Like many non-players, I experienced Cyberpunk 2077 mainly through news articles and Twitter posts. And I have to say – this is possibly the best way to experience this.
I mean, look – I’ve been hearing about this game for years, because a lot of my co-workers and friends are players. Everyone was excited! I had to delay the year-end package I was managing to accommodate it.
But almost immediately after launch, there was drama: Sony removed the game from its store and started offering a refund! Microsoft is also offering refunds! Just like Best Buy and Game Stop! The employees of the game’s creator, CD Projekt Red, are outraged! If your file gets too big, it will be corrupted and useless! A warning of epilepsy! DMCA Attacks!
If there are two things I love, they are drama and chaos, and man, Cyberpunk 2077 offers both. There’s also this, which I thought was a joke, but when I read the replies to the tweet, I realized it was not a joke.
Nobody told me that there is a part in Cyberpunk where Keanu Reeves pushes his body to pick up a woman in a car, causing a traffic accident
– merritt k (@merrittk) December 16, 2020
One of my friends bought it the day it was released and basically went to a bunker to play for a few days. He called it “a wonderful mess”, but he also said that the weakest part is combat and “AI is dumb as bricks”. Another is unable to finish her Johnny side mission and is very angry about it. Like, not ironically angry: she desperately would you like to find Nancy at the Gothic club, but the NPC she should be talking to is not there. (Also, as a condition of using her story, she asked me to mention that Judy is his wife.)
A little bit of drama around Cyberpunk is objectively nothing funny: overworked developers and stereotypes about trans people. Our sister site Polygon went so far as to post a standard notice on every post about the game, just because there are very going on here.
Before the launch of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red faced scrutiny from reporters for their work practices, especially with regard to “crunch”, a term that refers to long overtime that lasts weeks or months. Despite previous promises to the contrary, the company imposed mandatory crunch on some employees. Cyberpunk 2077 he also faced criticism for his marketing – in particular, the use of a trans sexualized model in a promotional poster, as well as the petulant tone used in much of the game’s advertising and on social media.
This thing is a fucking fiasco! My main lesson is that the people who will most like this game are those who know and love many players, but are not themselves players. And for us, the best part of the game is the flaws.
We are collecting some of our favorite faults in a group chat and now I will share them with you. Fair warning: some of these are not safe for work.
I have absolutely no way of proving it, but I swear I shot an opponent in Cyberpunk 2077 with a non-lethal shot and upon hitting the ground, defeated, it transmuted into this patio setting. pic.twitter.com/jjCM9EcJhe
– Katie Tiedrich (@katietiedrich) December 15, 2020
(A note: when I shared the following clip in our group chat, one of my friends replied, “I know EXACTLY the intersection.” Apparently, do cars always explode there?)
I love this game. Never fix bugs. Also, link to your favorite faults in the comments.