Was Cyberpunk 2077 Overhyped?
If you haven’t been living under a rock, you would know that a game named ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ was supposed to change gaming forever. What happened to all of this talk? In this article, we are going to diagnose Cyberpunk 2077’s rise to fame and how it suddenly came to a halt, if not a decline after it’s release.
Cyberpunk 2077 — A Victim To ‘Overhype’
After being in development for nearly a decade, Cyberpunk 2077 was in a ‘GTA’ (Grand Theft Auto) style based in the futuristic city called ‘Night City’. It was released at the end of 2020, but ever since hasn’t hit the news as it used to. What exactly happened to this extremely hyped game that was ‘Cyberpunk 2077’?
Cyberpunk’s Breathtaking Rise
CD Projekt Red’s biggest hyped game was Cyberpunk and you have to give it to them, their promotional methods and campaigns were very interesting to say the least. After years of making trailers for the game, they managed to get a spot to world premiere their game on Xbox’s stage at E3 back in 2019 (how does that seem so long ago)?.
After the world premiere, the buzz for Cyberpunk was unreal, you couldn’t go a day without hearing or reading the word ‘Cyberpunk’ somewhere. Keanu Reeves was their main promotional material, a form of endorsement so people with have a good retention span during their presentation (since they recognised the celebrity).
Another factor that further pushed their ever-so-fast growing hype was the memes of Keanu Reeves saying ‘you’re breathtaking’, it surely was a breathtaking meme. Not just that, but more memes popped up around the internet with the Cyberpunk soundtrack, i’m sure you know exactly what I’m talking about!
All of these factors pushed the reach of Cyberpunk and at this point in time, everyone had heard of the new game to break the gaming industry, even your grandparents probably.
Beginning Of The End
All seemed well for this amazing video game and as for it’s hype train too, but it then started to drop in attention.
Cyberpunk had to delay their game as they believed it was wrong to release the game in that state, and delayed the game a further 2 more times. This led to frustration within the community and instead of excitement, it was anger. This put a lot of pressure on CD Projekt Red to get the game out, and so instead of throwing their hands in the air and saying “it will not be ready for another year or so”, they felt the need to publish.
This spiraled into many complaints and even refunds as the game was not to what they expected. It was a hot buggy mess of a game, and the extremely long wait made many players frustrated and not wanting to play.
Try to imagine waiting for a game for almost the duration of a decade for it to be boardline unplayable. However, I also like to think it wasn’t so much the developers fault with the added pressure every statement they’d give. Perhaps if they had handled it differently and delayed it for a lot longer and thought it out properly, this wouldn’t have happened.
Not everything is bad with the game, the city skies and the next generation beautiful graphics and scenery are amazing to look at. It’s that good it’s too much for today’s technology and specifications that most graphics cards struggle to meet the 60fps mark.
Victim To The Overhype Disease?
As great as the game is, I’m sure many players will return within a year or so after the release to try and play again. The development team is working hard to polish this game and make it more playable and optimised to today’s technology, but I don’t think this doesn’t make it a ‘good game’.
I can see both sides, so I’m neutral on whether Cyberpunk was overhyped or not. What are your thoughts, was Cyberpunk another victim to the ‘Overhype’ disease? Let me know
Written By: Max Lang-Orsini
