There are no spoilers in this essay but it is a discussion of the themes of Cyberpunk 2077 so it does make minor allusions to the game’s narrative.

Cyberpunk 2077 is many things, depending on whom you ask and when. It’s a truly next-gen videogame that pushes the envelope of the medium with stellar art direction powered by a technology pipeline that pushed my GPU into an existential crisis. It’s a beautiful labour of love from an overworked and underappreciated studio working under abusive employers to make something truly special for the enjoyment of an equally abusive audience.

Cyberpunk 2077 is also a buggy, broken mess that makes even the worst offenders of its genre seem polished by comparison. It’s a game whose systems make zero sense, whose graphics fail to render properly on anything but the most cutting-edge hardware. It’s a game whose marketing actively betrayed its own beating heart, choosing to stifle its interiority to put on an edgelord facade, like the shy protagonist of a teen movie betraying his drama club friends to rub elbows with the cool kids.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a ghost story about regret. It’s about holding on to a way of life that’s no longer feasible, in a world that has moved so far beyond your existence that you don’t even know where to begin finding yourself. It’s a story about realising that sometimes even the brightest, most destructive fires can just… run out of oxygen; and that sometimes all your pomp and circumstance can result in nothing but finding your own body unceremoniously left to rot in a pile of garbage. No parallels to be drawn here, right?

Cyberpunk 2077 is all of the above and so much more. But more than anything, it’s a game that deserved better.

Public opinion on Cyberpunk 2077 plummeted seemingly overnight, and I’m aware that this is not the commentary the millions of players slighted by the game’s dishonest marketing and shoddy release are looking for. But underneath the technical abomination and beyond all of The Discourse surrounding what ended up being a legendarily controversial game, there’s a real heart to the game that hit me right where I live.

Like CDPR’s work with The Witcher trilogy, the heart of Cyberpunk 2077 lies not in its expansive lore or its grand narrative ambitions but in the smaller, quieter moments. And more than anywhere else, it lies in the character of Johnny Silverhand. On paper, he is gamer culture personified. A loud, brash, violent misogynist who is a whiskey-swilling, womanising rockstar by day, and a gun-toting revolutionary fighter by night. He’s maybe two minor rewrites away from being Duke Nukem.

The game’s own marketing played this up as loudly as possible, making Johnny seem another Trevor brick in the future Grand Theft Auto wall. In fact, the marketing almost actively downplayed the game’s own introspective nature to the point of making it seem far less interesting and sincere than it actually is.

This is what surprised me the most about the game when I played it last year. As opposed to the popular takes about Silverhand reading him as a cringeworthy glorification of gaming’s worst edgelord propensities, what I found here was a character filled with regret and a story openly critical of the exact tendencies the critics thought the game was glorifying.

I guess the marketing worked too well.

I will critique the business decisions and work culture of CD Projekt Red all day long, but even I can’t deny they know how to write a great story. And the story found in Cyberpunk 2077, when boiled down, is just a daisy chain of uncomfortable confrontations between Johnny and his own past. It fleshes out this exaggerated caricature through his relationship with the player, forcing him at every turn to interrogate his actions and ideology. It pulls no punches while pointing out that the only legacy left in the wake of Johnny’s heroic fight against The Man was a series of loose ends, broken people, and a city that forgot even the memory of his memory. The very fact of his prolonged existence as a digital construct is slowly killing the player character who is now his only real friend in the world.

At the end, I came away from Cyberpunk 2077 honestly wondering if I played the same game my colleagues did. Because while everyone was willing and ready to write it off as some cynical, transgressive bullshit, I was totally blindsided by just how hopeful the story was.

Nothing highlights that hope more than its protagonist, Valerie. The core of her story is accepting the inevitability of her death, wondering what (if anything) her legacy will be once she’s gone. All of this while witnessing first-hand how Johnny’s obsession with leaving a mark on the world ended with him being dumped in an unmarked grave in a junkyard. In contrasting these two, the ultimate thesis that Cyberpunk 2077 presents that all you really have to do to leave a mark of your existence is to be good to the people who love you.

That’s right, after all the edgy marketing, Cyberpunk 2077 is really a story about love. I love it!

Going through Valerie’s quest to stop the Johnny construct from killing her, you just live your best videogame life, encountering and helping a colourful cast of characters in their times of need. And by the time the credits rolled, regardless of whether or not you made any dent in the Arasaka Corporation’s corrupt empire, you will inevitably find yourself beside a whole group of people whose lives are better simply because you exist.

People like Panam, a disgraced Nomad whom you helped find her way back to her people. Or Judy who was able to find justice and closure for the loss of her best friend. People like Takemura who sometimes just call or text you to see how you’re doing. Because talking to you makes their day slightly better. If you can improve the lives of those around you even a little bit, then it’s something worth fighting for.

Cyberpunk 2077 suggests that the sum total of the meaningful connections you form in your lifetime have a greater impact than you can ever fathom.

I firmly believe that with enough time between us and the unpleasantness surrounding its release, we will be able to see this game for what it truly is. A digital construct of cherished friendships cultivated over a hundred or so hours, in an uncaring city with bright lights and bleak stories. And if there is one thing I hope to achieve with this overlong and overdramatic piece, it’s that at least a few of you might learn to love the sad, mangled, hopeful heart of Cyberpunk 2077 the same way I did.