Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay: All We Know

Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay: All We Know

Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person RPG, similar to classics like Deus Ex. The player takes on the role of an enterprising young operative named V, and interacts with NPCs, gets quests, and fulfills them through means both violent and non-violent. However, the scope and scale of Cyberpunk 2077 are far beyond the classics of the genre.

There will be plenty of shopping in Night City.

Explore Night City

Like CD PROJEKT RED’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077 is a fully open-world experience, encompassing the vast west coast metropolis of Night City. As we have seen in the gameplay demos of the City Centre and Pacifica districts, Night City is a location rich with detail and activity, and the player will be able to explore its entirety. This means everything from talking to people on the street, perusing shops for cyberware and fashion, and traversing its streets on a variety of flashy vehicles.

Lead Quest Designer for #Cyberpunk2077, @PaweSasko, would like to talk to you about cars and motorcycles. And if there’s cars, there has to be radio, right? 🎶 pic.twitter.com/5K2pyvRbc9

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) July 11, 2019

Instead of Witcher 3’s horse Roach, V will get around the city in flashy vehicles like the Quadra muscle car seen in the E3 2018 demo, complete with 1980s style digital speedometer and a V-TECH engine. V’s preferred vehicle can be summoned on a moment’s notice through an AI uplink, so expect driving to be fast and frequent, with the occasional lethal car chase included.

A retro wave driving experience.

Decisions Shape the Story

From the very start of play, decisions shape the course of the story in Cyberpunk 2077. The player will make key lifepath decisions that will shape their background: street kid, nomad, or corporate. This affects starting location, faction affiliations, and reasons for being in Night City. From that point on the player will make decisions with real consequences when interacting with NPCs and navigating the challenges presented by the quests they give.

For example, in the 2018 gameplay demo we saw how V could choose to either work with the agents of the megacorp Militech in order to accomplish their mission. Doing so meant that Militech wasn’t going to be on their tail, but it also meant getting into combat with a group they could have otherwise negotiated with. Factions don’t disappear when the mission is done, so your choices will play into quests down the road as well.

Conversations let you role-play and lead to a different story as the game unfolds.

Overcome Challenges with Weapons Wits and Charm

The player can customize V through Cyberpunk 2077’s “fluid class system” that will allow the players to freely choose from three skill groups: Solo, Techie, and Netrunner. Depending on these choices V will have different tools at their disposal to overcome the challenges Night City throws at them. Both the 2018 and 2019 gameplay demos focus on showing how different skill and equipment builds give V different approaches to the same challenge. In the 2018 demo, we see how V can shoot their way through a conflict or use hacking to disarm their opponents and throw them into confusion.

In the 2019 demo, the Netrunner version of V hacks security cameras, vending machines, and robots to overcome enemies, while the solo version of V gets into fistfights and picks up objects in the environment to use as melee weapons. They also get physical with the environment, ripping doors off their hinges and tearing an LMG turret off its mount to spray the room with lead.

Of course, it’s not all violence. V also gets into detail dialog trees with NPCs, and their background colors the choices they can make. A corporate background V will be able to talk the language of operatives working for megacorps like Militech, while a Nomad V will gain benefits when in the outskirts of Night City. You’ll never know exactly what the effects of your dialog decisions will be, so it’s best to just play your character and find out what happens.

Choose your lifepath and set off into the night.