“What’s your favorite game?” It’s a simple question that you would imagine someone who writes about video games for a living would have an answer to. But it’s always been a tough one. Halo 3? Maybe Mass Effect 2? Super Smash Bros. 64? Destiny 2, the game I’ve sunk 5,000 hours into?
I never had a clear answer until a few years ago, when I suddenly realized that after four playthroughs and hundreds of hours, it was Cyberpunk 2077, which just celebrated its fifth anniversary this week.
It feels improbable. I loved The Witcher 3, which was my first experience with CDPR, and as such, I was interested in Cyberpunk 2077, albeit perhaps with less enthusiasm than some. But the game was released and consumed by one of the wildest launch stories ever, a disastrous release of an unbaked game mired with technical issues to the point where it was actually delisted from the PlayStation store for months, something almost never seen in the industry. It was broken broken.
Well, for some. Sure, I had bugs on PC in those early days, and performance could have been better, but it was certainly better than running it on console. And if you could block out the noise of the larger controversies, you could see it. You could see the core of this game was great, and if it had fixed things, added things, delivered on its full potential, it could have been great.
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It is great, now. CDPR spent at least two years getting the game to where it should have been at launch, but in the five-year span, it has dramatically overhauled most major systems in the game, particularly its skill trees. It also then released Phantom Liberty, where at that point, I was not all that surprised it became my favorite DLC of all time, as well.
Cyberpunk 2077 is simply best in class across so many categories. Night City is one of the best realized environments I’ve ever seen across any open world title, beating out Grand Theft Auto handily in terms of a gorgeous, living space (that got more convincing with patches to civilians and traffic, in time).
The voicework here is stellar. Yes, the star feature was Keanu Reeves, but there is no question in my mind that Cherami Leigh’s V is the best first-person narrator I’ve seen in a game. The concept of every bit of the game, even cutscenes, taking place in first person only worked because of her (and Male V, Gavin Drea, was solid as well). Leigh’s performance, however praised, was not praised enough.
The excellent voicework extends to the excellent characters and the writing to bring them to life. In particular, Judy and Panam quickly became some of my favorite video game NPCs, with Panam in particular being an unforgettable love interest that would make Mass Effect and Baldur’s Gate players jealous. Even if she rejected me. How many NPCs have ever broken your heart?
None of this would work if the game itself was not fun. It was solid enough to start, but when Cyberpunk 2077 really kicked into gear was after its major skills overhaul. Half the reason I made four(!) different Vs was not just to make different story decisions, but to commit to different pathways and builds. I had my pure melee build (stupidly overpowered), my run and gun shotgun, LMG tank build, my hacking-only build full of exploding heads and cyberpsychosis, and finally, my final and favorite run, throwing knives only, like some sort of Goldeneye modifier. I don’t think there’s a better metaphor for Cyberpunk’s transformation than the original throwing knife skill being throwing a literal, single knife in your inventory, then needing to find it afterward lest you lose it. After the grand skill tree rework patch, it was switched to being a cooldown with infinite ammo, and it ended up being one of the most hilarious, legitimately strong builds in the game thanks to CDPR investing in the idea, rather than abandoning it.
Again, I made four Vs for four full runs of the game, at least until I was told to meet Hanako at Embers, as I’d done most of the endings by that point already. I have never done that many playthroughs of a single-player game before, and none of them felt like a slog. Ultimately I made my way to a new, “true,” ending in Phantom Liberty which was one of the most gut-wrenching sequences I can remember in a game.
Something happened midway through these five years that changed my perception of all this. After blacking out, falling and smacking my head a number of times, I was diagnosed with epilepsy in my 30s, a rarity. Now, every time V’s brain glitched out because of the relic, and she found herself going dark and hitting the floor, I could feel that kind of pain and confusing. She was marching toward her death, I am not (well, technically I could die from one of these), but there is something to be said here about how Cyberpunk deals with grief and bravery in the face of illness (read my friend Gene Park’s essay about how he connected to Cyberpunk via his own cancer diagnosis).
There is still lost potential in Cyberpunk. The idea of three different lifepaths never really manifested. The romance options, while compelling, are locked and limited. Johnny can be…a lot, if you ask me. But no game is perfect. Where it shines, it doesn’t just shine, it stands up to the greats in video game history and as such, is a great itself. For me, the greatest.
Every so often, I’ll revisit Night City. CDPR keeps adding little bits and pieces to the game, addicted to perfectionism and delivering a few more crumbs of what they wish they launched with. New haircuts, new cars, new apartments. An MCART monorail for the sole reason just because it was something they said the game would have (functionally, it’s rather useless, but it’s mainly about proving a point).
No more major expansions, but rather CDPR has thrown itself into Cyberpunk 2, working on it alongside The Witcher 4 with an ambitious release schedule in the coming years. The hope, of course, is not that it’s another great game, but that they can avoid another all-time awful launch. But in the end, they produced a recovery that has now become a model for other games trying to do the same. But few can.
I love Night City. I love my friends there. I love my Vs. I love my throwing knives. And when you ask me what my favorite game is now, I don’t hesitate.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
