Cyberpunk 2077 Review – Core Missions
Then there's “Gimme Danger,” a breathtaking spectacle where you must once again assist Panam, but this time as she attempts to raid an Arasaka convoy in the Badlands, and you both play the role of scorned aggressors. We sped down the broken highways during a storm that could only be described as nightmarish, with the engine whine drowning out thunder. On the way, we were ambushed by competing Nomad factions. Every single explosion in Cyberpunk 2077 felt intensely personal; we were reclaiming what was lost and what Dex, Yorinobu, and every Corp that has ever looked down on us were forced to suffer.
While driving to the destination, I was able to hack their security cameras and activate the turret defenses they had. The turrets ended up slaughtering the trucks instead. When the convoy had finally brought us to the chosen location, I was met with an 'intel' truck, and so was Panam. As she reached her destination, she turned toward me and said, “We own them now”. At that moment, I remembered the countless number of post-apocalyptic heists I had done in my life. The unrivaled feeling could only be replicated with those Heists, it's like defeating the UN building in Fallout 3 while imagining a sibling's ride, mimicking riding shotgun, bonded thoughts of rain on my skin, the world shouting in code.
Unpredictable Missions: A Playground and a Prison
What makes these quests stand out from the rest is that they are far from being neat or tidy. You break into labs only to show compassion towards someone you were previously trained to hate, to mercy. You race as you get your hands on some money, only to overspend it and realize the payment was your soul's reflection. You pull the trigger on some of the corporate goons only to realize they, too, as desperate as you, were pawns. These missions tend to flow not only in scripted lines but are part of a world that refuses to let you realize that Night City serves both as a playground and a prison.
Each objective – Rescue, retrieve, rally, or raze – serves a greater purpose and impacts the consequences that ripple throughout the city, changing the inventory of vendors, turning NPCs Friendly and Foe, and even affecting romance options. It feels like a mix of Fallout, where the boundaries of reality are pushed to the extreme in world-building, where it meets the ethical blurriness of Deus Ex, and the narrative depth of The Witcher. The end result is a mix of feature-rich choices making me feel like a wanderer in multiple ways than one: always chasing the next frame of data in the street and whisper, or next opportunity to tear the city to shreds, or save it.
Escaping Monotony: Thought-Provoking Side Gigs
If you've felt annoyed before by side quests that seemed like fetch tasks—go here, get this, kill a beast of legend—Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition shows you the way out of that monotony. Even minor gigs, such as “Holy Mauser,” where you attempt to recover a shotgun an emotionally-charged parent claims is theirs, feel like stories with a distinct twist. So, you can stroll in the periphery of Santo Domingo, a suburb where it rains softly and shrouds you in mist. You can remotely access traffic cameras to track the shotgun's thief, then capture the person in a backroom curtained in neon lights.
Do you allow them to keep the gun in part because it's wicked, or do you take it back, tearing hope from a gang war-spirited soul who merely wanted refuge in a city that claims to offer safety? Witness painfully frank moral ambiguity. This is the same kind of gut punch you'd get in a Fallout settlement, where deciding who gets the water filter can spiral into a pitched battle. But here, it's a weapon seen as a violation, and the sobbing child enduring taunts from passing cars while grasping the weapon under the eerie glow of a stuttering lamp is crying, emblematic of any wasteland orphan.
“Transmission”: From Simple Hack to City-Wide Crisis
And we cannot skip “Transmission,” a quest I mentioned in passing, as it is decidedly not in my notes for its over-the-top goals. What begins as a simple hack protocol escalates into a full-blown crisis spanning across the city. You crash a Voodoo Boys syndicate meeting to upload a virus on their broadcast transmission, and now you're in the meeting. While racing through data nodes, the world fractures outside: police drones go haywire, gangs prepare for turf wars, and a reporter's live feed glitches to broadcast a virus-infested manifesto.
The immediacy is overwhelming: each quick hack I was able to drop into that network felt like a trigger switch, riot hundreds of miles away. In my head, I compared it to launching a missile in a Fallout 4 mod, but there's no nukes here, only whispers of information having a meltdown. After the mission, the streets and the very soul of the city are on metaphorical fire. It's an overwhelming interplay of cause and effect, something that has overshadowed everything else since the moment I attempted that mission.