cormack12
Gold Member
Source: https://www.forbes.com/sites/paulta...life-path-option-mapped-out-in-one-image/amp/
After a short introductory mission, and then one tiny follow-up quest later in Cyberpunk 2077, your choice of life path has zero real impact on the story. Instead, life paths are reduced to a series of dialogue options that come up in conversation. Again, these more or less never result in actually different outcomes to situations or missions, it’s mostly just different lines.
I am reminded of a very old theory about what happened to the life paths as the game was reshuffled. In effect, the idea is that the main story campaign is made of three life paths that got jammed together. Meredith Stout was supposed to be the main part of the Corpo life path, but was cut down and reduced to almost nothing (I mean they even made a sex scene with her before she disappears entirely? Why?).
Then there’s Judy, who seems like the obvious main component of what would be a Street Kid life path, and that could also potentially connect to NCPD cop River down the road. Panam, obviously, is the Nomad life path, complete with not just her own storyline and romance, but even a Nomad-specific ending they left in the game that anyone, Street Kid or Corpo, can choose. But in the end, there wasn’t enough time to flesh all the life paths out, so they were combined into one giant main storyline, connected by the thread of Johnny Silverhand and the chip. At least that’s the theory.
My guess is that when Cyberpunk returns for substantive expansion DLC in the future, life paths will not have any new relevance past more conversation options, maybe. That ship has sailed, I feel, and they’d need a full sequel to do a do-over of that concept at this point. For now, this long list of conversations is really all we’ve got.
After a short introductory mission, and then one tiny follow-up quest later in Cyberpunk 2077, your choice of life path has zero real impact on the story. Instead, life paths are reduced to a series of dialogue options that come up in conversation. Again, these more or less never result in actually different outcomes to situations or missions, it’s mostly just different lines.
I am reminded of a very old theory about what happened to the life paths as the game was reshuffled. In effect, the idea is that the main story campaign is made of three life paths that got jammed together. Meredith Stout was supposed to be the main part of the Corpo life path, but was cut down and reduced to almost nothing (I mean they even made a sex scene with her before she disappears entirely? Why?).
Then there’s Judy, who seems like the obvious main component of what would be a Street Kid life path, and that could also potentially connect to NCPD cop River down the road. Panam, obviously, is the Nomad life path, complete with not just her own storyline and romance, but even a Nomad-specific ending they left in the game that anyone, Street Kid or Corpo, can choose. But in the end, there wasn’t enough time to flesh all the life paths out, so they were combined into one giant main storyline, connected by the thread of Johnny Silverhand and the chip. At least that’s the theory.
My guess is that when Cyberpunk returns for substantive expansion DLC in the future, life paths will not have any new relevance past more conversation options, maybe. That ship has sailed, I feel, and they’d need a full sequel to do a do-over of that concept at this point. For now, this long list of conversations is really all we’ve got.