Cyberpunk 2077: Night City Wire–Episode 2

Alright folks, CD Projekt Red is back with another Night City Wire episode, giving us another in-depth look and more information about the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 video game set to come out November 19th! So let’s jump right into what new things we were able to witness from Episode 2 (in case you missed it, you can check out my thoughts about episode 1 here).

An In-Depth Look Into the 3 Available Life Paths

Night City Wire started off with an introduction from Hollie Bennett again, of course, before beginning with an in-depth look into the three back story life paths that the player can choose from. They are: Street Kid, Nomad, and Corporate.

Street Kid

Street Kid seems to have a focus on different friends or connections in Night City, and a constant struggle against the police. If you like knowing all the factions within Night City, all the big players, and all the connections and intricacies within the city itself, Street Kid is for you.

Nomad

Nomads seem to have a particular focus on family connections, freedom, and comradery where the other two factions, Street Kid and Corpo, are too easily morally compromised. If you like the idea of growing up in the badlands and being an outsider when you arrive in Night City, Nomad is for you. This is the life path that I’m personally going with on my first playthrough.

Corporate

Corporate is all suits, hierarchy, phone calls and business meetings in suits. It’s classy meets corrupt. If you love the idea of having power in corrupt corporate companies flush with money, Corporate is for you.

Regardless of what backstory you choose, all three follow the same general path of major events happening within Night City. However, your background will affect your interactions with the characters in Night City, including what options are available to you in the dialogue and how situations play out. Also, regardless of your backstory, you will also find missions that are themed to all three classes.

Music: How Refused Brought Samurai to Life

Swedish band Refused recorded an entire album of tracks that are attributed to the band within the video game, Samurai. In Episode 2, we are able to see what the process of recording songs for a fictional band set within a video game was like for this Swedish rock band.

Lead vocalist Dennis Lyxzen explained how it was an unusual process having someone monitor his singing a song, since he was singing it as Samurai’s lead singer Johnny Silverhand (voiced and represented by Keanu Reeves) and not as himself.

At the end of the clip about Refused, CD Projekt Red also released the fourth track from Samurai, called A Like Supreme, online.

A Closer Look at the Weapons in the Game

With a short video clip but then also in an interview with senior gameplay designer Pawel Kapala, we learned a lot about the kinds of guns and other weapons that will be available in Cyberpunk 2077. They fall under five different categories: Cyberware, Melee Weapons, Smart Weapons, Power Weapons, and Tech Weapons.

There are also other secondary weapons like Throwables, as well as weapon mods and attachments for the weapons you pick up.

Power Weapons are the most similar to contemporary weapons, with some small exceptions like bullets being able to ricochet off walls or surfaces.

Tech Weapons use Electromagnetics to punch through walls or cover.

Smart weapons track enemies in real time, by having the bullets shoot out and then change direction in midair to hit their target, or follow a target that’s in motion.

To get these weapons, you can both find weapons and buy weapons in shops, but the best weapons you can acquire according to Pawel are off of the enemies that you kill or from loot caches within Night City. Weapon rarity ranges from common and uncommon to rare and legendary, which sounds very similar to that of Borderlands’ hierarchy system as well.

And that’s it!

Compared to Episode 1, a lot of immediate reactions to episode 2 were that it was better in the sense that there was more substance being shared (like the life paths and weapons deep dive), but also that it felt like it ended a lot sooner than the first episode. Interestingly, Episode 2 is actually about a minute longer in length than Episode 1, but it is true that it had less segments within it. This may be because there were less surprises in this episode, compared to the surprises presented in the new official trailer that was jam-packed with information, the news about the Netflix exclusive series Edgerunners and its production, and the new in-game mode called Braindance. Nonetheless, Episode 2 was an excellent continuation of Night City Wire, and I for one can’t wait for a third and, if we’re lucky, maybe even a forth episode before the game finally releases on November 19th.

Your thoughts

What did you think of Episode 2 of Night City Wire? What life path will you choose? Do you like the songs that are currently released from Samurai? And what weapons are you most excited about? Let me know in the comments below. You can also check out the entire episode here: