Is Cyberpunk 2077 an RPG or an Open World Game?
Cyberpunk 2077 is a sci-fi video game. Cyberpunk 2077 was developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt. Cyberpunk 2077 (2020) has been praised for its expansive and dense environments, storyline, and visual fidelity. Cyberpunk 2077 has often been cited as one of the most anticipated video games of the 2010s, and has been an important influence on the video games industry. Cyberpunk 2077 is a video game set in the future, in which people live in a dense metropolis surrounded by wasteland. This video game features several gameplay systems, such as main story missions, side activies, a loot system, among other systems. Due to the various game systems present in Cyberpunk 2077, it is often debated whether it is more accurately described as an RPG or as an open world video game.
The Purpose of This Article
While it is true that Cyberpunk 2077 features both elements of RPG video games as well as of open world video games, I often see discussions whether it should be described either as an RPG, as an open world, or as an open world RPG. In this article, I will analyse the aspects of Cyberpunk 2077 and compare them to RPG video games, open world video games and to open world RPG video games in order to produce some conclusion on this matter.
It should be noted that while in this article I will attempt to produce my definitive description of Cyberpunk 2077, this should not be considered an absolute definition, but my own definition. In other words, it should be considered The Video Game Literate's description of Cyberpunk 2077.
Is Cyberpunk 2077 an RPG?
In the RPG sense, Cyberpunk 2077 features missions, which are like quests, the development of the main character's skills, dialogue options and stat-based game loot, which are traditional characteristics of the RPG genre, and many of these characteristics are also found in classic RPGs such as Dragon Quest VI (1995), Final Fantasy VII (1997), Baldur's Gate (1998), Diablo II (2000), Gothic (2001), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) and Divinity: Original Sin (2014).
Cyberpunk 2077 is an RPG video game, as it features classic RPG characteristics, and a well-developed and deep main storyline, being accurately described as a story-driven video game with an open world. In this sense, Cyberpunk 2077 is an open world RPG, such as Fallout and The Elder Scrolls video games.
While having some classic RPG elements such as multiple dialogue options, quests and the development of skills, it is notable that Cyberpunk 2077 also features classic action RPG elements, such as the stat-based game loot, which is a characteristic also found in action RPGs (ARPGs) such as Diablo II (2000), Borderlands (2009) and Path of Exile (2013). ARPGs are known for their classic gameplay loop in which the game character fights and defeats different enemies, with increasingly difficulty, in order to find and equip better items and equipment, which increase the main character's stats, such as fighting power and health points, to become stronger throughout the game.
Is Cyberpunk 2077 an Open World Video Game?
Due to the large environment available in the game open world of Cyberpunk 2077, players wonder whether this is an open world video game. Moreover, considering the RPG characteristics of Cyberpunk 2077, players also wonder whether Cyberpunk 2077 belongs to the open world video game genre in the same sense as Assassin's Creed and Grand Theft Auto (GTA) video games.
Cyberpunk 2077 is open world, featuring expansive and dense environments in which the main character is able to adventure. This video game not only features an open game world, but it also features side activities and other similarities to traditional open world video games. For this reason, it both features and open game world and also belongs to the open world video game genre.
What Makes Cyberpunk 2077 Open World?
In the open world sense, Cyberpunk 2077 features a dense and vast game world in which the main game character can adventure either on foot or on vehicles, featuring a central metropolis, a surrounding wasteland and many interior locations, a characteristic not often found in open world video games. While the definition of open world video game is elusive, many researches agree that, in general, open world video games provide freedom to the player character in the sense of deciding in which direction to adventure in the game world, and this is certainly a characteristic of Cyberpunk 2077. Interestingly, Cyberpunk 2077 features a crime and punishment system similar, in principle, to the game system of Grand Theft Auto video games, in which if the player character engages in unlawful behaviour, they are tracked by the game police system.
While Cyberpunk 2077 is also an RPG video game and also an action-adventure video game, it can also be described as an open world video game due to the large size of its open environments, due to the presence of various NPCs roaming its metropolis, as well as the open world side activities. These are characteristics also seen in other traditional open world video games.
Cyberpunk 2077 features different landmarks and unique locations which can be found throughout its dense metropolis, or in the surrounding wasteland. These landmarks are another classic characteristic of open world video game design, also found in classic open world video games such as Grand Theft Auto III (2001), Assassin's Creed (2007), The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015), The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017) and Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018). The unique landmarks in open world video games incentivize adventuring throughout the game world in order for the player to discover new and interesting locations, providing variation to the adventure.
Although I've seen criticism regarding the interaction of the main player character with most of the NPCs in the game world in Cyberpunk 2077, comparing it to the interaction featured in The Elder Scrolls video games, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) in which often there are multiple dialogue options present, it is important to mention that classic open world video games in many cases do not feature dialogue options with most NPCs at all, such as Grand Theft Auto III (2001) and Assassin's Creed (2007), games in which dialogue with most NPCs is limited to remarks that some NPCs make when passing by the main game character. Typically, open world video games with many NPCs and with a vast game world do not focus on multiple dialogue options with all of its NPCs, but rather on multiple gameplay systems in the game world in order to keep the gameplay interesting and varied. It is interesting to note that open world RPGs that provide multiple dialogue options in vast game worlds often feature a smaller amount of NPCs in the game world, or, in other instances, some NPC presets that are repeated in the game world through randomized appearance, providing some sense of variance, while retaining the same dialogue options. While multiple dialogue options are most often than not a characteristic of RPG games, I believe that this characteristic is better analysed, in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, through comparisons to other open world games and to open world RPGs, such as The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011) and Fallout 4 (2015). For example, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011), while featuring a vast game world, does not feature cities as dense as the metropolis of Cyberpunk 2077, in the sense that its urban hubs do not feature as many NPCs as the amount found in Cyberpunk 2077. This is also true for Fallout 4 (2015). In video games with large amounts of NPCs that can be talked to, it is expected to see preset dialogue options rather than unique dialogue options with each of these NPCs, and the unique dialogue options are mostly reserved to story-relevant NPCs, also referred to as secondary game characters.
Open World Video Games and Their Impact on the Video Games Industry
While open world video games are widely regarded as one of the most representative of the video game sub-genres in the industry in current times, to the point of many, if not most, of major company published titles either adopting open world game elements or representing the sub-genre itself, open world video games were not always so numerous in the industry. In the past, there certainly were examples of open world video games in many moments throughout the history of the video games industry. At the same time, in many cases, these open world games of the past did not many common characteristics between themselves to the point of being categorized as a whole separate sub-genre in the same way most open world games are categorized today.
Some examples of open world video games in the past include The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994), which featured many of the open world characteristics found in later The Elder Scrolls video games, such as a game world which can be traversed in multiple directions, a day and night cycle, various cities to visit and different enemies across the landscape. The Elder Scrolls: Arena (1994), unlike many classic open world video games of the 2000s and 2010s, featured an infinite game world.
I've often seen researches attributing to Zelda video games an important influence in the development of open world video games. For example, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time (1998) featured a central hub, much similar to an open game world in current definitions, which could be traversed by the game character in order to visit different locations. Older Zelda video games are often credited to having featured various open world video game characteristics.
Later examples of video games that feature a stronger resemblance to current open world video games are Shenmue (1999) and, Grand Theft Auto III (2001). Shenmue featured an urban video game world in which the player character is able to adventure and talk to multiple different non-player characters (NPCs). The game also featured a day and night cycle, and various side activities which could be performed in this game world, much similar to current open world video games. Grand Theft Auto III, on the other hand, while also featuring these characteristics, is often considered to be an important mark in the history of open world video games, as Grand Theft Auto III. While Grandt Theft Auto III featured characteristics of open world video game which had been seen previously in other video game titles, Grand Theft Auto III innovated the industry in the sense that adventuring in its open game world is rewarding by itself, with secret, hidden collectibles scattered throughout the environment, power-up collectibles that enhance the gameplay for a short time, as well as various elements that can only be found in certain places of the game world. While some video games feature an open world in the sense to increase player immersion and to add a sense of vastness to the game world, in many cases these landscapes are beautiful, but empty, in the sense that there are no side activities to be performed, there are no hidden items to be collected, and there are no unique landmarks to be discovered. In this sense, while these games certainly feature beautiful landscapes that contribute to the sense of vastness of the game world, some players feel a lack of incentive to adventure in these open world landscapes as there is nothing to be found, beyond beautiful sceneries. In this sense, Grand Theft Auto III not only featured a game world to adventure, but also to discover, with its side activities, hidden items and unique landmarks.
Is Cyberpunk 2077 an Immersive Sim?
It is interesting also to point out that Cyberpunk 2077 also features one of the most important immersive sim game characteristics, the one of allowing multiple ways of completing missions and surpassing challenges, a classic characteristic of the immersive sim genre. This characteristic can be found in classic immersive sim video games such as Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992), System Shock (1994) and Deus Ex (2000). While games of multiple genres feature different ways of conducting tasks, immersive sim games are known for their first-person gameplay, in most cases, as well as the multiple ways of resolving situations, two characteristics found in Cyberpunk 2077. However, although Cyberpunk 2077 has immersive sim elements during its missions, in my opinion, the fact that it has clearly defined game systems in its side activities in which there are no multiple ways of resolve (such as the crime and punishment system) would be incoherent to an immersive sim description, and thus, I consider Cyberpunk 2077 to feature immersive sim elements, but not to be an immersive sim game per se, at least not in the classic definition of immersive sim games, which would be games that follow the gameplay tradition of Ultima Underworld: The Stygian Abyss (1992), System Shock (1994) and Deus Ex (2000).
Is Cyberpunk 2077 an RPG or an Open World Game?
In this article, I have shown through multiple examples that Cyberpunk 2077 features classic characteristics of both RPGs, such as quests, main character development, and stat-based game loot, and of open world video games, such as freedom of adventuring and side activities. For this reason, if Cyberpunk 2077 were described as either an RPG or as either an open world game, both descriptions would be true. However, which description is more accurate?
For players who play Cyberpunk 2077 solely for its storyline and main story missions, Cyberpunk 2077 will be mostly an RPG experience. For players who play Cyberpunk 2077 in order to adventure and discover its game world and its side activities, Cyberpunk 2077 will be mostly an open world video game experience. And for players who play Cyberpunk 2077 in order to complete its main story missions, find different loot, perform side activities and adventure in the game world, Cyberpunk 2077 will be an open world RPG experience.
It seems clear that Cyberpunk 2077 is at the same time both an RPG and an open world video game. However, simply having RPG elements does not define a video game as an RPG, in my opinion. Many video games feature characteristics of multiple genres, and in many instances the description of these games is not always accurately represented by the definition of each of these genres. For example, Minecraft (2011) features an open world, but is it accurately described as an open world game? In my opinion, Minecraft is more accurately described as an open world survival craft video game, or as a survival game. Describing Minecraft as an open world game would categorize it in the same group as Grand Theft Auto video games, while there are clearly many gameplay differences between Minecraft and Grand Theft Auto video games, and thus this would not be an accurate description, in the sense that it would cause more doubt than education.
While Cyberpunk 2077 certainly features characteristics of both the RPG genre and the open world genre, which genre describes it better? Well, considering the vast amount of game systems present in Cyberpunk 2077, it must be stated that there are multiple ways of playing such game. In this sense, it is possible to play Cyberpunk 2077 as a story-rich, action-adventure video game, with a focus on the main story missions, and in this sense Cyberpunk 2077 would be surely accurately described as an RPG. On the other hand, it is also possible to play Cyberpunk 2077 as an immersive, atmospheric open world experience, adventuring in the metropolis and in the surrounding wasteland, discovering the different locations and performing side activities, and in this case it would be surely accurately described as an open world video game. In this sense, Cyberpunk 2077 could be played either as an RPG or as an open world video game. It could also be played as both.
Considering that the storyline and main story missions of Cyberpunk 2077 are finite, such as in most RPGs, eventually the player will have finished the main story missions and will move on to the side activities and adventuring in the game world of Cyberpunk 2077. In this regard, the main story experience will be a part of the gameplay time, and the rest of the gameplay time will be spent in classic open world gameplay, with side activities and adventuring. In this sense, it could perhaps be said that most of the gameplay time will be open world gameplay, although this varies from player to player.