Night City is a great setting for exciting stories and characters. Natalie was particularly taken with her relationship with River Ward. Unfortunately, it was this romance that ended up ruining the open-world experience for her.
Night City is full of meaningless sex, twisted fantasies and fleeting acquaintances – as befits a cyberpunk scenario. But it’s the friendships, romances, and relationships in Cyberpunk 2077 that V can develop with the characters Judy, Panam, and River that make the role-playing game memorable for me.
These relationships don’t just give me a break from working as a mercenary, where V gets his hands dirty for others to earn a few extra pennies. They also bring me closer to V as a protagonist, become an important part of her life that is worth fighting for, and introduce me to characters that seem completely human and believable and quickly become a real highlight for me.
I find it all the more annoying that it is these relationships and romances, of all things, that ultimately prove to be the biggest disappointment for me and become the key figure that checkmates the open-world experience in Cyberpunk 2077.