Cyberpunk 2077 – Review of Accessibility Features and Opinions on the Game

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After almost ten years of waiting, the dream game was released. Because of all the scandal and hype around Cyberpunk 2077 – it seemed that everything was not as smooth as everyone had dreamed, and it was scary to launch the game on consoles, because I didn’t want to spoil the first emotions, which are the most important. But there was no other option, waiting for a patch for next-gen consoles would have to wait at least a year, and I don’t have the opportunity to play on PC because my computer doesn’t meet the system requirements. My main gaming platforms were the Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5, where I began my dive into the game. After evaluating the quality and accessibility of controls on all the consoles available to me, I chose the main platform – Xbox Series X.

Cyberpunk 2077 on “nextgen”, especially on the Xbox Series X, looks very nice. Why is nextgen in quotes? Because the game there is running on backward compatibility with the previous generation of consoles with minor visual improvements, but nevertheless the project looks modern and some special remarks I do not have. During the passage of the game there were various temporary deficiencies and small moments that can spoil the impression, but the output of regular patches quickly corrected much of this. During the time I was playing Cyberpunk 2077 managed to update from version 1.05 to 1.11. Nothing critical that would have suspended my passage was not seen, perhaps lucky, and perhaps at this time the game has been sufficiently patched and most of the bugs that were at the start, were fixed. Now, after 85 hours of immersion in Cyberpunk 2077, I can safely say that most of my fears in the technical sense were in vain, you can safely play and enjoy the picture. Cyberpunk 2077 is fully completed, and I’m ready to share with you my impressions and accessibility features of the controls for people with disabilities.

Graphics and Performance

By working with light design, neon and a variety of bright city design, the picture is clear and contrasting. On PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X (in performance mode) the game runs very smoothly, in most cases with a stable frame rate, which is equal to 60. On the Xbox Series X there are occasional jerks when the camera turns fast, but I suspect this would be smoothed out by VRR technology, which my TV does not have.

I played most of the game in “Quality” mode. Despite the 30 fps, the game runs very stable and cinematic, with no jerks and looks incredible due to the deeper visuals, quality shadows and high resolution. The current versions of the game currently have no raytracing support, but the reflections are fine. In my opinion, Cyberpunk 2077 is currently one of the most beautiful games on consoles, provided we haven’t yet seen the nextgen version, due out in early 2022, which will be an excuse to replay the game, seeing other finales and scenes that were missed on the first playthrough. As for the Xbox One X version, it also looks very nice and playable, albeit with a lower frame rate, visuals and resolution. By the way, on my YouTube channel I have recordings of all the prologues from different consoles, you can watch, if interested

The World of Cyberpunk 2077

The visual component and the world of Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the main merits of CD Projekt RED, which is worthy of special attention. It’s hard to imagine how much work was invested in the creation of such a detailed and large world. Due to the light design of the environment Night City at night is incredibly stylish and atmospheric. This is the same picture from cyberpunk themed movies and TV series. This is exactly how many fans of this setting see the world – a dark city, with crazy bright billboards, holograms, ubiquitous neon and sometimes rain.

In the daytime, the city looks different – lush and contrasting. But at any time of day, Night City looks incredibly beautiful and mesmerizing, especially considering how detailed it is. You can feel the uniqueness in every neighborhood, nook, and building. Thanks to the lighting, contrast and the well-tuned HDR in the TV, the game looks more like the real world at some points, like a nighttime New York City, than a painted backdrop. The design of the city and the surroundings is created in such a way that it does not seem to be the future, as in most sci-fi, but on the contrary, it is very recognizable, and you can believe that in 50-70 years the cities will be like this in real life.

Cyberpunk 2077 is one of those games where you don’t want to use fast travel. Almost the entire game I moved around the world by transport, looking at every architectural detail of the environment and it was amazing, especially the first dozen hours, when you just explore the world and see everything for the first time, given that day and night are visually a completely different world.

We should also mention the scale of the buildings. When you come to the center for the first time, it makes an incredible impression. Tall buildings and large bridges, where the character seems tiny. This is not an innovation in games, but nevertheless it is immersive and makes you believe in what’s going on.

The visual world of Cyberpunk 2077 turned out the way it should be. It reflects all the thousands of hours of work that the specialists spent on its creation. We want to thank them very much for that. Because of this attention to detail and environment, you can forgive most of the performance problems.

Another thing is the filling of this incredible world. This is where some of the nuances come in. When you first enter the open world, the map can be a bit shocking and confusing. Dozens of different icons appear in each area: orders from fixers, police help with crimes, robbery and just questions where it is unknown what is located. Different tasks are literally at every step and at first you do not know what to take. Throwing the player to deal with all this world and content, in my opinion, not really the right way. Lack of smooth and gradual immersion at the beginning of the game and familiarity with the rules of the world – a little disorienting. Of course, after a few hours, figuring it out and completing a couple dozen quests, you begin to understand how everything works.

An interesting element is that the names and descriptions of tasks are not displayed on the map, but as soon as the character approaches any of the markers – the phone rings and the customer informs you that there is a job nearby. This element of randomness can be considered a nice plus. By the way, in Cyberpunk 2077, most of the tasks, including plot, come through a phone call or message. The technology is not new, but here it fits the atmosphere particularly well and is done well. Sometimes, however, you have to wait a long time for the characters to call, but you can always rewind a little time.

After a detailed study of the tasks in the open world, unfortunately, it turned out that they are almost all the same. The so-called “blue markers” are most likely designed for resource farming and level up. As for the quests from the fixers, they are more interesting if you go deeper, delve into what’s going on and read all the notes, especially if you do them according to the rules of the fixers, which they send at the beginning of the mission. This type of missions will tell a lot about the lore and rules of the world. To complete them all – will take an incredible amount of time, several hundred hours, so for fans here will be something to do, especially if you’re want get the “platinum”, for which you need to completely clear the map.

For more immersion in the world it would be nice to reveal its domestic part. Cab, ambulance, police. Some additional tasks from this area. All of these are absent here, except for a very interesting part with Delamain storyline. Also, there are no entertainment venues, mini-games or, for example, casinos. By the way, with the economy and money in general a separate topic: it is incredibly difficult to earn them in the game, and everything around is insanely expensive and there is no large-scale way to make money, even closer to the end of the game. From fixers constantly come messages that you can buy a cool car or motorcycle, but the money for this is never enough, because you have to spend it all on implants. There are several ways to make money: getting money for orders, crafting things and weapons with the subsequent sale and farming on the side missions, but this is clearly not enough

Despite all these remarks, or rather, hopefully, temporary shortcomings, the world of Cyberpunk 2077 draws in its special mood and visual style. I want to believe that many missing elements will appear in future updates and everything will fall into place.

Music and Sounds

In addition to the world I would like to say a few words about the music. The music in Cyberpunk 2077 is almost always aggressive. On missions, on the radio, in the surroundings – in most cases it is rock, and often heavy. This style was probably chosen in order to keep the gameplay dynamic. It is, of course, a matter of taste, but personally I really missed the cyberpunk ambient that usually accompanies thematic movies of the 1980s, such as Blade Runner.

In Cyberpunk 2077 there were only a few such scenes in the entire game, mostly in the corporat branch. I’m sure that the dynamic style of music will appeal to most players, especially fans of the new Doom, but I always turned on the radio station “Body Heat 98.7” when moving around in transport – it’s more of a pop radio, but there are often very pleasant quiet compositions.

Storyline

The story and the emotional component in games for me always come first, and in Cyberpunk 2077 it’s all good. From the first minutes, the story begins to immerse you in the world with its special approach and staging. The first-person view adds impressiveness and everything happening on the screen in some scenes is mind blowing. To some extent, this is achieved thanks to the very smooth and detailed animation of the main characters and environments. Unfortunately, the secondary characters and the open world are not so good with animation, of course, it creates some imbalance in the perception, but as for the scenes, everything is up to the mark – it seems that you watch the characters “real” with their emotions and natural movements. Because of this, belief in what is happening greatly increases. Plus, due to the fact that during the cutscenes the character is fixed, the directors make interesting effects for the player, such as bokeh (background blur) and cool visual plans, showing the characters at different distances and frame positions, or, for example, suddenly somewhere in the distance Johnny appears and starts doing something or adding comments

Also an important detail – the game is completely saturated with sexuality, beauty and femininity, which for today’s agenda is a rare event. It is undoubtedly a huge plus to the developers’ courage. The game truly feels like a product designed for an adult audience. Even starting with the creation of the character, in the editor you can choose such features of the body, the selection of which is unlikely to be found in other games. In fact, the gameplay of this will not change much, but the fact is worthy of respect. I played the game for female V character, precisely because the editor allows you to create a really beautiful character that is pleasant to manage the entire game. Also because Judy won my heart and I really wanted to get to know the character better, if you know what I mean…

Surprisingly, once the character is created, you can’t change it in any way. And we are not talking about global things, you could add a simple functionality to change the external attributes: hair, hair color, piercings and other things. I suspect that this will be added later with future updates, especially when Cyberpunk Online comes out.

And now for the main point. As I reported above, I am a fan of story-driven single-player games. Cyberpunk 2077 fully meets my tastes in terms of style and pace. It’s one of those few games that grabs you from the very first minute and surprises you with its narrative structure. Despite the fact that the main storyline of Cyberpunk 2077 is very short and takes just over ten hours to complete, it is very intense and dynamic. I really wanted to spend more time in the game, so I took my time and tried to do all the central additional missions, of which there are quite a lot and most of them are very high quality. Some, just as interesting, varied and deep (literally) as the missions from the main branch. It is strictly recommended that you do them, especially those that can directly affect the main story. It’s unfortunate that some players might miss some stories, so I think most of the sides were worthy of being part of the main storyline. But, nevertheless, additional activities in Cyberpunk 2077 are very diverse, sometimes shocking and provocative, just worth the “cross scene” and the rock concert.

It is difficult to talk much about the story, and it is not necessary, because, firstly, you can cross the holy border of spoilers, and secondly, the players should see and feel everything themselves. But it is impossible not to mention the most important thing – Johnny Silverhand is terrific in every sense. He’s the star here, the informal, the rocker, the old school – everything is as it should be. His jokes are always on point, very tough and poignant. Johnny is very well voiced by Keanu Reeves and spelled out, in fact, as are all the other main characters. Overall, the characters are interesting and colorful. The dialogues and the way they talk to them are done very well – they always answer in a very detailed and meaningful way, which has a pleasant effect on the perception. There are not many answer choices, but they are all of high quality, worth your attention and tell you more about the situation, without wasting the player’s time, as is often the case in other projects.

Before starting the main walkthrough, I tried all three prologues for different classes and chose “corporat” precisely because of the atmosphere and, as I thought, some special effect on the world. In the end, unfortunately, it turned out that it didn’t change as much in the story as the choices of answers in the dialogues. Most of the time, one way or another, it leads to the same consequences, except for a few moments. And personally I don’t consider this a minus, but it might upset someone. Cyberpunk 2077 in my understanding is positioned as a story game with RPG elements, rather than a full-fledged RPG, like the The Witcher, of which I am a fan.

The story of Cyberpunk 2077 is emotional, dark, sad and, at the same time, filled with black humor and jokes, as it often happens in this genre. But that’s exactly the special value of the project, when video games talk about serious things. The world of the game is filled with a huge number of subtly integrated references to movies and anime, and detailed lore. For those who appreciate this culture – Cyberpunk 2077 will become a favorite game, as it happened to me. But still, seeing the whole picture, there is a feeling of uncertainty and haste, it seems to me that the main storyline has gaps. Of course, I really enjoyed the story and the ending (I see all the possible endings), but I would like to believe that in the story DLCs we get more bright and emotional moments and detailed answers to some questions.

Gameplay

There are several styles of play Cyberpunk 2077. Starting from no-contact stealth, to crazy action with machetes and bladed hands, although even on medium difficulty this way can seem quite difficult, because killed quickly, sometimes with two hits. Each style has its own special skills upgrade, there are five main branches in total, but each of them has 20-30 perks to improve weapons, melee, stealth and hacking. At first glance this may confuse the player, because initially you have to decide which branch of skills you would like to upgrade, as ability points are always in short supply and you can not develop several talents at once. This adds some balance, it turns out a specialist of one class, but in any case, if you want more skills, you have to clean up the map and earn points.

Because of my physical peculiarities it is difficult for me to play in an overactive action style, so I chose to hack my enemies remotely. Stealth itself in Cyberpunk 2077 is not made very convenient, but hacking pleases and simplifies the game. By the end of the playing I was fully upgrade branch “intelligence” and my character was a kind of hacker-terminator. Some quests I passed by connecting to the surveillance cameras and quietly destroying enemies one by one with scripts: blowing up their brains, setting them on fire, or hound them on their comrades. They didn’t even realize where the attack was coming from. This could be called a cheat, but the feature is present and it makes it easier to play. It would have been a good challenge if the gang’s netrunner could figure out where the attack was coming from and send the enemies there, but there are no such mechanics. Near the middle of the game I had no problem with any type of enemy or cyberpsychos, and even the bosses were killed on the first try.

As a result, Cyberpunk 2077 welcomes all ways of play. The locations provide many opportunities to get into this or that place by applying force, hacking skills or technical abilities. Everything depends only on the imagination and mood of the player: you can for fun to destroy all, destroy by hacking or stealth, or do not kill anyone, quietly sneaking into the right place and perform the order. Each new mission can go somehow special, which is sure to diversify the gameplay. The game does not impose its rules, but gives a huge freedom of choice.

Accessibility and Special Features

The most painful topic is the accessibility features for people with disabilities. Why for me this is the main point in any video game, I described in my previous review, and, unfortunately, in Cyberpunk 2077 with controls accessibility is not good.

In Cyberpunk 2077 there is absolutely no configuration of control schemes. It is given as is and reconfigure the purpose of the buttons in the game can not, which is an unpleasant point. You can certainly use optional accessories, or use the change control with the operating system of consoles, benefit from this functionality is available in the special features section on both platforms, but it is not always convenient, because you always need to keep in mind which button was changed to which, as the game interface, all the markers and tips remain unchanged. I want to note that the basics of controls in Cyberpunk 2077 are made conveniently, but the function of the buttons reconfiguration is definitely needed. It is noteworthy that in the PC-version of the game you can reassign the buttons, while the console versions do not have such a possibility.

Next, a very important point, in Cyberpunk 2077 there are no other control settings, which are now found in most projects. For example, due to weakness of the hands, I can not hold any button for a long time and in many games for this there is an opportunity not to hold, but just press and the function will be fixed. Once pressed the LT/L2 button and the weapon is always in the state of the sight, pressed again – the sight is get out. But okay the sight, with him not so critical, but the mechanics of scanning and hacking in Cyberpunk 2077 is made very difficult for people with disabilities. The scenario is as follows: you need to press and hold L1/LB and use the arrows on the D-Pad to select the script for hacking. In my case this is almost impossible to do (I need a separate hand implant for this in real life) – I physically can’t hold one button and reach for the other, especially for the D-Pad. For many normal people this may seem strange: what could be easier than moving your finger a couple of centimeters to the side? But for me, it’s physically impossible. If the scanning function were locked on the screen, I would feel comfortable pressing the right button and selecting the script. Or there would have been an option to use any other buttons under my right hand to select scripts – it would have made interacting with the game much easier. Cyberpunk 2077 has very subtle camera and character movement settings, but there are no such important features as press/hold buttons. Of the accessibility settings, there are only targeting assistance and pulling to the target.

As for the sticks, I also have some comments. During conversations with characters, you have to make a choice of answers with the arrows on the D-Pad, rather than with the sticks, as it was, for example, in The Witcher or many other games. It seems to be a small thing, but it is uncomfortable and problematic for me to “reach” for the arrows and it would be more comfortable to make the choice with the sticks (or any other buttons under my right hand). I understand why the developers did it this way, the game is very dynamic and the sticks are busy moving the character, but still could have added an additional option (available in the special features) to select the answer with the right stick, just moving it up or down a bit. At the moment, during the dialogs, the switch between characters is implemented by moving the right stick to the right or left, so I do not see the difficulty in adding the option of selecting the answer by moving it up or down.

Another point that I wrote and will write about in each of my reviews, and which I would like to convey not only to the developers of Cyberpunk 2077, but in general to everyone who creates video games is the function of sprint character. Now in most projects this is implemented by pressing the left stick L3/LS. This seems like a logical and simple action, but just so you understand – I with all my desire and maximum effort physically can not press this button. And usually in games I never “run”, which really changes the perception of gameplay in a negative sense and limits immersion and interaction, and if the game in certain scenes “forced” to do it, I have to temporarily reconfigure the sprint control to some other button to run the desired section. For developers, this problem is solved very simply by adding an additional optional feature – auto-run. This solution is present in some very rare games, such as Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War and Titanfall 2 – there it works perfectly well and performs its function. It can be implemented in several ways:

• Auto-run is always on;
• Auto-run is activated depending on the inclination of the stick forward, if more than 90%, then automatically turns on the sprint.

I understand that this functionality is little in demand and requires additional investment in the development and implementation, and the answer may be that who needs it, let him look for a solution on their own, but still such a possibility would greatly simplify the interaction with the game, I say this as someone who every day is faced with this problem.

For myself, I found a unique solution to comfortably play Cyberpunk 2077. Thanks to Microsoft and the Xbox Team I recently got the Xbox Adaptive Controller and many additional separate buttons. With this device and the CronusMax accessory I wrote about in one of my previous reviews I built a comfortable control scheme and got through the game without any problems. My setup is as follows:

• The Xbox Adaptive Controller and its accessories have become an indispensable solution for me. I use the controller itself as a hub and connected some buttons to it. In the photo you can see how they are placed on a special comfortable mat, closer to my hands. The elongated buttons had commands corresponding to the D-Pad arrows on the gamepad, ie: up, down, left, right. These buttons on regular gamepads are the most difficult for me to access, it’s very hard for me to reach them, especially during dynamic combat. Now they are always within my reach and I can comfortably and quickly press any of them. They solved the problem of selecting dialogues and sending scripts to enemies while scanning. As for the round buttons to the right, they are set up to duplicate the clicks on the LS/RS sticks – I wrote about it above that even if I particularly wanted to, I couldn’t click them on any original gamepad.
• The CronusMax serves several functions in this setup. Firstly, I use it to connect the DualShock 4 gamepad to the Xbox Series X, which you can read about in my related review. But in short, I find it very difficult to use the original Xbox gamepad because of its asymmetrical sticks arrangement. And secondly, CronusMax makes it possible to use scripts such as auto-sprint, which I wrote about in detail above.

In the end, it is safe to say that without the Xbox Adaptive Controller it would have been insanely difficult for me to play Cyberpunk 2077. Controller and its functionality became a real salvation for me and simplified the interaction with the game and the console. But it should be understood that the above devices are not for everyone and require additional complex setup and connection, besides they cost a lot of money, so this solution can not be considered affordable and mass

I really hope that a lot of the above will be fixed in future patches and that the control accessibility functionality will be added later. As strange as it may seem, but such little things are incredibly important to a certain group of fans of a video game and are the determining factor whether they can play it or not.

Conclusion

As a conclusion I would like to say once again that despite some, hopefully temporary, comments Cyberpunk 2077 has become one of my favorite games, and I can safely recommend it for playing. It may not be exactly what many dreamed and fantasized about after the first announcements, but it is one of the most stylish, beautiful, dynamic and adult projects of recent years, carefully crafted by fans of the genre for fans like it. I believe that games of this level should be appreciated. The very fact that CD Projekt RED took it upon themselves to develop such a great story project is worthy of respect. I want to believe that many of the problems of Cyberpunk 2077 will eventually be fixed and we will get a top quality product. We’ll probably have to wait a while, but all sorts of things have happened in the history of video games.

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