automotivated
Well-Known Member
After about 55 hours I finally finished Cyberpunk 2077! I do have one massive complaint about the last portion of the game though, if you want to finish up the character-focuses side missions (the quest chains that give you achievements specifically), the last two which unlocked just before the point of no return were extremely annoying to complete. The quests were a blast, those two quest chains are basically more stuff related to Johnny Silverhand and Samurai, but the problem is that the game pads itself out by making you dick around with other things for the next quest in the chain to trigger. To put that in perspective I basically did this for about a day or so (probably would have been a bit faster had the covid booster not derailed my day!). They really should have just made it so that you could use the time skip feature to advance those questlines instead. The one positive side to that is I managed to stumble on a few more of the wackier questlines that I missed.
Once Act 2 started I knew that the game was probably going to have a bittersweet or downer ending considering the circumstances that V ends up in, but this was a monstrous gut punch. I considered trying the secret ending because I was worried that someone I cared about was probably going to wind up dead if I brought anyone else along but due to the fact that if you die during it the game goes straight to the credits I decided against it due to potential frustration as worried as I was. Went with Johnny's suggestion to call Rogue since considering Johnny was going to be more or less completely gone after this I wanted to honor his last request, plus he gets to fuck up Arasaka one last time which is pretty badass in itself! Then my worst fears were realized when Adam Smasher showed up and killed Rogue.... FUCK. The ONE thing I was hoping wouldn't happen! Good thing I got the opportunity to blast his ass and honestly he's a pretty easy boss, actually easier than Oda surprisingly. You'd think Adam Smasher would be more of a challenge considering his legendary status in Night City but hey, just proves you're even more badass than he is.
Then I went inside Mikoshi and oh dear god the next part hit like a damn truck after everything I went through in this game. Turns out that despite your best efforts, your body has essentially already been reconfigured to the point where it's technically not even your body anymore, it's Johnny's. What a fucking awful situation for everyone involved, Johnny wanting V to get their body back and V having a slight glimmer of hope of sorts were more or less completely shattered. At this point you either let Johnny have your body since V is doomed if they go back, or let V have their body back with only a few months to live. I guess depending on one's perspective, neither of them technically dies, at least not right away since either V or Johnny stay with Alt in cyberspace to become part of "something greater" but man is it bittersweet as all hell. I went with giving V their body back, as that was ultimately the goal I was working towards throughout the game and I wanted to see it through but I can't help but wonder if I picked the more "bitter" option since it's made abundantly clear that V probably doesn't have that long to live. Then there's the resolution of the romance option you pick. In this case I romanced Judy and said goodbye to her before the final mission. Shit, I just realized that this is THREE gut punches since Rogue is dead (and depending on one's perspective, possibly died for nothing but at least got to blow up a grenade in Adam Smasher's face), V is dying and the romance with Judy ended in what I'm pretty sure was a break-up where the two go their separate ways. It's a very ballsy move that I don't think I've seen done in other games (very rarely have I ever seen a romance option have a straight up depressing outcome by the end of the story), but damn it why couldn't I go with Judy in the end? You don't even get that as an option and to be honest it's a little disappointing. Having that kind of option would have been nice and could have been a neat way to add slight variety to the ending. The remainder of my ending involved V being the new head merc of Afterlife and then going into space to possibly find some chance of survival or a cure then the game just... cuts to the credits. I'll be honest, I didn't mind the ending (it's just been a LOT to take in) but I wish that mission in space was playable.
I actually do like the ending, I think it has some good messages about living life to the fullest and refusing to give up even in the face of impossible odds but with how bleak it is not everyone is going to be a fan of how it ends. For what it's worth I think it fits well with the tone of the game, even if getting the rug pulled out from under me just before the end was one hell of a swerve.
This game turned out to be a massive surprise and honestly maybe even a new favorite of mine to an extent despite it's issues. I didn't expect much after it's disastrous launch along with people being very disappointed with what the game turned out to be but I actually really enjoyed what was there. It's really a result of horrible management practices and I hope that CD Projekt Red learns from this, stops crunching their devs and actually listens to them next time if they say that something isn't ready, etc. In time I can see this game undergoing a re-evaluation of sorts, it already has to some extent. Kinda feels like this generation's Vampire the Masquerade: Bloodlines, with it's rough initial state but there's certainly good parts to it. Maybe in a few years we'll see a massive fan patch that adds a ton of content/makes it closer to the game people imagined it would be. That, and hopefully the remaining bugs will be ironed out! If you see it on a good discount I'd say it's worth trying.
Honestly I'm really glad you enjoyed it as much as you did! I really talked a lot of shit about it last year so im happy my grouchy ass didnt chase you off when the opportunity to try it out presented itself. I'll have to give it another playthrough myself.
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Been working my ass off in Forza Horizon 5. Its still kind of buggy in some ways, but its a lot more stable than it was the first two weeks. Im looking forward to getting off work and doing some of the seasonal stuff theyve added to the game world. Can't wait to test out the ice rink at 300+ miles an hour.
