I love open world games as much as the next guy and I love good story lines probably even more than the next guy. But, do these two things really fit together? Does an open world always have to have a main story in it? Doesn’t the merit of open world lie in the explanation, rather than in a linear, single experience? Why can’t the story be told in multiple short stories, rather than one main one?
Cyberpunk 2077 would provide an ideal setting for such a structure.
Don’t get me wrong, I like Cyberpunk 2077. I even think the main story and the concept of having two “souls” in your body are intriguing. But the game inspired me to have some thoughts about an alternative cyberpunk game revolving around a city.
Maybe instead of the very particular story of dealing with Johnny Silverhand in your head, the main character could be the city. Its story could be told through exploration and multiple little stories surrounding it. Of course, the player always needs a goal to work towards, but that is easily provided here: start as a nobody and try to reach the top of this city of opportunity. Resource management would become a more integral part the game, as you balance streetcred to gain access to places and missions and money to buy the right equipment or even skills for such missions.
Then, your different starting situations – corpo, streetkid or nomad – could be an interesting tool to explore the city from different perspectives. As a corpo, you’d meet fixers that work with corporations and you’d perform missions for them, while as a streetkid your jobs take place more on street level and nomads would be more concerned with smuggling, stealing and generally providing for the outskirts. One could even get the same missions but from different clients. So, for example, when you as a street kind get the mission to kill a corpo, as a corpo you’d get the job to protect this corpo from killers. On the way, you’d learn the two sides of it. I am thinking here of Nier:Automata, where you play the (almost) same story with three different characters over and over again.
On the way to the top, the players could then be confronted with choices between getting richer and more and more powerful and maintaining one’s humanity, by forming connections and helping the right people in need.
Image credit: CD Project Red