The Hidden Genius Of Cyberpunk 2077's World - How To Do Exposition 

I got some good news for you then, there’s about 2 pet-able cats in the prologue of the game near viktors clinic, you can also adopt a cat in the game called ‘Nibbles’ it’s near the mega building for V’s apartment, take a left when leaving and there is a bowl on the ground, you gotta find cat food, leave it go to sleep in your apartment and come back later for a surprise 😎

@@sandevastated1 Honestly, maybe I'm looking too much into it, but I took that pet-able cats as literally the bad omen for V. Because my reaction was - yey, a cat! And than you get that talk with Takemura and suddenly your miraculously found cat is more ominous than it was before. It added a metaphysical theme - like "oh, noes, I've been seeing cats all this time, even in the prologue"!

@@calinissetehtarello4126 Fun fact: The cat you run into a Hairless cat, also known as a Sphynx. In Egyptian culture, the Sphynx is supposed to be a guide into the after life. Take what what you will with that.

Because I went with the nomad origin (objectively the best life path), I actually got a look at that earlier. The whole plot of it is you're smuggling something into night's city, you are chased, having to bribe guards, all this stuff. So naturally, both V and Jackie want to have a look at what they are risking their lives on, only to open it up and find ...a lizard. A normal, lizard, put into hibernation in a cold case. While the player might chuckle at this, both Jackie and V are amazed at this creature, petting it, staring at it, like they have never seen an animal like this before. Because they haven't. There's also a nice little bit of natural dialogue, where Jackie admits he always wanted a pet, joking they should keep it for themselves, only for V to remind him that the corpo they are smuggling this for would happily kill them for that.

@@edisonthedave if u did the nomad life path when u go to the hotel room where the relic is in. if u go to the lizard V and Jackie have a little exchange wondering if it's the one they smuggled in

oh god, i remember that i almost started crying when i discovered it's possible to leave a message to Jackie, just shows how well the story is written so we miss characters who we only interacted with for few hours of the game...

You are super sus and corny ​@@wojciechmika5860

*500 hours in* YOU CAN WHAT?! I never thought to do that! This game is incredible

Yeah, I'll pick it up again in like 2 years once they've fixed it.

@@TheCloserLook You know what ? I am doing it. I am gonna send you a reply in exactly 2 years so you don't forget.

Im waiting until then to play it

I think people railed on Keanu Reeves acting too much too. The moment in the oilfields where he was looking for something and just was let down really hit hard. Keanu did a good job in the scenes that needed emotion. Most of it he was your likable douchebag companion who sometimes went against your interests. Like just cause it was all the rage to hate on Cyberpunk they hated on every aspect of the game even those that deserved respect. Like for example every cutscene is seamless and interactable. Never felt like you were just watching the game. Traditional cutscenes player loose all control and you just watch. But in Cyberpunk some choices lead to cutscenes. Like for example the Arasaka soldier holding a hostage in the downed AV. You can complete the entire dialogue with him or you can just shoot him and end the dialogue. In TW3 the camera cuts to the character talking every time so all you can do is make decisions based on what dialogue options you have. It was like a mixture of a COD campaign in moments with an RPG. Interesting concept that's never been combined before. Like COD some cinematic events ruin the immersion. But you got to give it to them that they tried something completely different than TW3 in that aspect. Some options were only given if you look at certain objects like a gun on the table or a character that's off to your left. I thought it was an interesting design change that worked in a lot of ways.

@@TheCloserLook Yo man I'd like to ask what are your thoughts on spiderman 3

I didn't think of it like that, I always assumed it was some hacker environmentalist that got hold of the PA's

Even if you're not right, that shark bit adds a lot of realism. The example of an information told to everyone, even though they know it is how, in the London metro, they keep saying “see it, say it, sorted”. Everyone knows that they should report suspicious activity, but it still goes on and on.

Not even just that, it's also partially a subtle hint that the average persons education has declined so much that, even well before 2060, there needs to be automated announcements like this to inform people. To inform them of what we would, today, consider common knowledge or even relatively recent news. There are plenty of things we know today from just a passing mention on the news cycle 17 years ago. Where as in Cyberpunk, people are too caught up in whatever they're doing to care or are too busy trying to scrape by to notice. The same could be said about the issue he took with the NPC's in the waiting room. One doesn't want to be bothered with dealing with their mentally ill family member, displaying a lack of what we would consider basic understanding of mental illness and the empathy that intrinsically comes with that understanding. He doesn't know or care because that's how the world, more specifically the megacorperations, of cyberpunk have conditioned people to be. Where as the other is the typical cynical opposition to the former, whom only realistically believes they know the truth. But similarly has the same lack of understanding and empathy for mentally ill people, even those they ought to care about. It's a display of megacorperations using narrative framing to always have the people more interested in arguing with one another than to actually do anything meaningful to change the status quo. By 2077 it's no secret that the Megacorps that predominantly rule the world are awful and treat the masses poorly. The largest of them have literally had four, very public, world spanning wars by 2077. They no longer need to hide their agenda's, they can do almost anything they like without repercussions or it affecting their profit margins. They are the only source of almost everything the masses want and need, so they don't need to do anything more than ensure that the masses lack the education and will to unite against them. What better way than to ensure the education system is fully privatised and that numerous media sources distribute information that will pit people against one another by catering to particular demographics that even hate the corporations themselves. After all, it's better & cheaper to control what is being discussed by people predisposed to hate your corporation than to attempt to cover up every misdeed. Tell them what misdeeds are to be discussed and tell their opposition that you were in the right. Telling people what they what to hear through tailor made media sources pushes both sides of the masses to argue with each other rather than oppose your corperation. It feels heavy handed, hamfisted and unmotivated to us. However, to someone from that world it would be a typical argument between two people with different perspectives fed to them from different media sources. It's actually quite amusing how it illustrates how bad corpertised media narrative framing could become if left unchecked. In the real world we can already see the beginnings of this occurring right now. If general education levels were to plummet and monopolies be allowed to run amok then this will be our future. It's honestly hilariously depressing really.

100% this!!

can i add that i think it may be a joke? considering shark attacks are exceedingly rare as is now, and how out of place it actually feels even in universe, I feel like the devs added it as some joke that kind of went over everyone's head, mostly because its not that funny.

Same.

Also same.

What it was was a hot mess. I liked it *despite* the monumental shortcomings. It really wasn't a good game at all (a big problem that piece by piece got mitigated by the patches, so kudos to the devs), but the worldbuilding drew me in and made me... not accept, but somehow tolerate the fatal flaws of the game. Outstanding worldbuilding, some great characters - since everything else was sub-par at best, downright horrible at worst, it goes to show how far good worldbuilding can take you. Even through what's otherwise a &#@§ show like this.

What it was is a pretty nice looking city that i would really would like to see in a better game. Because besides the setting... playing it felt like playing a very rudimentary MMO but solo. Aside from some setpiece missions like the Arasaka tower and the Judy dive. It was mostly. "NPC tells you to go kill/steal the questitem/person (x times) at location Y" 120 times over. And as a reward you get a Colorcoded Legendary Unique Lvl 13 shirt that a Defense score of 420 while the Lvl 9 bulletproof vest has only 244. So you throw it into the trunk with the other 200 Unique Legendary Super Awesome Shirts that have more stopping power than a Tank. Even the (usually liked) Delamain mission are just more of the same. Drive to X, wait for "witty dialogue" to be expositioned to you and then drive to the next one to repeat. They just happen to have some moderately funny jokes/situations that happenend to an AI.

@@MakDemonik "playing it felt like playing a very rudimentary MMO but solo." You know there is a name for this: It is called RPG.^^ The question is is it a good RPG? The way I see it repetitive fetch quests seem like a negative argument for it, while the worldbuilding seems to be a +.

Not only that, the amount of thought put into designing even the littlest things to flesh out their world always caught me by surprise. Like how they use ads for lighting and speedbumps? Which are pretty genius since they stick out on the road. The designers of the game did their homework.

The game's landfill alone tells such a great story in how everything gets discarded eventually and we all just end up as mementos of all these discarded objects over the span of decades

Same im guessing you have an ok comp

@@druxusthemage9806 Same boat, my pc is midrange and I only had one crash in about 40hrs of gameplay. Saw a few glitches but none during super important moments so I got really immersed when it mattered most thankfully

I encountered like 2 and was okay with it really

@@garbearfar1394 i have over 200hr in game and i can count on one hand the number of crashes

@@druxusthemage9806 its kinda crazy how varied people's experiences are. I tried to start a new game recently and CTD right after the prologue. second crash I've ever had but kinda spelled doom on that playthrough

Lol

i totally feel like i won in the nomad ending ngl

And that empty feeling is why you start again from another background and choose to pursue a different ending...

@Toask I’d understand this issue on release but in patch 1.61? When the game is at its peak?

When u finish the main game and end up at kaer mohen all alone....

Go outside sweatball

The only thing that pulls me out of the world is weirdly the lack of cars on the road lmao

@@aidancocking4014 roads are a mixed bag imo, like on smaller roads and stuff there seems to be an appropriate amount of cars but the facts that there isn’t hundreds of cars going a snails pace on the freeway in a large city in California is funny to think about. There’s also the fact that there’s only like two parking spaces in downtown is kinda annoying. I know a bunch of moneybags just fly now but the fact that there’s no parking space next to my downtown apartment kind of sucks.

O M G XD

Indeed, it really got me thinking about death, friendship and sacrifice like little else. I got so attached to the characters that walking away from Viktor and Misty that last time CRUSHED me

Aw, thanks Yami. I'm really happy to hear I helped you with your writing, good luck with it!

I also put horizon zero dawn on a pedestal in terms of great mystery writing. Because even i as a writer was wracking my brain as to what zero dawn could be that made the "cure worse than the disease" and got such a reaction out of ted faro the whole game. The fact that they could write a story about fucking robot dinosaurs and have a fantastic twist that even the theory mill can't see coming is an amazing feat of writing

Also helped put into words why I liked the game so much. The best way I could describe it before was "Night City feels alive". And it definitely wasn't because of the gameplay, that much I knew.

@@Ben-rz9cf zero dawn gripped me by my fuckin BALLS story wise. I had to know what zero dawn was, what happened to old America and old future humans And when I found out I was like holy shit these humans that got wiped out weren't that far off from us now, then had a mini existential crisis thinking of us making these robots that use organics as fuel and ourselves being wiped out having to make our own Zero Dawn Only for some red head out cast to save her world we re seeded from the machines we made that unmade us.

Man same pinch....it made me feel so weird that I was working day and night in the middle of corona epidemic, trying to safely work, care for my parents, renovate my house; and this game came and made me feel that I could die tomorrow, we could all die tomorrow and become stories in some future tribe

Yep! It's my favourite game to this day

Damn thanks for this comment I've heard people left and right say it's mid

If only because anyone with an inkling of exposure to present-day pop culture could've seen the disaster that Ted Faro was engineering a mile away. Getting to the heart of the game's mystery is less about discovering what he did and more about piecing together the evidence you've already seen and deducing what he did before the game confirms your suspicions. That existential dread you feel digging to the heart of the game's mystery is the growing realization that you have more capacity for foresight than he did.

Well, thanks. That's higher praise than a feel I deserve.

​@@TheCloserLook No, I feel it's about the right level of praise. =p. You really do have a good way of offering up information, and you write a good script.

@@CataclysmDM he offers information i didnt know i wanted and its amazing, unlike teachers that teach information in a boring way that makes me bored and dislike learning until something like this channel that actually makes learning interesting and makes me want to learn

@N7Andy i like u

I mainly played the main missions, and very few side quest. Are they good? Good as witcher 3? Did not finish(got pretty far thou), but tbh Main mission was not my fav, but mostly because it felt like on rails stuff. Maybe i should have done more side stuff too. I kinda wished for a varied amount of gigs in larger environment and stuff, but most side stuff i did was small kill this npc in the parking lot stuff. I wish the gig we did with with jackie in that cinematic near the beginning was a large playable part of the game to be honest.

@@Kevlord22 Imho not exactly Witcher 3 level, but close. Well worth playing, for sure. Plus, there is a live gig with you on the guitar in one side questline (not gonna spoil it for you). It's not very long, but memorable ;) The sidequests really add to the arc of the sidechars making you feel much more attached to them. I am not only talking the romances here (all of them are great, btw). And, thinking about it, some of the sidequests are absolutely on witcher 3 lvl. "The Hunt" for example, an excellent psycho nightmare story, or "Sinnerman" come to mind.

Playing it a year again later. Can't believe it's been almost over year already 😲

World is nice but a fucking empty lifeless fucking place, every quest is given to you in a damn text message or phone call. It's like doing a checklist of shit!

3:48 it's such a very internet apology, being in 3 parts like that.

32:56 ...as does this collapsing green-screen, right when our immersion is broken. Haha. A perfect illustration.

​@@thumbsdown7502any time: can't you tell no one cares what you say

RIP Stadia user

The truth is that it wasn't in development for very long, in fact it was very short. They made the first teaser during the Witcher 2 era but only a couple of people were working on the concept of the game. The real development started in 2016 after Witcher 3 was complete which makes it like 4 years which is not a long time for a game this size. GTA 6 is in development longer than 4 years and it's still in pretty early stage. They shouldn't have given such a quick release date, instead of delaying it just not say it's being released in April 2020. Maybe they wanted to release it in 2020 as a homage to original Cyberpunk 2020 or maybe they thought that they are going to fix those technical issues quickly because the core of the game was finished. Witcher 3 was released very buggy and people didn't mind as much but it wasn't such a huge release. Overhyping was the biggest problem, people expected their perfect game and everyone had a different vision. Some people expected a hardcore RPG and others wanted a futuristic GTA. No matter how good the final product would be one of those people would be dissapointed.

stadia users lol

@liamsteam walsh I hear what you say about the illusion of control, but Illusion of control can actually be a pretty powerful tool and in my opinion, they did a fine job with it. Not to mention that you are definitely in control yourself at some points. But yeah, I understand that's not what was promised and it will always remain disappointing for many people. I do believe CDPR has some of the most talented writers and narrative designers of our time, and I also believe that its executive board doesn"t give those wonderful people half the time and human resources they would need to make their talent shine 100%.

@liamsteam walsh I kind of disagree with your view on the main story arc and the general lore. Probably because CP77 is what made me want to try out the TTRPG version. Had it been the other way around, I might have been disappointed (not sure though). Now concerning the story, I have to say that never in my life have I seen a story handle the themes of death and bereavement with such brutal realism and lucidity. For example, many people have been complaining about that one very important character (spoiler alert) who dies prematurely and how the writer just made him up so he could be a supporting character while V still needed him, and then killed him off when they didn't need him anymore.... Well, that simply isn't true, as later on the developers did go on and devote an entire, several hours long mission to the consequences of that guys' death and the impact it had on those who remained. That "ofrenda" scene that you can choose to go to (but you actually have a choice to ignore it as well) moves me everytime, in a deep and emotional way. I had to wonder how and why I would systematically feel devastated by this ofrenda, even though I have played this scene times and times again over the course of several playthrough. It finally occurred to me that that moment was not about storytelling. Rather, it was about what can you do when someone you love is brutally taken away from you : absolutely nothing. That's where CP77's brilliant writing really shines in my opinion : the story is not really (but still a little bit) about how you can or cannot survive the relic ; it's not about you really having any choice at all. Rather, it is about HOW YOU WISH TO BE REMEMBERED once you're gone. This theme can be found everywhere in the story : when DeShawn asks you "quiet life, or blaze of glory, hm?". When Johnny plays badboy and gives the finger to the entire world but really, all that matters in the end is that Rogue can look into his eyes one last time and see him. When you get to decide how you're going to remember your friends. Even in small, secondary quests like that Sinnerman/They won't go when I go mission, where you get to witness the sanctification and crucifixion of a guy who wanted the world to forgive the criminal he was and aknowledge that weird cyber-messiah he was trying to become (that quest seriously shook me to my core). That theme also comes up with Judy and Evelyn, Panam and Scorpion and Saul, etc. In the end, it's all about how that city devours you and how you need to stand out, use what little time you have left on this world to bomb a megacorporation, open your heart to your loved ones, cleanse your soul at the hand of a buddhist monk, or simply enjoy ultracapitalism to the fullest of its potential (Lynx Paws, Hard Knuckles, Mantis Blades, Kerenzikov, Sandevistan, you name it) right before the lights go out, because one way or another they will.

It needed more than a little polish, and still does. I love the game. Even have the hard cover guide on my desk. But it was pretty crap at times, and still is.

@@StuckTrippin, eh, I’ve only encountered two really weird, but not game breaking glitches, everything else has been an extremely smooth, beautiful ride.

@@void-master9077 I find it hard to believe you only had "2 weird glitches" lol

@@neonpoison3201, start of the game, the montage, everyone was t posing, v had no head, but it fixed it self in the next scene, right after I woke up with Johnny, he had no limbs, head was inverted into his body, and he was half naked, only with a thin pair of underwear, I don’t know about you, but I consider that pretty weird lmao, besides that, I have a good computer, and I’ve never encountered anything else, maybe the ai being shite, but that’s more or less the developers hand, not the game breaking.

@@void-master9077 Thats my point weird glitches like that happen alot especially in long nonstop play throughs that's why I found it hard to believe you only encountered only 2

;D

It would have been a good series. Not a movie

Honestly it's sad how many games have this fate

That’s like asking me to ignore the taste of shit in my mouth from my otherwise appetizing dinner. No thanks.

It's more like a pile of shit that tastes good, the look and texture I'd disgusting, but the juicy lore and characters are the good part for the people not acting sane that day

@@owyemen9367 No, my analogy is fine. Shit tasting good doesn't make much sense my homie lmao

Same. I loved the storyline and emotion it brings and the fact that it was an original experience.

Thanks, I hope you'll like it!

@@TheCloserLook Yo man I'd like to ask what are your thoughts on spiderman 3

Not to be that guy, but ima be that guy. Excited*

@@blake3937 Just don't ratio me

@@thefatagentkid3907 ratio

Go outside

@@Erabbz dont shut down other people's passions frat boy

He only says at the beginning, being honest.

Personally I was hoping that cdprojekt red would pull a no man's sky and work for like a whole year just refining the game, improving the mechanics, releasing DLCs, and just making it really good. But it seems like they've abandoned it...

@@TheCloserLook "But it seems like they've abandoned it..." Where is this info coming from? They're working on bringing this game to next gen and several expansions.

@@TheCloserLook you must be happy that wasn’t the case at all right 😁 the 1.5 release got me to finally pick this up and i’m loving it but hey i have a Q about your chosen example of bad exposition i’m hoping you’ll see... wasn’t that guy in the hospital clearly referring explicitly to people who’d gone ‘cyberpsycho’ and not just to anyone who’s sick/in need of the hospital? yaknow cyberpsychos, that hot-button issue in the game’s world essentially turning a tiny % of the population into crazed serial murderers whose condition may or may not even be possible to reverse and many of whom are so dangerous that (according to your NCPD fixer regina) even the police are too scared to go after them? and if so, wouldn’t it make perfect sense for random people to be talking about that and voicing those exact sorts of opinions and just generally clashing over the issue? i mean no one really knows how to handle it, there’s no easy answer, and it’s such a big deal within the world that it’s literally part of the main intro with night city news covering new cyber psychos popping up and killing ppl... so wouldn’t it be weird if there WEREN’T some ppl saying that exact sort of thing? fkn love this video tho lmao i have so much appreciation for your unique execution, new sub for sure

I was bad at maths, until I got a Prof, who deductively made us learn the formulas. Than for 2 years i was good at it. When she left, and was replaced... I again sucked at it... because we weren't lead onto the formulas. The Formula was given, and than exercise on it... yeah.. wasn't fun, cause you had nothing to figure out. For example, the good prof, made us find the relationship described in Pythagoras Theorem, hinting us on the way, nudging us towards the formula. The other one, just gave us formulas, with no context...

underrated comment. wow

I had a history/economics teacher who understood this and refused to use the schools textbooks. He also pointed out inaccuracies in the schools textbooks.

Glad you enjoyed it!

This is a certified hood classic

Flawless? Im finding this narrative clunky, feels like teenager writing

Brooo I thought I was tripping 😭, it added an extra texture an warm rawness to the game! Like back when I got the promo disc with game mags for ps2.

You don’t get much more horrifying than all organic matter being obliterated from the face of the earth over the span of 14 months

Dumbass me who have beaten Horizon zero dawn never once thought it was post apocalyptic world

@@cifer8070 How? It's the main point of the main story...

If you check out the Peralez computer you’ll see foreshadowing off them being brainwashed, and Mrs Peralez being in on it. Also a minor cool detail that Judy refers you to them as ‘A reliable merc, from the afterlife’. In the beginning soul killer is also foreshadowed as when you play as Johnny it says ‘soul killer initialised’ and the female Arasaka agent saying ‘but there are worse fates than death’

A lot of Yorinobu's more erratic choices you hear of during the game also make a lot more sense when you realise that he's playing the long con and his goal has always been to burn Arasaka to the ground from the inside.

It also shows that the people living in Pacifica don't care to improve the area they live in, which is in evidence across Night City as a whole.

And Bioshock, specially Bioshock

@@jonolas1626 Indeed

Instead everyone just complained about not being able to talk to every NPC to get some useless lines of dialogue that probably isn't much better exposition than what you can easily just observe

I can't imagine why Chosen One, Dark Lord, and Amnesia reside on an upper tier. I'd imagine they'd be down lower off-screen, like G or H?...

XD

It’s like playing and swimming through a wiki at the same time… AND I AM A NERD! XD

I agree,.. and can't wait til they update it some more with dlc so I can play it again

The fact that the game spends so much time showing me brief detailed cutouts of the World in missions but never letting me interact with it in the open world was such let down

I did, I felt like it was too much about Johnny vendetta against Arasaka. That should've been DLC. The environmental story telling was cool, but, it left so much to be desired. Ex, The Black Panther movie teases a bunch of culture in Wakanda, but, we really only learn that it's a advanced tech nation because of a magic stone and there was a war, a long time ago, because of it. In CP77, you get teased a corpo war, but, they just "TELL" us it's happening without showing us. And I think there's one mission based on it--where you find out a gang is gathering resources for the opposing corp to frame them for a crime.

@@DavidRB Let me guess, you rushed through main story and skipped most of the side quests? Cause that's where the characters get flashed out.

@@MaMastoast You put my thoughts perfectly into words!

@@JC-kl3uc I played basically every side quest and the story is terrible

Hope you like it!

@@TheCloserLook I completely forgot to respond after watching the video but I loved it. Was nice to see someone be positive about Cyberpunk with really good points. You went really good in depth about world building. Was a great video and you have a great taste in videogames! One last thing, I love the green screen. When you are in your video's it gives it so much personality. Great video and definitely liked it!

Thanks, Mixx. I think I'm beginning to finally realise what my style is.

@@TheCloserLook this style is stellar, keep at it but don't rush yourself, have fun :)

I suspect that was not a glitch, just a random event. Unfortunately with the game being full of glitches like cars exploding just randomly or whatever else happened it makes you question why that happened, breaking your immersion.

Cyberpunk could have been the best game ever if they developed until it was finished

Thank you so much! I'll keep at it.

I feel you on that, the characters actually felt like people.