It’s frustrating that the first chance to play Cyberpunk 2077 is not in the flesh but remotely, streamed from somebody else’s PC. But there’s a pandemic so a press event can’t happen, and this is what we’ve got. And you know what? The tech’s not bad. The video image is compressed but it’s still a stunning game, and while there’s a bit of input lag, it’s negligible. It’s surprisingly playable, and so I play for four hours from the very beginning of the game.
You’ve seen some of what I play in the gameplay video already released, but I also do things and meet characters you haven’t seen. More importantly, I get a chance to just be in the world and feel what it’s like to be there. I nose around, talking to people. I look through my inventory and pore over my character development screens, fantasising about the kind of Cyberpunk hero I’ll be. I get a sense of what it’s going to be like spending hours and hours here.
And I tell you this: there’s a lot more going on in Cyberpunk 2077 than The Witcher 3. Night City is an overwhelming place. There are no quaint little villages like White Orchard with gentle rolling hills on the horizon to ease you in. There’s one big city stuffed with huge buildings, and the labyrinthine alleyways and the dirty streets beneath them.
Quite how Cyberpunk manages to pack so many people in I don’t know. They crowd the streets and alleyways as well as the clubs and hallways inside. Even by my apartment there are people banging on vending machines and shouting things. I frequently barge past people to get to places, and it makes my day to hear a boy say, “You’ve got a big dumb face. Hahaha!” because I know the cheeky personality I loved in The Witcher 3 is here.
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People come in all shapes and sizes (I’m so glad there are bigger body types) and colours, and are tattooed, body-modified and punked. The hair is some of the best I’ve seen. It can be wooden in games like these but here it has body and bounce. Consider there are more than 30 haircuts to choose from, not to mention implants (metal balls under the skin), zany eye-types (I opted for swirly black and white hypno eyes) and all kinds of futuristic metal facial adornments, and you begin to imagine what an exotic spectacle the people can be.