[SPOILER Warning] A critical view on the story and pacing.

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Disclaimer: this post will contain spoilers for the story of cyberpunk 2077 and other pieces of fiction, notably the expanse, the windup girl, a song of ice and fire, the sprawl trilogy, blade runner, johnny mnemonic and others.

First and foremost : critique is one of the highest forms of appreciation and respect.


Now that this is out of the way, let's get it started by saying that overall, the story is very good. Parts of it are a true gem of story telling in video games. Other parts however, show weaknesses I also want to write about.

First: what makes the story great?
Mainly, it's the story telling and the techniques used to get the players deeply immersed into the world and story of this game.
CDPR showed how powerful the first person perspective is if utilized accordingly. This is both blessing and curse at the same time.
Another pretty important factor is the protagonist or in this case, literally the perspective character.
A perspective character (PC) in writing is a protagonist, from which perspective the story is told.
This story has two PCs but only one main character. Please keep this in mind. Main and PC is V - our avatar and representation of ourselves in the game. The other PC is johnny silverhand. Johnnie's perspective is told only relevant in flashbacks and a very limited number of side missions and two epilogues if certain choices are made.
In addition the story is driven by a strong cast of side characters, who are pushing the narrative.

If we compare this constellation to novels with more than one PC, we already are on the low side. Leviathan Wakes (the first expanse novel) presents us with two PCs, who also work as main characters - both progress the story equally.
The windup girl has 4 PCs and I actually stopped counting how many PCs are in "a song of ice and fire"

This will become important later on.

Another important factor to create immersion is the ability to present the player appropriate visual presentation and convincing voice over and music. This is off course different to novels but is comparable to movies. Blade ru ner would have been far less impactful, if vangelis would not have made the soundtrack.
To cut this short, this part of the game is exceptionally well done. The voice overs are excellent and the characters never feel out of place because of the way they look and sound. A lot of people criticise the performance of Keanu Reaves but IMHO, he nails Johnny perfectly well. Johnny is a selfish, cynical and deeply sad character the assumed "limited Rang" e of Keanu Reaves fits perfectly to Johnny's range of emotions, goals and state of mind.
Other characters who are especially well made are Vic, misty and jacky.


Pacing:
Here is where first problems are surfacing..
The pacing is excellent - for a novel, movie or linear game. The game starts out slow with the player getting a feeling what our V is like. In my personal example, V is a Corpo.
We are called in, because shit hit the fan in our department (counter espionage) and several assets are being killed. V is under heavy stress when an old friend calls - jacky. Little side note, it would have been far better if the interface would have shown us basic informations about jacky, just like you did with our, boss, we are about to meet.
To cut this short, V gets a special job from her boss, meets jacky and gets fired.
Here, the story progresses and shows us the transformation from corpo-V to merc-V. While a lot of people would have preferred a playable version of it, the slide does its job surprisingly well.

Next stage is act 1
We have are at the beginning of our new life and apparently are already valued assets, because we are given the task of saving important corpo-personal. After that, the first relatively hard to believe part comes in. Mr. Chill.
It requires a good amount of suspension of disbelief to accept the fact that one of the top fixers in NC tasks V and Jacky (a cliche solo, who is only good at certain things) with a masterpiece heist. Alarm bells are already ringing here.

The pacing however at this stage is perfect. We have the freedom to explore Watson, because matters are not really pressing.
Several side and main missions later, the highlight of the game comes. The heist.

This mission has excellent pacing, an excellent plot twist and one of the saddest good byes of the story.
Yorinobus kills his father and blames it on poison - convenientlynfornhim, we are on scene and can be used as presumed assassins - this however is only the cherry on top for his plan, who would have worked in any case.
Jacky is mortally wounded by either the fall through the window or a stray bullet from the drone. It is clear that we need to act fast if we want. To safe our lives.
In the end, jacky bleeds it in the taxi and we can't do anything to help, because the taxi has a pre-determined route we can't change.
We are given the biochip (the target of our heist) and have to store it in our personal shard slot to keep it functional
We confront Mr chill and in return for our services, we bite a bullet. Here, the pacing slows down a bit to give us room to breathe.
Next stage is us waking up from. Time to time - V is clearly not dead but loses continuousness, only waking up from time to time.

Here, we can witness our body being bumped, Mr chill getting exetuted to cut lose ends and we slowly crawling out of a landfill, only to get picked up by soburo arasakas former bodyguard, who brings us to a ripperdoc (Vic). In between we meet Johnny silverhand and change perspective. This whole part is exceptionally well made. The pacing is perfect, a new PC is introduced and we are bound to what is happening on screen.

The fall off in act 2 is sadly very steep.
We are presented with a terminal condition. While this is technically not a problem, it is made one later on by the story. The calorie man in the novel the windup girl gets ill during the course of the story (the setting of the book makes it perfectly clear that he is fucked) but he continues to do his job (finding old gene material for his company).

We however are at this point left with options that revolve around suicide, because the biochip is slowly rewriting our brain - we are becoming johnny.
At this point, the story hits an absolute low point. The incentive to play on is basically taken away, because we are not presented with a goal to carry on. On top of that, our new passenger mindrapes V.
After waking up from this shitty night, we are being left with nothing (no fire for revenge, because Mr chill is already decaying in a dumpster.), until we get a call and attent to a meeting that gives us a faint chance to safe out lives, if we help the bodyguard.

From this point onwards, the pacing if totally off.
Why? Because we are being told again and again that we are running out of time. Not only by Vic (our trusted ripperdoc) but basically most people we meet and the fact that our biochip makes us feel sick, cough up blood and pass out from time to time in addition, our new passenger (a real dick) is bothering us.
We are literally running out of time in an environment that want to be explored and experienced. This dissonance is high and kills the setting to a large degree. Especially if we take into account that all main missions are available at this point and that we basically can do them one after one. If they were tied to character level or other timed gates, we would have less of a sense of urgency and would be more inclined to do side content.
Insteady all side missions are urgent and present us with an arbitrary time gate (flight plan is already approved / parade is about to start etc)
This pacing would be excellent in a novel, because the MCs focus is now solely on survival. A race to gain tien ultimate price.
This basically ruins act 2.

The storytelling within the main missions is pretty well done and we learn a lot about Johnny, ourselves and NC.

Act 2 ends with a bang and an invitation from our enemy - the arasaka family. At this point, our time in NC is basically over. We are slowly dying we have to get our shit ready as fast as possible. At this point, the pacing gets a lot better. We collapse after the meeting and wake up in vics clinic, who tells us that we are already dead if we don't make out final move. He gives us two pills that buy us some time and a gun if we are not feeling able to finish it, because the chances for survival are slim.
Here, we get a moment to slow down and take a breath, before going on our final mission. If we made the "dumb decision" to help people we met during then main missions, out options on what to do are increased. Why is is a dumb decision to do lots side missions? Because of the urgency of the situation is telling us to focus on the main goal.
The last mission is set up well. The pacing is good. V is slowly falling apart but is still able to face off enemies and Adam Smasher. The fight however is a bit hard to believe if we consider the state our body is in.
We finish the last mission, and get our reward - survival in several tastes and colors. Beaten, fucked up, partially rewritten by the biochip and optionally at the loss of lots of friends lifes, we are waiting for our "getting out of jail card" in the epilogue. To get this, we have to sacrifice one of the PCs - either johnny or V. In Vs case, we would sacrifice the MC and let Johnny take our place. Literally.


Here, we come to the next problemI: n story continuity and inconsistencies.

We suddey are terminally ill - again. Seriously. Pulling the same plot device twice on the MC is a horribly bad idea, if the continuation of the story is not possible or does not serve a higher purpose for the story.
In the windup girl, one of the major PCs is killed after 2/3rd. At this point, we get a replacement in the formnofnher subordinate, who is actually able to continue the story. The death was logical, impactful and we get a replacement that is able to continue the view from this perspective. In addition, the replacement has her own agenda, views and path to redemption.
In leviathan wakes, the second PC dies at the end by sacrificing himself to safe earth. It is an impactfulmdeath that has a meaning.
In later books several PCs die in a comparable fashion. They either die in a blaze of glory or use the remaining time they have (from a fatal condition) to attone for their sins, by saving their lives. Meaningful, logical and believable.

The second terminal illness servers no purpose, other than to make the player suffer. We don't have a replacement for V at this point, the other PC is already gonenand no one is left to fill the gap.
If we let Johnny take over, he is not using it to continue a life worthy of the sacrifice made by the MC - he gets shut down by other people and in the end, leaves NC.
V is present with the terminal illness.
If we let arasaka dice up our brain to safe us, the other PC is gone forever and we are only left with the choice to give up and get digitalised by or to get back to earth with only 6 months to live - no hope to find a cure at all.

In the other two outcomes, we are also left with 6 months. V either buys a large mansion (why?) and goes on one final mission with a faint chance for a cure (again) or rides (a tank) into the sunset, while having a small chance to fing a cure.... Again...


The core problem lies in using the same obsticle and solution again. In addition, the player feels cheated, because two of three acts were basically full of disappointment and unfulfilled goals.

The second problem lies in the justifications behind the terminal illness. This can be described as an asspull. I don't want to go into details but the presence of the illness in V as V and in johnny as V are illogical at best. V gets sick, johnny does not. We don't get a real explanationnon why it is that way and why the biochip suddenly does not do its job anymore. In addition the other successful engram transfer works and is justified by the core family relation between engram and body.
So. Either V's body gets sick - no matter who gets it or doesn't.
Either the chip finishes its work or it doesn't.

Blaming the problem on DNA is simply not believable and even contradicted by the lore of the world where gene therapy is common.


IIn the End, the perspective of death of the MC is cheapened, because it's a reused tool, serves no purpose and it happens at the final hour, without the player being able to do something against it.

This is made worse by the high levels of immersion caused by the 1st person perspective and the time spent witnessing the MCs struggle to survive. We went though hell as V and not with V.

You can let PCs and MCs die in a story. The countless deaths of them in a song of ice and fire proves that this concept works. However, there are enough MCs ans PCs left to advance the story.
In cyberpunk, there is nobody left to carry on the torch. Even if this would be the only installment, leaving the world without a spiritual successor to V pays the world disrespect.
Killing off the MC and avatar off screen disrespects the player and their achievements.
The loss of quality at the end of the game makes me very sad, because the buildup and story were very good before.. Especially the storytelling, from the 1st person, caused the best immersion in a video game story so far.


That's basically all for now.

What do you thing regarding pacing and storyline? Have I missed something?
Please discuss respectfully.


(I wrote this on my tablet so please forgive typos and strange autocorrections)
 
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