Cyberpunk 2077

for the most part the stakes are fairly low. There's no end of the world stakes, your fate and actions can impact characters around you, but ultimately things will keep on going on in much the same way. It's much more a personal than many RPGs. (Of course, some actions might have more profound consequences in the future. Thinking of Alt in particular. Essentially unleashing a powerful AI from behind the blackwall might well have future implications for the world...).

I found that focus on individuals stories just kind of neat. Everyone is a character in their own story, and yours is nothing special.

It's really interesting how, after observing all endings of Phantom Liberty, Reed is actually the most honest character, and So Mi is extremely manipulative. At every stage your encouraged to think Reed can't be trusted, but this So Mi, trying to escape her life, can be, but So Mi has been trying to manipulate events right from the start of the expansion - her drive is understandable, and is a very sympathetic character, but ultimately she's been lying from the start.

The world is set up where corporations and authority is perhaps not to be trusted.

But Reed is a good man, and honest. It's like you're encouraged to believe he's lying, but he genuinely does carea bout So Mi and V, but he's also heavily bound by his loyalty to the NUS. There's a similarity between Reed and Takemura maybe, characters who are can be moral but their loyalty and principles blind them.

It's all just very morally grey everywhere and the more I think about it the more interesting it becomes.

It's also interesting how Johnny's goal - the destruction of Arasaka - is only explicitly realised in the ending where his engram is destroyed (removed like a tumour, in his own words).

I dunno, it just nicely plays into the idea that, ultimately, the state of Night City (and the world) can't be lead by a single person. There are multiple stories that intersect -sometimes the intersection is brief, othertimes individual stories become entwined, but I really like the idea that the influence of V, the player character, isn't the only force in the world - most games make the player character the definitive power in the world, and I totally get why that appeals, but Cyberpunk 2077, in general, just presents our story as a thread in web.

And I find that refreshing.

Maybe I'm entirely wrong, but it just feels that way to me.

but just thinking about the final conversation between Johnny and V and Johnny uses V's real name... that whole conversation was just moving, choom.