Holy cow, we finally got our first look at Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt Red livestreamed a long, in-depth, 40-minute gameplay reel of the game’s world, systems, and characters. We couldn’t possibly more excited from what we saw. There are a ton of details that they went into. We highly recommend that you check out GameSpot’s full video below for the full presentation. In case you don’t have time to watch the entire livestream, or just want a recap of some of the highlights, we’ve compiled ten of the most exciting and interesting things that we learned from the Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay reel. Check it out below!
Your Character is Highly Customizable from the Start
In the vein of some of Bethesda’s open-world RPG’s, you’ll be able to fully customize your character before you begin the game. This is significant, considering that Projekt Red’s last game, The Witcher 3, just had a single playable character named Geralt. When you first boot up Cyberpunk 2077, you’ll have the option to customize your name, background events, facial appearance, body type, tattoos, clothing, and most importantly, your biostats. Like in Fallout, these biostats give you freedom to change the strengths and weaknesses that define your character. For example, if you prefer to run into a situation with guns-a-blazin’, you might be best off choosing the strength and reflexes stats, as opposed to tech and intelligence. If you dig around, there are a ton of customization options to tailor the game to your playstyle.
But when the duo pulls to a stop, the camera pulls outside of the vehicle for a moment. We get a view of the cityscape, and they continue driving in third-person. This is great! First-person driving has never felt intuitive. It’s good to see that despite Projekt Red’s controversial decision to position the game’s perspective in first-person, you have the option to detach from your character and see your vehicle while driving.
You Have a LOT of Options
Cyberpunk is, of course, an open-world game, so there’s no set path that you can follow from start to finish. But even with that in mind, it seems that there might be even more diverse options and repercussions in this world than we thought. For example, in this quest, you would have the option to approach a situation peacefully and risk being betrayed. You could also brute-forcing it and retrieve your objective by killing everyone. As the narrator puts it, “Each [option] will have consequences that will ripple through the game world and your story.” Even things as small as dialogue can branch in multiple ways depending on your responses. Really, no one playing Cyberpunk will have the same experience as someone else when it comes out – there are so many paths to go down that it will be impossible to predict how your story will go.
The Pause Menu has Secrets…
37 minutes into the gameplay, we got a peak at the pause menu… and wow, there’s a lot to cover here. The tabs at the top of the screen show that there are multiple menus to peruse: Codex, Quests, Bio Monitor, Inventory, GPS, Crafting, and Social. Unfortunately, we only get to see the inventory panel, but that doesn’t mean we can’t speculate! We’re most intrigued by the social tab on the far upper right. Could this mean that there’s some sort of online co-op mode? Or does this just let you monitor your in-game relationships with characters vital to the plot? What about the Codex tab? And Crafting – what kind of crafting elements can we put our craftsmanship skills to in Cyberpunk 2077? We sure don’t see any crafting in this demo. There’s a lot of teasers for the future here – we can’t wait to see what Projekt Red unveils.
For an RPG, there Sure is a Lot of FPS
Now, the narrator goes out of his way multiple times to say that Cyberpunk is an RPG – and we don’t doubt that. Between the stat details and upgrades and customization, the RPG aspects of this game are shaping up to be incredibly compelling. But despite all that, Cyberpunk seems to be influenced heavily by the first-person shooter genre.
Towards the end of the demo, the player cheats a little and activates abilities some late game abilities. From that point on it pretty much turns into a full-on action FPS. We got to witness them run along a wall, jump down, stab someone, shoot another guy with a shotgun, sprint into the next room, duck behind blockades, wield a homing machine gun, double jump, tilt out from behind barriers, and ricochet bullets off walls. It seems like a gunplay system that comes straight out of Doom Eternal! It’s interesting to see Projekt Red opt for a fast action-based RPG, as opposed to something like, say, Fallout’s slower pace, but we think it’s paid off!
You can Hack Someone’s Neurons to Affect their Comrades
If you’ve ever wanted to jump into someone’s brain like in The Matrix or Inception, we’ve got great news for you! You’ll be able to jack into an enemy to access his “neural network,” deploying software and disabling other nearby cronies with the touch of a button. In the demo, the player uses a neural network hack to disable a nearby enemy’s connection to his gun. Assumedly, there will be many kinds of neural network hacks you can impede nearby enemies with. Seems a little bit BioShocky – we dig it.
Boss Fights are Intense
The raid finishes off with a tense battle against Royce, the leader of the gang. Like any proper boss, he has a weak spot to infiltrate. The player dashes back and forth, shooting at the shield behind him when she can. After abolishing the shield, she finishes him off with three short tack-rifle shots, and the job is finished. Hopefully we’ll get to see more boss fights like these when the game releases. It was a fantastic finish to an exciting raid, and an interesting conclusion to a very detailed gameplay video.
