Happy Life
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cyberpunk
The ultimate Witcher 3 with all its elements: bleakness, question marks, pseudo-dialogues, a schizophrenic main quest, a disgusting interface, auto-leveling gear, vomit-inducing role-playing system with nothing of substance – with percentages added to dreary effects instead of interesting progression.
However, there is an undeniable plus compared to the Witcher, which is that, firstly, it's a shooter – shooting is always more enjoyable than waving a drawn toothpick, and secondly, it's in first person.
Overall, I see several major serious problems with it.
The main one is that the world is utterly repulsive. From the point of view of traveling by car, in some areas, you can admit that the city is designed coolly, in the sense that when you look at the intricate patterns of urban dystopia in industrial zones, you feel that it could look like this in real life, and it really does look like it in Moscow, that is, serious attention has been paid to details, plus good graphics enhance this detail. But otherwise, the city is just a city, and it consists of typical houses, fences, garbage cans, vending machines, advertisements, and other repulsive modern junk that evokes nothing but fatigue and disdain.
The NPCs are extremely awful; I probably haven't seen such freaks anywhere else. Imagine all the possible mutants from Oblivion, dressed in completely random clothes, as if a schoolboy had gone wild in an MMORPG – he generated freaks and bought the most eye-watering cosmetics for them. And the saddest thing is that this really feels like a very likely scenario for the near future of human civilization – in this sense, it's immersive, but not in the way I would have liked.
In general, I couldn't spend a single minute trying to walk around the city, look at the NPCs, and the world, but I just rushed along the marker, just to avoid seeing this nightmare.
An additional sub-problem stems from the previous one – because of this, there is no desire to delve into the intricacies of the relationships between the NPC freaks, read useless thousands of notes (I didn't read a single one during the entire game – I tried a couple of times, but I dropped it almost instantly out of boredom, it's completely generic and dull), think about the details of quests or one and a half moral dilemmas, and so on – being in the world won't become more pleasant because of this.
In addition to this, the developers are trying in the most clumsy ways to force unnecessary and awkward lore – for example, you can click on the portrait of a character, which will be indicated on the diary page with the text next to the corresponding quest, and it will give you his picture with a quote – who he is, what he did. Why is this needed – it's unclear, the NPCs are completely awful, you'll look at many of them for only about 15 minutes, and this information doesn't give you anything. Another clumsy method is when you are in a quest dialogue, when taking or completing a quest, after you have just had a serious conversation about a robbery or some other vital things, you can additionally ask one or two questions of the level "well, are you still watching boxing?" and the NPC will answer you "yes, today Ivan Ivanovich is against Peter Petrovich, how he knocked him out with one left hook, uuu" – that is, it should create the impression that you are like acquaintances or friends, and as if you are having an immersive dialogue, during which one line from the quote will be retold to you in this form of a thesis, but again – it's done in a mega-clumsy way, and it's unclear why I should be interested in this.
Another major drawback is that the plot is small, commensurate with the setting. The individual elements and concept of it appeal to me more – if you compare it with the same Blade Runner, then in the Blade Runner films, a completely hackneyed, boring, and banal idea is brought to the forefront, which can be conveyed in any possible setting, and not just in a cyberpunk setting (I haven't read the book, but a friend who read it claims that there the replicant theme was only one of the concepts in the plot, and in the rest there was a lot of everything diverse, unlike the films, where it is presented as the only thing worth paying attention to). What is shown in Cyberpunk – at least fits more or less into what I am personally willing to expect from such a setting, but I don't like the presentation. The excessive amount of cinema – it's not just watching half-hour cutscenes in first person, but "interactive" cutscenes, where you need to slowly follow the NPC down the street during a dialogue, and even press X at some moments to move further in the dialogue – it's incredibly annoying. Absolutely unnecessary, vague Keanu Reeves, on whom 90% of the budget was spent, mumbling something under his breath, with disgusting relationships with his friends, which you have to figure out and watch a movie.
Moreover, individual moments of the main plot or even side quests are very, very good – atmospheric, with interesting events and concepts, sometimes raising interesting questions, generally feeling like 8-8.5/10 and clearly stand out from the overall Far Cry-GTA-like form factor that we have in the end. Here, the thought arises that these may be preserved elements from the original concept of the game – that is, the Cyberpunk 2077 that was promised and announced long before the marketing machinations completely reworked its concept ten times. If the whole game was like these individual moments, it would be excellent, but there are only one or two of these moments.
And, in addition to the problems mentioned above, you can just throw into the heap all that was listed in the very first sentence. Bland progression; trash dialogues; "content" in the form of question marks/collectibles; driving a car is so repulsive that you feel like you're on a flying carpet, regardless of the make of the car.
The interface and ergonomics are non-existent concepts – imagine that you have 10 types of grenades that are thrown by pressing the mouse wheel, plus an implant like knives on the same button, and the only way to switch between them is to go into the inventory and drag another grenade into that slot. Or here's another joke – you shot an enemy at close range, pressed R to reload the weapon, and instead of reloading, your character picked up the weapon of the killed enemy, because R is also to pick up a weapon from a corpse.
In addition, there are completely useless merchants and weapon customization – why bother with this if in 10 minutes a new random bandit on the street will drop a gun that is simply better in all parameters than your customized legendary one?
Otherwise, despite all this, you can run around and shoot if you like shooters – the shooting itself is done pleasantly. I especially liked that many subtle moral questions can be solved with lead, which, of course, may cause some kind of shock in some NPCs, but in general it is very suitable for the game and the setting, in my opinion.
Overall, I would rate it a solid seven or a weak seven and a half.
The ultimate Witcher 3 with all its elements: bleakness, question marks, pseudo-dialogues, a schizophrenic main quest, a disgusting interface, auto-leveling gear, vomit-inducing role-playing system with nothing of substance – with percentages added to dreary effects instead of interesting progression.
However, there is an undeniable plus compared to the Witcher, which is that, firstly, it's a shooter – shooting is always more enjoyable than waving a drawn toothpick, and secondly, it's in first person.
Overall, I see several major serious problems with it.
The main one is that the world is utterly repulsive. From the point of view of traveling by car, in some areas, you can admit that the city is designed coolly, in the sense that when you look at the intricate patterns of urban dystopia in industrial zones, you feel that it could look like this in real life, and it really does look like it in Moscow, that is, serious attention has been paid to details, plus good graphics enhance this detail. But otherwise, the city is just a city, and it consists of typical houses, fences, garbage cans, vending machines, advertisements, and other repulsive modern junk that evokes nothing but fatigue and disdain.
The NPCs are extremely awful; I probably haven't seen such freaks anywhere else. Imagine all the possible mutants from Oblivion, dressed in completely random clothes, as if a schoolboy had gone wild in an MMORPG – he generated freaks and bought the most eye-watering cosmetics for them. And the saddest thing is that this really feels like a very likely scenario for the near future of human civilization – in this sense, it's immersive, but not in the way I would have liked.
In general, I couldn't spend a single minute trying to walk around the city, look at the NPCs, and the world, but I just rushed along the marker, just to avoid seeing this nightmare.
An additional sub-problem stems from the previous one – because of this, there is no desire to delve into the intricacies of the relationships between the NPC freaks, read useless thousands of notes (I didn't read a single one during the entire game – I tried a couple of times, but I dropped it almost instantly out of boredom, it's completely generic and dull), think about the details of quests or one and a half moral dilemmas, and so on – being in the world won't become more pleasant because of this.
In addition to this, the developers are trying in the most clumsy ways to force unnecessary and awkward lore – for example, you can click on the portrait of a character, which will be indicated on the diary page with the text next to the corresponding quest, and it will give you his picture with a quote – who he is, what he did. Why is this needed – it's unclear, the NPCs are completely awful, you'll look at many of them for only about 15 minutes, and this information doesn't give you anything. Another clumsy method is when you are in a quest dialogue, when taking or completing a quest, after you have just had a serious conversation about a robbery or some other vital things, you can additionally ask one or two questions of the level "well, are you still watching boxing?" and the NPC will answer you "yes, today Ivan Ivanovich is against Peter Petrovich, how he knocked him out with one left hook, uuu" – that is, it should create the impression that you are like acquaintances or friends, and as if you are having an immersive dialogue, during which one line from the quote will be retold to you in this form of a thesis, but again – it's done in a mega-clumsy way, and it's unclear why I should be interested in this.
Another major drawback is that the plot is small, commensurate with the setting. The individual elements and concept of it appeal to me more – if you compare it with the same Blade Runner, then in the Blade Runner films, a completely hackneyed, boring, and banal idea is brought to the forefront, which can be conveyed in any possible setting, and not just in a cyberpunk setting (I haven't read the book, but a friend who read it claims that there the replicant theme was only one of the concepts in the plot, and in the rest there was a lot of everything diverse, unlike the films, where it is presented as the only thing worth paying attention to). What is shown in Cyberpunk – at least fits more or less into what I am personally willing to expect from such a setting, but I don't like the presentation. The excessive amount of cinema – it's not just watching half-hour cutscenes in first person, but "interactive" cutscenes, where you need to slowly follow the NPC down the street during a dialogue, and even press X at some moments to move further in the dialogue – it's incredibly annoying. Absolutely unnecessary, vague Keanu Reeves, on whom 90% of the budget was spent, mumbling something under his breath, with disgusting relationships with his friends, which you have to figure out and watch a movie.
Moreover, individual moments of the main plot or even side quests are very, very good – atmospheric, with interesting events and concepts, sometimes raising interesting questions, generally feeling like 8-8.5/10 and clearly stand out from the overall Far Cry-GTA-like form factor that we have in the end. Here, the thought arises that these may be preserved elements from the original concept of the game – that is, the Cyberpunk 2077 that was promised and announced long before the marketing machinations completely reworked its concept ten times. If the whole game was like these individual moments, it would be excellent, but there are only one or two of these moments.
And, in addition to the problems mentioned above, you can just throw into the heap all that was listed in the very first sentence. Bland progression; trash dialogues; "content" in the form of question marks/collectibles; driving a car is so repulsive that you feel like you're on a flying carpet, regardless of the make of the car.
The interface and ergonomics are non-existent concepts – imagine that you have 10 types of grenades that are thrown by pressing the mouse wheel, plus an implant like knives on the same button, and the only way to switch between them is to go into the inventory and drag another grenade into that slot. Or here's another joke – you shot an enemy at close range, pressed R to reload the weapon, and instead of reloading, your character picked up the weapon of the killed enemy, because R is also to pick up a weapon from a corpse.
In addition, there are completely useless merchants and weapon customization – why bother with this if in 10 minutes a new random bandit on the street will drop a gun that is simply better in all parameters than your customized legendary one?
Otherwise, despite all this, you can run around and shoot if you like shooters – the shooting itself is done pleasantly. I especially liked that many subtle moral questions can be solved with lead, which, of course, may cause some kind of shock in some NPCs, but in general it is very suitable for the game and the setting, in my opinion.
Overall, I would rate it a solid seven or a weak seven and a half.
Title
My sword, my trusted ally, unphased by my aspect.
