It’s surprisingly difficult to not dress like a complete gonk in Cyberpunk 2077; I spent a majority of my first 20 or so hours looking like an absolute idiot. It got to the point where I couldn’t even look at V without triggering an aneurysm from the sheer amount of exaggerated eye-rolling. I was looking cringe, plain and simple.
Once I started to chase fashion more than function, I began to manage to dress a tad bit snappier and looked far more prêt-à-porter. But even then, with an eye more towards looking like a futuristic Stefan Urquelle rather than Steve Urkel, I would still manage to end up with a bit of buyer’s remorse. This mostly came down to the simple fact that Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t always do the best job of presenting what the final product will actually look like on your character compared to how it looked in the clothing store menu.
Take, for example, my V in a flak jacket paired with a nice shirt-and-bow-tie combo.
As you can see in the thumbnail image, the bow tie isn’t exactly accentuated or even depicted all that clearly, which is mostly due to two facts:
- The thumbnail is a bit small.
- The whole shirt-and-tie combo is depicted at an angle which obscures it almost entirely, at least to my discerning eye.
So once I purchased what I thought was just an unassuming dress shirt, I was a bit surprised to then see it came with a sparkly gold bowtie. Although my V can totally pull it off, I probably would have passed on that getup if I’d been aware of the bowtie sooner.
Which brings me to my point: Cyberpunk 2077 should include the option to try on clothes before you buy them. It’s surprising this option isn’t already in the game, even after update 1.5, which fixes so many of the game’s most egregious issues. In fact, fans had to create the option themselves, with a fan-made fashion website for the game. Bless these folks for putting in the work, but it appears the website is no longer up and running.
And all this is especially odd considering how vain and image-conscious (or self-conscious, rather) the character of V can be, always looking to impress and make a scene. This becomes all the more difficult when you can’t inspect the various articles of clothing before spending upwards of $12-15k just for one shirt or pair of pants. That’s some serious eddies in the world of Night City. Hell, there are purchasable cars that cost less.
This is also pretty absurd based on how few articles of clothing I would even consider wearing. And believe you me, I have been to damn near every clothing shop in Night City and the surrounding area. Dope threads are alarmingly in short supply (at least for male V; I can’t speak to the female version, since I made the unfortunate choice of playing as the male version of this Jersey Shore reject).
Specifically, I find most of the footwear and legwear options in Cyberpunk 2077 to be downright abysmal, as if the game is playing a practical joke on it’s fashion-forward fan base. I would love to see far more options available in general, and far fewer articles of clothing that are just downright silly, outlandish, or flat-out hideous.
However, if this clown-show clothing line is all we have to work with, the game should at least allow the player to see what various clothing options look like before purchasing them. Otherwise, we’re all forced to relive that awkward phase in our teenage years when we were trying to find our own style and failing miserably at it. And nobody wants that. Nobody.
