This is a brand new 45-minute chunk of gameplay, packed full of new details and interesting things to pull out. Here's what we've learned:
The footage is introduced as "Still work in progress," which makes sense considering Cyberpunk is an April 16, 2020 game.
"Once we're ready to show this to the public, we will."
Cyberpunk is a narrative-driven open-world action RPG.
They're going to focus on the gameplay mechanics this time.
Roughly 50 minutes of brand-new gameplay will be shown.
You play as V.
The demo is from the middle of the game. V has been implanted - against his will - with a biochip that holds the secret to immortality.
He's BEING HAUNTED BY A DIGITAL GHOST NAMED JOHNNY SILVERHAND! (This confirms he's dead.)
V is getting help from a group of "net-runners" named the Voodoo Boys.
You can change V's hair color, skin color, eye color, and facial features. There are lots of facial customization options.
Silverhand, when you leave the customization menu: "Come on, you really think they give a rat's dick how you look?"
When V meets the Voodoo Boys at a chapel, they reveal they have Haitian ties.
We're moving through a huge crowd in a chapel as a preacher gives a sermon.
When meeting your Voodoo Boys contact, the "street kid" life path choice opened up an alternate dialogue option.
The contact directs you to a butcher shop to ask for someone named Placide.
Graffiti on the wall says, "Where's Johnny?"
The demo takes place in the Pacifica region of the city, which was initially supposed to be fancy but investors pulled out and left it a wreck.
There's real-time translation of someone talking to you in Creol, thanks to an implant chip. They speak it and you just read subtitles.
You meet Placide, who then leads you somewhere to give you a job.
We are trying to learn more about the chip on our head. It's repeated that it's not there by V's choice.
Pacifica looks like an extremely run-down boardwalk-ish district – a little like Santa Monica, CA. We see hotels, a Ferris wheel, and flamingo statues.
A rival gang called the Animals have moved into a rundown mall called the GIM.
We head to a hotel converted into a tech Haven and visit a shopkeeper, called Grann's Tech Shop.
There are lots of shops to find, and more stuff unlocks as your street cred goes up.
This character is getting netrunners' stuff since in this case we're playing as a netrunner.
To clarify the Silverhand thing mentioned earlier, he is literally just a voice in your head like a narrator – at least so far.
There are lots of clothing customization options.
We bought something called "Demon Software" (maybe daemon?) that gave us a new ability when equipped.
Placide leads us to an office to talk, where he tells us to take a job before he'll tell us anything more.
We jacked into Placide's computer system. We're told we didn't have to and that could have backfired if he then took advantage of it, but we did it anyway just to look up info on that chip you want to know about.
You'd taken a bullet to the brain at some point and the chip supposedly stopped working.
Oh wow, Silverhand is like a hologram chilling behind Placide during this whole conversation. He looks exactly like he did in the trailer. He has a little blue tint and is glitching out. He makes occasional comments.
Placide's mission lets him use you so he can see what you see as you head to the GIM to liberate it from the Animals.
Someone has equipped the Animals with high-tech gear, which is super weird, so you've gotta find out who and why.
Now Placide is also talking to you through your head. It's getting crowded in here.
There's a fully dynamic day and night cycle. Sunset looks nice.
We come across a YAIBI KUZANAKI motorcycle and riding it. It's the one from the collector's edition. Motorcycle driving looks fairly arcadey and sort of stiff.
You can change the radio to listen to different stations and can swap between first and third-person perspectives.
You can travel across the whole world freely and seamlessly with no loading screens.
We meet up with some Voodoo Boy lookouts outside the GIM mall.
We driving around a huge parking lot to go in through the back entrance for a stealthier approach. That's optional.
The Animals value strength and drink something called "juice" that makes them crazy strong.
As we sneak by guards, they all have "18" next to their names – most likely a level indicator.
Animal guards go to attack the Voodoo Boys scouts, who've been discovered, so we snuck by after they leave.
V is holding what looks like an SMG with a red dot sight right now, but we haven't fought anybody yet.
We're looking for the high-tech van now.
We grab a guard stealthily; we can either kill him or dispose of him in a non-lethal way. In this case, we toss him down a nearby garbage chute.
"Players can play the entire game without killing an enemy if you wish." Non-lethal runs, here we come!
There's a locked door. You could physically open it, but since this player character is a hacker we found a terminal to hack it. Hacking minigame confirmed!
There's a grid of hex codes that you pick out the right ones for. Completing the basic level will give you access but you can get more optional benefits for doing even better.
We come across some Animal guards boxing against a bot. We use a "quick hack" from afar on the bot to turn up the difficulty and it knocked the dude out cold. It's super funny and still stealthy.
We quick-hacked a drink machine to drop soda, causing a noise that distracted some dudes. Then we used a crazy laser cord thing to kill them stealthily from behind, including slicing an arm off.
We found the van!
Cyberpunk 2077 has a "fluid class system" that allows you to mix and match abilities.
We're now using a developer tool to go back to the middle of the mission to replay it as a more strength-focused version of V to open that door by force.
This opened a new path that skipped the guys we had to sneak by entirely.
Now we've skipped back to the van, and we're eavesdropping on some Animals but we are not listening too long in the interest of time.
We're still trying to be stealthy, but we used our strength to do a melee takedown on a guy and stab someone with a broken bottle. Sliced the heck out of 'em.
You can use perk points earned on level-ups to upgrade a number of categories: blades, rifles, handguns, assassination, cold-blood, sniper rifles, engineering, hacking, shotgun melee, two-handed, and maybe one more I didn't have time to write down. The level-up skill tree is a branching thing that looks like a motherboard almost, with cables going out from the center.
Another strength move: using an enemy as a bullet shield, ripping away an enemy's gun and using it.
There's some cool, bloody feedback when hitting people.
We just went on a crazy killing spree!
We shot a dude in the knee and it made him limp.
Now we're switching back to wimpy old netrunner V, who'd snuck to the van. It turns out to be from NetWatch, an agency dedicated to fighting cybercrime. This is Netwatch's attempt to bring down the Voodoo Boys by surveilling them with that van.
That laser cable is called a monowire. It's held like a garrot and can be used to hack people from afar or slice them up like crazy up close.
Perks also affect dialogue options.
We are now going after the netrunners from Netwatch who're behind this.
We're back to using that SMG, and we hacked a turret to fight for us.
Then, using the demon we bought, we hacked someone and gave it to them. That made him pull the pin on a grenade he was holding, killing him. Hacking made someone else shut themselves down, too.
We used a buff to move faster.
We zoomed in to eavesdrop on Sasquatch, the leader of the Animals. She has a huge hammer and uses it in a cool boss fight. She has a weak point glowing on her back that you have to shoot at after dodging her attack. Breaking it cut off her juice supply, making her too weak to hold the hammer.
She's not done yet: she grabbed and hacked us.
If the hack finishes (it's a bar at the top of the screen) we'd straight-up die, but we managed to kill her first.
The environments are fairly destructible, with walls and pieces of cover getting torn up with bullet holes during a fight.
After that battle we headed into a movie theater, but we got cut off from Placide. There, we found the NetWatch special agent. He wants to talk to you in private, so he severed the connection to Placide. He tells you NetWatch wants to buy you out, and that Placide plans to kill you after the job.
NPCs will interject with quick lines while they wait for you to choose a dialogue option.
You have the choice to incapacitate the agent, ask him to back up the claim, use your Street Kid option to relate to the Voodoo Boys, and a few others.
We choose to incapacitate and hack him to free Brigette, who is the person you've been trying to get a meeting with.
You get knocked out. When you reboot, Johnny is there to talk. He says the NetWatch guy was right, as soon as you gave him access Placide fried everyone on the network, including us.
We looted several individual piles of money on the table and left the mall. The Voodoo Boy outside offered to give us a ride back to Placide.
A loading screen was shown just for fast travel. Again, you can otherwise go through the entire game without loading screens.
Brigitte is back with Placide when we get there, and she knows about the chip.
We are looking to talk to Alt Cunningham (an established Cyberpunk character) about it.
Alt was the first person to make themselves into a fully digital consciousness.
Brigitte leads you to the heart of the Voodoo hideout.
We're using Johnny as bait to draw put Cunningham, getting into an ice bath to go into cyberspace. The world disappears then comes back as a wacky digital version that looks like Tron mixed with the Matrix.
Unraveling the mystery of the chip is a big part of the plot.
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