Unofficial Demo Walkthrough

[Rawls]

Okay. So, this is most of what I think we learned from watching the demo, supplemented by stuff that’s been said in various interviews. Citations will be included when an article or interview is mentioned the first time, after that it will be cited merely by its number. They also give the obligatory “work in progress disclaimer” across the top of the screen throughout ... so heads up for changes in the future. I’ll add to that - all of these impressions are based on the demo, as well as articles and interviews published about Cyberpunk 2077 thus far. Take everything with a grain of salt.

Here’s the Demo:

Spoiler: Introduction (00:00 – 00:41)

We start off with the awesome looking title screen, and the narrator tells us that the Cyberpunk 2077 is a “narrative driven, open world RPG.” While it’s not mentioned here, it’s also been clearly stated that the game will be purely single player at launch. (1) https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/...-gameplay-and-interviewed-cd-projekt-about-it

To elaborate on the “narrative driven” point, Patrick Mills told Eurogamer “It's not a linear story. We want to do the same thing we did with Witcher 3, which is have really involved choice and consequence. In terms of the demo you saw, there are several different ways to approach that encounter … You can go in there guns blazing. You can go and talk to them. There are a few other things we … don't want to talk about. We also want to have those choices and consequences that I think were greatest in Witcher, which were the ones where you make the decision not knowing what the outcome was going to be, and you have to go with your gut and figure out exactly what you want, and then later you see the consequences. We want a lot of that here. And you will be able to affect the main story pretty significantly.” (1)

Maciej Pietra said in another interview that “we learned from The Witcher, especially from the Bloody Baron quest … that some of the best stories are the most personal ones. We truly believe that with those personal stories told in a broader spectrum, the core [there] is that basic human emotion, and just like those kinds of quests in The Witcher, we’ve approached designing Cyberpunk in the same way.”(2) http://fandom.wikia.com/articles/cyberpunk-2077-the-fandom-interview

As far as how the narrative will be designed, Patrick Mills told metro that the narrative will be structured around the main quest. “[A]fter we’ve written out and sketched out the main story we find the characters that maybe we want to spend more time with, themes, or even bits of old main story that aren’t getting used anymore. Because we iterate a lot so sometimes you wind up with something that is part of the main story and then at some point you’re like, ‘No, main story has changed but we’ll make it a side quest’. And because there’s not the pressure of being part of a multi-hour long story you have a little bit more freedom to figure it out. And for us, our rule for side quests is that the story has to be something that you’ve never seen before, there’s gotta be something in this story that’s different. It’s never gonna feel like, ‘Go here, do that’. It’s you go there and do that and then something happens.”(3) https://metro.co.uk/2018/09/05/cybe...t-willing-to-say-is-what-were-saying-7916829/

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Character Creator (00:41 – 01:35)

The demo continues on, and it is obvious that the player can choose to play as a male or a female.

Next the character creator takes us to a screen where we can make decisions about the player character’s background. The first and last name’s display “missing data” but the Character’s alias is “V.” Given that the devs constantly refer to both male and female protagonists as “V,” I think it’s a safe bet that “V” is what all the NPCs in the game are going to refer to the player as. It also appears that V’s birthday is set, and that (s)he will be 22-23 years old.

There are choices in the demo as to background for the character. First is the option of who V’s childhood hero is, either (a) rockerboy Johnny Silverhand, (b) solo Morgan Blackhand, or (c) corporate god Saburo Arasaka. Then the player can choose a key life event, either (a) death of a sibling, (b) ran away from home, or (c) first big kill. Finally, the player can choose why they have come to Night City from either (a) unfinished business, (b) ex-lover in town or (c) something to prove. CDPR claims these choices involving the character’s gender and background “affects your experience within the world.” (1) Given that there are no more arrows over or down, I would speculate that these nine options are all of the various backgrounds one can chose … as on subsequent screens, it’s obvious there is an arrow which indicates more options are available. Your chosen backstory unlocks specific sidequests from the off. (48) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...reviews-thread.10970204/page-61#post-11136734

The next screen labeled “biometric scan” covers what I would refer to as the biological appearance of the character. The options at the top are face, hair, scars and other. While it is unclear what would fall within “other,” it is explicitly mentioned by the narrator that the player can choose the character’s “body type” … so that seems like at least part of it.

For now, we only get a look at the options for face. There are five facial presets, but seeing as there is an arrow to the right, it appears there are more that can be rotated through. Along with the presets there are options below to customize eyes, nose, mouth, jaws, ears and skin tone … with each option having 10 possible settings. There is also a selection for “color” (which I think means “eye color”) with at least 36 options. In total, that’s 96 possible variable selections just for facial details.

Now the screen rotates over to “appearance” which appears to be more of stylistic options rather than biological ones. The options at the top include style, clothes, makeup and piercings. We get a deeper look at style only here, which includes tattoo options (again the arrow to the right indicates there are more than five options), locations, colors and glow. Also, under style are cosmetic options such as eye mods, skin mods, surface wiring and bodily scars. There appear to be 83 total variables visible on this screen.

Finally we have the “biostats” page. The options are Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, Reflexes, Tech and Cool. All of these stats other than Tech and Cool seem fairly self-explanatory. Mike Pondsmith told IGN “Cool isn’t just the Cyberpunk version of the more traditional RPG stat Charisma. ‘You can have a tremendous amount of cool and have very little charisma,’ Pondsmith explained. Basically, there’s a difference between talking your way out of situations and just throwing off a vibe that commands respect.” Pondsmith also said he believes it will also influence dialogue options, but didn’t share specific details on that. He spoke about the idea that people who might otherwise draw weapons on you when you walk in the door would not want to mess with a particularly cool character. (4) https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06/14/e3-2018-cyberpunk-2077-has-a-cool-stat-heres-what-it-does

In the demo, the character has 25 stat points to spend. Interestingly, below the stat options are two choices, either “confirm” which starts the demo, or “edit additional details” which states “admin access required.” Whatever it is … it’s clear there are other options in the creator that were not shown off in the demo.

The narrator says “you’ll notice we didn’t pick a class. Cyberpunk 2077 features a fluid class system, and you’ll be able to modify your class throughout the game.” This class system has been discussed in a few different places.

Miles Tost told CEREALKILLERZ “So basically our idea is that, instead of having just one class the player will be able to choose a mixture of abilities that fall into archetypes. We’re designing levels so that the player can be either a strong solo, a fast solo, a netrunner or a techie. And we are designing abilities around these archetypes. But the player will be able to combine any of these to make their own class.” (5)

When asked about the character’s “skill tree” Phillip Weber told community member Kinley “The actual shape of skill progression is still something that is in full development, what we know is that there are the 3 directions that you can take. The Solo direction, the Netrunner direction and the Techie direction. Compared to the Witcher we have much more freedom on what these skills can do and how varied they can be, in Witcher 3 all the skills had to make sense to what Geralt, a witcher, can do. Having this freedom also means that now we can solve quests in many more different ways.” (6) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...om-2018-edition.10979804/page-2#post-11096951

CDPR’s Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter Account summarized the stats and skills progression systems this way: “We have Attributes like STR, REF etc. which can be raised by leveling up and installing body cyberware; Skills, raised by successfully performing actions (Hacking, Crafting, Short Guns, Long Guns etc.); [&] Perks unlocked with both Street Cred and XP.” (7)

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1022482194059730945

Maciej Pietra told fandom “There will be many different abilities and because of the fluid class system, you can mix and match them. So, if you want to spend a few points in [the hacker style] Netrunning skill tree, or some as a techy, this is a good choice. This will help you if say, you want enemy turrets to be standing still when you run into the enemy [base]. Or you can spend some points in the solo playstyle if you want access to a particular weapon, etc, so obviously, you’ll be able to mix and match those and create your own unique playstyle.” (2)

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Scavenger Fight (1:35 – 4:24)

The first scene begins with the narrator telling us that the demo is near the beginning of the game.

We can see that the game is set in Night City in the Free State of California. The promotional material for the demo at E3 said “In 2077, we’re in a different timeline. America lies in pieces. Megacorporations control every aspect of life while the streets are run by organized crime. In between is where sex, decadence, and pop culture mixes with extreme poverty, violence, and the unattainable promise of the American Dream.” (8) https://www.pcworld.com/article/3281374/e3/cyberpunk-2077-preview-e3.html

As V gets off the elevator, the narrator tells us we’re trying to find a missing person whose “locator chip” went dark. We are on the mission with two companions, Jackie who is with us, and a netrunner named T-Bug, who is only heard and sometimes seen in the upper left corner. She is hacking doors and other things for us.

While there are companions with us there wont be a party based companion system. Philip Weber said on the Forum “like in The Witcher, if the story calls for it, you will have a companion or two for a mission, but we don’t want to do a “companion system” where you’re never alone. In some quests you will be by yourself, in some you will have one person like Jackie or even a whole group, and in other quests you might be alone or with someone else depending on the choices you made. Sometimes if you leave someone behind and it makes sense for the story for them to stay behind, we’ll do it. And another time they might catch up. We really want to have it fit the story, so basically you’ll always have someone with you if we think it’ll be interesting.” (9) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...g-solo-possible.10981097/page-2#post-11108630

There is a lady who walks out into the hallway. A dialogue prompt comes up, and we are able to motion to the woman to get back in her room. As you walk by you can also here a dog barking, so domestic animals are almost assuredly in to some degree.

As we continue down the hall, the narrator tells us this is a first person perspective role playing game. Cyberpunk 2077 will be mostly first person perspective, with TPP in some cutscene’s and optionally while driving. You’ll also be able to see the player character in the inventory and mirrors. (10) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...r-answers-to-your-cp-2077-questions.10970951/ Also it has been confirmed CDPR is planning to include a photo mode. (11) https://www.pcgamer.com/cyberpunk-2077-will-have-a-photo-mode/

When asked about why they are going to FPP, CDPR has offered a few reasons. (a) “The first-person point of view is there so you can see things happening up close, and so you can really interact with things in a visceral manner. With the game world.” (12) http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06...77-cd-projekt-addresses-first-person-backlash(b) “It was a narrative-based decision, because we believe that the FPP camera will help us to immerse the player way more into the story and the environment that we are creating.” (13)

CDPR are aware that not everyone likes FPP, telling dualshockers “We are firm in that decision. However, we’re very aware that a lot of people don’t like first-person, and there is a small number of people who can’t play first-person for a variety of reasons.” (14) https://www.dualshockers.com/cyberpunk-2077-first-person/ That being said, CDPR has also mentioned that the team is looking into offering difficulty options and sensibility options to hopefully manage to turn Cyberpunk 2077 in the first first-person game that some of those people will like, or that some will be able to play.

T-Bug “breeches” a door, which unlocks. Jackie and V enter. T-Bug then announces that she has neutralized the alarms for the apartment. Jackie and V find an apparently dead girl whose corpse is being scrapped for parts. The scavengers are kidnapping people to harvest their implants. There is a prompt for us to inspect the body, when we select inspect, V concludes that the “chrome” is not advanced enough to be their girl. Jackie and V move on.

As they enter the next room, there is a scavenger looking over a bathtub, with an assault rifle next to him on the floor. There are plastic curtains hanging everywhere from the ceiling (presumably for spraying blood). As V walks through one curtain, we see it move. You can see the scavenger is level 2. V pistol whips the guy, dunks his head in the tub, puts her gun underwater, and shoots the scavenger in the head. So stealth take downs confirmed it seems. Immediately after, a prompt shows to “pick up body” or “Take.” Logic would say “pick up body” implies we may be able to hide them and “take” is probably how we loot bodies.

However, rather than do any of that, V moves on and takes a “reflex booster” which “allows us to use the Kereznikov ability.” This implies that some combat actions can only be performed when the appropriate prerequisite conditions have been fulfilled. An icon appears in the top left that counts down from one minute, which is apparently how long the reflex booster works. We move into the next room and see a guy pushing a wheelchair. We shoot him, and the fight is on. It turns out our pistol is an automatic. We also see lots of damage numbers pop up and little HUD messages such as “enemy killed.” CDPR’s Community Manager Marcin Momont confirmed that “a lot of HUD elements (including damage numbers) will be optional.” (15) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...markers-and-immersion.10980680/#post-11098790

Once the scavenger pushing the chair is shot, everything goes fast. V sprints into the next room and there are several enemies. V gets nicked a couple times and her health dips to 75%. We can also see her taking out several enemies while using the Kereznikov ability to slow down times. It seems to work similarly to “Adrenaline Rush” from Mass Effect 2 & 3. However, it is clearly dependent on having taken the reflex booster. We can see that several of the items in the room are destructible (i.e. the bottles and pillars in the room). As V kneels behind a shelf, she takes another inhaler. This one has the “Trauma Team” symbol on it, and when we take it a little + sign shows up in the HUD. I think this means it’s a medical booster of some sorts.

Soon all that is left is a level 4 “scavenger boss.” He slams a door in Jackie’s face. Then as he insults V, he apparently grabs an automatic rifle and begins shooting at her through the wall. V ducks for cover, and we can see that her health is beginning to recover. I’m not 100% sure is because of the second inhaler shot V took earlier, or if it’s because health regeneration is a thing. My best guess is that it’s from the booster. V returns fire and lands a couple hits, but needs to find another route. Over the coms, T-Bug chimes in with the solution and opens a window for V. She sneaks around the side getting a better position on the boss, and shoots him. The scavenger isn’t down yet, but as he turns the weapon in V’s direction, Jackie tackles him and takes him out. The scavengers are down, now it’s time to find their missing person.

It's should be mentioned that this encounter feels fairly linear, and by way of explanation, Kyle Rowley told Angry Joe "I just saw the flow through the demo, and in the opening sequence it's quite linear, because it's the very start of the game, and we wanted to really bring that kind of epic combat feel and have making sure it feels dynamic and everything like that. But as you're progressing through the game, we really want to open that up. So basically ... and it's the same thing like we did in the Witcher 3, where we had the opening section where you can't ... where you teach the player to tame [?] the game. And we're kind of doing the same thing here, where it's more linear and as you unlock more and more abilities, additional pathways to the level design open up as well. We dont want to just have linear level design, we want to have things like choices." (55)

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Calling in Trauma Team (04:24 – 07:55)

T-Bug tells us there is only one room left, the bathroom. Inside we find our girl, whose name is Sandra Dorsett, in an ice bath. CDPR obviously has no qualms about nudity here, so anyone concerned about whether the game will be “mature” enough needn’t worry. CDPR has described the game as a "mature experience intended for mature audiences." (16) http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/06...-2077-details-game-is-a-first-person-rpg-more

There are three dialogue options here, but V cuts to the chase and “jacks into” Sandra’s biomonitor. We connect to Sandra’s “biomon” through a plug from our wrist. The cool thing here is we’re actually seeing this all be done in perspective. The info that pops up has in game justifications, and we see the character actually performing the stuff we want to do such as plug into the biomonitor. It’s not just click X and it’s done. We see it happen in real time. The monitor tells us she’s still alive, but barely, with several life support systems failing. Fortunately for us, she has trauma team platinum.

“The Trauma Team is composed of paramedics expertly trained in combat, who will go to any length to deliver their clients from harm. Those wealthy enough to afford a Trauma Team medical plan receive a card and biochip implant. When the chip recognizes a medical problem in a client’s system, it immediately informs the Trauma Team who rush to the scene to stabilize and extract the patient — rain or shine, war zone or picnic.” (17) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...ler-frame-by-frame-ep12-trauma-team.10977500/

Sandra’s GPS module is offline, and V asks T-Bug what is blocking the biomon signal. T-Bug thinks it’s a virus blocking the signal and guess that a “shard” will be in Sandra’s “neurosocket.” I love all the lingo in this scene. T-Bug continues by speculating that if they remove the shard, the signal should contact Trauma Team. We have the option here to ask “Is that safe?” But V is a woman of action, and pulls the shard.

Trauma Team International immediately gets the signal and tells us they will be on scene within 180 seconds. Either we can take her, or get Jackie to, we choose to handle it ourselves. We learn that Sandra’s premium plan will cover 90% of the anticipated costs of her extraction and treatment. When V tries to pick Sandra up, she starts “flat-lining.” V demands Jackie to give V an item that will allow V to administer an injection. She stabs Sandra in the chest (Pulp Fiction style) with the hypo to revive her.

We take Sandra outside to the terrace just as Trauma Team arrives in an aerial vehicle. Trauma Team has two medics that are Level 10, and two Trauma Team soldiers that are Level “???”. They lay down a stretcher and order us to put her down. As soon as we do we get pushed back and we’re told to step back. Since we’re hardcore, we don’t step back, causing the soldier to firmly say “I said, step back.” Deciding discretion is the better part of valor, we comply … but I wonder what would have happened if we didn’t? Soon trauma team evacs off the terrace without so much as a “Thanks for your help!”

Now that the Trauma Team has left, T-Bug cuts her connection, and V and Jackie are on their own. We’ve been told that two vans of scavengers have showed up downstairs and are on their way too us. I’m assuming we could stay and duke it out in case we wanted to loot the place for gear. However, we don’t stick around. We head for the elevator, and get the heck out of there. When they get there, Jackie says he’s gonna buy something real nice and asks V what she’s going to do … suggesting it may involve some sort of bender. V protests using some colorful language and our team makes a clean getaway it appears. You will note the game switched to a third person cutscene here for a moment. This and the immediately following scene in V’s apartment are the only two third-person cutscene’s in the entire demo.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: V’s Apartment (07:55 – 10:20)

The game flashes forward three days. I am left wondering if we always cut to this scene, or if we get to play the three days between the end of the scavenger mission and waking up in V’s apartment?

We wake up in V’s apartment with a naked beau next to us. When speaking about how romantic encounters work, Patrick Mills told GameInformer they will be “similar to the Witcher, but with more diversity …There are a lot more options. You know, you're defining your own character here, which means defining their sexuality any way you want. With Geralt, you had a character whose sexuality was very well defined by the novels and the short stories and the previous games. But in this one, it's up to you to decide. We've got NPCs that are gay, we've got NPCs that are bi, we've got NPCs that are straight, because we want them to feel real and that they have preferences as well … We're aiming for big, complicated relationships that continue over the course of the game, but also casual encounters that don't matter that much."(18) https://www.gameinformer.com/e32018...re-diverse-romance-options-than-the-witcher-3

Dude-man gets up and leaves without even making us omelets (WTF bro?!?!). I suppose this is more of the one-night-stand variety of encounter? They don’t even bother with exchanging awkward morning after pleasantries. ☹ The demo narrator makes a comment about mature content, but I’m more interested now in the books above V’s bed. Everything hasn’t gone cyber it seems … literature isn’t dead!

We have a drink machine in our apartment, where we can also apparently order food, braindances, joyboys and joygirls. The currency of Night City is Eurodollars or “Eddies.” In the background, Stan the radio jockey talks about “the man, the myth, Johnny Silverhand” and mentions that it’s been a year since Johnny’s last ride. This brings into question some events that occurred in some of the Cyberpunk source material. Mike Pondsmith said at Pax West that “ at this point, we plan to continue the timeline and you will see the things that you saw in 2020, but they will somewhat be changed.” He continued to say that technology will have shifted based on things that have happened since the table top was originally published in the late 80s. (19) https://segmentnext.com/2018/09/07/cyberpunk-2077-alternate-timelin/

Keep in mind that the Cyberpunk IP has it's own lore and history. As explained by JGrayatTalsorian (who works for RTalsorian, the people who make Cyberpunk PnP properties) on discord, Cyberpunk 2020 is the second edition of the IP, and from there "the timeline branches in four directions ... the primary timeline is leading to what you all are here for. Cyberpunk 2077." There will be a new source-book for Cyberpunk called "Cyberpunk Red" which will "help explain how things got from 2020 to 2077." There are three other timelines that include events like the 4th Corporate War decimating the planet, the Nanovirus Carbon Plague, and the Starblade Battalion, which are all alternate timelines to the one CP 2077 takes place in. So be careful when checking out the lore that your in the right timeline. (53) Cyberpunk 2077 Official Discord, cyberpunk-chat, 6:52 P.M. CET - 7:11 P.M. CET on December 19, 2018.

As Stan talks, we see V brushing her teeth at the sink. I love little mundane moments like that. Makes the characters more relatable IMO. We can see her shower is in the background of that shot. When the frame shifts back we get a look at V’s apartment, which looks pretty spacious actually for a starting point. It’s been confirmed we can purchase other apartments. (2) We can see in the foreground that the radio jockey’s full name is “Stanley Media.” He announces that the next song will be Johnny Silverhand’s band Samuari’s song “Chippin’ In.” Speaking about the music, Marcin Przybylowicz, CDPR’s lead composer, said “the way we plan the music placement in our games is simple; it always has to help the story, because the story in our games is the most important thing. I believe, personally, that we as a studio are the best in storytelling, so my role as a composer is to do everything that’s possible to help my music to add additional context to those stories, or help in narration, for example, for those stories.” (20) https://www.vgr.com/cd-projekt-red-composer-marcin-przybylowicz-on-the-cyberpunk-2077-soundtrack/ Przybylowicz also confirmed that “All music assets (all but one, to be precise) were composed and produced internally, including Chippin’ In and other radio/media tracks.” I have a sneaking suspicion the “one” might be “Bullets” by Archive.

The narrator tells us we have “money to burn,” and shortly thereafter Jackie calls with a job offer. V tells Jackie she has a date with her “ripperdoc,” who is a specialist vendor who deals in cyberware upgrades for money. (1) Jackie implores V to meet with him at the subway entrance first about this job, and tells her to “bring her iron” (gun). A new quest pops up called “Breaking Though.” Are possible objectives include grabbing our jacket, gun, and meeting Jackie downstairs, as well as checking out email for a message from the ripperdoc and meeting him at his establishment.

Before we leave, V decides to take a look around her apartment. First she approaches the “window.” I put quotes on window, because it appears to have an optional view for either “morning” or “night.” This could just be the shutters on the window, but it could also imply that the view isn’t really there at all, and it’s just some sort of digital image on the wall. Whether real or not, the view appears to look East from V’s apartment.

Also, you notice on the window we also have “braindance” as an option again. “For many Night City residents, crushing poverty and homelessness are significant and likely inescapable problems. Despite this, most are still entranced by the glitz of showbiz and luxurious lifestyles of the privileged elite. Breakthroughs in neural technology paved the way for people to share recordings of their own personal memories and emotions via tech known as “braindance” (or BD). Some BD productions put actors in staged situations to create “false” memories, to give viewers the feeling that they’re living in an action film. Other BDs are simple recordings of a day in the life of the world’s biggest and brightest stars. The ability to “become” a celeb and experience a life of luxury gives many a chance to escape their own miserable reality. As a result, braindance addiction has become an ever-growing problem for the city’s poor. Also, as with all forms of entertainment media, illicit braindance recordings (XBDs) can be found easily in the seedy underbelly of Night City’s black market.” (21)https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...e3-2018-trailer-frame-by-frame-ep04.10972304/

The Narrator says that part of CDPR’s creative process is drawing inspiration from Cyberpunk 2020, Mike Pondsmith’s tabletop role playing game upon which Cyberpunk 2077 is based. If you want to see a very thorough look at references to the source material that are present in the trailer, check out (22) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/mega-2020-lore-thread-trailer-breakdown.10970780/. The narrator notes that CDPR is putting there own spin on the intellectual property.

Anyways, V walks though her studio living room and into a locked side room … that could most accurately be described as an armory. Inside there are some cabinets, a safe it appears, and several places on the wall that looks like they could hold a variety of weapons. We see spots for something like swords, rifles, pistols, grenades, ammo, and etc. V grabs her gun. According to IGN “Your apartment is a set place that fills with all of the clothes and weapons you get, though you don't have to go there to swap.” (16)

Then we exit the armory and grab out jacket. There is no visible "level" to the jacket, but we can see the jacket has several damage “resistances,” namely physical, thermal, electrical and chemical. Also, the jacket increases out “street cred” leveling speed by 5%. Street Cred can be earned through competing side missions and can be used to access new vendors and Fixers, who are a type of quest giver in Cyberpunk 2077. (23)

CDPR Forum Manager Vattier confirmed that they are “not planning to introduce any reputation indicators for factions. Your reputation will be measured by a general Street Cred – reflecting how you’re seen by the street. You will be able to increase it through side missions and it will allow you to unlock access to additional content, such as new shops or new missions.” (10) In addition, he stated that “[f]reedom is the biggest value for cyberpunks, so they wouldn’t permanently join any faction. In the game you will be able to work for various factions, but it won’t be possible to join them.” (10) My guess is that street cred is mostly a measurement of how well known you are, and your choices, rather than a stat, will determine how the various factions of Night City view us.

V grabs her jacket, and I’m left wishing that there was an animation for putting it on, like there was for jacking into Sandra earlier in the demo. I get why there's not because it would get really old watching us change clothes twice if we equipped the wrong thing in the inventory ... but still. I'll get over it. Then she heads over to the door, unlocks it (again, wish we saw her actually push the button), and heads out.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Going to Meet Jackie (10:20 – 13:40)

As we exit the apartment, there appears to be a disabled person who rides past on a motorized wheelchair. Across the way is a giant “21” which I presume means we’re on the 21st floor, as well as an advertisement for Trauma Team. I’m left wondering if we can purchase in the insurance policy? Which then makes me wonder what other types of expenses may be optional or obligatory. Do we have to pay for our apartment? Food? Drinks? Are those things at least optional? Being able to role play the economic struggle of surviving Night City sounds really cool to me. But I might just be weird …

ANYways, we turn right and head down a set of steps. Off to the right, we can see there are other apartments, on V’s floor, but we don’t head in that direction. I’d kind of like to see if we can meet the neighbors. As we go down a step, there is an NPC yelling “NCPD, Open Up!” Best not to get in other’s business so we move on.

As we make our way down the hall, there is apparently a Tattoo shop on the left, and a door roped off with caution tape n the right. Straight ahead is a “Buck a Slice” (presumably a Pizza vendor), where we turn left. As we continue walking, we pass something called Asam (?) Market, as well as several vending machines. We approach an advertisement for a soda that will apparently “put a shock in our system.” Looking at the ad creates a marker on our HUD that directs us to the nearest drink vending machine. As we walk towards it we walk through a gym-type area where several people are working out, and there is a sparing ring. I wonder if we can learn melee combat moves there, or if it’s just for show? We head to the vending machine and purchase out “1 Nicola” according to the lower left corner of the HUD.

Next to the drink machine is a weapons store called “2nd Amendment.” On the wall six weapons are being advertised, with all the specific names listed. The narrator tells us it’s run by Wilson, one of Night City’s many gunsmiths. Wilson says he has our old 45 ready for us, which brings up a quest option for V’s Got a Gun. A dialogue prompt comes up for us to say “Let’s see it” but we ignore him for now and head into the elevator. As we walk away he says “Alright, later then.” Gosh we’re rude.

We get on the elevator, which has options for services, apartments, parking and lobby. There are also buttons for opening and closing the doors. We push “lobby and head on down. As we head down we see “Masala Studios” (more on this later). Then we look to the right and see a highway that comes under a part of the Megacomplex’s super structure. Looks pretty cool. In the background you can see the city goes on for a few blocks, and then nothing in the skyline. Since we are looking west at this point, the best bet is that the Pacific Ocean is not very far in that direction. We can also see here that the Ripperdoc’s clinic is a block or two West of V’s location (160 meters) based on the icon on the screen.

Soon we’re at the bottom of the elevator and stepping out to a customer arguing with a food vendor about a signal going down (maybe a digital money transfer? The customer demands his eddies back). We’re almost out of our apartment complex now, as we can see the light of day in the background, we see a music stand on the right, where what appears to be a rockerboy is thinking about buying Johnny Silverhand’s first album. Makes we wonder if we can purchase music in game with eddies?

We walk out of the apartment complex and into the streets of Night City. Wow. As one gaming journalist put it:

“Listen, I’ve played a lot of video games in my life. Almost 30 years of them at this point. I know what a “city” looks like in video games, and I’ve watched that definition evolve over the years. I remember when Morrowind’s towns seemed bustling, and Oblivion after that. I remember watching a trailer for the original Assassin’s Creed and being stunned how large and crowded it was. I remember driving around Grand Theft Auto V and being in awe of the traffic and the number of unique pedestrians.

So I’m deadly serious when I say: I didn’t think Night City was possible. Not yet, at least. I literally didn’t think the technology existed. What I saw during CD Projekt’s demo was astounding …

[It’s hard] to convey a sense of scale to the player. As we walked out of that apartment, I was stunned as we looked up at towering skyscrapers, dozens of them stretching off into the distance and dotted with billboards and storefronts and all sorts of other signs of life. It felt like an actual city street, something from Manhattan or downtown Los Angeles or Tokyo or some other urban megacomplex.

And the people. The people! Dozens if not hundreds of NPCs casually milling about. Not just walking, but doing things—stopping to look at stores, or talk to each other, in ways that seemed entirely natural. One boxed with an android in a back-alley ring, while onlookers crowded around. These aren’t the robotic schedules I’m used to from Skyrim or Fallout 4, or even The Witcher 3. I’d say Assassin’s Creed: Origins got closest, but even it pales in comparison to what I saw during this Cyberpunk demo.

Night City felt like a living, breathing place.” (24) https://www.pcworld.com/article/3281374/e3/cyberpunk-2077-preview-e3.html

That pretty well sums up how I feel walking onto the streets here. The City feels alive. Producer Richard Borzymowski told VG247 “Our community system is based around routines …In certain parts of the city there are communities set up, they have their routines and they behave differently during the day and night. Districts that might be very lively during the day might be very empty during the night, which might influence you going there because there might be some other guys going around. You have to constantly think about what you’re doing at what time … Some people are [shopping] for groceries, calling people, etc. We aim for a realistic city. To create a realistic city environment, you need the blood of the city which is the population, otherwise it would feel empty.” (25) https://www.vg247.com/2018/08/25/cyberpunk-2077-night-city-buildings-npcs-deserts-mountains/

“We want the player to feel they’re in a district even without looking at their compass. It’s a big city, people tend nowadays to use GPS, but we’re building it in such a fashion that the player should always have a point of interest in sight so they can orient themselves. It’s not always a big building, sometimes it’s a hill or the mountains on one side, the sea on the other side.” (46) “It’s the city and there’s a certain degree of the outskirts of the city as well … We are not putting an invisible wall after the last building in the city because it would completely break immersion. The city is located on the West Coast in California, there is a desert, there might be something else, and we have the sea on the other side.” (25)

As a brief history, CDPR has stated that "Night City is a free city located within the Free State of North California. While still technically on American soil, the city falls completely outside of state and national legal jurisdiction. Here, the corporations are in charge. Over the years, the city has been fractured by various corporate conflicts and gang wars. Those caught in between are often left desperately trying to make ends meet and survive the riots and violence that rage throughout the streets. Night City was founded by tech giant and visionary Richard Night. He envisioned a perfect city that would stand as a monument to progress and the power of technology to improve people’s lives. His optimistic vision of the future is now a haven for violence and corruption." (50) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...e3-2018-trailer-frame-by-frame-ep01.10971461/

Across the street on the right is NCPD, a Night City Police Department. On the left we again see “Marsala Studios.” Overhead a giant advertisement for “Cyberpunk” pops up. According to Philip Weber, the sign is currently a place holder – “We take a lot of care to produce actual brands and corporations that fit the world, and this takes time. So in the meantime, we might use some WIP art here and there.” (26) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...n-a-billboard-in-game.10982087/#post-11121185

As we walk through the street towards Jackie we pass some Monks, and dozens of NPCs. There are a couple repeats here or there, but the variety is really impressive IMO. As we look up for a moment, we can see that the Metro Rail goes overhead. There is a sign advertising “Sector 027” over an escalator or steps that goes down below the street. I wonder what that is?

Across the street is a big yellow M in a triangle, which appears to be the Metro (or subway as Jackie said). We stop at the cross walk for a moment (it’s red and we’re a rule follower) and look around. Neon signs flood the street as we look South-ish. The crosswalk turns green and we cross. As we approach, sure enough the M sign sits over an elevator that declares itself part of the “Night City Area Rapid Transit.”

Right next to the elevator stands Jackie, staring off at a burger restaurant in the background.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Meeting Dexter Deshawn (13:40 – 16:30)

According to the demo materials at E3, Jackie Welles is a “gun for hire [who] is a highly skilled assassin. In the Wild West setting, he’d surely be a gunslinger or a bounty hunter. 2077 has him as a cyberpunk, just outside the big league. And he really wants to get into the game.” (27) http://cyberpunk.wikia.com/wiki/Jackie_Welles Based on his accent and use of spanglish throughout the demo, it is apparent that Jackie is of some Hispanic descent.

Jackie tells us that THE Dexter Deshawn, one of Night City’s top fixers wants to meet with us. We tell Jackie we’ll talk to him, though the option for more caution is also there. As we go Jackie tells us he is headed to the ripperdoc, and that he’ll meet us there. We walk down towards Dexter and see a ??? level bodyguard standing outside a Cadillac. As we approach, more monks walk by, and the bodyguard opens the door.

We get in the car and meet Dexter. My first impression of him is that he’s a really chill, overweight Mr. T with wit a gold-plated cyber-arm. CDPR’s Cyberpunk demo highlights at E3 said “Fixers like Dexter juggle illegal contracts – burglaries, assassinations, kidnappings, trafficking, you name it. They do it for a price, of course. They’re links between clients and mercenaries. In Night City, fixers aren’t far and between, but Dexter is exceptional. He’s a top level player, with a wide net of contacts and the best mercenaries on demand.” (28) http://cyberpunk.wikia.com/wiki/Dexter_DeShawn

Dex says it’s a pleasure to meet us, and tells his driver to go. Throughout the scene that follows, if you watch the compass at the top of the screen and background outside the car, it’s apparent that the driver is taking V and Dex around the same few blocks from various directions. We pass the “Marsala Studios” sign outside V’s apartment at least twice through the duration of the ride.

Inside the car, it’s straight to business. Dex has a big time job and wants to know if we’re interested. We ask him for the details, but Dex tells us he needs to give us a test first to see if we’re reliable. We ask Dex what the nature of the test is, and he hands us a shard.

We take the shard, and our view becomes filled with images and data regarding the job, though we can still here Dex speaking in the car. We see an old Meat Processing Plant that’s been abandoned for two months awaiting municipal permits, with some sort of yellow wiring running throughout it.

Dex tells us that a “Phsychogang” jumped a corporate convoy, and stole some equipment. We see from the shard that the gang’s name is “Maelstrom,” that they have 30-40 members and that there leader is Simon Randall “Royce.” The gang’s turf is apparently in Watson, and we’re given some details about their security. It seems they have heavy combat augmentations, pain suppressors, reflex boosters, and “Red Eye” optical units.

Dex tells us as we read about the gang that this equipment the gang stole is a “combat bot” called the “flathead.” The shard details on the flathead show us it is a special military grade surveillance and reconnaissance unit. Dex says he could buy it, but Maelstrom and he don’t get along well.

At the end of the briefing on the shard, we see the image of a woman named Meredith Stout. It says she is a “Senior Operations Manager” and the shard warns us not to delay, detain or arrest for any offense. The shard then adds her to our contact list. We’re given the option to ask Dex what his beef with Maelstrom is, but decide to ask about the woman instead. Dex tells us she’s a “corpo agent” who trying to discover who got the drop on her convoy. Dex knows that she has a suspect in custody, but not enough evidence on hand to prove he’s a guilty party. Dex says that it’s been twenty hours since the theft and thinks Stout is likely desperate by now. He thinks we could use that.

I will note that some of the dialogue options appear colored and others do not throughout the demo. If I had to guess, I would say the non-colored responses do not “advance” the conversation, but merely pick up more details, lore or character, just like in the Witcher 3. The colored responses most likely advance the conversation to the next list of dialogue options.

Speaking of dialogue options, when asked about how many dialogue options were visible at a time, he said: "It really depends as we have a very dynamic dialogue system. So you can have different dialogue options depending on the character you play. As an example, if I am now talking to you and you have a camera there and I notice I am being filmed, then maybe I would now look at the camera and another dialogue option would actually pop up there. The conversation would shift to the camera where I would ask "Oh am I being filmed?!" and when the conversation shifts back maybe another dialogue option would have appeared. The quest, writing and cinematic teams are working really hard on these scenes and we're trying really hard to make them as dynamic as possible. Another example would be that if you go further into, let's say, being a netrunner and you have a lot of netrunner knowledge, then a new dialogue option might pop up. But usually we like to hide the numbers behind things like that so it feels more natural, so usually we would also not want to show the option to you if it's not available to you at that specific time. This is all something we're still toying around with so it is not final obviously." (6)

V takes the job and we agree to meet up at “Afterlife” once the job is done. As we go, Dexter promises more work in the future if we do a good job for him. We get out of the car right near the burger joint that Jackie was staring at a few minutes ago. We’ve now obtained the quest “Going Pro.”

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Victor the Ripperdoc (16:30 – 23:40)

We decide to call Stout, and the narrator tells us she is a “Militech contact.” We see a sign ahead of us for “Tom’s Diner” (hey a Suzanne Vega reference!), the Lizzy Wizzy snippet from the trailer is on a wall the right, and there is a recycling vehicle of some sorts ahead. Our contact list appears in the top left corner of the screen, and we select the contact to make the call.

Soon Meredith Stout appears in front of us on a face-time style screen. It’s clear she’s pretty pissed about something. We tell her we heard she was looking for tech, and Stout becomes very interested. She demands to hear what we have to say, but we let her know we want to meet face to face. She calls V an amateur and hangs up, but then reconnects and tells us to meet her at the “first exit off Skyline going towards the NID” (most likely the Northern Industrial District referenced on the Metro Map). She says she’ll be in a storm channel under the overpass.

With that, she hangs up on us. We've got a meeting, but first we decide to head towards the ripperdoc’s, going through Tom’s Diner. Leaving the diner, we walk into a Courtyard that definitely has an Asian bazaar feel to it, and there are some really cool holographic looking lights that appear to resemble leaves coming off a tree branch. There’s another “Buck a Slice” pizza franchise to the right. One of the vendors on the street is advertising a Pad Thai dish. The NPC’s here have labels such as Slacker, Street Vendor, Corpo Rat, Dirtgirl, NC Resident, Coroner, Homeless Man, and etc.

We look up for a moment and see all the signs, then head down a somewhat sketchy looking ally. A man on the right named Stephan tells us he wants to sell us a “real whack tape” that will change out lives. My guess would be this guy is peddling illicit braindance tapes out of his shopping cart. Ew … we ignore him and move on.

To the left is a crime scene investigation. In regards how crime is looked on in the world, Miles Tost explained it this way: "let me just say the Night City police don’t react lightly to people stepping out of the line. Their cyber implants, as well as advanced weaponry make them not a pushover, either." We don't have any further details than that it this point, but Night City Polcie Department doesn't seem like the type we should mess with. (49) https://gamingbolt.com/cyberpunk-20...etting-freedom-of-choice-side-quests-and-more

In this scene, a NCPD Technician recreates the scene that presumably shows a cyberpsycho going on a spree of violence. The tech says the psycho was on Sadvestian (another type of reflex booster) on full blast. It looks likes the perpetrator charged at someone with an ax to me until they got shot by a man with an assault rifle (maybe a member of the Psychosquad … which is a unit in Cyberpunk 2020 created to deal with cyberpsychos). Cyber-psychosis is a mental illness caused by adding too much technology to your body. Philip Weber told eurogamer that cyber-psychosis “will be part of the world, part of the story.” However he continued, “but as for how it will affect the player, I can’t really say. In Cyberpunk 2020 it was a gameplay system and if you used too much cyberwear you could get cyberpsychosis which would essentially be Game Over for you. It can’t really work like that in our game because it would be too frustrating if it was just ‘Game Over’... I can’t say how we’re handling it yet but cyberpsychosis is definitely part of the game.” (29) https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-08-24-the-big-cyberpunk-2077-interview

We head across the street, past a person named Cindy who looks like a dude, and into the ripperdocs place called “Esoterica.” Inside we find Jackie being cared for by the doctor’s assistant named “Misty.” She’s a level 3 NPC who looks a lot like Priss from the original Blade Runner. We give Jackie Dex’s shard with the briefing on it. He says he’ll check out the mission while he waits for us to finish our appointment. We head through a trashy looking ally and down some stairs into the rippredocs.

Before we continue, you may have noticed by now that it seems like cyberware is ubiquitous in this world. When asked whether there was an option to go without any cyberware, Kyle Rowly said that as of now, “some implants will be required (or you will have the option to choose between X, Y and Z) in order to progress but most are optional. Note: Still subject to change ... “ (10).

Victor is a level 9 NPC who is waiting for us to install some cyberware. As we approach he is watching a boxing match. Although he is a ripperdoc, Victor wears glasses, has a glove to help steady his hand, and appears not to have any cyberware installed in himself. Interesting. V tells Victor that she wants an optical scanner and a “grip” installed. Victor seems surprised she wants the upgrades, but V explains that she has an upcoming job for Dexter Deshawn. Victor kicks a chair across the room and guesses that V can’t pay him until after the job is done. V reasons with Victor that he knows she is good for it, and Victor agrees. This raises and interesting question for me … what happens if you don’t pay him back later?

V sits down in the operating chair. Victor says he’s giving her a Kiroshi optical scanner, which is the best he’s got. The suction animation on the eye implant when he removes it from the case looks awesome. Victor then places the eye in a machine of some sorts, and tells V to jack in to his system so the updates can be installed. V gets a Zetatech Neural Processor, a Kiroshi Mark I basic scanner and a dermal grip, which enables use of locked weapons with -50% damage reduction. The grip also increases melee damage. On the far right it also appears there is a military scanner we don’t go with for today. The total cost is 1800 … note that V got a 10% loyalty discount.

An important note on the screen is that all of the cyberware has a “humanity cost” associated with it in the demo. “CD Projekt Red hasn’t laid out how exactly Cyberpunk 2077’s humanity system will work, but in the tabletop RPGs it’s based on, getting too modded out is a very bad idea.” (30) https://www.gamesradar.com/that-cyb...cked-here-are-10-details-you-may-have-missed/ Maybe your Humanity will just work like a hard limit for how many implants you can have installed at once here? Maybe it will affect things like street cred and dialogue options? We don’t know for now … but it’s clear there will be some sort of consequence or limiter to implanting cyberware, though Kyle Rowley told IGN it’s still in development and hard to implement because of how it limits character progression. (31)

V tells Victor she is ready, and he pulls up tool for installing the dermal grip. V has the option to comment on “new equipment” but decides to get on with it. We place our hand into the scary looking machine, and Victor shoots us full of anesthetic. Victor asks V if she feels okay, and V chides him for sounding like a dentist. Victor reminds V that’s she needs to be nice as his hand could slip while he’s installing her new eye. Right after he says this he plucks out her old eye … and everything goes dark for a moment. Then he links our neural processor with the new optical scanner, and we can see ourselves. As he puts in our new eye, I can’t help but marvel at the texture on his glove. I’m going to need to buy a new computer. Also, there’s a nice touch when the eye glitches for a split second as it’s put into place.

The narrator tells us, and we can see, that now we can zoom in on stuff … like the sign describing Mantis Blades on the wall. Then we try out the scanner. It gives us info like threat level (Victor’s is “very low”), damage resistances, and gang affiliations. Soon the jaws of life dermal grip installer-thingy over our hand has done its job. We can actually see that it made a visual difference on V’s hand, which has interesting implications for other cyberwares. We compliment the good doctor for all of his help, and sort-of thank him. He tells us to take two wiffs of medication now and another two later. We only take one wiff now (we’ll show HIM who needs meds!) and never do again later. I wonder if there’s any benefit to actually following the instructions? This inhaler looks a lot like the second one we used earlier in the scavenger hideout, so that gives more weight to that inhaler being a medicinal one as well. With that Victor wishes us well and we head on our way.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Driving Jackie’s Car (23:40 – 26:30)

Misty tells us that Jackie is waiting outside, so we head out there and join him. Jackie tells us about his new wheels, and agrees to let us take it for a drive. We walk over to the car, which has a level 2 thug standing next to it. The narrator comments that it looks like one of those scavengers we dealt with at the opening of the demo.

We get in the car, drive down the ally and take a right. While driving in first-person, the U.I. appears diegetically on the windshield. We’re now on the street that has the burger restaurant on it (to the right), and were heading south east, which means our apartment would be on the next street over to the left. We turn slightly to the right heading south until we come to a stoplight overlooking a canal and a city skyline that takes up the whole view ahead of us. My best guess is that this is downtown Night City or “City Central.”

Speaking of cars, Maciej Pietra has commented that “We are planning many different vehicles [as well as] modification for your cars. Bikes are also a big a part of the game. When it comes to flying vehicles … in the reference material, flying AVs are the most expensive thing in the entire world. So, as a player, you will be able to fly in an AV a few times, but not as a pilot, as a passenger, and it will be strongly connected to the narrative. Because you start almost at the bottom, right? In the demo you’ve seen you’re at the beginning of your journey there and, well, AVs are expensive.” (2) As mentioned above, you can drive the vehicle in either first- or third-person perspectives. (10)

We turn left onto the highway next to the canal. Now we are headed east, and we can see the same skyline that was visible from V’s apartment window across another canal. Soon we turn North, and the car is ambushed by some of the scavengers from before, who say hello by kicking open the back doors of their van and shooting at us. V whips out her trusty pistol, leans out the door and starts returning fire while Jackie takes over the wheel. We zoom down what looks like a fairly busy street exchanging gun fire. Patrick Mills told Eurogamer “You can cause a decent amount of chaos. We're not ready to talk about exactly how those systems are going to work, but you can cause chaos. You can run over pedestrians. However, it's not the game of that. It's the game of being a mercenary. We'll have more to share later in that resp … You asked about chaos - the chaos you saw when the Scavengers show up while you're driving, that's what we're looking for.” (1)

So down the road we go sowing chaos until we shoot out the tire of the Scavenger van and it wrecks into a barricade. Soon we pull into a shantytown on an unfinished bridge near the canal, and we get a great view of Night City from this location. As we take in the view … lets talk about the map a bit. CDPR has been understandably cagy about the size of Night City. “In terms of specific size, it's really difficult to tell because Witcher 3 was flat, and our game is very vertical. You've got a footprint in Witcher 3 and that's it. But our game just goes up and up and up and up. So we can put a lot of stuff in there. It's going to be really dense.” (1)

“Night City is divided into six districts, with each of them representing a different aspect of the game's cyberpunk aesthetic. Here's what we learned about each:

• City Center: Night City's biggest pride, this is the heart of corporations, the cluster of neon, and the quintessence of luxury.
• Watson: A unique mix of Asian cultures, it is a fallen corporate giant now populated by immigrants, hiding various bazaars and markets in a tangle of narrow alleyways.
• Westbrook: Featuring tourist-oriented Japantown, it is a place for the wealthy who like to work hard and play hard.
• Heywood: Living in one of the neighborhoods of the predominantly Latino area means you successfully managed to climb the social ladder -- it's a massive suburban housing district, with an underlying gang problem.
• Pacifica: On the other end of the spectrum, this is the most dangerous part of town, abandoned and overrun by gang activity. Separated from the rest of the city, it's a place of immense poverty.
• Santo Domingo: All of Night City is powered from here, with its countless power plants and industrial factories, stuck in an endless cycle of modernization.” (32)

https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cyberpunk-2077s-night-city-consists-of-six-distric/1100-6459846/

“[The demo takes place in] a little bit of Watson … Each district will feel distinct. There will be a lot to see and a lot to do. It's very big. It's very big.” (1) Based on everything we know, and following the compass and marker distances in the demo compared to the image of the Metro Map of the City, this is my best guess as to the path V takes –

Spoiler: Metro Map with Guesstimated Path

Keep in mind that the Metro Map is likely not to scale, so that’s only an educated guess. But given the size of the area in the demo, and how little of the map that path actually touches … the City is indeed going to be huge. In response to a question about if V could travel beyond Night City’s walls, Philip Weber told Eurogamer "The city is a realistic, big place but you also have an area around Night City... I can't talk in detail about what we want to do there and what it might look like but there are definitely areas of Cyberpunk where there's not buildings everywhere, there's not crowds, where maybe we can show somewhere different." When asked about going beyond the city, he continued: "You can still go a little... well, not a little, you can go some way further. Of course there are natural limits to it at some point but it's not just the city."
(33) https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2018-08-24-the-big-cyberpunk-2077-interview

As we sit there taking in the view, you’ll notice a little drone heading down the canal carrying some cargo it looks like. "n 2077, society is highly dependent on drones and robotics — from live-feed camera drones, to sparring bots and massive warehouse machinery. Huge, automated trash collectors and robotic street sweepers can be seen any day through your window (if you’re lucky enough to have one). Whether top-of-the-line or pieced together from scrap, robotics serve a huge role in both the economic sector and everyday life. In fact, most public transportation services are handled by automated vehicles. These trains and buses are practically entities in their own right — able to communicate with each other and learn in order to improve efficiency." (51) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...e3-2018-trailer-frame-by-frame-ep02.10971734/

We see a giant building with “Arasaka” writ large on the side … which is the name of one of the less than friendly mega corporations in the pen and paper game. Above the Arasaka building is some sort of hovering ship in the air. "Arasaka specializes in protective services and the distribution of their Japanese-made products throughout North America. Over the years, it has developed a dark reputation as a corporation that is to be feared and one which covers its tracks using cyberassassins, an army of lawyers as well as an alleged connection to the yakuza." (52) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...er-frame-by-frame-ep11-corporations.10977257/

We turn left from the view location and have switched to driving from third person perspective. In the distance we can see what looks like a damn, or water plant or something like that at the end of the canal. We head towards the dam until we appear to be literally driving over it. One thing I will say about this portion of the trip is that traffic seems awfully light. Once on the dam, we take a left and are only about 100 meters from are meeting spot with our corpo contact Meredith Stout.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Meeting Stout (26:30 – 31:10)

As we arrive at the meeting point, the Narrator mentions that Millitech, the company Stout works for, is one of the largest companies in the private military sector. "Militech ... is an arms dealer based out of the eastern US. Working closely with police and military forces, it has substantially contributed to civilian security systems. It’s a powerhouse manufacturer of high-grade military technology — from simple firearms to heavily armored combat vehicles." (52)

Jackie asks why we’re stopping. V tells him she wants to meet with the corpo off Dex’s shard, to see if she can get any advantage over Maelstrom. The Narrator warns that preparation will be key when dealing with Night city’s more powerful enemies. We use our optical scanner to check Stout and her goons out before we approach. Their SUV is essentially an armored tank, and we can’t learn much about Stout, other than she could probably kick V’s butt if we tried to start something at this point.

V tells Jackie to stay put. As we look at Jackie, we can see his shadow. If you do some measurements and math, it seems that time in Night City passes by at twenty times faster than time in the real world so that one minute in real life equals twenty minutes in the demo. (34) https://forums.cdprojektred.com/index.php?threads/time-in-cyberpunk-2077.10982462/ It officially has been confirmed by CDPR writer Stanislaw Swiecicki that Cyberpunk 2077 has a day night cycle and dynamic weather system. (35) https://wccftech.com/cyberpunk-2077-dynamic-weather/

Jackie gives us the thumbs up that he’ll stay hidden there, and we head down to meet up with our corpo contact. Stout offers to shake our hand as we approach. As soon as V takes Stout's hand, we get pistol whipped, knocked down and pinned to the ground. As we fall to the ground, the mark from V’s anesthetic shot is still visible on her arm. I wonder how long that stays? Meredith is kind of a jerk. “Corporate executives are the new aristocracy of this world. They watch the city from above, sitting in their plush chairs at the tops of skyscrapers in the corporate district. Meredith is an egomaniac who will stop at nothing to reach her goals -- and she's highly successful. She lives and breathes corporate. She despises the common folk and spits all over people from the lower classes.” (36) http://cyberpunk.wikia.com/wiki/Meredith_Stout

She accuses us of trying the blackmail her, and then has one of her bodyguard’s pin V against the car, while the other bodyguard gets Meredith’s suspect out of the car. Then the bodyguard pinning V takes his arm plug and jack’s into V and installs a lie detector. Our HUD is like, “intruder alert” which seems obvious right now, but might be useful in more subtle circumstances. Regardless the look of having your cyberware hacked is interesting.

Stout asks V if she’s alone. We have options here to tell the truth, lie, or demand to be released with Stout. If we look at Stout’s bodyguard, we have the option to try and take is gun. To the left of each action is the name of the person it is directed at. It doesn’t take much to extrapolate how this can work in scene with multiple people … seems like it could be really interesting, especially if executed well.

According to Maciej Pietra “[With the new] first-person perspective and what we’re calling the interactive scene system, we think we’ve found a new way to immerse the player into this world. Basically, this interactive scene system is a way that players can interact during the scene with NPCs and different objects, meaning that players are still in control. To give you an example how that would work, we’re here talking right now and I could just stand up and leave and you would somehow react to that — or not, because maybe you know that someone else would come and sit in my place! But somehow that would influence you. Either way, this non-dialogue decision as a player would make the NPC react to you, right?” (2) So everything is done seamlessly between gameplay and cinematics, and all of the gestures of motions of the characters are hand crafted by CDPR. (37)

In the demo, we decide to lie. Apparently we’re not very good at it, because the lie detector knows, and Stout sends a drone to look for Jackie. Before it gets close to him though, Stout keeps interrogating, asking if the guy she got out of the car, Anthony Gilchrist, or anyone else from Millitech had leaked info to us. I’ve never seen him before, and V says she doesn’t know him. The lie detector gives us the green-light. Yay!

Gilchrist seems ecstatic at this news, and he claims that Stout is going to meet her end soon based on this situation. He demands to be taken home, but Stout orders that he get placed back in the car. The bodyguard unplugs the lie detector. Stout decides she wants to hear our proposal but warns us it better be good. We have three options. We can reveal we’re working for Dexter, just give her the offer, or decide to fight.

We decide to just make the offer, and have three options. We can either (a) offer to kill the thieves in return for payment (in the form of the bot), (b) offer to recover the gear together, or (c) offer to help find her mole. We opt for A, but Stout says all she’s interested in is her suspected mole. She gives us a credchip worth fifty thousand eddies, which apparently should cover the cost of our bot with Maelstrom. She says the chip has to make it into the thieves’ terminal and that’s all she needs. She says if we can do that then we have a deal. We could have asked “what’s the catch?” … but we don’t and take the chip.

In her own charming fashion, Stout warns us not to cross her. Gilchrist screams at us from the car not to trust Stout, and that she’s going down. Meredith then gets in her armored SUV and drives off, drone she sent off looking for Jackie now in tow. For now, it’s unknown what the consequences of this situation will be. According to Mike Pondsmith, “One of the binding philosophies of the game is that your actions have consequences and that also goes back to the original sources in the tabletop game. In the tabletop game, there is no system for karma- good things, and so forth. But you can pretty much guess that if you blow away some guy in a gang, his gang’s going to remember, and they’re going to find you. That is realistic, that is the way things really go. Sometimes karma isn’t really meted out in a nice, neat 'dark side, light side' way. Sometimes it comes and bites you in the butt in ways you never expected. We were kidding the other day in the office about that moment when you’re driving on the freeway, and somebody cuts you off, and you flip them off, and then you go into the bank, and there’s the guy you flipped off behind the counter! This sort of stuff happens! Karma is not a black and white thing … but your actions do have consequences.” (38)

We head up a flight of stairs to meet back up with Jackie. The Narrator chimes in and tells us we’ve now unlocked a new non-violent path to recovering the flathead. Jackie is waiting back for us at the car, we tell him we made a deal, and they get back in the car to go meet with Maelstrom, the psychogang that Dexter told us stole the flathead.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Meeting with Maelstrom (31:10 – 37:30)

Once back in the car, we drive North East towards the All Foods Inc. warehouse. Jackie tells us on the way that the gang has to be nervous knowing the they screwed over a corporation, feeling like they have to move the tech, but knowing they can’t or risk getting found out by the corporation.

They arrive at the warehouse and can either try and make the deal, or try and go in gun’s blazing. We choose to try and work things out. Jackie doesn’t seem to like the idea, but V is persistent. We come to a door, with a camera scoping us out. We click on the intercom and let them know we want to talk to Royce. The door opens and we are greeted by two turrets that are online, but not firing yet. Soon there after we notice lots of Millitech hardware, including some anti-personnel mines. Looks like Meredith was right about her mole within the corp.

Soon we’re greeted by the first member of the gang, a level 3 Maelstrom Ganger. Since we’re trying to buy the gear, we do what we’re told for now. We travel up an elevator, and are welcomed with a “What?” from “Dum Dum.” Charming. We tell him we’re here to buy the flathead. These guys eyes are pretty trippy, "Red Eye" scanner indeed. You can definitely tell they’ve gone a little overboard on the whole “borged” thing.

As we walk in the room, we can see there is a netrunner, a goon with a shotgun, and several people hanging out around some couches. We’re told to sit there. Jackie really doesn’t want to. His security concerns are frankly justified but V asks him to set so he complies, avoiding what would likely be a confrontation. Dum Dum offers us a “wiff” off an inhaler and we take it. It’s only after we do that the guy seems willing to talk. We tell him we need to see the flathead first before we talk money.

Dum Dum opens the case, and seems genuinely proud of the little spider bot guy. It has camo-armor, and really good reflexes, or so we are told. It turns on by inserting a chip into ones head. Then our new friend Dum Dum takes it for a ride and has it walk along the ceiling. Pretty cool stuff. We tell the him we’re interested, but just then the boss Royce shows up with a big gun and two questions. What’s going on and who is this?

A now gun pointed in out face, we tell Royce we’ve got 50K on the credchip, ready to buy the bot. He tells us we reek of Millitech. We tell him we’re from Dexter Deshawn, Royce begins to laugh and turns his back on us, and we use the moment to draw down on Royce and his goons. Jackie says we just want to pay and be on our way. Royce asks how much we have again? We can choose to give him the chip, say we changed our mind, or give him the chip with “additional info” (likely about how it came from Stout). We just decide to pay him without the warning, and Royce accepts. There are several dialogue options throughout the conversation. “You can have different dialogue options depending on the character you play. As an example, if I am now talking to you and you have a camera there and I notice I am being filmed, then maybe I would now look at the camera and another dialogue option would actually pop up there. The conversation would shift to the camera where I would ask ‘Oh am I being filmed?!’ and when the conversation shifts back maybe another dialogue option would have appeared.” (6)

The whole scene is really cool, and it’s done seamlessly with gameplay. “It’s not a separate cut scene. Like, in the demo you’ve got those bits where you can take out your gun and change what happens in the scene. But, like, when you are in the Maelstrom area, for example, and you’re walking away from those guys that’s all still a scene, it’s all still happening as a scene. It’s tightly choreographed with all those people moving around and all of that. And stuff like that is actually really difficult.” (3)

With the credchip exchanged, the tension seems to be dropping and Dum Dum sighs with relief as it appears everything worked out in the end. As he says this, Royce plugs in the chip, and instantly Millitech is in their system. The psychogang’s netrunner is apparently no match for what Millitech can bring to the table, and soon the Maelstrom netrunner is fried. Royce understandably is no longer satisfied with our presence, and tells his guys to “zero” us. That’s our cue. Gun’s are drawn and poor Dum Dum and his two associates in the room are gone before they know what hit them.

The narrator explains that the credchip we gave them had a virus on it that fried the entire Maelstrom system. Jackie mentions that this means the security protocols have been tripped, and we’re trapped in there. Time to find a way out.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Escape from the Room (37:30 – 39:10)

So we’ve got to figure a way out, but first we're going to take control of the bot and search for supplies. We walk over to Dum Dum’s body, which still has the flathead’s chip in it. We look at him and have three options, either pick up the body, take the chip or equip it. We take the spiderbot chip and decide to examine it. “Every item in the game, we’re told, can be inspected within the inventory. This shows the item close up, where you can look for hidden details and learn bits of lore about the world or, just maybe, discover a clue that will help you on a quest.” (39)

So we go into the inventory screen. Up top we can see options for Codex, Quests, Biomonitor, Inventory, GPS, Crafting and Social. We can view V in the inventory screen. We see that her pistol does 79 DPS, and that she has slots for three other weapons that can be equipped. There are also tabs within inventory for “backpack” and “style.” Under out personal stats, you can see we are currently level 2, with a street cred of 1. At the bottom right of the screen are the items we just looted, including a jacket, an inhaler, and the spiderbot shard. We never see V actually operate the flathead, but it seems like we could use it ourselves for surveillance if we wanted to.

We select the flathead chip from the looted items and give it a look. It gives us an up close image of the item, as well as some details about it. The chip is called an BCI Interface Motherboard and has a “type,” specifically cybernetics and wetware. We can see now that the chip can indeed react as quickly as the human with it installed can, as the carbon nantubes within allow for reaction times comparable with the central nervous system. We can see that multiple devices can be connected to the brain via the same shard. Good to know. It also warns us that there is an “overclock chip” … and that the there may be negative side effects to using the thing too much as “prolonged overload may lead to gradual degredation of the central nervous system and death.” Yikes. We throw caution to the wind and install the chip. The narrator tells us that the bot will now follow us wherever we go.

We look around the room and find a street modified tech shotgun. I noticed that while all the enemies have levels, the weapons a clothing do not seem to at least in the demo. Interesting. According to Kyle Rowley, guns “in Cyberpunk 2077 fall into three general categories: power, tech, and smart.” (40)

Power weapons were described as more “traditional weapons that you would have nowadays,” such as high-impact guns. “When you fire them, we may have, for example, exaggerated hit reactions and staggers to kind of emphasize the hit impacts.” Tech weapons, on the other hand, focus primarily on penetrating through walls, NPCs, and other objects. The final category, smart weapons, can track and follow targets around the games. As Rowley explained, these types of weapons were designed to be accessible to players, regardless of how good they are at shooters. “Because we’re a role-playing game and we understand some people aren’t necessarily [fans of] twitch-based combat who like playing role-playing games, [so] we tried to design the smart weapons around being something that people can pick up and play casually without necessarily having to be super-efficient with shooting people in the head or more twitch-based, reaction-based combat, so we’re trying to cater to both audiences there with that.” (40)

In another interview, Rowley stated “In order to actually use smart guns you will need a specific connection to the gun via a piece of cyberware that will unlock the ability to use the targeting system that will actually multi-highlight the enemies, so when you pull the trigger the bullets track them. The player’s actual skills do not affect the smart weapon technology at all, it’s all based on the gun. The targeting system itself is from an eye augment so that is what unlocks the bullet tracking, but how efficient it is at tracking is based on the weapon, not the player skill. The way the weapons work now, [and] obviously this is all very much work in progress so anything can change, but what we have right now are pistols, shotguns, rifles – they can be either Tech or Street. A large percentage of those weapons can fit modules that can change they way they handle, those modules being Tech, Smart or Power. So I can acquire a Tech pistol but I can replace the module so it can become a Power or Smart pistol. Gameplay mechanics can change based on what modules you pick and modules will also have rarities attached to them as well.” (6)

Philip Weber was asked about non-lethal weapons and said “Speaking as a quest designer I want to say that if you choose to resolve a situation in a non-lethal way then I might want something else that is interesting to happen, just so you don’t think you’re missing out. Maybe something that builds towards those types of strengths, so maybe an additional conversation or something along those lines. But Cyberpunk is a brutal world so you will definitely have to fight in the game, you will not finish the whole game without killing.” (6)

Having gotten some gear, now it’s time to figure out how to get out of the room. First we approach a terminal, and have the option to hack it, however, out skill level isn’t high enough (we’re only have hacking level 1, and it takes level 5 to do it). We decide to scan the room, and see a maintenance panel near the roof. Disassembling the panel only requires a Engineering skill of 1, which we have … so we’re in business. Like earlier with plugging into Sandra in the ice bath, we actually see V doing the disassembling of the panel here, so that’s good. It definitely seems like there will be skill checks, but the Philip Weber (a level designer) has confirmed that every encounter will have at least one solution that is not gated by a hard skillcheck. (6)

The narrator tells us that there are many skills in the game that help the player in solving problems. The engineering skill can be used to fix, disassemble, and disarm devices blocking our path. V heads through some duct work and escapes the room.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Taking Down Maelstrom (39:10 – 45:30)

V comes out on the other side via a conveyer belt as the narrator tells us V is getting some upgrades for the rest of the demo. We drop down from the ductwork into a room, and go to work. We jet around the room, blasting one ganger with the tech shotgun at point blank range and causing him to fly apart in a bloody mess. We next use a ricochet targeting system connected between our gun and optical scanner to aim shots of walls and into enemies. Here we can see our health regenerating without any help from an inhaler (at least so far as I can tell yet). I’m not sure if this is due to some medical gear we have installed, or if it’s just that the dame’s difficulty setting is set low. I hope we’re able to not have unexplained regenerating health at difficulties above “normal.”

V charges into the next room, shoots a guy charging at her with a melee weapon. She takes a fair bit of damage from someone at the other end of the room (a couple shots get her to 54% health), but Jackie throws a grenade which takes the heat off V for a moment. She uses it to show off a targeting system where we can see enemies through walls. With that and a penetrating tech weapon, she can do a lot of damage.

After the battle is done in this room, V finds a Smart Gun, which again does not appear to have any levels. It’s described as one of the more advanced weapons in the game, allowing bullets to track targets. We use it as well as out tech shotgun and pistol to demolish a room full of gangers. The combat looks fun, and as though it would be very challenging if we weren’t upgraded for the purposes of the demo. As it is we cut through them like a hot knife through butter. Soon enough the room is cleared, and we’re off to find our way out.

As we enter the next room, there is a guy facing the other direction having a conversation with two others. After he’s done talking we perform a stealth take-down, and rather than kill him, we jack into his neural socket. The narrator says once we are jacked into his network, we have access to everything it connects to. We can see in the demo that there are various "nodes" we can search for and that the system has no "ICE" (presumably Intrusion Countermeasures Electronics" designed to fry unwanted netrunners. Since there is no ICE, we seem to navigate with ease, but I wonder, what it would be like if the Maelstrom netrunner hadn’t been fried earlier in the mission? “Hacking is an interactive and immersive experience where you will “jack in” and run the Net. Night City is an omnipresent network, offering countless cyberspace access terminals. Within them you will find layers of hidden systems, firewalls and security programs deployed to fry your brain. Missions will stack you against other hostile Netrunners who defend corporations both in cyberspace and the real world.” (41) https://techraptor.net/content/cyberpunk-2077-everything-we-know-so-far

Connecting into the Maelstrom ganger, we can now access other squads through the personnel system. We choose to try and get access to the squad of the guy we just jacked into. We have the options to get access, reduce aim or disable cyberware. We choose to simply get access (NETWORK BREACHED flashes in red), but I have a feeling we could have lots of fun with those options. The narrator explains that we’re merely getting access so that we can perform what he calls “quick hacks.”

Now it’s time to show off our high level abilities. We wall run above two other gang bangers, and whip out some mantis blades from our arms. We use the blades to dig into the walls and hang there a moment. Honestly it’s a little weird no one heard us, as metal digging into concrete is not generally considered a subtle sound. We perform a quick hack on one of the two unsuspecting guys below (now listed as very low threat level) and disable his gun. Then we jump down on the other guy and finish him in one blow of a mantis blade from above. Of course the other guy’s gun doesn’t work now.

We stroll up and begin slicing away at him. Kyle Rowley told Gamespot that CDPR “learned quite a lot from the combat in Witcher 3, and we're translating that to the lessons we learned in the gameplay about how to do melee and try to transfer that to Cyberpunk … Obviously it's very different in the fact that we're now doing it from a first-person perspective rather than from a third-person, but the lessons that we learned in Witcher, we can definitely translate." (40) “Players can single out particular limbs, whether chopping at arms with a katana of blasting out knees with a shotgun. This isn’t spray and pray – you approach an enemy tactically and switch up your weapons based on their defense or skillset.” (42) https://www.vg247.com/2018/06/22/cy...mance-controversial-decision-go-first-person/

The demo mentions that this “fast solo” build of V can also double jump and bounce off walls and the gameplay demonstrates for us. We proceed on walking through into another room, and find a “corpo tech rifle” from Millitech. Looks pretty sweet. Our new to acquired, we head into the room where Royce and one of his goons wait for us. Royce is getting into some form of power armor. We decide to scan him and learn that he’s going to be hitting us with thermal damage, that he’s weak to electrical damage and that his power suit has three weak points. The weak points become highlighted by the scanner, which kind of reminds me of Horizon Zero Dawn … and I for one like it. We jump down and start the fight.

Jackie helps out by lifting up a car to provide some cover. We shoot around the cover using our smart gun. That doesn't seem to be working so we switch to our tech shotgun. We soon see for the first time that V is able to slide along on the ground while firing. One thing that we do not see, and has been confirmed not to be in the game yet, is the ability to lie prone on the ground. (10) We jet around the room avoiding fire. Soon enough we get around behind Royce, and with a well placed shot, we are able to disable his shield with a few well-placed shots from our tech shotgun. Things are almost over with Royce's protection gone. Three blasts later with the shotgun, and Royce is down for good.

 

[Rawls]

Spoiler: Wrapping Things Up (45:30 – 48:22)

The narrator comments that the job could have gone smoother, but we’ve escaped with the flathead spiderbot. Then he implores that we think back and asks a few questions. What would have happened if we didn’t talk with Stout at all? What would have happened if we told Royce about the agent and her plans? Or what if we had gone there just to buy the bot ourselves? The narrator mentions that each is a possibility, and each would have consequences rippling through the game world and our story.

The Demo that we saw was based on the path shown at E3, there were some slight differences that could be seen by those who watched a similar but different demo at Gamescom. According to IGN, one of the differences was that you could play as male V. This male version of V also wakes up next to a man in the apartment scene. (43) http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/08/23/cyperpunk-2077-differences-between-the-e3-and-gamescom-demos

Also, during the Gamescom demo V warned the Maelstrom leader Royce about Stout. Royce thanked V for the heads up, delivers the spider bot and sends V and Jackie on their way. However, the Maelstrom gang makes the mistake of insulting V’s jacket … and Jackie offers to buy V a new, cooler jacket if they retrieve the now-virus-free 50,000 eddie cred chit. That means fighting their way through all of the cyberpsycho Maelstrom goons, but as we saw at E3, Jackie and V are more than capable of taking down a few booster gangers. (43)

This mission is meant to give us a flavor of the world I think, without revealing too much plot-wise. “The game … ‘adopts elements of noir cinema’ to create moments of moral ambiguity requiring hard choices, as is expected from the developer of The Witcher 3. Multiple story outcomes are confirmed, and the paths leading to them are said to be ‘strongly contrasting.’” (44) https://killapenguin.com/random/gamestuff/news/details-cyberpunk-2077-havent-seen-mentioned-yet/

This is classic cyberpunk fare, offering a vision of the future that speaks to the dangers of unchecked capitalism and profiteering. "The punk part in cyberpunk stands not only for rock and roll and sex and drugs and whatever … It also stands as a fight against the system." according to Richard Borzymowski. (45) https://www.engadget.com/2018/08/23/cyberpunk-2077-daylight-interview/ That's one way Cyberpunk 2077 stays true to the roots of its genre, but it's not the whole story. Though you play as a mercenary fighting against The Man, the end goal is not to destroy the world as you know it. "We want to always keep it personal," Borzymowski said. "We don't want to tell a story about rescuing the world. We don't want to basically destroy the system ... It's not just another part in this cyberpunk-industry cliche machine." (45) In in Cyberpunk you can’t save the world, you can only save yourself. (3)

CD Projekt Red isn't subverting cyberpunk as a genre, but it is trying to present some of its classic ideas in a fresh way. (45) Cyberpunk is kind of a “cynical take on transhumanism. So you have sort of utopian transhumanism were ‘technology will liberate us from our flesh, from our foibles, from all of our failings’. And then in Cyberpunk there is a certain kind of liberation but because the structures in place don’t really allow true freedom you’re just a slave of another kind. You’re turning yourself into a commodity in a different way.” (3)

In our demo, we head outside having completed the job, and are greeted by Agent Stout’s drone. Soon enough the Agent herself appears. She seems pleased with the results we got her. V can choose to be upset, eager, or plain rude. V goes with upset (understandably). Stout justifies her actions by saying that this is all because somebody messed with the corp, and that only the corp gets what it wants. We’re not taking this crap, we insult Stout and walk away.

Contrast this with the Gamescom demo, where after defeating Royce, V headed outside expecting to meet with Stout (as we had at E3), but instead found another Militech agent in her place. Apparently tapping into the Maelstrom network was her last-ditch effort to prove her value to Militech. Since we tipped off the booster gang to the malware on the chit, it seems as though Stout’s contract had been terminated (likely with extreme prejudice), serving as another example of the consequences that players could find themselves facing. (43)

But in our demo we walk away from Stout and call Dexter. We tell him we got the flathead. He seems very pleased and tells us he’ll meet us at Afterlife. We see our street cred increase to level 2 (meaning this was a side quest based on what we’ve learned about the XP systems). Jackie is elated that they have pried open the door to the big leagues. V says the only thing she wants to pry open is a bottle of scotch. We conclude with a mission statement “Need to get to know this city Jack, and not just gun in hand. I’m on a crusade.”

That concludes the demo walkthrough. "The game was being played live - trust me. We had a few issues that meant we had to restart the build mid-demo.” (10) The press demo was running on:

CPU: Intel i7-8700K @ 3.70 GHz
MB: ASUS ROG STRIX Z370-I GAMING
RAM: G.Skill Ripjaws V, 2x16GB, 3000MHz, CL15
GPU: GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
SSD: Samsung 960 Pro 512 GB M.2 PCIe
PSU: Corsair SF600 600W (10)

So a meaty rig, but "The current console generation is what we're aiming for. We are aiming for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and of course PC as well." (10) CDPR has been working hard to make sure the game both pushes boundaries and is well optimized – “We have a completely new animation system, and we completely changed the approach to handling animations. We have a better mocap studio, we have a completely new facial animation system based on muscles. We have a new way of generating lip sync animation when people are talking. We have a completely new approach to creating environments, so instead of working on a huge world at once we are creating prefabs which are then adjusted and placed differently, so everything is scalable. Another thing is simply our engine, which we decided to push far while still working hard on optimisation to make sure the game will run on current-gen consoles. It’s a completely new way – I would say almost every single department went through this kind of evolution.” (46) https://wccftech.com/cyberpunk-2077-new-animations-engine/

There is no release window yet for Cyberpunk 2077, however it has been mentioned that the game is “playable from start to finish” … whatever that means. (47) https://www.gamespot.com/articles/cyberpunk-2077-is-already-playable-start-to-finish/1100-6461385/ While that may be, the game still isn’t feature complete, doesn't have all of its assets, and the fixes for the bugs that were discovered in playtesting haven't been implemented yet. (47) So it will likely be a long while before we get our hands on it, but if the demo turns out to accurately reflect the final product … I think it’ll be worth the wait.

 

[Sardukhar]

Jesus Rawls. Slow week at work? This is like crazy depth.

 

[Rawls]

Slow week at work?

Heh. Sick kid on Monday so I was home all day with a kid who took a four hour nap. Then I had already started, so a few late nights and here we are.

 

[Snowflakez]

Nice, Rawls! By the way, fun little detail...

Pay attention to the muscles in the woman's neck during this scene. You can tell she's struggling to breathe, and when V uses the Airhypo on her, she takes a gasp and her muscles relax.

So cool.

 

[Loostreaks]

That's almost longer than my seminar work back at university. Seriously, nicely done.

Two things I've also noticed ( that I didn't see anyone mention):

- During stealth sink takedown, it kind of looks like player is still under control when it comes to execution..crosshair still holds and hovers above enemy's head and then you manually pull the trigger. Hard to say though, but it doesn't look like full auto.

- T-bug's voice I'm sure I've heard somewhere from Mass Effect/Bioware games. But I can't remember who exactly, definitely had secondary role.

 

[Rawls]

- T-bug's voice I'm sure I've heard somewhere from Mass Effect/Bioware games. But I can't remember who exactly, definitely had secondary role.

She sounds vaguely like EDI to me, but I think it's more the electronic-sounding effects than the voice itself. I doubt it's the same VA.

 

[Rawls]

"Victor the Ripperdoc" section updated to include a bit on crime from this interview - https://gamingbolt.com/cyberpunk-20...etting-freedom-of-choice-side-quests-and-more