Like many non-players I have experienced Cyberpunk 2077 mostly through news articles and Twitter posts. And I must say – this is possibly the best way to experience it.
I mean, look – I’ve heard of this game for years because many of my colleagues and friends are gamers. Everyone got all the hype! I had to postpone the end of the year package as I was project management to accommodate it.
But almost immediately after launch it was there drama: Sony pulled the game from its store and started offering refunds! Microsoft also offers refunds! So are Best Buy and Game Stop! Employees of the game’s producer, CD Projekt Red, rebel! If your file gets too big, it will get corrupted and useless! An epilepsy warning! DMCA strikes!
If there are two things I love, it’s drama and chaos, and boy does Cyberpunk 2077 offers both. There’s also this, which I thought was a joke, but when I read the tweets ’response, I realized it it was not a joke at all.
No one told me there is a part in Cyberpunk where Keanu Reeves ties your body to finger a woman in a car and thus causes a traffic accident
– merritt k (@merrittk) December 16, 2020
One of my friends bought it the day it came out and essentially went into a bunker to play it for a few days. He called it “a wonderful mess”, but also said that the weakest part is combat and “AI is stupid as brick.” Another can’t finish his Johnny side quest and is very angry about it. Which is not ironically angry: she desperate want to to meet Nancy at the goth club, but the NPC she has to talk to is not there. (As a condition of using her story, she also asked that I mention that Judy is her wife.)
Some of the drama around Cyberpunk is objective not fun at all: overworked developers and stereotypes about transgender people. Our sister site Polygon has gone so far as to post a standard disclaimer on every post about the game just because there is so much takes place here.
Prior to the release of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red faced journalists’ control over its way of working, 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 also faced criticism for its marketing – especially the use of a sexualized trans model in a promotional poster as well as the flippant tone used in much of the game’s advertising and social media.
This thing is a fucking failure! My main takeaway is that the people who will most enjoy this game are people who know and love many players, but are not players themselves. And for us, the best part of the game is mistakes.
We’ve put together some of our favorite bugs in a group chat, and I’ll now share them with you. Fair warning: some of these are not safe for work.
I have absolutely no way of proving this, but I swear to you that I shot an opponent in Cyberpunk 2077 with a non-lethal round and by hitting the ground, defeated, she transmuted into this courtyard. pic.twitter.com/jjCM9EcJhe
– Katie Tiedrich (@katietiedrich) December 15, 2020
(One note: when I shared the following clip in our group chat, one of my friends replied, “I KNOW EXACTLY the intersection.” Apparently, cars always explode there?)
I love this game. Never repair the faults. Also link to your favorite mistakes in the comments.