A lot of Cyberpunk 2077‘s appeal is in its world, fascinating story, and abundant style. However, there’s a deep combat system beyond the visuals and quirky characters.
We saw some of what was possible in combat during the release date announcement trailer but Twinfinite got the chance to check out an extended demo, which lasted about 50 minutes.
During that extended look at Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED showcased just how many options there are in combat. Below is every single way you can kill enemies in the footage we saw, some of which are really cool.
- From vendors in the game, you can purchase malware that you can use to harm enemies when you hack into them. You load them into your inventory, alongside things like your weapons and gear, and they can then be used in combat.
- You can do standard stealth takedowns, just as would in many other action games, by creeping up behind enemies. However, first you grab them, and then you get to choose between choking them out or snapping their neck. What you choose to do will often be down to whether you’re trying to do a pacifist playthrough of if you want to hide the bodies after you take them out.
- Once you choke an enemy out, without killing them, you can pick up their bodies and hide them in places. In the E3 demo presentation, the CD Projekt RED player threw the body in garbage shoot, which kills the enemy in the process.
- The demo introduced us to a group of bad guys called ‘Animals’. They take a drug called ‘juice’ that enhances their muscles, giving them super strength and speed. To practice their fighting, they fight robots, and you can hack them to overload so they punch the enemies’ heads off.
- The Animals will also use gym equipment to keep their muscles growing. In the demo, one of them was using a bench press machine, which you can helpfully hack too. You can hack it so that is repeatedly drops on the bad guy, crushing him.
- Another thing you’ll be able to do in Cyberpunk 2077 when you silently grab enemies is use them as human shields. You can hold them in front of you, while still alive, and move towards another enemy that is shooting at you, protecting yourself as you move.
- V, the character you play as, had a thing called a nano wire, which is a string like tool that is essentially a laser with many uses. However, probably the best use is as a whip of sorts that slices through enemies. You can throw one end of it towards an enemy, beheading them or severing limbs.
- You can also hack enemies to pull the pin in a grenade they have, blowing them up.
- Or, you can hack them to shoot themselves in the head with the gun they’re holding.
- Of course, the standard first person shooter gameplay is always an option. You can slide along the ground, leap over things, and the gunplay looks great.
- Many of the enemy compounds will have turrets that are set up. You can hack those so that they target the enemies you’re fighting.
- You’ll also come across some boss like enemies in Cyberpunk 2077, and they may have weakspots for you to target. Just shooting them normally will only do a little bit of damage, but once you destroy the weakspot, they become much easier to take down, which adds some tactical play to the trickier fights.
Of course, those are only the possible ways in the demo we saw, and there will surely be many more ways to take on the different types of bad guys you come across. Seeing that all these possibilities are available in such a short section of makes me even more excited for the full game.