Cyberpunk 2077 Impressions After 16 Hours of Hands-on Experience

"Like any big game of this type, not every dialog option or snarky comment makes for a massive branch in Cyberpunk's narrative, but sometimes, your moves--like whether you leave an incapacitated opponent alive, or who you decide to trust--can create serious ripples.

When I finished my 16 hours with the game, I'd amassed a huge slate of side-missions, taking me all over the city. All of them concerned fascinating characters, from Judy, Johnny, and Panam, to River, a NCPD detective investigating the death of Night City's former mayor, and Padre, a Valentino's fixer who appreciated V's attitude of getting the job done by any means. The best part of Cyberpunk 2077 is feeling like a small part of the huge world of Night City, and I'm eager to continue learning about the people who inhabit it," reads the text.

"Cyberpunk 2077 manages to weave decisions and consequences into the narrative in such an organic way that I often don't even realize that I could have done something different. This can be a problem because it makes the game seem more "linear" than it really is. If you play Cyberpunk normally (i.e. you don't repeat anything to try an alternative), you won't be able to appreciate what the creators have done," we read.

"Cyberpunk 2077 offers the most organic gameplay I've possibly ever experienced, the closest to real human interaction. If you want to talk to someone, just go up to them. Gone is the "Press X to Interact" prompt for the residents of NC; instead you're just given options for your openers and then you're in. It's very limited in terms of cutscenes too, instead focusing on offering up interactive conversations that you can still freely control, opting to pick up on something happening elsewhere in the room mid-conversation if you so wish.

One particular moment has stuck with me too, so simple but also just another element of the organic dialogue in the game. I'd spent some time talking to the aforementioned Judy – currently among my top tier of favourites in the game – and when the conversation had wrapped up I turned to leave the room. I was halfway out the door when she called me back with a simple "Hey, V". I wasn't pulled back into narrative choices, I could have chosen to carry on walking up the stairs and into the cool air of Night City's neon-soaked streets. Of course, I didn't, I turned back to find out more and the rest will go down in V's history," we read.

"I wish I could go into more detail about the story, because some of the places you visit, characters you meet, and jobs you pull off are incredibly thrilling and memorable. There's stuff in here to rival The Witcher 3's best quests, and I was pleasantly surprised by how much of an emotional punch the story packs. The game's marketing has, understandably, focused on the louder, more aggressive side of the game, which has painted a somewhat inaccurate picture of it. Cyberpunk 2077 isn't all noise, future slang, extreme violence, and fluorescent yellow; it has quiet, touching moments of warmth too," we read.

"It wasn’t until the end of that prologue (and a phenomenal spoilery sequence right after) that Cyberpunk 2077 really sank its hooks into me. It’s a slow walk to get there, but all that setup makes the scenario you are eventually thrust into that much more riveting, and after that it didn’t take long at all to get me fully invested in its larger story," writes IGN's editor.

"An optional objective in a mission may involve setting up an alternative meeting, or simply involve calling another character to check-in, but all of these have the potential to send objectives spinning in a widely different direction or uncover a hidden subplot that could influence your future choices. And it's here, deep in the grey between, that the real intrigue into Cyberpunk 2077's branching narrative gets into your psyche like the biochips that fuel these cybernetically-enhanced individuals," we read.

"Simply put, Night City is stunning, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen another video game city even close to it in scope or style. It’s gorgeous, rich in detail, and with a verticality and scale that’s genuinely amazing, all while still feeling like it could be a real place. No, you can’t just enter any building or go through every single floor of the ones you can – that’s not the unrealistically high bar it’s trying to hit. But there is still so much to see here, and so many different places for missions to send you. Districts can also be impressively varied visually, and even though a fast travel system is available I honestly felt like I was missing out by using it. We’ll see how long that lasts in the grand scheme of things, but this compact (but still very large) map layout works to Cyberpunk 2077’s advantage when a fast travel load screen might be only somewhat shorter than a drive anyway, and with a far worse view.

If there’s perhaps one thing I want you to take away from this preview, it’s how different Cyberpunk 2077 feels to play than many of the games it can be compared to. This is, without a shadow of a doubt, an RPG – and despite the FPS combat full of fancy weapons, its pace is otherwise slow and deliberate.

But even then, it’s not like other open world RPGs like Fallout 4 or The Witcher 3 thanks to one extremely important difference: combat is not an inherent part of travel. (...) Cyberpunk 2077 takes place in a city. A violent, dystopian nightmare of a city, sure, but still a city, meaning travel itself feels closer to something like GTA despite the structure around it feeling more like Fallout. As a result, I could sometimes go hours at a time without ever drawing a weapon, completing missions just by having conversations and sneaking around a bit. Fights can be found around almost any corner, with bounties to collect or gangs to attack at the drop of a hat, but you sort of have to go looking for trouble between big quest encounters if you want it instead of it coming to you naturally. It’s a crucial difference in the feel of this world, and one that feeds into how much its focus is truly on both story and player choice," we read.

"Combat itself is probably one of Cyberpunk 2077’s weaker points. It’s certainly not bad, but if you’re playing this like a straight FPS then you’ll probably be disappointed. The most jarring thing about it is that enemies have a surprising amount of health, often acting as bullet sponges that can take multiple point blank shots to the head before going down for good. This led me to prefer sneaky takedowns where I could manage them, but stealth on its own doesn’t have a ton of depth beyond finding the right moment to crouch walk up behind someone – though using Quickhacks to scout out enemies and set up those opportunities was a lot of fun.

Combat didn’t really start impressing me until midway through my second day, once I had unlocked a few more abilities and found a strategy I enjoyed. By the end of my playtime, I had a powerful rifle that could charge up shots and shoot through walls, as well as a legendary katana – I would sneak into a room, use a hack to reveal enemy positions, then get behind a wall and pick them off based on their hologram outlines alone, and if any ran at me I would swap to my sword and cut off their head. The spongy health bars were still there, but this strategy felt fantastic to me (and goodness gracious does the mid-fight music push the pace to even more exciting levels)," we read.

"A quality sword like the Black Unicorn, combined with these perks, makes wielding a blade in Cyberpunk 2077 incredibly satisfying and super effective. If you're careful, and use the environment to your advantage, you can clear out an entire facility of heavily armed soldiers without firing a shot. Throw hacking into the mix, disabling security cameras and rebooting optical implants to temporarily blind enemies, and you end up with more compelling reasons to keep your gun holstered and your sword unsheathed.

Of course, this is just one of countless ways to play Cyberpunk 2077. This is a deep RPG, and through perks, gear, and increasing your stats when you level up, you can tailor your V's build to fit around how you want to interact with Night City. If you prefer to shoot your way out of trouble, there's a whole suite of perks dedicated to that too. But while the shooting is great—the guns feel nicely weighty and powerful—once I'd sliced my way through a group of oblivious Maelstrom scavs with the Black Unicorn, it was swords all the way for me," we read.

"Cyberpunk 2077’s quest log is a big messy list, and figuring out which of your many quests to pursue next is a hassle for a few reasons: there’s no indication of the XP, money, items, or Street Cred a quest will reward; no sense of how difficult a quest will be beyond a vague “Danger” descriptor like “Moderate,” “High,” or “Very High,” when an actual level number would have let me decide if I should try to punch slightly above my weight or not; and there's little convenient way to tell what’s near you beyond tracking a quest and then tabbing over to the incredibly busy map to see if the waypoint is close by. Generally whatever I picked was enjoyable, but if it’s going to give me this many things to do then I wish there were better tools to inform my decisions about the order to do them," we read.

"I have a few criticisms. The on-rails shooting sections, usually involving someone driving a car and V hanging out of the window, firing at pursuing bikes, cars, and drones, feel clumsy and outdated, like a hangover from the previous generation. The number of jobs you have forced into your quest log, even if you didn't actively seek them out, can feel overwhelming. As someone who likes to keep a quest log pruned and manageable, I foresee a lot of headaches here. And the constant chatter—text messages, phone calls, and other audio distractions constantly competing for your attention—can be mentally exhausting. But honestly, that's about the worst I can say about Cyberpunk 2077 at this point," we read.

"Let's be clear about one thing: Cyberpunk 2077 makes a mistake typical of open-world games - it suggests an urgency that doesn't actually exist. Yes, I should do this and quickly so that something very bad does not happen "soon". But I can still do side tasks or swim through Pacifica at Pimpmobile. Or do more side tasks to afford the Pimpmobill in the first place," we read.

"After spending 16 hours with the game, I've only just hit Act 2, and only just started writing V's story, but the journey so far has been intoxicating. Anyone worried that Cyberpunk 2077 may be disappointing shouldn't be; this is a game that will surely surpass expectations," we read.

"I did Akira slides on motorcycles, hacked peoples' brains, stole more cool-looking futuristic cars than I can count, and ate synthmeat yakitori. I met dozens of eccentric characters, played factions against each other, drove beyond the city walls into the desert, made a few powerful enemies, and hung out with Keanu Reeves. A few things didn't quite land for me (more on that later), but after all this my desire to play the finished game is more powerful than ever," we read.

"I came away from my 16 hours with Cyberpunk 2077 hungry for more, and with the sense that it had certainly had more to feed that hunger. It’s rad as hell, a gorgeous world that you could get absolutely lost inside of in precisely the manner you choose to do so. It’s certainly not without its rough edges, especially when it comes to its menus, but those blemishes didn’t do much to stop what it does well from shining brightly. Even after two full days I feel like I’ve only barely started to see what’s here, and it only got more exciting the deeper I went," we read.

"If you were to force me to make some comparison with the past, I would say: Cyberpunk 2077 is closest to Deus Ex. It's only bigger, better staged, has even more branched stories, more details, more RPG elements and a more open world. This is the Deus Ex we always wanted. And because for some people (also for me) Deus Ex is one of the best games of all time, that's a big complimen, Michael Graf writes at the end of his preview.