Cyberpunk 2077 Contains a Wolfenstein-like mini game now.

[Enjay]

Perhaps of mild interest to people is that Cyberpunk 2077 now contains a mini game called Arasaka Tower 3D which seems as if it is running a Wolf 3D-like engine inside Cyberpunk.



I've played it and it does seem very Wolf-like and I think I might even have seen mention of Wolf3D scrolling past in the credits when I beat Phantom Liberty, but I'm not sure.

What's more, the room that the acrcade machine is in seems to tie in to the FF:06:B5 "Magenta Mystery" ( https://www.reddit.com/r/FF06B5/ ) which has clues littered around Night City and has also spilled into a secret room in the Witcher 3 High-Rest update. If you manage to see the high score table of Arasaka Tower 3D, then FF:06:B5 is repeated there too (more details https://primagames.com/tips/cyberpunk-2 ... -explained ).

But, yeah, mostly I just thought I'd post this because it looks like Wolfenstein 3D, or something very close to it, is running inside Cyberpunk 2077.

[Rachael]

That is interesting, I've played through 2 of 4 of Phantom Liberty's endings but have not seen that mini game yet.

[Nash]

That is extremely cool. :D Haven't encountered this minigame myself.

Only thing that would have made it even more cool is if they made bespoke sprites and artwork for it - like, legitimate, 90's style sprites and wall textures, instead of just doing some kind of render-to-texture trick (you can clearly tell whatever the minigame is outputting is just from the current engine, rendered to a texture and then scaled down to look pixelated)

PS, Phantom Liberty is one of the best modern games I've ever played, hands down. Everything about it is just so well executed and classy.

[Enjay]

On the topic of the mini game, I *think* it just came with the 2.0 update (i.e. Phantom Liberty not required). I think that there is only the one arcade machine that plays it and it isn't in Dogtown, it's in the Biotechnica flats area of the original map.

As for Phantom Liberty, yep, played all the endings now. I do have a couple of thoughts on how they could have been a bit better but, yes, the DLC is very good.

My only real disappointment while playing Phantom Liberty was that there wasn't much additional to do in the rest of NC. I mean, I get that the thing was meant to be mostly in the new area, and the logic of the DLC plot allowed that to make sense. However, Dogtown is a hyper-violent, militarised "even more Pacifica than Pacifica" area. That's cool and all, but I also like the classier, more techy areas too. So, some more stuff to do in the "nicer" parts of town would have been cool.

In saying that, I very much got the impression that it would probably work better when playing from a clean start and allowing the Dogtown missions to feed into your game in a more natural and organic way. I played the Phantom Liberty stuff almost as a stand-alone game because I'd already done absolutely everything else that there is to do elsewhere in the game already.

As for the endings:

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As I posted on the CDPR forums...
If you get the new game ending...

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i.e. If you make decisions that let you get cured...

...the consequences (physiological and interpersonal) for the cure seem very forced. I totally get (and actually really like) how getting the cure puts you back on the street as a nobody (with rapidly-fading Afterlife legend status if you try to go back, as per Rogue's credits holo-call). It is perfectly consistent with the conversation that you have with Dex right near the start of the game. However, I think that the way the consequences are "done to you" off-screen is clumsy and forced.

You basically agree to the procedure, go under, and then wake up to be told that you've been in a coma for two years (not an expected, or even hinted-at, outcome), you can no longer use any combat cyberware and, as you will soon find out, nearly all of your friends have ditched you for a variety of (sometimes quite weak) reasons.

As for the physiological, I don't think there is much, if any, in-game warning that you might lose your ability to have combat chrome enhancements. Maybe I missed it, but something of a hint at that would have been nice.

However, that's a minor point and I can mostly accept it. It does kind-of make logical sense: your entire nervous system is shot, corrupted by experimental cyberware, and these are the consequences. More or less, it feels fair enough. Almost (but, like I said, a better hint in game would have been nice).

What really, really, feels forced is how quickly your friends/love interests give up on you and get on with their lives, and even reject your attempts to get in contact with them when you awake. I mean, seriously, these are people whose lives, careers, families, etc. you saved, who declared their love for you, who said they would do anything for you. But, you drop off the radar for two years (with a damned good reason, that you even tell them about) and they all move on and can hardly be bothered to give you the time of day. To rub salt into the wounds, Mitch (via a non-interactive holocall during the credits) tells you not to bother trying to contact Panam because she would be too upset by it. And that's it! No more contact with Panam because Mitch won't let you. I mean, let me decide Mitch. My Male V was deeply in love with Panam, my female V was BFFs with her. And you are not letting me even try to explain to her why I dropped off the radar? It's not as if a two year coma was within my control.

I know several people (in real life) who I haven't spoken to for a similar length of time (even longer) who I know that I could just pick up the phone to and be back to chatting like best-of-chooms within minutes. Hell, we just had a pandemic that lasted longer than that.

It all just feels really forced and too quick. I mean, V even calls everyone important before the procedure to tell them they'd be away for a while (admittedly the estimate was a couple of months, not two years) and they all knew V was in serious medical trouble. Maybe if the coma had been longer (at least five years, maybe more) it wouldn't be so jarring but it just feels really forced to get the "you're just a face in the crowd" ending that CDPR wanted rather than actually feeling logical. A longer period of coma could make the death of at least on of the significant interests logical/acceptable too. Imagine coming around from a coma after 7 years to find out that Panam had died in a raid or something (rather than just getting the brush-off from Mitch), or Kerry had finally died of old age (nah, he's immortal, I can feel it ). To be fair, Kerry is probably the one who's reaction is about right. He's just too busy being a superstar to commit to a meet-up (regardless of how close you had been two years earlier). He was mostly like that right through the rest of game anyway.



It was also pointed out on the CDPR forum that if you are playing a heartless, self-interested Corpo rat, then all the things that CDPR want you to feel bad about probably don't matter to you. So, it would be nice to be able to accept Solomon Reed's offer of a nice cushy desk job away from NC and have that be your ending, without having to go back to NC. For a Corpo, that's probably about the best ending you could get, but it's simply not there as an in-game option. So, you have to go back to NC and get mugged regardless. Solomon does say you can call him later, and his credits holo-call emplores you to do it, but it's just an out of game head-canon thing that you might have done it rather than an actual choice.

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If you have sided with and escaped with Songbird...

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...and you are now at the space port monorail terminal, about to put her on a flight to the Moon, I feel that she tells you that the cure can only work for one person far too late - but only if you have been especially nice to her prior to that.

If you make the choice to side with Songbird and betray Reed, she tells you very, very late in the game that she's been lying to you all along and that the cure can only be used once. OK, she's a hard-nosed FIA agent and walking Blackwall Nuke who has been prepared to do whatever it takes to save her own skin right from the outset. So, yeah, I get it. In fact, if that's the case, why does she even tell you at all? Why not just leave it until it's too late, the ship has launched and there is nothing you can do about it?

But if you have deliberately and explicitly made positive conversation choices with her throughout the game, if you have sided with her consistently, if you have shared a bond, shared childhood tales etc etc, then it would have been really nice to have had her tell you quite a bit earlier. On the monorail near the end, you even have a dialogue option along the lines of "I'd have helped you anyway". So, why not make that an actual choice earlier in the game? e.g. So Mi and you share a moment (perhaps at her little hideout) and she tells you the truth, and you can decide to carry on helping her regardless. But *only* if you have been especially nice to her. If you have merely been positive/neutral (or even negative I guess) then she shouldn't confide in you until much later, if at all.

Again, the dialogue on the monorail as it stands feels a bit forced to add an extra impetus to your decision when Sol Reed confronts you on the spaceport walkway: you had been determined to save So Mi (and expected that this would also allow you to save yourself), but CDPR set things up for a betrayal at the 11th hour, just to make your "hand her over/don't hand her over" and "kill Sol/don't kill Sol" decision more immediate.

How would I have done it?

1) If you have been positive to So Mi, then she trusts you earlier on and tells you the truth at that point. From there you can stick with your convictions (i.e. allow her to be cured) or play along and betray her in the end (making you the ruthless bad guy instead).

2) if you have been neutral/less positive then she 'fesses up at the point that she currently does (i.e. on the monorail) This could be seen as a last minute "I wasn't going to tell you this, but you actually had my back when you didn't need to, so I'm giving you the whole story and now my life is literally in your hands; I trust you with that.

3) If you have not been positive enough to her, So Mi never 'fesses up but Sol tries to use it as a bargaining chip on the walkway "the way she's doing it, the cure can only be used once, did she tell you that?" (possibly with the option of V asking So Mi to confirm/deny it, or you overhearing Sol/Myers discussing it earlier). Then, if you still put So Mi on the flight, you find out that Sol was telling the truth (i.e. you do not get cured).

The fact that I thought about it that much, that I thought it was worth that much thought, means that the game made a big enough impact on me to trigger those thoughts and ruminations. So, although it might sound like criticism (and I guess it is), it's actually an endorsement of the game too.

[Nash]

Will not openly comment about the endings for obvious reasons (though I will say that I agree on all points), but I'd just like to add:

I am with you on how impactful the game was to me on a personal level, outside of the game. When I finished the original for the first time, it legitimately left me in a weird state IRL where I just... felt so empty. Jackie, Johnny, Panam etc, they all felt like real friends to me.

Moving forward, I take the stories told in Night City to heart in my life too, in a small way. It's a testament to how good the game's writing is. Of course, all this is realized with an impressive set of technical tools: the game is visually stunning with -IMO - one of the best uses and justification for ray/pathtracing, excellent audio and sound design, one of the best mocap (at least for the set piece actors) in real time 3D games, exceptional voice performances, etc...

Yeah, Cyberpunk 2077 is good. It's a shame that a lot of people would rather dismiss the game due to the other controversies surrounding it.

[Enjay]

I just found a shard that goes a little way to mitigate some of the negative feelings that I had towards the way CDPR handled one of the endings (as per my spoilered spots above).

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If you sided with Songbird, later you can find a shard that has a thank you message from her.

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It's hard to find - basically a secret. Perhaps it should have been a bit more explicit? Anyway, for those who sided with Songbird (I think that it is only available after either the King of Wands or the King of Swords endings), the shard is in the alley where you meet up with Songbird at the start of The Killing Moon mission (if you did that one).

Here's my recording of me picking it up.


(I have no idea why there is a car on its side. It was nothing to do with me.)

I know that if you help So Mi get to the moon, you get an anonymous message and Moon souvenir (which is obviously from her), but this recorded thank you is really nice. It also helps reinforce, and allow me to accept, that So Mi was so utterly paranoid and untrusting that she couldn't bring herself to tell V the truth until the last minute, but that she wanted to.