Cyberpunk 2077 is a game I've spent a lot (maybe too much) of hours on. It's an immersive experience that comes in many forms, but it's hard to deny that CD Projekt's strengths were properly leveraged: The characters with explicit narratives (Goro, Kerry, Judy, Panam, Johnny, River, Wakako, etc.) that you encounter are mostly coherent and interesting. You could fault them for getting too attached to the character, but isn't a little heroism necessary? Environmental storytelling is also very rich. If you get lost in the city streets, on its rooftops, or in abandoned buildings, you sometimes find the remnants of events that make the city feel alive. Some of these encounters are contracts, while others happen by chance during a simple stroll. This game also respects the continuity of events, as was the case in The Witcher 3. When something happens, its consequences affect the game, and some locations and environments change. I advise those who claim that CP2077 is the same after 10 hours or 100 hours of gameplay to pay more attention to the scenery, conversations, and announcements. Of course, Cyberpunk 2077 is far from perfect, even though the game has been extensively patched, stabilized, and so on. However, its ambition to immerse us in an ultra-immersive adventure in a Cyberpunk-era city makes its imperfections more noticeable than in a (also excellent) game like Pathfinder WotR, which was also in a sorry state at launch. Thus, the NPC clones, erratic traffic in the city at certain times, NPCs getting scared for no reason, or stealth occasionally behaving chaotically are unfortunately linked to the choices made to create this unique experience. CP2077 has the flaws of its ambitions, but few games can boast of offering us something that no other game has offered us so far: the incredible experience of a future we will never know but is worth knowing.
