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siennaditbot · 11 months

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Kim Possible x Ron Stoppable ship analysis!

I'll go through the episodes I know have something shipping related and analyse the moments and try to think what the characters are thinking!

Edited the final movie stuff btw! It's better now! Also now with pictures and GIFs!

S1 EP1: Crush

Ron doesn't really like Mankey (says his name mockingly) or the idea that Kim likes him. He later mentions this in So the Drama ("I was never in favor of that but I was there for Kim.")

I like how they're comfortable enough to talk about their crushes. In the past, sure, but now as well!

"We always go together." (To dances? What other "school functions" are there?) I kinda really wish we could've seen one of those. Like it was obvious to Ron that they would still go together! Idk how American schools work and how many dances they'd have been to at this point, but they really must be comfortable with each other to go to dances together like that. Just two pals having fun!

Neither is jealous of the other planning to take a date to the dance. A bit awkward and taken aback, sure, but both seem to be fine with it. I'd say neither is crushing at this point, but as mentioned earlier, Ron isn't fully on board with the Mankey thing even if he helps Kim with it.

Ron might ask all the other girls to the dance cuz he feels a bit left out? Not jealous left out, but a bit lost cuz it's a new situation?

"Contrary to popular belief, I am not dating Kim Possible." Proof that at this point they are aware of the idea of them being together, even if they aren't for or into it. Not a new concept, but not one they'd consider. Ron also tries to help Kim with Josh with this, clearly caring more about their friendship than whatever he thinks of Mankey.

Ron really encourages her to ask Mankey to the dance. "You can handle this!" Sweet guy.

S1 EP8: Mind Games

Small thing but Ron says that Kim is pretty <3 ("smart, athletic, pretty and popular")

Ron (as Kim) has a soff face when they practice cheerleading and are back to back <3 Looks at her, smiles and closes his eyes and leans against her <33 No idea why though. Kim has a similar expression but she just enjoys doing the routine, she smiles the whole time. Could be platonic "I like to be close to her", could be him subconsciously appreciating the closeness in a different way? No major "crushage" though.

S2 EP2: Grudge Match

Kim's had a crush on someone and now Ron has a crush. I don't think they have feelings for each other at this point since both are pursuing other people.

More open talking about feelings. Both are so supportive.

Ron's very aware that people might think they're a couple doing couple things (doesn't want Zita to see them coming out of the movie theater)

Kim's all "yeah, so?" and "you.. and me.. on a.. date?" which imo means that she doesn't think of them dating as a thing that's likely to happen.

Ron, on the other hand, goes "it could happen!" which tells me that he's more open to the idea and has maybe considered it before. Not enough to act on it but is aware and not as much against it as Kim. Still very much thinks of Kim as a friend more than anything else since he's into Zita rn.

Kim goes "I'm gonna say something that I've never said to you before", and Ron seems unnecessarily shocked or interested? To me it seems like he might have expected her to confess or smth like that based on the convo topic, idk.

S2 EP11: Exchange

Ron is clearly interested in Yori. Stares and swoons and stuff. Wiggles his eyebrows like an idiot lol. Super happy about her kissing his cheek. ("Yeah I love this place!!") Pointing this out since he seems different when they meet later in S3.

S2 EP13: A Very Possible Christmas

First of all I love how much time Ron spends with the Possible family! He joins their Christmas party <3 Seems like it's not his first time joining, either.

Also Kim, really, a cyber scrapbook of their memories together?? That's adorable. I'd cry too. Platonic but super cute.

Two hugs in this ep. Platonic but super cute.

They're really sweet to each other. Ron wanting to give the best gift to Kim and Kim looking all over the world for Ron.

Lol, does Drakken ship it? He puts them under the mistletoe. Ron found it though... Who put it up? Drakken does put the ribbon thingy on it so maybe he did.

They aren't that awkward about it, but Ron does laugh it off and Kim does give him a quick peck on the cheek. He says a positively surprised "oh" and touches his cheek with an awkward smile. He's a bit taken aback but doesn't seem to think about it too much, and neither does Kim. It's platonic to her it seems?

Ron's more confused than when Yori kissed him, since the girls are different to him? He doesn't celebrate like he did with Yori. Intriguing... "Yeah!!" vs "Oh!"... I think his reaction to Kim's peck is more genuine? Less "mr popular ladies man"?

"Season's greetings from the Possibles"? I see you there Ron lol. He's part of the fam.

S2 EP19: Blush

Again, Ron's not super into the Mankey business. ("Mankey-monkey conspiracy")

Ron says he "Finds the whole 'dating thing' overrated. Who would subject themselves to that?" Is that jealous talk or has he not had great experiences with it before? The Zita thing did crash and burn pretty fast at least. Maybe he also thinks of how Kim turns into a mess around guys? Degrading? Embarrassing?

"So he takes you to dinner, you two see a movie, big tap-dancing whoop! We do that stuff together all the time!" I see you there Ron. He compares their time together to dating...... More to mock the concept of dating than saying that they're like a couple? Does sound a bit jealous though..

He's much more negative towards him than in S1 EP1. Intriguing... The romantic-platonic levels might be changing there..

Kim's call log is mostly Ron. That's sweet. Probably platonic but sweet.

He gives her an awkward thumbs up when he saves her and lets her enjoy the rest of her date. That is an uncomfortable face though, Ron... I'm definitely moving him into the romantic category at this point. He likes her, but doesn't know it?

Kim's still platonic and very into Josh. Maybe.

Sitch In Time:

Could be (and really should I think) read as best friends being separated, but since I already put Ron in the romantic category, it hurts just a little bit more. Still tough to lose a best friend though, so no major "crushage" yet imo.

Ron wants younger teen him to grow to be a "babe magnet" but that's just his typical "mr wanna be popular" speaking. He does dumb stuff like that later as well. Also none of that happened? Time travel stuff?

Oh yeah now we're getting to the good stuff

S3 EP1: Steal Wheels

"Official Ron night". Cute.

Platonic but Kim's jealous of Ron spending more time with Felix.

I understand the whole "he's my best friend!" stuff but also shows how possessive she is of him?

S3 EP2: Emotion Sickness

Ron wants to protect Kim from seeing Mankey with Tara. Sweet dude.

Kim's over Mankey. "Grew apart. Time to move on."

Ron's bummed out about not realizing that Tara used to like him. Doesn't wallow in it though, which seems to me like he never had that much interest in her.

Ron's super awkward when Kim goes all flirty, and I'd say it's because she's not acting like herself. Been odd all day. Says that she's freaking him out. Weird enough for him to run away from her.

Monique asks if Kim liking him is not good and Ron goes "I don't know, it's not that I haven't thought about this.. I mean who hasn't..." Which really tells us that he has considered it before. It's not a new thought to him.

The 'who hasn't' part though? Who hasn't shipped them or who hasn't thought of Kim liking them? I'd say it's the first. People do often think they're a couple so it's once again understandable that he's considered it as well.

Ok, the kiss. He's surprised, but definitely into it. Fully kissing back and embracing her, even though she's "just a friend" to him and obviously acting weird. It's not gross since he doesn't pull back. He's not against it, even if it's a "in the heat of the moment" kinda thing.

If it was Yori or Zita? Would probably somewhat kiss back too. I think he'd have a different expression though. Less content, more confused and awkward idiot playboy? Would let them do "most of the work" and not fully embrace like that? He just wasn't as comfortable with them.

If he didn't already like the kisser? If it was a pretty girl he might have just stood there all confused but let himself be kissed (see Bonnie in S4).

Idiotic grin afterwards? "Whatever you say"? Would probably have a similar reaction to Zita or Yori kissing him, but I still say there would be more awkwardness and celebrating aka babe magnet stuff. Also important to note, he liked those two. Kim is getting a similar - if not better - reaction.

He seriously considers dating Kim.

"What's not to like about Kim? I mean she's smart, cute... Dating could be good, you know, the date thing."

Still, he's super worried about what it could do to their friendship. I read this as him not being ready for it or feeling like it isn't natural - which, of course, it isn't. Being friends is more important than this unnatural thing that's going on, even if he does get kisses out of it.

"We're a great team, but dating could complicate things." Understandable to be afraid of change (he is bad with that), but I think it's mostly how unnatural and sudden it is.

Would probably swoon over any pretty girl talking to him like that, but there is a hint of "I knew Kim was pretty but wow." in there imo. Definitely not a platonic reaction there my guy. Uncomfortable but into it.

"So I guess the crush and everything was all moodulator, huh?" he says while looking sad and disappointed. Guess he did want it to be real after all?

Kim's "Not everything. There's still fireworks." though? Confusing. Is that her straight out admitting that she thinks there's something there? She does say a few eps later when Ron's bummed out about not getting that Yori liked her that "you got me", so maybe she just likes to stay stuff like this?

Also Ron is so happy about her words with his "You think so?" and is a bit disappointed/confused? again when Kim points at the sky.

My headcanon is that Kim's really starting to get feelings and realize there might be something there after this episode.

S3 EP4: Bad Boy

First things first, cozy movie night. Friends do that too, but I've been there. More special if there's feelings there. Which both have at this point.

Ron hasn't managed to get a date with him before (to a wedding) and goes "Unless.." and looks at Kim. Immediately awkward, tugs at shirt, looks away. He considered her a date-date for a bit there.

"Not that I'm asking you." That wouldn't be as awkward if there were no feelings there. Friend date. Both are thinking of a date-date. Which is awkward to think about cuz they're still just friends.

First time Kim seems to actually react like Ron does. Awkward and in denial. Both label it as awk-weird. See above.

Ron is intrigued about Kim liking bad boys. Both that and girls liking bad boys in general cause more babe magnet shenanigans. Definitely tryna attract other girls though.

"Thanks for being my date- uh, friend", he says. They do go together, and everything's fine. A bit funny of Kim to make sure he doesn't think of it as a date-date though. Maybe she just hasn't accepted her feelings yet? Ron's happy to call it a date though.

S3 EP9: Overdue

Shego asks Ron where Kim is, and he goes "She's not my girlfriend!" very suspiciously. Leaves me a bit confused though. At least shows that he's been thinking about the possibility? Linking the gf term to her as well. Such denial can only mean he'd prefer the opposite.

"Ooooh... Awkward...." with a laugh too. That's very suspicious my guy.

S3 EP12: Gorilla Fist

Happy to see Yori ofc, but clearly lacks the "OH YEAH YORI HI" factor. A lot chiller. Over her, into Kim.

Kim's very jealous. If it wasn't obvious before, it is now. She's interested.

I feel like Ron's trying not to make Kim get the wrong idea about Yori when they first meet. "She's not my secret girlfriend!!" type of talk imo.

"I knew he crushed on someone when he was there!" Very platonic of you Kim. Makes one think.. Has she had some feelings for him all this time? There's the "It took 12 stinking years for you to kiss me!" in S4 so it's not impossible. Small, 'not wanting to accept them' kinda feelings she's tryna cover up with other guys? Who knows.

More great denial. Aka the opposite of what she's saying. Very jeal.

Ron's super smug about Kim "freaking over about his friend Yori". Happy about Kim being jealous huh? Dude's so in love already. Cute.

Ron's not super phased about being caught by Yori. Business like usual, nothing special there. No swooning.

Kim asks about their relationship, obviously curious and jealous. More ok with her now though. Shocked about the kiss though.

Ron has a calmer reaction to Yori's cheek kiss than before. Eyes widen and he smiles, laughs in a flattered way? Still different from S2. Immediately tries to explain to Kim what just happened lol.

He's only a bit disappointed when Kim tells him Yori actually liked him.

"Why can't girls be more obvious? - - How am I supposed to know what's going on?" "Well, you got me." Very sus of you Kim. Even says it a bit shyly I think? Indirect confession? Not that indirect though. Ron still misses it.

And finally, some notes from So the Drama:

Cute how Ron grabs onto Kim when they're falling. He know she protecc.

"Captain of the chess team. Or worse." She makes a scared face? An 'oh no' type expression? It's really emphasising how, at least in the context, Ron is anything but boyfriend material to her. I know Bonnie's talk is affecting her, but she really shows no trace about having feelings for him in S3, which she absolutely did have btw!

"Is there anything sadder than going to the prom with your 'just a friend'?" A bit confusing, Kim. Does she want someone else, or does she want to actually go with Ron? As more than friends? Or does she think she's unlovable and a failure n stuff if she doesn't bring a romantic partner? That's more likely, but one can dream.

"I mean, a "date" date would be nice, but a stinking 'bf'..." Another confusing Kim line. She was looking at Ron before speaking. I'm reading it as 'a real date with someone (else? Not actually sure if she's excluding him with that) would be nice, but I wish there was at least a guy', which is pretty much how the Finnish dub put it. It clears this up a little. The tone of the conversation is that she'd like a "proper" boyfriend who's not like Ron and fits better into the food chain etc so this makes sense I think. Kim's so difficult.

"I'm gonna end up with Ron!" "Mom, he's not a guy, he's Ron!" He's "obviously" not boyfriend material! I love denial and whatever but she really doesn't seem to want to accept the idea. Bonnie is affecting her yadda yadda but still! Stuff like this is why I think everything after the confession happens a bit too quickly. She acts like he's the worst case scenario which is a bit odd for someone who kisses him not that much later, right? Is she covering up her existing feelings out of fear she'll be mocked? Has she just not come to terms with her feelings yet? I can't accept her coming to like him only after and because of his confession, that would be too shallow of her, and odd since she was this against it earlier. She's not that desperate for attention. There was definitely something there before, but she's just not willing to see it until he confesses?

Hooked up? "Eww. Kim and me? No, no, no. Best friend since forever but not like that." The denial sounds genuine, I guess he just hasn't realized or accepted his feelings at this point. But then he's immediately uncomfortable by Eric's "extreme steam" comment. "Let's not talk about her that way ever again." To me that sounds protective. He does not appreciate others talking that way about her. Hint of jealousy? Doesn't wanna think about her like that himself? Confusing.

Immediately jealous and uncomfortable with Eric's advances and Kim's obviously positive reaction to him - he knows how Kim acts when she gets a crush. Cue sad montage. It's kinda funny how he still hangs out with them on their dates btw. Doesn't wanna give her up? Friends don't join their friends on dates though. Did Kim's parents make him be their chaperone? Could see James doing that.

More and more jealous as time passes. He angy. Dramatic "cooties in the area"! Understandable. They're barely noticing him anymore.

I always thought he took the pepperoni off the pizza cuz Kim and Eric had a silly moment related to it. He seems like the kind of guy who would like pepperoni otherwise.

Probably feels betrayed as well. Kim was so quick to say bye to him. Barely even looked at him. He could see it as 'Bye bye, this person is more important to me now.'

Still a good friend though and immediately goes to help her find her dad when asked. Manages to act normal as well. (I'm kinda mad about how useless he's in the action scenes btw.)

Ron's monologue about his feelings is the best scene in this movie. I love that stuff. He goes pretty far back as well with the locked braces thing, which is part of the 'she's been with other guys before which I wasn't in favor of but I was there for her' talk. I wonder what he thought of it all back then. He was a really supportive friend at least, helped even if the situation was uncomfortable or odd.

"Something's different now. There's something between us... Who am I kidding? That's not different. Something's been there a long time. I think there's something there. Does she?" Peak. (I've quoted that so many times here, it's so good.) Also now I kinda have proof of this, having gone through a lot of the series just for this post. For how long though...?

He's finally willing to look at his feelings properly and puts everything into perspective. Comparing this to the 'Emotion Sickness' monologues? He's less afraid of change. He's feeling different enough to want to actually go for it this time. The situation is more dire, but more real.

"There's something there". Does he figure out that Kim's been showing signs of feeling the same? The "Does she?" is probably him wondering if she's realized it too. The "something" could be anything from S3's awkwardness to smaller changes in their dynamic from S1 and before. Suddenly not going to dances together and having to think about this stuff more.

He's actually saying that he wants to date her. "Kim's worth [telling her about my feelings even if it's humiliating]!" "What if I start yapping about my feelings and she chooses Eric and not me?" Just the 'realizing his feelings' talk is great, but he actually wishes she would choose him as her boyfriend. Proper acceptance of feels right there. No denial whatsoever. He will hide it for Kim's sake, but he wants to date her. (I love this soff dude!!)

Dude's skilled for being able to act like he didn't just realize and accept a lot of scary and life changing feelings. Chooses friendship over any jealous and possessive behavior, even if it is a bit tough at times. Gets a bit smug when they do decide to go save the world though.

Tiny cute detail: when on the scooter together and Ron drives, Kim holds his shoulders, but when Kim drives, Ron has his arms around her/hands on her hips.

Confession scene. (Peak Ron for getting Kim out of her "pity fiesta" btw.) He's simply saying that a guy, a real guy that's good for her, exists, and that he's here, about to say 'someone like me'. A bit of a roundabout way to say it but it gets the point across. Mostly saying it to make her understand that she's not unlovable? There's a hint of 'guess this is a good opportunity to shoot my shot', too, but in a selfless way, not asking her to like him back. Just wants her to know so she can get her groove back. He thinks they could work. (Includes himself in "guys that are better for you than Eric")

Kim's reaction confuses me a bit once again. "Oh. Really?" She's happy about it, sounding hopeful too? 'Didn't think he actually liked me' surprised? 'I'm not unlovable' surprised? Both? 'It wasn't unrequited after all and I shouldn't have been afraid'? Why she so difficulttt

Kim's oddly flirty when hurrying to the prom, but the prom scene itself is adorable. Them being awkward about the change. Some distance inbetween that Rufus gets rid of lol. Stuff's different but they're still themselves.

Soff kiss with the soffest gazes I've ever seen. A bit quick to get there, but adorable. The point of a proper kiss is that both are in on it, and here they are. Better than the 'Emotion Sickness' kiss, but Ron's even more comfortable and less lovestruck with it. He knows it's real this time and that he's ready for it now. Kim's also finally getting over the food chain talk and really accepts her feelings for him. Feeling like 'This is still a bit odd, but it's him, and it's alright. I trust him more than anyone else. He's safe, and this feels right." or smth?

Is it finally done? This took... Almost 7 hours. It's 3am right now, so it might've started to get messy halfway lol. I hope someone out there gets something out of all this hard work.

Extra few hours (like 5, one edit didn't go through...) from editing after waking up. The movie stuff makes more sense now!

#SDB rambles #kim possible #kim possible so the drama #kim possible x ron stoppable #ron stoppable #kimron #kim x ron #i will come back to this at least #also pls tell me if i missed anything!#long post #took.... just a few hours longer than i expected #I'm so tired

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adastraperfortuna · 3 years

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I Played Cyberpunk 2077

Ultimately, Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s hard to talk about it without acknowledging the backlash that it received around its launch, but the backlash was directly proportional to the amount of marketing that it got. This happens to a lot of games – and frankly, a lot of my favorite games. If I were working at CD Projekt RED and I was responsible for the kind of marketing that resulted in the kind of expectations that they built for themselves, I’d have to take that sort of stuff into deep consideration. But, as someone who bought the game, enjoyed the game, and desperately wants to talk about the game, I’m not sure that it matters. So, to reiterate: Cyberpunk 2077 is good.

There’s so much game to Cyberpunk that it might be easier to start by talking about my favorite part of it that isn’t a game: the photo mode. I’ve joked before about my favorite gameplay loop in Star Citizen being “taking screenshots,” and that’s not my intent here, but some of my favorite games in recent memory have made it easy to look over the memories I made during their runtime. Interspersed within this review will be some of my favorite screenshots that I took – the inclusion of precise controls for things like depth of field, character posing/positioning, and stickers/frames helped to make my screenshot folder feel less like a collection of moments in a game and more like a scrapbook made during the wildest possible trip to the wildest possible city.

And what a city it is. Night City is my favorite setting in a video game in recent memory. It’s not incredibly difficult to make a large environment, but to make a meaningful environment where every location feels lived-in and the streets are dense with things to see and do? That’s a challenge that very few studios have managed to step up to. More than that, Night City feels unique in the landscape of video game cities – whereas a city like Grand Theft Auto V’s Los Santos is rooted in a reality we’re familiar with, Cyberpunk’s retro-futuristic architecture (and overall aesthetic) help lend it a sensibility that we’re unfamiliar with. It really feels like stepping into another world - fully fleshed-out, fully envisioned.

The environment is obviously beautiful and unique, but I was surprised by just how ornate it was. The thought and consideration that went into details as minor as the UIs you’ll encounter in and on everything from car dashboards to PCs and menus both diegetic and otherwise helps the entire world feel diverse, detailed, and cohesive. While everything feels of a kind and everything is working towards the same design goals, the sheer amount of variety was shocking.

The biggest thing that stuck out to me about Night City itself within just a few hours of playing was how vertically oriented it was. Not just in the “there are tall buildings” sense, though there certainly are tall buildings – I’m talking about the way that Cyberpunk uses verticality to tell stories. The first time that you end up high enough above the skyline to see rooftops will inevitably be during one of your first encounters with Night City’s elite. The hustle and bustle of street life fading away as an elevator climbs up the side of a building and you emerge into a world you aren’t familiar with was astounding. That claustrophobic feeling of being surrounded by monoliths isn’t only alleviated by attending to the rich, though – for similar reasons, my first journey out of the city limits and into the “badlands” will stick with me. Cyberpunk successfully manages its mood and tone by controlling the kind of environments you’ll find yourself in, and while that may seem like a simple, sensible, universal design decision, its consistent application helped ground the world for me in a way that made it feel more real than most of its contemporaries.

Something else that makes Night City feel real is how Cyberpunk implements its setpieces. In a decision that reverberates throughout the rest of the game, CD Projekt was clearly all-in on the notion of immersion and seamless transitions. While it was consistently surprising and exciting to find bombastic moments embedded in the world’s side content (one standout involves Night City’s equivalent of SWAT descending from the sky to stop a robbery in an otherwise non-descript shop downtown), it never took me out of the world. And, on the other end of the experience, the number of memorable, exciting story moments that were located in parts of the city that you had wandered by before helped make the world feel almost fractal, this idea that every building and every corner could house new adventures or heartbreaks.

One thing that did take me out of the experience, unfortunately, were a few of the celebrity (or “celebrity”) cameos. While I think that the core cast was well-cast, with Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand in particular being an inspired choice, the game, unfortunately, wasn’t immune to the tendency to include recognizable faces just because they were recognizable. Grimes plays a role in a forgettable side quest that felt dangerously like it only existed because she wanted to be in the game. There are also an almost concerning number of streamer cameos (“over 50 influencer and streamers from around the world,” according to CD Projekt), and while most of them completely went by me, the few that did hit for me only served to disrupt the world. The only perceived positive here is that most players won’t have any idea who these people are.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t the only thing that broke immersion in the game. Due to what I can only assume are particularly harsh memory restrictions imposed by the game’s release on last-generation hardware, the game has some of the most aggressive NPC culling that I’ve ever seen. While NPCs don’t strictly only exist in screen space, it often feels like they do, as simply spinning the camera around can result in an entirely new crowd existing in place of the old one. This is obviously rough when it comes to maintaining immersion in crowded spaces on-foot, but it gets worse when you’re driving. Driving on an empty road, rotating the camera, and finding that three seconds later there was an entire legion of cars waiting for your camera to discover them, far too close to slow down, was always a deadly surprise. It doesn’t help that your cars take a while to slow down.

Cyberpunk’s approach towards cars in general is interesting. While I certainly had trouble with them when I began playing, I eventually began to get into their groove. If you want to learn how to drive effectively in Cyberpunk, you have to learn how to drift. After the game’s latest substantial patch, the team at CD Projekt finally fixed my largest problem with the game’s driving – the minimap was simply too zoomed-in, making it difficult to begin to make the right decisions on when and how to turn when traveling at speed. Now that that's resolved, however, whipping and spinning through the streets is fun, and the cars feel appropriately weighty. I’ll still occasionally boot up the game just to cruise around its streets and listen to the radio.

Speaking of the radio, did I mention that Cyberpunk 2077 has one of the greatest game soundtracks that I’ve ever heard? The radio is filled with great original songs from some pretty great musicians, but that’s not where the soundtrack’s beauty starts and it certainly isn’t where it ends. The original soundtrack (composed by P.T. Adamczyk, Marcin Przybylowicz, and Paul Leonard-Morgan) was consistently beautiful, moving, and intense. The world feels gritty and grimy but ultimately beautiful and worth saving, and a great deal of that emotion comes from the soundtrack. While the heavy use of industrial synths could’ve lent itself towards music that existed to set tone instead of form lasting memories with memorable melodies, the sparkling backing tones and inspired instrumentation helped keep me humming some of its tracks for months after last hearing them in-game. I’m no musical critic, I don’t know how much I can say about this soundtrack, so I’ll just reiterate: it’s genuinely incredible.

It certainly helps that the encounters that so many of those tunes are backing up are exciting as well. I was expecting middling combat from the company that brought us The Witcher 3, and while the experience wasn’t perfect, it was competitive with (and, in many ways, better than) the closest games to it than I can point to, Eidos Montreal’s recent Deus Ex titles. Gunplay feels tight, shotguns feel explosive, and encounter spaces are diverse and full of alternate paths and interesting cover. My first playthrough was spent primarily as a stealth-focused gunslinger, using my silenced pistol to cover up the mistakes that my feet made when trying to avoid getting caught. Trying to sneak into, around, and through environments helped emphasize how complex the environments actually were. While it’d be easy to run into a wealth of the game’s content with your guns loaded and ready to fire, that may contribute to a perceived lack of depth in the game’s world design. I’m trying to write this without considering what other people have said about the game, but this particular point has been something of a sticking point for me – there are individual, completely optional buildings in Cyberpunk that have more interesting, considered level design than some entire video games, and the experience of evaluating and utilizing them was consistently mechanically engaging and exciting.

The sheer number of abilities that the player has can be almost overwhelming. While leveling does encourage the player to specialize into certain traits, especially when said traits can also serve as skill checks for the dialogue system and some traversal opportunities, every trait houses a bundle of skills that each house a sprawling leveling tree. Far from the kind of “three-path EXP dump” that you’ll find in a great number of AAA titles, Cyberpunk’s leveling experience can be legitimately intimidating. It’s difficult to plan the kind of character you want to play as when you’re trying to project eighty or a hundred hours forward for a character that will be constantly encountering new kinds of challenges. I certainly didn’t begin my playthrough by wanting to be a stealth-focused gunslinger – in fact, I was originally aiming for a melee-focused hacker build. While I was drawn to what I was drawn to, hearing stories from other players about the kind of builds that they ultimately considered to be overpowered made one thing exceedingly clear: Cyberpunk is a game that rewards every kind of play, possibly to its own detriment.

Cyberpunk’s main story is notably short. I wouldn’t consider this to be a problem, considering the sheer amount of engaging, exciting, heartfelt side content, but it might be the core of the difficulty scaling plateauing so early on. As you progress deeper into the game you’ll find that almost every build, as long as you are willing to commit to something, is more than viable. Look around long enough and you’ll find people saying that every single build is overpowered. For me, that fed into the central power fantasy in an exciting way. By the time that I rolled credits a hundred hours in I was more or less unstoppable, walking into rooms and popping every enemy almost instantly. For others, this was a problem – it can be frustrating to feel like all of your work to become stronger wasn’t met with an appropriate challenge when the time came to put it into practice. This is a difficult problem to solve, and I don’t have a solution. I’ll fondly remember my revolver-toting, enemy-obliterating V, though, so I can’t complain.

Regardless of the scaling, however, the content you play through to arrive at that pinnacle of power was consistently, surprisingly robust. While the differentiation between “gigs” and “side quests” is confusing (word for the wise: gigs are generally shorter and more gameplay-centric missions that are designed by CD Projekt’s “open world” team while the side quests are made by the same team that made the main quests and are generally longer and more narrative-centric), both kinds of side content are lovingly crafted and meaningful. Of the 86 gigs in the game, every single one of them takes place in a unique location with a hand-crafted backstory and (almost always) a wealth of different approaches. These don’t exist separately from the rest of the game’s design philosophy, even if they are made by a separate team, and you’ll often find that decisions made outside of gigs will reverberate into them (and, sometimes, the other way around). I’ve played a great deal of open world games, and never before has the “icon-clearing content” felt this lovingly-crafted and interesting. While the main quests will take you traveling across the map, the side content is what really makes it feel dense and real. You’ll be constantly meeting different kinds of people who are facing different kinds of problems – and, hey, occasionally you’ll be meeting someone who has no problem at all, someone who just wants to make your world a little bit brighter.

It’s surprising, then, that one of the most obvious ways to integrate that kind of content in Cyberpunk is so sparsely-utilized. “Braindances,” sensory playback devices used to replicate experiences as disparate as sex, meditation, and murder, play a critical role in some of the game’s larger quests, but they almost never show up in the side content. You would imagine that the ability to freely transport the player into any kind of situation in a lore-friendly way would’ve been a goldmine for side content, but its use is limited. This isn’t even a complaint, really, I’m just genuinely surprised – I wouldn’t be surprised if they used them more heavily in 2077’s expansions or sequels, because they feel like an untapped goldmine.

Another thing that the game surprisingly lacks is the inclusion of more granular subtitle options. While the game does let you choose the important stuff – whether or not you want CD Projekt’s trademark over-the-head subtitles for random NPCs, what language you want the subtitles to be in, what language you want the audio to be in – it doesn’t include something that I’ve grown to consider a standard: the ability to turn on subtitles for foreign languages only. As the kind of player who avoids subtitles when possible, I went through most of Cyberpunk with them off. Unfortunately, a tremendous number of important cutscenes in the game take place in languages other than English, and I didn’t know that I was supposed to understand what these characters were saying until I was embarrassingly far into one of the prologue’s most important scenes.

NOTE: I was pleasantly surprised to discover after replaying the ending of the game earlier today that they've fixed this issue in a patch. Nice!

I can only complain about the game’s language support so much, because there’s something important that lies between the player and the story they’re there to experience: a fucking incredible English localization. Ironically, it’s so good that I can’t help but imagine that most players won’t even think about it. It’s easy to notice and talk about an excellent localization when it’s from something like a JRPG, something with a clearly different style from what you’d expect from a work made in English, but never once in my entire playthrough did I even briefly consider the idea that it was natively written in anything other than English. I knew that CD Projekt was a Polish studio, but I just assumed that they wrote in English and localized it backwards. The language is constantly bright and surprising, the jokes land, the characters have memorable quirks, everything feels natural, and the voice acting is legitimately some of the best that I’ve ever heard in a video game. Both versions of the main character’s voice were damn-near instantly iconic for me, landing up there with Commander Shepard in the upper echelon of protagonist VO. I can’t praise it enough.

That said, even if the localization was incredible, it’d be hard to appreciate if the meat of the story wasn’t up-to-snuff. I was ecstatic to discover, then, that Cyberpunk 2077 has an incredible story. Every great story starts with a great cast of characters, and Cyberpunk hit it out of the park with that. The core cast of side characters are some of my favorite characters in years. Judy, Panam, River, and Kerry are all memorable, full, charming people. Kerry Eurodyne in particular is responsible for my favorite scene in a game since the finale of Final Fantasy XV. The quest “Boat Drinks,” the finale of Kerry’s quest line, is quietly emotional and intensely beautiful. He, and the other characters like him, are more than the setting they’re in, and the way that the game slowly chews away at the harsh and bitter exterior that the world has given them as it reaches to their emotional, empathetic core consistently astounds. Night City is a city full of noise, violence, destruction, and decay, but you don’t have to participate in it. You don’t have to make it worse. You can be different, and you can be better. You don’t get there alone, you can’t get there alone, and Cyberpunk is a game that revels in how beautiful the world can be if we are willing to find the light and excitement in the people around us.

Of course, Cyberpunk is a video game, it’s an RPG, and the story is more than a linear progression of memorable moments. Something that struck me while making my way through Cyberpunk’s story was how expertly and tastefully it implemented choice. I’m used to games that give you flashing notifications and blaring alarms whenever you're able to make a decision that matters, so I was initially confused by how Cyberpunk didn’t seem reactive to the things I said and did. The game would give me a few options in conversations, I’d select one of them, and then the story would progress naturally. However, as I continued, I began to notice small things. One character would remember me here, a specific thing I said twenty hours before would be brought up by someone there, an action that I didn’t even know I had the choice to not take was rewarded. The game slowly but surely established a credibility to its choices, a weight to your words, this sense that everything that you were saying, even beyond the tense setpiece moments that you’d expect to matter, would matter. It was only after going online after completing the game that I realized just how different my playthrough could’ve been. While nothing ever reached the level of the kind of divergent choices that The Witcher 2 allowed, there were still large chunks of the game that are entirely missable. Three of the game’s endings can only be unlocked through the completion of (and, in one case, specific actions in) specific quests, and multiple memorable quests were similarly locked behind considerate play. This isn’t really a game that will stop you from doing one thing because you chose to do something else, most of the choice-recognition is simply unlocking new options for the player to take, but it always feels natural and never feels like a game providing you an arbitrary fork in the road just for the sake of making it feel artificially replayable. CD Projekt has already said that they made the choices too subtle in Cyberpunk, but I deeply appreciate the game as it is now – more games should make choices feel more real.

It helps that the dialogue system backing up some of those choices is dynamic and the cutscene direction backing those scenes up is consistently thrilling. The decision to lock you in first-person for the entire game was an inspired one, and it resulted in a bevy of memorable scenes made possible by those interlocking systems. There are the obvious ones – being locked in a smoky car with a skeptical fixer, getting held at gunpoint by a mechanical gangster with his red eyes inches away from your own and a pistol’s barrel just barely visible as it presses against your forehead, having to choose between firing your weapon and talking down someone with a hostage when in a tense, escalating situation. There are also a million smaller ones, situations where the scale of the world becomes part of the magic. The first time that I sat down in a diner and talked with someone I had to meet or the first time that I rode along through the bustling downtown of Night City as a politician sized me up will stick with me because the perspective of the camera and the pacing of the real-time dialogue interface combine to make almost everything more powerful. There’s so much effort put into it – so many custom animations, so many small touches that you’d only see if you were staring intensely at every frame. All of that effort paid off, and the controversial decision to strip third-person out of the game was ultimately proven to be one of the smartest decisions that CD Projekt has ever made.

Another decision that helped power an exciting, engaging story was how the game freely manipulates the time and weather during key story moments. It’s a small touch, it’s one that you won’t notice unless you’re looking for it, but every once in a while you’ll walk into a place during a crystal-clear day and come out five minutes later to discover that it’s a cold, windy, rainy night and you have a city to burn. Along with the first-person limitation, this initially feels like something that could only harm immersion, but when it’s backed up by a story that motivating and scenes that thrilling you’d be hard-pressed to notice it outside of the flashes of telling yourself that this scene or that scene is the best that you’ve played in a long time. This also helps avoid a problem that games like the Grand Theft Auto series consistently face – instead of letting scenes happen at any time, compromising direction, or doing something like a timelapse, sacrificing immersion, Cyberpunk manages to always keep you in the action while also presenting the action in its most beautiful and appropriate form. There are moments where it truly feels like it’s meshing the kind of scene direction that’d be at home in a Naughty Dog game, the gameplay of Deus Ex, and the storytelling of the WRPG greats, and in those moments there is nothing else on the market that feels quite like it.

I sure have talked a lot about this game’s story, considering the fact that I have barely brought up its central hook. The early twist (unfortunately spoiled by the game’s marketing), the placement of a rockstar-turned-terrorist-turned-AI-construct firmly in your brain after a heist goes wrong and your best friend dies, helps establish a tone that the rest of the game commits to. Johnny Silverhand starts as an annoying, self-centered asshole with no real appreciation for how dire your situation is, but by the end of the game he had more than won me over. Reeves’s performance was really stellar, and the relationship between him and V is incredibly well-written. More than that, his introduction helps spur on a shift in the way that you engage with the world. The first act is full of hope, aspiration, the belief that you can get to the top if you hustle hard enough and believe. After you hold your dying friend in your arms and are forced to look your own death in the eyes, though, things begin to turn. Maybe the world is fucked up, maybe it’s fucked up beyond belief. But there Johnny is, telling you to fight. Why? Every time you fight, things get worse.

But the game continues to ruminate on this, it continues to put you in situations where fighting not only fails to fix the problem, but it makes it worse. Despite that, it’s positive. For me, at least, Cyberpunk’s worldview slowly came into alignment, and it’s one that I can’t help but love. Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about how important the fight is, how important believing in something is, even if you’re facing impossible odds, even if there’s no happy ending. It’s a story that posits that giving up is the worst ending of all, that your only responsibility is to what’s right and to the ideals that you and the people you love want to live up to. The game uses every story it can tell, every character it can introduce you to, and every encounter it can spin into a narrative to drive that home. And, when the ending comes, it was phenomenal. All of the endings were powerful, effective, and meaningful to me, but I’m more than happy that I went with what I did.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an excellent video game. It’s not flawless, but no game is, and at its core it's one of the most fun, beautiful, narratively engaging, and heart-filled games that I’ve ever played. I couldn’t recommend it highly enough, and I sincerely hope that everyone who has skipped out on it because of what they’ve heard is able to give it a shot someday. Maybe they’ll love it as much as I do. Wouldn’t that be something?

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