Transcript

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello and welcome back to the Gaming Backlog Book club. We are here to chat about the moments of Cyberpunk 2077. From our first meeting with Dexter DeShawn up until after the dreamlike moment in the motel.

But first, it sounds like you have a real life cyberpunk 2077 update, don’t you, Alex?

[00:00:19] Speaker B: I do, yeah. I’m playing or I’ll be receiving here in the next couple days the cyberpunk TCG because I backed it on Kickstarter.

So I’m excited to open the booster boxes. I get in the starter decks and then I have another friend who’s doing it as well and then play and learn the game, the TCG game. It’s actually pretty fun, so I’m looking forward to that.

[00:00:44] Speaker A: You’ll have multiple cyberpunk activities at the same time.

[00:00:48] Speaker B: Yes. I also did start the book. I’m not very far into it. Oh yeah, Cyberpunk, I think it’s called. No coincidence.

I have not started Edge Runners yet though.

[00:00:58] Speaker A: That’s, you know, you should just quadruple it up and.

[00:01:00] Speaker B: I know, I know, I know.

[00:01:02] Speaker A: Cybercycle really fast.

[00:01:04] Speaker B: Yeah, we’ll see. But yeah, not very far in the book. But it’s been good so far. But yeah, but I’m excited more for the. Definitely for the TCG when I get that to start.

[00:01:13] Speaker A: And I believe they’re like modeled after some of the tarot cars that you can see in game, which you don’t.

At least so far. I haven’t seen them seen them but I’ve seen other people like Misty uses them and things like that. So I’m curious to see. I don’t know that I have the time for a trading card game, but very intrigued by it.

You’ll have to come back and give us a review once you’ve got a few rounds in.

[00:01:38] Speaker B: I will definitely.

[00:01:41] Speaker A: And not specific to cyberpunk but kind of related to the genre. I.

I found out randomly that there is a.

This year, like actually still the current season. Amazon released a new adaptation of the Ghost in the Shell which I had seen a long time ago. The original, well, I don’t know if it was the original, but the anime version from the 90s, which was very good and sort of dark and gritty and very Blade Runner esque. And this one’s a lot more kind of colorful and goofy 90s anime style. But it, I started watching it just out of curiosity and it was fun.

Definitely gets you into the sort of just all the conversations around AI and cyborg bodies. So Fits right in.

[00:02:29] Speaker B: Okay, very cool.

[00:02:31] Speaker A: Yeah, I’d recommend checking it out. But first, watch Cyberpunk Edgerunners.

[00:02:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I will.

[00:02:38] Speaker A: Well, reminder, we do go into spoilers here and there. So if you want to avoid that, start at the previous episode and then come back to this one once you’re caught up.

So, Alex, did you do your homework?

Do you remember what your homework is?

[00:02:53] Speaker B: No.

So probably not.

[00:02:55] Speaker A: Bad, bad, bad.

Which radio station did you listen to the most in this section of the game?

[00:03:02] Speaker B: Oh, damn it. I did. I ended up listening. Yes, there was a radio station.

[00:03:07] Speaker A: I will ask you this question every week. So. And.

[00:03:09] Speaker B: And to the list, it was like the EDM one. And I can’t.

I can’t remember the name. Off.

[00:03:16] Speaker A: Okay, you’re gonna have to take a note of this next time because there are multiple.

Yeah, techno, electronic, EDM style channels in here.

[00:03:25] Speaker B: I’ll have to. Yeah, I’ll have to look.

I don’t know. But yeah, I did. I did start. I didn’t realize, like, when originally starting the game and getting your car, I didn’t see that as a function. And then after you mentioned it, I saw it and, yeah, started listening.

[00:03:42] Speaker A: Turning the radio, I went through a

[00:03:43] Speaker B: couple stations and then I kind of found one that I liked.

[00:03:47] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s some.

I mean, I think it’s like, I don’t know how much driving FM.

[00:03:53] Speaker B: There we go.

So 92, 92.9 night FM, techno and electric electronic. That’s what I was mainly listening to.

[00:04:01] Speaker A: Okay, okay, cool. I’ll. I’ll check that one out this time.

Like, I’ve like popped on each station for, you know, 30 seconds just to get the vibe. But for me, it was 91.9 Royal Blue Radio, which is the jazz station.

There’s nothing. I mean, I love jazz generally, but in all of its forms. But there’s just nothing funnier than being in like a.

Being attacked in a car chase or going through some important mission with a bunch of guns blazing and you’re just chilling in your car, like just tapping your foot to some jazz.

How much driving have you actually done?

[00:04:40] Speaker B: I feel like a pretty good amount.

[00:04:44] Speaker A: Reasonable amount. Yeah.

[00:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I got into a police chase.

[00:04:47] Speaker A: Oh. Oh, yeah. I think I got chased by the police at some point too, now that you’ve mentioned it.

[00:04:53] Speaker B: Yeah. So I had to get rid of them, shake them off my tail. It was because what did I do? I.

Oh, I came up to a stop. What? That was a stop that was basically blocked off by Maelstrom.

And before I could turn around like it like fast enough. They went red and started to shoot at me.

[00:05:17] Speaker A: Yep. Sounds all right. Yep.

[00:05:18] Speaker B: So I ran one over, drive away. But a cop saw me start chasing me.

[00:05:24] Speaker A: Good times.

[00:05:25] Speaker B: So I kind of went a little gta. Ish.

[00:05:28] Speaker A: Yeah, no, that is expected to happen. I think something similar to that happened to me as well. Like you just going up against the other gang and then. Oh, there’s a cop there. Oops.

[00:05:36] Speaker B: Yeah, there’s also, I will say with the cops like one in the car actually tried to do. They like did a pit maneuver on me. So they actually like. It’s not like they just drive along. They actually try and ram you and they do like a pit maneuver to push you off the side. Yeah. Oof.

[00:05:51] Speaker A: Well designed. You know, that might actually be effective.

[00:05:55] Speaker B: Yeah, actually they did. They basically blew up my car to be almost fully damaged.

[00:06:01] Speaker A: Oh. Oh.

[00:06:02] Speaker B: Like it got really damaged.

So what happened was like when I got. I forgot what happened when I. I didn’t die. But when I respawned somewhere, it basically said like, your car’s been fixed. And I think it took like a few.

I think it cost a couple hundred or whatever.

[00:06:18] Speaker A: Oh, so it auto fixes it and auto deducts from your cache.

[00:06:22] Speaker B: I think so, yeah. If I remember. Yeah.

[00:06:24] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah. I think one point I got out right on time for them to stop shooting at it. But I remember at one point. I don’t know if you’ve come across this, but when you’re in your car or maybe it’s next to your car, there’s an option at least the starter car, there’s an option to change the color of it.

[00:06:42] Speaker B: Yep, I changed the color of mine.

[00:06:44] Speaker A: And so. But it’s not like an actual color. Cause the actual color stays the same. But every time you get in it, it changes to the color you are in. So it’s like a hollow color. Like a holographic version of. It’s creative. Yeah, it is.

But.

But yeah, so it said like I got the car damaged enough that the holo color stopped working. But the car.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s interesting.

But I haven’t. I guess I haven’t driven tons and tons. Like I’d say anything. 150.

I don’t know what the actual unit of measure is. Now that I think about it. If I’m 150 away from whatever my I’m looking to do next, I usually just run.

[00:07:25] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:07:26] Speaker A: Because I. It probably does take at least a little bit longer than it would to spawn the car. And Find the car and drive there. But I don’t know, I feel like it’s close enough that I can just get there reasonably fast. If it’s farther than that, I’ll usually spawn the car in. Or if it’s really far, I’ll try to use the fast travel. Just because it exists.

[00:07:43] Speaker B: I don’t know. I also found out, and I also talked to a friend about this because I realized obviously I’ve taken other people’s cars or motorcycles and I’ve ridden them, but because you take them or whatever, you don’t get them in an inventory. They don’t. You don’t get to keep it.

[00:07:57] Speaker A: So, like, I think you have to actually buy cars, don’t you? Like, I’ve seen an email about buying cars.

[00:08:04] Speaker B: Yeah, you have to actually. Yes. To own the car, you have to actually buy. Buy the like.

[00:08:09] Speaker A: Interesting.

[00:08:10] Speaker B: Buy the car.

[00:08:11] Speaker A: Have you bought any other cars?

[00:08:12] Speaker B: I have not bought any other cars.

[00:08:13] Speaker A: So I guess you probably. In that case, once you have multiple cars, you set whichever car you want as the default so that it’s the one that triggers when you, you know, whistle your horse in type thing.

[00:08:23] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:08:24] Speaker A: Interesting.

[00:08:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I. I found out because I was like, I took a guy’s bike and I was just riding around on the bike floor and then I. I got off of it and did something and I went back, it was disappeared. I was like, oh.

[00:08:36] Speaker A: So I don’t know if you took this quest. There’s a quest where you have to get a side quest where you have to pick up someone from like a motel or an inn and then sneak them out or fight your way out and then go off in his car and then shake your tail and then drop them off with like someone who’s gonna smuggle him out of the night city or whatever. Did you do that?

[00:09:00] Speaker B: I don’t think I’ve done that one yet. Okay.

[00:09:01] Speaker A: He has a really sweet car. I think it’s purple or something. But it’s like a really cool, like, sports car kind of thing that I was. I, you know, you get to keep it afterwards, but you don’t actually. It obviously. Yeah. It doesn’t stay in your garage or inventory. So. But I find out if you go to the same place you parked it at, you can actually go get back in it and keep driving.

[00:09:23] Speaker B: Okay. So maybe that’s one of the ones.

[00:09:25] Speaker A: I don’t know if that works the same with motorcycles or if it’s just like specific side quest. Specific vehicles. But at least some cases you can keep using Them.

[00:09:33] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:09:34] Speaker A: Now that I have to. Now that I think about it, I have to remember where I parked that thing.

Yeah. I mean, I suppose that the final point here is. Anyone on Discord, please let us know what radio station you’re listening to. Very curious. And also want to see on Discord what your V looks like. Now, Alex, have you made any major body modifications since last time?

[00:09:56] Speaker B: I have, and actually I did.

I will post it in the Discord. I did take a screenshot, so I will do that.

Yeah, well, I guess not body, but, like what I’m wearing. Wise. Yeah.

My clothing and clothes.

[00:10:11] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I’ve set up like five outfits or something, but I think I’m gonna start rotating through. Because you keep finding more clothes.

[00:10:18] Speaker B: Yeah, because I found some outfits that give me like plus 10 armor.

[00:10:22] Speaker A: Yes. Like, there’s extra perks for it. I mean. Yeah. It’s essentially your clothes is your armor here.

[00:10:26] Speaker B: Yeah.

The melee resistance and some other things. So.

[00:10:30] Speaker A: Huh.

[00:10:30] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:10:31] Speaker A: Yeah. I haven’t done any. I haven’t done any physical alterations yet, but after the events of this week, which we’ll get into in depth in a little bit, I’ll probably be starting to go down that path. A bit of physical alterations, but anyway.

Do you ever just sit and watch the news in the elevator or your apartment?

[00:10:57] Speaker B: Not really, no.

[00:10:59] Speaker A: There are some of the. I mean, the news itself is whatever, but it has some of the most ridiculous TV commercials of all time.

[00:11:07] Speaker B: Okay. I figured that. I’ve seen some of the ads around

[00:11:10] Speaker A: which are just cool. Yeah, well, like on the. On the walls and whatnot. Yeah, like, those are funny.

You should watch some of these commercials and report back now, this week. Did you just jump straight into Dexter’s assigned jobs or wander around knocking off side quests for a bit first?

[00:11:29] Speaker B: I did some side quests.

Not too many.

[00:11:36] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:11:37] Speaker B: Trying to remember now what I’ve done.

I think I did a few that you had done in the first episode. So I think, like you talked about. I did the one with the.

With the monk to get his brother.

[00:11:47] Speaker A: Yep.

[00:11:49] Speaker B: I did the one with the gentleman who needs you to take him to.

[00:11:56] Speaker A: Not hospital, but to a ripper doc.

[00:12:00] Speaker B: Yeah, Ripperdoc. To get his part fixed.

[00:12:05] Speaker A: His. His.

His cyber crotch needs to be.

Because it, like exploded or something then.

[00:12:13] Speaker B: Yeah.

And I did that one.

[00:12:15] Speaker A: That was. That. That is, I think, one of the funniest side quests I’ve ever done ever in any game.

And then he calls you later and says he got a new one put in, like the new Model?

[00:12:27] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:28] Speaker A: Like, don’t you learn from the major mistake you made?

[00:12:31] Speaker B: No, did not learn his lesson.

So I think those are really the two, like, kind of side quests. Otherwise, I did do a gig job, kid taking out a gentleman in one of his restaurants. He was part of the Tiger Claws.

[00:12:50] Speaker A: Tiger Claws, yes.

[00:12:51] Speaker B: So I took him out, But otherwise, I think that was about it. Otherwise, then I. I did a couple. I did one or two more of the cyber psychosis.

[00:13:05] Speaker A: Like cyberpsychos?

[00:13:06] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, cyberpsychos.

[00:13:07] Speaker A: I.

I know that I was planning originally to just dive straight back into the story and immediately got distracted.

So I didn’t do that right away. I went and took out as many cyberpsychos as I could find.

It’s a super fun challenge. Kind of set of mini bosses, essentially.

[00:13:29] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:13:31] Speaker A: Now that we have a bit more power to actually go toe to toe with them, I think especially.

Did you knock them out whenever you could or did you just straight kill them?

[00:13:42] Speaker B: No, I kind of knock him out because I guess. Yeah, you can knock them out to where they’re on the ground and then if you hit them again, it kills them.

[00:13:47] Speaker A: Yes.

[00:13:48] Speaker B: I didn’t realize that for the first. The first one I killed because he was on the ground and then I hit him again. Yeah, he died. And then on the message, he’s like, well, you were kind of like basically saying you didn’t need to be that ruthless.

[00:14:00] Speaker A: Yeah. Yep.

[00:14:01] Speaker B: And I was like, oh, so the other ones. No, I’ve just knocked to the ground and then left him.

[00:14:06] Speaker A: Yeah. I think it’s tough because. Right. Like, you switch to. Obviously I’m using guns in most of these encounters because they’re pretty lethal up close. And then I’d switch to just fists, regular fists, to try to knock them out when they’re at, I don’t know, like, seven Health or something.

But if you know they’re also. They’re pretty lethal. So you. You try to, like, get as many hits in and knock them down. But if you, if, if they’re. If you get them to the point where they’re going to fall down, but you hit them again while they’re following down, they still die.

So you gotta watch out. So it’s like get a hit or two in, step back, you know, and then see where they’re at and then do it again.

There were a couple.

I had a couple favorites of these cyberpsychos. Did you get the one who was basically screaming his head off in pain at the docks?

At some docks, like, near A bunch of cargo stuff.

[00:15:00] Speaker B: Yeah, he has like a. You have like an lmg. Yeah, yeah.

[00:15:03] Speaker A: And then he jumps high up onto a giant shipping container and then jumps back down and like kind of slowly walks to you. That one was fun.

[00:15:10] Speaker B: Yeah, that guy was fun.

[00:15:12] Speaker A: And then there was another one that I found who was in an.

Basically a plaza or a square in inside a building with a bunch of water in it and electric electrified floor.

Did you find that one?

[00:15:27] Speaker B: Ooh, I don’t know if I found that one.

[00:15:29] Speaker A: Okay, that, that. It has an interesting story to it, that one as well. So I, I won’t spoil that here

[00:15:34] Speaker B: for you, but no, I found another one like kind of in. It was like a train yard and then it went through building.

[00:15:41] Speaker A: Yeah, the train yard’s the one.

He’s the one that’s like ex military.

[00:15:49] Speaker B: I think so. Yeah. I can’t remember. I don’t know.

[00:15:52] Speaker A: He has a sniper rifle.

[00:15:54] Speaker B: I don’t know if it was sniper.

[00:15:55] Speaker A: No. Is that not the same one?

[00:15:56] Speaker B: I don’t know. But look at this guy. This guy I got.

I was able. There was a pillar in between us, so I was able to just move back and forth on the pillar and he just kept shooting the pillar and not me. So when. Oh no, he had a shotgun. Yeah, this guy had a shotgun because he had a double barrel shotgun. So whenever he’d shoot both rounds and have to reload, I’d run around the pillar, hit him and then go back around and hide.

It’s just like an easy way to take him out because he was kind of stuck on it. And I was like, okay, so yeah, good times. Yep. Just took advantage of it a little.

A little bit.

[00:16:31] Speaker A: I also went to go do that boxing match now that I had enough cash for the buy in. I think I mentioned that last time that it was like 4,000 or 8,000 and I had maybe 300 eddies on me. So I went and did that. Did you do that boxing fight?

[00:16:45] Speaker B: I haven’t done that yet, no.

[00:16:46] Speaker A: Have you walked over there yet?

[00:16:48] Speaker B: No, not yet.

[00:16:49] Speaker A: All right, let me know when you do that. If not, I’ll mention it next week. But yes, it’s an interesting opponent, I’ll tell you that.

[00:17:00] Speaker B: Okay, yeah, I’ll try to do that this week now that I definitely have the cash for that because I already paid off Victor Vector. Yes, I guess that previously.

And then I’ve got quite a bit of cash after this week’s stuff.

[00:17:16] Speaker A: Yeah, so you just need, you need 8,000 for that fight.

I’ll Put it that way.

[00:17:21] Speaker B: Pretty sure I have that.

[00:17:23] Speaker A: And did you do any of the NCPD hustle missions?

[00:17:29] Speaker B: No.

[00:17:30] Speaker A: There once on the map it says ncpd and then it you, as you get close to it, you know, some you’ll hear like a police radio saying something. You’re basically just stopping like a gang in like a small area.

Oh, I don’t know if they have like I did one of them. They were up kind of in the upstairs of a outdoor building.

I don’t know, it seems like more of like a. What’s it called, Like a camp clear out type mission.

[00:17:58] Speaker B: Yeah, basically. And then there’s like, if you scan around, there’s the evidence or whatever you need to find.

[00:18:03] Speaker A: Yeah, it’s like, it’s just like the standard, you know, open world, clear out the enemy camp type quest, which, yeah, I’m fine to do. They have some interesting, like item drops, that kind of thing. So like it’s worth doing if you’re nearby. But I don’t know how much I’m going to be searching them out because they don’t add a ton to the story. I guess they do the vibe, but.

But yes.

I don’t know about you. From, from there I went and decided I’d check out the Dropbox, which I’d seen around and didn’t know what to do with. But I decided I. To sell some things and I looked at my inventory and it was a good, good timing because you pick up so much here you end up kind of maxing out your carry capacity.

So I sold a bunch of junk basically and then I found a close vendor and a med vendor just to see how they work and what’s possible.

You know, at this point I have a pretty solid chunk of cash, so it’s nice to kind of be able to participate in the economy of the world.

And then, yeah, some other kind of random tidbits. I randomly came across a small group of four.

I don’t know if they were affiliated, affiliated with any specific gang, but they were about to execute three innocent people in this little sectioned off area of a neighborhood.

And since they were in that enclosed space, I decided, and I didn’t see any cops around, I decided I could help them out, the. The kidnap people.

So I pulled out my katana and got to work and just made quick work of them.

I didn’t get any thank yous, but you know, that’s just the job.

[00:19:47] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:19:49] Speaker A: And then, yes, at this point is when I realized I actually had enough cash to go and pay Victor back and. Yeah, definitely glad I did. He seems like the kind of lay low, upstanding citizen that we want on our side, huh?

Yes. And it turns out that’s very much the case later.

[00:20:05] Speaker B: Yeah, it very much is.

[00:20:11] Speaker A: And then I guess I will. We can get to the main story in a sec. But after some of the main quest progression I did a specific side gig to clear out these illegal pachinko machines.

Did you do that one?

[00:20:25] Speaker B: No, I haven’t done that. No.

[00:20:27] Speaker A: It’s one of Regina’s gigs. It’s outside of one of her apartment buildings.

[00:20:34] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:20:35] Speaker A: And so I had to fight against. It was a group of four but I was able to kind of sneak up over a balcony instead of take them head on. The actual target who was running this little group was easy to take out, but she had one person in the team that had these. Had the gorilla arms who would just basically put up his arms like he was blocking for boxing and it would block a lot of bullets and stuff. So he, he took a while. He was kind of a tank.

So yeah, there’s definitely some interesting fights going on here.

But the cool part is that with these pachinko machines I kind of just stuck around and play some of the arcade games because they have in world arcade games you can play.

[00:21:17] Speaker B: Okay, I haven’t seen those yet.

[00:21:19] Speaker A: There’s. And I’ve actually since that I had. I’ve seen it in like at least one more spot. So I think they should be semi ready available.

Um, there’s a playable game that’s more or less like Contra where you play as Max Tac. So you get on a helicopter and you get like different weapon power up like gun power ups and you just fight a bunch of cyberpsychos basically or a bunch of gang members in this kind of 2D side scrolling shoot em up. That was fun.

There’s one that you cannot play but the preview on the screen is kind of like Cruisin USA or Cruisin the World for N64.

So I was a little bummed because I wanted to do that.

[00:22:00] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:22:02] Speaker A: And finally there’s a game that’s basically just like the. You know, the T Rex Infinite scroller jumping game that pops up on Google Chrome when you don’t have Internet.

[00:22:12] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:22:12] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s that. But it’s themed after the Witcher and you play as Geralt’s horse Roach.

[00:22:21] Speaker B: That’s cool.

[00:22:22] Speaker A: It’s called Roach Race.

It’s so great. I just sat there. There’s a.

I think when I First played, I got into the top 10 or something. So you get a text message afterwards that says if you get into the top five, you get a reward and if you get into the top 10. And then I realized how far I was from either of those, and so I just stopped eventually. But I played that for like maybe 20 minutes trying. Trying to advance. The funny part too is that it references one of the bugs that has, you know, is so prevalent in the Witcher that it. In the Witcher 3 that it became a meme where Roach, your horse, will spawn on top of a house or a building.

[00:23:00] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:23:00] Speaker A: So the intro screen to the game is like Geralt looking up at the roof with Roach on top of it. And then you. Yeah, you just start playing. But gotta love that. Gotta also expect that there may be even more Witcher references at some point here, which I welcome.

Anyway, I suppose on to the main quest. Did you start with the pickup or the information?

[00:23:30] Speaker B: The. I did.

I did the in.

Yeah, the information one first. I didn’t meet Jackie first. I went to. I went and met.

Oh, is it Evelyn?

No, Evelyn Parker.

[00:23:48] Speaker A: Yes, Evelyn Parker.

[00:23:49] Speaker B: Yeah.

So I went to the. Yeah, I went to Lizzie’s Bar. That was Right. That’s the first one, right?

[00:23:55] Speaker A: Yeah, Lizzie’s. Correct. So I did it the opposite direction. I started with the pickup, but we can start with the information. So let’s chat about that. How did you.

How did he go about that one?

I mean, it’s kind of. It’s kind of a little more on rails, but.

[00:24:16] Speaker B: Yeah, it’s a little more. Yeah. I mean, just going.

[00:24:19] Speaker A: I guess the variety comes from your conversation decisions.

Oh, sort of. I mean, sort of. It’s not like super crazy, but. Yeah.

[00:24:29] Speaker B: Yeah, I didn’t say basically much. I didn’t massively like, bully because I know you can talk to the bouncer to get in. I was kind of. I get the option of like a corpo option to get in.

Like.

[00:24:45] Speaker A: Oh, you chose a corp.

[00:24:46] Speaker B: So, you know, on dialogue. Yeah. You have like your specific class or whatever. Yeah. Option.

[00:24:52] Speaker A: Yeah.

[00:24:53] Speaker B: Sometimes on some combo. So I picked that. And then the kind of. Which for corpo wise is a little. Little more bullish and people are kind of like, oh, okay. And yeah, so I got it.

I went with that. I go with that actually, when I see it, usually because I’m intrigued to see what it does.

[00:25:14] Speaker A: Okay, okay. I think I hear what you mean.

Yeah, I. So I guess I used the. I don’t know if I used a Nomad option or if I even had one. But yeah, I talked to the bouncers and I think I said something about like, oh, yeah, I’ll totally try your crazy brain dance. Like, I’m definitely down for that. And can. And that’s sort of how they let you in. I mean, I think they’re going to let you in no matter what because it’s a main quest, but it’s a main.

[00:25:41] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

[00:25:44] Speaker A: But yes, that. That was fairly straightforward and I guess, like, yeah, you. You meet Evelyn Parker there inside Lizzie’s bar. She’s just sitting at the bar. I mean, of course you talk to the bartender first and then you say you’re looking for her. And then she says she’s been sitting there the whole time, of course, and says, hey, hey, it’s all right, dude.

And yes, I immediately recognize the character and the location, or at least that camera angle of her as a character from a trailer.

[00:26:18] Speaker B: From a trailer. Yeah.

[00:26:20] Speaker A: But it’s not the game, it’s not the gameplay trailer I was thinking that I mentioned last time. Okay, so I don’t know if you actually did this part of the other quest, the pickup, but I think the one that I was thinking of was either the meetup with Meredith Stout or potentially even another one with her that was like under a freeway underpass.

So either I’ll see it later or I’ll look it. Look it up again because it’s not what I thought.

[00:26:47] Speaker B: Okay. I did do so actually before Liz’s bar. I actually did the Meredith Stout meetup first.

[00:26:52] Speaker A: You. Okay, so you did the optional part of the pickup before.

[00:26:56] Speaker B: First. First. And then.

[00:26:57] Speaker A: Okay, well, yeah, we. We can get back to that in a sec.

But yeah, I guess you meet Evelyn, right? You meet Judy really quickly and then you get taken to a VIP room.

You learn that Evelyn knows Yorinobu Arasaka personally and they have some kind of arrangement.

Curious indeed.

And then you go into the braindance, courtesy of our tour guide, Judy.

So Judy is a character I knew about previously and had seen images of and believe is a romance option as well.

But I guess I’ll say after just seeing images of her before, I did not expect her voice to sound like that at all or for her to speak like that generally. Like, I don’t know if I didn’t have anything particular in mind or a type of personality in mind. It just wasn’t what. What. What it actually is.

Um, and I’m actually really glad they went in the direction they did. She has me super intrigued to have more conversations with in the future.

[00:28:01] Speaker B: Yeah. Definitely.

[00:28:04] Speaker A: And this whole brain dance concept has very matrixy vibes.

[00:28:10] Speaker B: Very much, though.

[00:28:12] Speaker A: You know, you just. You lie down in a recliner, you plug in, and then you feel like you’re somewhere else.

[00:28:18] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:28:21] Speaker A: You know, are there gigantic machines controlling the entire world of Night City? I hope not.

That would take a. That would be a major plot twist, I guess.

But I don’t think they would go so on the nose either.

What’s the point?

And I will say I looked this up out of curiosity for this game overall, since Night City is full of neon and flashing lights and obviously a good majority of video games for the last many, many, who knows how many years have had epilepsy seizure risk warnings. When you load them up, like as the game’s loading before the menu screen, the main menu screen.

And it sounds like they patched this out a long time ago early on. But the Braindance Immersion intro used to actually be a flashing strobe light instead of a one time kind of slow turn on a very bright white light and then turn it back off.

[00:29:14] Speaker B: Oh, okay.

[00:29:16] Speaker A: And the original version of this is literally a flashing strobe light in front of your face. And that’s because they actually modeled it on a device used by doctors to diagnose epilepsy and visual triggers.

[00:29:29] Speaker B: Interesting.

[00:29:31] Speaker A: So I mean, I’m sure that’s somewhat taken from the original board game or the concept overall, but I’m definitely glad they removed that because while it might have been cool for the sake of immersion, isn’t it better to keep everyone safe and give more people the opportunity to enjoy this gaming experience? I think so.

[00:29:48] Speaker B: Yeah. I think so too.

[00:29:51] Speaker A: You know, not to say if, you know, like original Pokemon also had some issues with that and other various games.

And then the.

So you get into this first. Did you actually do the tutorial? I did. I think they give you the skip option for probably for repeat playthroughs.

[00:30:13] Speaker B: No, I did the whole.

[00:30:15] Speaker A: Okay, you did it good. I mean, I think that’s supposed to be the way you do it for the first playthrough. But I did see that option. I was like, no, I don’t know how this thing works. I think I’m gonna try it.

[00:30:25] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:30:25] Speaker A: So that the BD tutorial of the editor mode is super interesting. It definitely feels a bit like a detective mode from other games, but also mixed in with a video editor software simulator, which doesn’t happen all that often in games to my knowledge. I think there’s maybe a couple examples, but kind of cool, kind of different you know, maybe it sparked someone to want to get into video editing. Who knows?

There’s also. There’s the comment at some point in here about BD freaks will pay a real premium for a genuine flatline.

Because the person that you’re doing this raw BD as gets shot in the end.

Just tells you how some sick. Some of these braindance addicts are.

[00:31:13] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:31:14] Speaker A: I mean, wow.

Getting off on getting killed.

[00:31:18] Speaker B: Getting off on. Yeah, exactly.

[00:31:23] Speaker A: Definitely wouldn’t be my thing. And, you know, V definitely freaks out about it a little bit too.

Like, you could have warned me when you ask T Bug to join in on your BD investigation for the actual kind of the walkthrough as Evelyn. And then Judy has a major issue with a netrunner joining, and you have to convince her.

And Evelyn’s help goes a long way. But she also says to Judy, help me this one last time.

Oh, I missed that part.

Depends on. I think maybe it depends on how you tried to convince Judy. Because if you talk directly to Judy, that was another option. But I had Evelyn help.

Like I just said, like, Evelyn, can you help me out here?

[00:32:12] Speaker B: Oh, I didn’t. Yeah, no, I went.

Yeah, okay.

[00:32:15] Speaker A: You said it should be okay, Judy.

[00:32:17] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:32:18] Speaker A: Okay. So, yeah, so Evelyn basically talked to her and she said to Judy, help me this one last time.

Which leads me to the question of. So how deep is the history between those two?

And what has Judy had to accept and deal with in the past? I really want to know more about that.

[00:32:34] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:32:38] Speaker A: And as you arrive here into this embodiment of Evelyn, you run into a giant wall of a cyborg leaving Arasaka’s hotel penthouse suite.

You scan their security systems. You can listen on Yorinobu’s distaste for his not so dear old dad and find out where he was hiding the relic, which needs to be constantly cooled, which. Not sure how we’re going to actually transport it, but I’m sure we’ll get there.

Something about this whole kind of investigation and this whole heist concept also reminds me slightly of Inception as well.

[00:33:21] Speaker B: Yep. Kind of going, yes. Yeah, I can see that.

[00:33:24] Speaker A: Like, going like, you’re not going into the guy’s dreams, but you’re. We’re living, you know, we’re in a brain dance, investigating some things to try to plot it out.

[00:33:33] Speaker B: To plot it out. Yeah.

[00:33:34] Speaker A: And there’s a whole heist concept in general, which that was. And I guess just subliminally. Subliminally the fact that the target is a Japanese man in both kind of makes the connection, too.

But, yes, this. This type of detective investigation is a fun change of pace from the run and gun violence first quest that we had. So I’m glad they included it. I’m sure there will be more.

And then did. Did Evelyn also try to cut out Dex as the middleman for you?

[00:34:08] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:34:09] Speaker A: What did you do in that conversation?

[00:34:12] Speaker B: I stuck with Dex.

[00:34:14] Speaker A: Okay. I said I would think about it.

[00:34:17] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:34:18] Speaker A: Which didn’t actually make a difference in that moment. But V makes a good point that not screwing over the fixers is the only rule every merc in Night City lives by.

So I. You know, right as he kind of said that, I was thinking maybe I shouldn’t do that.

Either way, I didn’t want to make a rash decision and decided to mull it over.

That is, until I randomly walked back into Misty’s shop and she read my tarot cards, which laid out that I’m enthusiastic but don’t yet know the danger I face, and said.

She said don’t aim too high and that eventually I’ll meet someone interesting and charismatic.

I don’t know that I’ve figured out what that means yet.

Well, part of it I have.

I’m not much of one for fortunes in real life, but that bit about not aiming too high felt pretty on the nose right after my chat with Evelyn. So, yeah, I decided right there that I wouldn’t. Would not do the 5050 cut. So if I’m going to hit it big, I’ll wait until later.

[00:35:25] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:35:27] Speaker A: Did you move on to the heist from there or try to take a break to wander around a bit? I guess. Did you go straight into the pickup? I guess that’s the other side.

[00:35:36] Speaker B: I went straight to them. To the pickup. So.

[00:35:38] Speaker A: Okay, so you did. Before you did that information quest, you did the piece with Meredith Stout?

[00:35:45] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:35:46] Speaker A: Okay. I’m curious how that conversation went for you.

[00:35:51] Speaker B: Ooh, like so.

[00:35:53] Speaker A: So I’m assuming that at least the overall setup is the same. She immediately kind of has her crew grab you, and one of her bodyguards basically is able to plug into you and function as a lie detector.

[00:36:06] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:36:06] Speaker A: Okay. That’s all the same, I guess, on my side, since I have the Nomad background, I was able to ask about and offer up my expertise to improve her convoy security since she has a mole in her group.

But she didn’t want my help. Her loss.

Anyway, I. I then gave her my terms about wanting a robot, and she accepted, but only if I pay with their money, which I also accepted, at least in that moment. To both not get killed and also get what I need. What could go wrong?

To be fair, though, this is CD Projekt Red, and there was an option to say no effing way as a response, so maybe something will go wrong. There’s a lot of gray areas here. How did that whole conversation go with

[00:36:57] Speaker B: you,

[00:36:59] Speaker A: if you remember?

[00:37:00] Speaker B: Yeah, I’m trying to remember. So.

So to come out of it, there was a side.

Yeah, this was this section. Yes. There was a side quest for me that I did where I had to fight.

No, that was the pickup.

[00:37:18] Speaker A: Yeah, that is the pickup.

[00:37:19] Speaker B: I think that is the pickup fighting all the maelstrom. Right. In the.

[00:37:22] Speaker A: Yes. In the. I don’t know what kind of building it was, to be honest, but yes.

[00:37:26] Speaker B: Yes. Okay. Sorry. That was. That. I sided with.

I saved Brick because. Brick.

[00:37:35] Speaker A: Yeah. So that’s. That’s a bit later. So I guess.

[00:37:38] Speaker B: Was that later on?

[00:37:39] Speaker A: That’s. That’s. That’s after. So, okay, when you walk into the.

Wherever their base is, Right.

You meet with Royce, and it turns out the deal that Dex had with Brick didn’t matter because he got mutinied, basically.

And so you’re on the couch.

[00:38:00] Speaker B: Oh, no.

[00:38:02] Speaker A: And Jackie’s standing around, and Royce is talking to you.

So you have a couple of options there. Like, you can pay it out of your own pocket. I think that’s right.

[00:38:14] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:38:14] Speaker A: Or you can use this. I don’t know if you took the Militech cash for Meredith.

[00:38:20] Speaker B: No, I paid it out of my own pocket.

[00:38:22] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:38:22] Speaker B: I don’t remember that. That I did.

[00:38:25] Speaker A: Okay, so you put it out of your own pocket. So what happened to you next? That this is where we’re going to deviate? I think

[00:38:35] Speaker B: so. I then had to. They all then kind of turned against me. From what I remember, Everyone turned.

[00:38:41] Speaker A: They turn against you because you paid out of your own pocket.

[00:38:44] Speaker B: Maelstrom did. Yeah.

[00:38:45] Speaker A: Okay, so maybe it’s not that different.

[00:38:47] Speaker B: No, I had to fight my way out. And actually, if I remember rightly, now Brick is stuck behind a door somewhere. Right. And I actually grabbed the C4. The detonator. I blew him up. So I did not say brick. I’m thinking someone else. Rude.

My bad on that one.

[00:39:06] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:39:07] Speaker B: I was just like, oh, what’s this? It’s a detonator. And it’s like, would you, like, detonate? I was like, okay.

[00:39:14] Speaker A: Okay.

Yeah. Yeah. You lost control of this situation, that’s for sure.

[00:39:20] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:39:22] Speaker A: Well, okay, then that’s the curious turn of events, Basically. I had that militech cash that I took from Meredith.

[00:39:29] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:39:30] Speaker A: I used it to pay for the bot with Royce.

Like, I decided to use it. I was like, well, I don’t want to waste my own money. Let me just pay with this.

And so that’s why I’m a bit curious. I guess I’ll have to either replay eventually or watch a video of it just to see the difference there. Because they turned on you. Anyway, in my case, the Militech credit chip, or whatever it was, has a virus on it, so it scorched their system and then turned them on me. So they got all upset.

So Jackie and I were. Yeah. Left scrambling to make it out alive. I stealthed as far as I could get and then, of course, got caught with so many people around and basically killed everyone around that Brick room.

And I actually managed to save him. He was.

[00:40:25] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:40:26] Speaker A: Imprisoned by that laser mine pointing at his chest with a. Yeah, there’s a laser that triggers. So if he moves. So I don’t know how many days he’s been sitting there.

There’s a. When you look at it, there’s the manual disarm feature, so if you hit square, you can disarm it. But I didn’t have enough points in.

I don’t remember which set it was. You didn’t have that either?

[00:40:44] Speaker B: No, I didn’t have that either. I remember seeing that.

[00:40:46] Speaker A: Yeah.

What I did have was the cyberdeck disarm quick hack feature.

[00:40:55] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:40:55] Speaker A: So I used that, and it turned it off immediately.

[00:40:59] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:41:02] Speaker A: So I. Brick, this is a message to you. I expect you to return the favor down the line.

[00:41:09] Speaker B: I don’t know. I’m being said. I’m still confused on who, like, Brick was.

[00:41:13] Speaker A: Yeah, I think it’s just the guy that had the deal with Dex to give the.

What’s it called? The Flathead spider rope robot thing. Yeah, I think he’s just the guy that organized to get Dex the Flathead.

But then. But then Brick. Brick got ousted by Royce, who wanted to take over the. As the leader of the gang.

Something along those lines.

[00:41:34] Speaker B: Yeah. Okay. Well. Yeah. All right. Well, yes. And I accidentally just blew him up, so.

[00:41:38] Speaker A: Well, rest in peace, Brick.

[00:41:41] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:41:42] Speaker A: I’ll. I’ll tell you what. What happens with them later.

And. Yeah, so I. At this point, you know, Brick is dead for you. He’s alive on my end. He just hangs out in the room. Anyway, so I walked out.

I tried to sneak around to the exit at this point, but ended up just killing everyone.

At the end of all that fighting, you come up On a big hangar with Royce roaming around.

But Royce is now in a giant mech suit.

[00:42:12] Speaker B: Mm.

[00:42:14] Speaker A: And he’s kind of.

Yeah. Wandering. Did you fight him?

[00:42:19] Speaker B: Yeah, I fought Royce. Yeah. I fought all the mechs and everything that were in there.

[00:42:22] Speaker A: You killed Royce?

[00:42:24] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:42:25] Speaker A: How was that fight?

[00:42:29] Speaker B: Not massively. I don’t know. I was shooting him from kind of far away for a while, and then.

[00:42:34] Speaker A: And then using cover and whatnot.

[00:42:36] Speaker B: Yeah, using cover. What.

[00:42:37] Speaker A: What. Do you recall what gun you have around this point?

[00:42:41] Speaker B: I have.

So I had. I was using the smg. I was using the SMG that does the electric rounds.

[00:42:48] Speaker A: The Fenrir.

[00:42:49] Speaker B: The Fenrir, yes. I’ve now swapped that out, but I was using that.

And then I was using.

I had the chain. The chain sword.

[00:43:02] Speaker A: Yeah, you showed me that. So you found a sword that has a. Is it like a chainsaw? Like it spins or. It just has a. It’s. Oh, that’s sweet.

[00:43:08] Speaker B: Yeah.

It’s kind of like Gears of War, but it’s obviously not the gun.

[00:43:13] Speaker A: It’s just literally on a stick.

[00:43:14] Speaker B: Yeah. Sword. Cool. So use that. And then trying to remember what my.

It was one of the rifles I have. I just. I don’t know. I might have been using an LMG at that point because I picked up a random LMG somewhere. I think there also might have been one.

[00:43:30] Speaker A: Did he get any hits in on you?

[00:43:35] Speaker B: Not that I can remember.

[00:43:36] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So you just kept your distance. I’m assuming he had a gun or whatever. Or was he trying to.

[00:43:40] Speaker B: I mean, other people were shooting, I think at him too, from what I remember.

[00:43:43] Speaker A: So other people were shooting at him?

Oh, I mean, like Jackie, maybe?

[00:43:47] Speaker B: Well, no, I had.

I had Militech helping me out.

[00:43:52] Speaker A: Oh, they showed up to help you out?

[00:43:55] Speaker B: Yeah, they had. Yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. Because I think. Because I paid my money, Militech was in there helping me out, and so I.

[00:44:01] Speaker A: That’s curious that you didn’t use their option. And then they. They came to help anyway, so they

[00:44:08] Speaker B: came and helped me out. So, like, I couldn’t shoot Militech people. I could only shoot the maelstrom.

[00:44:13] Speaker A: So, yeah, I ask all these questions because I saw a big bad Royce in a mech, and after my cyberpsycho experiences, having to try many times, I said nope, and actually managed to sneak by him and stealth out of there instead of fighting head to head.

[00:44:33] Speaker B: Oh, no. Okay. I fought him.

[00:44:34] Speaker A: Which, you know, I’m glad about, because between, you know, that hard. The fact that I’m on hard difficulty didn’t really upgrade many of my skills or perks at this point, and didn’t have a particularly crazy strong set of weapons aside from that Fenrir gun. I figured he was going to destroy me, so I didn’t even try it. I suppose I should have, but the fact that you can do all these things is really cool, you know? And the funny thing is, in my sneaking experience, it was slightly confusing at first because the waypoint on the mini map to escape was in the middle of the arena in that room.

And it and the point actually overlapped with where there was a car sit just parked right there. So I thought I was going to escape by getting into the car and driving out, but when I got there without anyone seeing me, I couldn’t get in.

Like, it didn’t give me an option to get in the car. So, yeah, I managed to get back into the darkness and do another lap around the whole thing to go out the regular old door in one of the corners.

So the waypoint led me astray, but I still managed to escape afterwards. You know, I’m chatting with Evelyn there in the parking lot and she said, oh, hey, thanks. And, you know, I got pissed off at her for not telling me about the virus.

Almost didn’t make it out alive, blah, blah, blah. And yeah, she said, you know, about your offer to help us with the mole. No, thanks.

Because they thought it over. They didn’t think very hard.

And yes, from there I went on to that. The information quest with Evelyn Parker at Lizzie’s. And then, yeah, I think we’re now kind of caught up in terms of the setup for the heist. Did you go into the heist from there or did you do anything?

[00:46:27] Speaker B: I went. I think I went to the heist just kind of. From there. Yeah.

[00:46:32] Speaker A: Okay. I did a couple other things kind of to.

This is where I kind of almost actually put effort into upgrading myself a bit because I felt like the heist was this big, monumental occasion. You know, we’re going into the big league, so gotta get ready for it. Um, but the next time I got in my car to drive around, I was immediately ambushed by some Maelstrom members, I presume from what I did to them and Royce just before. And gotta have eyes in the back of my head from now on, but I don’t think that’s a piece of cyberware that we can install.

[00:47:08] Speaker B: Well,

[00:47:11] Speaker A: I did also do a side gig where I had to track down a specific braindance, and it was being distributed by a father son duo who were creating Some really messed up stuff.

And I actually was able to sneak into their hideout without being caught and snag the unedited, incriminating BD in question right under their noses while they were both in BD editor chairs, but decided to wake them up anyway because of how effed they are as people.

The father, of course, being the deranged individual that he is, tried to explain it all as just meeting the demand of the customers. And if it wasn’t them doing it, it would be someone else.

But hey, if I need to become Night City’s Batman and rid the Earth of this type of scum, so be it. And I just chop them down with a katana after the speech. Because F that, hope it doesn’t come back to bite me though, you know?

[00:48:09] Speaker B: Hopefully not.

[00:48:10] Speaker A: Yeah, history says it probably will.

And finally, before I went into the heist, I visited a random ripper dock I was near and installed a handful of things to kind of further try out my stealth build.

I put in Mantis blades into my arms that I just thought were so sweet in all the marketing materials.

[00:48:31] Speaker B: Okay.

[00:48:31] Speaker A: And kind of an alternative, interesting alternative to katanas.

[00:48:35] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:48:36] Speaker A: I also installed Sandevistan, which I had mentioned before that I had seen on on edgerunners.

And I also put in leg tendons that gave me a double jump.

Oh, what? Okay, so take I look I in this, at this ripper dock, I just looked at all the different body part options and saw what. What was there. Like I hadn’t really.

Aside from the trailers, I hadn’t really died.

[00:49:04] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:49:05] Speaker A: And had not looked in depth at what options there were. There were some other cool leg options as well, by the way. Like there’s one that you can charge up and do a super high jump.

I forgot the other one. There’s another one too, but the double jump is cool. So between a katana and a double jump, all I need now is some shurikens and I’ll be Genji from Overwatch.

I took all of my upgrades out for a spin with one last gig before starting the heist.

And I ended up talking the guy down from fighting me. And he let me leave with the stolen meds he had, so he didn’t go cyberpsycho after all. And I didn’t have a chance to test out this new upgrades, so I just went blind hoping that would all go well with the heist once I tried then. I did love them though, that I think I like this build direction that I’m going in. With the one exception that here’s A little caveat. If you are equipped with Sandevistan, which basically lets you slow down time for everyone else but you, it’s amazing. But you can’t quick hack anything because it replaces your Cyber Deck.

So no hacking of any kind. You can still scan to see where things are, but you cannot hack cameras and turn them off. Can’t hack enemies. So it’s a major sacrifice because up until that point, I’d been using tons of hacking to get through places.

But it’s still interesting to check it out. Like, I have.

I still have the Cyberdeck. I can buy another Cyberdeck and swap between them. But you have to go to a Rupert to do that. So I don’t know if it’s going to be situational or if I’ll just kind of gear into one versus the other.

I. I believe you also installed some. I did some cyberware and things at some point.

[00:50:53] Speaker B: So I did. So I.

I did. So I went back to Victor Vector. I upgraded a couple things. So I just kind of did the regular upgrades on like, because, you know, they’ll show you like on your. What you have installed already.

Yes, like your eyes and whatever. Like, you can upgrade them tiers, like tier one, tier plus one, plus tier two. So I upgraded quite a few things to tier two, especially the eyes. So now, like, scanning is a lot faster.

Like scanning stuff fully.

[00:51:22] Speaker A: Oh, interesting.

[00:51:26] Speaker B: But I did add, as you said, you added Mantis blades.

[00:51:30] Speaker A: I added Mantis blades, yep.

[00:51:31] Speaker B: Yeah, I added electric, like missiles, like rockets that you can shoot out of your missiles.

[00:51:39] Speaker A: Electric rockets. Oh, yeah, that’s right. So all of the arm installments, you can either do. What is it?

[00:51:48] Speaker B: It’s just like, it’s. I think so there’s just like. I’ll say normal or regular physical.

[00:51:53] Speaker A: Physical damage. Yeah, like physical damage.

[00:51:55] Speaker B: Then there’s thermal for fire. Then there’s poison, which I forgot what the poison one is.

[00:52:01] Speaker A: Yeah, there’s a poison one and then there’s electrical.

Okay. And so you got electric missiles that shoot out of your arms.

[00:52:08] Speaker B: Yeah, so there was.

[00:52:08] Speaker A: So you’re Iron Man.

[00:52:10] Speaker B: I get. Yeah, I know. I haven’t got to try them yet though, so. Because I also forgot that they’re mapped to your R1 button on the controller.

[00:52:18] Speaker A: Yes, they are.

[00:52:19] Speaker B: And it’s not a button I tap very much, so I gotta.

I’ll use them.

[00:52:24] Speaker A: Oh, interesting. So that’s mapped to basically like a grenade slot for you.

[00:52:29] Speaker B: Yeah, interesting.

[00:52:30] Speaker A: So. So I suppose this is a different. So they’re both installed in the same slot in the Arms. But because yours is a projectile, you’re using your grenade button. When I use the Mantis Blades, it’s actually like on your weapon wheel. Instead of fists, you can swap out to that or you can swap back to fists, and then you use. You just use it like fists. So you use it with R2.

[00:52:51] Speaker B: Interesting. Okay. As I said that I know it’s on. I haven’t got to use it, but I saw that it was programmed, like, looking through my controller like it was programmed R1 when I was looking at it. So.

[00:53:01] Speaker A: Okay.

[00:53:01] Speaker B: But for next episode, I’ll test it more, try it out, and I’ll let you guys everybody know what it is like.

But yeah, I know there’s, like, that option. The Mantis Blades. There’s the. Was it the. Is it gorilla arms or gorilla arms?

[00:53:14] Speaker A: I am. I do want to try the gorilla arms because I watched. I had seen it. I recently rewatched a trailer that’s called, like, Weapons of Destruction. I think it is. And it shows a guy with gorilla arms literally ripping a turret off. I don’t know if you can still. If you can use the gun after that, but it sounds cool. I do like the Mantis Blades because you can hold R2 and then you literally, like, leap towards a really long distance towards the enemy and stab them.

The only thing that, at least so far, when I’ve been using them, they don’t do tons of damage compared to my katana. So I’ve. It’s.

[00:53:47] Speaker B: I don’t know.

[00:53:47] Speaker A: I need to work it in better somehow into my.

[00:53:49] Speaker B: Yeah.

I also don’t know if you can have multiple ones at once that I’m still learning the whole. The whole, like, process of installing Cyberware and what’s just like, permanent and not. And I’m still learning all that. And there’s only, like, there’s a certain bar that you can have up to the amount of Cyberware.

Okay.

Like, I’m just. Those bits of menus, I’m still learning.

[00:54:17] Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, I’m still fairly not confused. I just haven’t, like, sat there and read every single tooltip around what they all do. Because there’s a ton.

[00:54:26] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:54:26] Speaker A: Like, that is one thing that I felt could use a better tutorial is, like, all the different menus about your installations.

[00:54:33] Speaker B: Yeah. But I will say now, next time I read ripperduck, I do want to look for the legs that can give me a double jump, because that would be useful.

[00:54:40] Speaker A: Yeah. Like, I did want to try the charge one, but I felt like double jump. Maybe was more useful for a moment.

[00:54:45] Speaker B: Yeah, I might look for that.

[00:54:51] Speaker A: But yeah.

So that’s kind of the setup. Right. And then you go and meet up with Dex at the Afterlife bar, which is the bar where all the legends hang out.

And after I told him about Evelyn’s scheme, he said, and I quote, oh, I decided to tell Dex. Right. That Evelyn was trying to.

[00:55:12] Speaker B: I did the same thing.

[00:55:15] Speaker A: He said, trust is essential in any partnership. That’s meant to be long lasting and fruitful.

[00:55:23] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:55:24] Speaker A: Good stuff.

Not hypocritical at all.

The heist itself, you infiltrate with disguises.

[00:55:36] Speaker B: Yes.

[00:55:37] Speaker A: And like, secret identities. Did you.

Did you go to the bar on the first floor?

[00:55:44] Speaker B: Yes, I did. I. So yes, I had seen. I had seen it posted in our discord. And so I actually took my time and walked around and explored the areas around the mission. Even though Jackie in the distance. Well, even Jackie in the distance is like, come on, let’s go, we gotta take the elevator.

[00:56:05] Speaker A: Also, he’s just standing around at the entrance of the bar.

[00:56:09] Speaker B: Like, after you talk to reception. I was just like, I walked around the whole first floor.

[00:56:14] Speaker A: Oh, all right.

[00:56:15] Speaker B: To see where I could go. And yes, I did find a Kojima sitting at the bar.

Someone said it was Kojima, so that was kind of cool, sitting at a table with people.

[00:56:26] Speaker A: Does he have anything interesting to say?

[00:56:29] Speaker B: No, I don’t think it even gave me an option to talk to him.

[00:56:31] Speaker A: I think I was just sitting there in the face. Oh, that’s kind of cool.

[00:56:35] Speaker B: I did take a screenshot of that.

[00:56:37] Speaker A: Nice. Nice.

Well, yes, you know, after. After playing Death Stranding in season one of the podcast, it’s good to see him elsewhere because usually he’s in his own games in some form, but.

[00:56:48] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:56:51] Speaker A: Cool. So, okay, so after the bar, was there anything else to explore outside of that? Did you have a drink at the bar or you just kind of wander around?

[00:56:57] Speaker B: No, I didn’t have a drink at the bar. No. I just kind of explored around, picked up. Which actually I’m gonna. I’m gonna read. Picked up a lot of those, like, notes things.

I just didn’t have the time to read them yet, which I’m sure there’s some about Arasaka and I’m sure the hotel and other things. So.

[00:57:16] Speaker A: Yeah. Oh, yeah, there’s. Yeah, I guess I didn’t pick up.

[00:57:20] Speaker B: I found some bits of clothing that were just. They didn’t really do much. I think I found one thing that did.

[00:57:26] Speaker A: Gave me.

[00:57:28] Speaker B: It was like. It’s like a hat for the Arasaka Company, which gives me.

[00:57:31] Speaker A: Well, you are a corpo. You can be a corpo.

[00:57:34] Speaker B: 4% or something. Plus 4% melee damage, resistance or something. So yeah, those kind of. I just was exploring around.

[00:57:46] Speaker A: Okay, Yeah, I hear that.

You know, the next portion of this quest is you get into your room, which we have a really sweet kind of suite there with a nice view of. What are they, like military complex of Arasaka down below.

And you get the flathead spider robot out of its case and Jackie doesn’t want to do it, so you end up guiding the robot through security cameras.

[00:58:15] Speaker B: Yep.

[00:58:17] Speaker A: And scanning things. That was fun. Different.

[00:58:20] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a different. That was fun.

[00:58:22] Speaker A: From there you have to sneak into the penthouse, which really just involves taking an elevator.

[00:58:31] Speaker B: Yeah.

[00:58:32] Speaker A: And then you got to go find the biochip, which you know, we know from the. The information from the brain dams quest. Where it is.

[00:58:39] Speaker B: Where it is.

[00:58:40] Speaker A: But I wanted around the rest of the suite anyway just to see. And you. Because you had your guns removed in the car.

In the delamain car before getting into the building. It was nice to find a handy pistol there.

[00:58:52] Speaker B: Yes, it was curious. On the nightstand.

[00:58:55] Speaker A: Like if you don’t do that.

I’m curious for someone that didn’t pick up that gun, what you do when you get ambushed.

Unless you sneak your entire way out of the place, which is tricky I think.

[00:59:08] Speaker B: Yeah, you just have to sneak and then at least the first few to pick up.

[00:59:12] Speaker A: I guess you can snag someone’s guns if you need to. But yeah, but yeah, good luck with that. But yes, find the gun, find the biochip, and then a whole whirlwind of crazy stuff happens.

First you, you know, you have Yorinobu arrived to his place. His dad arrives on a helicopter.

He’s going to have just a nice little quick private chat.

So Adam Smasher and what’s the other guy’s name?

I don’t recall.

[00:59:49] Speaker B: Goro.

[00:59:50] Speaker A: Takamura. Takamura.

[00:59:51] Speaker B: Takamura is his first name. Goro. It’s just I always say Takemura. Yeah.

[00:59:56] Speaker A: So they, they both take a step into the elevator, you know, the two bodyguards. And yeah, there’s a nice pleasant conversation. And then Yorinubo kills his own dad.

[01:00:06] Speaker B: Yep.

[01:00:09] Speaker A: Dysfunctional families all over the place.

You then have to escape the penthouse by trying to sneak out the. On the balcony, climb around and there was a way to get out, but the, you know, the. What is it? Maxtac or someone shows up in a helicopter and starts shooting at you.

So you jump, smash through Some glass. You’re somehow both able to walk after that.

You know, aside from my double jump legs, I didn’t have anything else to keep me from breaking. I don’t know about Jackie. He seems like he’s probably a little bit further along in his modifications and. And Jackie decides to. Because the case for the biochip, the cold case for the biochip is not functional, he plugs it into himself, which, you know, I’d be curious what would happen if the story went in a different direction.

But yes, obviously you’re all trying to escape. You go through the main floors. I would. I will say, aside from that pistol we picked up, I was glad I had just recently installed those Mantis arms in preparation for the heist, because even though all the rest of our weapons were taken away, I still had my arms and therefore everything inside of them and. Which means you must have had your electric missiles as well.

[01:01:31] Speaker B: Yeah, but again, I just, like, totally forgot to use them based in the.

I did try and stealth the majority of this section.

[01:01:39] Speaker A: I. I tried to as well. I had this. I had Sandevistan instead of the hacking, so I couldn’t hack the cameras, which was tough. And the Sandevistan, which hopefully there’s a way to create a shorter cooldown for it at some point through some kind of upgrade or a better version because it has like a. At least like a minute long cooldown. So I’d have to wait around afterwards or, you know, continue to sneak, choke out people and avoid cameras and you finally get down.

The funny thing here is, like, so I have this Sandevistan thing so I can slow down time and just sprint to the next cover point, but Jackie does not. So I would do that and then Jackie would just slowly walk towards the place and there’d be a bunch of people seeing him and nothing would happen.

That’s game design for you, though.

[01:02:28] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah, it’s always like that. Yeah.

[01:02:31] Speaker A: And then you get.

I ended up killing a bunch of people.

It was, you know, between the Mantis arms and that pistol. And I think I picked up something else if I ran out of ammo.

Did anything eventful happen for you? Nothing crazy.

[01:02:45] Speaker B: I stealthed like, quite a bit for at first, and then I got caught on one and I had to shoot for one of the sections. And then I think I ended it with stealth, but I was able to pick up someone’s, like, electric baton, which I was able to use.

[01:02:59] Speaker A: Oh, I did not find that. That’s cool.

[01:03:01] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:03:02] Speaker A: There’s a lot of creative weapons in Here.

[01:03:04] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:03:07] Speaker A: So you. Yeah, I mean, you eventually escape the main floors. It’s funny that there’s a broken down elevator or a security locked elevator. You have to find another one in the same lobby and then you get to the garage.

I escaped the garage by literally stepping out of the elevator using Sandevistan and just ran straight to the car. And you know, Jackie kind of jogged his way over and we were out of there.

[01:03:31] Speaker B: Oh, I fought whatever.

[01:03:33] Speaker A: Did a firefight with the guys down there.

[01:03:35] Speaker B: Yeah, I got. I heard in a firefight with the people down there.

[01:03:39] Speaker A: Yeah, sounds about right. I would have done the same if I didn’t have the other thing. So.

[01:03:42] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:03:45] Speaker A: And then of course, because you can’t just end it. When you go out of the garage, there are flying drones coming at you and the Delamain car and you just knock them out. I think there’s like three. Maybe there’s some respawn. Don’t recall.

And then, yeah, you escape. But not without a cost.

[01:04:11] Speaker B: No.

Yeah.

[01:04:13] Speaker A: And Jackie kind of just bleeds out and dies.

Damn. This hit me fairly hard, actually. I thought Jackie was gonna be with us through at least most of the game, if not all of it.

Based on how they set him up and the friendship and some of the marketing stuff like who does CDPR think they are? George R.R. martin?

I mean, we had just become Bus Buzz and he gets sweeped away from us so soon.

[01:04:45] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

[01:04:49] Speaker A: But yeah, you know, you just gotta move on. This is not a friendly world. So you meet back up with Dex at the motel.

[01:04:59] Speaker B: Wait for. For Jackie. What did you.

[01:05:01] Speaker A: Oh, yes. There’s a couple of options here because Delamain as part of your premier service. With Delamain, you get to choose where to send the body, which.

You know what, now that I think about it, I did have a little bit of morbid curiosity, expectation about something because when you get in the car at the beginning, when he’s describing all of his. When you’re on the way to the hotel, to the Kenpeki Plaza, there you can. I don’t know if you did this, but I asked a bunch of questions of Delamain about the service and it said included is. One of the included services is, you know, disposal or selection of where to leave remains.

I feel like they wouldn’t have foreshadowed that so hard if it wasn’t the case that someone was going to die.

Also, I mentioned this in Discord, but Kenpeki Plaza and the look of the building itself reminds me a lot of the building From Die Hard.

[01:05:59] Speaker B: Nakatomi Plaza.

[01:06:01] Speaker A: That’s the one. Yeah.

And you have a firefight and you’re jumping around buildings like that, Dean.

So I chose. I chose to send Jackie’s remains back to his mom, with my line of thinking being he’s already dead. What’s. What’s Victor gonna do with him?

And, I mean, okay, Misty’s gonna be upset about the news, but I sent it to his mom. Both from him being a Latino and the fact that he talked about his mom a lot, so they seem to have a good relationship. So I sent him there. What did you do?

[01:06:43] Speaker B: I did the same. I did the same. I sent him home. I sent him back to his mom.

[01:06:47] Speaker A: I don’t remember what the third option was, but it didn’t sound like a good choice for anyone.

[01:06:52] Speaker B: There was. Send him to Victor. Send him home, and then have him wait for you.

Which I’m assuming.

[01:06:58] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. I can just, like, sit in the car there. That was a strange choice. I don’t know what you would do with that, but yes. You get out of the car.

I don’t recall if Delamayn drives off, but you. You meet back up with Dex.

[01:07:12] Speaker B: Mm.

[01:07:14] Speaker A: And Dex asks questions. Doesn’t ask about Jackie. I got pissed off about that.

[01:07:20] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:07:21] Speaker A: You know, Dex is watching the news and saying that. How badly you screwed up.

And then I. You know, you get a chance to go into the bathroom. I punched out the bathroom mirror.

[01:07:32] Speaker B: Same.

I punched the mirror, too.

[01:07:35] Speaker A: Seems like the only reasonable course of action there.

You step out of the bathroom, immediately get mugged by the bodyguard.

[01:07:46] Speaker B: Yeah. Me. A sucker punch.

[01:07:47] Speaker A: Who hands over the pistol to Dex, who then points it at you and kills you.

[01:07:54] Speaker B: Yep.

[01:07:54] Speaker A: So Dex kills V. I think that’s probably one of those just clean up the witnesses kind of thing.

[01:08:00] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:08:02] Speaker A: And with that, right after that, the title screen flashes. And it turns out that all of that was just the prologue.

[01:08:10] Speaker B: Which is crazy.

[01:08:11] Speaker A: Which is crazy. Like, you know, a lot of TV shows, especially in their first ever episode, will. Or movies at least. Like movies that have big builds up build ups, will take a long time, like 20, 30 minutes to show the title screen sometimes.

Here is. You know what? Like, I don’t know how many. I think it was around 15 hours or so when I got to this, if not more.

Which is crazy that all of that was just the prologue. And also doubly exciting because that was a hell of a ride that could be its own amazing but short game all on its own.

[01:08:49] Speaker B: Yes.

[01:08:50] Speaker A: And also because it means we have a whole Hell of a lot more of that awesomeness coming soon.

[01:08:54] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Yes, we do. I’m very excited for that.

[01:08:57] Speaker A: So, like, if they can repeat that experience many, many times over throughout the rest of this story, I am so ready for it.

Just. Wow. I was kind of floored by it.

And, you know, you end up having.

You come back to not being yourself because you’re dead right. You have an interlude dream sequence as Johnny Silverhand, the man himself.

[01:09:23] Speaker B: Yeah, that was.

Yeah, that’s cool.

[01:09:27] Speaker A: Cool. Different, curious. You know, we had mentioned last time that we were kind of shocked in a couple ways by the fact that Johnny Silverhand’s a major part of the marketing for this game. And a.

Where was he? And it finally arrived.

And in. In a big way too. So it gives you some of his backstory, I suppose. He was one of the instigators to attack Arasaka Tower many years ago.

You know, as long as what we’re seeing is all the truth, then that’s. Yeah. He is like basically the primary bad guy. Oh, bad guy. But the person that arranged everything.

[01:10:05] Speaker B: There’s a. Yeah, he’s a terrorist. So I had found actually before this, like, about a terrorist attack on our 2023.

[01:10:12] Speaker A: Yeah. Some of the, like, history lore and then text ships talk about that. Yeah, that.

[01:10:18] Speaker B: Yep.

[01:10:18] Speaker A: And they had mentioned that he was the primary suspect and that.

But that was. Yeah, long time ago.

[01:10:25] Speaker B: Yeah. But then getting to then kind of play as it was.

[01:10:30] Speaker A: Yeah, you play as him. Right. As a. As the rock star he is holding a gun and a microphone in a concert and then talking to a bunch of nar. Nonsense.

Your bandmate says, don’t do this, and you kind of retort back with, you got. You’re better than this band. Get out of here.

[01:10:49] Speaker B: Yes. Yeah.

[01:10:50] Speaker A: And you hop on a helicopter, you man a Gatling gun on the side of the helicopter, you go down to the building, blah, blah, blah.

Yeah, it was fun. It was fun.

And as you kind of go through this building, his gun is sweet, by the way. He was like one shotting everything.

[01:11:09] Speaker B: I need this as soon as possible.

[01:11:11] Speaker A: Yeah, I really want it too. You know, that gun was awesome, I think, considering. I guess obviously anyone that’s playing along with us here.

Well, okay, I’ll hold my thought for a sec there. But as part of this inner. Go ahead.

[01:11:27] Speaker B: No, I was gonna say what was cool with this gun. Whatever part of the body you shot off, like, was blown off.

[01:11:31] Speaker A: Yeah.

[01:11:33] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:11:34] Speaker A: I really hope it’s possible to find it somewhere, like stashed away somewhere. Although Based on what happened in this building, it may have just been lost in time or locked in an Arasaka safe somewhere.

[01:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:11:48] Speaker A: As you’re doing all this, Adam Smasher, who is, yeah, he is now Yorinobu’s bodyguard, but much less tricked out with chrome version than he is today, mind you, stops Johnny and then Hanako Arasaka, who is the recluse of the family, but seem to have a good relationship with their brother, based on the lore notes that I read, uploads Johnny’s mind to a biochip.

And it just so happens to be the biochip we just stole as V. Yes, the relic.

The relic. The relic is Johnny Silverhand.

[01:12:23] Speaker B: Johnny Silverhand. Yeah.

So that was a cool development.

[01:12:27] Speaker A: Bravo. Yeah, like a lot of little mini twists. Some interesting moments here.

Now if you ended here at this point because that’s technically where you wake up from the dreamlike sequence that started in the motel and that is what we said we were going to stop at at the end of last episode. Then a bit of an extra spoiler alert here for about 10 to 15 minutes more of gameplay, mostly because besides the auto saves, it wasn’t possible to manually save here. And the action didn’t exactly stop either. It kind of just kept rolling.

So both Alex and I continued to play until we were able to manually save because that’s how we prefer to turn off a game basically.

So I guess another quick countdown to the new spoilers.

5, 4, 3, 2, 1.

After you’ve been uploaded as Johnny into the biochip, we come to as V in the dump.

Get get dragged out by Dex, who you immediately see get shot in the head by Takemura, who is Sanobu the Father, Arasaka’s bodyguard, who initially looks like he was taking us to answer for that murder of the father, but then you black out and then come back to and he ends up enlisting our help to fight off some gangers. One of them is like a crazy looking dude with blade arms, like not Mantis blades, mind you. These are just arms that are blades.

[01:14:00] Speaker B: Yeah, just arms that were blades. Yeah. He’s like on top of the car

[01:14:03] Speaker A: and he tried to. So that was really cool.

[01:14:05] Speaker B: Yeah, that was a cool sequence.

[01:14:08] Speaker A: We both survive and he asked you to get us to a ripper dock. And is there anyone that we trust?

And of course there is. There’s Victor.

Glad I paid him off before.

[01:14:19] Speaker B: Same here.

[01:14:21] Speaker A: I’m curious if anything different happens. If you didn’t pay him off and you try to show up at his door like this, you End up with Victor, of course, who patches you up and lays out the bad news.

And there’s a lot of it.

You died. Johnny’s consciousness is in our body.

He will take over until we’re kicked out completely and don’t exist anymore. And only Johnny Silverhand lives in your body.

That’s. That’s not great on its own.

[01:14:54] Speaker B: No, not at all.

[01:14:55] Speaker A: On top of that, you only have a few weeks left until that happens. So it’s a fast acting virus of sorts.

I don’t like that one bit. So the stage is set for the rest of the game. I guess from this point on we have a hitchhiker and we’ll just have to deal with that as it comes.

[01:15:15] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:15:16] Speaker A: The other thing is this entire prologue was setting us up on this heist to go to get into the big leagues. But we now have a target on our back from a variety of organizations.

We also don’t have anything else aside from the street cred that we built up beforehand.

Like hopefully Regina’s still good. T. Bug got ambushed at some point in that heist, so who knows what happened to her.

Jackie’s gone.

Dex is gone, Our primary fixer.

And we just have Johnny and Victor here as our buds. I have no idea where this is going.

[01:15:57] Speaker B: Very excited to find out.

[01:15:59] Speaker A: Absolutely.

In a non story related thing, the game actually crashed on me this time around.

[01:16:06] Speaker B: Oh.

[01:16:07] Speaker A: Which was lame.

Fortunately it was not during a major quest, so I was able. I had a. What’s it like? Autosave readily available a few minutes beforehand, but hopefully that doesn’t kick in in a bad moment. I wouldn’t want it to happen in the heist when there’s, you know, long stretches.

[01:16:23] Speaker B: Yeah.

[01:16:27] Speaker A: But you know, by all accounts this is much more cleaned up than it had been previously in the original release.

But anyway, for next time, play until you finish the quest called Automatic Love.

Then after you leave Clouds.

Don’t know what that is. Some kind of business. And debrief with Johnny outside.

Go ahead and save and quit and hang on for the following episode.

From what I can tell, that’s only two main quests. I don’t know how long they are, but that is our breaking point for next time.

So you’ll have maybe some extra time for side gigs and things and.

Yeah, should be fun. Rest in peace. Jax.

[01:17:14] Speaker B: Yeah. No. Poor Jax. Poor Jackie. We will miss you, Jackie.

But we sent you back to your mom.

[01:17:22] Speaker A: Maybe we meet his mom one day.

[01:17:25] Speaker B: Hopefully that’d be cool.

[01:17:27] Speaker A: Yeah. Just give us a nice like meal and hang out Have a chat. Reminisce.

[01:17:33] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly.

[01:17:34] Speaker A: Or she’ll hate you because you got shot him into this. Yeah. There’s only. There’s only two ways it can go.

[01:17:39] Speaker B: Two options. Let’s just hope it goes the next way.

[01:17:42] Speaker A: Yeah. Not the rest in peace, dude. And we’ll. We’ll see what happens and who the hell we meet and work with in the future. Because, yeah, all of our allies are. Most of our allies are gone.

[01:17:54] Speaker B: I know, but. Yeah, but now I’m excited to see how this with Johnny Silverhand now how this starts to play on the mind and totally how much he pops up and what it affects and everything. So it’s gonna be fun.

[01:18:08] Speaker A: Yep, yep, yep.

[01:18:10] Speaker B: So.

Yes. Well, thank you everyone for listening. Hope you guys are enjoying cyberpunk and enjoyed this part. This heist was. I mean, for this just to be basically kind of the prologue of the game was insane and awesome. I hope you guys are enjoying it as much as we are and looking forward to now, I think, getting really into the main. Main story and getting through and seeing what this.

What’s in store. So again, thanks for listening and have a good one.

If you want to follow along and discuss our playthrough of many games on the Gaming Backlog Book Club Podcast, please give us a follow on your podcast platform of choice. Spotify, Apple Podcasts, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Amazon Music, or Pocketcasts, as well as our Discord and Instagram account under the same name. Thanks.