Way before its launch, Cyberpunk 2077 was confirmed to be a first-person game. That did not sit well with a lot of people, considering the fact that this is an RPG with a very detailed character creator. In first persion, you wouldn’t really get to see your character much at all, and when CDPR confirmed that third-person cutscenes were also discontinued, that really riled people up.
Six years later, I think CDPR made the right choices. First-person really increased the level of immersion you feel, and the highly detailed world of Night City was simply much more enjoyable when you’re up close and personal with it. Not to mention the first-person cutscenes and how that truly lets you embody V’s perspective and suspend all disbelief that you might have had.
But not everyone saw eye-to-eye with CDPR’s design philosophy. And so, not long after the game was released, mods started coming out that let you play the game in third person. The issue is CDPR made basically no animations for TPP, and in fact you were completely headless in the game for some reason. A few fixes later, V got their head back, but that still did not change the fact that the animations were, basically, non-existent.
However, today a new mod dropped on 2077‘s Nexus Mods page, promising a complete overhaul of V’s third-person animations. And, honestly? The results are stunning.
V finally moves around like a human being. She or he has a full animation rig attached to the character and no longer glides or twists in unnatural ways to look behind him or her (I just now realize how difficult it is to write about an ambiguous character).
Anyway, the sprint animation is a bit over the top and aggressive and likely pulled out of the photo mode’s idea of how a sprinting V should look, but everything else looks as good as if CDPR itself had made it.
The only thing remaining to be added now is combat animations, but at this point that does not seem to be a planned feature for the mod. The creator describes their mod as one that lets players enjoy “the best of both worlds,” meaning combat remains first-person and immersive while moving around the world can be enjoyed from the third person.
I love how modders come in clutch unexpectedly and out of nowhere, fixing or improving games in ways the developers never did. The animation rig given to V is fantastic, I have to admit, and I cannot wait to see what else community creators will come up with over the next few years (if Cyberpunk 2 doesn’t blow us all off our feet).
