I'm thinking today might be a soup day...

📷By Hat Lion Photos

25 x 20 cm, I already had this panel with just random swirly paint strokes. And y'know... it's always fun to paint an eye.

I posted a week or two back about how much Starfield bummed me out, and after bouncing off of it, I decided to finally giver Cyberpunk a go. I didn't plan it this way, but the big expansion patch had just come out, so there were a lot of improvements and optimizations so I've never seen anything about what the game was like before really. Just heard Jeff Gerstamann talk about it a few times.

Idk if it's cuz of how flat and disconnected every character in starfield felt, but doing side stuff in Cyberpunk and having characters have like, even a little bit of nuance to them feels like downing the first glass of cold water after sleeping all night with a stopped up nose. It feels like almost every side mission ends up opening up into an interesting character story. The big thing though is that unlike starfield, the NPCs feel like a part of their setting? Like characters might make bad or stupid decisions, but it all feels natural and believable. It doesn't have this overwhelming sense that the game's characters aren't bought in to the setting.

I get that on some level, this is not the game that I heard people talk about when it first came out years ago, but honestly I'm shocked at how... rich? the characters feel in cyberpunk. I went in fully expecting a bunch of flat edgelords but no it's actually been really good.

I had heard criticism of his character along the lines of "he sucks on purpose but that sucks because the game is clearly making him out to be cool too." I get some of that, and yeah it's clear from the flashbacks that everyone in his life hates him, and he doesn't seem to realize that? It's kind of funny on its own, but what really sells me on his character is going a full 20 points into cool.

When I started playing, I thought the Cool stat was more generic, like you get to do Cool stuff with guns, you get to say Cool lines in conversations, and just get to be an action hero sort of stuff? I don't think that's exactly right though. Once I hit 20 cool, which is also around when I started to get closer with Johnny and got to see a lot more of how he acts around people...

Cool is the "Act More Like Johnny" stat. Pretty much all the lines you get at 20 cool are fucking awful. Everyone groans or gets mad at you when you use them, and all of them are you being so up your own ass you don't seem to realize how flat everything you say is falling for everyone who isn't you. The fact that they let you max out a stat and act like Johnny and have everyone just be so sick of your shit is perfect.