Cyberpunk 2077 is finally shaping up to be the game that was promised pre-launch. With this Herculean, No Man’s Sky-sized about-face in quality and content, so too comes increased player engagement and critical accolades.
And look, I’ve had my own rocky history with the game, oftentimes lamenting what it is versus what it could (or rather, should) have been. But even throughout all of that personal turmoil and grief, I have logged well over a hundred hours across three platforms. I bought it for my PS4 Pro, got a second copy on GOG, and more recently got a third copy via Steam to enjoy on my Steam Deck. And that’s saying nothing of the standalone PS5 upgrade, which technically means I own four copies, even if I only paid for three. Needless to say, I think my money does more than enough talking when it comes to my level of devotion to this much-maligned game.
But there’s one thing that has always held back maximum levels of enjoyment: At the end of the day, no matter how good or engaging a game is, I simply can’t get behind playing an open-world action game solely from a first-person perspective.
This has diminished my overall enjoyment of the Far Cry series, and to despite the level of work that went into achieving it, I absolutely loathe the first-person mode in Grand Theft Auto V. I appreciate the option to switch on the fly (from third-person while traversing the world and first-person while engaging in combat), and I think Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands makes a really smart move by going from third-person to first-person as soon as you look down your sites, then popping back out once you let go of the left trigger.
The ability to see your character engaging in the world has always been important, at least for me. I hate being limited to what’s in front of my character rather than being able to see the world around them. In fact, once I heard there was a third-person camera mod for the PC version of Cyberpunk, that was my sole impetus for my picking up a second copy of the game on GOG (GOG had the lowest price tag at that moment in time).
Now, you can see in the IGN video above how well it could perform back in 2021, which is when I tried it myself. I will admit that my experience with the mod felt a little janky.
Much work has been done since those early days of the mod, as evidenced in the YouTube video below (courtesy of user Red Dead Angel).
Even though the mod’s performance and visual appeal have markedly improved, things can still look a little whack.
But I think a dedicated mode from CD Projekt Red itself — and not just a mod from an avid user base — could deliver on one of the Cyberpunk 2077 dreams that’s still outside the reach of the mod community. And not only would it look and feel better (or at least one would assume), it could also be utilized by those that can’t access mods. Think the casual PC players who either don’t want to use mods or don’t know how (or don’t even know that mods are a thing), or the huge console user base that’s simply locked out of modding altogether.
If CD Projekt Red could implement a dedicated third-person option (even if you had to opt in permanently when creating your character), that would be a great addition to the already great base game. Perhaps that could even propel it even further into the stratosphere of the gaming audience’s good graces.
I would love to see this addition added to Cyberpunk 2077, so please, CD Projekt Red, try to see things from my perspective.
