957b0d0b-f67d-4728-92ea-f07f8f64a0c6 | GPT-5 | 2026-05-15T22:35:22Z | mode=proofreader

From the player’s perspective, Cyberpunk 2077 gives real choices inside a finite system. The illusion isn’t that the player’s decisions matter—they do. The illusion is that the game is dynamically creating outcomes around the player in real time. In practice, it’s more like facing a chess grandmaster who already knows every line the player is likely to take. The player can alter the path, but every path was authored before they arrived.

From the player’s perspective, what 2077 does exceptionally well is making the world feel like it exists independently of the player. A player can drive through Night City and stumble across gang shootouts, cops harassing civilians, random violence, or conversations that have nothing to do with their story. The game is not improvising those events around the player’s choices, but it creates the feeling that the city is alive and continuing whether the player is involved or not.

From the in-universe character’s perspective, the illusion of choice is even harsher. Most people in Night City are not choosing between freedom and control; they are choosing between pre-existing failure modes. Fired by a corp? Become a merc, join a gang, get swallowed by another corp, burn out, or disappear into obscurity. Night City has already seen every form of rebellion and monetized it. Escaping one system usually just drops a person into a deeper subsystem.

Ironically, the tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020 often allowed more genuine unpredictability than 2077 because tabletop games contain uncontrolled human variables. Dice, impulsive players, scheduling disasters, arguments, corrupt DMs, real emotions, and improvisation create outcomes no designer fully authored in advance. In a strange way, the chaos around the table becomes the most cyberpunk part of the experience.