When Cyberpunk 2077 had its large redemption arc because of post-launch patches and the Edgerunners anime, I scoffed—this recreation was at all times this good, glitches or last-gen console efficiency however, however these vaunted updates by no means fairly bought at the actual malaise on the coronary heart of its RPG system: character constructing and kit that by no means felt substantial or rewarding, and at all times served as extra of a drag on Cyberpunk’s nice fight, stealth, and storytelling.
A post-Summer season Sport Fest interview by VGC, although, has my hopes up: inventive director Pawel Sisko and quest designer Despoina Anetaki described “all of the core foremost programs” of the huge RPG as having been “redone or up to date in a serious method” for upcoming enlargement Phantom Liberty.
Sasko says that the sport’s enemy AI and particularly the NCPD shall be overhauled, and he described a number of alert ranges and a higher number of models from the cops that sound extra consistent with the Grand Theft Auto video games. That definitely sounds good, however the police AI in Cyberpunk by no means bugged me the best way it appeared to grate on everybody else—perhaps I am simply an excessive amount of of a great noodle and by no means bought in sufficient hassle to note.
The extra engaging proposition for me is what Sasko stated of upcoming modifications for character constructing: “The most important [main system changes] are the perks and talent bushes, which have been rebuilt utterly.” Whereas Cyberpunk presents this dizzying array of viable playstyles for V, lots of the talent bushes behind them boil right down to “+3% headshot vital hit probability whereas airborne”-style nonsense. Capturing, hacking, slicing, or sneaking by Night time Metropolis feels nice, however constructing V to take action has at all times been stultifying. A screenshot shared by jordgoin to the Cyberpunk subreddit exhibits a extra linear agility perk tree that just about jogs my memory of Dragon Age Inquisition, a recreation with superb perks and sophistication talents.
The tidbit that the majority set my thoughts on fireplace although, was what Sasko instructed VGC about candy, candy loot: “We’ve additionally redone the loop and complete development of the sport—the issue curve is completely different, the tiers and drops of loot is completely different, the archetypes of enemies have been redone for extra selection.”
I’ve at all times discovered Cyberpunk’s gear financial system to be a majorly-underrated drag on the entire expertise, a worst of all worlds tackle the looter shooter/stay service “numbers go up” deluge of gray, inexperienced, blue, and purple drops utilized to a single-player recreation the place it simply would not match within the first place.
As an alternative of say, Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas, the place degree adjustment falls into broad tiers of energy—9mm pistols and iron daggers at one finish, anti-materiel rifles and Daedric greatswords on the different—every bit of substances in Cyberpunk has a level-adjusted quantity hooked up to it figuring out its harm or harm resistance. The consequence, for me, was spending method an excessive amount of time pouring over slight variations in harm and harm per second between barely completely different variations of the identical revolver. Worst of all was getting a cool, distinctive weapon and having it get shortly outmoded by frequent drops as soon as I would leveled up a couple of times.
I need the Byakko distinctive katana (with mega lunging assault motion!) that I bought as a present for turning into BFFs with black widow underworld kingpin Wakako Okada to be the very best rattling katana within the recreation. I definitely don’t need it to be out-damaged by a generic “unusual” sword I discover within the palms of a random goon two hours later, and I do not need my solely recourse for upgrading cool stuff to be modifying my total character construct to spec into the “Technical Capability” attribute that allows you to achieve this. I am a hacker cyborg ninja, rattling it, not a gearhead!
It bought to the purpose that on my newest playthrough I used a mod to simply auto-upgrade all weapons and armor on level-up. This, nonetheless, borked the sport’s complete issue curve and I grabbed one other mod to crank issues up previous Very Onerous to compensate for all that freely-available max-level gear. Even then, all of it served to indicate how mechanically shallow Cyberpunk’s gear system was with out ballooning level-adjusted harm and harm discount stats to obfuscate it.
We nonetheless do not have particulars on what Cyberpunk’s programs overhaul will entail, and even how a lot shall be lined by a free replace this September or locked behind Phantom Liberty. What I hope, although, is that CD Projekt will lastly ship RPG mechanics that match the standard of Cyberpunk’s quests, world, and storytelling.
