but I still don't like it for Panam or River.

You know...this is an interesting observation. Do you recall if the words "lesbian" or "straight" or "bi" are ever even mentioned in the game?

[IlyaP]

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Cyberpunk 2077  is nominated in two categories of the Games Awards: Best Roleplaying Game and Best Score and Music

Here's hoping for best score. The music in that game - my glom! So good! Bells of Laguna Bend is some of the best game music I've heard this year!

 

[karaddin]

Yeah the music is superb, I keep getting a bunch of different ones. I particularly appreciate the Cello versions of Rebel Path and Been Good to Know Ya.

46 minutes ago, IlyaP said:

You know...this is an interesting observation. Do you recall if the words "lesbian" or "straight" or "bi" are ever even mentioned in the game?

I'm not sure it comes up in them rejecting you, but one of the jokes V can make after spending the night with Judy does refer to them both as lesbians. Not necessarily true for V obviously, but it's a joke that bi/pan women make plenty as well right now. I've seen the word applied to Judy plenty from outside the game, but I'm not sure it comes up at any other point during the game. It's pretty obvious if you're paying attention to her character though, so I imagine most people don't need it said, but still interesting to consider.

[IlyaP]

50 minutes ago, karaddin said:

Yeah the music is superb, I keep getting a bunch of different ones. I particularly appreciate the Cello versions of Rebel Path and Been Good to Know Ya.

I'm not sure it comes up in them rejecting you, but one of the jokes V can make after spending the night with Judy does refer to them both as lesbians. Not necessarily true for V obviously, but it's a joke that bi/pan women make plenty as well right now. I've seen the word applied to Judy plenty from outside the game, but I'm not sure it comes up at any other point during the game. It's pretty obvious if you're paying attention to her character though, so I imagine most people don't need it said, but still interesting to consider.

Hurm. Interesting. As a cis bi male, I never really thought about it much beyond "hey you like girls that's cool, whatever you prefer". 

I now need to think about what that says about me as a person and a gamer.