Grandpa Lex Visits Night City: A Rusty Gamer's First Hours in Cyberpunk 2077

Fridman opens as "grandpa Lex", presenting a record of his brief travels through the Cyberpunk 2077 universe. He says he sadly has no time to play games these days, though they have been a source of a lot of pleasure in his life. He hopes to repeat the experiment once or twice a month, although he admits 2021 looks like it will be quite insane, and mentions Stanley Parable as a possible next game.

He notes that a thorough run through the game's side quests could last at least 100 hours, so he sets himself a limit of two to four hours. When he jokes that nobody walks away from a good RPG, he answers himself with "it's called discipline". The game, he says, had been released only a couple of hours before.

On the difficulty screen he jokes that normal is probably what "very hard" is for most gamers, given how long he has been away from games. He is tempted by the easy option, reasoning that as you age you learn to appreciate the story and not the combat. After a gag about what David Goggins would pick, he settles on normal.

At the life-path screen he reads out the nomad, street kid and corporate options and their descriptions, joking along the way. He is drawn to the nomad for its honesty, integrity and love of freedom, though he wishes he could wear a suit and tie. He chooses the nomad path.

The appearance editor takes a long time. He rolls random faces until one looks close to "gritty but not too pretty", adds scars and a Bruce Lee-style set of scratch marks, and picks white teeth. He keeps cyberware off the face for a subtler, old-school look, skips facial tattoos and piercings, and keeps the content family friendly when he discusses the more detailed options.

For attributes, he treats intelligence as the mage, body as the warrior, reflexes as agility, technical ability as lockpicking and cool as stealth. He says he is not into lockpicking or sneaking, so he puts most points into body and intelligence, with one in reflexes. He describes himself as slow, hard-hitting and reasonably good at programming.

The opening has V working on a stalled car with a nomad contact, and Fridman picks dialogue options as he learns the controls, including the mouse wheel for conversation choices. He likes the car's sound and the radio. He soon runs into a sheriff-type character and tells him he is traveling alone, with no clan or camp, and wants no trouble.

On his way to a telecom tower, he is struck by how beautiful the landscape is and says he would like to go hiking there. He notes the cold in Boston and the thought of running up a mountain like David Goggins. He admits that this is when you know you are getting old: you do not want to shoot anything, just enjoy the scenery.

Between climbing the tower, which he finds stressful because he is afraid of heights, and a radio call that leads to a client named Jackie Wells, he struggles with a Kinesis keyboard that makes the controls awkward. Driving too fast, he attracts the police and learns the game's bounty system, which he compares to Grand Theft Auto. Getting shot at, he says he should have picked the easy level.

Fridman meets Jackie Wells and the two trade backgrounds, with Jackie giving a colorful description of where he is from. The cargo has to be loaded into the car, and Jackie is evidently nervous about it. Fridman makes jokes about the haircut choice and about Jackie's bench press, and promises to drive at the speed limit this time.

On the drive to the border he remarks on how deserted and empty the world looks, which reminds him of coronavirus times. The customs check goes badly: the manifest is marked "LOA", lost on arrival, which means the cargo will be flagged as soon as they cross. They need a sweetener, a credit chip with a bribe, and he jokes about whether it is Bitcoin or Ethereum.

After being questioned in a back room, he rejoins Jackie, only for armed pursuers to arrive demanding the contraband. Fridman is a poor shot with the mouse and keyboard and keeps asking whether he should hit the people or the car, and he apologizes to the police for shooting at them. When they stop, the crate is marked Arasaka, which means they are robbing heavy hitters.

Jackie gives V a Militech training shard, and Fridman runs through the shooting tutorial plugged into the neural link. He covers crouching behind cover, headshots, using consumables to heal, and switching weapons, and he stresses that he rarely plays shooters. His results are mixed, but he gets through.

The hacking tutorial interests him more. The scanner highlights hazards in red, hackable objects in green and useful objects in blue, and quick hacks can distract a guard. He is pleased that his points in intelligence matter and says hacking shows the game is not all about brute force, though the body score helped when kicking down the door.

He then practices sneaking up on a guard, taking him out quietly and hiding the body in a dumpster, apologizing to the virtual victim. In the melee lesson he learns fast and strong attacks, but admits he did not use any of the techniques when it came to the final test. A katana lesson follows, which he finds easy.

Fridman acknowledges he will not get far into the main quest, as he has only an hour or two and there is a lot of pre-story. He and Jackie look for Sandra Dorsett, and he hacks a door and takes enemies down quietly. After scavenging weapons, he finds the situation on the other side and clears the way.

On the drive home with Jackie, he likes the city's mix of Los Angeles and Las Vegas and says he could spend a hundred or more hours exploring it. But he feels the game so far has more shooting than RPG and gives him a Grand Theft Auto vibe, and he says he is more of an Elder Scrolls kind of guy. He asks if they can just ride and listen to Led Zeppelin without shooting anyone.

At V's apartment, which looks far nicer than his own, he looks for a computer to program on and finds only guns. It is 3 a.m. in Boston, so it is nearly bedtime. He says that he enjoys seeing people who are not wearing masks and being in proximity, even in a virtual world, and he cannot wait for things to open back up so people can meet again.

At Dr. Victor Vector's clinic, the game explains that cyberware installation is invasive and dangerous, and that only ripper docs can do it safely. Fridman likens them to the neurosurgeons of the future. He stands up from his desk in real life while V sits in the chair, and he notices the "system malfunction" messages, wondering whether they are the bugs everyone is discussing.

He picks ocular upgrades, which cost nothing in this scene, and thinks about how real-world cyberware might be paid for. If so, he says, wealthy people could upgrade themselves and widen the gap between the haves and have-nots, and maybe a Bernie Sanders-type character would try to fight that. He adds that the future may look a lot like the present.

The new eyes link directly to weapons, and he enjoys the idea of skipping the rest of the messy human biology. During the operation he compares it to his own LASIK surgery, which he calls the best thing he has ever done, though he does not entirely trust a neurosurgeon with rolled-up sleeves and tattoos. Afterward the scanner shows enemy strength and a list of bounties, and he comments that this is a pretty violent world.

Fridman meets the fixer Dexter DeShawn, who asks whether V would rather die old and forgotten or go out in a blaze of glory. Fridman picks the blaze of glory and says he likes the characters the game creates. The job is to grab a prototype combat robot, which involves a gang called the Maelstrom and a leader named Royce who may not honor an earlier deal.

At the Maelstrom hideout he sits through a tense meeting and is shown the robot, a dog-like machine. He grabs the gear after a fight, and he admits that he may have changed in how he appreciates a Grand Theft Auto-style game. He likes the city and the people but is not loving the shooting and the missions of that style, and he notes there is a lot of swearing.

In his closing thoughts he says the game is like GTA with an RPG flavor, which many people will like, but it is not really his thing and has too much shooting for him. If he wants shooting, he would rather play a straight shooter like Call of Duty. He is surprised by the nudity and swearing, and compares the flavor to Duke Nukem.

He also notes this was the first time he has played a game in a long while and the first time he has recorded himself playing. He asks viewers what other games he should try, perhaps another around New Year's, and encourages everyone to play games if they bring joy. He says life is too short not to take these fun little detours.