Can This Expansion Finally Bring Cyberpunk 2077 Back?
Circa Dec, 2020. The game everybody's been anticipating for launches, and it comes out as a broken disaster. Many broken promises as well as an unfinished product was delivered to the masses. Some had hope that the game will be fixed, cleaned out before having its post-launch content out. Dec 2020 was nearly 2 years ago. That long, huh.
But we have finally arrived here, with a new DLC expansion revealed to be "Phantom Liberty", with the premise taking place elsewhere from Night City where you help a leading figure of New United States in some conquest move against Night City. The trailer ends with Johnny Silverhand saying "bad idea", if anything's to be believed, it's going to be hell on Earth.
Nearly 2 years of waiting for a broken game to be fixed, even when that was over and done, the critics still dubbed the game as flawed. Drawbacks stemming from lackluster story writing, few multiple endings, misleading promises from promotion campaigns, terrible in-game loot economy, and the fact that it ran terribly on the last-gen systems. Lucky for them, they won't be able to touch the game again, since it'll be a PC and current-gen DLC release.
And I don't believe this is going to be a small-time expansion, because there were areas in the main game that were locked out for access. If anything, this could the final update that will put the game back on the map, redeem themselves if all I hope works out and more from it.
Taking Time Mending The Wrongs
When the game first came out, it was also beyond a technical mess. Outside the galore of bugs and glitches, of which made it the joke of the internet for months on end, the game was inconsistent on a lot of things. The police in the game were ineffective in trying to capture but also allow you to escape in the most fair way, the loot economy was strenuous as it needed you to grind to get even a simple powerful gun, meaning it didn't let you experiment easily, and dear god don't get me started on the constant "new car" offers when I couldn't even earn enough credits for it.
But most important of all, the game wasn't fun to play from point A to B sometimes, thanks to how unfinished it felt. It felt like a lot of content was cut off, and replaced with constant junk collecting for the so-called loot economy. It is a great RPG shooter by a broader sense, it just also lacked polish. Even the Steam reviews says a lot.
So what did CD Projekt Red do for the past 19 months? They've been actually hard at fixing the game, right before announcing the new DLC expansion. The roadmap was long and busy for the studio, amidst people leaving, including the lead game designer leaving the studio a few months after release. I can fully attest to the product state right now, which is that most of the above problems I've mentioned have been fixed....well mostly.
The game right now has a functional open world, with a lot of the features that were supposed to come with. Still doesn't have some of the things teased from the trailers, but it'll have to do. Not only that, but they've added more free content, including gameplay DLCs.
When it comes to polish and overall quality factor of the game mechanics, I'd say it takes itself slightly up from the state that it was. But if you've wanted bigger things, something that the game had promised to be, well, that's maybe where we'll find it in the expansion DLC.
Redemption Story
The latest patch, 1.6 has added some interesting changes and additions, as well as an announcement that both the vehicle to vehicle combat, and police system will get overhauled from future patches. Since the new Edgerunner anime is coming out, they added content based on that too. So it has come to this phase where the game is getting No Man's Sky level of prosumer treatment.
But even better news, a modding tool has finally been added to the main game. Remember that GTA V manage to survive this long, mostly because of the mods, I mean, even for a single-player game, this could be the one that finally drags Cyberpunk 2077 out of the pitfalls.
But alas, that's not what I am really looking for. Because if anything, the new expansion could be adding so much on top of the main game, it'll do much more than rectify the mess it made and bring our trust back. Much like them bringing back Keanu Reeves for another voice role.
What I am really hoping for is that the expansion will elevate not only the RPG elements, but the gameplay itself as well. Expansions have done this where the gameplay has new elements inserted into it that complements and, makes the game new and fresh to play again. They don't have to go really far with this one, but there's so much they can do, after all, they've created the Witcher series, and on their way to making a 4th one.
Bringing back the wall crawling abilities with the claws, that should have been there from the start. I have no idea why they removed it. In fact, that aspect brings much more verticality so, maybe add a jetpack or something similar for combat in different heights. I would also really like it if there were augmentations where you shoot like a drone, dart, or small missiles from the arm or something. I kind of brainstormed the last part, but let's see if they can one-up that.
Giving us usage of combat drones not only through hacks, but also deployed and used by us. Allowing access to transportation that hovers on the air. Create more meaningful quests, with a greater open-world map designed around them. 6 months of waiting time, and I am already guessing what they'll be able to do next.
But there's no proof of that, or any data indicating it either. Since not much gameplay was shown from this one trailer. If anything, this could also be a dud when it's out. Though I highly doubt that, since the anime is coming and CDPR has been working hard on this game, well enough, last thing to expect is they'll sleaze on the last minute.
They have a lot to regain after losing their reputation as a trusted game developer over the past 2 years. Would do that wonders to come up with a redemption story such as this.
Update: CDPR confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 is getting a sequel later on. Now we're gonna start expecting big things later on. Including the return of the sidelined multiplayer game.
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I had absolutely no problem with Cyberpunk when it was released, I thoroughly enjoyed it and just assumed that the majority of the whining was coming from old-gen console players. 🤷♀😅 I figure if they only released on "next-gen" and PC, it wouldn't have had so much of a backlash.
I've been waiting and waiting and waaaaaaiting for the new expansion! I don't want to have my full, complete playthrough of the game until the game is... full and complete. It annoys me when I play a game, finish it, then, "Oh, hi. Here's some new content." Grargh.
Unfortunately, I'm not too sure if I'll really like this upcoming expansion. As a non-American, my first impression of the teaser trailer was, "Oh crap... well this doesn't sound like propaganda. Not at all."
I still feel like they should have delayed the game for another year or so. They were even figuring out how to make the best out of what they've worked on before its launch.