After eight long years of hype and anticipation, Cyberpunk 2077 has finally officially launched around the globe — and it’s already broken Steam records. As …
After eight long years of hype and anticipation, Cyberpunk 2077 has finally officially launched around the globe — and it’s already broken Steam records. As fans would expect of a game from CD Projekt Red, the studio behind The Witcher 3, it’s a massive, complex game, with a gigantic open world to explore in Night City. I’ve spent over 40 hours with the game so far. That’s a lot of hours, but I still feel like I’ve seen only a fraction of what Cyberpunk 2077 has to offer. Still, there are a few handy things I’ve noted for those powering through Cyberpunk over the weekend — tips and tricks I wish I knew before I loaded the game up for the first time. When you start the game, you’ll be given the option of three backstories for V: Street Kid, Nomad or Corpo. Your choice will have two main impacts. First, it’ll affect the opening hour or so of the game, as you’ll start out in a different part of Night City, mingling with different characters, depending on which you choose. The Corpo starts in an office building, the Street Kid in a sleazy bar, the Nomad in the Badlands desert outside of Night City. About an hour in though, you’ll end up on the same path as a gun for hire alongside your pal Jackie. The second, longer-lasting effect is that you’ll get different dialogue options based on which backstory you chose. I went for Corpo, which gave my V the ability to politic his way around certain sticky situations. In other words, your backstory doesn’t make as big a difference as you might worry it does. More consequentially, you’ll get the option at the beginning of the game to distribute points to six different attributes: Body, Intelligence, Reflex, Technical Ability and Cool. Within each of these attributes, you’ll have perks you can unlock. At first, I spread attribute points and perks around semievenly. I had an idea in my head that, like skill trees in most AAA games, I’d end up unlocking all the perks eventually anyway. In truth, you’re far better off choosing early on how you want to approach combat and tailor your attribute points and perks accordingly. Broadly, there are two ways to handle combat: Force and stealth. But within this there are subdivisions. Within force, you can specialize in melee weapons, fisticuffs or gunplay. Within stealth, you can optimize your sleuthing (the Cool attribute and related perks that make it harder for enemies to detect you), hacking abilities (you’ll hack nearby tech to distract/harm enemies) or stealth- kill offense (like gnarly throwing daggers). Obviously, you’ll adjust your style as you go through the game.
