this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2025
52 points (87.1% liked)
PC Gaming
12231 readers
368 users here now
For PC gaming news and discussion. PCGamingWiki
Rules:
- Be Respectful.
- No Spam or Porn.
- No Advertising.
- No Memes.
- No Tech Support.
- No questions about buying/building computers.
- No game suggestions, friend requests, surveys, or begging.
- No Let's Plays, streams, highlight reels/montages, random videos or shorts.
- No off-topic posts/comments, within reason.
- Use the original source, no clickbait titles, no duplicates. (Submissions should be from the original source if possible, unless from paywalled or non-english sources. If the title is clickbait or lacks context you may lightly edit the title.)
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Not an RPG. You make literally two real choices the whole game: who you are (at the start), and what you're going to do (at the end). The developers themselves have said that the game is not a RPG, and more like a shooter with some RPG elements when they were criticized about this.
Although I have to agree that the list doesn't seem to care about this, as they've put Dark Souls, Monster Hunter and Elden Ring as RPGs...
All of those have character progression (skills/points) that’s a main attribute of RPGs.
So does Cyberpunk.
Before or after the overhaul? Because at launch it was barely enough to call it a progression system.
It had all of those things at launch.
Barely. I remember well levelling up to get the incredible boost of +2.5% at handling handguns. That skill tree was so shitty that I'd prefer if the game didn't have it.
lol paltry stat bonuses is not progression system. Theres a reason they had to overhaul it…it was hated because it wasn’t a progression system, calling it an rpg is an insult to actual rpgs.
You seem to be moving goalposts
This is so wrong I don't even know where to start. There is an very convoluted web of how choices in literally dozens of quests affect other quests and other things in the world. There are hours and hours and hours of videos on Youtube going through all the choices you have and all the possible outcomes they give you and all the different endings the game has if you make the right choices.
And since when are we gatekeeping the term RPG? Even the Wikipedia article opens with "Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing game"... It's also based on a pen-and-paper RPG, and it's original creator, Mike Pondsmith, is involved in the creation of this game and it's upcoming sequel. I'm not sure how much more RPG you can be than that?
GTA V has quests with decisions and lets you make a few ending altering decisions, while also having character progression and item progression, plus let's you roleplay being a criminal, would it be called an RPG by most people standards? Hardly.
Although I'd say CP2077 is not an RPG by the usual standard, I agree that the game borders the concept. Actually, I'd say most games that have a player character do border the real foundational concept of a "Role-playing Game", however, that's not how most people classify RPGs as videogames. For a videogame to be an RPG we understand that they need to pursue those elements wholeheartedly. And that's definitely not the case for CP2077 (also not for Monster Hunter, nor Souls).
Also, the source material being a TRPG means absolutely nothing. Vampire the Masquerade Bloodhunt's source material is the TRPG Vampire The Masquerade. Is the game an RPG then? No, it's a Battle royale. Pathfinder Gallowspire Survivors is a mob-hell/vampire survivor-like game, not an RPG either. Actually, this is even worse for CP2077 because the game takes almost nothing but the setting from the Cyberpunk TRPG.