ALONG FOR THE RIDE

Does a lack of choice make CYBERPUNK 2077 a bad RPG?

- By Matt Killeen

The rendezvous is a motel room. The heist has gone badly and, as the sole survivor, I'm limping in with the goods. The fixer is frightened. Long before Dexter DeShawn is having me gunned down coming out of the bathroom, I knew that I was getting double-crossed.

I wanted to get my shot in first. I had another buyer for the chip in my head. That would have been thematically and contextually appropriate, but I was explicitly unable to do any of that.

I've had a degree of dissonance playing Cyberpunk 2077. I'm visiting Night City years after everyone else, yes, but this is 2.2 – the definitive version. However, my efforts to play it my way, as opposed to how the developers want me to, makes a mockery of its Steam tags: Cyberpunk, Open World, RPG. To put it in terms the denizens of Night City would understand, I'm doll-chipped. But I'm conscious.

I play most things as Lawful/Neutral Good. Proportionate, righteous violence, but no casual murder. Here, I'm obligated to be a killer and thief, and that's that. Even a gun with a non-lethal mod can only be earned by killing, and killing the poor and the disenfranchised.

ORIGINAL CYBERPUNK

I was playing as me – a better looking, younger, me anyway – which seemed appropriate when presented with character creation tools. And to be clear, I'm an original cyberpunk. I grew up in the '80s, soaked in black rain and smoky neon. I was the guitarist in a band called Chrome Orchid. Now I'm actually there, shouldn't I like it more?

I put my gut-feelings under the scrutiny of some experts, like Lorne Nudel, a senior writer at Ubisoft, and a producer of games for Pixar and Universal, who also teaches storytelling through ELVTR UK and Game Story Writer. He vehemently disagrees with my first issue: