After 500 hours of playing on my pacifist V I decided to do an evil run (I tried before but I kept choosing more neutral options). It's been only 7 hours in and feels like it's getting more and more difficult to witness making my favorite characters miserable 😩
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You literally did an pacifist run, don’t think many can do that- so that’s why it’s harder you to be so evil in the other hand, I guess
My runs have been pretty hybrid versions, but I’ve been pretty evil at anyone who is an “enemy”. Like random gang members just partying and I’ll slaughter them in horrible ways.. makes me feel crazy person to be fair but still..
Can’t make myself be asshole towards the closest characters tho.. Just can’t.
The game offers not many role playing options. You’re just experiencing V’s life which is pretty much locked into several pre-written paths with very few evil options. The most you can do is siding with capitalism but you’ll still get fucked by it at the end.
One can argue that due to the nature of Cyberpunk stories every run is evil run to some degree.
Most my playthroughs are evil-ish (cuz you can’t be true evil) or self centered and for that, I admire your ability to be pacifist
I’d think being a pacifist would be more difficult most jobs are assassinations. is it possible to be evil in the game or fun can’t level V up or learn skills sitting around doing nothing while demanding everyone pays her a percentage of their income from their jobs.
I did a run where i said no to everyone and did brutal kills on pretty much every enemy. Still ended up with a fairly positive gameplay experience because when you say no to things, people assume you’ll just get to it later. When you completely eviscerate every enemy you come across, there’s no credit system for that so no one cares XD Would be cool if Orion included that somehow so you could be truly evil.
*Because your weak* (jk not realy)
In the core game, probably yes, it’s tough. But the DLC is crazy, sometimes I didn’t even let the NPC finish their sentence before I put a bullet in their skull. Fun times
This might be a little rambling on my side, but I think companies are just afraid to make proper “evil” run, even if the game is M.
And frankly, story would be just really hard to stick to the core writers though of, and there would be too many branches in dialogues, so more immersive tittles with a lot of voice lines would cost 5-10x if there would be a true “evil” run.
In case of CP – you can’t play how you really want to play the game. You can’t kill Jackie the moment you meet him. You can’t kill Eve or Vick. You don’t have an option to steal Hammerhead and just sell it to whoever.
Heck, even killing kids in the streets is disabled. Not sure if it’s a law or what, that is preventing me from chopping kids’ head but oh well.
I love trying all the different paths and choices, seeing all the different reactions…. But there are still some dialog options I can’t bring my V to say sometimes 🤣
cuz evil = corp
I kill and take from dead bodies.
I took that one guy who had a pregnant gf money and car
I shoot civilians and fuck up maxtex squads
I make people blow their own heads off
I kill all cybercychos
And I never leave survivors
It’s a testament to the amazing writing and character development from the game writers. I tried to an Asshole V run, where I choose all the heartless dialogue and decision options and I couldn’t get through the whole game.
Now I’m just Carnage V. I help everyone I can, just a little messy while doing it.
i plan to do an evil run for my 2nd playthrough. idk evil playthroughs in games are really easy for me especially after i experienced all the content in the first playthrough. plus the characters are pixels on a screen and that helps a lot. they’re not real.
The characters are well written. If you are like me and you played the game a lot you have also read extra emails and holos to get an even more detailed portrayal of each character.
It’s why people have so many different reactions to the SoMi choice. She is a complicated character who is in an incredibly complicated context. Is she justified? Does she go to far? Does the lie change how we see her? Would V have done the same? And that kind of murky moral setting means you have to actually think and make up your own mind why you think a character is good or bad. So when you have decided you like a character (because you actually made a decision, potentially going against some other information that may have had you thinking something else) there is more cognitive dissonance to work through because of the effort you made to realize you like them.
Is there really an evil run though?
I mean you can play the game in a more brutal manner, still makes no difference on how V is perceived by other characters.
I have a hard time being evil in RPGs…I think the last time I really gave it a go was KotOR, because going dark side really felt like doing something different, not simply doing the same old things with an added dash of a-hole behavior. It shouldn’t be so difficult for me to be an a-hole to companions or something but it is! Also from a gameplay perspective, being a jerk often locks you out of content: you kill the wrong person, choose not to help someone, etc.
The issue with 2077, I think, is that it’s more of a single player open world game with some RPG elements rather than a true RPG. You can approach missions differently to some extent (stealth, no stealth, sometimes choosing to kill or spare, etc), but character-wise for V you’re a bit stuck. All the lifepaths funnel into the same path after the six month montage and don’t feel much different from each other beyond small flourishes or restrictions you might add yourself. You get some flavor texts, but then you only get to choose from a set number of paths to see V’s story play out. I don’t know what CDPR could have done to account for all the possibilities, like a V who wants to end up in a gang or a corpo V who wants to go back to the corpo life. We don’t get dialogue choices like that, it may have been too unwieldy for the devs. But the result is there’s a dissonance sometimes because it seems like a true RPG but there are actually many limitations.
Because being mean makes me feel bad.
I sometimes go to random outdoor party zones (mostly in dogtown & pacifica), massacre the shit out of everybody and then dance like a psychopath. And for some strange reason, V dances better with strangers better than they dance at home or with Alex.
Failing missions to be an asshole is not great since you can’t progress further. It’s hard to be completely evil since you have to be a little nice to complete some missions, but I wish we had the ability to go full renegade like in ME. In hindsight, ME was written that way precisely because of the morality mechanic, but Cyberpunk being a morally grey universe shouldn’t need that to let you play as a morally grey or evil person.
Purposeful design choice.
The world of Cyberpunk is meant to convey a complete lack of stereotypical Good and Evil concepts. This is a dual decision in showing the characters and world are amoral in their choices, with the only driving goal being Survival, and subtle refence to Buddhism and its direction to try and cease living in terms of “Good / Bad”.
Instead, the game is built to encourage the player that engages in “Right” activity (ie: showing interest in others, knowing how your actions impact the world around you, and making choices accordingly) and thus your attempt to play counter to that design choice results in the experience you received.
I betray everyone and kill anyone