Paths: A Cyberpunk 2077 Blog

It's December 10, 2020. You look outside the window, everything is still in the dead of the night, no sounds, besides the sound of a few a cars passing by. You've been up all night excited, knowing Cyberpunk 2077 is finally going to be released after years of trailers and built up hype. Your fingers frantically refresh the tab, watching the countdown timer, knowing full well when it becomes available. The clock ticks zero, and you don't waste a millisecond to hit the download button. 

An hour later, with a smile as wide as your face, you boot up the game. The CDProjekt Red, the developers, logo shows up, followed by a few others. Then you see this...

Cheeks hurting from the smiling, you can barely look away from the screen. Despite it being 3am in the morning, you feel all the sleep drain out of you. The introductory movie plays, showing you a glimpse of this new world you prepare yourself to immerse into.

 

And the game finally begins, you've reached the main menu. You take a quick tour of the settings to make sure everything is set up perfectly to give you a problem free, smooth game. You hit the space bar, and press the 'New Game' button.

Despite the eagerness to just jump into the game, you spend an hour or two to make your first character. Then you are met with this screen.

The three life paths you can choose for your V, to set up background and history.

Now, I just want to discuss how I felt about each of these introduction sequences, which act as a prologue before the main campaign starts. I won't explain how the introduction plays out, in case someone wants to play it for themselves, but if you are curious, watch it on YouTube.

The Nomad Path:

This was by far my favorite path. It established a very good history and background for V, kept the tone, location and characters in the beginning very in line with their lifestyle. Another aspect of it is it offered a very fresh perspective of Night City, as you start from outside it, in the Badlands. All the activities and interactions feel very natural and in place, and the chemistry between Jackie and yourself naturally builds up. I personally felt this to be the most fleshed out introduction, while setting up a deep history for your character through the rest of the game, and it also deepens the romance between Panam and yourself if you choose to do so.

The Streetkid Path:

My second favorite of the three, I felt this to be the most normal ending. It doesn't set up much history for your V, but you are put into the life of a street hustler, gets into a deal that goes sour, a failed attempt of theft, that pulls a hand into creating a bond between Jackie and yourself, while establishing some character for Padre, which you'd miss out on if you chose the other paths. This path offers the highest amount of dialogue options, as you do spend a lot of time in Night City and can relate to a lot more characters easily.

The Corpo Path:

Not my favorite, but it doesn't mean that it's bad. This was the shortest of the three, with the least action, and a straight up corpo deal gone bad. Jackie acts as your friend, telling you how bad the decision you made was, and it ends in you losing your job and swearing to stick out against corporations that did you wrong.

The dialogue option this one gives you through the rest of the game are not as much, and it stands out as I felt as if V stuck to their old ways, but still wanted to start new. It could be taken as 'old habits die hard' but if you didn't like the way you were treated there, why treat others the same way?

Well, as we all know, as much as I love this game, it launched in a terrible state. Due to a myriad of issues, everyone, including myself, had terrible performance and bugs, so bad some people couldn't even play it, and this left a terrible mark on the game and the reputation of the studio.

If I was able to pique your interest in this game, I implore you to go play this game, you will not be disappointed.

~sodahead

(images taken in-game, from CyberPunk 2077 by CDProjekt Red)