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There are a lot of things you can say about CD Projekt Red’s latest release, Cyberpunk
2077.
It represents probably the biggest divide between different platform releases in years,
meaning that a vast amount of people, at the time of writing at least, won’t be able
to see anywhere close to the very real potential I believe this game has (I mean, just as I
was about to record this Sony announced they’re issuing full refunds and taking it off the
PlayStation Store?
It’s been a while since we’ve seen a situation quite like this).
The glitches, even on my new PC, put recent Fallout titles to shame, and it sucks because
the developers that clearly worked insanely hard on this stuff are now bearing the brunt
of the business decisions that led to the game being released in such an unfinished
state.
Why this wasn’t delayed further baffles me to no end, and I can totally understand
the impulse of disappointedly requesting a refund if that stuff was too much for you,
even if, for me—the guy that made that Star Citizen video last year—I’ve grown a remarkably
high tolerance for this kind of thing.
In terms of the the fundamentals of the game’s design though, the stuff that’s harder to
fix—ya know, no game could possibly live up to the almost decade of hype Cyberpunk
has garnered.
Turns out my prediction, after seeing the behind-closed-doors demo a couple of years
back at Gamescom, that this would be GTA by way of modern Deus Ex was pretty damn accurate—that
is to say, little that we haven’t seen before.
And you know what?
Despite all this, the game’s many, many flaws…
I still really enjoyed it.
It’s maybe not the kind of commentary people are looking to hear right now, but beneath
these technical monstrosities lies a real heart to Cyberpunk that really resonated with
me; one that I hope to convince you of here by breaking down one scene in particular.
Far removed from the grand heists and shootouts you perform in massive corpo skyscrapers,
this isn’t some massive world-altering event here—but in the vein of the developer’s
previous work, it’s something much smaller in scale, a side mission.
To be precise, it’s a gig in a dive bar.
On the surface, at least, it seems relatively minor at best and downright corny at worst,
but when you consider the context surrounding it and its implications for these characters,
I was shocked by how well this one scene takes everything I found so captivating about the
game’s personality—using glorious shlock to get to something much deeper, more human—and
manages to distill all of that into the length of a Refused song (and heads up I will be
spoiling this side mission from here on out so here’s your chance to delta if you need
to).
It’s kind of absurd that this scene works as well as it does.
Towards the end of the main quest, your long-dead asshole brain pal Johnny Silverhand decides
to get his old band Samurai back together for one more night of rockin’ out, doing
sick solos and throwing up the devil horns in exactly the same way he did fifty years
ago.
He’s a charicature of the hard-partying rocker dude that also happens to be a gun-slinging
fightin’ guy, as if he could be more ripped from the pages of a thirteen-year-old’s
diary.
And for sure, his character fits well with the almost grindhouse vibes of the game’s
general tone, reflecting the fact that this is a very accurate reproduction of what an
80’s tabletop game considered cool for the time (I mean, it bears repeating—this game’s
mascot is a bullet belt-clad dude named Johnny Silverhand, it’s one step away from Duke
Nukem).
There is absolutely fun to be had with that kind of juvenile indulgence in a video game.
But contrary to what many of the takes I’ve seen seem to suggest about Silverhand in particular,
there’s way more to it than that.
While CDPR’s business reputation has been in a state of turbulence of late shall we
say, there’s no denying that, well, they still know how to write a damn good story
when they want to.
See, this whole scenario is not some hollow celebration of Johnny’s debaucherous escapades
over the years; in fact, it’s kinda the opposite.
It’s the culmination of a series of uncomfortable confrontations between Johnny and everyone
around him but most notably with himself; fleshing out this charicature by really forcing
him to interrogate his own bullshit in a way that I totally did not expect.
And it all starts pretty late into the relationship between Johnny and player character V.
After all this time of Johnny butting in to moan at you about how lame your plans are
or something, you’ve started to notice the hostility between the two lessen somewhat,
to the point that Johnny feels comfortable making a final request before his presence
leads to host V’s untimely death—finish off Adam Smasher, the fucker that gutted Silverhand
half a century ago.
And so you team up with your fixer, Johnny’s former flame to get right back to what he
started, infiltrating and killing your way to the info you need… only to find that
the dude in question is pretty much untouchable now, that he’s likely long since moved past
caring about anything to do with Johnny Silverhand.
What you do get, though, is the location of Johnny’s body.
And so you take a lengthy drive out to the middle of nowhere.
What you find isn’t the flower covered, well kept shrine you’d expect for such a
well known rockstar; instead you find him unceremoniously dumped in a junkyard without
so much as a marking to signify his final resting place.
Perhaps it’s the view of Night City in the background, churning away like nothing ever
happened, but it’s here that Johnny’s final request of V takes a turn for something
more personal, reflective.
Johnny was supposed to triumphantly take revenge here, tying everything up in a neat little
bow and emerging as the lone hero of the tale, but suddenly and unapologetically confronts
him with the fact that such a heroic narrative doesn’t jive with the myriad loose ends
he has left in his wake—the friends that he consistently fucked over with his destructive
habits, under the guise of some noble desire to change the world that no one else could
understand, man—that all ultimately amounted to a need to feel superior to those around
him—denying the very real help offered to him at every turn, and berating those offering
it as weak.
It’s a pretty striking thing to see this ghost go from a single-minded selfish asshole
to realising that, for all his bluster about how you as a player couldn’t possibly live
up to his rebellious ideals, that you’re the only person he’s got left (and given
how he’s treated you, it’s certainly not by choice).
And what follows is pretty surreal.
Johnny asks to use V’s body to, well, check in on his buddies and former bandmates—leaving
them unsure of how to react; he goes on a date through V, he reminisces about the good
old days, all while these people are left reeling as to what the fuck is even happening,
how this stranger is somehow channeling the musical abilities and personality of their
late friend, why he’s decided to show up now after 50 goddamn years—a period of time
that hasn’t exactly been kind to these individuals.
You see frontman Kerry, a money-making machine for the corpo record label that could be dropped
at any time for a more profitable model; keyboardist Nance has changed her name, attempting to
distance herself from her past and establish a career in investigative journalism, trying
and failing to get a scoop on what’s new in her former field and having to suffer a
great many fools in order to do so.
People have either moved onto an unfulfilling new identity or they’ve remained in a depressing
state of arrested development—targeting each other as outlets for their misplaced
rage rather than the corps they used to so angrily fight against.
And while Kerry is the only one to know that it’s actually Johnny in V’s head rather
than some young upstart looking to just fill in on guitar, you’re constantly reminded
that all of this existential anguish is anchored to Silverhand—the figurehead of their collective
identity whose initial charisma lured them all in, gave them some kind of purpose, before
he treated them all like shit and bailed; his sudden death leaving those close to him
entirely in the lurch, unable to process what to do next—unable to move on.
Which brings us onto the gig, suggested by Kerry.
It’s at once a chance for these people to affirm who they actually are, say the “fuck
yous” they never got to say, both to each other and Johnny, whether directly or otherise;
but also, mourn him; gaining some kind of closure on all of this stuff they were forced
to live with for half a century, realising that if anything the world is worse now than
it ever was.
It’s a mess of unprocessed emotions on the parts of everyone involved, directed at everyone
involved—guilt, joy, nostalgia, anger—which is what makes this outwardly cheesy representation
of a dive bar punk show, devil horns and all, feel somewhat less contrived—like the genre
itself, this gig represents a need for general catharsis; a venting of anger that is otherwise
difficult to direct at one particular target.
And, sure, it is kinda corny but it was this context, these layers of meaning, that completely
sold me on it nonetheless—I was headbanging along as if I were on the stage myself, trying
to put on a show for the crowd while realising just how important this moment is for these
characters.
And it doesn’t end with everything somehow solved, these people will still struggle for
a long time.
But this gig, this collective catharsis at least gives them a glimmer of hope that progress
is possible.
Which brings me onto why this scene so stuck with me.
It’s a microcosm of the game’s wider theme of legacy—of characters desperately trying
to find some means of leaving a mark, some reason to keep going when the world is so
desperate to crush their very beings into dust.
And while some have been quick to write off the game’s story as cynical bullshit, I
came away from my time with Cyberpunk wondering if I played the same game these people did—because,
more than anything else, I was taken aback by just how… hopeful it all is.
The core of V’s character is exactly this conundrum—coming to terms with the inevitability
of their demise; considering whether it’s even possible to leave a mark in what little
time they have left; all while directly witnessing the results of Johnny projecting his bullshit
ego at every opportunity so as to be noticed and remembered—ultimately, he finds himself
dumped in an unmarked grave in the middle of fucking nowhere.
Turns out though, this contrast between the two characters shows that it doesn’t take
much to leave that mark; through just existing and helping people in their times of need
as you do so often in the game’s side quests, you find that towards the end of the main
game, regardless of whether you’ve affected the corporate structure of Night City in any
meaningful way… you suddenly have a whole host of characters who have benefited from
you just being around; who call and check up on you; who want to hang out because your
presence makes their lives better in some small way—makes them feel safer, makes them
laugh, encourages them to open up to you in a way that they never could previously.
If you can do this, if you can make the lives of those close to you just a little bit better,
then that’s something worth embracing and fighting for in such an otherwise uncaring,
hostile world.
Who knows, maybe the cumulative effect of all those meaningful personal connections
might have a greater impact than you likely envisioned.
And what’s so crucial about this, about this gig, about the whole game… is that
it’s never too late.
The brazen shlock of this world—its garish advertising, loud music, louder fashion and
the crassness of its denizens—gives the writers the opportunity to make the point
that, if even this Bullshit Rocker Dude—this long-dead Bullshit Rocker Dude in a different
brain and body to his own—is capable of reflection and some semblance of positive
change—connecting more deeply to those around him— then what the hell’s stopping you?
And, ya know, for all the game’s instability and bugs, there’s something wild to me about
the fact that this is such a crucial part of the story to me, that you can totally miss
if you just mainline the critical path.
It’s a three minute sequence that goes to the absolutely insane effort to more or less
accurately animate Johnny’s fingers playing the correct frets.
And while obviously there’s always the unfortunate possibility that this attention to detail
was realised through unhealthy and unfair work scheduling, this scene was still an indicator
that, for as much anger and hatred as the game is generating right now, fantastically
written, detailed and emotionally complicated scenes like this are exactly why I love CDPR’s
previous games so much; and why, around the time it’s actually fuckin’ finished, I
hope Cyberpunk gets another chance to resonate with people like it did with me.
I’d like to sincerely thank my patrons here—as I stated at the start it’s your continued
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I’ll have one more video coming out before the end of the year, as well as the annual
bumper game of the year deliberations on the Writing on GamesCast.
These things often go for upwards of ten hours or something, it’s crazy.
I know, especially this year, the holiday season is going to be tough for a lot of people,
and it’s my hope that, in some extremely minor way, I could maybe help a little bit
by just producing tons of video and content and podcasts for you to consume during these
tough winter days.
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Tommy Carver Chaplin, Dr. Motorcycle, HamMigas, Shardfire, Rob, Ana Pimentel, Jessie Rine,
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So yeah, link to the podcast in the description, this has been Writing on Games, thank you
so much for watching, I really hope you’re doing OK, and I will see you all next time.