Cyberpunk 2077 is a hugely anticipated game and one The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red hopes will define the capabilities of RPGs on the next generation of hardware. The studio has discussed efforts to make every side quest feel like a full story and an in-depth character customization system that will let players be whoever they want in Night City.
However, Cyberpunk 2077’s protagonist, V, could be the game’s biggest hurdle to overcome. There are many ways in which the design of the character could limit roleplay opportunities even with the huge amount of customization available, and there are examples of RPGs that have made similar decisions in the past to negative reception.
Cyberpunk’s V can be customized in a few key ways. First, their appearance and gender are said to be totally customizable. Second, there are 3 Life Paths in Cyberpunk 2077 which establish the backstory and early missions for the character: Corpo, Nomad, and Street Kid. However, there are some important ways that V is not customizable.
First, there is a preset male and female voice for the character. Beyond that, the player cannot customize V’s voice in Cyberpunk 2077. This means that dialog options will work in a way that more closely resembles The Witcher than it does The Elder Scrolls, with players picking an option and then hearing some iteration of the line repeated by the player character’s voice actor.
This goes a long way towards create a separation between the player character and the players themselves. This is fine with a character like Geralt of Rivia where the character is not really supposed to be customizable, at least on a fundamental level, but it does not work as well for open-world RPGs where the player is supposed to be anyone they want.
Indeed, a huge part of Skyrim’s longevity has been the fact that players can experience the world as almost any character they can imagine. The lack of player voice acting helps with this immersion. V’s voice establishes that, if nothing else, the character has an American accent, which limits the player’s ability to roleplay as anything other than an American in the extremely diverse setting of Night City which has huge Japanese, Latino, and Haitian populations.
Fallout 4 demonstrated some of the reasons why having the player character voiced can be a huge hindrance in open-world first-person RPGs. While in Fallout: New Vegas the player’s lack of voice allowed a breadth of roleplay opportunities for the Courier, who could be anyone, Fallout 4’s voice established a certain character for the protagonist that greatly limited who players could be in the game.
Not only does V have a set voice, but the character also has a set age. With the game taking place in 2077 and V’s birth year established as Dec 10, 2054, V will always be 22 years old no matter how much the player customizes the character otherwise. To have a player protagonist with a set age and voice is a big limitation, and while this worked with a character like Geralt who was separate enough from the player that CD Projekt Red could write character development into the story, it is unlikely that the studio will want to force the same development on the player of Cyberpunk 2077.
This could mean that while V is specific enough to limit a lot of roleplaying experiences in the game, the character will also not be so clearly written as to overcome that limitation with depth. This is a very similar problem to the one faced by Fallout 4, and Cyberpunk fans will be hopeful that CD Projekt Red can strike a good balance in the game before release.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set to launch on November 19, 2020, for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One, and will release later for the PS5 and Xbox Series X.
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