Or is the whole game traveling from one spot to another to talk to someone and then a thousand phone calls in-between? I have 12 hours in this game and I’ve only had 3 actual gameplay moments where I got to shoot or fight people. Is this a visual novel pretending to be a shooter? Wtf
Stop checking off quests from your list and just go in another direction and explore the world around you. I don’t wanna be that guy and say “You’re playing it wrong”, but if you’re just working off a checklist, then you’re definitely playing Cyberpunk wrong. There are things happening all over Night City that aren’t given to you by the main quest line. Open your map and look at the icons scattered around, and you’ll see tons of side gigs, gang activities, and other missions that aren’t tied to the main story at all.
Or just walk down the street and see what’s happening near you. See a group of people standing around with yellow triangles over them? Go fight 'em. Sometimes they’re random gangoons just standing around on a smoke break, but sometimes there’ll be new things to discover by cracking some skulls.
Get drunk with the 6th Street Gang and join in their shooting contest on the rooftops, go climb the ranks in Night City’s underground boxing club, talk to the mysterious monk and learn how to meditate, recover Johnny’s lost memorabilia, find a gun that talks to you and has a bad attitude, buy some fine designer clothes from the Jinguji store, track down and capture cyberpsychos for psychiatric evaluations, help a former soldier suffering with PTSD, take Jesse Cox to see a doctor about his penis problem, become best friends with a vending machine, help a J-pop star with their stalker problem, pick a fight with the police and see if you can survive until MaxTac gets called, buy some cars and travel in style.
There’s a ton of things to do outside the main quest. But if you’re just going down the list for the main quest line, then yeah, there’s going to be a lot of talking, because Cyberpunk is a very narrative-driven game, especially for the main quest and the side quests for other characters like Judy, Panam, River, Kerry, etc. I’m on my second playthrough of the game with 140 hours logged so far, and I still have undiscovered content to complete. There’s plenty to do in Night City, you just gotta look.
Thanks for the write up, I guess I am just approaching this wrong. I figured the checklist of quests would actually lead me to the stuff you listed.
I kinda did the opposite and just wadered off and did whatever. But that did not work at all for me. It became pretty stale and showed off the weaker side of the game. I guess the trick is to do something in between
The side quests pop up based on location for the most part. But the story only gets deep if you do a lot of those quests. The romances and friendships are side quests for the most part. The stories you uncover. I want mention specifics, but a fan favorite involves a couple of rich politicos that call you. The weird shit you find out with the cyberpsycho quests are pretty neat.
This doesn’t have a KOTOR light side dark side meter, but if you start to connect with your character, then some of the choices you make are rather emotional. Like you get hired to kill someone, but they talk to you when you get there and you have to decide what to do. And sometimes that changes some things later.
I played all of the original endings (I have about 300 hours in the game since launch). Prior to Phantom Liberty, I decided to try a certain ending and it absolutely crushed me. I was legitimately angry at some of the people and crying about how things went for some others.
If you just want an action rpg light on the story, this isn’t it. This is like getting to jump into the action of a really interesting comic series. Lots of shit going on that isn’t the main focus of the story. Some of it matters and some of it is just something to do. I imagine if you only hit the main storyline it’d probably be kind of bland. For one, you want have a good reason to kill every tiger claw that you see.