When Cyberpunk 2077 was announced as a first-person, open-world experience, it immediately had a lot to live up to. Not only was it CD Projekt Red's follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Witcher series, but it was also now stepping into the territory of games from studios like Bethesda. For all the interesting storytelling and memorable characters CD Projekt Red packed into Cyberpunk 2077's Night City, it arguably failed to create the same type of cohesive world that exists in games like The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, in part due to Night City's static nature.
Bethesda's The Elder Scrolls and Fallout games of the last decade-plus are more than just RPGs; they're iconic worlds many players want to live in. There's just something about such an expansive, first-person game that captures the imagination, and this is especially the case with The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim, a game that's nearing its 10-year anniversary but has yet to be topped in certain aspects. There's a reason why Bethesda is able to keep porting Skyrim to so many platforms because it offers an immersive experience like no other. The citizens of Tamriel aren't standing still, waiting for a player's input - they're living out their lives, going from their job to their home, and conversing with their neighbors. It's not a perfect system, but it's pretty impressive for 2011, especially when compared to what CD Projekt Red was able to come up with in 2020 for 2077.
Part of Cyberpunks' comparative inadequacy could be because its NPCs are static characters, sometimes existing as little more than quest markers. For example, in the Elder Scrolls games, players have the chance to attack and even kill NPCs, which could shut them out of quest lines or turn them against certain factions. Even if most players don't want to mess with the story in that way, it creates a grand spectrum of opportunity that doesn't exist in Cyberpunk 2077.
It's clear that there were plenty of cut corners in Cyberpunk 2077, so perhaps some of this immersion fell by the wayside. Still, the fact that NPCs are required to tell out V's story in Cyberpunk speaks to the lack of options the player truly has as they go on their adventure. If a story-vital NPC were to be killable in Cyberpunk 2077, there would be few options for the game to fall back on. Much like how there are only a few romantic options baked into the experience, there are only a few groups V can meaningfully interact with, and taking even one of those away would make the story wholly incomplete.
Once CD Projekt Red gets a handle on the many bugs and glitches affecting Cyberpunk 2077, the developer does have more content in the works for the game. Both paid and free Cyberpunk 2077 DLC is on the way, and perhaps that will also bring updates that liven up Night City and bring it more in line with Bethesda's open worlds. For all the bugs inherent with any game world of this size, the release of Cyberpunk 2077 shows just how impressive even the lesser Elder Scrolls and Fallout games truly are - and how far other franchises have to come to make their digital worlds feel just as lived-in.
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