Will there be character creation?
Cyberpunk 2077 character creation
Yep. During the demo we got a quick peak of the character creation screen, which starts with choosing your sex. From there, you can customize hair, tattoos, and clothing. It doesn't look like you can change your character's bone structure, though—no deep menu of facial feature sliders here.
You can also change your stats. There are basics like Strength and Intelligence, but also a 'Cool' stat that perhaps maps to charisma or one's ability to handle stress. The full list from what we saw in the demo: Strength, Constitution, Intelligence, Reflexes, Tech, Cool. Notably, there are some important stats from the tabletop Cyberpunk not represented here, like Empathy. More on why that's significant below.
We're sure Cool will have some other cute functions aside from charisma, as we speculate here. You can also change your backstory, which will affect how characters regard you and may open up new choices and story moments. You know, the standard RPG stuff these days.
However you customize your character, you're still one specific person: V. Not 'Vee.' Just V. You're a mercenary, and that's most of what we know so far.
What kind of abilities can you unlock?
Cyberware refers to augments that have all sorts of uses. During the demo, we visited a Ripperdoc who could upgrade and replace our cyberware. We opted for a Kiroshi Optical Implant that let us zoom in on objects and also analyze the environment, seeing enemy levels and getting detailed information about them. We also picked up a Subdermal Grip for our gun hand, which increases the damage we do when firing guns.
The implants are wildly cool, but it’s strange that they don’t seem to have downsides in a game world which—at least in its tabletop incarnation—stressed the dangerous sides of cyberware with mental illnesses like cyberpsychosis. It’s a facet of the universe that we know the developers are aware of—the 2013 reveal trailer featured a woman getting arrested by C-SWAT for going off the deep end. On the tabletop, a character’s Empathy and Humanity stats dictated how much cyberware it was safe for them to use, but Empathy seems absent from Cyberpunk 2077.