Played a bit more Cyberpunk 2077 on Switch 2 today, and I’m really enjoying it so far. I’m starting to get to grips with how to play a bit more stealthily, and it’s considerably more gratifying to play this way than going in all guns blazing. The fact you can go in all guns blazing is also gratifying, but after one of the “fixers” telling me I had done sloppy work because in the process of attempting to steal a bit of data, I had murdered everyone in the building, I figured I should learn how to do things a bit more appropriately. I’ve put all those points into Intelligence and Technical Ability, after all, so I might as well use them!
What’s fun about playing stealthily is that it makes each mission feel a bit more varied. Rather than showing up, aggroing the first guard you see and then effectively playing a cover shooter for a bit, you generally have to explore the environment a bit more thoroughly to find suitable means of entry and exit. Canny use of Quickhacks can also allow you to “tag” important objectives, mechanisms and guard positions, so you can keep track of them even when they’re not in direct line of sight. And if you take control of security cameras — something you can do with your starter Cyberdeck — you can use their perspective to hack things that aren’t within protagonist V’s direct line of sight.
I’m anticipating that long-term, you’ll probably be able to get into a position where you can complete an entire mission without setting foot inside the building once. I’m not at that point yet, largely because I think I’m lacking some useful Quickhacks for achieving that, but I have reached a point where I can convincingly perform reconnaissance on the target area before attempting to breach it. What then follows is a bit of wandering around outside, usually to find a means of getting on top of the building, and then planning a means of attack that either allows me to avoid everyone, or perhaps perform some silent takedowns.
The silent non-lethal takedowns are immensely satisfying to perform. By sneaking up behind an unaware enemy, you can grab them and drag them into another room before either killing them or knocking them out; the latter option is usually encouraged. Once you have a body, you can then pick it up and move it somewhere, including stuffing it into dumpsters (fatal), the boot of a car (not fatal) or just an out-of-the-way location.
This sort of thing is what I was talking about when I said I hoped Cyberpunk 2077 was going to feel like an old-school PC game. I’m talking sort of Deus Ex and Thief: The Dark Project era. I can’t remember the last time I picked up an unconscious body and stashed it somewhere out of sight in a video game. Perhaps that says something about the games I typically play, but it feels like something we don’t do a whole lot of in games any more. And that’s a shame, because well-implemented stealth sections are a lot of fun.
And there’s the rub, I think: I reckon a lot of people, having experienced many bad stealth sections in games, have forgotten what well-implemented stealth is like, and at worst have conditioned themselves to think that stealth is automatically bad. But one thing Cyberpunk 2077 shows is that if you do stealth sections correctly — and by that I mean providing the player with plenty of tools to monitor the situation and strategically plan things out — they can be as fun as all-out gunplay.
Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t do anything especially out of the ordinary. You have a little minimap in the corner of the screen that acts a bit like the radar in Metal Gear games. Enemies can be unaware, cautious or alerted, and it takes a moment for them to “switch” between those states; if you can get out of sight before they fully reach the new state, you can escape their notice. Cameras and security devices can be hacked, manipulated and even turned against enemies. And various things you do — ranging from stumbling over discarded noisy debris to attempting to hack their mainframe — have the potential of giving you away.
Since I’m not very far in the game’s main story, I haven’t seen a lot of additional options to customise V’s cyberware to hack in various different ways, but already I’m starting to see how all this works. My “Netrunner” skill stat is getting a nice workout, and it’s satisfying to see that rise with use.
And thus far I’ve mostly been doing random-ish odd jobs rather than progressing the main story. None of these have felt throwaway, either; they all have narrative context, and feel just as important to the overall setting as the main missions. That’s good; it’s helping the setting to feel nicely immersive, and making the game a whole lot more enjoyable.
So yeah! I’m glad I picked it up. It looks and runs great on Switch 2 — and with no frame of reference for the PC or PlayStation versions I don’t feel like I’m “missing out” on any graphical flourishes — and it’s a lot of fun to play. So it may be five years old, but to me it’s new, fresh, and exciting — and I’m looking forward to playing more.
Want to read my thoughts on various video games, visual novels and other popular culture things? Stop by MoeGamer.net, my site for all things fun where I am generally a lot more cheerful. And if you fancy watching some vids on classic games, drop by my YouTube channel.
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