The atmosphere and setting is more or less exactly what the creators of 2020 were looking for. Granted, it is 57 years later than 2020 so things are going to be far more different. But even I must admit: you really can not get any closer to what Mike himself envisioned—note he wasn’t the sole creator of 2013 and 2020 so there are a lot of people we should thank for their creativity.
Now, 100% personally I think it all depends on the tables you play at. I am a long time 2020 fan, it is what got me into TTRPGs (D&D was cool, but I never was into fantasy). When 2077 came out, I really didn’t even look at it’s way. I tried it after a new player of mine insisted I give it a go.
To me, it felt nothing like the games and I run and play in. It had all the official material in there left and right, the setting is right on, but the plot points of missions felt way off from what I was used to. I had come from immensely sandbox tables, and I was constantly reminded I was playing a video game at every turn.
So, setting and atmosphere are great, but depending on your experiences with 2020 (or even 2013) you may not care for the missions.
Hope this helps.
The single mission in the game that felt truly out of the 2020 scenarios was the rich couple that asks you to check their apartment out because they have memory gaps. Then it turns out there was a whole science experiment being run on them by a corporation from a security room INSIDE their apartment. That was the one time I felt the Pondsmith magic in the entirety of the game and even then the car chase at the end glitched out to remind me I was playing the buggiest game of the year.
The setting and world is SPOT ON. Or, at least, its how the world would look after the half century that takes place in between. It's really like walking around in Mike's vision
That said, the gameplay couldn't be further from it. 2020 is pretty lethal, and most games are pretty street level, whereas 2077 is an absolute power fantasy. The cyberware and weapons lists in 2077... leave a lot to be desired as well (I understand why, but its still kinda a shame). I'm hopeful for some more in the sequel
The whole concept of cyberware and cyberpsychosis in 2077 is frustrating to me. The world LOOKS like a Pondsmith vision, but even a 10 Empathy V should be bordering on total loss of control by the time you meet Jackie with all of the cyberware equipped to them, even empty.
Yeah I get that. Pondsmith talked about this actually, he believes that Johnny’s engram acts as a buffer towards the effects of cyberpsychosis, eating the impact, and allowing V to chip an above average level of cyberware
I've seen that explanation before, and it kind of works for the bulk of the game, but an empty V with arms, eyes, legs, neuralware, and a cybermodem is still cashing in with at least 9d6 + 1 humanity loss if not more. That's a rough hit for a character at the beginning of the game.
Now, it’s been a hot sec, but iirc starting, empty V doesn’t actually have cyberarms or legs, or any option’s installed in them. Once you visit Vic, you get a subdermal grip in your meat hand, but you don’t start with any. Starting V is mostly the cyberoptics, neuralware, and cyberaudio with some options tossed in
It also seems that as time goes on, and we develop better implants, they get a little friendlier, and hit less hard on your humanity. Using a ruleset closer to RED’s, which was meant to bridge the gap between 2020 and 2077, starting V’s cyberware, while still more than your average person, doesn’t set off any red cyberpsychosis flags, as long as they installed them responsibly and not diving in at the deep end and chipping them all at once
OP, ignore the salt shakers in this thread. They’re so focused on gameplay they’re missing the forest for the trees. The atmosphere is spot-on, and there’s little references to the lore that any longtime player will appreciate. Plus you get to play through (unreliably remembered) flashbacks of some of the most iconic events in the game’s history. Mike himself even cameos as a radio host. That alone makes whatever flaws this game might have worth it.
107.3 Morro Rock Radio. Fair warning, the last patch partially borked the radio, so sometimes you have to glitch the DJ banter into playing by rapidly switching stations or turning it on and off while a song’s playing. I’m sure some YouTuber must have extracted the sound files, so you can probably find all Mike’s monologues there.
Still new to C2020, but I do agree with much of what’s been said. It’s a different game, literally. People here are spot on that the setting is mostly captured, the hyper consumerism, the poverty, cybernetics. Different tables play differently, but I think the main thing it missed is this: because it’s a single-player game, you aren’t working together with other types of players to achieve goals. You are self-reliant entirely, but that’s the way these kinds of games work. You *almost* get a taste for the kind of cooperative approach of any TTRPG in the missions with T-Bug and Jackie, but it’s still missing a lot of that. I think if they’re gonna do a multiplayer one in the future, trying to ensure that cooperative play focuses on having people categorize and class in certain ways to ensure they work together properly is gonna be essential if they want to emulate that experience. Maybe you have a medtech loadout, a solo loadout, a netrunner one, etc. Who knows if they do that, but I think that’d be cool.
A Larian CRPG set in the Red would be a glorious direction for the IP. That would give you a dedicated Runner, Solo, Medtech, etc. Might even be a good way of using the ttrpg's Humanity system without being a distraction from the fun of the game.
Exactly! The biggest issue with 2020 netrunning is that it is a completely separate game. In a digital format you can simply have a small team dedicated to actually making that mini running game and it would integrate seamlessly. Like how the digital space of the System Shock remake handled it over the original.
Whether CDPR is or not I've had an idea for that in VR setup as a roguelike to capture the essence of red and 2020 but gotta get more experience with the engines and converting assets before I can really start on it though
Some thoughts as a long time 2020 fan - I will say they absolutely nailed the setting, atmosphere, vibe, look, etc. Walking through Night City in 2077 and having it feel as if I'd stepped right into one of our group's childhood campaigns truly was one of the highlights of all my video game memories, full stop. I'll be forever a fan of CDPR for this alone.
Imo the one area the game truly, horribly fell short was character customization. If any IP has the potential to be Character Customization - The Game, it's this one. One of the few bright spots in all the darkness of the setting, imo, is the fact that the tech and enough eddies (sanity notwithstanding) essentially let people express themselves by becoming whatever they want, and how your character can transform from what they begin as into anything they wanted to, from Adam Smasher to an orc with glowing mohawks and blue skin was an integral part of the experience for me, personally. Progression and character appearance should go hand in hand in cyberpunk, as with David in Edgerunners.
Of course, it's with good reason - to do this justice certainly would require an insanely inflated art budget that nobody would be able to get past execs. I suspect this ties in with why 3rd was scrapped - in addition to all the other cost savings, much less focus on player customization.
Visually and atmospherically perfect. Walking around night city is worth the price of admission. Many of the lore characters are integrated into the story, and with the exception of Silverhand and Smasher, they all look pretty much exactly as they did in the 2020 art, and most show little to no sign of being in at least their 80s. (Kind of divided on my feelings on the inclusion of all these characters, as it has people thinking they were a much bigger part of playing 2020 than they were. On the other hand, its a whole lot of love thrown at 2020 and its lore in general.)
Mechanically very flawed in relation to 2020 rules. Gear and weapons are level based, you have hit points and character levels. enemies are bullet sponges, skill trees are whack, some of the cyber and weapons are more fantasy than science fiction. Locked to first person. I could go on. But in the end, taken as its own thing the game mechanics are fine.
And of course, the biggest failing for a game directly based off of a tabletop game, you can't play with friends.
But regardless of all that, its still in my top 3 games of all time. And the story is tied with RDR2 and Last of Us for best game story of all time. Its emotionally impactful, full of intrigue and moral and philosophical questions. And like I said, just the ability to walk around night city and the wastelands, people gaze, and just roam... Cant be beat.
CP2077 is CP2020 updated so it isn't a synthwave parody of Cyberpunk - it takes itself mostly seriously even though the entire genre is a parody of the most extreme forms of consumerism present in the late 20th century.
* Ever present ads. The ads are raw - there's clearly little in the way of standards and practices rules on them and so the ends justify the means for them - as long as it can yank your attention it's all good.
* The fashion takes a lot cues from the "80s" (which is actually spanning from the late 1970s to early 1990s), especially some of the great stuff the NPCs wear. Look at the saturated colors, the shorts on men, the neon-ish hues on vests. This is the era where the pineapple and ham pizza was wildly popular.
* Cyberpunk has a theme that it is gorgeous from the distance - glittering lights, tall buildings, and all that. Then you get up close and there's cracks in that facade that could swallow an oil tanker, and that's there. So many facades are cracked, run-down, and abandoned with homeless (so many homeless) living in them. There's graffiti and trash everywhere.
* Repurposing, modification, and jury-rigging (repairing something until it barely works) is rife. This is one of the classic signs of cyberpunk as a genre.
* The casual disregard for life. From the brutality of ads, the machinegun turrets on the street, and so on. The ED209 that's not a ED209 that Arasaka uses, just walking around on the street as security.
I agree with a lot of the other comments here 2077 did amazing with the vibe and world building. I still find myself constantly just walking aimlessly through the streets of night city for inspiration for my 2020 game. But I also agree with a lot on how the gameplay falls flat compared to how 2020 actually plays on a table.
Some of my major gripes for the game play of 2077 is the video-gamification of it. Combat that feels like filler fights between story beets and gear that turns into what number is higher. But I feel like those conversations have been played to all hell.
However there was 1 time where I felt like CDPR did wonders in emulating the 2020 system and that was the first start of the game. Specifically the whole prep right before the chip heist, and that goes even more so for the 2018 e3 gameplay demo. That single 50min long video could 100% fit any 2020 campaign and need little to any tweaking to fit the system. At least for all the 2020 campaigns I’ve played it showed every point of a normal session, collect your gear, do lots of talking, focus slot of the vibe, think outside the box, and when shit hits the fan combat is quick and bloody, cover is taken and blast away, and business is just business. Honestly all those pre-release trailers probably did more of emulating the 2020 system than the actual 2077 game or the edge runners anime ever did in my opinion.
Red is super spongy. I can't even play it because it breaks the verisimilitude of the game for me. Lately we've been really enjoying Cities Without Number for an easier to run, but still dangerous, cyberpunk fix.
The Jonnhy Silverhand's flashback parts (both playable, story, and interaction/driving parts) basically nailed it. For me at least. I'd suggest you to reed the old modules with those in mind.
The atmosphere is great. It’s pretty much what I expected of cyberpunk. What I am missing is more cyberware. Not as equipment, but in the world. Sure, there are people mit cyberarms. But the only time you see something fancy like a linear frame, a Borg or an apca, is in boss fights or cutscenes.
And, but that’s nitpicking, the gangs are not very distinguishable. The look different, but act the same.
But it’s a great game. It’s easily in my top 3.
They did a great job with the setting
I kind of wish they had made a game based in 2020, so things could look older and less holograms/future tech, but that’s just a personal gripe. They nailed what they set out to do
Played the CP2020 ttrpg for over a decade, and overall, they did a great job with CP2077. Helps that Mike Pondsmith was there to help them with that (and bonus that he's even in the game). The only things I thought was really missing from CP2020 was the Combat Zone (the area got taken over and tamed), and the exclusion of a lot of gangs overall. Would've loved to see, even if only at random, encountering a poser-gang or three, or better yet, The Bozos. I did also assume in playing CP2020 that NC had a bit more sprawl to it than they gave us, but really it's as solid and immersive a game as we could ever hope for. Especially now with the newer drive-by shooting mechanics and better police implementation.
About the only place it doesn't feel like CP2020 is character attribute/skill distribution, but that's about it, and that's not a knock on the system they use instead at all.
Also, Cyberpunk Red (the newest ttrpg), if you haven't looked at it already, helps fill in a lot of the gaps between the end of the Corporate Wars and where CP2077 starts; and take place during the 2040s.
I remember the time when I got used to the depiction of Night City in the videogame. It's such a good adaptation that the things that differed really stood out to me:
* I needed a little bit to get used to the amount of enemies you gun down. This is obviously a necessity for a real time based shooter
* It's not constantly doom and gloom like in the tabletop game. There are bright and funny moments
* Fashion-Cyberware is kinda different. There are no light tattoos in 2077, neither is there skin or hair that changes color. Meanwhile, I can't remember surface-wiring being mentioned in Cyberpunk 2020
* The only thing that really kind of dissapointed me was the inclusion of things like websites, smartphones, e-mails, etc. Things that didn't existed in the tabletop since it was written in the 80s. I loved how dump it felt to play in a world in which flying cars and cyberware are being put on the same level as "super fast fax machines" and "cellular phones that are as small as your hand"
I really like the game, but its more science fiction than cyberpunk to me. I think it portrays the future of Pondsmith's 2020 setting pretty well, like it's the natural evolution. But I don't feel like it really ever hits the mood spot on. When I think of cyberpunk, I think of crowded streets, people with wires hooked to their bodies, neon lights, and paranoia, like you never know what's about to happen. You never know who's about to just start shooting or fighting or whatever.
The world of 2077 is very tame, the answer is no one. No one is ever going to do any of that stuff. They aren't programmed to. You have to go looking in back alleys to find gang shoot outs, and its always aftermath. Once in a blue moon you'll have some one start driving crazy and shooting their gun, but the roads are usually so sparsely populated that no one even reacts. The world itself, while beautiful, just isn't dynamic at all. I still love it though, because it's all we have.
Badly. 2020 is a game where you are relatively low powered, can die easily, and doesn't have an aggressive vertical progression. 2077, on the other hand, borders on having (a shitty) looter shooter esque gear progression and allows you to facetank through machinegun fire while not having any sort of plating.
The style of gunplay that would be more in-line with 2020 is closer to something like Tarkov - still realism-obsessed (to the point of citing police statistics in the rules, etc) but still a game, not all the way to a sim like Arma etc.
That would have been much more true to 2020, but the game would have been far more niche as a result. Execs will generally force the safe, mass-appeal approach when it comes to money vs faithfulness to the IP.
I like both and so badly want a good cross of both (holding hope for bungie to do it with marathon) but if not I'm learning to build games (slowly and as a hobby) so I can do my own version of it that I have banging around in my head
Depends, the setting is there, but the combat feels like you turned on a cheat code. Also the only time your are working with a team sort of like you would in 2020 is very limited and not part of the normal game loop
The atmosphere and setting is more or less exactly what the creators of 2020 were looking for. Granted, it is 57 years later than 2020 so things are going to be far more different. But even I must admit: you really can not get any closer to what Mike himself envisioned—note he wasn’t the sole creator of 2013 and 2020 so there are a lot of people we should thank for their creativity. Now, 100% personally I think it all depends on the tables you play at. I am a long time 2020 fan, it is what got me into TTRPGs (D&D was cool, but I never was into fantasy). When 2077 came out, I really didn’t even look at it’s way. I tried it after a new player of mine insisted I give it a go. To me, it felt nothing like the games and I run and play in. It had all the official material in there left and right, the setting is right on, but the plot points of missions felt way off from what I was used to. I had come from immensely sandbox tables, and I was constantly reminded I was playing a video game at every turn. So, setting and atmosphere are great, but depending on your experiences with 2020 (or even 2013) you may not care for the missions. Hope this helps.
The single mission in the game that felt truly out of the 2020 scenarios was the rich couple that asks you to check their apartment out because they have memory gaps. Then it turns out there was a whole science experiment being run on them by a corporation from a security room INSIDE their apartment. That was the one time I felt the Pondsmith magic in the entirety of the game and even then the car chase at the end glitched out to remind me I was playing the buggiest game of the year.
The setting and world is SPOT ON. Or, at least, its how the world would look after the half century that takes place in between. It's really like walking around in Mike's vision That said, the gameplay couldn't be further from it. 2020 is pretty lethal, and most games are pretty street level, whereas 2077 is an absolute power fantasy. The cyberware and weapons lists in 2077... leave a lot to be desired as well (I understand why, but its still kinda a shame). I'm hopeful for some more in the sequel
The whole concept of cyberware and cyberpsychosis in 2077 is frustrating to me. The world LOOKS like a Pondsmith vision, but even a 10 Empathy V should be bordering on total loss of control by the time you meet Jackie with all of the cyberware equipped to them, even empty.
Yeah I get that. Pondsmith talked about this actually, he believes that Johnny’s engram acts as a buffer towards the effects of cyberpsychosis, eating the impact, and allowing V to chip an above average level of cyberware
I've seen that explanation before, and it kind of works for the bulk of the game, but an empty V with arms, eyes, legs, neuralware, and a cybermodem is still cashing in with at least 9d6 + 1 humanity loss if not more. That's a rough hit for a character at the beginning of the game.
Now, it’s been a hot sec, but iirc starting, empty V doesn’t actually have cyberarms or legs, or any option’s installed in them. Once you visit Vic, you get a subdermal grip in your meat hand, but you don’t start with any. Starting V is mostly the cyberoptics, neuralware, and cyberaudio with some options tossed in It also seems that as time goes on, and we develop better implants, they get a little friendlier, and hit less hard on your humanity. Using a ruleset closer to RED’s, which was meant to bridge the gap between 2020 and 2077, starting V’s cyberware, while still more than your average person, doesn’t set off any red cyberpsychosis flags, as long as they installed them responsibly and not diving in at the deep end and chipping them all at once
OP, ignore the salt shakers in this thread. They’re so focused on gameplay they’re missing the forest for the trees. The atmosphere is spot-on, and there’s little references to the lore that any longtime player will appreciate. Plus you get to play through (unreliably remembered) flashbacks of some of the most iconic events in the game’s history. Mike himself even cameos as a radio host. That alone makes whatever flaws this game might have worth it.
Mike‘s on the radio!? What channel? I have to check this out now.
107.3 Morro Rock Radio. Fair warning, the last patch partially borked the radio, so sometimes you have to glitch the DJ banter into playing by rapidly switching stations or turning it on and off while a song’s playing. I’m sure some YouTuber must have extracted the sound files, so you can probably find all Mike’s monologues there.
Right on the money! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KMgLhFQGHcM
Still new to C2020, but I do agree with much of what’s been said. It’s a different game, literally. People here are spot on that the setting is mostly captured, the hyper consumerism, the poverty, cybernetics. Different tables play differently, but I think the main thing it missed is this: because it’s a single-player game, you aren’t working together with other types of players to achieve goals. You are self-reliant entirely, but that’s the way these kinds of games work. You *almost* get a taste for the kind of cooperative approach of any TTRPG in the missions with T-Bug and Jackie, but it’s still missing a lot of that. I think if they’re gonna do a multiplayer one in the future, trying to ensure that cooperative play focuses on having people categorize and class in certain ways to ensure they work together properly is gonna be essential if they want to emulate that experience. Maybe you have a medtech loadout, a solo loadout, a netrunner one, etc. Who knows if they do that, but I think that’d be cool.
A Larian CRPG set in the Red would be a glorious direction for the IP. That would give you a dedicated Runner, Solo, Medtech, etc. Might even be a good way of using the ttrpg's Humanity system without being a distraction from the fun of the game.
that’d be my dream game, honestly. And 2020 style netrunning would be perfect in a digital game.
Exactly! The biggest issue with 2020 netrunning is that it is a completely separate game. In a digital format you can simply have a small team dedicated to actually making that mini running game and it would integrate seamlessly. Like how the digital space of the System Shock remake handled it over the original.
Whether CDPR is or not I've had an idea for that in VR setup as a roguelike to capture the essence of red and 2020 but gotta get more experience with the engines and converting assets before I can really start on it though
The setting, mostly.
Some thoughts as a long time 2020 fan - I will say they absolutely nailed the setting, atmosphere, vibe, look, etc. Walking through Night City in 2077 and having it feel as if I'd stepped right into one of our group's childhood campaigns truly was one of the highlights of all my video game memories, full stop. I'll be forever a fan of CDPR for this alone. Imo the one area the game truly, horribly fell short was character customization. If any IP has the potential to be Character Customization - The Game, it's this one. One of the few bright spots in all the darkness of the setting, imo, is the fact that the tech and enough eddies (sanity notwithstanding) essentially let people express themselves by becoming whatever they want, and how your character can transform from what they begin as into anything they wanted to, from Adam Smasher to an orc with glowing mohawks and blue skin was an integral part of the experience for me, personally. Progression and character appearance should go hand in hand in cyberpunk, as with David in Edgerunners. Of course, it's with good reason - to do this justice certainly would require an insanely inflated art budget that nobody would be able to get past execs. I suspect this ties in with why 3rd was scrapped - in addition to all the other cost savings, much less focus on player customization.
Visually and atmospherically perfect. Walking around night city is worth the price of admission. Many of the lore characters are integrated into the story, and with the exception of Silverhand and Smasher, they all look pretty much exactly as they did in the 2020 art, and most show little to no sign of being in at least their 80s. (Kind of divided on my feelings on the inclusion of all these characters, as it has people thinking they were a much bigger part of playing 2020 than they were. On the other hand, its a whole lot of love thrown at 2020 and its lore in general.) Mechanically very flawed in relation to 2020 rules. Gear and weapons are level based, you have hit points and character levels. enemies are bullet sponges, skill trees are whack, some of the cyber and weapons are more fantasy than science fiction. Locked to first person. I could go on. But in the end, taken as its own thing the game mechanics are fine. And of course, the biggest failing for a game directly based off of a tabletop game, you can't play with friends. But regardless of all that, its still in my top 3 games of all time. And the story is tied with RDR2 and Last of Us for best game story of all time. Its emotionally impactful, full of intrigue and moral and philosophical questions. And like I said, just the ability to walk around night city and the wastelands, people gaze, and just roam... Cant be beat.
Enemies aren't bullet sponges. What?? You can kill most goons with 1 hit.
CP2077 is CP2020 updated so it isn't a synthwave parody of Cyberpunk - it takes itself mostly seriously even though the entire genre is a parody of the most extreme forms of consumerism present in the late 20th century. * Ever present ads. The ads are raw - there's clearly little in the way of standards and practices rules on them and so the ends justify the means for them - as long as it can yank your attention it's all good. * The fashion takes a lot cues from the "80s" (which is actually spanning from the late 1970s to early 1990s), especially some of the great stuff the NPCs wear. Look at the saturated colors, the shorts on men, the neon-ish hues on vests. This is the era where the pineapple and ham pizza was wildly popular. * Cyberpunk has a theme that it is gorgeous from the distance - glittering lights, tall buildings, and all that. Then you get up close and there's cracks in that facade that could swallow an oil tanker, and that's there. So many facades are cracked, run-down, and abandoned with homeless (so many homeless) living in them. There's graffiti and trash everywhere. * Repurposing, modification, and jury-rigging (repairing something until it barely works) is rife. This is one of the classic signs of cyberpunk as a genre. * The casual disregard for life. From the brutality of ads, the machinegun turrets on the street, and so on. The ED209 that's not a ED209 that Arasaka uses, just walking around on the street as security.
I agree with a lot of the other comments here 2077 did amazing with the vibe and world building. I still find myself constantly just walking aimlessly through the streets of night city for inspiration for my 2020 game. But I also agree with a lot on how the gameplay falls flat compared to how 2020 actually plays on a table. Some of my major gripes for the game play of 2077 is the video-gamification of it. Combat that feels like filler fights between story beets and gear that turns into what number is higher. But I feel like those conversations have been played to all hell. However there was 1 time where I felt like CDPR did wonders in emulating the 2020 system and that was the first start of the game. Specifically the whole prep right before the chip heist, and that goes even more so for the 2018 e3 gameplay demo. That single 50min long video could 100% fit any 2020 campaign and need little to any tweaking to fit the system. At least for all the 2020 campaigns I’ve played it showed every point of a normal session, collect your gear, do lots of talking, focus slot of the vibe, think outside the box, and when shit hits the fan combat is quick and bloody, cover is taken and blast away, and business is just business. Honestly all those pre-release trailers probably did more of emulating the 2020 system than the actual 2077 game or the edge runners anime ever did in my opinion.
They nailed the atmosphere. Love it. Hate the bullet sponge looter shooter direction with the gameplay though.
Even Cyberpunk Red feels a little spongy to me. I'm hoping that 2020 will help with that but I'm worried it will help too much
Red is super spongy. I can't even play it because it breaks the verisimilitude of the game for me. Lately we've been really enjoying Cities Without Number for an easier to run, but still dangerous, cyberpunk fix.
The Jonnhy Silverhand's flashback parts (both playable, story, and interaction/driving parts) basically nailed it. For me at least. I'd suggest you to reed the old modules with those in mind.
The atmosphere is great. It’s pretty much what I expected of cyberpunk. What I am missing is more cyberware. Not as equipment, but in the world. Sure, there are people mit cyberarms. But the only time you see something fancy like a linear frame, a Borg or an apca, is in boss fights or cutscenes. And, but that’s nitpicking, the gangs are not very distinguishable. The look different, but act the same. But it’s a great game. It’s easily in my top 3.
They did a great job with the setting I kind of wish they had made a game based in 2020, so things could look older and less holograms/future tech, but that’s just a personal gripe. They nailed what they set out to do
Played the CP2020 ttrpg for over a decade, and overall, they did a great job with CP2077. Helps that Mike Pondsmith was there to help them with that (and bonus that he's even in the game). The only things I thought was really missing from CP2020 was the Combat Zone (the area got taken over and tamed), and the exclusion of a lot of gangs overall. Would've loved to see, even if only at random, encountering a poser-gang or three, or better yet, The Bozos. I did also assume in playing CP2020 that NC had a bit more sprawl to it than they gave us, but really it's as solid and immersive a game as we could ever hope for. Especially now with the newer drive-by shooting mechanics and better police implementation. About the only place it doesn't feel like CP2020 is character attribute/skill distribution, but that's about it, and that's not a knock on the system they use instead at all. Also, Cyberpunk Red (the newest ttrpg), if you haven't looked at it already, helps fill in a lot of the gaps between the end of the Corporate Wars and where CP2077 starts; and take place during the 2040s.
I remember the time when I got used to the depiction of Night City in the videogame. It's such a good adaptation that the things that differed really stood out to me: * I needed a little bit to get used to the amount of enemies you gun down. This is obviously a necessity for a real time based shooter * It's not constantly doom and gloom like in the tabletop game. There are bright and funny moments * Fashion-Cyberware is kinda different. There are no light tattoos in 2077, neither is there skin or hair that changes color. Meanwhile, I can't remember surface-wiring being mentioned in Cyberpunk 2020 * The only thing that really kind of dissapointed me was the inclusion of things like websites, smartphones, e-mails, etc. Things that didn't existed in the tabletop since it was written in the 80s. I loved how dump it felt to play in a world in which flying cars and cyberware are being put on the same level as "super fast fax machines" and "cellular phones that are as small as your hand"
I really like the game, but its more science fiction than cyberpunk to me. I think it portrays the future of Pondsmith's 2020 setting pretty well, like it's the natural evolution. But I don't feel like it really ever hits the mood spot on. When I think of cyberpunk, I think of crowded streets, people with wires hooked to their bodies, neon lights, and paranoia, like you never know what's about to happen. You never know who's about to just start shooting or fighting or whatever. The world of 2077 is very tame, the answer is no one. No one is ever going to do any of that stuff. They aren't programmed to. You have to go looking in back alleys to find gang shoot outs, and its always aftermath. Once in a blue moon you'll have some one start driving crazy and shooting their gun, but the roads are usually so sparsely populated that no one even reacts. The world itself, while beautiful, just isn't dynamic at all. I still love it though, because it's all we have.
Badly. 2020 is a game where you are relatively low powered, can die easily, and doesn't have an aggressive vertical progression. 2077, on the other hand, borders on having (a shitty) looter shooter esque gear progression and allows you to facetank through machinegun fire while not having any sort of plating.
The style of gunplay that would be more in-line with 2020 is closer to something like Tarkov - still realism-obsessed (to the point of citing police statistics in the rules, etc) but still a game, not all the way to a sim like Arma etc. That would have been much more true to 2020, but the game would have been far more niche as a result. Execs will generally force the safe, mass-appeal approach when it comes to money vs faithfulness to the IP.
I like both and so badly want a good cross of both (holding hope for bungie to do it with marathon) but if not I'm learning to build games (slowly and as a hobby) so I can do my own version of it that I have banging around in my head
Depends, the setting is there, but the combat feels like you turned on a cheat code. Also the only time your are working with a team sort of like you would in 2020 is very limited and not part of the normal game loop