Gamescom 2018: Cyberpunk 2077 demo is different from E3

Set in the future, Cyberpunk 2077 throws you into a world run by gangs and corporations as you look to find your way. At Gamescom 2018 I got a chance to sit through an exclusive guided session of Cyberpunk 2077 to get a taste of what it has to offer, now I finally see what the hype is all about.

The demo at Gamescom features V, the main playable character and unlike at E3 where we were confined to just the Female, here the male option was chosen to provide a slightly different experience. This, of course, affects how you interact with the world around you, your sexual partners and relationship with friend Jackie.

The initial mission has V and Jackie attempt to locate a certain individual who’s bilocator has been switched off. They find her abducted by a gang looking to harvest her organs and must fight their way out of trouble. The gunplay showed off some crisp combat and the first person really helps it stand out as a great shooter when it comes to the combat. Another interesting feature is performance boosts you can take before key combat situations which of course in addition to standard boosts to stats help you slow down time. This is very important when you’re fighting large groups of breaching against a set of hunkered down enemies. V’s equipment also gives him certain perks like resistances, HP etc but also Street Cred, a sort of influence level that affects conversation choices and prices from local vendors. You can also upgrade your augments that drastically change how you play the game. A hand augment provides a count of your ammunition while your eye augment allows you to zoom in and locate items of interest around you.

The main part of the gameplay session revolved around getting in the good books of a local fixer by stealing a robot from Maelstrom a tech-crazed local gang. However, in doing so you must take help from a militech agent desperate for assistance however the twist comes in terms of the choices you make during the mission. Cyberpunk 2077 gives you more freedom than before to shape the world around you, and that no doubt extends to its mission and not just dialogue choices. The militech agent provides a corrupted credit chip to provide the gang that would fry their entire network, however unlike the E3 demo we chose to warn the Maelstrom gang leader and earning his favour. However on your out from the transaction, he insults V’s jacket and your companion Jackie suggests you kill them and take the money. At E3 the guided demo had players walk out without causing further trouble, but in my session, the audience voted to jump headfirst into the fight. It leads to an all-out assault on the gang's inner sanctum showing off new gameplay features as well, notably ricochet bullets that allow you to bounce them off walls to hit targets in cover or at least force them out. Unlike your standard call of duty-esque shooters, the enemies do have a fixed health pool and instant headshots won’t really do the job, at least not without the right weapon. We also got a look at a few new weapons and an interesting boss fight against the gang leader, Royce in a giant mech suite. It helps keep the fights interesting as you have to use your partner as a bit of a distraction to get behind him to target his weak spots; something we will surely more off as we get more information about Cyberpunk 2077’s combat and mission structures.

After the fight you, of course, walk away with an extra 50K credit, a lot of XP from shooting up the entire gang and are introduced to a new militech agent who has taken over after the previous one you encountered was terminated for her incompetence. Every conversation you have, every fight you get into, every mission you complete will shape the world of Cyberpunk 2077 and it will be a reflection of your actions and choices.

While it certainly gives you a very ‘altered carbon’ vibe, it’s a bit more vibrant as you can explore a lot of it. Cyberpunk 2077 might just be everything The Wither 3 was and wasn’t and then some; The demo was running on PC’s powered by NVIDIA and the visuals looked drop dead gorgeous. Considering NVIDIA recently just launched their brand new RTX GPU’s featuring real-time ray tracing for improved life like lighting effects, this might be the perfect implementation, however, there is no indication of that at this point whether the game will feature support that.  It’s certainly one of the most exciting games at Gamescom 2018 and one to keep an eye out for next year!

Cyberpunk 2077 is expected in sometime 2019 and will be available PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One; though there isn’t any official communication apart from “when it’s ready”.

— Ishaan Arya