Usually when I think about Christmas games, I’m remembering the games I opened on Christmas morning. That means Ocarina of Time and Pokemon Stadium in 1999. Sonic Adventure 2: Battle and Frogger Beyond in 2002. Wii Sports and Twilight Princess in 2006. And, weirdly enough, most of the Uncharted games (in 2007, 2009, and 2016). Cyberpunk 2077 was never a gift, but it’s just as entrenched in my memories of the Christmas season. More specifically, it’s an emblem of the strangest Christmas season of my lifetime.
December 2020 Belonged To Cyberpunk 2077
I viscerally remember the first night that I (and a million other players on Steam alone) booted up CD Projekt Red‘s mega-hyped RPG. Earlier that day, I had prepared for the experience by buying a big bag of Crunchy Fajita Takis to eat by the handful and an energy drink to help me stay up exploring Night City until the early morning.
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I found a cooling pad I had been gifted years before and plugged it in to give my gaming laptop a leg up in its fight against a game I already knew was far too graphically demanding for it. I even managed to turn off this weird old hanging lamp in my office that has stayed on basically continuously since we moved into our apartment. Somehow, magically(?), the bulb never burns out. I was worried I wouldn’t be able to get it back on, but I risked it to enjoy Cyberpunk in perfect darkness.
My hype for the game had been diminished somewhat by the fact that most reviews had not declared it the masterpiece I had hoped for. But I still held onto hope that even if it wasn’t for everybody, it would be for me. It was a true event game in a time when lengthy development cycles had made those fewer and farther between.
Why did this game matter so much? Because it felt like the only good thing we were promised at the end of a terrible year. In retrospect, 2020 was a great time for gaming. We got Half-Life: Alyx, Final Fantasy 7 Remake, The Last of Us Part 2, Hades, Ghost of Tsushima, Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1 + 2, Spider-Man: Miles Morales, Spelunky 2, Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Doom Eternal, Ori and the Will of the Wisps and several other great games.
2020 also elevated a bunch of multiplayer games to mega-hit status as players were desperate for something to do with friends from the safety of their homes. The Jackbox Party Packs, Fall Guys, Among Us, and Phasmophobia all got massive pandemic bumps.
COVID Gaming Was Weird And Sad
But at the time, it didn’t feel like a good year. Not because players didn’t enjoy Alyx and 7 Remake and TLOU as they came out – we certainly did. But those felt like the only positive experiences available to many players in 2020. Alyx hit at the same moment as lockdowns. Remake was the game I played that April as I wondered whether writing work would pick back up after websites cut freelance budgets. By the time TLOU came out, those financial questions had largely been resolved, but the entire online game community was stir-crazy, which led to a seemingly endless series of virtual scuffles about that game.
It was an annoying time and, four years removed, those games still carry a bit of that COVID stink. I can’t think about replaying them without thinking about those weird, dark months in the middle of a weird, dark year.
But Cyberpunk 2077 was the light at the end of the tunnel. I looked forward to it the way I looked forward to Christmas as a kid trying to get to the end of semester, the way I looked forward to winter break as a college kid busy with final papers and exams. Cyberpunk 2077’s release and Christmas and the eventual end of the pandemic were all wrapped up together in my mind. They were promises that this weird time would be over soon.
Of course, those promises all curdled. Cyberpunk 2077’s launch was a mess. I got guilted into doing Christmas with my family, and that in-person gathering was rife with paranoia and guilt. There was no one moment when you could definitively know that you didn’t have to worry about COVID anymore. The pandemic never ended so much as it faded out like a 2000s pop song. Is it gone? Or is it just quiet right now?
But on December 10, 2020, I didn’t know any of that. As I started my Nomad playthrough in the desert outside Night City, I had no idea what the future would hold. Maybe it would all work out. Yeah, maybe.
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