Hello, So I finished the game yesterday at 4 am.. lots of thoughts, I had to open up the forums and see what is up, after reading more than 40 pages of the ending thread and this I feel like I had to share my thoughts so thanks for that
And breakdown what I am seeing fused with my opinion.
Playing as 'myself' , male V forming relationship with Panam, I got "good" ( more on this later) ending after more than 60 hours ingame time and I am not gonna lie the whole game made me tear up sometimes and the story was very gripping allthroughout , so good job on that! defintely top 5 game for me along with Witcher series and Mass effect series. Soon I looked up all the other endings and I have to say I am a tiny bit dissapointed for the lack of better word. Pretty much all others apart from Nomad are pretty depressing and hopeless, which is what majority of people feel. Again I am going to bring up what I am seeing althrough the forum - just because it's "cyberpunk" does not mean we cannot have a halfway decent ending for ourselfes, yes I know NC eats people alive and chews them up but we are not ordinary people are we, not after Dex.
Why do I consider the nomad ending 'good' ? Because its the only one that offers a tiny bit of hope even if you only got 6 months to accomplish it ( finding a cure ) or atleast fighting for it as Johnny says when you enter the well.
I would be all up for a continuation DLC specially given the Nomad ending , bit biased on this regardless because I dont like prequels etc. because again like many people said what is the point of the extra backstory and etc. when we already know the end of the story? Same thing goes with any extra missions before ACT 3 UNLESS it ties back to the ending/ or gives us some ability to influence it better. Whatever happens DLC's( more like Expansions) need to have an effect on the story either ability to change it OR better post main game story either in Palace or Arizona/road to south ,which does not need to be limited to the map extension only as with writing we could easily return to NC for certain missions or objectives, - people who say Cyberpunk is NC only.. but it really isnt it was we wouldnt have badlands currently either.
About V/V engram discussion - I dont really mind playing as V engram as some people call it I consider that as V who survived. What is a soul anyway? Isnt it mind, personality, and memories that defines that ? which is exactly what was "put" back into your body after Arasaka tower, its exactly the same you regardless if you were "copied" or not. The bigger issue in my opinion is figuring out how not to die AGAIN, with no coming back this time.
Romances - It is quite obvious that the main romance choices are Judy and Panam. Others are there to satisfy or make everyone happy and I see no issues with that and if people STILL feel something is off why didnt we see that with Witcher
. It feels great and all and engaging with the missions and little messages between the calls, so I like that was expanded upon from Witcher like they said they would however it is still not quite perfect, it is very good UNTIL you complete all the missions relating to the person then its like you hit a brick wall, until the ending ofcourse which is better than nothing but.. yeah. Why not allow us to call them say for a gig , hell even add an RNG and/or lockouts to the call so you cant always call them if the story does not "allow" them to be away from their families, job or whatever , you get what I mean, this is just a rough example, if you dont like it , just read the first part
People saying it would be very hard to bring all(most) endings and specially romances to a continuation expansion - Gotta disagree. Remember how empty and lifeless Witcher 3 was after the story and fans complained? Blood and Wine rectified that, it remembered your romance choice for one and stuff you did in the story, the whole ending of B&W was fan service after CDPR listening and I liked that , we need some of that here for sure. Just remember that this whole engine and specially witcher was made to be played from sequel to sequel carrying your save over and choices actually mattered( thats why playing Witcher and Mass effect in series was one of the best video gaming experiences for sure and I will never forget them) so it is defo not impossible.
Regarding the gamestar article CDP saying the game is done story wise and no story continued expansion - I very much hope that is not the case and was reffering to the base game story being complete from writing standpoint , not cut up for future expansions ON purpose. If cyberpunk 2077 wont have a post story or sequel I would be very dissapointed indeed. People saying they should just "abandon" it and stuff , nah you cannot do that. This is their IP , them mentioning how they 'lost' fans trust in the recent conference call , they need to continue cyberpunk and provide fan service thats the only sure way of getting some if it back , not by abandoning and making a separate game such as Witcher 4. That would only really mean that they are reliant on Witcher "copyright" to stand out which is never a good outlook for a company. Cmon CDPR you can do this.
Look what is happening to Mass effect ( not sure how much to "spoil" here ) but the recent teaser for the new ME shows that they are very likely to choose a canon ending and continue upon Shepard or story of what happend, he IS Mass effect as Andromeda clearly showed( and no I dont mean technically , just generally I played Andromeda, and I liked it however it was not the same feeling as Shepard's ME). They needed 8 years to realise that it seems even if its mainly a new team and ideas -however many OG devs returned specifically to work on this new game soo anyway, lets return to Cyberpunk
All in all, why do I think a continuation is possible ? Well given the many teasers - area not available..yet. - hints etc. , endings pointing to V being alive in some form, I truly hope and feel like we have not seen the last of V. Second its much easier to develop a blood & wine style expansion than make a sequel or etc. with new chars, new story, new engine framework etc. and could come within the next 2 years for sure, do I believe its going to be first dlc? hell nah. That is prolly space station stuff or something else , but I hope its coming. If not I assume player retention after people finish the story is going to be pretty bad, but that is for their internal statistics to see
just remember its not about CCU. If anything a ~6000 post, 300 page thread about the game after 13 days does not faze you or someone here who brings it up to management, then I dont know what to say
it really shows people care about this game, and how can we not after so many years! PS I also would agree with people saying MP is not really needed, I'd rather much delay MP even more to 2024 if needed to gives us a more fledged out story and content
Thank you very much anybody/everyone who reads this post/rant/thoughts , this will help me move on until further experiences are available. Here's to a better 2021!