No more delays. At long last, Cyberpunk 2077 is out now, and finally in the hands of the millions who have been looking forward to its launch for nearly a decade. And as you’d expect from an open world RPG – and one made by CD Projekt RED no less – there’s a lot going on here. When you dive into Night City, there’s going to be a lot that the game is going to throw at you in quick succession, and to make those early hours and the hours beyond a little easier for you, we’ve put together some handy pointers that you should keep in mind. Without further ado, let’s jack in.
DON’T RUSH THE STORY
Let’s begin with the most general tip we have for you. Cyberpunk 2077 is a lot shorter than The Witcher 3, with a main story that can be completed in about 20-30 hours if you want to stick to the critical path- but we wouldn’t advise that. Go off the beaten path and do all the optional stuff and side missions you can. For starters, you get more bang for your buck, but more importantly, that’ll impact how the main story plays out as well. Side missions can often be tied to the main story and have an effect on how events turn out, while there’s also the fact that doing more optional stuff and levelling up will open up more options for you- like with dialogue choices, where you will be able to pass checks to open up new possibilities that would have been locked before.
DON’T SKIP THE TUTORIAL
Within its opening hour, Cyberpunk 2077 will offer you the chance to take on its tutorial, right before you’re about to enter the game’s first mission, and while you might be tempted to jump straight into the action, it’s best to get through the tutorial beforehand. It’ll teach you the basics of hacking, shooting, stealth, and melee combat, which will obviously be useful to you throughout the entire game, but it’ll also net you with XP upon completion, which you can never have enough of.
PROGRESSION
Cyberpunk 2077 has multiple layers of progression, but one thing that it emphasizes is player choice- play the way you want, and that’ll count toward your progression automatically. If you use your handgun often, you’ll become more proficient with your handgun, if you stealth a lot, you’ll level up your stealth stat, and so on. There are, of course, attributes and skills to unlock with points that you accrue within the game, but something that you should always keep in mind is that the simple act of playing the game the way you want to play it will make you better at the stuff you tend to stick with.
ATHLETICS
Keeping what we just spoke about in mind, we’d recommend sprinting and jumping every chance you get. Doing that will count towards your athletics stat, and athletics is a pretty important stat, since it’s something that’ll govern some of the most fundamental things you’ll be doing throughout the game.
HACKING AND STEALTH
Approaching combat encounters in Cyberpunk 2077 can broadly fall under one of three categories- you can go all out, you can use stealth, or you can hack. The latter two often go hand in hand, and if you are going for a more passive build and don’t want to engage in direct combat too much, investing in hacking and stealth is a smart idea. Look over the two branches and make sure you’re unlocking the perks that can be used to proper effect in conjunction.
BODY AND TECH
Often in Cyberpunk 2077 you’ll come across locked doors, which is always a great way to bug the hell out of players. “But what’s behind that door?” you keep asking yourself- which is why pumping attribute points into the Body and Technical Ability categories is something we recommend. High stats in these two categories will allow you to get past most doors you come across – even locked ones – by either hacking into them or literally ripping them off their hinges.
STORAGE
As you might expect, Cyberpunk 2077 has an encumbrance mechanic, which means you have to keep an eye on your inventory space at all times. And given just how much stuff there is to pick up in pretty much every single location you visit, that inventory can fill up quite fast. You can store your weapons and gear in your stash back at V’s apartment, but your car will also come in handy if you’re looking for a more mobile solution. If you’re ever far away from your apartment and find yourself low on inventory space, simply summon V’s car and stash some of your stuff in its trunk.
DON’T WASTE MONEY ON VEHICLES
Speaking of V’s car- when the game starts out, you’ll have a beaten up vehicle to use and get around Night City, and you will invariably find yourself wanting a better, shinier vehicle. You’ll get plenty of chances to purchase one – the game literally bombards you with messages about vehicles that can be purchased – but we’d recommend holding off on doing that, especially in the early hours of your playthrough. Some of the best vehicles in the game are quite costly, and money isn’t too easy to come by, so you’ll be better off saving up for those than purchasing something cheaper but far worse early on. Besides, many of the side missions in the game will reward you with really good vehicles for free, so your money will be better spent elsewhere.
GET REINFORCED TENDONS
Ripperdocs around Night City have a vast selection of useful cyberware upgrades to purchase, but one of the most versatile ones that you can get is the Reinforced Tendons. These allow you to double jump, and come in very handy in exploration, navigation, and combat. It’ll take a while before you can purchase this upgrade, since you’ll have to save up some cash, but once you have enough money, make sure you get the Reinforced Tendons before anything else.
TEXTS
Throughout your time in Cyberpunk 2077, V’s phone will be blowing up on a near constant basis, and you’ll be getting texts notifying you of a vast number of things. From side missions and optional activities to conversations with characters that can advance your relationship with them, there’s a lot of stuff in your texts that can have a tangible impact on your progress. As such, it’s a good idea to keep checking your phone for texts, and respond to conversations whenever you can so that you don’t miss out on a chance to strengthen your relationship with them.
KEEP SCANNING
When you hold down L1 or LB, V will do a quick scan of the room, which will highlight all of the loot you can pick up in your vicinity, be it junk or consumable or chests that you can open and so on. There’s a lot of loot to grab in Cyberpunk 2077, so to ensure that you don’t miss out on anything useful or important, it’s best to keep scanning your surroundings regularly. Basically, you should be doing a scan any time you enter a new room or area.
DISASSEMBLING WEAPONS
There’s an extensive crafting system to dive into in Cyberpunk 2077, and that, as you’d expect requires lots of crafting components. Thankfully, there’s a pretty easy way to get your hands on at a decent stockpile of components. Pick up any and all gear, clothes, and weapons you see around you (including the stuff that dead enemies drop) even if it’s worse than the stuff you already have equipped, because you can always disassemble it and get crafting components. If you do it enough, you’ll have a healthy supply to fall back on in no time.
SELL YOUR JUNK
As we mentioned earlier, pretty much every single room and location you enter in Cyberpunk 2077 is teeming with things to pick up and cram into your inventory, and while a lot of those things are labelled by the game as junk, you shouldn’t be ignoring that stuff either. Picking up junk does eat away at your carry limit, but selling all the junk in your inventory at vendors or drop points is a quick and easy way to make money in Cyberpunk 2077.
DIALOGUE OPTIONS
If you’ve played even one choice-driven RPG with dialogue options before, this should come naturally to you, but it still bears mentioning. When you’re selecting dialogue options, before you select a yellow one – which is what advances the scene and conversation – make sure you exhaust all the blue options, if any are available. These are optional, ancillary choices that can reveal additional information to you, and some of these can even open up new yellow dialogue options.
AVOID FAST TRAVEL
Being an open world game with a sizeable map, Cyberpunk 2077 does, of course, have a fast travel system, and while you might be tempted to make liberal use of it to save time and cut down on needless travelling from point A to point B, we’d recommend avoiding fast travel whenever possible. A lot of events can happen in Night City dynamically, which can open up new quests and activities, and exploring organically is the best way to come across these events. Additionally, when you’re traversing through areas, you’ll often get calls from fixers who will inform you about jobs and side missions, completing which will count towards your street cred. Fast travelling will mean you not getting those calls.