dad Geralt warms my heart

Bread’s Game Journal 05/15/22: I Figured Out The Problem With Cyberpunk 2077, There’s No Geralt.

So, I’ve been playing Cyberpunk 2077 again, this time making a lot more progress than the last time I tried to get into it. For the most part I’ve been enjoying myself quite a bit! Far from the disaster the game was when it launched, now it’s a really solid open world action adventure game, with some excellent details around the edges of it’s crazy future city. One thing’s been bothering me though, and I just tonight really came to grips with what it is: Geralt isn’t in this game.

I don’t mean that as some kind of gag statement, or ironic diss, either. Witcher 3, I would argue, shared a lot of the same flaws and jank as Cyberpunk 2077, so I wondered for awhile why it got by so much easier. Having played for about ten hours now, I really do feel like the answer was just Geralt the entire time. Cyberpunk is a deeply cynical game, in a lot of ways, and even though Geralt was an often cynical character, his presence went a long way to lightening up the similarly dour Witcher 3.

Ithink the writers of Cyberpunk thought they had a Geralt, in the form of Keanu Reeve’s Johnny Silverhand, but I’d argue against that as well. Johnny is one of the most powerfully nihilistic characters I’ve ever seen in a video game, and importantly, I don’t think Keanu ever really got a handle on that all that well. I think his cynical attitude and harsh view of everything and everyone was supposed to be made endearing through the Keanu Reeves performance, but it never really shines through.

Meanwhile, Doug Cockles performance as Geralt went a very long way in making him as endearing as he was. Geralt was a cynical old man, sure, but he wasn’t just doing it because he hated everyone. Geralt was ultimately just someone’s exasperated dad, being forced day in and day out to deal with a veritable murderers row of people he didn’t much care for, and it never stopped being charming. Largely because no matter how much bunk he had to put up with, Geralt just pushed through it anyway and made the best of whatever bad situation. Johnny just complains, and to be fair, all Johnny cando is complain, due to the nature of the way he exists at all within the story.

To be clear, I’m enjoying the game. I’m also enjoying hearing Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand whenever he shows up to voice his opinion (which is a lot!). There was just something bothering me about the game since the start, and here I finally figured it out. Well at least I wrote about it a bit, I think, maybe I haven’t figured out anything. What do you think Johnny?

Yeah I guess that’s about right.