Cyberpunk 2077 blew us away at E3. The awesome in-engine trailer shown on Microsoft’s stage sent our hype flying through the roof, and then the behind-closed-doors (BCD) demo confirmed that CDPR’s next project is on course to completely reset the benchmark for open world RPGs. If you’ve read our preview, one of the key takeaways was just how ambitious the design looks to be. Cyberpunk appears to be ditching many of the tropes we’ve become accustomed to in the genre and striving to create something much more immersive.
No surprises, then, that despite our massive enthusiasm for the project, we’re a little skeptical about a few aspects of its design. Having watched 50 minutes of the alpha footage showcased at E3, we’re reviewing some of those concerns below.
Driving
Even though the demo that we saw at E3 2018 was an alpha build of Cyberpunk 2077, it looked extremely polished. But before you go thinking that means the game is right around the corner, it’s worth pointing out that BCD demos are hardly ever scenes pulled from the main development of the game. Instead, they’re a polished vertical slice honed specifically for presentation.
That makes analyzing demo footage problematic. On the one hand, there’s every reason to expect improvements in the final release. On the other, what we’re being shown is almost representative of an idyllic version of the game; in other words, exactly what the developer hopes the entire game turns out to look like. And if the latter is the case here, the driving in Cyberpunk 2077 has us a little worried. Everything we saw during the gameplay demo impressed us except for the vehicular traversal. It looked amateurish compared to open world games such as GTAV and Watch Dogs.
Indeed, the controls seemed rather stiff in terms of the physics that dictated the car’s movement and maneuverability. Driving appeared very much as “this is how you move from point A to point B,” rather than actually being exciting to handle. And the car noise itself sounded more like a tin-can than a grunty V8—a minor detail for some, perhaps, but for our money, there’s nothing that spoils immersion than hearing a car cycle through 100 gears to the generic hum of “any old engine,” which was exactly the case during the demo.
One other thing that did catch our eye was the way in which areas were interconnected via freeways. These were more like set tracks, and the game didn’t seem to allow for players to drive anywhere they pleased. Perhaps that will change in time, but it also may be the case that CDPR has considered the extent to which driving would have to play in designing the open world if that level of freedom was granted to the player. Night City just didn’t look like the sort of place you could tear around in a car; as if designing that into the game wouldn’t suit the level of detail and clutter it presents. That might disappoint some players, but it also might prove a suitable omission to better convey the context of the environment: do you really want to be running pedestrians over and doing high-speed jumps in the gritty dystopia of Night City?
Ultimately, we’ll just have to see as to whether driving in Cyberpunk 2077 ends up being a laborious necessity or something that’s actually exciting to undertake.
The Dialogue and Writing
CDPR deservedly received a lot of praise for the writing that comprised the many, many lines of dialogue in The Witcher 3. Narrative and quest design were one of the big pillars that set Geralt’s open world adventure apart from other games in the genre; every contract and side quest felt as though it had a purpose and a genuinely interesting reason to exist. We’re expecting the same of Cyberpunk 2077, but that’s already looking like an uphill battle.
If you weren’t already up to speed, a fairly substantial number of CDPR employees opted to leave the studio following the launch of The Witcher 3. Many of them from the narrative team. They would have been replaced with talented staff, no doubt, but it’s worth noting that Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t going to be written by the same group of individuals. That slightly throws into question whether the narrative will be as solid this time around. And, indeed, what we heard during the demo maybe wasn’t quite as up to scratch as we’d expected.
Don’t get us wrong, it wasn’t substandard, but it was very, well, cyberpunk-y. By that we mean there’s a lot of cliched, slightly cheesy 80s dialogue, which does well to represent the source material but maybe won’t be all that compelling to listen to for 100 hours. Of course, we only saw 50 minutes, but hopefully, the characters and the dialogue that brings them to life is a bit more engaging than the corny banter we heard during the presentation.
Bullet Sponge Enemies
Any time guns and role-playing is combined in an experience that puts shooting right at the center of gameplay, there’s a cause for concern. It doesn’t feel natural. There’s something strange and frustrating about unloading clips of ammunition into an enemy that you just don’t feel as much with swordplay. It’s a realism thing, perhaps; it’s easier to accept that an enemy can endure a few slashes and stabs before hitting the deck, but an entire clip of a pistol? Not to mention, it’s so much less tedious striking an enemy with a melee weapon than it is shooting – there’s something in the mind that’s based on everything we know about guns: one-shot should mean curtains, and when that doesn’t happen, it’s irritating.
There are very few games that have got around this with any great success. The amount of ammo required to down some of Ubisoft’s The Division bosses bordered on parody. And although role-playing shooters such as the Mass Effect trilogy pulled it off, the far-flung futuristic setting somehow made it easier to stomach—laser zappers and high-tech body armor explain away having to shoot enemies 20 times before they fall.
Cyberpunk 2077 isn’t the same; everything feels grounded in a somewhat believable future, and firearms shoot very loud and weighty bullets. We saw some awesome gunplay during the demo, showcasing inventive ways of taking down enemies that looked more compelling than conventional shooting. Shotgunning an enemy’s legs, for example, and then blowing their head off as they fell forward. Powerful Cyberware abilities dispatched grunts in a single swipe on many an occasion, too. But there were signs of bullet sponge when using lesser caliber firearms and versus some heavier looking enemies that had us raising an eyebrow. Sure, many of the foes we’re likely to take on in Cyberpunk 2077 will be jacked up to the max with Cyberware and augmentations, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be fun unloading 30 rounds of ammo to bring them down. Let’s hope CDPR finds a way to make gunplay challenging without resorting to upping armor levels to silly levels.
Performance on PS4 and Xbox One
Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t the prettiest game I saw at E3 2018, but it wasn’t far off, and it was certainly the most ambitious in terms of scale and scope. When you combine high fidelity graphics with a massively detailed open world —seriously, one of the most detailed I’ve ever seen— it’s going to put some serious strain on the hardware that’s running it. As it turns out, the demo we saw was running on a very powerful PC, indeed. So powerful, in fact, that had a vanilla PS4 attempted to run the demo, it would have probably made a very loud roar, crashed, and then caught fire. Is Cyberpunk 2077 really a current-gen game, as CDPR seems confident that it is? Or more importantly, if they are able to make it suitable for the current generation, how well is likely to run at all?
Of course, it’s far too soon to start doom-mongering about performance. But I’m quite sure that half the reason CDPR opted for a BCD demo over a full-scale gameplay presentation to the public was so as not to open themselves up for a similar backlash over possible future graphical downgrades, as was the case with The Witcher 3. Let’s not forget that as brilliant as The Witcher 3 was, it had its fair share of bugs and performance woes at launch, and Velen has about as much detail as the Sahara desert in comparison with what we saw of Night City at E3. If any developer can pull it off, we’ll put our faith in CDPR. Yet we’re equally worried that either the scope of what we saw at E3 might be too good to be true or will end up running like junk on the vanilla models of the current generation consoles.
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