With Cyberpunk 2077 officially being released this week, you may be wondering how to best set your expectations for how long you might be spending in Night City. Well, IGN is here to help.
While you should certainly check out IGN’s Cyberpunk 2077 review before reading further, both our reviewer and two other staffers have been playing CD Projekt Red’s newest RPG, and can speak to their experiences playing the main campaign and all the side content spread throughout Night City’s streets.
While no content spoilers follow, if you want to know absolutely nothing about how Cyberpunk’s campaign and side missions affect its endings, now’s your chance to turn back!
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]
[ignvideo url=”https://www.ign.com/videos/2020/12/07/cyberpunk-2077-review”]
Destin Legarie, Director of Video Ops
Cyberpunk 2077 can be completed in 25 – 30 hours depending on how quickly you run through the campaign. That said this is what we’re guessing many will deem the “bad” ending. By forming stronger bonds with the characters in Night City and the surrounding areas you’ll unlock various endings that have a dramatic impact on how your finale will play out.
In my playthrough I completed it the first time in around 30 hours of game time. After going back and building relationships with many characters in the game I seem to be nearing a natural conclusion for those relationship trees at around 60 hours. This is without having touched a single “Gig” mission unless I ran across it organically in the open world. There’s easily another massive amount of time that could be invested there.
The claim pre-launch was that for a 100% completion of the game you would need to have played for 175 hours. Because there doesn’t seem to be an accurate indication of percentage completed beyond missions left it’s unclear how far doing main story missions and side jobs will bring you toward that 100% completion mark. That said there hasn’t been a dull mission yet!
Thus far we’ve been able to experience three core endings, two of which take place in the final area and one earlier. Upon returning at higher completions the end missions play our quite differently.
[widget path=”global/article/imagegallery” parameters=”albumSlug=cyberpunk-2077-pc-gameplay-screenshots&captions=true”]
Miranda Sanchez, Executive Editor, Guides
As the lead guide writer for Cyberpunk 2077, my time with the game is slow-rolling and still going. I’ve done tons of reported crime missions (they’re great for making money fast and getting neat gear early — more on that in our guide!) and select side missions, plus tons of running around. I exhaust just about every room in main missions to completely explore anything they have to offer. I also craft a lot! You can read my findings in our Cyberpunk 2077 guide of course, but at this point I’m a decent way into Act 2 and have 45 hours in as of this writing. If you’re looking how to find that stat yourself once you start playing, take a look at the Character Stats in the player menu.
[poilib element=”poll” parameters=”id=f2468882-78f7-47dd-b11c-5245ed611a72″]
Tom Marks, Deputy Reviews Editor and Cyberpunk 2077 Reviewer
The first time I beat Cyberpunk 2077 I almost entirely focused on main story missions, which I largely do not recommend doing yourself. When the credits rolled, my in-game playtime was at 19 hours, while my actual real world playtime was about 21. Similar to what Destin said, that allowed for only a very limited set of endings, all of which were enjoyable but grim.
After reloading a save and spending another 20 hours doing side missions, I was able to reach the end of multiple side character storylines and see four more distinct endings – all of which were drastically different and largely more fulfilling than the ones available when I rushed. There are still TONS of other missions, fights, side stories, and activities for me complete, so I could easily spend dozens upon dozens of hours more just running around Night City doing stuff without it running dry, but the main story itself is at least completable (and fairly malleable) in far less time.
[poilib element=”accentDivider”]