Stop Telling Me To Start Games Over

We did it, folks! Cyberpunk 2077 has finally become the game it was meant to be, taking us on a beautiful adventure while showing us exactly what next generation consoles can do. And it only took about three years after those next generation consoles launched. That’s not too bad. If you asked me for the exact correct length of game development, I’d say, ‘oh, until about one thousand days after the full release?’ That seems like a normal amount of time, right?

Maybe I’m being a little bit unfair. There have been other, previous updates to Cyberpunk 2077 that have eliminated tons of bugs and graphical glitches while still further chiselling out what is, honestly, a pretty great experience. Cyberpunk 2077, despite all its many flaws at launch, its fair amount of flaws in the months after launch, and its few remaining flaws three years later, is a good game. It’s joined the ranks of No Man’s Sky and Final Fantasy 14 in the world of, “You’re not allowed to be mad at us anymore because we fixed things real good, we did, we did!”

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What CD Projekt Red did with Cyberpunk 2077 is admirable. It feels like a whole new game. But here’s the thing. And this is a minor point. For the love of God, stop telling me to start games over again. Jesus Christ. Is your dad Father Time? Do you have nowhere to be, ever? Restart a game? In this economy?

Listen, I get it. Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot of new content. Some of the old content is better because of it. I understand you completely. But on the other hand, I’ve spent dozens of hours in the previous version of the game. I already have a character there who’s been through a lot of the story. She’s made friends. She’s made enemies. She’s accidentally hit a wall with a motorcycle and flown across a beach.

All of that has taken a lot of hours and a lot of effort. And you know what? This is the second time everyone has told me to start this goddamn game over!

When the first series of patches dropped, folks all over the World Wide Web promised that this was the time to start the game over. Oh, you had a character before? Well, throw them out. They’re garbage. All the new balances and improvements make this time the one to create a person and walk around Night City. Finally, the final experience!

So I did. I’m on my second character now. And I’m not trading her up again. I’m tired, guys. I love this game, but I do not have the energy to do the heist on Konpeki Plaza again. It’s a long mission. Also I don’t want to create another character and then struggle through whether I make the same choices as before to see the story play out the way it was or make completely different choices so I never find out what would’ve happened to my old version of V. I don’t want to do eight hundred rescue missions again so I can boost my stats to be better at later rescue missions.

Stop it already. I know it’s in good faith. I know you mean well. But not all of us have hundreds of hours to invest into the same experience again and again until a company gets it right. Sure, for some people that’s super exciting! Some folks like to play open-world games again and again, investing thousands of hours into detailed worlds like Assassin’s Creed or Grand Theft Auto. I am not one of those people. You’d think I would be, considering I’ve got no family and no close friends, but here we are.

It’s not even that I like my version of V, although I do. It’s that I don’t want to have to do everything over from zero just to get the ‘full’ experience I should’ve had when I paid full price for this game at launch three years ago. I recognize I don’t have to! Nobody is forcing me to restart a character. And I’m not! Kid, I’ve already loaded my old games and reallocated points and let the ripperdoc fix me up. I ain’t losing 35 hours to a patch and DLC.

Would I have a better time if I did create a new character? Who knows! I’d probably have a better idea of what’s going on. For the last two hours of play, I’ve slowly moved through my journal to give my dumb ass a ‘previously on’ catchup with the events of Night City. So I do recognize the benefits of starting anew. Getting the full experience fresh has got to be cool if you’ve never played the game before. But I have. I’ve made new characters too many times. I’m done making new characters. I don’t want to make them anymore.

What sucks is that ‘make a new character’ is not unreasonable advice. No one intends to be an asshole when they’re pitching it. It’s players, media, and companies saying ‘it’s so much better now and you should see it all!’. But when a game launches, early adopters are the ones putting in the time to appreciate what the developers made. It’s the most excited and loyal people spending hours playing. When you tell those people to start over, you’re essentially telling them that your game was a waste of time until just now. What players did before? Meaningless. Start over. And it’s their fault for trusting you upfront.

We all know to be wary of game launches and content promises. We all know game companies release half-finished products under grueling schedules put in place by money people. But there’s something deeply annoying about being expected to reboot your own experience every time a developer makes changes to something you already own. I’m not talking fixes. I’m not saying “it’s crappy that the game works better now than before.” We know that. But the idea that the player is the one who screwed up by trusting you enough to progress deep into a game is kind of insulting.

Not to mention the fact that players spend $60 on a video game when it launches. Or $70 for the enhanced edition. Or $250 for the deluxe edition that comes with an embarrassing statue that will keep you from ever having sex again. I’m not nearly the first person to say this, but asking for full price and then repeatedly telling fans “Now it works, wait no, now it works, wait, now finally it works” is shitty. I shouldn’t have to restart a game three times to give developers the satisfaction of doing the right thing a third of a decade after release.

Cyberpunk 2077 is legitimately great now. And if you haven’t ever played it, I’d say this is the point at which it landed. But I’m not upending my game. I’m not creating yet another new V that I’ll likely be told to replace in three months when the final, final, final update for the game comes. Maybe that’s shooting myself in the foot and not enjoying the full video game I personally paid money for. Or maybe I know that if I have to listen to Jackie talk about dying a legend again, I’m going to shut off Cyberpunk 2077 and never play a video game again.

Anyway, let me know when Starfield adds maps and I’m supposed to make up a new astronaut for some reason.

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