When Cyberpunk 2077 had its massive redemption arc due to post-launch patches and the Edgerunners anime, I scoffed—this sport was all the time this good, glitches or last-gen console efficiency however, however these vaunted updates by no means fairly received 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 all the time 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 primary programs” of the large RPG as having been “redone or up to date in a significant approach” for upcoming enlargement Phantom Liberty.
Sasko says that the sport’s enemy AI and particularly the NCPD will probably be overhauled, and he described a number of alert ranges and a higher number of models from the cops that sound extra in step 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 very good noodle and by no means received in sufficient hassle to note.
The extra engaging proposition for me is what Sasko mentioned of upcoming modifications for character constructing: “The most important [main system changes] are the perks and ability timber, which have been rebuilt utterly.” Whereas Cyberpunk affords this dizzying array of viable playstyles for V, a variety of the ability timber behind them boil right down to “+3% headshot essential hit likelihood whereas airborne”-style nonsense. Capturing, hacking, slicing, or sneaking by means of Night time Metropolis feels nice, however constructing V to take action has all the time been stultifying. A screenshot shared by jordgoin to the Cyberpunk subreddit reveals a extra linear agility perk tree that just about jogs my memory of Dragon Age Inquisition, a sport with superb perks and sophistication skills.
The tidbit that almost all set my thoughts on hearth although, was what Sasko advised VGC about candy, candy loot: “We’ve additionally redone the loop and entire development of the sport—the issue curve is totally different, the tiers and drops of loot is totally different, the archetypes of enemies have been redone for extra selection.”
I’ve all the time discovered Cyberpunk’s gear economic 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 sport the place it simply does not match within the first place.
As a substitute of say, Skyrim or Fallout: New Vegas, the place stage adjustment falls into broad tiers of energy—9mm pistols and iron daggers at one finish, anti-materiel rifles and Daedric greatswords on the different—each piece of substances in Cyberpunk has a level-adjusted quantity hooked up to it figuring out its injury or injury resistance. The end result, for me, was spending approach an excessive amount of time pouring over slight variations in injury and injury per second between barely totally different variations of the identical revolver. Worst of all was getting a cool, distinctive weapon and having it get rapidly outmoded by frequent drops as soon as I might leveled up a few times.
I need the Byakko distinctive katana (with mega lunging assault motion!) that I received as a present for changing into BFFs with black widow underworld kingpin Wakako Okada to be the most effective rattling katana within the sport. I definitely don’t desire it to be out-damaged by a generic “unusual” sword I discover within the fingers 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 Means” attribute that permits you to achieve this. I am a hacker cyborg ninja, rattling it, not a gearhead!
It received to the purpose that on my newest playthrough I used a mod to simply auto-upgrade all weapons and armor on level-up. This, nevertheless, borked the sport’s entire 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 injury and injury discount stats to obfuscate it.
We nonetheless do not have particulars on what Cyberpunk’s programs overhaul will entail, and even how a lot will probably be coated 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.