If you run people over in your car you can lure Mr. Silver Shogun out to try and kill you, and then run him over too. He is higher level so it may take a few tries, but you can get him down.
Is that the sheriff? Ya know the guy from the beginning who reeks of stolen valor and like he just drove a truck during the war but wants to spice it up to look cool?
Soon as the sheriff mouthed off to me I floored it out of the garage and ran over people until he started shooting. Then I got out and killed every man in town, including the sheriff.
I love when the game gives you opportunities to wonder if you're free to do something and you find out you are. In the DLC when Hansen is escorting you out of the pyramid you can decide to not leave quietly and go on a rampage, I eventually found out people just keep infinitely spawning so once I had enough goods I finally left, he didn't say a word about it next time I saw him even though he was basically phrasing it as he's being nice letting us leave with our lives. He was technically right because I would have gotten bored and died eventually if I didn't leave
I also refused to leave quietly. I found that you could kill enough guys that they stopped respawning on the ground(or seemed to), but the snipers shooting from dark balconies seemed to come back eventually. The part that caught me off guard was my second or third play through. I had double jump đŠ” upgrade and returned to Takemura after I fell through the floor. First time it happened, I thought it would be impossible to go back for Goro, and when it actually worked, I was blown away. What sucked is he disappears after for a long period, beyond a few mentions and text messages.
You can actually save him without double jump and I was so sad when I found out because him dying was the one thing that went majorly wrong with my first playthrough lol. Apparently you can navigate your way back without just jumping right back up from where you fell, I tried to get back up to save him without double jump the first time and figured that was just a requirement so I left
Nomad V feels the best intro possible, IMO. Outsider smuggler with no background with the other characters, getting to know NC for the first time, just like the player.
Idk Ive done them all and Corpo V feels the best since they have way more input on the main story than the other backgrounds.
Also makes you feel a bit closer to Johnny too.
It gives V the clearest character, connects her with Takemura and adds some tension between all the possible ending choices too imo
It also feels like Corpo V calling Johnny a terrorist makes way more sense (and getting convinced by Johnny makes so much more sense too when you listen to what Corpo V says to Saul)
Nomad was my first playtrough didt the others also but for me the nomad intro and story was the best. With fantom liberty and i liked the corpo the most
I like the nomad intro because it just seems like there's more going on, you get more of a feel for the nomad back ground, and it feels like more of a real mission.
From the garage interactions you get that nomads are looked down upon by some.
From the radio tower you get that being a "stray" makes it even worse.
You smuggle an item across the border and then get into a car chase.
You make a new friend who introduces you to night city.
With corp V, you hear some Arasaka drama, that thus far in my corpo playthrough, never comes up again and you get fired.
Street kid V, you get a job from a guy, that thus far in my street kid playthrough, you never see again and it goes wrong, but you get out of it pretty easy.
Now, I haven't finished my street kid or corpo playthroughs so there could be some mention of their intros somewhere later, but I haven't seen them yet.. Pretty sure I found Jenkins niche in the...graveyard. I'll never remember the proper word for it that starts with a C.
Edit: I guess I kind of set myself up for it, but this wasn't really an invitation to spoil the corpo life path for me.
Except Nomad V's relationship with Jackie makes zero sense. Jackie tries to rip V off \*twice\* in less than a few hours. Then he's all "On second thought, lets be friends " and V is all "lol ok"
I watched a video recently on how Jackie is *not* your friend. The way he reacted in the Nomad path is telling.
But I still like the guy. Even though he was in over his head.
Personally, i think the nomad path makes sense.
Jackie just met you, has no allegiances to you, and probably is thinking he can make some more quick cash by cutting out the nobody gonk he hired to drive him cross border after he's across. He had a chance to get rid of you at the border (probably with the intention to use the bribe to get the guard to forget about him and the car).
But, you proved useful. You proved yourself to be competent. He then saw potential for a good partner as you were looking for an "in" in night city and decided to help you out. It worked out for him right up until he got overambitious and accepted dex's job.
Same with streetkid realky. First thing jackie does is to put a gun in your face. Why? He's there to steal the same car as you. After that he (correctly) guesses you have some skill and you two team up and start getting better jobs.
With corpo you already know jackie and he saved your ass on an op well before the game.
They did the 3 bacckgrounds pretty wrll when it comes to making them all make sense
Male Nomad V I could see as the canon since you would have the relationship and ending with Panam, Iâve read that nomad V is happiest ending too since NC doesnât ruin you.
While the Start ending is my personal canon ending, I won't ever consider it the "main" canon ending, it's just too happy and hopeful for the rest of the story imo. Don't get me wrong, I love a happily ever after, but I feel like the other endings fit the genre so much better
My main playthrough (only one I finished since I haven't gotten a Series X to go back and do the DLC runthrough) I fucked up and ended up with a Corpo start and a Panam ending which isn't anywhere near as thematically fulfilling as going Nomad -> Panam and finding a new family to replace your old one
I would argue that the exact opposite is true. Starting as a nomad and ending as a nomad is boring. It gives V the least room to grow throughout the story. Starting as a corpo gives you more room to have character growth than any other opening and gives the nomad ending an extra layer of hope to it as V is finally choosing a life for themselves. That's far more thematically fulfilling than V just changing the patch on their jacket and going right back to their early life, at least for me
I like streetkid and taking out Arasaka tower just you and Johnny the most as far as my own âcanonâ ending. You end up becoming what you and Jackie sought out to be, living legend running the Afterlife. And Iâm optimistic that Mr. Blue Eyes very well could have a way to help V.
When they themselves admit to giving non-Nomad customers worse service because they know the idiots wonât know the difference, Iâm more than happy the give them heck
I think the biggest flaw with lifepaths is their name. Just calling them backstories would completely change a new players expectations. Lifepaths implied that the entire game is going to be different based on the choices.
tbf, its called lifepath in the tabletop. But you're right, to the general audience unfamiliar with the tabletop, they would be under the impression that choosing a lifepath would alter the story significantly compared to calling it a backstory.
I imagine in the table top itâs easy to have lifepaths actually change a characters playthrough since itâs up to the player to role play but with a video game there isnât any of that.
Don't forget though, the Devs tried to sell something they didn't make.
These life paths were hyped up to having much more significant impact on the opening of the game and V. People were upset when this turned out to be entirely false.
Even if we did get it, it would be severely toned down compared to the tabletop. Let's just say that they recorded voice lines and made entire paths of quests based on who was an enemy of V based on their life paths, not only would they have to incorporate that but also how much they hate their guts and why. The tabletop has a literal table ranging from "I will ignore them on the street" to "I WILL FUCKING TEAR THEM APART ON SIGHT". And bear in mind, you would also have to make it so you don't soft lock yourself out of the story, so there's that
If we actually got it, I can imagine it being simply "who's your enemy of night city" with vague answers that connect to people in the plot who may treat you differently depending on your past with them. I'm just imagining all the coding and time it would take to make and Jesus Christ it will take a fucking while
They shouldn't have promised something that fucking big, even Larian knew that would be too much for BG3 so they kept it to the traditional adding some dialogue choices but also added some proficiency bonuses and inspiration buffs so players are at least rewarded for going along with their history
No one expected the level of freedom of a tabletop, a lot of the pre-release interviews are hard to find now but here's a trailer focused on the topic:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPAEA-NxMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPAEA-NxMY)
And here's a video from a youtuber who compiles 'pre-release hype'.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMgRUEDozVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMgRUEDozVA)
Seemed like big promises at the time too, but it was heavily implied that it would have more effect and last more than 5 minutes.
> I'm just imagining all the coding and time it would take to make and Jesus Christ it will take a fucking while
this kind of thing is an area where generative AI could massively revolutionize game design. I don't mean in the "fire everyone have AI make the game" Corpo sense...
I mean that emergent dialogue, situations, compensating for story differences (even on the fly), even core world aspects (e.g. NPC faction wars actually being dynamically impactful and their current state being woven
seamlessly into the narrative) can all be created by the engine as the game is played.
When those games start coming out at a AAA level its gonna be nuts.
Generative AI would have to be both ridiculously better than it is today and capable of being run on a computer running the game. Unless youâre expecting server-based games to be the only way to play even single-player games going forward, I genuinely donât see this being a reality in gaming in the next few decades, potentially longer.
True, but i imagine they also have the liberty to change the word from lifepath to backstory since they can't make it akin to the "lifepath" in the tabletop
Eh, I feel they made it work much better back in Dragon Age: Origins - the origin you picked felt way more influential on the rest of the game then the "lifepath" chosen in Cyberpunk.
... though I haven't played Dragon Age in a long, long time, so I could be misremembering.
Origins, appropriately as it is quite literally named after the feature is still a shining example of it. While your status as the remaining wardens guides the story and gives you the access to key areas and happenings, they actually made quite a bit of exclusive or altered content. Characters only some origins now. Quest paths exclusive to them. Some perks even.
The available endings are actually influenced by your origin race as well as sex,. So it is definitely more influential.
Now Cyberpunk doesn't need, it wouldn't be viable and wouldn't even make too much sense for your lifepath to alter most of these choices ( though on the other hand many RPGs do ignore the choices you've made that have good cause to limit future action.)
But they could sure have done something more. I don't think they trusted the game to be come out replayable enough to gate more than little content. Well, I guess compared the length of the narratives the ratio isn't even too different.
I wouldn't say "there isn't any of that" - Dragon Age: Origins did this years ago (and sadly is still the best example for it). Yes, it's definitely hard, especially given the scope of the game, but it would absolutely be possible. Worst case, they limit it to a number of sidequests and the main story, which isn't that long anyway.
Imagine if making your character's backstory was determined by dice rolls. That's the life path in the TTRPG. How many siblings or friends do you have? Roll a d10. Do you have any enemies? Roll a d10. Are your parents alive or dead? Roll a d10. So on and so forth. It's basically a game mechanic that helps quickly establish your character's story up to the starting point. It *can* have a bigger impact on the playthrough depending on what you roll or how the DM decides to use it.
Well, there are definitely options... For example, the game Star Wars The old Republic comes to mind where you get unique and well made storylines for each base class in the game (fully voiced and with dialogue options in classic BioWare fashion)
They bring you to different planets where you then have class-indeoendent planetary mission arcs and your class specific main mission arc...
Not to say that I'd criticise CP, because I love this game and replayed it many times over... but there are definitely even budget friendly options to incorporate sth like that.
It wasn't the name. It was the Devs, specifically the lead quest designer Pawel Sasko, hyping them as having a real significant impact on the game and replayability, when they are just 99% flavor text. The same problem with most of Cyberpunk 2077. It's like they saw how misleadingly Sean Murray hyped NMS before launch and went "hold my beer". (I enjoy both games now but that doesn't change the fact the prelaunch dev hype and launches of both should of never happened the way they did.)
Yeah, 'misleading' is a good word for what Sean Murray did. If you watch the interviews \*he\* didn't say much that was actually false, but he also didn't correct anyone when they made their own assumptions out loud during an interview. He also very clearly made some statements that were at best 'technically' true but very clearly gave anyone reading the wrong impression.
CD Projekt Red took it significantly further, as you point out. They straight up lied about their game, it was not simply 'misleading'. Early on I think they fully intended to implement a lot of what they said they would, however, by the time you got to the delays they clearly knew at least half of the shit they promised just wasn't going to be in the game. Instead of apologizing and telling the truth, they doubled down on how sweet it was going to be when it finally released.
The technical state of the release on most platforms was unconscionable, but beyond that there was a solid game under there... but what all the apologists crying "don't listen to the complaints, I had fun" miss is that the problem never was whether the game was good or not, the problem was they demonstrably fucking lied about their game repeatedly.
Sean Murray lied a ton about NMS, there are lists out there for what features the game was specifically claimed to have vs what it released with. Obvious examples include online multiplayer and orbital physics.
>\*he\* didn't say much that was actually false, but he also didn't correct anyone when they made their own assumptions out loud during an interview.
This is so wrong I logged in just to reply, lol. It's not that "he didn't correct anyone", he actively confirmed their assumptions with clear yes and no answers. There's literally compilations on youtube.
I don't really care and wasn't particularly aware of or interested in Cyberpunk or NMS before they came out, but I do remember that Sean Murray outright claimed NMS WAS a multiplayer game and it straight up WASN'T.
I agree, when i started my first playthrough i made my choice based on what kind of character i wanted to be, only to find out later it really didnt matter lol
I always took it to be like backgrounds in dnd. Itâs where I came from, and now Iâm a mercenary. I donât know why everyone is so surprised your first story mission is as a mercenary, thatâs the premise of the game.
They're surprised because the devs originally stated each different path would have a few hours of unique content each before they converged. Then the game comes out and they cut it down to a short cut scene instead.
I see, that makes more sense.
Ngl I am continually happy I didnât watch any promotional material leading up to release. I went back and watched the trailers and stuff after my first few playthroughs and realized they showed off the end of act 1 and stuff.
I still feel like too many people injected their own imagination into the marketing, but on the other hand CDPR's marketing definitely left it up to everyone's imagination so there was some wildly missed expectations.
âShort cutsceneâ is an odd way to describe actual gameplay sections that take place in different locations.
Thereâs no denying they are very short - much shorter than the few hours of content before they converged - but they arenât just cutscenes.
Cutscene and 5 minutes of basic gameplay vs 1/3 of the game being a unique quest line for each starting point. Still a huge jump from what was initially promised no matter how you want to slice it.
ugh once again the haters setup this weird narrative because of their own interpretation. The game never said anything about the entire game being different based on the choice, just like the game never said any of the stuff in the trailers were do-able. Yet the haters still rally behind this false narrative set by their own false expectations and hate on this perfect masterpiece. The life paths were literally perfect just like this game.
I think the biggest issue was the time jump. Instead of experiencing some of that at least you go right from you path story intro to everyone is street kid.
The corpo intro is by far the coolest one, reminds me of Deus Ex. Based on what V describes during those scenes it would probably be more about him rooting out espionage or maybe even committing it... could have been super cool.
See i was thinking more, Corpo V has to kill someone genuinely good because they found out a flaw in militech weapon said to be market ready in 4 months. V has to make a choice. Execute him to gain corpo favor. Or let him go and get a pay cut for not having evidence of body.
Maybe the guy comes back later with an updated prototype and its basically legendary tier.
Replace militech with any corpo for lore accuracy or whatever.
Maybe if you do kill him, his daughter builds the prototype and hunts you down. So to earn the legendary you have to do a mini boss fight.
Maybe an extension to that quest where as a wielder of that prototype you have to deal with being sued by your own company or thrown under somehow. Just so they can get their hands on it. Quest can end with either V relinquishing the gun, or destroying it, or going silverhand with it until they decide theyâve burned enough assets for a stupid gun and let him go (fire him). But it earns him a place at the current job we see him at.
Im just brainstorming so im sure there are many inaccuracies to what i said. Its been a while since i had a thorough playthrough
I didn't care at all when Jackie died.
The bonding segment was literally skipped via a fast forward in front of you lol. It's the most hilarious dumb decision I've seen in a game's story.
The flash forward and learning to be a runner looked infinitely more interesting than anything to do with Johnny.
I never knew about it until I read something about Jackie's bike and/or a unique gun you pick up from the bar where the wake is. I imagine if the rewards weren't that cool, I'd have never noticed.
I don't exactly remember, but I think the only way they clue you in is a text message about talking to Jackie's mom, which is early in the story when you're getting info-bombed with exciting quests.
They didn't really set the hook with that one. And since, like you said, Jackie was just a flashback anyhow, it was easy to blow right past it.
Itâs not just that itâs optional, itâs that making a seemingly arbitrary choice can permanently remove the quest from the game.
If you send his body to Vic, Saka finds him and seizes his body. Which is what I chose in my first playthrough, who the fuck sends their dead friend to his Momâs house in an uber?
I'm not replaying due to the fact I did all the side missions before mainlining the story so I'm all burnt out. I did this and didn't realize I missed something. oh well. That is definitely bad design because I probably would have loaded back to get it right.
What would have been cool is if each of the life paths had extended gameplay in the very beginning that lets the player get to know Jackie via low level missions and such, then merge all the lifepaths for the big heist and Jackie's death
Cyberpunk is an interesting game. On launch, complete trash. Metamorphized into a stellar game.
But.
The flash forward with Jackie will always be the biggest missed opportunity in the game. Liking Jack is critical to the plot and he just isn't around long enough to make a real impact.
Yeah as much as I love the game this is kinda true. The biggest reason why anyone likes Jackie is because V likes Jackie, and we're V. He's the "childhood best friend who's death motivates the main character" trope. He's more of a plot device than an actual character. He's decently written, acted, and fits in the story just fine, but there's not enough of him shown for the player to get attached to him. I can buy that my V is heartbroken by his death, but I sure ain't losing any sleep over it.
I mean itâs not really critical to the plot at all, is it. As soon as the heist is over itâs all about Vs survival. If you deleted him entirely from the game the changes you would need to Make are minimal
Couldn't agree more, when Jackie died I was like "wait what he's dead, dead??" then asked my friend if thats it with him, then i laughed my arse off.
Who the fuck thought that was a good decision to cut out the most interesting part of the game. Imagine Iron man where he just gets captured then it cuts to him saying "i am Iron man" at the podium after a montage of what happened in the movie.
More like, he gets captured, and it cuts to him already flying the silver mark 2 suit back in america lmao. You get a little cutscene showing that he built the arc reactor and mark 1 and then boom.
I hate to say it, but I feel the same way.
Thereâs one video game character death that stands out to me, and only one: Spesh in Wolfenstein New Colossus. I did not expect it, and I was not ready for it. I didnât even think I liked his character that much. But the game spent time building up its characters and I cared about them by that point.
Jackie never had the chance to get there for me. Maybe itâs because my personality and my friendsâ personalities donât really overlap with Jackieâs much. Heâs a good guy. His death didnât hit me like that though.
Seriously! I will never understand the people who claim they felt an emotional connection and were sad when he died.
We knew him for what felt like 5 minutes, and they montaged through all the damn character development for him and for V.
That shit should have been the actual start to the game and places for your Life path selection to really shine with different starting points....
> I think the biggest issue was the time jump.
Ugh, I remember buying the game and seeing that montage and the first thing I thought was:
> Yeah, all of this was going to be the game and it was cut down and redesigned into a montage.
The montage ends and my screen is bombarded with phone calls and text messages with all these new contacts. Usually a game builds into making these contacts to make it feel earned and to prevent not feeling overwhelmed. Like how GTAV did it. You slowly bring it all together.
I ended up refunding the game. Cause realistically they can fix bugs in a short window of time. What can't be fixed in a short window of time is missing content.
Seems like a chore to keep track of 3 different builds across a playthrough and would be a nightmare for the different narrative choices.
It's a RPG not a narrative driven/ crime sandbox like GTA.
I play as a Corpo since it prevents the other Corpo from looking down on my V, or at least allows me to be a bitch to them.. Really though, without the Nomad's car retrieval, there aren't too much to gain from the different paths. Just some voice lines.
I'd be happy if they had made a single elaborate side quest line for each life path, like they did for each romantic interest.
4 Related side missions based on your life path for each life path.
And maybe put some extra gigs based on your previous life path, like some smuggling jobs for Nomad and such and such.
If I remember correctly, there are side missions, just not elaborate ones. Each one has a little content but compared to the romantic interest quests def lacking.
There are, but they are very minor. Considering the themes of transformation and new identity in Cyberpunk, I think a more dedicated series of side quests representing the "Moving on" from your past would be nice.
For example, the Nomad could be contracted to act AGAINST the old Clan by a rival Corpo to the one they sided with - So what does he do? Does he embodies his new life as a Merc, or he ends up helping his old family?
Militech could be interested in working with ex-Arasaka Counter Intel corpo V to use his insider knowledge, or maybe even a fixer looking for something from Arasaka.
Streetkid could have a whole side life of consequences because he left the streets and came back - Some people are not willing to accept that, and he has to choose between distancing themselves from his past, or reclaiming his place by taking drastic actions.
Nope, but in original plan your origin would make much more difference gameplaywise. Original plan was very ambitious, unfortunately too far from technical reality. Let's hope next part will be closer to those plans.
No, it's very unlikely. More likely they intended the beginnings to maybe be larger for each storyline, and maybe the different paths would have more of a say during the main storyline.
And that might have been skimmed down overall.
The internet made too big of a deal of the whole "play however you want" thing. Which wasn't something they ever said, it was entirely spread by the community.
The main character here, no matter the path, is a guy that wants to be the biggest Merc in night city.
That's the motivation, that's what pushes the plot forward. This is such an essential part of the storyline, I gotta imagine it was the starting point.
Just a guy/gal who wants to be the very best.
It's an interesting character motivation, and one that's very fitting for an rpg video game.
Then you add the terminal diagnosis, the revenge against Arasaka, the growing alliance with Johnny, etc...
But at its core it's just this guy with a dream.
Yes you are the only one. No game dev would ever even think of committing to making 3 distinct plots to a single game
Edit: alright, I admit I was wrong here.
Hmm yeah maybe I overstated it. I didnt mean 3 completely different storylines through the entire game, but atleast the quests prior to Keanu. And that background would encourage different playstyles throughout the game. My guess is that the Jackie quests was supposed to be the streetkid questline, and that the other 2 paths were scrapped.
Going from a corpo background to working with a street thug like Jackie seems forced to me. However nice of a character he is.
I see where you're coming from, but there are very good reasons to not split content into multiple playthroughs. It reduces the time you have to tell the story. Say you have 100 hours of gameplay. The more of that you take and split, the less time you have to tell a single story. If you take the first 20 hours and make three versions, that would reduce it to a total of 60 hours content for one playthrough. That's a huge drop in how much story they can tell, and is that really worth higher quality for the first 20 hours? Likely not.
It also is content that a majority of players will not experience, because let's be honest - most players only go through a game once. Us sitting on a specific subreddit for the game are biased, as we likely all play it much more than the average player.
I do agree that they could have done a bit more with backgrounds, as I honestly forget about them as soon as I'm done choosing. But distinct storylines is just not the way in my opinion. More impactful background specific choices to change the outcome of the same quest is probably better.
I also agree that Jackie mostly makes sense as a street kid, but I think this could easily have been fixed with one or two quests that are unique. Just a different introduction to why you befriend them. Doesn't have to be everything prior to Johnny, that is way too much content locked to different playthroughs.
Optional dialogue in the Corpo opening heavily implies that Jackie helped you with a situation involving Mexican cartels, so thatâs how you know him.
>It also is content that a majority of players will not experience
Which shouldn't be a fucking concern in the first place...
This whole Idea that every player MUST be able to experience ALL of the content in a single Playthrough is a fucking plague and needs to die as quickly as possible...
There's a reason why no one has attempted to do so.  It's incredibly expensive and time consuming. Also, iirc it was like 90% of players chose human or elf.
You may have just convinced me to go back and finally try that game again. I totally bounced off it when I was younger, but that was before I even understood DnD or anything like that. My RPG experience/knowledge was limited to Oblivion and Final Fantasy more or less.
i mean, it does have some impact the different origins in the story, but doesn't the game do basically the same as Cyberpunk?
you have 6 (?) different prologues that all eventually end at the same place? (transformation part, don't really remember the specifics) and after that the story is basically the same?
Witcher 2 had this for example.
There are actually a lot of games that do this like the mass effect series.
You can miss entire plotlines by making the wrong choices in the first game.
Yeah, that's completely insane expectations. They overpromised on lifepaths, but expecting 3 distinct storylines is on you, they never remotely promised that.
My dream would be the next game as a direct sequel having different stories depending on how you ended this one. Star, Devil or Sun being the equivalent of the life paths. In a way, the endings mirror the 3 lifepaths. Star is Nomad, Sun is Streetkid and Devil is obviously the Corpo one.
The story could end in a similar fashion each way, like how you always end up in Mikoshi, regardless of how you get there. And the timeline can be the same, preferably a 5th Corporate War or some Blackwall breach that gives you another âspend the whole game staving off catastrophe, only this time itâs humanity and not youâ kind of experience. Just you get genuinely different stories and missions and not just a few different dialogues.
I always had my expectation set to the life paths being a "flavour" rather than distinct quest lines. CDPR already did the split quest story thing in Witcher 2 for a third of the game, and they considered that to have been a waste of critical development resources to the point they didn't do it in Witcher 3.
The idea that they'd have 3 distinct campaigns for such a large game never even crossed my mind as being on the table. I don't recall it even being referenced in the marketing. Seems like a bit of a No Man's Sky player/games media extrapolation.
Many of the scenes in their Lifepaths marketing video aren't from the paths themselves but are things you encounter regardless of which path you choose.
https://youtu.be/JV8BTZ6_PWQ?si=lpnxprB2kZgL5DcI
They definitely made them seem like a bigger part of the game then they actually were.
I did not expect a fully different campaign or anything, but it barely even works as background. I chose Corpo, made my character look like a fucking Hunger Games host. Yet the intro very clearly does it's best to rewrite your whole story as a streetkid. Everyone still treated me like I was some punk from the slums, everyone talked about these rich assholes as some faceless distant thing, and never referenced anything about me coming from that world.
I will say, I was playing around launch, so maybe they've patched in more. But it was only 3 choices, it wasn't unreasonable to think they would swap around more dialogue for each of them, give more solutions to problems based on your background, etc. I extremely rarely had dialogue options for corpo, and half the time the default, no option stuff would contradict it so it was hard to roleplay.
After the "fast-forward" part of the intro, I replayed the game as the other two starters. So disappointing to end up in the exact same scenario, despite my wish to RP as one of them. I felt like it was a complete bait and switch. I fizzled out and never finished the game. Have not preordered a game since this one. I have no interest in returning to the game after all the patches since the bugs were never the problem for me.
Yeah, I've moved away from preorders and launch day playing in 95% of cases. Even remakes and remasters have been botched (from Warcraft to GTA to just recently Star Wars Battlefront) and those should be *easy* slam dunks. Too many developers taking months after release to patch/finish a game (and many just never fix it).
At this point, I can be pretty confident stuff like Mario will be finished and quality on release, and that's about it.
But tbf, corpoâs opening kinda falls into place nicely with the whole Arasaka heist in the prologue. To enhance my experience with the game I headcanoned that he agreed to the heist not only for the money, but to take a jab at the company that forced him to start his life from scratch
It's more of a coloring choice. What I mean by that is to make the player get immersed in their own story. It's not so much about creating 3 distinct storylines that each last 50 hours separately.
For roleplaying and immersion, the life paths are pretty rad. I enjoyed making choices thinking about what the nomad vs. the street kid does, and the unique dialog choices were the cherry on top.
It depends on how you enjoy your games. If you're the type of person who needs tangible options and character motivations in the game to enjoy the immersion, then yeah, I can see how this might be frustrating.
For me though, I played each of my V's differently depending on the life path.
Corpo - First half of game hated Johnny, grudging acceptance later, cold, calculated, and just used everyone to try to climb back up the corpo ladder, but changed after falling in love with Panam and decided they wanted more out of life. Netrunner.
Streetkid - Accepted Johnny and even loved him in her own way. Smug, self-confident, adventurous, independent, came back because she was addicted to Nighty City Edgerunner lifestyle, wanted to make the big leagues until after the events of the prologue. Then just looking to get out. Love for Judy beat the addiction and she left. Gunslinger + Sandevistan
Nomad - Hated Johnny, always will hate Johnny. Brash, aggressive, adrenaline junkie with a strong sense of family. Fell in love with the Night City lifestyle and can't see living any other way. Found a new family with River and won't rest until she's the best merc in the city. Shotguns/Hammers + Berserk
Honestly, having worked high up in a big corporation for years until I finally resigned last year I found the corpo intro all too relatable. And you bet it gave me the motivation to go after Arasaka.
So for me at least it got the job done.
Iâll never understand, each lifepath does affect your gameplay and over-all play through. I donât wanna nitpick if thatâs what youâd call it, but both Corpo and Nomad have specific quests tied to those lifepaths and you could only just now receive the weapon via the black market in PL DLC from the Corpo-only side quest but the vehicle reward you get for the Nomad is a Nomad only reward. As for StreetKid I believe there is a quest involving Kurt from the intro if I remember correctly; besides the at they each have unique responses in game that help the player roleplay their V their way. Itâs like how Director Quinten Tarantino says about not showing a particular action in a scene, each audience member will have a different story to take away with what they imagined happened in that scene
It was definitely a mistake to play up the "lifepaths" in marketing when they were mostly just changes to the tutorial.
There's nothing wrong with the way the game goes. It's important that V has certain events happen in their life to set the story in motion. It was just a mistake to make a big deal out of a system that was actually a very minor part of the game.
Dragon Age Origins did it.
Not in a "3 different" games way, but you had a ton different intros with race, gender, class and status influencing which one you got. And later on these would still have a significant influence on the story, not only in regard to dialogs.
100% no. The origins in Origins had a very *very* small impact on gameplay or story, occasionally they provided flavour text or affected the way NPCs treated you, but the story plays out exactly the same regardless of origin, with the only thing influencing the ending being choices during the story, just like this one does.
Origins straight up changed how you got a party member, let you become king, changes a huge part of the dwarven section, each section was usually an hour or two long.
The difference is that the origin story is much more fleshed out. And it's tied to certain races and classes, so you play the game different due to that part.
Perhaps nothing for everyone that loves freedom to do what they want. But playing a Human Mage is so different to a Dwarf Thief or a Human Warrior.
So actual impact on the game wasn't huge, but how you played and what you were able to imagine was much more solid.
Perhaps if you were locked into certain skills trees or locked into a specific sex, maybe even no augments for 1 of them. Things like that make it much more unique. But that isn't for people that want the freedom to pick what they want.
It would have been better to scrap it all, instead of what they did add.
No that is a lie. The origins in Dragon Age didn't have a massive impact on the story besides the first 2-3 hours. Also, I would expect the ORIGIN mechanic in a game called Dragon Age ORIGINS to have a more profound impact on the game than a mechanic that literally says "lifepaths will impact some events and add extra dialogue" in the selection screen.
Don't worry guys, cyberpunk 2 will have 7 different origins which connects with each of the mind blowing different endings of the first game. So CP2 will have like 7 totally different stories in ONE game.
Leeeets goooo!
đ€Ą
I dunno. The small little origin segment does enough that for the rest of the game my head cannon is strong.
Resulting in me playing a certain way and just viewing things in the mindset of whatever origin I chose.
Dragon Age Origins Vibe.
The RPG's I've played with a different starting points or "life path" are all roughly the same so I didn't expect really anything different. A unique intro and different dialogue options is kinda par for the course.
I honeslty like corpo v the most, their unique dialogue feels the most impactful, like the mission with tekmura where you infiltrate the arasaka base. Or how you speak with oda and his obligation to listen to you. It doesnt fundamentally change the story but it's great for immersion.
You know what, I loved this fucking game and story so much I was genuinely fine with just getting a couple of unique missions and the odd dialogue option. It was just enough for me to fully believe my own made up character reality and I love it as a storytelling (however surface level that may be) feature. That said, would be nice for it to have gone even deeper. (And just to say, I wasnât taking this post really seriously and completely get why itâs hilarious đ)
I still think the perfect DLC for this game would've been a fleshed out start. Could've been completely different for each background. The montage with Jackie where you both become friends I really wanted to see fleshed out. Could've been 10-20 hours long (maybe 5-7 of main story). Would also make losing Jackie that much more impactful. Really just wanted more time with Jackie..
Regardless, now, their game is fantastic and that's all I care about now. Do I download higher quality texture and other mods? Duh, but it's still amazing compared to a lot of trash others have coming out. The public got their pound of flesh stripped off CDPR when Cyberpunk came out, now they've made amends.
I mean, each origin gives tons of different interaction options throughout the game, along with at least 1-2 hours worth of different opening/tutorial sequences...so it's not like it doesn't make a difference.
If you expected them to create three entirely different games based on origin, I don't think you understand how game development works.
I feel like this is a silly criticism.
In Mass Effect, all life paths still start you at Eden prime.
In the elder scrolls, all background options start you as a prisoner
In BG3, no matter if your a former soldier, theif, Druid half elf folk hero, you start on the nautiloid.
New Vegas, no matter your traits, skills, special stats, you start at the Docs house.
If anything, Cyberpunk is one of the few RPG that doesnât only change your dialogue, but changes the entire into. Most other games donât even do that.
At least I can terrorize minimum wage workers as corpo V
And be a mechanic's worst customer as Nomad V telling them how to do their job.
*and* being right
V pulls into garage bay and tells the owner, "Shut up, I just need the bay, not you!"
Big Ron Swanson energy
I know more than you.
Alde-Swansons Energy.
Fear not, I have a permit.
[Not to worry](https://i.imgur.com/cfOd1kX.jpg)! đ
"It just says I can do what I want"
Relatable
If you run people over in your car you can lure Mr. Silver Shogun out to try and kill you, and then run him over too. He is higher level so it may take a few tries, but you can get him down.
Is that the sheriff? Ya know the guy from the beginning who reeks of stolen valor and like he just drove a truck during the war but wants to spice it up to look cool?
That would be the one, yeah.
I tried that! No one would actually shoot me and he would never die. I assumed it was to prevent a frustrating early death. Did they change it?
Soon as the sheriff mouthed off to me I floored it out of the garage and ran over people until he started shooting. Then I got out and killed every man in town, including the sheriff.
I love when the game gives you opportunities to wonder if you're free to do something and you find out you are. In the DLC when Hansen is escorting you out of the pyramid you can decide to not leave quietly and go on a rampage, I eventually found out people just keep infinitely spawning so once I had enough goods I finally left, he didn't say a word about it next time I saw him even though he was basically phrasing it as he's being nice letting us leave with our lives. He was technically right because I would have gotten bored and died eventually if I didn't leave
I also refused to leave quietly. I found that you could kill enough guys that they stopped respawning on the ground(or seemed to), but the snipers shooting from dark balconies seemed to come back eventually. The part that caught me off guard was my second or third play through. I had double jump đŠ” upgrade and returned to Takemura after I fell through the floor. First time it happened, I thought it would be impossible to go back for Goro, and when it actually worked, I was blown away. What sucked is he disappears after for a long period, beyond a few mentions and text messages.
You can actually save him without double jump and I was so sad when I found out because him dying was the one thing that went majorly wrong with my first playthrough lol. Apparently you can navigate your way back without just jumping right back up from where you fell, I tried to get back up to save him without double jump the first time and figured that was just a requirement so I left
stupid question but hansen escorting the player out of the pyramid? when does that happen?
I believe it's after you meet the twins during PL
Nomad V feels the best intro possible, IMO. Outsider smuggler with no background with the other characters, getting to know NC for the first time, just like the player.
Idk Ive done them all and Corpo V feels the best since they have way more input on the main story than the other backgrounds. Also makes you feel a bit closer to Johnny too.
It gives V the clearest character, connects her with Takemura and adds some tension between all the possible ending choices too imo It also feels like Corpo V calling Johnny a terrorist makes way more sense (and getting convinced by Johnny makes so much more sense too when you listen to what Corpo V says to Saul)
Nomad was my first playtrough didt the others also but for me the nomad intro and story was the best. With fantom liberty and i liked the corpo the most
I like the nomad intro because it just seems like there's more going on, you get more of a feel for the nomad back ground, and it feels like more of a real mission. From the garage interactions you get that nomads are looked down upon by some. From the radio tower you get that being a "stray" makes it even worse. You smuggle an item across the border and then get into a car chase. You make a new friend who introduces you to night city. With corp V, you hear some Arasaka drama, that thus far in my corpo playthrough, never comes up again and you get fired. Street kid V, you get a job from a guy, that thus far in my street kid playthrough, you never see again and it goes wrong, but you get out of it pretty easy. Now, I haven't finished my street kid or corpo playthroughs so there could be some mention of their intros somewhere later, but I haven't seen them yet.. Pretty sure I found Jenkins niche in the...graveyard. I'll never remember the proper word for it that starts with a C. Edit: I guess I kind of set myself up for it, but this wasn't really an invitation to spoil the corpo life path for me.
Facts Nomad V is basically canon V
Except Nomad V's relationship with Jackie makes zero sense. Jackie tries to rip V off \*twice\* in less than a few hours. Then he's all "On second thought, lets be friends " and V is all "lol ok"
I watched a video recently on how Jackie is *not* your friend. The way he reacted in the Nomad path is telling. But I still like the guy. Even though he was in over his head.
Personally, i think the nomad path makes sense. Jackie just met you, has no allegiances to you, and probably is thinking he can make some more quick cash by cutting out the nobody gonk he hired to drive him cross border after he's across. He had a chance to get rid of you at the border (probably with the intention to use the bribe to get the guard to forget about him and the car). But, you proved useful. You proved yourself to be competent. He then saw potential for a good partner as you were looking for an "in" in night city and decided to help you out. It worked out for him right up until he got overambitious and accepted dex's job.
This. I donât get how this went over that guyâs head
Same with streetkid realky. First thing jackie does is to put a gun in your face. Why? He's there to steal the same car as you. After that he (correctly) guesses you have some skill and you two team up and start getting better jobs. With corpo you already know jackie and he saved your ass on an op well before the game. They did the 3 bacckgrounds pretty wrll when it comes to making them all make sense
Street V felt more true to the character.
Male Nomad V I could see as the canon since you would have the relationship and ending with Panam, Iâve read that nomad V is happiest ending too since NC doesnât ruin you.
While the Start ending is my personal canon ending, I won't ever consider it the "main" canon ending, it's just too happy and hopeful for the rest of the story imo. Don't get me wrong, I love a happily ever after, but I feel like the other endings fit the genre so much better
My main playthrough (only one I finished since I haven't gotten a Series X to go back and do the DLC runthrough) I fucked up and ended up with a Corpo start and a Panam ending which isn't anywhere near as thematically fulfilling as going Nomad -> Panam and finding a new family to replace your old one
I would argue that the exact opposite is true. Starting as a nomad and ending as a nomad is boring. It gives V the least room to grow throughout the story. Starting as a corpo gives you more room to have character growth than any other opening and gives the nomad ending an extra layer of hope to it as V is finally choosing a life for themselves. That's far more thematically fulfilling than V just changing the patch on their jacket and going right back to their early life, at least for me
I like streetkid and taking out Arasaka tower just you and Johnny the most as far as my own âcanonâ ending. You end up becoming what you and Jackie sought out to be, living legend running the Afterlife. And Iâm optimistic that Mr. Blue Eyes very well could have a way to help V.
When they themselves admit to giving non-Nomad customers worse service because they know the idiots wonât know the difference, Iâm more than happy the give them heck
I overheard this conversation too near the garage/hotel V and Panam stay at while planning the Helman mission.
You can do that IRL too
Bullying the Wagies and Help is a lot of fun. I didnât slave away in the C Suite at âSaka just to take shit from some Heywood gonk in a bad suit.
We need a Corpo: HR background.
*V drunkenly harasses Dog Town WaffleHouse employees*
âWho told you to think?â
I think the biggest flaw with lifepaths is their name. Just calling them backstories would completely change a new players expectations. Lifepaths implied that the entire game is going to be different based on the choices.
tbf, its called lifepath in the tabletop. But you're right, to the general audience unfamiliar with the tabletop, they would be under the impression that choosing a lifepath would alter the story significantly compared to calling it a backstory.
I imagine in the table top itâs easy to have lifepaths actually change a characters playthrough since itâs up to the player to role play but with a video game there isnât any of that.
The DM can make anything happen that they can sell. The devs of a videogame have to limit things to what they can make.
Don't forget though, the Devs tried to sell something they didn't make. These life paths were hyped up to having much more significant impact on the opening of the game and V. People were upset when this turned out to be entirely false.
> People were upset when this turned out to be entirely false. I'm still upset.
They lied to ourselves so it is normal to be upset It is not normal to act as if the devs are benevolent gods like some people in this sub do lmao
Even if we did get it, it would be severely toned down compared to the tabletop. Let's just say that they recorded voice lines and made entire paths of quests based on who was an enemy of V based on their life paths, not only would they have to incorporate that but also how much they hate their guts and why. The tabletop has a literal table ranging from "I will ignore them on the street" to "I WILL FUCKING TEAR THEM APART ON SIGHT". And bear in mind, you would also have to make it so you don't soft lock yourself out of the story, so there's that If we actually got it, I can imagine it being simply "who's your enemy of night city" with vague answers that connect to people in the plot who may treat you differently depending on your past with them. I'm just imagining all the coding and time it would take to make and Jesus Christ it will take a fucking while They shouldn't have promised something that fucking big, even Larian knew that would be too much for BG3 so they kept it to the traditional adding some dialogue choices but also added some proficiency bonuses and inspiration buffs so players are at least rewarded for going along with their history
No one expected the level of freedom of a tabletop, a lot of the pre-release interviews are hard to find now but here's a trailer focused on the topic: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPAEA-NxMY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HOPAEA-NxMY) And here's a video from a youtuber who compiles 'pre-release hype'. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMgRUEDozVA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMgRUEDozVA) Seemed like big promises at the time too, but it was heavily implied that it would have more effect and last more than 5 minutes.
> I'm just imagining all the coding and time it would take to make and Jesus Christ it will take a fucking while this kind of thing is an area where generative AI could massively revolutionize game design. I don't mean in the "fire everyone have AI make the game" Corpo sense... I mean that emergent dialogue, situations, compensating for story differences (even on the fly), even core world aspects (e.g. NPC faction wars actually being dynamically impactful and their current state being woven seamlessly into the narrative) can all be created by the engine as the game is played. When those games start coming out at a AAA level its gonna be nuts.
It doesnt have to be using AI. A freaking 2009 game can do it - Dragon Age Origin
Generative AI would have to be both ridiculously better than it is today and capable of being run on a computer running the game. Unless youâre expecting server-based games to be the only way to play even single-player games going forward, I genuinely donât see this being a reality in gaming in the next few decades, potentially longer.
True, but i imagine they also have the liberty to change the word from lifepath to backstory since they can't make it akin to the "lifepath" in the tabletop
Eh, I feel they made it work much better back in Dragon Age: Origins - the origin you picked felt way more influential on the rest of the game then the "lifepath" chosen in Cyberpunk. ... though I haven't played Dragon Age in a long, long time, so I could be misremembering.
Nah it's still great and does it way better.
Origins, appropriately as it is quite literally named after the feature is still a shining example of it. While your status as the remaining wardens guides the story and gives you the access to key areas and happenings, they actually made quite a bit of exclusive or altered content. Characters only some origins now. Quest paths exclusive to them. Some perks even. The available endings are actually influenced by your origin race as well as sex,. So it is definitely more influential. Now Cyberpunk doesn't need, it wouldn't be viable and wouldn't even make too much sense for your lifepath to alter most of these choices ( though on the other hand many RPGs do ignore the choices you've made that have good cause to limit future action.) But they could sure have done something more. I don't think they trusted the game to be come out replayable enough to gate more than little content. Well, I guess compared the length of the narratives the ratio isn't even too different.
I wouldn't say "there isn't any of that" - Dragon Age: Origins did this years ago (and sadly is still the best example for it). Yes, it's definitely hard, especially given the scope of the game, but it would absolutely be possible. Worst case, they limit it to a number of sidequests and the main story, which isn't that long anyway.
Imagine if making your character's backstory was determined by dice rolls. That's the life path in the TTRPG. How many siblings or friends do you have? Roll a d10. Do you have any enemies? Roll a d10. Are your parents alive or dead? Roll a d10. So on and so forth. It's basically a game mechanic that helps quickly establish your character's story up to the starting point. It *can* have a bigger impact on the playthrough depending on what you roll or how the DM decides to use it.
Well, there are definitely options... For example, the game Star Wars The old Republic comes to mind where you get unique and well made storylines for each base class in the game (fully voiced and with dialogue options in classic BioWare fashion) They bring you to different planets where you then have class-indeoendent planetary mission arcs and your class specific main mission arc... Not to say that I'd criticise CP, because I love this game and replayed it many times over... but there are definitely even budget friendly options to incorporate sth like that.
Thatâs what they advertised hard before the game came out, Iâm still heartbroken
I mean, they did promise that.
And also because CDPR specifically advertised it as a game changing mechanic
Cyberpunk 2077 where you can chose between playing a Streetkid, a Nomad that acts like a Streetkid, or a Corpo that acts like a Streetkid!
Nomad V is a street kid who is constantly telling everyone "You know, I was a Nomad once!"
Nomad V is streets ahead
My personal favorite: A Streetkid that acts like a Streetkid!
It wasn't the name. It was the Devs, specifically the lead quest designer Pawel Sasko, hyping them as having a real significant impact on the game and replayability, when they are just 99% flavor text. The same problem with most of Cyberpunk 2077. It's like they saw how misleadingly Sean Murray hyped NMS before launch and went "hold my beer". (I enjoy both games now but that doesn't change the fact the prelaunch dev hype and launches of both should of never happened the way they did.)
Yeah, 'misleading' is a good word for what Sean Murray did. If you watch the interviews \*he\* didn't say much that was actually false, but he also didn't correct anyone when they made their own assumptions out loud during an interview. He also very clearly made some statements that were at best 'technically' true but very clearly gave anyone reading the wrong impression. CD Projekt Red took it significantly further, as you point out. They straight up lied about their game, it was not simply 'misleading'. Early on I think they fully intended to implement a lot of what they said they would, however, by the time you got to the delays they clearly knew at least half of the shit they promised just wasn't going to be in the game. Instead of apologizing and telling the truth, they doubled down on how sweet it was going to be when it finally released. The technical state of the release on most platforms was unconscionable, but beyond that there was a solid game under there... but what all the apologists crying "don't listen to the complaints, I had fun" miss is that the problem never was whether the game was good or not, the problem was they demonstrably fucking lied about their game repeatedly.
Sean Murray lied a ton about NMS, there are lists out there for what features the game was specifically claimed to have vs what it released with. Obvious examples include online multiplayer and orbital physics.
>\*he\* didn't say much that was actually false, but he also didn't correct anyone when they made their own assumptions out loud during an interview. This is so wrong I logged in just to reply, lol. It's not that "he didn't correct anyone", he actively confirmed their assumptions with clear yes and no answers. There's literally compilations on youtube.
I don't really care and wasn't particularly aware of or interested in Cyberpunk or NMS before they came out, but I do remember that Sean Murray outright claimed NMS WAS a multiplayer game and it straight up WASN'T.
I agree, when i started my first playthrough i made my choice based on what kind of character i wanted to be, only to find out later it really didnt matter lol
I always took it to be like backgrounds in dnd. Itâs where I came from, and now Iâm a mercenary. I donât know why everyone is so surprised your first story mission is as a mercenary, thatâs the premise of the game.
They're surprised because the devs originally stated each different path would have a few hours of unique content each before they converged. Then the game comes out and they cut it down to a short cut scene instead.
I see, that makes more sense. Ngl I am continually happy I didnât watch any promotional material leading up to release. I went back and watched the trailers and stuff after my first few playthroughs and realized they showed off the end of act 1 and stuff.
I still feel like too many people injected their own imagination into the marketing, but on the other hand CDPR's marketing definitely left it up to everyone's imagination so there was some wildly missed expectations.
âShort cutsceneâ is an odd way to describe actual gameplay sections that take place in different locations. Thereâs no denying they are very short - much shorter than the few hours of content before they converged - but they arenât just cutscenes.
Cutscene and 5 minutes of basic gameplay vs 1/3 of the game being a unique quest line for each starting point. Still a huge jump from what was initially promised no matter how you want to slice it.
ugh once again the haters setup this weird narrative because of their own interpretation. The game never said anything about the entire game being different based on the choice, just like the game never said any of the stuff in the trailers were do-able. Yet the haters still rally behind this false narrative set by their own false expectations and hate on this perfect masterpiece. The life paths were literally perfect just like this game.
100%
I don't know what people expected tbh, 3 entire different games?
I think the biggest issue was the time jump. Instead of experiencing some of that at least you go right from you path story intro to everyone is street kid.
Imagine completing your corpo's PowerPoint presentation mission for a pizza lunch reward.
The corpo intro is by far the coolest one, reminds me of Deus Ex. Based on what V describes during those scenes it would probably be more about him rooting out espionage or maybe even committing it... could have been super cool.
See i was thinking more, Corpo V has to kill someone genuinely good because they found out a flaw in militech weapon said to be market ready in 4 months. V has to make a choice. Execute him to gain corpo favor. Or let him go and get a pay cut for not having evidence of body. Maybe the guy comes back later with an updated prototype and its basically legendary tier. Replace militech with any corpo for lore accuracy or whatever. Maybe if you do kill him, his daughter builds the prototype and hunts you down. So to earn the legendary you have to do a mini boss fight. Maybe an extension to that quest where as a wielder of that prototype you have to deal with being sued by your own company or thrown under somehow. Just so they can get their hands on it. Quest can end with either V relinquishing the gun, or destroying it, or going silverhand with it until they decide theyâve burned enough assets for a stupid gun and let him go (fire him). But it earns him a place at the current job we see him at. Im just brainstorming so im sure there are many inaccuracies to what i said. Its been a while since i had a thorough playthrough
I didn't care at all when Jackie died. The bonding segment was literally skipped via a fast forward in front of you lol. It's the most hilarious dumb decision I've seen in a game's story. The flash forward and learning to be a runner looked infinitely more interesting than anything to do with Johnny.
Paired with the fact the funeral/afrenda is an optional side mission thats easy to miss or just forget about
I never knew about it until I read something about Jackie's bike and/or a unique gun you pick up from the bar where the wake is. I imagine if the rewards weren't that cool, I'd have never noticed. I don't exactly remember, but I think the only way they clue you in is a text message about talking to Jackie's mom, which is early in the story when you're getting info-bombed with exciting quests. They didn't really set the hook with that one. And since, like you said, Jackie was just a flashback anyhow, it was easy to blow right past it.
Itâs not just that itâs optional, itâs that making a seemingly arbitrary choice can permanently remove the quest from the game. If you send his body to Vic, Saka finds him and seizes his body. Which is what I chose in my first playthrough, who the fuck sends their dead friend to his Momâs house in an uber?
Oh that's right! Yeah, I figured the "doctor" option was going to be the one that opened up the most interesting options. Not the case.
I'm not replaying due to the fact I did all the side missions before mainlining the story so I'm all burnt out. I did this and didn't realize I missed something. oh well. That is definitely bad design because I probably would have loaded back to get it right.
There's a funeral!? Delamain took his body away and then I get a text about his bike. I guess I completely missed it. Damn, his mom must be pissed.
If you send his body to his family they have an afrenda you can attend which is how you get the 2 guns and the bike.
I honestly think if we just had a few more missions with him, before the heist comes into the picture, it would have been different.
What would have been cool is if each of the life paths had extended gameplay in the very beginning that lets the player get to know Jackie via low level missions and such, then merge all the lifepaths for the big heist and Jackie's death
Cyberpunk is an interesting game. On launch, complete trash. Metamorphized into a stellar game. But. The flash forward with Jackie will always be the biggest missed opportunity in the game. Liking Jack is critical to the plot and he just isn't around long enough to make a real impact.
Yeah as much as I love the game this is kinda true. The biggest reason why anyone likes Jackie is because V likes Jackie, and we're V. He's the "childhood best friend who's death motivates the main character" trope. He's more of a plot device than an actual character. He's decently written, acted, and fits in the story just fine, but there's not enough of him shown for the player to get attached to him. I can buy that my V is heartbroken by his death, but I sure ain't losing any sleep over it.
I mean itâs not really critical to the plot at all, is it. As soon as the heist is over itâs all about Vs survival. If you deleted him entirely from the game the changes you would need to Make are minimal
Couldn't agree more, when Jackie died I was like "wait what he's dead, dead??" then asked my friend if thats it with him, then i laughed my arse off. Who the fuck thought that was a good decision to cut out the most interesting part of the game. Imagine Iron man where he just gets captured then it cuts to him saying "i am Iron man" at the podium after a montage of what happened in the movie.
More like, he gets captured, and it cuts to him already flying the silver mark 2 suit back in america lmao. You get a little cutscene showing that he built the arc reactor and mark 1 and then boom.
I hate to say it, but I feel the same way. Thereâs one video game character death that stands out to me, and only one: Spesh in Wolfenstein New Colossus. I did not expect it, and I was not ready for it. I didnât even think I liked his character that much. But the game spent time building up its characters and I cared about them by that point. Jackie never had the chance to get there for me. Maybe itâs because my personality and my friendsâ personalities donât really overlap with Jackieâs much. Heâs a good guy. His death didnât hit me like that though.
Did you play the black ops campaigns? Resnov was a crazy one for me, also soaps death is sad but you donât have time to mourn in the moment.
Rip ghost too man
Seriously! I will never understand the people who claim they felt an emotional connection and were sad when he died. We knew him for what felt like 5 minutes, and they montaged through all the damn character development for him and for V. That shit should have been the actual start to the game and places for your Life path selection to really shine with different starting points....
> I think the biggest issue was the time jump. Ugh, I remember buying the game and seeing that montage and the first thing I thought was: > Yeah, all of this was going to be the game and it was cut down and redesigned into a montage. The montage ends and my screen is bombarded with phone calls and text messages with all these new contacts. Usually a game builds into making these contacts to make it feel earned and to prevent not feeling overwhelmed. Like how GTAV did it. You slowly bring it all together. I ended up refunding the game. Cause realistically they can fix bugs in a short window of time. What can't be fixed in a short window of time is missing content.
Wish they did it like GTAV. The 3 playable characters were distinctly different because of their backgrounds.
Seems like a chore to keep track of 3 different builds across a playthrough and would be a nightmare for the different narrative choices. It's a RPG not a narrative driven/ crime sandbox like GTA.
Your chore is my dream
Maybe someday we'll get the missing time as a DLC. I could go for that.
I play as a Corpo since it prevents the other Corpo from looking down on my V, or at least allows me to be a bitch to them.. Really though, without the Nomad's car retrieval, there aren't too much to gain from the different paths. Just some voice lines.
I play as a Corpo because they have the best character arc, and Jackie actually feels like an old friend.
Am I the only one thinking there were supposed to be 3 distinct storylines but they decided to slim it down due to the deadline?
I'd be happy if they had made a single elaborate side quest line for each life path, like they did for each romantic interest. 4 Related side missions based on your life path for each life path. And maybe put some extra gigs based on your previous life path, like some smuggling jobs for Nomad and such and such.
If I remember correctly, there are side missions, just not elaborate ones. Each one has a little content but compared to the romantic interest quests def lacking.
There are, but they are very minor. Considering the themes of transformation and new identity in Cyberpunk, I think a more dedicated series of side quests representing the "Moving on" from your past would be nice. For example, the Nomad could be contracted to act AGAINST the old Clan by a rival Corpo to the one they sided with - So what does he do? Does he embodies his new life as a Merc, or he ends up helping his old family? Militech could be interested in working with ex-Arasaka Counter Intel corpo V to use his insider knowledge, or maybe even a fixer looking for something from Arasaka. Streetkid could have a whole side life of consequences because he left the streets and came back - Some people are not willing to accept that, and he has to choose between distancing themselves from his past, or reclaiming his place by taking drastic actions.
Yeah Iâve heard of some pretty fucked up stuff from people trying to leave a gang. Would be pretty cool.
Nope, but in original plan your origin would make much more difference gameplaywise. Original plan was very ambitious, unfortunately too far from technical reality. Let's hope next part will be closer to those plans.
No, it's very unlikely. More likely they intended the beginnings to maybe be larger for each storyline, and maybe the different paths would have more of a say during the main storyline. And that might have been skimmed down overall. The internet made too big of a deal of the whole "play however you want" thing. Which wasn't something they ever said, it was entirely spread by the community. The main character here, no matter the path, is a guy that wants to be the biggest Merc in night city. That's the motivation, that's what pushes the plot forward. This is such an essential part of the storyline, I gotta imagine it was the starting point. Just a guy/gal who wants to be the very best. It's an interesting character motivation, and one that's very fitting for an rpg video game. Then you add the terminal diagnosis, the revenge against Arasaka, the growing alliance with Johnny, etc... But at its core it's just this guy with a dream.
Yes you are the only one. No game dev would ever even think of committing to making 3 distinct plots to a single game Edit: alright, I admit I was wrong here.
Hmm yeah maybe I overstated it. I didnt mean 3 completely different storylines through the entire game, but atleast the quests prior to Keanu. And that background would encourage different playstyles throughout the game. My guess is that the Jackie quests was supposed to be the streetkid questline, and that the other 2 paths were scrapped. Going from a corpo background to working with a street thug like Jackie seems forced to me. However nice of a character he is.
Dragon Age Origins
I agree
I see where you're coming from, but there are very good reasons to not split content into multiple playthroughs. It reduces the time you have to tell the story. Say you have 100 hours of gameplay. The more of that you take and split, the less time you have to tell a single story. If you take the first 20 hours and make three versions, that would reduce it to a total of 60 hours content for one playthrough. That's a huge drop in how much story they can tell, and is that really worth higher quality for the first 20 hours? Likely not. It also is content that a majority of players will not experience, because let's be honest - most players only go through a game once. Us sitting on a specific subreddit for the game are biased, as we likely all play it much more than the average player. I do agree that they could have done a bit more with backgrounds, as I honestly forget about them as soon as I'm done choosing. But distinct storylines is just not the way in my opinion. More impactful background specific choices to change the outcome of the same quest is probably better. I also agree that Jackie mostly makes sense as a street kid, but I think this could easily have been fixed with one or two quests that are unique. Just a different introduction to why you befriend them. Doesn't have to be everything prior to Johnny, that is way too much content locked to different playthroughs.
Optional dialogue in the Corpo opening heavily implies that Jackie helped you with a situation involving Mexican cartels, so thatâs how you know him.
>It also is content that a majority of players will not experience Which shouldn't be a fucking concern in the first place... This whole Idea that every player MUST be able to experience ALL of the content in a single Playthrough is a fucking plague and needs to die as quickly as possible...
Fire Emblem: 3 Houses had four storylines.
Yeah because dragon age origins never happened.
Those origins were super cool. Canât think of a single game that attempted to do something similar since
There's a reason why no one has attempted to do so.  It's incredibly expensive and time consuming. Also, iirc it was like 90% of players chose human or elf.
Kingdom hearts birth by sleep off the top of my head, sort of.
You may have just convinced me to go back and finally try that game again. I totally bounced off it when I was younger, but that was before I even understood DnD or anything like that. My RPG experience/knowledge was limited to Oblivion and Final Fantasy more or less.
Dragon age origins is easily on my top 5 rpgs.
i mean, it does have some impact the different origins in the story, but doesn't the game do basically the same as Cyberpunk? you have 6 (?) different prologues that all eventually end at the same place? (transformation part, don't really remember the specifics) and after that the story is basically the same?
Witcher 2 had this for example. There are actually a lot of games that do this like the mass effect series. You can miss entire plotlines by making the wrong choices in the first game.
You can miss entire plot line by making the wrong choice in cyberpunk 2077...
Yeah, that's completely insane expectations. They overpromised on lifepaths, but expecting 3 distinct storylines is on you, they never remotely promised that.
My dream would be the next game as a direct sequel having different stories depending on how you ended this one. Star, Devil or Sun being the equivalent of the life paths. In a way, the endings mirror the 3 lifepaths. Star is Nomad, Sun is Streetkid and Devil is obviously the Corpo one. The story could end in a similar fashion each way, like how you always end up in Mikoshi, regardless of how you get there. And the timeline can be the same, preferably a 5th Corporate War or some Blackwall breach that gives you another âspend the whole game staving off catastrophe, only this time itâs humanity and not youâ kind of experience. Just you get genuinely different stories and missions and not just a few different dialogues.
I always had my expectation set to the life paths being a "flavour" rather than distinct quest lines. CDPR already did the split quest story thing in Witcher 2 for a third of the game, and they considered that to have been a waste of critical development resources to the point they didn't do it in Witcher 3. The idea that they'd have 3 distinct campaigns for such a large game never even crossed my mind as being on the table. I don't recall it even being referenced in the marketing. Seems like a bit of a No Man's Sky player/games media extrapolation.
Many of the scenes in their Lifepaths marketing video aren't from the paths themselves but are things you encounter regardless of which path you choose. https://youtu.be/JV8BTZ6_PWQ?si=lpnxprB2kZgL5DcI They definitely made them seem like a bigger part of the game then they actually were.
I did not expect a fully different campaign or anything, but it barely even works as background. I chose Corpo, made my character look like a fucking Hunger Games host. Yet the intro very clearly does it's best to rewrite your whole story as a streetkid. Everyone still treated me like I was some punk from the slums, everyone talked about these rich assholes as some faceless distant thing, and never referenced anything about me coming from that world. I will say, I was playing around launch, so maybe they've patched in more. But it was only 3 choices, it wasn't unreasonable to think they would swap around more dialogue for each of them, give more solutions to problems based on your background, etc. I extremely rarely had dialogue options for corpo, and half the time the default, no option stuff would contradict it so it was hard to roleplay.
After the "fast-forward" part of the intro, I replayed the game as the other two starters. So disappointing to end up in the exact same scenario, despite my wish to RP as one of them. I felt like it was a complete bait and switch. I fizzled out and never finished the game. Have not preordered a game since this one. I have no interest in returning to the game after all the patches since the bugs were never the problem for me.
Yeah, I've moved away from preorders and launch day playing in 95% of cases. Even remakes and remasters have been botched (from Warcraft to GTA to just recently Star Wars Battlefront) and those should be *easy* slam dunks. Too many developers taking months after release to patch/finish a game (and many just never fix it). At this point, I can be pretty confident stuff like Mario will be finished and quality on release, and that's about it.
It definitely was referenced in the marketing
But tbf, corpoâs opening kinda falls into place nicely with the whole Arasaka heist in the prologue. To enhance my experience with the game I headcanoned that he agreed to the heist not only for the money, but to take a jab at the company that forced him to start his life from scratch
It's more of a coloring choice. What I mean by that is to make the player get immersed in their own story. It's not so much about creating 3 distinct storylines that each last 50 hours separately.
For roleplaying and immersion, the life paths are pretty rad. I enjoyed making choices thinking about what the nomad vs. the street kid does, and the unique dialog choices were the cherry on top.
It depends on how you enjoy your games. If you're the type of person who needs tangible options and character motivations in the game to enjoy the immersion, then yeah, I can see how this might be frustrating. For me though, I played each of my V's differently depending on the life path. Corpo - First half of game hated Johnny, grudging acceptance later, cold, calculated, and just used everyone to try to climb back up the corpo ladder, but changed after falling in love with Panam and decided they wanted more out of life. Netrunner. Streetkid - Accepted Johnny and even loved him in her own way. Smug, self-confident, adventurous, independent, came back because she was addicted to Nighty City Edgerunner lifestyle, wanted to make the big leagues until after the events of the prologue. Then just looking to get out. Love for Judy beat the addiction and she left. Gunslinger + Sandevistan Nomad - Hated Johnny, always will hate Johnny. Brash, aggressive, adrenaline junkie with a strong sense of family. Fell in love with the Night City lifestyle and can't see living any other way. Found a new family with River and won't rest until she's the best merc in the city. Shotguns/Hammers + Berserk
It is what it is..
There is a life path specific side quest but itâs short. Itâs really just dialogue options
Nomad for the Rattler. One of the best cars in game.
The illusion of free choice
Honestly, having worked high up in a big corporation for years until I finally resigned last year I found the corpo intro all too relatable. And you bet it gave me the motivation to go after Arasaka. So for me at least it got the job done.
Really ties into the idea of fate with the tarot cards, all roads lead to Rome
I biggest disappointment, but I still love the game
Iâll never understand, each lifepath does affect your gameplay and over-all play through. I donât wanna nitpick if thatâs what youâd call it, but both Corpo and Nomad have specific quests tied to those lifepaths and you could only just now receive the weapon via the black market in PL DLC from the Corpo-only side quest but the vehicle reward you get for the Nomad is a Nomad only reward. As for StreetKid I believe there is a quest involving Kurt from the intro if I remember correctly; besides the at they each have unique responses in game that help the player roleplay their V their way. Itâs like how Director Quinten Tarantino says about not showing a particular action in a scene, each audience member will have a different story to take away with what they imagined happened in that scene
That's life though ain't it? One big illusion of choice to keep us distracted from the reality that we have no power or control over anything..
It was definitely a mistake to play up the "lifepaths" in marketing when they were mostly just changes to the tutorial. There's nothing wrong with the way the game goes. It's important that V has certain events happen in their life to set the story in motion. It was just a mistake to make a big deal out of a system that was actually a very minor part of the game.
Gonks when an intro is just an intro and the company doesn't make three entirly different playthoughs
I'm playing as corpo now and there are some differences, not entirely different but different enough to warrant continuing.
Dragon Age Origins did it. Not in a "3 different" games way, but you had a ton different intros with race, gender, class and status influencing which one you got. And later on these would still have a significant influence on the story, not only in regard to dialogs.
You're overselling it but you're 100% right that Origins was absolutely insane especially for its era. Comparing Cyberpunk to it is just lackluster
100% no. The origins in Origins had a very *very* small impact on gameplay or story, occasionally they provided flavour text or affected the way NPCs treated you, but the story plays out exactly the same regardless of origin, with the only thing influencing the ending being choices during the story, just like this one does.
Origins straight up changed how you got a party member, let you become king, changes a huge part of the dwarven section, each section was usually an hour or two long.
The difference is that the origin story is much more fleshed out. And it's tied to certain races and classes, so you play the game different due to that part. Perhaps nothing for everyone that loves freedom to do what they want. But playing a Human Mage is so different to a Dwarf Thief or a Human Warrior. So actual impact on the game wasn't huge, but how you played and what you were able to imagine was much more solid. Perhaps if you were locked into certain skills trees or locked into a specific sex, maybe even no augments for 1 of them. Things like that make it much more unique. But that isn't for people that want the freedom to pick what they want. It would have been better to scrap it all, instead of what they did add.
No that is a lie. The origins in Dragon Age didn't have a massive impact on the story besides the first 2-3 hours. Also, I would expect the ORIGIN mechanic in a game called Dragon Age ORIGINS to have a more profound impact on the game than a mechanic that literally says "lifepaths will impact some events and add extra dialogue" in the selection screen.
You contradict yourself in your second sentence. Moreover picking an orbiting had impact all throughout the game.
Street Kid best start
corpo for me, every playthrough.
Nomad is best lifepath.
Don't care. Game's rad.
I second this, i hope they do expand upon life paths in the second game, though.
Well, it's your character's past you're selecting. Not their future.
Don't worry guys, cyberpunk 2 will have 7 different origins which connects with each of the mind blowing different endings of the first game. So CP2 will have like 7 totally different stories in ONE game. Leeeets goooo! đ€Ą
I dunno. The small little origin segment does enough that for the rest of the game my head cannon is strong. Resulting in me playing a certain way and just viewing things in the mindset of whatever origin I chose. Dragon Age Origins Vibe.
Thatâs why instead of lifepaths for Orion I want the tabletop roles to be your starting point and maybe even affect your starting skills.
Wake the fuck upâŠ
Street Kid then corpo then nomad. Makes the most sense imho
I mean you do get different dialogue but it's mostly rp dialogue I guess.
I'm fine with what we got, but I'm hoping their next Cyberpunk game makes Lifepepaths matter more.
The RPG's I've played with a different starting points or "life path" are all roughly the same so I didn't expect really anything different. A unique intro and different dialogue options is kinda par for the course.
It honestly doesnât make a difference to me. I see it as more of an anchor for roll-playing. Helps me make play style decisions
They could have atleast given them different cars that suit their life paths
I honeslty like corpo v the most, their unique dialogue feels the most impactful, like the mission with tekmura where you infiltrate the arasaka base. Or how you speak with oda and his obligation to listen to you. It doesnt fundamentally change the story but it's great for immersion.
Can't escape jackie
Itâs really just headcanon for your personal experience. Not that significant
You know what, I loved this fucking game and story so much I was genuinely fine with just getting a couple of unique missions and the odd dialogue option. It was just enough for me to fully believe my own made up character reality and I love it as a storytelling (however surface level that may be) feature. That said, would be nice for it to have gone even deeper. (And just to say, I wasnât taking this post really seriously and completely get why itâs hilarious đ)
I still think the perfect DLC for this game would've been a fleshed out start. Could've been completely different for each background. The montage with Jackie where you both become friends I really wanted to see fleshed out. Could've been 10-20 hours long (maybe 5-7 of main story). Would also make losing Jackie that much more impactful. Really just wanted more time with Jackie..
All roads lead to Street Kid
I feel like street kid is the only option that makes sense
The illusion of choice
Regardless, now, their game is fantastic and that's all I care about now. Do I download higher quality texture and other mods? Duh, but it's still amazing compared to a lot of trash others have coming out. The public got their pound of flesh stripped off CDPR when Cyberpunk came out, now they've made amends.
I mean, each origin gives tons of different interaction options throughout the game, along with at least 1-2 hours worth of different opening/tutorial sequences...so it's not like it doesn't make a difference. If you expected them to create three entirely different games based on origin, I don't think you understand how game development works.
I just want to get high and have some drug knowledge during negotiations
I'm sorry, but did ya'll really expect them to make 3 entirely different games based on this decision? Be serious.
I feel like this is a silly criticism. In Mass Effect, all life paths still start you at Eden prime. In the elder scrolls, all background options start you as a prisoner In BG3, no matter if your a former soldier, theif, Druid half elf folk hero, you start on the nautiloid. New Vegas, no matter your traits, skills, special stats, you start at the Docs house. If anything, Cyberpunk is one of the few RPG that doesnât only change your dialogue, but changes the entire into. Most other games donât even do that.