Cyberpunk 2077 can often be an unsettling game, and that's okay. It's a vision of a future where corporations can do whatever they want and everyone else uses each other to fight for scraps. Of course, except for a few good souls who usually end up the worst.
We see this in the River Ward questline, which shows how one of the few decent cops in Night City lost his job because he stood up to corruption and actually wants to help people. During his quests, you help him find his missing nephew, but you quickly learn that this is far from your typical missing person case.
The Making Of Cyberpunk 2077's Narrative as told by Paweł Sasko and Cherami Leigh
Five years ago, Cyberpunk 2077 asked us what it means to live on after we die.
As it turns out, his nephew, Randy, has been groomed by a man who targets struggling teens. Once he meets them in person, he takes them to a farm, hooks them up to a machine that pumps drugs into them, and kills them. It's easily one of the nastiest things you'll encounter in Night City, and yet it sounds like it could be worse.
The River Questline in Cyberpunk 2077 was supposed to be darker, but the designer postponed it
In an interview with Bluesky, Cyberpunk 2077 quest director Patrick K Mills shares some behind-the-scenes information on how Rivera's quests were written, including drafts that never made it into the game.
“If you can believe it, I had to go back [the] direction to make it even darker,” says Mills. “My version is a riot compared to what I was asked to do. Finding the tone of 2077 was very much a collective effort.”
I don't know why the assignment we were given made the proposed idea seem “laughable”, but I shudder to even think about it. Maybe we wouldn't have a way to save Randy? If we fail the investigation, he may die in the questline, but having that result would be incredibly depressing.
That's not the only part of Rivera's story that could have been completely different. The final part of his quest line, Follow the River, will have you go by his sister's place for dinner and spend time with him and his family. Here you play a game with his niece and nephew (you have a chance to let them win) and get to know River a little more.
All of this was written by quest designer Dominika Kuczynska, but there was a suggestion from Mills, which she says is “god-like”. Here, Rivera's niece and nephew would find a dead dog and you would explain the concept of death to them. Pretty grim considering what their brother had just been through.
- Released
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December 10, 2020
- ESRB
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M for Mature: Blood and gore, intense violence, nudity, coarse language, strong sexual content, drug and alcohol use
