Hello! We’re going to start the year off with a handful of pieces looking forward to 2022. Sometimes we’ll be looking at trends we’ve spotted or themes that will probably be continuing to define things in games for a while. Sometimes we’ll just be thinking about things we’ve enjoyed and where they could lead. Have a lovely new year all!
So, dilemma: the next-gen patch for Cyberpunk 2077 is nearly here – like, really nearly actually here after all this time. God, imagine if you’d waited for it before continuing your launch campaign! Oh hang on that’s what I did. But don’t worry about that Bertie! Don’t worry that you bought a new console especially. We’re going back and it will be wonderful, and there won’t be a bug in sight.
Question is: do I start again or continue where I left off? That’s my dilemma. You see, I don’t remember what the hell I was doing in the game. I don’t know if I have blade implants in my arms yet. I don’t know what that sketchy samurai contact of mine is doing. I don’t know what Keanu’s up to (he’s in The Matrix 4). In fact, I can’t even remember how to play it. And you know what? I don’t think the game cares. It probably won’t even acknowledge I’ve been away. It’ll just be – pop! – back to wherever I was in Night City and a screen full of indecipherable icons and ‘off you go again’. It gives me the wobbles just thinking about it.
Games, I think, have a re-onboarding issue. They spend all this time easing us in, like toddlers into a swimming pool, but once we’re happily floating, they walk off. They assume we’re good forever now, bobbing around in their pool. But what if we go off for a hike? What if we go cycling? What if we come back and can’t remember how to swim? There’s no toddler ease-in now: only the murky depths of the deep end.