Quite a few games were delayed that quarter, and honestly I think it has nothing to do with QA.
The targeted window was too crowded with games. While they probably will spend the extra time on QA, I think this was more of a marketing decision. They want more distance from Animal Crossing, Last of Us, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy, and the late Q3/Q4 window right now is pretty open.
It kind of went under the radar last year, but they mentioned fairly major changes from the last press demo slice, so I wonder if this isn't a followup on that.
My big hope for the game is that Keanu is avoidable.
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Hmm. Time to sort through my list of upcoming games and try to figure out if any are actually coming out in the front half of this year. (There's a bunch of small RPGs that are 'maybe 2020')
LordofHats wrote: Quite a few games were delayed that quarter, and honestly I think it has nothing to do with QA.
The targeted window was too crowded with games. While they probably will spend the extra time on QA, I think this was more of a marketing decision. They want more distance from Animal Crossing, Last of Us, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy, and the late Q3/Q4 window right now is pretty open.
Eh. I don't see most of those competing with Cyberpunk, but there are others coming out in that window that make sense:
Ubisoft shoved a bunch of games back last year because the latest <insert franchise with guns> game was poorly received. The most obvious overlap with Cyberpunk is Watchdogs Legion (which is March)
And Doom Yetmore got pushed from November last year to late March by Bethsoft.
I don't really have a problem with a game being delayed as long as the end product is better as a result. I have a lot of games I still need to play through anyway. I am very excited for Cyberpunk 2077, I've intentionally been cutting myself off from gameplay footage of it so I can go in as blind as possible.
Voss wrote: Eh. I don't see most of those competing with Cyberpunk, but there are others coming out in that window that make sense:
Last of Us most definitely does, as will Final Fantasy VII. Not in terms of genre, but in terms of who will look to play Cyberpunk in that time frame.
It's not about competing in a direct sense." All of those games are big, highly anticipated releases. People who "play games" play all of those games. They all breach traditional demographics for the market. There's only so much room on social media for word of mouth. It's also around the time a bunch of Epic Store exclusives go out to the general market.
No point putting yourself in such a packed time frame when you don't have to.
I'm kind of okay with this, gives me something to look forward to later in the year. Hopefully Doom Eternal, and then early in the summer Elden Ring (assuming it makes some kind of june/july release) should keep me busy plenty.
Voss wrote: Eh. I don't see most of those competing with Cyberpunk, but there are others coming out in that window that make sense:
Last of Us most definitely does, as will Final Fantasy VII. Not in terms of genre, but in terms of who will look to play Cyberpunk in that time frame.
It's not about competing in a direct sense." All of those games are big, highly anticipated releases. People who "play games" play all of those games. They all breach traditional demographics for the market. There's only so much room on social media for word of mouth. .
See, I see those as rather niche games. As 'people who play games' and who watches a lot of 'people who play games,' I'm kind of left with a polite shrug. Or in the case of Animal Crossing, just confusion, because it apparently isn't about genetic experiments or furry porn, as the name suggests.
Voss wrote: See, I see those as rather niche games.
I'm not sure how the highly anticipated sequel to one of the most popular games of the previous decade and two remakes of two of the most popular games of all time are niche.
Animal Crossing is probably somewhat so. The last "proper" game in the series being nearly 20 years old, but that's the demographic that they're probably looking at. People in their mid-twenties to thirties who have a very packed March-May game season. With Borderlands III's general release right in the same time frame for everyone who ignored the Epic release, why bother taking the risk? Game's aren't like movies where people only really watch certain kinds of movies in theater. Games are much more divided along age groups than genres.
Voss wrote: See, I see those as rather niche games.
I'm not sure how the highly anticipated sequel to one of the most popular games of the previous decade and two remakes of two of the most popular games of all time are niche.
Most FF fans I've heard of are concerned by the remake rather than anticipating it (or already decided they hate it, of course). The others... eh. Maybe its a console thing (which as a market is just odd), but remakes in general are pretty yawn-worthy.
Games are much more divided along age groups than genres.
That's.. not an assertion I've ever seen before. It doesn't match my experience in any way at all, I've met and interacted with very few people who care about games outside their preferred genres.
But anyway. I broadly agree with you, we're just quibbling over specific titles at this point.
I can't help but feel like this is more opinion than market reality.
The RE2 remake did very well (though it is a franchise with a history of remakes so that might color it), and the other Final Fantasy rerelease games have all done very well. The current FFVII divide to me seems more a divide between people who played the game when it was released and people who didn't, and I'll be surprised if the game doesn't sell well. They'd need some serious screw ups to botch that money pit. Let's Go Pikachu and Eevee had a troubled start, but I think that's mostly because people didn't even know they were remakes (advertising on that was really unclear), but they still sold well long run.
I'm not talking about how exciting they are.
I'm pointing out that these games sell well, and suggesting CD Project Red doesn't want to compete in such a crowded launch window.
That's.. not an assertion I've ever seen before. It doesn't match my experience in any way at all, I've met and interacted with very few people who care about games outside their preferred genres.
I think I bungled that a bit.
The problem is that in the timeframe we're looking at, we're seeing the release and rerelease of several games that were widely played across the board, regardless of the genre. Borderlands one of the biggest shooters around, and Last of Us II is the sequel to what is widely believed to be Sony's best game of the last decade. The remakes are all popular games people in their 20s and 30s now played as kids, and are going to attract attention. The most obvious demographic for all these releases are an age group, and it's the same age group that CD Project Red's games do best with.
A crowded Launch window likely doesn't worry CDPR, let's face it, THEY'RE the 300 lbs gorellia right now. And I suspect THAT is the reason for the delay.
Witcher 3's a tough act to follow. it's the best RPG made in a long time and expectations for Cyberpunk are high. VERY high. and if there's one thing that has been proven the apst few years. it's that fans can be pretty merciless where their expecations are concerned. so yeah CDPR's wanting to take their time and make sure that cyberpunk 2077 knocks it out of the park makes sense
Part of me is a little disappointed, but then I have a look at the 'games of the decade' thread and there's a huge similarity between that and my current games backlog - so I'm not sure I need anything else right now...
I was already thinking I'd wait and see how stable/good/interesting/buggy it was, and not pick it up day one.
Definitely doing that now. Its good they're willing to delay rather than rush, but a 3 week delay to come out right before Xmas/New Years? If stuff comes out buggy, its going to still be buggy into mid January.
One delay is good, two are fine... third/fourth, I'm beginning to wonder if something systematic went wrong. The most innocuous reason is the marketing department was over-enthusiastic and didn't grasp the issues involved.
Definitely doing that now. Its good they're willing to delay rather than rush, but a 3 week delay to come out right before Xmas/New Years? If stuff comes out buggy, its going to still be buggy into mid January.
One delay is good, two are fine... third/fourth, I'm beginning to wonder if something systematic went wrong. The most innocuous reason is the marketing department was over-enthusiastic and didn't grasp the issues involved.
I suspect that it's a technical/gameplay problem with one or more of the console versions of the game. I'd guess that something isn't working properly with one of them, and the delay is because of that. And it's something that they thought was working properly, or they wouldn't have waited this long. The other versions of the game - particularly the PC version - are, I expect, ready to go.
Definitely doing that now. Its good they're willing to delay rather than rush, but a 3 week delay to come out right before Xmas/New Years? If stuff comes out buggy, its going to still be buggy into mid January.
One delay is good, two are fine... third/fourth, I'm beginning to wonder if something systematic went wrong. The most innocuous reason is the marketing department was over-enthusiastic and didn't grasp the issues involved.
I suspect that it's a technical/gameplay problem with one or more of the console versions of the game. I'd guess that something isn't working properly with one of them, and the delay is because of that. And it's something that they thought was working properly, or they wouldn't have waited this long. The other versions of the game - particularly the PC version - are, I expect, ready to go.
Yes... I had that thought as well. But decided to skip the very long anti-console rant that would have triggered in the moment. Happily I'm too tired this morning to indulge that, as the bellowing pod of plesiosaurs* that woke me up this morning after less than 5 hours of sleep turned out to be cows that I had to help move.
*my dreams just love incorporating environmental sound effects, apparently.
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But yes, from the wording of the announcement, I got the distinct impression they've got about six versions more than they wanted, and given how 'test consoles' work, juggling them from home location to home location (rather than just having them at the office) turned into a logistics puzzle.
Yes... I had that thought as well. But decided to skip the very long anti-console rant that would have triggered in the moment.
I can't blame you for wanting to rant. I'm going PC Master Race on this myself (I quite literally just replaced my video card this past weekend since my old one won't be able to run it; mind you, it was an old card, and this isn't the only game I'm interested in that it wouldn't run), so my thought is "Just release the PC version already!" But if my guess about the console version(s) is correct, then I suspect they've also got some big reason why they want to release on all platforms at the same time. Theorizing on the game's Reddit (which is full of people who are suddenly incredibly negative about how horrible they just know this game is going to be after the latest delay /rolleyes ) is that CDPR has an agreement with someone requiring simultaneous release on all platforms.
I'm annoyed, but after waiting this long I should be able to wait another three weeks.
Except, of course, 2020 seems to be well-acquainted with Murphy...
Tannhauser42 wrote: Weird part is that the game has already gone gold for physical production. So everything they're doing now will be going into the Day 1 patch.
That definitely isn't weird. 'Gone gold' these days largely just means a content lock (no new content), the physical production part is fairly trivial (and imo, pointless waste of money and resources).
But day 1 patches are standard practice- no matter what, at some point you have to stop making new things and shift priority to making sure everything works. Just because you're content complete doesn't mean QA stops, and the more little things that can be fixed prior to launch, the better.
Eumerin wrote:Theorizing on the game's Reddit (which is full of people who are suddenly incredibly negative about how horrible they just know this game is going to be after the latest delay /rolleyes ) is that CDPR has an agreement with someone requiring simultaneous release on all platforms.
My guess that 'someone' would be Microsoft. With the new Xbox coming, they went hard on simultaneous xbox/PC releases and their game pass. A lot (almost all?) of what they showed off during their promos this year is dual release.
Which to me makes the console pointless, but it does mean I don't have to wait for the few console games that might catch my interest.*
In fact, I wonder if one of delays (the move to mid november), wasn't to accommodate the release of the new Xbox, so Cyberpunk wasn't coming out before the console and undermining sales on that platform.
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The upside to all this is its really consumer friendly. Cyberpunk is basically available on everything, and multiple storefronts. No one is really missing out or being manipulated into a bigger hardware purchase.
*Which at the moment is Avowed, which is Obsidian's 'Skyrim,' set in the Pillars of Eternity universe. Not completely excited about the format change, but their CEO has been talking about doing a skyrim-style game for over a decade, and getting MS behind them made it inevitable.
I'm more than happy to voice my support for CDPR taking all the time they need to do this right. Unfortunately it seems they're both delayed and crunching, which is the worst of both worlds.
I suppose they're keen to make sure it releases for the holidays.
I'm also a fan of agreements for simultaneous platform release. Why, I hear you ask? As much as it's a setback in this one particular case (and probably others to come soon with the new generation of consoles coming), it's a bulwark against that far more insidious of threats - platform-exclusivity. That one needs to die a horrible fiery death already.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Weird part is that the game has already gone gold for physical production. So everything they're doing now will be going into the Day 1 patch.
That definitely isn't weird. 'Gone gold' these days largely just means a content lock (no new content), the physical production part is fairly trivial (and imo, pointless waste of money and resources). But day 1 patches are standard practice- no matter what, at some point you have to stop making new things and shift priority to making sure everything works. Just because you're content complete doesn't mean QA stops, and the more little things that can be fixed prior to launch, the better.
I am well aware of what "gone gold" means and how it works. No, the weird part is announcing a delay in your release after you've gone gold. Especially given some of the theorized reasons for the delay having to do with functionality on different platforms.
yeah, whatever technical issue this is, it was found at last minute and is presumably pretty major.
that said I'm fine with it as it gives me a month to play the new assasin's creed without killing myself trying to push through it in the week between it and cyberpunk
I've got an odd feeling about this game. Considering how much a fan I am of blade runner and the genre in general you'd think i'd be hyped over the moon for this. But I just don't feel much hype. I really doubt this game can live up to what people have built it up as.
I honestly am on the opposite side of the fence, if only for the fact that this delay only means a prolongation of the soulcrushing crunch.
Hear me out, IF the project would've been propperly planned for a longer time they'd also not have to crunch as nonsensically as they are now..
Alas one of the reasons why i prefer when games companies are not giving out release dates to the public....
Thargrim wrote: I've got an odd feeling about this game. Considering how much a fan I am of blade runner and the genre in general you'd think i'd be hyped over the moon for this. But I just don't feel much hype. I really doubt this game can live up to what people have built it up as.
I wouldn't expect much blade runner from this. The Cyberpunk RPG is more glam rock, drugs and Cybernetic sexual enhancements. It's very, very naked 80s. Lot more robocop than the gritty noir dark nights feel of Bladerunner. Closest bladerunner gets is the strip clue and hooker-adjacent noodle vendors, and the strip club isn't nearly glitzy and over-exaggerated enough.
Thargrim wrote: I've got an odd feeling about this game. Considering how much a fan I am of blade runner and the genre in general you'd think i'd be hyped over the moon for this. But I just don't feel much hype. I really doubt this game can live up to what people have built it up as.
I wouldn't expect much blade runner from this. The cyberpunk RPG is more glam rock, drugs and Cybernetic sexual enhancements. It's very, very naked 80s. Lot more robocop than the gritty noir dark nights feel of Bladerunner. Closest bladerunner gets is the strip clue and hooker-adjacent noodle vendors, and the strip club isn't nearly glitzy and over-exaggerated enough.
Hammer meet nail. Take a loot at the videos of it. It's pretty far removed from Bladerunner. Maybe Deus Ex is closer?
I don't care at all about the delay. However, I think they screwed up by having a set date in the first place. If there is one thing Bethesda does right, it is not announcing games until they're about ready to release. Fallout 4 was announced in June and released in November. Given it was Bethesda, I'm sure it was a buggy mess at first (side note I'm 70 hours into a came with 80 mods running and no bugs so make of that what you will).
CDPR announced Cyberpunk 2077 in 2013 and released a demo trailer in 2018. Why?
I don't care at all about the delay. However, I think they screwed up by having a set date in the first place. If there is one thing Bethesda does right, it is not announcing games until they're about ready to release. Fallout 4 was announced in June and released in November. Given it was Bethesda, I'm sure it was a buggy mess at first (side note I'm 70 hours into a came with 80 mods running and no bugs so make of that what you will).
CDPR announced Cyberpunk 2077 in 2013 and released a demo trailer in 2018. Why?
CDPR has to work by a different set of rules than Bethesda does. The original announcement - which was just a quick teaser trailer - was an indication that CDPR was working on something beyond The Witcher. The third Witcher game was released in 2015. That's five years since then with no new big releases (Blood and Wine was released the following year, in 2016; so four years, if you want to include that). CDPR has investors, and those investors need to know that the company is doing *something* productive with the money that's been given to the company. Incidentally, a while back CDPR revealed that it was also working on another title, but has released no information about that title. We don't know anything about it other than the fact that it exists.
There are two things to note. The first is the SARS2 mess, which I don't think anyone could have foreseen. It's possible that the game would be finished if it weren't for that. The second is that I don't think you can fault CDPR for the November 19th release date. That date was so set in stone that marketing materials were released, and big public ads were running on the sides of public transportation advertising the game. The game was less than a month away from release when the current delay was announced. *NOT* having an announced release date at this point would have been strange, and would have made the marketing campaign very difficult.
Now if the game slips again, and it misses this year's Christmas season, then it might be an indication that CDPR's management has been ignoring some glaring warnings about problems with the game's development.
I think pretty much the entire video games industry has management issues and is abysmal on worker conditions.
That crunch is such an accepted and expected part of the job of a developer is proof enough on the management front.
To support that you have really high profile cases of project management failure such as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, LA Noire, Duke Nukem Forever etc.
With worker conditions you have crunch (present pretty much everywhere), sexual harrassment (hello Ubisoft), abusive management (McNamara at Team Bondi) and so on.
It's a dream job with thousands of eager applicants willing to "do anything" for it. Until they enter the mill and get burned out in a few years and replaced by another wide-eyed youth. Anything short of legislation will fail to fix the problem as developers know that their more junior developers are easily replaceable.
A Town Called Malus wrote: I think pretty much the entire video games industry has management issues and is abysmal on worker conditions.
That crunch is such an accepted and expected part of the job of a developer is proof enough on the management front.
To support that you have really high profile cases of project management failure such as Mass Effect: Andromeda, Anthem, LA Noire, Duke Nukem Forever etc.
With worker conditions you have crunch (present pretty much everywhere), sexual harrassment (hello Ubisoft), abusive management (McNamara at Team Bondi) and so on.
indeed.
And even if you consider crunch as an necessary evil for especially small to middle scale companies neither applies to the industry giants nor do they lack the funds to avoid it alltogether. And even such small companies in other industries, f.e. machine industry a strong JIT group over here, even they compensate alot more and are forced to uphold higher standards and often go voluntarily even further then the minimal standards just to retain skill.
Further not even these companies have on every bloody project they do the necessity of forcing crunch, which goes to show the hybris of game publishers and developpers especially in the higher echelons even more.
That the groundfloor "cannonfodder" is easily replacable is just icing for most of the companies involved in the game buissness.
Personally, I doubt many project managers in the video game industry have ever seen a Gantt chart, let alone know how to construct one.
A simple excel sheet + hand times pie + worker experience should normally do the trick aswell.
When small companies do that successfully and retain their staff and don't have "stress-casualities" then it goes to show the lackluster skills of the VG industries management.
Hopefully they'll stay on target now, what with them releasing the last Nightcity Wire yesterday. They've also released an updated system requirements chart:
Ugh. I'm not sure.
I've still got a 980Ti, which on benchmarks is significantly better than a basic 1060 (as in 15-20 FPS depending on 1080/1440/ultrawide).
But its a 5 year old card now, and I don't have any idea if CD Projket bothered to optimize that far back.
Everything else is a non-issue, except maybe freeing space on the SSD.
May have to do some extra digging to see what people are saying when it hits. Don't want to deal with a GPU upgrade anytime soon.
Voss wrote: Ugh. I'm not sure.
I've still got a 980Ti, which on benchmarks is significantly better than a basic 1060 (as in 15-20 FPS depending on 1080/1440/ultrawide).
But its a 5 year old card now, and I don't have any idea if CD Projket bothered to optimize that far back.
Everything else is a non-issue, except maybe freeing space on the SSD.
May have to do some extra digging to see what people are saying when it hits. Don't want to deal with a GPU upgrade anytime soon.
You beat out the minimum, from the look of things.
I finally got around to replacing my card at the start of this month specifically due to this game. But it was a 750. So it was a bit overdue...
Personally, I doubt many project managers in the video game industry have ever seen a Gantt chart, let alone know how to construct one.
A simple excel sheet + hand times pie + worker experience should normally do the trick aswell.
When small companies do that successfully and retain their staff and don't have "stress-casualities" then it goes to show the lackluster skills of the VG industries management.
Maybe video game development is just too time variable to put good estimates on. We're talking a company with around 1,100 employees and in the realm of a half a billion in revenue, I'm sure they have some project managers in there. The problems come when different parts of a project are both dependent on each other but also difficult to predict on timing. Then project managers who are pushed to achieve things in the shortest time possible due to the immense running costs where every day of added time could cost in the millions and you end up with a lot of stress and difficult to achieve timelines.
Voss wrote: Ugh. I'm not sure.
I've still got a 980Ti, which on benchmarks is significantly better than a basic 1060 (as in 15-20 FPS depending on 1080/1440/ultrawide).
But its a 5 year old card now, and I don't have any idea if CD Projket bothered to optimize that far back.
Everything else is a non-issue, except maybe freeing space on the SSD.
May have to do some extra digging to see what people are saying when it hits. Don't want to deal with a GPU upgrade anytime soon.
You beat out the minimum, from the look of things.
I finally got around to replacing my card at the start of this month specifically due to this game. But it was a 750. So it was a bit overdue...
Beating the minimum generally isn't enough for a graphics heavy first person game. Usually means stuttering, overall low FPS and 'technically playable.' Pretty bad for a fast paced shooter/melee game.
I'd rather be around high at least, but uncertainty about managing recommend is not a place I'm happy being.
That said, I did some digging, and a 2060 is only about 13% faster than the 980ti for the witcher 3, so it might not be a total lost cause.
I was planning on waiting at least a week or two anyway, so I'll have time to see how it works out for other people.
@Malus
/shrug. Red dead just sounds utterly bloated, and ffxv isn't much better.
their own previous game with the same base engine is a more reasonable comparison, and an increase of about a third isn't out of line. Especially since its more visually flashy
Voss wrote: Seems about right to me, even a bit high, really.
Witcher 3 with all the DLC is just shy of 50GB
Total Warhammer 2 is 56
But then FFXV is 100GB, Red Dead Redemption 2 is 150GB.
RDR is only 116GB on my PC.
But yeah, 70GB is on the smaller side for a game these days. Witcher 3 is more than 5 years old, TWW2 is 3 years old, so pretty much a generation or two old.
A few games I've installed recently have been in the 100GB range, CODMW was probably the stupidest one weighing in at about 200GB.
I bought a 2TB SSD because it was starting to get a bit silly, lol. Discovered there was basically no practical difference between an NVMe SSD and a top range SATA one, so went for a big arse SATA rather than an NVMe (sure, NVMe is faster in benchmarks, but in actual OS and game load times it seems there's negligible difference).
Voss wrote: Ugh. I'm not sure.
I've still got a 980Ti, which on benchmarks is significantly better than a basic 1060 (as in 15-20 FPS depending on 1080/1440/ultrawide).
But its a 5 year old card now, and I don't have any idea if CD Projket bothered to optimize that far back.
Everything else is a non-issue, except maybe freeing space on the SSD.
May have to do some extra digging to see what people are saying when it hits. Don't want to deal with a GPU upgrade anytime soon.
You beat out the minimum, from the look of things.
I finally got around to replacing my card at the start of this month specifically due to this game. But it was a 750. So it was a bit overdue...
Beating the minimum generally isn't enough for a graphics heavy first person game. Usually means stuttering, overall low FPS and 'technically playable.' Pretty bad for a fast paced shooter/melee game.
I'd rather be around high at least, but uncertainty about managing recommend is not a place I'm happy being.
That said, I did some digging, and a 2060 is only about 13% faster than the 980ti for the witcher 3, so it might not be a total lost cause.
I was planning on waiting at least a week or two anyway, so I'll have time to see how it works out for other people.
There's not much of a pattern to minimum specs. Some games run fine at minimum specs, others will be stuttery. Some games don't even have to run at minimum settings if running minimum spec. I don't think there's any standards defining how minimum specs should be determined.
Best just to wait for some benchmarks to come out if you're concerned about that.
My PC looks to fall in around the "High" level, so like most other modern games I'm expecting to be able to play a little bit off max settings.
TW3 and TW2 were both well optimised for their times, so hopefully this will be also.
@Malus
/shrug. Red dead just sounds utterly bloated, and ffxv isn't much better.
their own previous game with the same base engine is a more reasonable comparison, and an increase of about a third isn't out of line. Especially since is more visually flashy
It's big textures and detailed meshes that end up with big file sizes. As video card memory rises, publishers can include higher quality textures and game file sizes increase. Also people are increasingly on unlimited broadband plans, so there's probably not a hell of a lot of motivation for publishers to make themselves more efficient (I feel sorry for any gamer still on a metered plan...)
Voss wrote: Seems about right to me, even a bit high, really.
Witcher 3 with all the DLC is just shy of 50GB
Total Warhammer 2 is 56
But then FFXV is 100GB, Red Dead Redemption 2 is 150GB.
RDR is only 116GB on my PC.
But yeah, 70GB is on the smaller side for a game these days. Witcher 3 is more than 5 years old, TWW2 is 3 years old, so pretty much a generation or two old.
A few games I've installed recently have been in the 100GB range, CODMW was probably the stupidest one weighing in at about 200GB.
I bought a 2TB SSD because it was starting to get a bit silly, lol. Discovered there was basically no practical difference between an NVMe SSD and a top range SATA one, so went for a big arse SATA rather than an NVMe (sure, NVMe is faster in benchmarks, but in actual OS and game load times it seems there's negligible difference).
Geez. I thought 70 gigs was on the higher scale of things. Highest ones that come to mind are CoD WW2 and Shadow of War at 100 gigs each, but those sounded like outliers. Haven’t even touched Doom or Tekken 7 due to the ludicrous installation size (60GB and 70GB respectively) for their length.
Only thing that comes to mind is the possibility that Cyberpunk pulled a Vermintide and made the scenery out of miles and miles of walkable entities, but then Divinity OS2 is around 60 without this issue,
Cool info: I read the global release time is 1AM in Poland on the 10th. That means if you're in an earlier timezone, you can start playing on the 9th. 6PM for me on the 9th here in Texas. Woohoo! My body is ready.
My birthday is the 9th, and while I am salty about not being about to like.. do anything, it will be a nice consolation prize to be able to play this.... assuming it actually drops.
I wonder what my performance is going to look like. I have an RTX 2080 super, but my monitor is an ultrawide so it's like 3440x1400p or something weird like that.
Geez. I thought 70 gigs was on the higher scale of things. Highest ones that come to mind are CoD WW2 and Shadow of War at 100 gigs each, but those sounded like outliers. Haven’t even touched Doom or Tekken 7 due to the ludicrous installation size (60GB and 70GB respectively) for their length.
Only thing that comes to mind is the possibility that Cyberpunk pulled a Vermintide and made the scenery out of miles and miles of walkable entities, but then Divinity OS2 is around 60 without this issue,
Division 2 checks in at 80 something gigs, iirc. And the reason why I know this is because each time the game gets patched on the PS4, you need almost as much free space on your hard drive in order to patch the game.
Looking forward to the 9th. The timer I checked earlier suggested that Cyberpunk should be playable by the time I get home from work.
Correct. It's only the XBox preload that's started, so far. Playstation and PC owners aren't getting it yet. However, the fact that the game is preloading means that we can be confident that it's not going to get delayed again (not that I thought there was any real chance of that happening).
Psst, pre-load for #Cyberpunk2077 is already available globally on GOG.com, Steam, Epic Games Store and Xbox!
On PlayStation, it becomes available 48 hours before the release (at midnight local time).
Reviews are coming out now. I watched two spoiler-free reviews on YouTube that both said the game was amazingly good. Both confirmed that there are bugs in the game, but their review copies were the pre-Day-1-patch versions. One confirmed that you can power your way through the main story in about 20 hours, but there is also a lot of side content with character stories and such. And that side content can impact the main story. The reviewer commented that when he reloaded an earlier save after beating the game and then playing another 20 hours of side content, he found his endgame options to be greatly changed, with up to six different endings that he could find.
This is the first game in years I'm excited to play. Too bad I'm moving and have to pack everything up! At least when I start playing it at the beginning of next year, there will be all the bugs worked out
Hehe, that was funny. Game finished preloading and the Play button in GOG Galaxy was ready to push. So, I pushed it. It loads an image of a junkyard and a subtitle from Johnny saying "Go back to sleep, Samurai. It's not December 10th yet!"
Edit: I can confirm that I am not a l33t hacker. Changing the date and time on the Windows clock did not allow the game to run. :(
I think it's good to have information out there about what specific parts of the game can trigger seizures. Just about every game these days has an epilepsy warning on it, so I'm sure most people ignore it at this point.
That said, I think the real truth here is that the game is actually just hijacking people's cybernetic implants.
Tannhauser42 wrote: I think it's good to have information out there about what specific parts of the game can trigger seizures. Just about every game these days has an epilepsy warning on it, so I'm sure most people ignore it at this point.
Warnings are fine, but this seems to have been a deliberate inclusion. From the article:
The headset fits over both eyes and features a rapid onslaught of white and red blinking LEDs, much like the actual device neurologists use in real life to trigger a seizure when they need to trigger one for diagnosis purposes. If not modeled off of the IRL design, it's a very spot-on coincidence, and because of that this is one aspect that I would personally advise you to avoid altogether. When you notice the headset come into play, look away completely or close your eyes. This is a pattern of lights designed to trigger an epileptic episode and it very much did that in my own personal playthrough.
I'm waiting to see what the reviews are like for the game running on an original PS4.
If the performance is really poor (or markedly different to the Pro/PS5 version) I might try and hold my breath and hold out!
Tannhauser42 wrote: I think it's good to have information out there about what specific parts of the game can trigger seizures. Just about every game these days has an epilepsy warning on it, so I'm sure most people ignore it at this point.
That said, I think the real truth here is that the game is actually just hijacking people's cybernetic implants.
It enables the Microsoft tracking chip that has been introduced via the vaccine..
Tannhauser42 wrote: I think it's good to have information out there about what specific parts of the game can trigger seizures. Just about every game these days has an epilepsy warning on it, so I'm sure most people ignore it at this point.
I imagine people with actual epilepsy issues don't ignore these warnings, and the game box has none. Apparently there is one in the EULA but...we all know what that means besides being an ass-covering.
I'm sure the game will be amazing to play, but CDPR continued to blunder it's way through the whole development when it comes to literally everything else, from crunch, through some refreshing anti-trans behavior to this actual medical danger. I know the company is polish but man.
BrianDavion wrote: so if you've got this game on Xbox you can set your region to new zealand and play already
Oops...
Sounds like someone screwed up.
The GoG version on PC is patching. From what people are saying, while the patch is around 9GB, it needs 65GB of free space to install. Steam users (and presumably Epic) can't patch until the launch. But the patch is also only supposed to be a couple of gigs.
BrianDavion wrote: so if you've got this game on Xbox you can set your region to new zealand and play already
Oops...
Sounds like someone screwed up.
The GoG version on PC is patching. From what people are saying, while the patch is around 9GB, it needs 65GB of free space to install. Steam users (and presumably Epic) can't patch until the launch. But the patch is also only supposed to be a couple of gigs.
The patch need 43 gigs free for me. Had to uninstall The Witcher 3 for it.
Well, did some research, looks like my 980ti will handle high settings pretty well. So... freed up space on my SSD (including witcher 3), ran various windows updates that popped today, updated my graphics driver to todays version, cleared my desk of a bunch of junk, and I'm ready to go.
Probably wouldn't have if WoW: Shadowlands didn't suck so much. But they've chopped up and minced the story to match their weird obsession with gating and grinding out multiple numbers to control when pvp players and raiders get gear, so... whatever. I'll play a game designed to be fun instead.
GAH! My laptop crashed while downloading the patch! This was happening when I tried to download the FreeLC for Total War: Warhammer 2. Been trying to fix it by getting rid of Killer and everything. Grr!
Sasori wrote: Been playing for about 2 hours now, it's great so far. Not even sure where to begin exploring though, the size is pretty intimidating.
Yeah, there is a _lot_, even in the opening area (which you're kind of locked to due to a police crackdown, but the opening area consists of several neighborhood and a lot of sidequests- the one-eyed fixer makes a lot of calls to you as you just walking down the street).
My first side quest took a few tries, the enemies are pretty nasty and the starting armor and gun are garbage items.
Character customization (stats and perks) are pretty massive, crafting is unexpectedly... easy. I didn't expect to be able to build a sniper rifle on the street, but with decent weapons, the game changed a lot- possibly too much, as in Fallout 4 levels of dis-assembling ash trays and other junk and making a functioning gun.
Was trying for melee initially, did not go well. Stealth attacks are very good, when you can pull it off. Even minor gang fights, they cover their sightlines pretty well, and don't just let any random idiot walk up and murder them.
Found several alternate routes to objectives- the Technical stat is very good for going through locked doors, but there are sometimes other ways to get around to an objective (like go in another apartment and get on the other balcony.
Some side quests seem not doable 'after hours'- I was trying to get to a boxing match in Kabuki, but couldn't find an unlocked door to get in the building.
Not a fan of the driving, though that may be me, but I end up all over the road.
Character creation was interesting, especially for how little you see yourself in game. Needs some better options- full menus for more than just colors, rather than just clicking left or right to cycle through 20-30 options.
Tattoos need to be less all or nothing. Some aren't bad, but particularly some of the body tattoos are a whole splodge of unrelated ink.
Biggest thing with character creation is the lighting is weird. Colors do _not_ show up in character creation (there is a strong tint) the way they do in game.
On PC the driving controls are kind of suck. I find it counter intuitive and janky to direct my vehicle with a and d rather than just hold W or S and turning the mouse. Maybe if A and D came with acceleration it would make more sense, but they don't.
I understand Cyberpunk is based off of the tabletop RPG of the same name. Does this one try to integrate the mechanics of the tabletop, or does it just kind of do its own thing?
SkavenLord wrote: I understand Cyberpunk is based off of the tabletop RPG of the same name. Does this one try to integrate the mechanics of the tabletop, or does it just kind of do its own thing?
My understanding is that it's mostly the former. The TTRPG is used for lore and setting. The game itself is quite old (80s, and prior to this year it's last published edition was in 2005 and this years game is mostly a reprint as I understand it). I think it's a sort of classic and a forerunner to Shadowrun but not super popular anymore?
SkavenLord wrote: I understand Cyberpunk is based off of the tabletop RPG of the same name. Does this one try to integrate the mechanics of the tabletop, or does it just kind of do its own thing?
Largely its own thing (which is a good thing, as the PnP RPG is pretty dated and bad as far as mechanics go). The stat names are there, and a lot of the 'skills' (by which I mean perk trees) are attached to the same stats.
But it is mostly different. The stats in this game go to 20 (capped at 6 at character creation) And these give you various increases per stat point (Cool, for example, bumps sneak attack damage and detection time, Body increases melee damage with blunt weapons and gives more health, and other things)
2-3 perk trees are attached to each stat, where you pick up various bonuses (+10% health, immunity to fire, bonuses to crafted weapons, poison on knives, etc, etc. There's a lot) Perks have a minimum requirement with the main stat value (must have Cool 11 to take immunity to poison or whatever). There are frankly a lot of perks: 15+ per tree (some have multiple levels: +10%/+20%/+30% health, for example), 13-14 trees.
Like with the Witcher games, CD Projekt doesn't exactly go into the nitty-gritty of the mechanics. What the game doesn't spend a lot of time telling you is the perk trees also gain experience and levels. And these levels in the perk trees also give you passive bonuses or just extra perk points. So its worth doing a variety of things to get extra perk points- I definitely recommend hacking random objects as you wander around starting out. Distract and Ping are basically undetectable and non-hostile. Breach is undetectable if you succeed, but on a failure can trigger a lot of hostility. I think there is an XP cap on hacking low level stuff, but not entirely sure. Stealth is similar. I've gotten stealth XP from going undetected while hacking enemies, but I'm not sure I got it from hacking stealthed, or that I killed someone while being undetected. Across the street.
Watch out for cops, though. Even fights with hostile gangers can sometimes attract hostile police attention to you if they wander into the area, and NPCs wander a _lot_, and there are a lot of them. Civilians tend to crouch in place, but sometimes they run, especially when combatants get close. They don't seem to actively report you, but the game did mention a bounty system, and I don't know about anyone else, but my gunfire tends to be... inaccurate. Though I haven't killed any innocents yet. Uh.. as far as I know, anyway. Combat can be pretty hectic, and sometimes more enemies show up and there's barely time to grab loose loot and run.
Even on normal difficult I very much enjoy the fact that the best option is sometimes just to bolt.
The Reboot Optics hack is your friend for stealth.
Played quite a bit last night. I'm using a netrunner build, with secondary specialization in tech. But I haven't upgraded my deck and daemons, so my hacking options are still rather limited.
One thing not mentioned so far is that attribute scores give conversation options. Most are pretty obvious. Cool is the exception. Cool in gameplay boosts sneaky stuff. Cool in conversations is used for references, such as quotations.
Eumerin wrote: The Reboot Optics hack is your friend for stealth.
Played quite a bit last night. I'm using a netrunner build, with secondary specialization in tech. But I haven't upgraded my deck and daemons, so my hacking options are still rather limited.
Yeah. T-bug gives you a quest early for free software, and its important to keep that shop in mind (I'm there are others, but that one's nicely located for early side missions). Do a few side quests and get those upgrades, as a better deck is huge (and not something you can build out of ash trays and playing cards... AFAIK)
I want to slot reboot optics back in, but I'm finding Ping insanely useful for tracking enemies. Many don't mindlessly charge at you like a lot of games, so its useful to know where they are.
The damage ability is really useful as well, as I find I can 'quickhack' people I can't quite draw a good line of fire on.
One thing not mentioned so far is that attribute scores give conversation options. Most are pretty obvious. Cool is the exception. Cool in gameplay boosts sneaky stuff. Cool in conversations is used for references, such as quotations.
Ah, yes. I've only seen that once so far, and all it was the 'yin/yang karma' symbol, and I wasn't sure what it was trying to tell me.
I had a conversation option that required 13 Int. It wasn't anything all that important, but it was the only one I'd seen so far with that large of a stat requirement. Some of the other options look like good ways to build relationships with people, such as using Tech to recognize that a particular character has some very nice gear.
Reddit has a lot of people complaining about horrible bugs. So far, I've only found one, and it involved an optional mission where the mission pathfinding led to a wildly different location than the quest marker on my HUD. I didn't find anything at the former, and can't figure out how to reach the latter. So I'm not sure which is right. Or maybe neither one is right, and the quest target -
Spoiler:
a stash hidden by a paranoid homeless man
- is somewhere else entirely.
(Spoiler is extremely minor)
I have encountered two annoyances, and both are tied to the game's route display system. First, I've had the game try and route me through areas that are either temporarily blocked, or are foot traffic only while I'm in my car. Second, the minimap doesn't cover enough territory. I'm constantly being caught by surprise when a turn-off suddenly appears while driving at higher speeds.
This game feels a a combination of Deus Ex and Fallout 4. Not a big fan so far 7-8 hours in. Buggy and incredibly unoptimized. I got a RTX 2080 and the framerate is bad with medium settings and 1080p resolution.
It's fun that people gak all over Fallout 4 dialogue system when it is similar to CP since you have no idea what your character will say except it doesn't even give you the option to select your characters tone.
Melee is clunky as hell and doesn't feel good and shooting is not good and very bullet spongy.
Dunno if I'll keep playing or wait until it gets patched.
Gargantuan wrote: This game feels a a combination of Deus Ex and Fallout 4. Not a big fan so far 7-8 hours in. Buggy and incredibly unoptimized. I got a RTX 2080 and the framerate is bad with medium settings and 1080p resolution.
What framerate are you aiming for? On my Ryzen 3600 and 5700XT, I'm averaging 45-50fps at 1440p with High settings. That feels perfectly fine for me so far. To be fair, my eyesight sucks so it's not like having really high framerates is something I've ever needed or noticed much difference with.
Melee is clunky as hell and doesn't feel good and shooting is not good and very bullet spongy.
I don't know how far you are into the game, but several of the reviews I've read say the bullet sponge effect goes away once you level up your skills and perks and get better weapons. CP2077 is still an RPG first, shooter second.
As far as bugs go, I've had a few, but no worse than any other (and far better than some) big, open world games I've played at launch.
Just gotta say, the one time, THE ONE TIME my wife looked over at my computer screen while I was creating my character just had to be the three seconds I was playing with the boobs slider. 20 minutes total in the character creator and THAT was when she had to turn around and look. *sigh*
Hmm. So far I haven't had many bugs, and no crashes. What bugs I've encountered have largely been little graphical glitches, particularly when a box of bottles falls, or Jackie eating outside your hab (that doesn't sync up well at times).
Can't speak to the RTX, by my GTX is fine on high settings. Butter smooth, no stuttering, no gameplay issues.
Melee can be a little weird- enemies dodge fast, and you get a face full of bullets if you try to just stand and cut people (I've had a lot better luck with two-handed hammers).
I've was largely focusing on pistols and sniper rifles, but tried out shotguns and woo. Knockdown is great.
-----
One thing I really want is 'holster' hotkey. Having a gun out is an issue, and bringing up the alt menu and selecting it is annoying.
Other than that, my only real gripe is how _easy_ the crafting is (which I've probably mentioned too often). Same is true for upgrading weapons and armor. A few moments on the street (or anywhere) is all it takes.
Enjoying it so far, only real bug encountered is pants not being equipped for some reason on the character screen and some odd popping of vehicles on the street.
Loving the melee combat. Sheathing your sword as you run with it is a nice touch.
BrookM wrote: Tapping alt twice will holster your weapon.
Enjoying it so far, only real bug encountered is pants not being equipped for some reason on the character screen and some odd popping of vehicles on the street.
Loving the melee combat. Sheathing your sword as you run with it is a nice touch.
Thanks, as minor a niggle as that was, it helps quite a bit.
Still not sure what direction I want to take this character. As much as I like the big 'ol hammer I've got, it seems rather ridiculous. And I'm waffling at various places on the skill tree. Sneaking, technical, hacking..., sniping or shotgun.
Though just the fact that these are real choices is nice.
Played about an hour after got it today and downloaded patch - so far its ..ok...
I need to dial down the responsiveness massively i I am going to hit anything - I was all over the place in the training sim.
Must be the only person who did the char gen in about a min and half - just did hair and that was about it - all else seemed ok and didnt bother with below the waist.
Had to uninstall my game as updating it just keeps crashing my PC, my friend's an IT guy and tried to help me fix it, but nothing worked (It did it when I was trying to update TW: Warhammer 2 with the newest FreeLC) My friend said it might be a hardware issue :(
Gargantuan wrote: This game feels a a combination of Deus Ex and Fallout 4. Not a big fan so far 7-8 hours in. Buggy and incredibly unoptimized. I got a RTX 2080 and the framerate is bad with medium settings and 1080p resolution.
What framerate are you aiming for? On my Ryzen 3600 and 5700XT, I'm averaging 45-50fps at 1440p with High settings. That feels perfectly fine for me so far. To be fair, my eyesight sucks so it's not like having really high framerates is something I've ever needed or noticed much difference with.
Yeah, I'm running it on a RTX 2070S at 1080p at the settings it defaulted to (which was basically high on everything, including ray tracing) and haven't noticed any framerate issues so far.
Have you downloaded the latest drivers, Gargantuan?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Eumerin wrote: Could have been when you were switching through the genitals.
Wow. So the Hotel... the big crux of the first chapter.
That was amazing. Slow build of tension, drama, emotion, everything was totally on point.
Same with the aftermath. Pretty much one of the most amazing sequences I've seen in a game.
The Interlude, and its consequences, though... leaves me a bit cold by comparison. Feels a bit like Aragorn going over the cliff with a random warg in Two Towers. Drama skips gears and flops over into somewhat farcical melodrama.
I'm enjoying it so far, and the graphics are great, but I think I was expecting something more.. I dunno, it just kinda feels like Grand Theft Auto Sci FI Edition
Necros wrote: I'm enjoying it so far, and the graphics are great, but I think I was expecting something more.. I dunno, it just kinda feels like Grand Theft Auto Sci FI Edition
Thats kinda my feel so far - it all seems very similar but not done that much of story as like to mooch about before I do.
Rampages are harder - decided to kill the rude people outside my apartment and 5 police teleported in and shot the crap out of me. On the other hand stroalling about the city somone dissed me so punched them and accidently threw a grenade which killed them but no police - maybe cos they were gang type people or something.
All the story aspects of the game are A+ so far. (I finished 2 of the side character's mission chains)
Aside from bug issues, the game needs these things:
More cybernetic options. Energy Blasters/Guns in hands/arms for concealed weapons for example.
Also some kind of dash implant like the Cyberpsychos get.
Barbers...
Possibly a surgeon or just add the option to the Ripperdoc update your character.
More tattoo options and ability to change them in game. (The cosmetic options are easy to implement, this should be out ASAP)
I grinded Mantis Blades prior to the Act 1 finale and they were a life saver.
So far not been able to get it to run very long on my PC. Took about 10 tries just to not crash after character creation. Then was able to play a bit but now crashes at another point repeatedly.
This is with latest 1080GTX drivers etc. so not sure what the issue is. Hoping maybe this new patch might help....
More cybernetic options. Energy Blasters/Guns in hands/arms for concealed weapons for example.
I do agree that some more 'ware would be nova*, but there is a gun in arm cybernetic in the game in the form of the Projectile Launch System. Some more would always be nice though.
For the rest, definitely agree. I in fact restarted to change my V's appearance as I initially didn't give her tattoo's but then felt that they would suit her with the streetkid lifepath.
*One thing I really like about cyberpunk as a genre is the abundance of slang that gets incorporated into the world. Really helps to make the word feel like its own culture rather than just "our world but with cyborgs". Puts the punk into it, separating it from other sci-fi with augmentation.
More cybernetic options. Energy Blasters/Guns in hands/arms for concealed weapons for example.
I do agree that some more 'ware would be nova*, but there is a gun in arm cybernetic in the game in the form of the Projectile Launch System.
For the rest, definitely agree. I in fact restarted to change my V's appearance as I initially didn't give her tattoo's but then felt that they would suit her with the streetkid lifepath.
*One thing I really like about cyberpunk as a genre is the abundance of slang that gets incorporated into the world. Really helps to make the word feel like its own culture rather than just "our world but with cyborgs". Puts the punk into it, separating it from other sci-fi with augmentation.
I'm expecting a tatoo parlor/hair dresser to be one of the first FreeLCs much like it was with W3
There are some odd missing elements and friend of mine was quite frustrated at how difficult it was to make a asian character - you can mess around with some stuff but no basic generic racial types for a multiracial city - which has huge ties to Asia?
The linked Quality of life/ gameplay link above is a good one. The teleporting police is very odd.
Lack of ability to customise appearance is bizare - as others have said assume it will come soon.
Think it will give it a bit longer to bed in - had four large patches for PS4 so far - last one was 16+ GB.
There are NO race options, it's not like they were excluding Asians. You can make a character that looks like any existing human race. That's a really odd gripe.
On to other issues. I've maxed Street Cred (level and street cred cap at 50) and unlocked most implants, but I'm annoyed that you can't have QuickHacks, Berserk, and the Time Slow (not the dodge one), because they all use the same slot. You can't afford the Time Slow or Berserk until later on and you get QuickHacks for free so it's seems like most players would invest in QuickHacks and have no reason to drop 40-50k on a different option. Kind of annoying.
gave up trying to get it to run on my PC as it was since even after the latest patch it was still crashing constantly, sometimes hard crashing the system/locking it completely.
So I did a clean re-install of Windows (was long overdue) and redownloaded the game, patches everything and was able to play afterwards for a couple hours and without a single crash plus in general frame rate and graphics were much improved.
After that my impressions are really good; running on a 1080GTX (want a 3080 but so far seems impossible to find) but still is running well so far on that older card with some settings knocked down or off. There seems to be a ton of detail on the world and characters and it seems like it is going to be very interesting to explore and adventure in. From an RPG perspective, it doesn't feel like there will be a ton of options in conversations and such so that might be a bit more on rails but I guess I will see as I play more.
Heads up for people but the Lizzie tech pistol you can find in Lizzie's Bar (on a crate near the entrance to Judy's suite, after the events of the heist) is really, really good.
Also, noticed some weird stuff involving V's shadow. Not sure whether it affects male V but for female V, her shadow on the ground goes very strange when you draw your gun. Looks to me like they didn't make a female V shadow when wielding a weapon as drawing one suddenly makes you taller and you get some very "interesting" shoulder shadows
Apart from that I've been getting the floating items (such as cigarettes people are smoking just ending up floating in the air etc.) glitches pretty regularly, and also got a pretty bad one involving the smoke on Jib-Jib street where it was just giant black boxes, though thankfully that got fixed after the patch. Also had sound for footsteps, car engine cut out some times, had the crosshair get stuck on, even when not wielding a weapon.
Had mutiple crashes on PS4, plus usual stuff like bald in mirrors etc. Going to give it a few days as no hurry to play more at the moment.
Have they fixed the cops teleporting in and out yet? Least its better than the gak Red Dead 2 Bounty system as out on the streets you seem to be able to ditch them. Did not quite figure out how you take out wanted perps without triggering the police being called.
They're rolling out hotfixes now to deal with issues as they happen.
I've managed to purchase the Akira-styled red bike after I've paid off Vik, going to have some fun with that one, just need me a biker outfit and that kickass Samurai jacket now. Just a shame that the driving mechanics on PC are a bit clunky, but then again most of the controls feel like that.
BrookM wrote: They're rolling out hotfixes now to deal with issues as they happen.
I've managed to purchase the Akira-styled red bike after I've paid off Vik, going to have some fun with that one, just need me a biker outfit and that kickass Samurai jacket now. Just a shame that the driving mechanics on PC are a bit clunky, but then again most of the controls feel like that.
Part of it I think is that the UI feels unresponsive/slow to react to inputs. I notice it most with drawing/holstering weapons where the key doesn't do what the tool tip says it should do and crouching/uncrouching doesn't work half the time.
Mr Morden wrote: Had mutiple crashes on PS4, plus usual stuff like bald in mirrors etc. Going to give it a few days as no hurry to play more at the moment.
Have they fixed the cops teleporting in and out yet? Least its better than the gak Red Dead 2 Bounty system as out on the streets you seem to be able to ditch them. Did not quite figure out how you take out wanted perps without triggering the police being called.
the bald in mirrors thing is something I've figured out the reason behind. it's your hat. take your hat off and your hair'lll show up
1) Call wouldn't end. Had to reload an earlier save.
2) Game froze on map. Had to restart.
3) Other voice actors were mute, but I could hear V.
Other than that most issues I've seen are related to clothing items don't show when switching to them, but taking them on and putting them on fixes it. Occasionally third person view won't activate when driving.
Crouch sometimes doesn't want to work.
Some RPG elements are definitely lacking, but I'm not surprised considering the only other games by CDPR force you to play Geralt...
There are multiple choices to be made in side missions...some of them are fairly significant.
I've managed to avoid buying a vehicle so far. All just seem to be a waste of money I could spend on more crafting recipes, fashion and cyberware, at least at this point. Did the mission with Mama Welles after the heist (think you only get it if you choose a certain option during the heist mission, though you can get the bike anyway if you make a different choice) and got a motorbike from it, so I used that until my car got fixed up.
Meanwhile I'm now packing an 8 base ram, 7 buffer, 5 slot cyberdeck with a load of killer quickhacks (including an epic level Synapse Burnout and rare level Short Circuit), got Mk. 3 Hiroshi optics modded out with all the stuff I need (highlight enemies who have detected me, see grenade arcs and radii, increased crit chance), the leg cyberware which gives a charged boost jump, the slow-mo slide/dodge and also some subdermal armour (though I picked that particular piece of 'ware up from somewhere or got it as a reward, so it was free).
I haven't had any crashes at all on XSX, but there are times where everything will freeze up for about 10-15 seconds and I think it's gonna crash, but it comes back. I always do a quicksave as soon as it happens.
I had one weird bug where I did a quest where you have to find 20 different grafiti murals around the world, I cruised around and got them all, but when I went to turn it in to Misty, she had no dialog at all and just stared at me, but V said his lines. She gave me something at the end but i couldn't see what it was.
Necros wrote: I haven't had any crashes at all on XSX, but there are times where everything will freeze up for about 10-15 seconds and I think it's gonna crash, but it comes back. I always do a quicksave as soon as it happens.
I had one weird bug where I did a quest where you have to find 20 different grafiti murals around the world, I cruised around and got them all, but when I went to turn it in to Misty, she had no dialog at all and just stared at me, but V said his lines. She gave me something at the end but i couldn't see what it was.
I've found that crafting recipes often show up blank on the screen where it flashes up what you just got given/picked up. So if that is what happened, maybe check your crafting tab and see if anything new has popped up in there.
In general I think the world is kind of corny and OTT, but I like the aesthetic, particularly the transhuman aspect.
The story is kind of lackluster. Some missions are exemplary, such as the Act 1 Heist, but it's generally mediocre. The MQ is probably much better when you complete the side quests for Judy, Panam, and River.
I did the 'best ending' and some of those consequences make me question whether or not it was really the best...it's the best for you, but some others suffer for your choices.
Thoughts on the Side Missions
Spoiler:
The side missions for Judy and River are the strongest points in the game for me. Panam's are decent and I like the break of going out to the desert, but they're not as intriguing.
As far as other side missions go:
The Cyberpsychos are interesting, but the endpoint isn't rewarding, so don't feel like you need to hunt all 17 down.
Beat on the Brat was fun, but required me respeccing and swapping to Gorilla Arms to win.
The AI Car (I can't spell the name off the top of my head) had an interesting run.
Compared to other well-known RPGs that I've played in the last 10~ years...I'd say DA:I is better, ME:3 is possibly better, Skyrim is possibly better (despite having weaker RPG elements to it IMO), and Fallout 4 and Outer Worlds are worse. I say Fallout 4 specifically is worse because I refuse to play it without some form of modern firearms mod. The in game options are awful.
In terms of out of the box gameplay, it's probably the strongest. It's not as dense as DA:I/ME:3 in terms of lore or characters or expansive as a Skyrim/Fallout 4. The writing is mostly good, but some Side Missions end abruptly. In terms of gameplay...you sort of have 3 classes...Quick Hack/Berserk/Time Slow...since you can only have one of those. All 3 work well. I kind of think melee+Berserk/Time Slow is more fun. Melee is surprisingly good. I played the last 25-30 hours as melee.
I didn't expect great Open World AI from the NPCs, but they need to tweak a few things. Right now the biggest issues to me are lack of barber, transmog, and New Game+. Bugs were minor for me.
Finished the game, got the 'bad' ending without really knowing how or why I got it other than I was trying to live. I thought that is what the game was pushing me towards but there you go. Other than that, the game then promptly crashed during the credits. Going to replay again for a better ending.
So, I'm level 22.. Main quests are at 60% 10% and 15% I think. In higher levels, are there any doors you really need to open that will require more than like 10-12 points in Strength or Tech ability? I'm trying to go for a stealthy assault build, but I find I have to keep dumping points because I don't wanna not be able to get to places. I find I'm using stealth, sniper rifles and quickhacks the most, but I'm just playing on the normal difficulty and most fights are pretty easy, I think because I'm doing lots of side missions and probably leveled up higher than most of the areas I'm going to. But I like clearing out a section of the map before I move on
Necros wrote: So, I'm level 22.. Main quests are at 60% 10% and 15% I think. In higher levels, are there any doors you really need to open that will require more than like 10-12 points in Strength or Tech ability? I'm trying to go for a stealthy assault build, but I find I have to keep dumping points because I don't wanna not be able to get to places. I find I'm using stealth, sniper rifles and quickhacks the most, but I'm just playing on the normal difficulty and most fights are pretty easy, I think because I'm doing lots of side missions and probably leveled up higher than most of the areas I'm going to. But I like clearing out a section of the map before I move on
Told myself the same thing about fights.
And then I blundered into a crime in commission where I seemed to be doing almost no damage to the bad guys, and was dying *real* fast. After a few tries, I checked the map. The specific crime that I was interrupting (and that was marked on my mini-map) wasn't shown on the city map. But everything else in the immediate area was "Very Difficult". I decided to bail and come back later...
Smart weapons are turning out to be a bit of a headache for me. Either they're fun weapons that can nail the bad guys even when those bad guys are behind cover, or you watch the bullets turn away from the bad guys even at point blank range. I'm not sure what causes the latter. But it's *really* annoying.
The fact that they are not allowing refunds after Christmas is a kick in the teeth. Betting a lot of people will be getting the game and finding it still a broken mess on their consoles on Christmas morning.
I'm not planning to be able to play the game until the new year anyway, so I'm glad I'll have some updates waiting for me to play on my xbox one a bit better.
I haven't picked up the game based on what I've seen so far but I feel it's a bit rich for CDPR to ask customers "for a chance" when they were fairly dishonest regarding last gen consoles being an utter mess and releasing a AAA title with horrendous bugs.
I think I may have come across the most fethed up quest so far..
Spoiler:
Crucifying a convict in a studio for a BD
Thankfully, not long after that I got to drive a from the bottom down naked man to a ripper doc because he installed a blackmarket penis.
Also encountered twice now a very annoying bug that locks you into cutscene. You can still walk around, but can't hack, shoot or jump, which cannot be lifted by reloading an older save or rebooting the game. Instead you need to start another cutscene to fix itself. It's a good thing joytoys are so cheap.
Tyranid Horde wrote: I haven't picked up the game based on what I've seen so far but I feel it's a bit rich for CDPR to ask customers "for a chance" when they were fairly dishonest regarding last gen consoles being an utter mess and releasing a AAA title with horrendous bugs.
It does look like it comes out for PS4 / X Box 1 in late Feb to be honest - which is ok for me as plenty of other games to play whilst wait for it to be fixed but I do feel sorry for those getting for Christmas (and outside their refund window).
For a rpg the basic imersion breaking elements are surprisingly bad - I remember GTA games on PS2 having better crow reactions and AI for police and people on the street and San Andreas at least offered abilty to change your appearance - you even got fat if you ate to much rather than
Hy wow you can have different looks for your gentils (wow so edgy) at the start but nah you can't change your hair colour or haircut in game Isn't Cyberpunk all about appearance and customisation? Well not in the game!
Ah well - another half finished game released too early.
A Town Called Malus wrote: I've managed to avoid buying a vehicle so far. All just seem to be a waste of money I could spend on more crafting recipes, fashion and cyberware, at least at this point. Did the mission with Mama Welles after the heist (think you only get it if you choose a certain option during the heist mission, though you can get the bike anyway if you make a different choice) and got a motorbike from it, so I used that until my car got fixed up.
I use vehicles even less after buying double jump.
Once you can double jump, you can ignore most obstacles or easily get around them to roof hop your way through many of the twistiest parts of NC.
Then you get a Tech sniper rifle, use ping, and just stand on the roof and headshot everything XD
The game seems to encourage hybrid builds from what I've seen. You benefit a lot from a few points in everything. Most stats get you special dialogue prompts in different contexts, a few points in Tech/Int/Body open hidden pathways to objectives. Then the game seems balanced around maxing out your primary means of dealing damage early, and it looks like you'll have enough levels/points left over to max out another stat easily.
I've only done one build so far, but I can say Intelligence and Tech are disgusting together. Tech weapons are amazing because they pierce cover (and they can do it through multiple walls) making tech revolvers and snipers insanely good. Quick hacks back them up fairly well.
Quickhacks ultimately though, seem outright broken once you've unlocked synapse burnout and suicide (it does what it says). If you combine those with one of the legendary OS from a ripperdoc and lots of perks in Intel, you'll just daisy chain enemies one after the other without ever coming under fire. They'll all be dead before they can hurt you.
Tyranid Horde wrote: I haven't picked up the game based on what I've seen so far but I feel it's a bit rich for CDPR to ask customers "for a chance" when they were fairly dishonest regarding last gen consoles being an utter mess and releasing a AAA title with horrendous bugs.
Yes but CDPR are but a widdle indie game studio, and you liked the Witcher, didn't you? And since the managers gracefully told the devs that their bonuses will not be tied to 90% on metacritic score, if you buy the game the money will actually, in a minuscule percent, go to the devs!
Man, this year has been a dumpster fire for a lot of studios isn't it? Naughty Dog lost what credibility they had between their insane crunch practices and the LoU Part 2 disappointment, and now CDPR doubles down on the crunch problem and the game is a mess for release. What a load of hooey.
Let's hope more people follow SuperGiant Games lead for how games should be produced.
First off, just wanted to say I feel for all the people having problems. I'm fortunate to have a strong PC that is able to run the game surprisingly well, and I've had very few problems. I know what it's like to have a game that has lots of problems, I'm just not in that situation with this one.
I'm level 21 now, played lots of hours, and I think I've decided what it is I would change if I could change one thing in this game: the levelled equipment system. There is no reason why I should be a minimum level to wear one jacket over another, or to use one pistol over another pistol that is the exact same make and model. By all means, keep the rarity (common, uncommon, etc.) as a determination of how much better one Unity pistol is over another Unity pistol, but there shouldn't be level requirements. Make a stat requirement if needed for high tech or really heavy weapons, that's fine, too.
Now that I've found an outfit I really like for my V, in order to keep that outfit up-to-date I have to pay continually increasing upgrade costs for it. Oh yes, each time you upgrade an item the cost to upgrade it again goes up. So if you find a really awesome looking top at a low level, you're screwed unless you can get really lucky and find the same one at a higher level in a shop.
Anyway, gotta say I really love the mantis blades now that I've finally got them. When my stealth approach fails and the enemies start charging me, I feel like the Doom Marine: "Rip and tear, until it is done".
Smart weapons are turning out to be a bit of a headache for me. Either they're fun weapons that can nail the bad guys even when those bad guys are behind cover, or you watch the bullets turn away from the bad guys even at point blank range. I'm not sure what causes the latter. But it's *really* annoying.
Yeah, first time I tried to use a smart shotgun I was like "this is awful, I'm not hitting anything". Just got an iconic smart assault rifle from some 6th Street people having a party and it seems to work a lot better. Might go and get a higher level of smart link cyberware.
Though I do also think that either the smart gun or the smart link cyberware itself is causing bugs with the reticule. When I go into scanner the gun reticule comes up and won't go away until I either reload or equip a smart gun and draw and then holster it. Bit annoying.
Now that I've found an outfit I really like for my V, in order to keep that outfit up-to-date I have to pay continually increasing upgrade costs for it. Oh yes, each time you upgrade an item the cost to upgrade it again goes up. So if you find a really awesome looking top at a low level, you're screwed unless you can get really lucky and find the same one at a higher level in a shop.
Yeah, that sucks. Also, would be nice if the shops actually stocked clothes which matched the kind of shop it is. Like I go into the super fancy haute couture boutique in the centre, where the items on display have holos listing them as costing tens of thousands but when I actually look at the stuff they are selling? Just the same kind of stuff as everywhere else, at the same prices.
If you had different stores which each had their own style and theme, then it would be a lot easier to put yourself an outfit together. Wanna look like a corporat? Go to a fancy tailor in the centre. Want rave gear? That shop over there is for you.
Also, the crafting system has a pretty major exploit in the form of maxdocs. Creating any version of a maxdoc (uncommon, rare, epic etc.) only requires basic and uncommon parts, just in increasing amounts. When you break down a rare maxdoc, however, you will get rare components back. So you get yourself a big stock of basic and uncommon parts (pretty easy from scrapping a load of guns you'll be picking up from dead dudes) and make yourself a load of maxdocs of rare or above, then break them down into components and boom, you just gained a load of rare or better resources and recouped some of your materials from making them. You can then sell the rare+ components for cash, buy more basic and uncommon ones and repeat. Or use those rare components to upgrade/craft yourself some goodies.
Background was obviously cut content, but it does impact choices and events.
Example:
Spoiler:
I only play female characters so I don't know if the following is possible as a male V.
First time as a StreetKid I refused the MilliTech chip and just killed everyone. Stout still liked that and it led to a hookup even though I've seen some guides say you can only do this as a male V.
Second time as a Corpo I hacked the MilliTech chip. Apparently this led to Stout being ousted/killed and the SOB from the trunk met me at the end.
Also your dialogue choices change when entering the hotel during the Heist.
The single biggest issue I have with the game is Johnny Silverhand. That character is the corniest, try hard edgy, absolute piece of crap writing I have ever encountered. I don't understand how anyone can like that or who okayed it. I get that the Cyberpunk IP leans corny, but FFS that character and the band Samurai are so bad they might as well be satire...that and the whole hard-on everyone in game has for Night City and being a legend of Night City. Who the hell actually thinks like that?
I don't know about the MQ...but the game absolutely should have had a couple of gangs you could have joined/taken over along with a couple of corporations that you could have risen in power with.
I like the core gameplay system a lot as far as combat/hacking goes, but the story elements are hot trash outside of the Evelyn/River/Judy/Panam plotlines.
trexmeyer wrote: but the game absolutely should have had a couple of gangs you could have joined/taken over along with a couple of corporations that you could have risen in power with.
Eh...
No thanks. That doesn't really fit with the cyberpunk genre, which is more about man versus the system. Rising to power within one of those groups would mean that V was joining the system. Also, we're explicitly told early on that you've only got a few weeks (despite the usual "video game time" stuff). That's barely enough time to get out of orientation in a big company, let alone take over a department. It always bugs me a bit when open world games have you doing that sort of thing in virtually no time at all.
There are some DLC planned, so despite my objections, you might still get your wish in the future.
trexmeyer wrote: The single biggest issue I have with the game is Johnny Silverhand. That character is the corniest, try hard edgy, absolute piece of crap writing I have ever encountered. I don't understand how anyone can like that or who okayed it. I get that the Cyberpunk IP leans corny, but FFS that character and the band Samurai are so bad they might as well be satire...that and the whole hard-on everyone in game has for Night City and being a legend of Night City. Who the hell actually thinks like that?
I don't know about the MQ...but the game absolutely should have had a couple of gangs you could have joined/taken over along with a couple of corporations that you could have risen in power with.
I like the core gameplay system a lot as far as combat/hacking goes, but the story elements are hot trash outside of the Evelyn/River/Judy/Panam plotlines.
I have to say, I'm extremely disappointed with the main plot of the game.
It's just... So pedantically lame.
Like, in the trailers and the sneak peaks, it looked like your character would get burned and then recruited into some radical freedom fighter group, which is probably a bit cliche for a punk genre game, but you know what with Keeanu as my spirit animal, I was all for it. Instead, the game is some sophist shlock masquerading like some kind of transhuman introspection that really just feels like a pointlessly high stakes game of musical chairs between you and Johnny. I think they wasted a perfectly good character (who comes off as a needlessly massive donkey-cave mostly because of circumstances) in this game the way the story is set up. The endings frankly give me Mass Effect 3 vibes, where the game acts like your choices matter but really there's only 3 actual endings, 2 of them suck, and the third is only a slightly better. Yeah yeah there's like seven 'endings' but they're all basically the same outcome with slightly different window dressing (colors). After hunting down all the ones other than the one I got, I find myself profoundly disappointed with the plot of this game, chiefly because;
Spoiler:
Nothing you do fething matters. Either V dies at the end of the game, or he dies six months later, or he lives forever in the internet in a state of eternal limbo (and might as well be dead). Basically, every ending fething sucks for you, some just suck slightly less and which how much of a depressing 'gotta save yourself' drag the main plot is I find I have no enthusiasm to play the game again. At best, I'd only be trying a new build so my character can once again end up dead in some way with their life having not mattered a lick.
I find most of the fan takes on how this is a 'deep' plot, to be rather pedantic. It's just crappy plot with an even crappier selection of endings. Go feth yourself if you became invested in your character, the NPCs, or the game world is how they all read to me.
I don't know about the MQ...but the game absolutely should have had a couple of gangs you could have joined/taken over along with a couple of corporations that you could have risen in power with.
I second this as well. I find most complaints about the game being deceptively linear hold true and it's a shame because the core game play loop, minus vehicles and bugs, is pretty sold. Builds are varied and impactful. You get to feel like an absolute badass at high levels and the level of open ended approaches to problems is generally great. It's an absolute shame none of that is reflected in an incredibly linear story and a game world that ultimately doesn't seem to care you exist and that you likewise don't care about outside of the immediate objective your pursuing.
It's one thing for a game to be about fighting the good fight even when you know you're going to lose. It's another when the game literally has no way for you to impact anything at all because you run around the world but don't really interact with it. The lack of interaction with the gangs, who were hyped as a big part of the game as I remember a few years ago, is one of the most noticeable aspects of this. The gangs matter so little, I don't even remember their names or what makes them different from each other. It doesn't freaking matter. ALl you do is kill them and the only interactions you really have with the city is in the corpse making business.
So what's the overall verdict? Worth a buy now at full price, or wait a while until it's on sale? Should CDProjektRed should have just made The Witcher 4?
AllSeeingSkink wrote: So what's the overall verdict? Worth a buy now at full price, or wait a while until it's on sale? Should CDProjektRed should have just made The Witcher 4?
If you weren't sold already, I'd wait for a sale or to see if the game state improves in a month. I wouldn't say I have buyers remorse. I would say that CDPR has scraped by avoiding the game becoming a repeat of Anthem, which isn't high praise. The game is at least functional on PC, where it doesn't have nearly as many issues as the console versions. The core loop is solid, the base mechanics work when the UI cooperates, and a lot of the bugginess will probably be patched out by the end of the month.
The bigger issue imo, is that the game is 'good enough' and for all the hype and supposed development time that supposedly went into it, good enough isn't. This game warrants serious comparisons to Anthem, another game that sat in development for a long time and also feels like it was not in development for that long at release. It's better than Anthem, but desperately needs fleshing out. There's a lot that just feels like it isn't there and the game's legacy will probably ultimately be defined by how CDPR handles post-release and DLC content.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: So what's the overall verdict? Worth a buy now at full price, or wait a while until it's on sale? Should CDProjektRed should have just made The Witcher 4?
I would only get it now for PC and only if $60 for 30-40 hours of entertainment doesn't bother you.
The gameplay is at least decent.
Some side missions are excellent, most are at least decent.
I don't love the MQ, but some aspects of it are really good.
The open world aspect of the game is massively exaggerated. It's only open world after Act 1.
A lot of people are complaining about the open world AI...but honestly...I can't name an RPG with good open world AI. Bethesda games are 'open world' and the NPCs have schedules and all that jazz, but it has ZERO impact on the actual game.
I'd compare Cyberpunk to AC: Origins/Odyssey, but with weaker open world aspects (having a nemesis system/better police would be nice) while having more RPG elements and story options. I haven't played the Witcher series, but I've seen a lot of people compare it to Witcher 3, just in a different setting.
Edit:
I think me and LordOfHats roughly agree that they botched the MQ and probably wasted time/money on that instead of building up the world well. The MQ is decent enough to me if
Spoiler:
Play a female V, romance Judy, do all of Panam's quests prior to the final mission, ask Nomads for help. Nomad/Corpo path might be best for this.
Some aspects of the MQ remain weak, but the characterization for Judy and Panam is solid.
I think the weirdest thing about it, is that the game world feels like it got 8 years of development time. Night City, as a locale, is amazingly well done, with excellent balance and variety in environs, well developed arenas for your various hijinks, and it's so full of NPCs it kind of boggles the mind.
This is the first time in a game where I've felt like a city is a city.
Core controls and such are also solid, save for bugs.
Then there's everything else, which feels like it was splashed together a bit. AI, vehicle controls, the story, interactability. All of that is at the level of an early access game in some ways.
I'm going to wait for a GOTY edition in a few yrs. Old console versions are complete gak and my pc is getting old (750ti 2gb card still going strong ). I don't really buy many AAA games and Cyberpunk would have been my reason to upgrade but from what Ive seen so far Im in no rush for new consoles or pc anytime soon.
I'm enjoying it a lot, I got up to around level 25 and I think half way through the main quest with my nomad guy and decided to start over last night with a corpo girl. I liked her intro story a lot better. I think I'm gonna go with more of a melee/shotgun build with her.
I think the problem is the game needed another 6 months or so of development, but they pushed it out early to cash in on the new console launches. So I think/hope the DLCs will make it a lot better or waiting for the game of the year edition they will probably have next xmas might be a good idea. But I don't have any regrets, it's still fun to play and I like the story.
It def seems like there is a difference between the PC version and the console versions and then a gigantic gulf between them and the PS4 and X box versions.
Now there are some very stupid people saying that anyone on PS4 etc should not be complaining as its last Gen console forgetting /ignoring that the game is sold as a PS4 game and whilst no one should expect the same level of graphics etc it should at least be playable. This coupled with the disengenous statements about the game "working well" on last gen consoles (a lie) and the calculated and deliberate embargo of any pre-release fottage/games for the same consoles really makes the situation much much worse.
I don't understand why some of the open world elements are so bad - the police teleportation /AI, in fact AI in general. The lack of basic in game customisation options that were present in PS2 games never mind hgh end expensive PS4/5 games. For a rpg many of the issues are immersion breaking..
Well at least it looks like the full game will be released in Feb 2021.
I don't understand why some of the open world elements are so bad - the police teleportation /AI, in fact AI in general. The lack of basic in game customisation options that were present in PS2 games never mind hgh end expensive PS4/5 games. For a rpg many of the issues are immersion breaking.
These are especially egregious given the long development time. You have fundamental requirements of an open world game which are just not there, such as the AI traffic not being able to navigate around objects in their path. Park your car in one of the lanes of the major motorways in Night City and the AI will just queue up behind it forever. They won't change lane to go around or anything, just sit in their cars and wait. Similarly, shoot their passenger and the driver just cowers in their car instead of trying to drive away or even get out and run.
These kinds of things should have been some of the first systems mapped out and implemented during development. Hell for people in cars reacting to getting shot at that was in the PS2 GTA games, for goodness sake. And in Cyberpunk they are just absent. Not even buggy and not very good, just completely absent.
When you have such fundamental systems missing from your game, it makes it clear that a lot of the development time must have been completely wasted by incompetent management.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: So what's the overall verdict? Worth a buy now at full price, or wait a while until it's on sale? Should CDProjektRed should have just made The Witcher 4?
Finding it great, personally. A lot better than any of the Witcher games, partly because I prefer custom characters for games I play, and the characters in the Witcher are just... terrible people. And somewhat boring terrible people, oddly enough.
I haven't run into near the number of glitches some others have mentioned. A few pop-ins and some traffic issues, but that's about it.
I do think the main quest is over-wrought and unnecessary. Well, the part with the chip and Johnny (who I could rant about the direction they went there for days- completely unsympathetic), at least. The set up with your character and crew is great, and they could have easy turned that into a revenge/reputation/money cyberpunk plot without the weird stuff.
The biggest problem with MQ is the typical one for 'open world' games. Present main quests with a story that absolutelly demands urgency. Give you 500 things to do that aren't the main quests, and have people complain about you not keeping up, despite it not mattering if you do them fast or not.
The weakest side quest is the tarot tie-in, which is also baffling simply because tarot isn't 'collect them all, then choose.' That makes no sense in any context, let alone the fumblings at pseudo-mysticism they went with. If they were going to do it at all, they should have done a proper reading that affects story elements, not just 'go photograph the major arcanum because reasons'
I'd love to see DLC and new game+ stuff that just lets you ignore the main quest and do cyberpunk things. The MQ is a bit of a chore, and a barrier to replayability.
I don't think Johnny's SUPPOSED to be sympathetic, he's supposed to be a donkey-cave and a bit of a nutcase. which is why ".. dear lord, we could become the same person" is supposed to be scary. I mean if I had a chip in my head like that I could take solace if the guy who'd be replacing me was a total saint like I dunno... Ghandi, if it was a total child eating monster? well I'd put a bullet in my ehad just to make SURE he died. but someone like Johnny silverhand?
There's a very compelling theory doing the rounds that the casting of Keanu in the game caused much of the game's story content to be cast aside last year and the the MQ was completely remade to revolve around Reeves' performance. Which considering the entire MQ is ultimately about his character and the ramifications of his character's actions, and he was only cast in the role last year actually makes a lot of sense and explains difference in the current game and earlier trailers and how the last year of the game's development (normally spent on polish) was instead spent remaking the MQ and leaving the rest of the game in the lurch.
BrianDavion wrote: I don't think Johnny's SUPPOSED to be sympathetic, he's supposed to be a donkey-cave and a bit of a nutcase.
As someone (IIRC, it was Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk pencil and paper game) noted following the initial reveal of Silverhand, yeah, Johnny's a jerk. He's a guy who hired his ex-girlfriend to rescue his current girlfriend after the latter was kidnapped by Arasaka back in the short story included in the original boxed rules set. The fact that he's a jerk was also mentioned repeatedly in one of the later trailers.
Minor spoiler for those who don't already know the names of the girlfriends in question -
Spoiler:
That would be Rogue and Alt Cunningham respectively.
I'm curious where CDPR is planning to go with the DLC. Will it be incorporated into the main story? Will it be outside the main story? I haven't finished the MQ myself, so there might be some glaring items that I'm not aware of that would affect this. But right now I'm not sure how I feel about inserting something else into the main story while you're (in theory, anyway) supposed to be running around trying to get the chip dealt with asap.
LordofHats wrote: There's a very compelling theory doing the rounds that the casting of Keanu in the game caused much of the game's story content to be cast aside last year and the the MQ was completely remade to revolve around Reeves' performance. Which considering the entire MQ is ultimately about his character and the ramifications of his character's actions, and he was only cast in the role last year actually makes a lot of sense and explains difference in the current game and earlier trailers and how the last year of the game's development (normally spent on polish) was instead spent remaking the MQ and leaving the rest of the game in the lurch.
I think this is accurate. Hopefully other game developers learn from this mistake and never repeat it. At best he offers interesting tidbits on gigs/side missions
Spoiler:
I think his best comment is at the end of the game concerning Judy
but having the MQ focused on solder turned rocker turned terrorist is just...lame. Out of all the story elements in the game, Johnny/Samurai/Rogue are the weakest aspects.
Also, I hate Jackie and Misty. I've lived in a majority Hispanic city and worked with mainly Hispanics for most of my adult life and I have literally never encountered a single one that injects so much random Spanish into their conversations. The most was from one lady I dated and even with her it was just a couple of phrases. It's great that they actually get representation, but it seems half-assed to me.
I did not like Silverhand and others that are worshipped in the RPG like Morgan Blackhand - they are mostly dicks and so was a little concerned that Silverhand was a main character in the computer game.
However I always played Corps so mite be bias. main story DLC may be limited if they have to Keanu reaves in it?
I imagine at some point the development hell will be revealed.
BrianDavion wrote: I don't think Johnny's SUPPOSED to be sympathetic, he's supposed to be a donkey-cave and a bit of a nutcase.
As someone (IIRC, it was Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk pencil and paper game) noted following the initial reveal of Silverhand, yeah, Johnny's a jerk. He's a guy who hired his ex-girlfriend to rescue his current girlfriend after the latter was kidnapped by Arasaka back in the short story included in the original boxed rules set. The fact that he's a jerk was also mentioned repeatedly in one of the later trailers..
'Jerk' is underselling it though, by a lot.
He's an abusive psychopath, and even when called on it, claims he did nothing wrong (and tells you you're just as bad as his ex). The conversation post voodoo boys was nauseating, frankly.
If he were just a jerk, they could have sold me on his character- a hard nosed, idealistic punk with somewhat dirty hands is totally in genre. But it goes way, way beyond that in his relationships, his actions and what he considers 'logical conclusions.'
Spoiler:
And the fact that its tied to frankly crap mysticism about copies of memory fragments, magically 'functional' personalities of computerized minds and frickin' souls drives it right into the ground. You aren't going to get a real person out of digitizing someone'sbrain- you've got none of biological aspects that affect personality, and the idea you can string memories together to be functional is a stretch, let alone that you have the same 'personhood' on your disk. Information, sure, I could believe that. But not an interactive construct, especially not on what's essentially a USB thumbdrive.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: So what's the overall verdict? Worth a buy now at full price, or wait a while until it's on sale? Should CDProjektRed should have just made The Witcher 4?
If you weren't sold already, I'd wait for a sale or to see if the game state improves in a month. I wouldn't say I have buyers remorse. I would say that CDPR has scraped by avoiding the game becoming a repeat of Anthem, which isn't high praise. The game is at least functional on PC, where it doesn't have nearly as many issues as the console versions. The core loop is solid, the base mechanics work when the UI cooperates, and a lot of the bugginess will probably be patched out by the end of the month.
The bigger issue imo, is that the game is 'good enough' and for all the hype and supposed development time that supposedly went into it, good enough isn't. This game warrants serious comparisons to Anthem, another game that sat in development for a long time and also feels like it was not in development for that long at release. It's better than Anthem, but desperately needs fleshing out. There's a lot that just feels like it isn't there and the game's legacy will probably ultimately be defined by how CDPR handles post-release and DLC content.
trexmeyer wrote:
Spoiler:
AllSeeingSkink wrote: So what's the overall verdict? Worth a buy now at full price, or wait a while until it's on sale? Should CDProjektRed should have just made The Witcher 4?
I would only get it now for PC and only if $60 for 30-40 hours of entertainment doesn't bother you.
The gameplay is at least decent.
Some side missions are excellent, most are at least decent.
I don't love the MQ, but some aspects of it are really good.
The open world aspect of the game is massively exaggerated. It's only open world after Act 1.
A lot of people are complaining about the open world AI...but honestly...I can't name an RPG with good open world AI. Bethesda games are 'open world' and the NPCs have schedules and all that jazz, but it has ZERO impact on the actual game.
I'd compare Cyberpunk to AC: Origins/Odyssey, but with weaker open world aspects (having a nemesis system/better police would be nice) while having more RPG elements and story options. I haven't played the Witcher series, but I've seen a lot of people compare it to Witcher 3, just in a different setting.
Edit:
I think me and LordOfHats roughly agree that they botched the MQ and probably wasted time/money on that instead of building up the world well. The MQ is decent enough to me if
[spoiler]
Play a female V, romance Judy, do all of Panam's quests prior to the final mission, ask Nomads for help. Nomad/Corpo path might be best for this.
Some aspects of the MQ remain weak, but the characterization for Judy and Panam is solid.
[/spoiler]
Thanks for the overviews. It seems a bit of a let down, I bought Witcher 2 and 3 out of the gates as CD Projekt Red at that time came across as very pro gamer. The Cyberpunk universe doesn't really interest me like the Witcher universe did, but I was considering buying it from the good will CDPR bought in the TW2 and 3. They released their games DRM free with DRM was becoming the norm, they tried to overcome unnecessary regional pricing by offering vouchers for the price difference between regions, and when some regions required the game to be censored, they censored it in a way that minimal effort from the community allowed it to be uncensored (basically making distinct files for the censored parts which weren't included on censored versions, but individual users could easily share).
I did start to get worried when the game was being delayed. Delayed usually = rushed, some people try to look on the bright side that the developers are giving themselves more time, but I think more often it means the game is being rushed out in less time than it needed, and the delay is just taking it from completely unplayable to mediocre.
trexmeyer wrote:Also, I hate Jackie and Misty. I've lived in a majority Hispanic city and worked with mainly Hispanics for most of my adult life and I have literally never encountered a single one that injects so much random Spanish into their conversations. The most was from one lady I dated and even with her it was just a couple of phrases. It's great that they actually get representation, but it seems half-assed to me.
I wonder how much of it was written from the perspective of what a Polish person imagines Hispanics in the US act?
People had a go at TW3 for not being inclusive enough, but Poland is one of the least racially diverse places I've visited, so those complaints always seemed a bit odd to me. I'm mildly dark skinned with dark hair and I felt so out of place, lol.
Cyberpunk has been dogged the past few years by rumors and accusations of insane crunch and staff turnover. People largely ignored these stories prior to release because CDPR had build a lot of good will with it's previous games and practices. I think the final release of the game suggests many of the unsavory rumors might have some truth to them.
Rampant turnover would explain a lot as would executive meddling into the game's production for the purposes of marketing. Two years ago, someone claiming to be a former CDPR employee accused the company of being very anti-employee, paying minimum wage rates for crunch level work loads. They additionally claimed the company was not preparing staff to develop Cyberpunk, poorly documented the game and their tools, and would often leave people with unclear goals and work loads. This story happened around the time that a lot of veteran members of the company abruptly left it over complaints that their pay hadn't been raised in years despite the company growing and being a massive success after Witcher 2 and 3.
And I suppose that sounds dire, but realistically, Cyberpunk 2077 minus bugs, is no worse than the first Witcher game which I think was also a surprisingly fun and very imperfect product. Cyberpunk does remind me of it a lot. How CDPR handles the post-launch development will probably decide how the game impacts their reputation and legacy (something they seem aware of, as it was mentioned in a recent stakeholder's meeting). Some of these problems are easily explained by CDPR's rapid growth (in ten years they went from a very small company to a very big one) and struggles with growing their operations. At the same time, the state of the game on consoles is quite severe and there's no way they didn't know about it, so that's on them. Mistakes and problems can be understandable while still being very much worthy of a painted finger at how badly they fethed up.
The thing is, does it really matter how much CDPR's reputation is hurt by this? EA, Blizzard, Ubisoft, Bethesda, Rockstar, and so on still sell millions every year despite their less-than-stellar reputations.
that depends, if CDPR can clean up the came after release and if they don't do anything that pisses the community off they'll be fine (I suspect the next big source of "fury" will be when multiplayer gets released and they have microtransactions for cosmetics).
One thing worth noting is that prior to witcher 3 CDPR was considered a "small studio" and generally didn't attract much attention. so witcher 3's release wasn't super anticipated and I suspect by time the wder gaming community realized what it was, the biggest launch bugs etc where addressed (hell a lot of people don't seem to realize the barbershop was FreeLC)
And I suppose that sounds dire, but realistically, Cyberpunk 2077 minus bugs, is no worse than the first Witcher game which I think was also a surprisingly fun and very imperfect product. Cyberpunk does remind me of it a lot. .
Bugs are (hopefully fixible) - I never played the Witcher Games - how did they compare with the following issues I (and other have) with C2077
* The NPC AI (both for people and cars) being non existant and horribly imersion breaking?
* Teleporting Police / no real "wanted" system - it looks like its a GTA style system but is less than the PS2 versions!
* Emptiness and sterility of the "Open world" outside the main quest/scripts - see AI but just so shallow at the moment.
Do/did the Witcher games suffer from this as well?
And I suppose that sounds dire, but realistically, Cyberpunk 2077 minus bugs, is no worse than the first Witcher game which I think was also a surprisingly fun and very imperfect product. Cyberpunk does remind me of it a lot. .
Bugs are (hopefully fixible) - I never played the Witcher Games - how did they compare with the following issues I (and other have) with C2077
* The NPC AI (both for people and cars) being non existant and horribly imersion breaking?
* Teleporting Police / no real "wanted" system - it looks like its a GTA style system but is less than the PS2 versions!
* Emptiness and sterility of the "Open world" outside the main quest/scripts - see AI but just so shallow at the moment.
Do/did the Witcher games suffer from this as well?
Witcher 2 I felt was pretty tight on NPC AI and it didn't feel terribly empty/sterile but it was no where near as "open world" nor were the areas all that large (that I recall, been years since I played) so there were not hundreds of folks walking around everywhere. I think NPCs at least retired at night or moved but I could be wrong - again been too long since I played it.
Witcher 3 I dont recall the AI being terrible for NPCs in the big city areas (Novigrad) at least I don't recall it massively knocking my immersion. I do recall the overall actions of NPCs varied by time of day at a minimum. I think maybe I might have wished people did more in the city or there was more variety of NPCs?
I will say that I LOVED Novigrad and thought visually it was one of the most amazing fantasy cities realized in a video game period - it actually felt like a city vs. a dozen buildings and 20 NPCs that make up the "big" cities of most computer RPG. BUT I always wished there was more to actually do in that city. Like maybe some more shops with rare or unusual useful items, more isolated "hole in the wall" points of interest or more reason to just explore it in detail; shoot even a collection quest or something but there wasn't much of anything and it was a bit of a let down on that front.
I'm about 60 hours into the game on PC and boy do I have mixed feelings. It's clearly unfinished in many ways, which is a damn shame, but there is also a lot of things to enjoy already and a massive iceberg of potential yet to be explored. Ignoring the huge amount of bugs and glitches (which is already a big thing to ask), the biggest fault of the game for me lies with the city itself.
The city is spectacular. Once I got the double jump, I spent most of my time jumping up and around roofs and buildings, walking along the monorail tracks and enjoying the vistas. But eventually, you'll notice that outside this vertical exploration, the city is ultimately shallow, with very few accessible buildings and ways of interacting with anything.
Interaction with pedestrians is non-existent and the AI is completely immersion breaking, not to mention the magical teleporting police who just spawn into the scene behind you, no matter where you are. After teasing the Trauma Team and the MaxTec special forces in the prologue, I'd expect the police to make a similar entrance with a transport shuttle or, you know, a police car.
Merely running past people will prompt them to cower or run away in fear, people in cars will react completely unbelievable when confronted with anything but neatly flowing traffic, stopping dead in their tracks when getting shot at and just going on their merry way after running you (or other people) over like it's nothing.
Comparisons to GTA V are inevitable, and while Night City looks spectacular, it feels much less plausible than Los Santos in so many ways. The backdrop should be the most robust part of an open world game, but behind the admittedly shiny facade there is very little substance to be found.
Mr Morden wrote: * The NPC AI (both for people and cars) being non existant and horribly imersion breaking?
Depends on the entry. Witcher one was a very clunky game, much like CP2077 on this front.
* Teleporting Police / no real "wanted" system - it looks like its a GTA style system but is less than the PS2 versions!
This I think is one of the most egregious elements of the game and clearly not what was originally intended. It actually strikes me as a solution that was thrown together because they couldn't get the real system working in time for release. Looking at the 2018 gameplay trailer again, I'm more convinced that the game went sideways when the MQ was remade. The 2018 demo presented what looked like a radically different MQ, focused more on cyberpsychosis (which explains why Regina's quest line on that appears so... suddenly and randomly in game).
I do think they'll fix this though. Eventually. They have to or no one will ever respect the game and while EA can just chuck fething up Dead Space 3 and dump the studio and franchise out a window to make stupid money on the next FIFA title, CDPR doesn't have that luxury. They're a big company money wise, but a small indie developer production wise. They can't afford to have CP2077 crash and burn. It'll bury the company (realistically, probably lead to Ubisoft or someone else buying it out at a horrifically lower stock price than it would otherwise be worth).
* Emptiness and sterility of the "Open world" outside the main quest/scripts - see AI but just so shallow at the moment.
Very similar. The questing system in CP2077 basically is the system from the Witcher series (more or less), but everything by the time of Witcher 3 was way more integrated and felt far more natural to the world. It helped that quest lines could have radically different outcomes based on player choice, which isn't really a thing in CP2077. You have basically no agency in the game which is basically how the first Witcher was as well. The Witcher games though had much stronger MQ. CP2077's main quest is gak unless you actually enjoy the utter shitstack that is Johnny Silverhand's personality.
The agency failure I think is at the root of CP2077's most glaring core problem; you're a player running around Night City to earn progression, not a character who lives there. It's ironic that in a game where the main them is about living life to the fullest no matter what, that your life is utterly inconsequential to the game world. At no point do V's actions have any apparent impact on anyone or anything, not even for V themselves. This even carries into the games many mostly reflavored and identical endings, where nothing you do really changes much for you or anyone else. All you can really do is adjust a narrow set of circumstances that are ultimately somewhat moot and irrelevant in context.
Spoiler:
The stupidest part imo actually is the Reaper ending, where you put a gun to your head and pull the trigger. This can make sense in context, because there's no way in game for V to actually save themselves. You're gonna die no matter what you do (which pisses me the feth off after spending 50 hours on one play through and then finding there's no better ending). You're only choice is dying now, dying in 6 months(ish), or dying in the internet while Johnny gets to live a full life in your body (because that makes fething sense somehow that Johnny can live a full life if you ditch your body, but you're gonna die no matter what even if he leaves). I'd actually say the Reaper ending is one of the better ones, just cause at least then V gets to go out on their own terms rather than waiting for inevitable erasure of self by bs author's fiat. But then the game just fething guilts you over it, showing how all the side characters are angry that you died then by your own hand rather than wanting to die by fate's hand later. And even then, V's life and death feels utterly inconsequential, cause you were gonna fething die anyway and no one but that narrow bad of characters would ever give a gak.
I think CP2077 will ultimately end up serviceable as a game, maybe even quite good with some content expansions. What it will never be though is the genre defining RPG CDPR advertised it as being or that the 2016 and 2018 demos they showed at E3 seemed to promise. Even the most well implemented parts of the game are just genre standard at this point, and don't even quite hold up to a game like GTAIV or Red Dead Redemption, let alone their sequels.
Do/did the Witcher games suffer from this as well?
The first game, very much so. Witcher one was produced on a shoe string budget over a couple years and was barely enough to keep CDPR afloat. The game had loads of bugs, very clunky and poorly balanced systems, and lots of promise that failed to be fully implemented. The formula was heavily refined in the next two games and Witcher 3 belongs on a top 10 list of best RPGs ever made. I don't know if CDPR can make that magic happen again. A lot of the people who made those games left CDPR during CP2077's development and joined Ubisoft. Ironically, many of them ended up working on Assassin's Creed Valhalla, apparently XD Explains a lot given how much that game seems to take from Witcher 3.
regarding the witcher, it's worth noting that about 6 months to a year after the witcher came out, CDPR put out an "extended edition" of witcher 1, which addressed some of the more glaring issues (for those who never played witcher 1 before that, there was no alchemy bag and alchemy resources went into your limited inventory pouch, which was such a pain in my first play through I basicly ignored alchemy) witcher 2 likewise got an extended edition. and even witcher 3 had some substantial additions with it's freeLC. such as the barbershop etc. So CDPR is very much the "george Lucas" of video games in that they're willing to put work into refining and adding to a game after the games already live.
Comment concerning different choices for the Flathead quest.
Spoiler:
Shard Options:
1) Refuse
2) Take
3) Hack...this is probably the most looked over option since it's a new gameplay concept at that time. I did literally everything I could beforehand (including follow up gigs) and only saw one other instance in Watson where you can hack a Shard.
Payment Options:
1) Don't Pay...you have to fight your way out. With enough Body (8) you can kill Royce then and there.
2) Pay with hacked shard or your cash. You have to fight MilliTech at the end.
3) Pay with shard (not hacked). Virus kills their Netrunner. Fight your way out.
4) Other...go in guns blazing and kill them all.
Brick:
You can rescue him or not. Not sure if you can rescue him when you're fighting MilliTech.
Royce:
Boss fight is optional.
Regardless, you'll meet Royce/Brick/Maybe Another later on in game depending on your choices. If you help Brick or Royce it might make that mission go smoother.
If Stout survives you can have a fling with her.
Sadly that quest and the final one seem to have the most options.
A few other notable ones.
Judy questline
Spoiler:
Side with Maiko.
Kill Maiko.
Don't kill Maiko (leads to kiss if female).
Siding with Maiko might prevent the romance.
Act 2 questline about the Float
Spoiler:
You can save Takemura, but it's a hidden feature. He'll text you later on.
Panam questline
Spoiler:
I haven't seen any options after doing it twice...
It seems like a fair amount quests are on rails, but those with options frequently pop up again in the news or a later encounter.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Anyone know what the heck those blade feet things that some NPCs have? Typically on melee variants.
Also, some thoughts on gangs.
Tyger Claws
Spoiler:
Kill on sight. There are two gigs in Watson (opening area) that deal with a freak that tortures JoyToys and a follow up with his supplier.
Also the crap with the Mox, Clouds, and Evelyn Parker.
They're nasty.
Sixth Street
Spoiler:
Kill on sight. There's a gig where you find out that they slaughtered a house of JoyToys and other civilians.
trexmeyer wrote: Comment concerning different choices for the Flathead quest.
Spoiler:
Shard Options: 1) Refuse 2) Take 3) Hack...this is probably the most looked over option since it's a new gameplay concept at that time. I did literally everything I could beforehand (including follow up gigs) and only saw one other instance in Watson where you can hack a Shard.
Payment Options: 1) Don't Pay...you have to fight your way out. With enough Body (8) you can kill Royce then and there. 2) Pay with hacked shard or your cash. You have to fight MilliTech at the end. 3) Pay with shard (not hacked). Virus kills their Netrunner. Fight your way out. 4) Other...go in guns blazing and kill them all.
Brick: You can rescue him or not. Not sure if you can rescue him when you're fighting MilliTech.
Royce: Boss fight is optional.
Regardless, you'll meet Royce/Brick/Maybe Another later on in game depending on your choices. If you help Brick or Royce it might make that mission go smoother.
If Stout survives you can have a fling with her.
To answer some of your questions and elaborate on one point:
Spoiler:
If you don't pay then you can still kill Royce instantly without needing 8 points in Body. If you ask for a discount he'll begin ranting and waving his gun around at which point you can draw your weapon on him. If you do that there is an option to shoot him afterwards, which kills him instantly.
And you can still rescue Brick if you are fighting MiliTech
In the Panam mission where you have to extract Saul from the Wraith(?) camp, the subsequent chase sequence depends on your performance during the rescue. Initially, I was forced into a firefight while escaping with Saul. For some reason, the resulting chase sequence always ended in my truck exploding at the same point, no matter whether I managed to take out my pursuers or not. Probably a bug, but one that would break that quest completely.
When I loaded a previous save and happened to complete the rescue without getting detected, there was no chase sequence at all, so the bug didn't manifest and I was able to complete the quest.
Been enjoying it immensely on the PC. Taking it slow, having just did the Heist quest and now Keanu is in my head.
Just running around town building up my street cred by killing gangers and killing Cyber-psychos as I happen upon them. Only big quest I did was the retrieval of Delamain's various personalities. Hopefully it pays off somewhere down the line, because the monetary rewards were somewhat lacking considering the amount of miles I put on my feet and truck tracking down his errant cabs. On the plus side, I saw alot of the city.
Edit: Also retrieved Jackie's motorcycle keys from his mom, but haven't given it a spin yet.
Haven't really run into any game breaking bugs, but like I said, taking it slow, just leveling up so that hopefully some stuff gets patched before I get to a point of no return.
PC: 80+ (7+ user score)
Consoles: ~50 (3+ user score)
Most of the bugs and glitches people are complaining about don't exist on PC, or aren't as frequent and the play experience is consequently much much better. It's why I call the game fun but imperfect. I could bitch about the things I don't like for hours, but at the end of the day I still had a lot of fun running around and shooting heads through walls.
Most of the bugs and glitches people are complaining about don't exist on PC, or aren't as frequent and the play experience is consequently much much better. It's why I call the game fun but imperfect. I could bitch about the things I don't like for hours, but at the end of the day I still had a lot of fun running around and shooting heads through walls.
That seems to be the prevailing view with the contrast between platforms being so vast. The deception about the console version is not really going down very well.
Oh, they do exist on PC, but they are easier to stomach when the game runs somewhat reliably at 60 FPS despite those bugs. Loading times are also much faster on decent setups in comparison to consoles.
I have encountered several game breaking quest bugs that could only be resolved by reloading a previous save, sometimes sacrificing a good half hour of progress. If for some reason I didn't have any spare save files at those points, that would have resulted in a soft lock of my playthrough.
The console release is a disgrace and I'm glad Sony had the balls and responsibility to pull the game.
PC: 80+ (7+ user score)
Consoles: ~50 (3+ user score)
Most of the bugs and glitches people are complaining about don't exist on PC, or aren't as frequent and the play experience is consequently much much better. It's why I call the game fun but imperfect. I could bitch about the things I don't like for hours, but at the end of the day I still had a lot of fun running around and shooting heads through walls.
The actual gameplay (combat) is excellent. Every gig has multiple routes in...even if some seem blocked off by Body/Technical Ability requirements. There's a lot of places where you can shoot through glass to get inside, which includes windows on the roofs. Also, for the single target kill missions you can frequently KO the target and carry them out which leads to slightly different results.
My biggest pet peeve with the gameplay remains that it is built around your Cyberdeck to an extent and you can't unlock new ones quickly. The fastest one I know you can get is by level 7 (Reflex 6 to start, all points into Reflex) and than there is a Ripperdoc that sells an uncommon Sandevistan...the only one I've seen in game.
Really? My experience is the opposite. You can buy what seems to be the best quickhacking deck fairly early in the game from the doc south of the big roundabout (where you get dropped off after the first talk with dex) for 50k and 10 street cred. I bought that deck and never replaced it.
The dirth of itemization is another thing that I think kind of weakens the game. You can basically have your entire cyberware set up loaded and running by level 10-12 and you'll likely never replace any of it for the rest of the game.
I think I screwed up Judy's quest with my new character..
Spoiler:
So the first time I went to clouds, after I talked to the doll, I messed something up and a bad guy attacked me so I ended up slaughtering everyone, including the boss of the club at the end. The quest ended like normal and Judy was happy, Evelyn is resting in her apt. And then that was it, I haven't heard from Judy since. I remember there being followup quests that lead me to killing that boss guy later on, and the girls taking over Clouds for themselves. I've done several game-days worth of quests since then, and when I tried calling Judy we just chatted about regular stuff. So I guess this means Evelyn will live? Maybe lead to a different story or some kind of happy bit at the end?
Wow I hear refunds promised now from Xbox and Best Buy stores as well.
I know they said already that preorders had paid for the game development but I wonder how many will be returning it and how that will impact the company. I see some folks losing jobs - hopefully its more the management that put them in this situation vs. the devs and folks who have been forced to crunch just to get it to the current state (let alone to a good state on all platforms by Feb 2021)
I just hope they can turn the game around and improve it with content. If they properly support the game I could see myself playing it throughout next year quite a bit. If they abandon it then it'll be the last game I purchase from this company.
Eumerin wrote: If you pay Vic what you owe him, then he's got a couple of nice cyberdecks (purple and gold) for sale that don't appear to require any street cred.
Also, if you're a psycho completionist you can make well over 100k during Act 1 by doing everything. I bought Blue Mantis Blades...even though you can get Legendary for free after Act 1, the Legendary Sandevistan he sold, Double Jump legs, and a few other 5-7500k Cyberware items.
You can also get a free Legendary Monowire in Act 1 and it wrecks everyone...Strong Attack spam stun lock.
I dunno, there are plenty of glitches but I really don't see why there's so much interweb hate, I've been having a blast playing the game so far. But then, I also loved Anthem.
Maybe it's just the last gen consoles? They probably should have said it's for next gen only, and maybe released a last gen version in a few months when it's more stable? I do remember getting PUBG on Xbox and that was a train wreck for me, I tried to get a refund and Microsoft was just like lolno.
Necros wrote: I dunno, there are plenty of glitches but I really don't see why there's so much interweb hate, I've been having a blast playing the game so far. But then, I also loved Anthem.
Maybe it's just the last gen consoles? They probably should have said it's for next gen only, and maybe released a last gen version in a few months when it's more stable? I do remember getting PUBG on Xbox and that was a train wreck for me, I tried to get a refund and Microsoft was just like lolno.
Everyone on a console is playing the Current gen version - the next gen version is not out yet.
Glitches is an understatement and half the story - content is another issue for many interms of the AI problems - like the teleporting police who can't chase you outside of missions etc
Eumerin wrote: If you pay Vic what you owe him, then he's got a couple of nice cyberdecks (purple and gold) for sale that don't appear to require any street cred.
Also, if you're a psycho completionist you can make well over 100k during Act 1 by doing everything. I bought Blue Mantis Blades...even though you can get Legendary for free after Act 1, the Legendary Sandevistan he sold, Double Jump legs, and a few other 5-7500k Cyberware items.
You can also get a free Legendary Monowire in Act 1 and it wrecks everyone...Strong Attack spam stun lock.
Counter intuitively, the monowire scales with Street Brawler perks, not blade perks.
Just for anyone who picks it up XD
One of my more minor pet peeves is the largely unhelpful/uninformative tool tips. The game could use some more clarity on what perks effect what gear.
Orlanth wrote: I preordered this game long ago, and have not downloaded it yet. I am in no hurry as I have other games to play and my SSD is currently full.
Maybe by the time I get around to installing it it will be more stable.
I have a policy of just not buying big name games at least until I see reviews and usually not for several months after that. Gives time for bugfixes, patches and for DLC-included versions to come out. Anybody who buys such a game on day one (or even worse, pre-orders it) cannot reasonably act surprised when this sort of thing happens.
I just remembered that Grimes was a VA for this game...and found out that she is Lizzy Wizzy. I've played that questline twice and had no idea that it was her. Freaking wild that some indie artist I've been listening to for a decade blew up like this.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Short Guide to Unlock All Endings
Spoiler:
Default are deal with Arasaka or suicide. You always get these two options.
Rogue assault with Johnny in control requires finishing the Rogue questline. The quest where you go to the drive in with her is the last one needed. The Kerry/Samurai gig is just a bonus.
Nomad assault requires the Panam questline and nothing else.
The solo assault questline requires you to follow this guide for a Chippin In dialogue section. That's it. I unlocked it at 40% approval with Johnny.
A warning...even on normal you want to be max level for this. I think I was 33 and I got killed in the first section, but I wasn't close to being optimized.
The only thing that Johnny's approval seems to impact is his dialogue with you after meeting with Hanako.
I have a policy of just not buying big name games at least until I see reviews and usually not for several months after that. Gives time for bugfixes, patches and for DLC-included versions to come out. Anybody who buys such a game on day one (or even worse, pre-orders it) cannot reasonably act surprised when this sort of thing happens.
Agreed. . . But, at least for us PC players, and insofar as I've experienced, all of the bugs that *I've* had are not game breaking, and are of the usual sort of early game bugs where you can laugh at them. Only time I had a playthrough session broken, was when I lept past my NPC companion down a ladder, that companion was programmed to be in front of me, so as they followed their pathing and got in front of me, they punted me through the wall and into the eternal fall of doom.
And if past CDR games are any thing to go by, I'd suspect we'll get DLCs and updates for a few years at least. . . IIRC, Witcher 3 got its 2nd DLC what, 2 or 3 years after launch? something like that? and I keep seeing it getting updates on my Steam queue so there's some kind of support for it out there.
I have a policy of just not buying big name games at least until I see reviews and usually not for several months after that. Gives time for bugfixes, patches and for DLC-included versions to come out. Anybody who buys such a game on day one (or even worse, pre-orders it) cannot reasonably act surprised when this sort of thing happens.
Agreed. . . But, at least for us PC players, and insofar as I've experienced, all of the bugs that *I've* had are not game breaking, and are of the usual sort of early game bugs where you can laugh at them. Only time I had a playthrough session broken, was when I lept past my NPC companion down a ladder, that companion was programmed to be in front of me, so as they followed their pathing and got in front of me, they punted me through the wall and into the eternal fall of doom.
And if past CDR games are any thing to go by, I'd suspect we'll get DLCs and updates for a few years at least. . . IIRC, Witcher 3 got its 2nd DLC what, 2 or 3 years after launch? something like that? and I keep seeing it getting updates on my Steam queue so there's some kind of support for it out there.
I did run into a "Game breaking bug" but CDPR gave a work around that I managed to use. so not a biig deal
Well, I just beat the game, with about 56 hours of playtime according to my savefile. Still actually have lots of side missions to do.
Spoiler:
I chose the ending path where Johnny assaults Arasaka with Rogue's help, and then I had Johnny go into cyberspace, leaving V to her body. Crappy ending, really. V only has a few months left to live due to her organic brain now rejecting her. Judy leaves her. And V goes on one last big job to steal from the Crystal City orbital casino to be a legend forever. Given how much that casino was mentioned throughout the game, I assumed it would be an eventual DLC, and I'd say this kinda confirms it.
I'll do another playthrough sometime next year after the game has had some DLC added into it.
Stardew Valley just got a major update, so I'll play that again next.
Crappy ending, really. V only has a few months left to live due to her organic brain now rejecting her.
Spoiler:
This bit here is literally every ending that isn't one where V dies/disappears into cyberspace. I don't care what DLC is added necessarily, but I honestly feel like demanding one where V has some chance to save themselves from their life being cut short by author fiat. The entire 'you gonna die no matter what you do' thing is so hamfisted, especially when there's an ending where Johnny walks off with your body and lives a full fething life.
I think there being "no happy ending" is intended, as Cyberpunk as a genre often tends to be pretty bleak. That said, the ending I got was.. actually reasonably happy. I choose to hit Arasaka with Panam, and... I think over all I got the happiest ending possiable. I road off into the sunset with Judy with my new family in the Nomads. there's a promise of maybe finding some contacts who might be able to help things (as it is the whole "your body is rejecting your mind" was pretty absurd pseudo science) so yeah, over all I feel that ending was a decent one, my V left night city behind her, with a feeling of something that I suspect she'd not had in a looooong time, real genuine hope
The Space Casino...obviously.
2/5 endings are already headed there.
1 is suicide so...yeah, you don't count.
Nomad ending can easily be contacted for the same mission.
Araska ending might actually be going there for the opposite reason...
This of course assumes that you take your body back, but I could see them having another option where you are downloaded into a new body for the mission.
Side note...having played entirely too much I've decided the biggest issue in the game is that way too many quests are locked deep into Act 2. There's an entire chain that's only accessible once you've unlocked the final quest and I think players will skip over it because of it's late accessibility. As of this post less than 1% of players had finished the chain according to Steam. Also, the act 2 side missions (specifically missions) are probably the best part of the game story wise. Hint: If it's a side mission, it likely has a follow up quest in 1-2 days, but their trigger system needs to be fixed.
Spoiler:
I probably skipped 2 weeks in game to get all of Kerry's quests and then the Blue Moon one to trigger.
The cyberpunk genre is cynical. That doesn't require it to be nihilistic, and with how little anything you do seems to impact you or the world around you it feels very nihilistic.
having just started a second playthrough I've some thoughts on the endings etc.
Spoiler:
MHO the nomad ending actually is, thematicly the most sense Because it show cases V's evolution as a character, you start off working alongside Jackie, and He's very upbeat on night city, becoming a legend etc. but by the end of the campaign, you're leaving night city behind, you've realized the city is a liar, a trap, you got sucked in by it's false promises, but no more" hell. I'll go one further. I think the best V is proably a female V that romances Judy and joins the Nomads. the ability to chart the growing feeling of delusionment with the city is easy to see,
Well lets be real. Male V has a bad voice actor. I'm not sure why. It was like that in Mass Effect too imo. The male VA just delivers their lines so flatly and without any flair, and in Cyberpunk with a bizarre Phillie/Jersey accent that sounds really fake.
I have 30 hours played, part of the way in to act 2.
Game is good on PC. I see some issues I would like fixed, but I see that coming in the future. Missions are fun. Side Quests are fun. Gigs are fun sometimes and sometimes frustrating. I hate any time an NPC drives. The rail system kills me. Melee is super fun, I love it. I am about to respec and go for a Fist build, Body/Cool/Int. Focus heavy on Cold Blood.
Very excited to see how things shake out.
PS: Johnny has grown on me, I hate him less than I initially did. Also, I am not fond of the voice actor for V.
I'm playing through this currently (on Xbone even…).
I don't like how hectic the mission system is. While I'm about to go towards a mission Place, I'm getting like three phone calls about new missions… Just let me get on with the current one please.
I have a cop waiting for me in a diner and I've changed the current missions twice already (when Judy or the Nomad chick call, I'm not gonna say no to them over some stupid breakfast with a po-po). I don't know how many days the cop has waited for me in the diner now…
And the Yakuza guy… Don't keep me waiting… How many days ago was that?
I get it. Time is really not the essence, but it kind of breaks the immersion how long the NPCs are willing to wait for me to return to them.
I wish I would get to do the missions at my own pace.
Spoiler:
Also, what is the point of doing all of these side missions when I know I'm gonna eat my gun in the end? This is a bit of a downer for me...
I recently got a glitch where, when driving around, all the other vehicles on the road lacked collision. Made getting through traffic much easier when I can just drive through everything.
I'm playing Xbone and so far the game has been perfectly playable. Haven't run into freezes that lasted more than a few seconds and while have met a few glitches here and there, nothing game ending.
Mostly a bit annoying stuff like when I'm sitting on a couch and a conversation starts that gives me the option to stand up, V will get up from the couch, but remain crouching. I cannot trigger the standing upright mode.
So during the whole conversation it feels like I'm a child, looking up at the adults talking… Lol.
The Graphics on the Xbone are fuzzy, but as long as the gameplay runs smoothly I can live with that.
I don't even care about the idiot NPC pedestrians and drivers. I don't really pay attention to that. It was kind of funny when I parked my bike on the sidewalk, the pedestrians started panicking and ran away in terror.
Yeah, that's right, don't touch my bike!
Spoiler:
I'm having pretty fun with the game, but the looming death at the end of the story kind of robs some of my enthuasism to play this game… But not enough to stop playing. I guess I just have to try to enjoy the jorney and forget about the upcoming end.
I think there being "no happy ending" is intended, as Cyberpunk as a genre often tends to be pretty bleak. That said, the ending I got was.. actually reasonably happy. I choose to hit Arasaka with Panam, and... I think over all I got the happiest ending possiable. I road off into the sunset with Judy with my new family in the Nomads. there's a promise of maybe finding some contacts who might be able to help things (as it is the whole "your body is rejecting your mind" was pretty absurd pseudo science) so yeah, over all I feel that ending was a decent one, my V left night city behind her, with a feeling of something that I suspect she'd not had in a looooong time, real genuine hope
Spoiler:
Yeah, I'll think I'll play through that ending tonight to experience it myself. It just sucks so much how Judy leaves V in the ending I got. Even the end credits video message from her was depressing. I also think I already know a "cure" for V's situation. The biochip was rewiring the brain for Silverhand's engram. There's no reason you can't use the schematics you got from Hellman to create a new chip to rewire the brain for V's engram.
LordofHats wrote: The cyberpunk genre is cynical. That doesn't require it to be nihilistic, and with how little anything you do seems to impact you or the world around you it feels very nihilistic.
I freely admit I'm a total sucker for happy endings, especially in books and games where you spends many hours getting to that payoff.
Quite a few times now, I've been doing rescue/theft/sabotage missions and going full stealth and non lethal. Stealth/non lethal is always my preferred way to play if its an option.
But... Over hearing some of the conversations during my sneaky escapades, I have to stop and get my katana out and start carving these fiends up. This game goes to some dark places.
Also, game needs more takedown animations. And non lethal should take a bit longer to do.
nels1031 wrote: Quite a few times now, I've been doing rescue/theft/sabotage missions and going full stealth and non lethal. Stealth/non lethal is always my preferred way to play if its an option.
But... Over hearing some of the conversations during my sneaky escapades, I have to stop and get my katana out and start carving these fiends up. This game goes to some dark places.
Yeah it does. One side quest I came across involved recovered a stash of meds from what turns out to be a ex-soldier with lots of cyberware and mental health issues. First time doing it, I accidentally provoked him (opened the door remotely then moved too much) and got in a fight. Second time, I successfully talked him down, got the meds and started walking away. Then paused at a muffled gunshot behind me. Went back in the room and... yeah.
The 'extreme' braindance scavengers (and makers/distributors- especially the father/son duo at the docks) are extremely nasty as well. You can do the latter without killing or even harming them, but after they rattle through the questions to clarify _which_ child murder BD you're asking about, well... I didn't see any point to not killing them.
Voss wrote: The 'extreme' braindance scavengers (and makers/distributors- especially the father/son duo at the docks) are extremely nasty as well. You can do the latter without killing or even harming them, but after they rattle through the questions to clarify _which_ child murder BD you're asking about, well... I didn't see any point to not killing them.
The correct response is to kill one of them and walk away while the other cries, but video game torture has no consequences
Most of the NCP missions are like that, too. It's not to the same degree. But at least half of them essentially are about stopping a crime in progress that's essentially about someone realizing that the "victim" cheated (or worse...) someone, and that person came back with friends to get revenge. And then you show up and kill the people getting revenge.
Voss wrote: The 'extreme' braindance scavengers (and makers/distributors- especially the father/son duo at the docks) are extremely nasty as well. You can do the latter without killing or even harming them, but after they rattle through the questions to clarify _which_ child murder BD you're asking about, well... I didn't see any point to not killing them.
The correct response is to kill one of them and walk away while the other cries, but video game torture has no consequences
You can lose access to two Ripperdocs and I know at least one of them has a unique item that can't be purchased anywhere else.
Spoiler:
There's one in Watson working with Scavs/Maelstrom (idr). You can confront him about if you read the computer and he'll offer a discount. If you refuse it he runs.
Also, if you punch Fingers during the Judy questline he'll refuse to sell to you and he has Hoverboots. You might be able to get them beforehand though.
So I'm up to level 40 now, I'm at the point where I have to meet Takamura and it says it's the point of no return, so now I'm running around doing all of the side quests on the map. Cuz once I get to the end of a game, I usually drop it and never look back unless there's a new DLC. I rarely do 2nd playthrus. But I've really enjoyed it so far, the only bugs I've had are just graphic glitches that don't really bother me much.
I probably won't after I complete the game I'm in right now. The prologue Heist mission is just too much of a chore, unless its skippable after beating the game.
Necros wrote: So I'm up to level 40 now, I'm at the point where I have to meet Takamura and it says it's the point of no return, so now I'm running around doing all of the side quests on the map. Cuz once I get to the end of a game, I usually drop it and never look back unless there's a new DLC. I rarely do 2nd playthrus. But I've really enjoyed it so far, the only bugs I've had are just graphic glitches that don't really bother me much.
PSA: the "point of no return" is the mission titled "Nocturne Op55n1". The game should give you a pop-up telling you this before entering the mission entrance. Upon completing the game, you'll be returned to your last save before starting this mission.
nels1031 wrote: Quite a few times now, I've been doing rescue/theft/sabotage missions and going full stealth and non lethal. Stealth/non lethal is always my preferred way to play if its an option.
But... Over hearing some of the conversations during my sneaky escapades, I have to stop and get my katana out and start carving these fiends up. This game goes to some dark places.
Also, game needs more takedown animations. And non lethal should take a bit longer to do.
Well there are quite a few animations missing - I don't think there is even a opening car door one....
I probably won't after I complete the game I'm in right now. The prologue Heist mission is just too much of a chore, unless its skippable after beating the game.
Had the same problem with Read Dead Redemption 2.
If they do a New Game+ mode (and DLC story missions like the witcher 3 ones), what it _really_ needs is an opt-out option. Either turning down Dex or slapping Jackie's hand away as he forces the plot-shard into your head. I was mildly disappointed (but not surprised) that wasn't an option already. I know I wouldn't let someone stick an unknown USB drive in my computer, let alone in my _head_.
Getting hunted for the break-in and all its consequences could be fun. More fun than dealing with Mr Abominable and the nonsense sci-fantasy metaphysics plot.
What's interesting is when you get dropped off at the end of the Heist, you can actually jump over the fence around the No-Tell Motel parking lot and wander off. The game doesn't unlock the rest of the world, and I'm not sure if encounters work properly after that, but in theory you could walk away and not get the post-bathroom 'surprise.'
BertBert wrote:It's a nice game for what it is, the city looks amazing, but unfortunately it is not even close to what the developers marketed it as. A dang shame.
After the Keanu announcement, I gotta say its exactly what I expected it to be (barring the details of the story). I would've been happier if it involved a decades old mystery and they applied the braindance investigation mechanics to the shard's stored memories, but it feels like they felt obligated to center the story around the big name actor they signed on. Which unfortunately is to the detriment of the main quest line and the game.
But other than that... maybe I just didn't pay enough attention to the marketing, but I honestly didn't expect more than this.
Yeah, that's the biggest part where they dropped the ball. It's not truly an open world game, they didn't commit.
Morrowind is the only open world game I know of where you can basically skip the MQ and still do it. Skyrim, Oblivion, and Fallout 3/NV/4 at least let you skip large parts of it.
They should have given you the following options:
Spoiler:
1) Have the option to refuse the mission at the start of the Heist. Jackie gets mad at you and your partnership is ended, someone replaces you for the mission and it goes down, but everyone dies. Path is now you trying to solve what happened.
2) Refuse the shard/prevent Jackie from giving it you. The meet with Deshawn ends with you fighting your way out.
Having played through what I think is all the content now sans 1-2 side missions
Spoiler:
I haven't gotten the Skippy return to trigger
I have to say my #1 issue with the game is that there are no branching choices. You can play through basically all the content in one go with the following exceptions that I know of:
Spoiler:
You obviously can't romance all options in go.
You can choose to aid NetWatch instead of the Voodoo Boyz which plays out slightly differently.
You do have options that lock you out of content, but none of these choices open up alternate content.
There are 4 potential final missions, but you can do them all in one playthrough.
That first video is basically everything that frustrates me about Cyberpunk. Like, I don't want to call the game bad for what isn't in it, but the comparison between Cyberpunk and games as much as 16 years old is stark and kind of shocking. The game doesn't even quite manage to hold up against ancient GTA games, let along the more recent generation of open world games like Red Dead Redemption. It doesn't even hold up to the last couple Elder Scrolls entries, who are maybe the most directly comparable games to what Cyberpunk is presenting itself as both in terms of content, exploration, and bugs XD
I'm baffled at people knocking the comparison. It just seems like empty fanboying with no regard for the actual criticism being leveled, which isn't that Cyberpunk is bad "future GTA." The comparison is about Cyberpunk being shockingly short on content, interactions with the game world, and immersion with its visually meticulously crafted cityscape even when compared to a sixteen year old game that did nearly everything Cyberpunk marketed itself as doing minus RPG elements. Cyberpunk's RPG elements aren't anything to brag about either. CDPR changed the game's marketing from RPG to open-world action game. The idea that it's thin to compare the final game to other open-world action games just because it's got a little more RPG in the mix than others is kind of specious.
It's not like genre is that hard of a dividing line anyway. We can compare the game to any number of others; Skyrim, Red Dead Redemption, Assassin's Creed, and GTA. In pretty much all of these comparisons, Cyberpunk comes up short in most categories that aren't music/voice acting/core game play, and where Cyberpunk is strong, it's not strong enough for me to not notice its comparative shortcomings on all other fronts.
Thats not the comparision at all - Cyberpunk was marketed as being an immersive and deep RPG, a vital open world game - but a game more than a decade older has vastly more features to enable the illusion of a living world - 2077 has as another video said - the interactivity of a painting.
The second video talks about all the open world /rpg elements that are not present and likely reasons why it was changed - probably a year or so ago when it became a game about Silverhand/Mr Reeves
And I can't help but feel like this is why the game stopped being an 'RPG' and none of V's choices really matter, or feel they matter.
It's really more a game about Johnny Silverhand. The entire MQ is really driven by Johnny, his actions, and his choices. V is simply an unfortunate victim screwed over by coincidence and sucked into the crushing tide Johnny left in his wake. This is why I just can't enjoy the MQ I think, because 1) Johnny is an donkey-cave and I find almost nothing endearing about the character despite Reeves' performance being pretty good and 2) his choices and life are more central to the game than V, who has very little influence on how anything plays out aside from a few kill/punch options. Really, V's only choice is how angry/bloodthirsty they want to be about how things play out and these choices have no meaningful impacts on the game. It's certainly less exciting and less interesting than anytime you play as Johnny in a flashback, where the story's main beats actually play out and play out fairly well if we're treating Johnny's life story as a hardcore rocker boy's tragedy and self-destruction (which probably would have been a funner game and more endearing than Johnny making jackass comments as you wander the game world).
Much like The Predator, it doesn't help that you can see where the cuts were made. There are items and options in game that support non-lethal game play, but there's no feedback on that choice (it actually costs you cred and experience, for no upside). If you know the game was originally marketed as having a Nemesis system ala Shadow of Mordor, the non-lethal options suddenly make more sense. The game was clearly originally intended to have a GTA style police system. All the setting pieces are in game and called out in the very first mission; trauma team arrives to protect their client, if you interfere with trauma team cops appear up to MAXTEC showing up. The game literally foreshadows the exact same system from GTA and then replaces it with teleporting cops who can't chase you or remember you if you run more than a block away.
People are going to compare this game to GTA for the police system alone. The idea that we shouldn't is really silly.
It's really more a game about Johnny Silverhand. The entire MQ is really driven by Johnny, his actions, and his choices. V is simply an unfortunate victim screwed over by coincidence and sucked into the crushing tide Johnny left in his wake.
That's my biggest peeve about the whole thing. After the Witcher games I was excited to make my own character...
and this really feels like a bait & switch or ironic mockery of that concept. [Developers laughing at people wanting to play their own characters, basically] Though I don't really see Johnny's story as a tragedy. He's a monster that goes out of his way to earn his terrible fate.
The number of times where you should have a choice but don't is ridiculously high. The place where you _do_ have the most choice is in Judy's questline, and ironically that often feels like you're taking her agency away (as you can take over conversations, override her decisions and either spare or kill people regardless of what she wants).
Haven't finished with Panam yet, but I'm getting the same sort of vibe.
Takemura's just felt like following a trail of bad (and baffling) decisions that can't end anywhere but a trainwreck. He gets sympathy points from me solely on the basis of the difficulty of finding decent Japanese restaurants in this country.
Voss, I think you're proceeding from a wrong assumption there. This game was never about creating/playing your own character. Like the Witcher, you're still playing a preset character whose history is already written: V. Unlike the Witcher, you do get to choose what V looks and sounds like. But you're still playing V and experiencing V's story. You don't like V's story, so you're not really going to like the game by extension. Maybe the eventual multiplayer is what you're really after, if there's a way to play it solo if you don't like actual multiplayer. That would give you the sandbox it sounds like you want.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Voss, I think you're proceeding from a wrong assumption there. This game was never about creating/playing your own character. Like the Witcher, you're still playing a preset character whose history is already written: V. Unlike the Witcher, you do get to choose what V looks and sounds like. But you're still playing V and experiencing V's story. You don't like V's story, so you're not really going to like the game by extension. Maybe the eventual multiplayer is what you're really after, if there's a way to play it solo if you don't like actual multiplayer. That would give you the sandbox it sounds like you want.
Uh, no. Every one of your assumptions is wrong.
I don't have even the vaguest interest in multiplayer.
I don't particularly care about sandboxes or 'open world,' they tend to be boring, cheap filler content. There's honestly plenty (almost too much) of that as is.
V doesn't have a history. The lifepaths are honestly a joke. The nomad one doesn't even make sense, given that it centers around smuggling through a border check and 3/4's of the city's borders just don't have those- they're open roads into suburbia on the east side, and nothing stops you from wandering into Pacifica or Westbrook. But while the lifepaths are definitely underdone, that's not totally bad, as not having a super-defined history makes it easier to make a character 'yours.'
V's story is fine, V is, like most protagonist characters in these kind of games, is a blank slate- the experience in the game is only real meat to V's story. That's exactly what I want. The starting quests (the misisons leading up to the heist, and the heist itself) and the side quests (Judy & Panam quest chains) are _very, very_ good. The Heist and Pyramid Song are hands down some of the best experiences I've had in games.
But there's way too few of them, and way too few side characters done to that standard. The gigs and gang fights are fine filler content, but they don't have the depth those side quests do (which isn't surprising). But they could have done so much more with a few more characters and unfolding mini-stories like those. That's where the lost opportunity is. Its particularly galling since that's where the strength of the Witcher 3 was- not with Geralt, but with interacting with the crazy cast of side characters and small quest chains in different locations. Killing gangs/critters for an anonymous source is fine filler, but there needs to be a lot more of the meaty stuff, particularly things where you have decisions and interactions that matter, and affect other things (and people) in the world.
And they do exist and they can do them... but it feels like real depth and more in-depth side quests were sacrificed to Johnny's story instead, which is just wretched and awful, and seemingly purposefully defeats the point of playing your own character.
Take Kirk as an example. He's set up as the intro to the street kid background that gets you start on your first job, it goes badly and yadda yadda. He re-appears in chapter 2 with a new job. Now, I expected to this to turn into a multi-quest chain and interaction where you tie back into the backstory you chose, complications ensue and you get a payoff and Kirk gets his come-uppance in some fashion, possibly intersecting with Padre again and delving into life in Heywood and probably Pepe back in the Coyote Cojo (which I hope does mean 'lame' or 'one-legged'), since you do the original job on his behalf. Instead... you go to a point down the road, open a van, come back to him and <'surprise'>, but its over. That's it. There's no depth, no payoff. Just another rinky-dink side mission with no interaction or significance. Its a 'the only meaning is that there is no meaning' cheap gag. And its disappointing because the game can and does so much better than this.
What I object to is in the main quest being jammed in your head and literally over-writing your character. That is the problem. As far as major problems go, that's the _only_ problem I have with the game. The MQ is basically mental trauma aimed directly at the character's (and the player's) agency. Its an unenjoyable spectre that drags the rest of the game down, with an incoherent monster rambling insane platitudes and abuse at you while ignoring the fundamental fact that all the monstrous things he did 50 years ago obviously failed and achieved nothing.
Johnny spits something about 'the ends justifying the means' at you at some point and I honestly laughed. He has no end goal, and even if he did, none of his mindless slaughter achieved it. He set off a nuke in a city, and the people he hated so much are still in the exact same position they were (if not even better off). Why in the world would I care in the slightest about this madman's story? During V's recovery, grappling with the new memories, she/he tells Vik that Johnny hates everyone, even the fans he's singing to. He treats his lovers like disposable whores and his teammates/bandmates like garbage, and expects that they'll appreciate that he's killing people he hates anyway is somehow to their benefit and proves his devotion to their well-being. Its messed up. Its just a twisted abuse narrative intruding on a game that's otherwise fun.
Tannhauser42 wrote: Voss, I think you're proceeding from a wrong assumption there. This game was never about creating/playing your own character. Like the Witcher, you're still playing a preset character whose history is already written: V. Unlike the Witcher, you do get to choose what V looks and sounds like. But you're still playing V and experiencing V's story. You don't like V's story, so you're not really going to like the game by extension. Maybe the eventual multiplayer is what you're really after, if there's a way to play it solo if you don't like actual multiplayer. That would give you the sandbox it sounds like you want.
Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your character’s cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.
Sounds pretty sandboy type game to me?
They seemed to have originally had options for your background that mattered - where Silverhand was just one of the influences but that seems to have all been cut out when they went for the story cetnered around their doubtless very expensive lead actor?
Looking at the second video I linked shows you the possibilities there were once considered.
Now will any of these element go back in - Personally I hope so However it is true I did not like Silverhand in the original lore - got the game as a present otherwise i would nto have bothered once I knew it was foccussed on him.
Suffice to say, I don't agree with either of you, but I have no interest in getting into a point-for-point debate over it.
Voss, you claim my assumptions are wrong, but then you went on to list quite a lot of reasons why they're actually right. Maybe I just didn't express myself clearly enough.
Mr Morden, we clearly have different ideas about what a sandbox is, because what you posted sounds much like the exact opposite of a sandbox to me.
Do not mistake me as a defender of the game or a white knight for CDPR. I'm not saying this is the best game ever; it is, in fact, just a 7.5/10 for me. I'm just not as hyper-critical of things.
Good evening, happy holidays, and I hope you both have games in your library that you do thoroughly enjoy playing.
Do not mistake me as a defender of the game or a white knight for CDPR. I'm not saying this is the best game ever; it is, in fact, just a 7.5/10 for me. I'm just not as hyper-critical of things.
Honestly, I think this is somewhat reflective of most of the thread. I'd also put the game at the 7/10 range.
I think the issue is more hype blacklash (clearly, CDPR was not prepared to deliver a product on par with what they'd built up in advertising and marketing), and other obvious missed potential within the game itself. I still like calling the game 'inperfect' because it's perfectly serviceable but I can't not see all the ways it could have been better. It's a case of the game being so okay it's disappointing. If not for the past three years of hype and big promises, with game play trailers that seemed ready to deliver, this game probably would have landed as a so-so game, topic of the week for its many bugs, and then forgotten about. But Cyberpunk was expected to be a huge release and an innovator in it's genre. The final product is certainly a huge release, but it's behind many of its contemporaries in almost all categories.
Johnny spits something about 'the ends justifying the means' at you at some point and I honestly laughed. He has no end goal
Mild spoiler for the first cut-scene with Johnny -
Spoiler:
There's a very quick line from Rogue during the sequence where they're delivering the nuke to Arasaka Tower were Rogue voices a suspicion that the real reason why Johnny is doing this is revenge for what happened to Alt (Rogue doesn't mention Alt by name, but it's pretty clear who she's referring to if you're familiar with the bit of fiction from First Edition rules). I haven't finished the game yet (been spending time doing extra stuff), so I don't know if there's anything later on that disproves this. But it's entirely possible that subconsciously, Johnny's vendetta is driven by a desire to lash out against Arasaka over Alt's kidnapping and subsequent death.
Doesn't make Johnny any more likable, mind you. It just helps to explain why he's so obsessed with bringing down Arasaka.
Johnny spits something about 'the ends justifying the means' at you at some point and I honestly laughed. He has no end goal
Mild spoiler for the first cut-scene with Johnny -
Spoiler:
There's a very quick line from Rogue during the sequence where they're delivering the nuke to Arasaka Tower were Rogue voices a suspicion that the real reason why Johnny is doing this is revenge for what happened to Alt (Rogue doesn't mention Alt by name, but it's pretty clear who she's referring to if you're familiar with the bit of fiction from First Edition rules). I haven't finished the game yet (been spending time doing extra stuff), so I don't know if there's anything later on that disproves this. But it's entirely possible that subconsciously, Johnny's vendetta is driven by a desire to lash out against Arasaka over Alt's kidnapping and subsequent death.
Doesn't make Johnny any more likable, mind you. It just helps to explain why he's so obsessed with bringing down Arasaka.
Spoiler:
it's totally obvious that he's doing it for revenge for alt IMHO. but even before Alt he's obsessed with Arasaka. and also a little narcisistic. which is something Alt reminds you of when you note how you saw things happen, that Johnny's perceptions are a little..... warped by his own narcisim. for example when he raids Arasaka to try and retrive Alt he's convinced they snatched her to get at him, but if you look at the facts it's pretty clear they grabbed Alt for her skills and honestly didn't give a damn about Johnny.
Johnny spits something about 'the ends justifying the means' at you at some point and I honestly laughed. He has no end goal
Mild spoiler for the first cut-scene with Johnny -
Spoiler:
There's a very quick line from Rogue during the sequence where they're delivering the nuke to Arasaka Tower were Rogue voices a suspicion that the real reason why Johnny is doing this is revenge for what happened to Alt (Rogue doesn't mention Alt by name, but it's pretty clear who she's referring to if you're familiar with the bit of fiction from First Edition rules). I haven't finished the game yet (been spending time doing extra stuff), so I don't know if there's anything later on that disproves this. But it's entirely possible that subconsciously, Johnny's vendetta is driven by a desire to lash out against Arasaka over Alt's kidnapping and subsequent death.
Doesn't make Johnny any more likable, mind you. It just helps to explain why he's so obsessed with bringing down Arasaka.
Spoiler:
it's totally obvious that he's doing it for revenge for alt IMHO. but even before Alt he's obsessed with Arasaka. and also a little narcisistic. which is something Alt reminds you of when you note how you saw things happen, that Johnny's perceptions are a little..... warped by his own narcisim. for example when he raids Arasaka to try and retrive Alt he's convinced they snatched her to get at him, but if you look at the facts it's pretty clear they grabbed Alt for her skills and honestly didn't give a damn about Johnny.
Spoiler:
Yeah, and what makes this worse is he uses the raid to get her back as a... justification?excuse? for how he treats her. Or at least that going after her makes his behavior OK and proves he cares, despite how adamant he is that they're only doing it to go after him. Every layer of Johnny's story is a self-indulgent spiral of gak.
I finished the game today, 64 hours, plus around 20 on my first character. Made it to level 47 I think. I did all of the side quests I could find except the boxing ones and tracking down the rogue limos. I thought the ending I got was great, don't know why so many people think all of the endings are bad? I did a save right before the last point of no return, so I may go back and try some others to see how they play out, but I liked what I got.
So I got help from Panam for the final battle, decided to let Keanu go live in the interweb, and rode off into the sunset with Judy. Got a bunch of voicemails in the credits from Vicktor and everyone I helped along the way saying they're doing fine. Yeah, got 6 months to live.. but feels like that should be good enough for a DLC to come out where V tries to find a cure or whatever. And if not, still think the ending was a good one for me.
Maybe in a while I'll go back to it and try a new playthru on the hardest setting, I felt like all of the combat on normal was way easy, especially after I got Panam's sniper rifle. I mean, most fights all you gotta do is ping your enemies, then blow them away through the walls clear on the other side of the building. And smart guns too, made it like easymode. Maybe also because I maxed crafting and with mods I was making legendary guns that could do 1000+ dps. Maybe I'll try being a cyber mage with all hacking and stuff, I didn't do much of that besides just pinging and occasional system resets to knock people out.
I hope they do an online mode kinda like RDR2 online, but hopefully not as boring. Just give you lots of different jobs to run, and maybe some dungeon type instances with big bosses and lots of cool loot.
I played through the Never Fade Away segment last night after posting the above. CDPR made some changes to it. Some are obviously for story flow (no mention of Rogue sending an elevator full of explosives up to the executive level). Others are just to make Johnny an even bigger jerk.
Note that the above is ancient history in Cyberpunk 2077 (it took place in 2013), and is well-known to most people who played the pencil and paper game. But it might be considered a spoiler if you're new to the franchise.
I've got some comments about the differences between the two -
Spoiler:
I'm working off of a very old recollection of the story, coupled with the summary, so I don't claim to be 100% accurate. Still, the bulk of what I write here should be correct. And I found a picture online that someone took of the first couple of pages of the story.
- The short story starts with Johnny and Alt leaving the concert, immediately followed by the attack. The earlier stuff - the drugs and the sex and the arguments - was all added by CDPR. There's nothing to suggest that his relationship with Alt has any friction, or that he treats her like a jerk. When the "gang members" approach the couple, his first act is to move Alt behind him so that he can protect her if things turn hostile. The "gang members" invite Johnny to party with them while moving closer, Johnny politely turns them down, and then they attack.
- The cat's present, though it's walking away, and doesn't look like it's trying to take a dump in the alleyway. The story also mentions that its eyes are glowing like LEDs.
- In the short story, Johnny assumes that the thugs were random gang members until Thompson tells him otherwise. In the game, Johnny immediately assumes that the gang members are linked to Arasaka.
- Ostensibly, Johnny hires Santiago. Rogue - Johnny's ex- - just happens to be dating Santiago at the time. The summary I linked suggests that Johnny may have known that and hired Santiago for that reason, though I have a recollection that Johnny claims otherwise and apologizes to Rogue. IIRC, this is Johnny's biggest "jerk" moment in the short story.
- The riot in front of Arasaka Tower happens when Arasaka guards lose their cool and open fire on the crowd. This provokes a riot. Santiago is covering the concert from a distance with a sniper rifle, and takes out some of the guards, helping the rioters make it into the lobby. The other three members of the group make it inside and to the elevators. Rogue packs one elevator full of explosives, and sends it to the executive level. The trio take the other elevator to the upper floors and the Arasaka mainframe (which is the only location in the building where Alt can work on Soulkiller).
- In the meantime, Alt's consciousness has already been uploaded by Soulkiller. She quietly kills the netrunners who were assigned to keep an eye on her, steals a bunch of money from Saburo Arasaka's accounts, wipes her work from the mainframe, and takes out the bodyguard of Toshiro Saburo, who is the executive who ordered the op to kidnap her, and is overseeing it all personally. Then she trains the room's gun turrets on Toshiro and waits for Johnny. The important point here is that everyone except Toshiro is already dead by the time Johnny's team breaches the door.
- The charges on the door go off. Unlike in the game, the charges actually breach the door to the room that Alt and Toshiro are in. My recollection is that the force of the explosion knocks Toshiro onto Alt, where he is able to disconnect her cyberdeck (cutting her uploaded consciousness off from her body; if he hadn't done that, she could have downloaded herself back into her body after Johnny arrived).
- In the game, you shoot Toshiro (I don't remember if he's ever even identified) as you enter the room with Alt's body. Thompson takes video of Alt's body, and Johnny nearly beats him to death. In the short story, Toshiro is still alive when Johnny reaches Alt's body. Thompson starts to film Alt, but stops when Johnny asks him to. A grieving Johnny then puts a bullet in Toshiro's brain (which is probably the real reason why Johnny asked Thompson to stop filming), and leaves with Alt's body. Rogue has a short moment of reflection where she realizes that maybe Johnny really was in love with Alt. And the short story ends at that point.
Some of the changes are obviously for streamlining purposes, particularly since the only PoV you see is Johnny's. But most of them seems solely to make Johnny much more arrogant and self-centered, and a much bigger jerk. I can't say that I'm happy about that.
Up until this point, I thought that Johnny was simply embittered over what Arasaka did to Alt. It festered and grew until he became misanthropic and completely obsessed with Arasaka (I've noticed that Johnny spends a *lot* of time complaining about Arasaka, but I don't think I've seen him mention a single other megacorp by name). The video game changes to Never Fade Away screw up that idea. He was already a misanthropic jerk, appears to have had a really bad relationship with Alt to the point where it's not clear why she sticks around (if you offer to walk her home right before the attack, she flat out states that it's probably only because Johnny wants to hit her up for more drugs; also, she's one of the best netrunners in the city, and could probably easily get a better boyfriend if she wanted), and is already obsessed with Arasaka (he immediately assumes that the seemingly random gang attack in the alleyway was an Arasaka hit even before Thompson mentions it). And, of course, there's the scene with him brutally beating Thompson at the end.
On the positive side, I still haven't given Johnny his nicotine fix. Small victories!
(I've noticed that Johnny spends a *lot* of time complaining about Arasaka, but I don't think I've seen him mention a single other megacorp by name
To be fair here, the game really doesn't either, except for Militech. I can only think of two others: Biotechnica (as a name) comes up in a sidequest or two, and Kang Tao does in Panam's quest chain. Also Kiroshi for your cybereyes, but I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't realize that was a Megacorp.
If you really dig into lore shards, read gear descriptions and devotedly watch elevator commercials in game, some other names *might* come up, but I'm honestly not 100% sure on that.
Its one of the areas that the games really thin, and considering RPG websites list off about 50 or so, there isn't much of a reason why CD Projekt missed out on this basic worldbuilding (Raven Microcybernetics was apparently founded in Night City as the most egregious example). Missions where one corp hires you for data/personnel extraction against another is a genre staple. Some fixer gigs lean that way, but its another place it could have been bigger and better.
On the positive side, I still haven't given Johnny his nicotine fix. Small victories!
Sadly happens during Judy's sex scene (though thankfully Johnny is left out of that). Its fairly jarring, actually, since it comes about _this_ close to burning her nipple and spiderweb tattoo on left breast.
V actually gets Judy hooked again after some of the fallout with Evelyn, she ends up smoking several times between quests. In a complete faux pas move, she asks for a smoke, and V hands her Evelyn's cigarette case, right after... things. I honestly expected a (well-deserved) freakout.
Plenty of Megacorps active in a big way in Night City - back in the day we had plenty of campaigns with my character a PetroChem executive doing the sort of job that V has at the start of the game - except I was not so terribly awful at it and enjoyed it a hell of a lot more.
Silverhand and co were pretty awful in the original game - him and Blackhand were so hero worshipped.
The ability to assist factions, be they gangs (often Corp proxies) or Corps would have been nice - again something that you coulod do in San Andreas but that was an actual open worldRPG.....
V actually gets Judy hooked again after some of the fallout with Evelyn, she ends up smoking several times between quests. In a complete faux pas move, she asks for a smoke, and V hands her Evelyn's cigarette case, right after... things. I honestly expected a (well-deserved) freakout.
Yeah, I've run that sequence. I think the non-freakout is fine, though. She's already spent a lot of time freaking out at that point. She does acknowledge it. And I'm not sure what else V could have done. She asks for the smoke after seeing V looking at the cigarette case. It's not as if he could have reasonably hidden it from her at that point.
Haven't gotten past that scene with her yet.
And I've still got Evelyn's handbag in my inventory. /rolleyes
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Mr Morden wrote: Plenty of Megacorps active in a big way in Night City
You can see their names plastered on their respective buildings whenever you look toward the city center. Arasaka's just unusual because Arasaka Tower is their American headquarters.
V actually gets Judy hooked again after some of the fallout with Evelyn, she ends up smoking several times between quests. In a complete faux pas move, she asks for a smoke, and V hands her Evelyn's cigarette case, right after... things. I honestly expected a (well-deserved) freakout.
Yeah, I've run that sequence. I think the non-freakout is fine, though. She's already spent a lot of time freaking out at that point. She does acknowledge it. And I'm not sure what else V could have done. She asks for the smoke after seeing V looking at the cigarette case. It's not as if he could have reasonably hidden it from her at that point.
.
Been casual about it and handed her a cigarette rather than the case?
I felt like a jackass rubbing someone's nose in an open wound rather than being quietly supportive and not making a big deal of a momentary weakness.
V actually gets Judy hooked again after some of the fallout with Evelyn, she ends up smoking several times between quests. In a complete faux pas move, she asks for a smoke, and V hands her Evelyn's cigarette case, right after... things. I honestly expected a (well-deserved) freakout.
Yeah, I've run that sequence. I think the non-freakout is fine, though. She's already spent a lot of time freaking out at that point. She does acknowledge it. And I'm not sure what else V could have done. She asks for the smoke after seeing V looking at the cigarette case. It's not as if he could have reasonably hidden it from her at that point.
.
Been casual about it and handed her a cigarette rather than the case?
I felt like a jackass rubbing someone's nose in an open wound rather than being quietly supportive and not making a big deal of a momentary weakness.
except she only asks after seeing you have the case and IIRC comments on the case. and it's not like V is showing off the case to her. rather V's clearly looking at the case which Evelyn gave her and thinking about Evelyn herself. it's not unfair to say that Evelyn's death had an impact on V (V didn't know Evelyn partiuclarly well but the way she went out, despite everything they did to try to save her, that'll impact everyone)
To be fair here, the game really doesn't either, except for Militech. I can only think of two others: Biotechnica (as a name) comes up in a sidequest or two, and Kang Tao does in Panam's quest chain. Also Kiroshi for your cybereyes, but I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't realize that was a Megacorp.
If you really dig into lore shards, read gear descriptions and devotedly watch elevator commercials in game, some other names *might* come up, but I'm honestly not 100% sure on that.
I think the rather sick facility I just raided for a side mission was a former Petrochem farm (though I might be misremembering, and it might have actually been Biotechnica). IIRC, one of the shards you can find laying around is a recruitment pitch for SovOil (the Soviet Union is still around; the sudden and complete collapse of the Iron Curtain in 1989 never happened).
V actually gets Judy hooked again after some of the fallout with Evelyn, she ends up smoking several times between quests.
One of the thoughts that crossed my mind when I gave her the cigarette was that there's stuff that's pretty common in Night City, and a lot worse than smoked tobacco. Drugs are a staple of the genre (as a mild example, the "med packs" in this game are inhalers). So, why not?
(I've noticed that Johnny spends a *lot* of time complaining about Arasaka, but I don't think I've seen him mention a single other megacorp by name
To be fair here, the game really doesn't either, except for Militech. I can only think of two others: Biotechnica (as a name) comes up in a sidequest or two, and Kang Tao does in Panam's quest chain. Also Kiroshi for your cybereyes, but I wouldn't be surprised if people didn't realize that was a Megacorp.
If you really dig into lore shards, read gear descriptions and devotedly watch elevator commercials in game, some other names *might* come up, but I'm honestly not 100% sure on that.
The very early mission where you get the bot thingy from the Maelstrom has you going to a (former) All Foods "meat" processing plant.
The game really could have better explored the implications of cybernetics. There's a lot of it in there, but it's mostly along the same lines. Joy Toys and the commodification of sex and a very weakass iteration of Ghost in the Shell's plot. They could have done more.
Is smoking really much of a vice when you can just replace your lungs? Is Alcoholism still a thing when you've got a cybernetic liver and a brain that can just shut off those receptors or block them?
LordofHats wrote: The game really could have better explored the implications of cybernetics. There's a lot of it in there, but it's mostly along the same lines. Joy Toys and the commodification of sex and a very weakass iteration of Ghost in the Shell's plot. They could have done more.
Is smoking really much of a vice when you can just replace your lungs? Is Alcoholism still a thing when you've got a cybernetic liver and a brain that can just shut off those receptors or block them?
maybe but then that's not really something most gamers are intreasted in I reckon. I mean as it is some of the darker implications of the setting are honestly barely touched on, outside from a referance in a cyberpsyko mission you could miss if you didn't read the shards around the corpses etc and understand what was being said, they don't hit on the true HORROR of what, for example, Dolls can really be horrific, there's a reason why in shadowrun a looot of shadowrunners adopt a "nukeit kill them all" policy to Banranku parlors
LordofHats wrote: The game really could have better explored the implications of cybernetics. There's a lot of it in there, but it's mostly along the same lines. Joy Toys and the commodification of sex and a very weakass iteration of Ghost in the Shell's plot. They could have done more.
Is smoking really much of a vice when you can just replace your lungs? Is Alcoholism still a thing when you've got a cybernetic liver and a brain that can just shut off those receptors or block them?
I think these are all things that could have been covered in a more ambitious game
It also looks like the stat menu is missing a stat (blank space in the menu) - likely EMP (empathy) which would have gone down the lore route of the more you become metal the less human you are which may have been an interesting element - if you replace too much you have trouble with human interactions. (*).
(*) although it does not stand up that well in real life - currently people with extensive artifical limbs etc don't become robotic...but its a game theme /balance mechanism - as it is in Shadowrun. Bubblegum Crisis I recall went down that route alot as well.
Can you actually take drugs/smoke etc - or is the game just limited to combat boosts and mainstream legal drugs like alcohol.
I know you can get Dum Dums inhaler if you're a streetkid and side with maelstrom against militech in the mission to get the flathead bot. If you comment on it during the initial meeting (and I think there might also be a stat check dialogue option too, can't remember) then he gives it to you at the end.
A Town Called Malus wrote: I know you can get Dum Dums inhaler if you're a streetkid and side with maelstrom against militech in the mission to get the flathead bot. If you comment on it during the initial meeting (and I think there might also be a stat check dialogue option too, can't remember) then he gives it to you at the end.
Does it do anything? I know you can get slightly drunk (visually only) but is that it?
Improves your armour for a short time, if I remember correctly.
Never actually used it as I shortly created a new character and went the other route. Not sure whether it is a one use only item or infinite uses. I'd hope it isn't one use only but then again there's also the unretrievable throwing knives so who knows?
EDIT: Just Googled it and found a walkthrough which says it applies a permanent armour bonus
They really botched the MQ story. NG+ needs an option to start after the Heist. The first time was great, but afterwards it is a slog. That's actually how a lot of the main/side missions are...very little skippable content and drawn out road fights, but Act 1 and Nocturne are the worst offenders.
I feel like the original game didn't have Silverhand embedded in your brain and he was just on the Relicguffin that you were looking for. Maybe you BD'd into his scenes. Also, I think there was a bigger focus on Cyberpyschosis as a story element.
Right now, I think the current game has 20 Cyberpyschos.
Spoiler:
17 missions with Regina.
1 with El Capitan (in the basement).
1 with Regina, but it's a Mox mission. You can get this one before The Ride, but the proper Cyberpsycho missions are locked behind talking to Jackie during The Ride.
1 that's kind of hidden behind dialogue with Zane in a clothing store. This leads to a quest where you visit with him again and a Cyberpsycho shows up. MaxTac shows up at the end and you're interviewed by a MaxTac LT that turns out to be the Cyberpyscho lady from the first trailer. She tries to recruit you, but that goes nowhere.
I find the worst part is the BD tutorial the first time you meet Eve and Judy. I'd really appreciate an option to say "I know what I'm doing" and skip the tutorial bit. It's not long really, but it's amazing how tedious it is after the first time.
Go watch the 2018 game demo.
The original game def didn't feature Johnny so strongly and you can even find hints of this still in the game, where some missions and dialogues make more sense without Johnny being around than with. The original demo made cyberpsychosis more prominent in the main story and I agree that Regina's entire quest line (namely how it just comes up out of the blue at the start of the game for no apparent reason) is a relic of this.
I would like New Game+. Kind of sad how by the time my character is 50 and fully decked out and gear, there's nothing much to do anymore but Nocturne. I'd like some radiant content, or a New Game+ option so I can enjoy my fully OP character more. Another option would be to make gig repeatable, or repopulate those areas with enemies so I still have stuff to do.
Apparently wanting to play the game after the MQ is wrong and not how it was designed to be played - if you want that you are playing the wrong game..... at least according to the Game designers....
Which is weird, since the MQ is super, life-threateningly important and urgent. Gotta go, now now now.
But here's a couple hundred other things to also do.
----
I hate that game devs (not just CD Projekt, but Bioware, Obsidian, Bethesda, Blizzard...) can't wrap their minds around this. Vital urgency does not gel with dozens to hundreds of side quests. It is utterly crap writing to try for both. as they're completely opposed conceptually. Learn to write overarching plotlines that require thought, planning and (off screen) logistics. Don't give a fake timer (or even a real one) for the PC, the nation, the world or the universe. And while you're at it, stop writing stupid 'epic' world or universe ending threats. They're dull, and trite- go for emotional investment instead.
Finished my playthrough. It was not the best game I've played, but I was reasonably entertained. So much so that I will be playing this a second time. The MQ was what it was, but I had fun riding my bike in the city and doing the stuff needed to be done. I kind of want to go on doing it Still more, so I'll do another playthrough with male V this time.
The MQ:
Spoiler:
I played the Johnny/Rogue storyline with female V. While I was a bit bummed of how dark the story was, I was sort of content how the game ended. Johnny went into the bit space, V got 6 months to live, but got rid of the Silverhand and the game ended with V doing the "bigger than life" heist. I think, even if there won't be a DLC (which I expect there will be) to do the actual heist, the game ended reasonably well for me. Which was more than I expected during the gameplay as I saw everything hopeless/pointless. I guess V made her mark on NC and the people she met along the way and will go out with a bang, like she wanted.
I could leave the story here, but I wouldn't mind if the heist would give V enough money to fix the she's dying issue. I can't believe that is unfixable with the technology we saw in the game...
The romance:
Spoiler:
I played female V, so I had two romance choises, I think. I made pass at Panam, but she wasn't interested. Friendzoned there. I will play a male V next to try that again.
I kind of botched things with Judy, so she just left. (altough, hilariously, when I visited her apartment she was there. So she faked her trip to get away from V?)
I did the River romance in the end. It was kind of short and while I liked the romance option, it felt quite empty after they decided to become a couple. River never took V's calls, never talked to her. I guess Mass Effect spoiled me here, but I would have liked to go on a final date before the games end mission. Just something to get a feeling that they actually felt something for each other. There was nothing and that was a bummer. Just the final goodbye call.
I played with Xbone and I'm kind of wondering what the big fuss was about the game being "unplayable" with Xbone/PS4... Can't say anything about PS4, but at least with my Xbone the game played quite well. I didn't get any low framerates ("dia shows" as they were called). The game froze a few second now and then when travelling around the city, but never during the combat. I got a handful of crashes where the game threw me out during the whole gameplay time, but they were few enough that, while annoying, were not too much bother for me. My Xbone restarted once. So the gameplay was a bit buggy, but I wouldn't call it unplayable.
The glitches were there, but for the most part I could ignore them. I had only one side mission that I couldn't finish because Johnny didn't manifest where he should have and I couldn't proceed with the mission. At least none of the MQ missions had problems.
One little thing I enjoyed in the game was riding around with a bike. Once I got the Nomad bike, I never even looked at the other vehicles. Other games (Saints Row, GTA) made the bikes really hard to drive. I usually crashed with the bike as soon as I tried to ride with them. But here in Cyberpunk, riding the bike was great. Easier to get through the traffic than with a car. (even though, as I understand it, Xbone has reduced amount of traffic when compared to PC).
So, to sum it up, I'm happy after playing the game. It's not perfect game, but for the most part I had a good time playing it. Even the ending did not bother me when I got to that part. (But then again ME3 ending did not bother me, so I guess I'm easy to please).
Voss wrote: Which is weird, since the MQ is super, life-threateningly important and urgent. Gotta go, now now now.
But here's a couple hundred other things to also do.
----
I hate that game devs (not just CD Projekt, but Bioware, Obsidian, Bethesda, Blizzard...) can't wrap their minds around this. Vital urgency does not gel with dozens to hundreds of side quests. It is utterly crap writing to try for both. as they're completely opposed conceptually. Learn to write overarching plotlines that require thought, planning and (off screen) logistics. Don't give a fake timer (or even a real one) for the PC, the nation, the world or the universe. And while you're at it, stop writing stupid 'epic' world or universe ending threats. They're dull, and trite- go for emotional investment instead.
Yeah, more open world RPGs should start a main quest like Morrowind did. When you meet the main quest giver he will tell you to get some experience under your belt, he gives you some gold, and he suggests you join a guild or a Great House. No rush to save the kingdom from marauding dragons or demons, or finding your son.
The Nomad vehicles are far and away my favorite. They have a great truck, a great bike, and the Coyote is imo the best to drive sports car in the game (doesn't have the overturning problem the others have) and does great off road because of its 4 wheel drive.
The only other vehicle I considered was the General Lee (the Type-66 with the orange paint, Texas? flag on top and 01 on the side, obvious Dukes of Hazard reference).
Voss wrote: Which is weird, since the MQ is super, life-threateningly important and urgent. Gotta go, now now now.
But here's a couple hundred other things to also do.
----
I hate that game devs (not just CD Projekt, but Bioware, Obsidian, Bethesda, Blizzard...) can't wrap their minds around this. Vital urgency does not gel with dozens to hundreds of side quests. It is utterly crap writing to try for both. as they're completely opposed conceptually. Learn to write overarching plotlines that require thought, planning and (off screen) logistics. Don't give a fake timer (or even a real one) for the PC, the nation, the world or the universe. And while you're at it, stop writing stupid 'epic' world or universe ending threats. They're dull, and trite- go for emotional investment instead.
Yeah, more open world RPGs should start a main quest like Morrowind did. When you meet the main quest giver he will tell you to get some experience under your belt, he gives you some gold, and he suggests you join a guild or a Great House. No rush to save the kingdom from marauding dragons or demons, or finding your son.
I think a large portion of buyers are likely to play only the main quest, and may very well not even finish that, so games have to tailor themselves somewhat to what the largest portion of players are going to do, which is a solid 10 to 30 hour main quest. They then need to balance that off against what their own dream of the game is and what the much smaller proportion of enthusiasts want in providing engaging side quests and interesting things to do off the beaten track.
Morrowind is probably a good example of what not to do for me, back in the day when I played it (original Xbox if memory serves), I got about 10 hours in before I got bored after feeling like I achieved absolutely nothing.
I do agree with Voss that main quests need not be world changing to be interesting though.
cyberpunk is good but not gonna lie, I really hope microsoft looks at this game, remembers they own the video game rights to shadowrun and go "ohh yeah? check THIS out" I've always perfered shadowrun to cyberpunk and the fact that the game system, over all is more updated and thus the setting is updated every so often to allow for modern views etc will make it less obviouslyl "THE FUTURE OF THE 80s!"
I think the Main Quest of Cyberpunk is very personal for the main character, but not very world changing overall. Everybody seem to go on with their lives no matter what happens, except V...
Spoiler:
Well, the targeted Corporation seems to be screwed, but even then, the other Corps just smell blood in the water and move in. I don't think anything really changes after that.
Finally got/found an annoying bug that is fairly persistent.
Now, I dunno if its necessarily specific to me or not but, Whenever I exit the game, no matter what I do until I go to Steam > Exit, the game is reading on the Steam home page as running. Now, I've repeatedly run the Verify Integrity scan, which comes up clean. I'm sort of wondering if one of the recent hotfix patches screwed something up between the game files and Steam.
And on the subject of "nothing changes" . . . Personally, I rather like it that way. It does make more sense for a city like Night City to be wholly uncaring of the things you did, and nothing changes. This game doesn't bother giving even lip service to whatever you've done in the game. It's one of the things that sort of bugs me about open world games. Nobody treats you any differently as you walk around Skyrim after you've devoured the soul of the Main Baddie. No one cares that You single-handedly ended the civil war. The ONLY change in Skyrim is the occasional city guard calling you dragonborn. Even the people you deal with person to person in most OW games only give cursory service to the things you've done. Ya know, like, you walk up to Gang Leader Hans, or Jarl Buttercup and you get "friendly greeting level 3", and then its right back to being some git getting a job.
EDIT: on the NG+ thing, for some reason I am recalling that Witcher 3 added NG+ with one of the main story DLC packs, so I would assume, if I am recalling correctly, that it will be added whenever we get major DLC expansions coming.
Morrowind is the peak open world RPG. Nothing else is even close. The gameplay is mediocre for that timeframe (seriously, the contemporary RPGs were Neverwinter Nights and KotOR), but the story and setting have yet to be matched. There were moments in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series that came close, but that's it.
Cyberpunk 2077 is solid though. The gameplay is excellent, but I think they devoted too much time on the wrong things.
Edit: Also, the fact that Chvrches isn't on the soundtrack is a fething disgrace. They nail the futuristic sound unlike anyone I've heard, peak Grimes included.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: Now, I dunno if its necessarily specific to me or not but, Whenever I exit the game, no matter what I do until I go to Steam > Exit, the game is reading on the Steam home page as running. Now, I've repeatedly run the Verify Integrity scan, which comes up clean. I'm sort of wondering if one of the recent hotfix patches screwed something up between the game files and Steam.
I often get an error report when closing the game. It's got some kind of issue when halting processes.
EDIT: on the NG+ thing, for some reason I am recalling that Witcher 3 added NG+ with one of the main story DLC packs, so I would assume, if I am recalling correctly, that it will be added whenever we get major DLC expansions coming.
Yeah it did. Gives me hope we'll get it eventually in Cyberpunk. I'd really like to play through the whole game with my decked out characters.
trexmeyer wrote: Morrowind is the peak open world RPG. Nothing else is even close. The gameplay is mediocre for that timeframe (seriously, the contemporary RPGs were Neverwinter Nights and KotOR), but the story and setting have yet to be matched. There were moments in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series that came close, but that's it.
The reason I never got into Morrowind was after 10 hours play time I just hadn't got anywhere. I was mostly a patient kid (hell, I painted model aeroplanes and toy soldiers for fun ) but I wasn't one to sit in front of the TV for hours on end, so 10 hours would have been more than a week of my video gaming time and at 10 hours in it felt like a game I would need to play for 80 hours to get anywhere. The idea of that may make some open world RPGers wet their pants with excitement, but 15 year old me had better things to do, like paint Lizardmen
Also the fog didn't help. Such an ugly game. The way a giant building could not be visible at all then suddenly pop in and fill the whole screen, eh, really took away from the game. Maybe it was less horrible on PC than Xbox.
Even now, the games that I have played for a long time are the ones where the main quest drew me in right off the bat, then I was enjoying it enough to explore the rest of the world. I think sandboxes are a bit overrated.
I played Oblivion more than I played Morrowind, and Skyrim more than I played Oblivion, and The Witcher 3 more than I played the 3 of them combined.
trexmeyer wrote: Morrowind is the peak open world RPG. Nothing else is even close. The gameplay is mediocre for that timeframe (seriously, the contemporary RPGs were Neverwinter Nights and KotOR), but the story and setting have yet to be matched. There were moments in the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series that came close, but that's it.
The reason I never got into Morrowind was after 10 hours play time I just hadn't got anywhere.
My memories of Morrowind are mostly of putting a rock on my spacebar to jump repeatedly and wandering off to get lunch while leveling athletics, or blocking attacks from mudcrabs (and then healing) for 20-30 minute stretches. The game mechanics were atrocious and backwards, and leveling 'correctly' to get the right attribute gains involved a pile of scratch paper and building your character backwards- putting skills you didn't want to use as your primary class skills and the skills you actually cared about as bottom-tier skills so you could control leveling and get the max amount of attribute gain out of the whole convoluted system. Assuming you wanted to level at all, since enemies were hard coded to match your level, and as you got better, they got better faster, so it was actually better not to gain levels at all (something that's still true in Skyrim to this day, though its harder not to level in Skyrim and it has an absurd amount of exploit bugs that make it a non-issue. The joys of re-using the same base engine for decades and never really fixing anything.)
AllSeeingSkink wrote: So what's the overall verdict? Worth a buy now at full price, or wait a while until it's on sale? Should CDProjektRed should have just made The Witcher 4?
I'd say if you wanted it for PC, you should get it. If you're on the fence, wait for some more content and polish to be added.
Voss wrote: My memories of Morrowind are mostly of putting a rock on my spacebar to jump repeatedly and wandering off to get lunch while leveling athletics, or blocking attacks from mudcrabs (and then healing) for 20-30 minute stretches. The game mechanics were atrocious and backwards, and leveling 'correctly' to get the right attribute gains involved a pile of scratch paper and building your character backwards- putting skills you didn't want to use as your primary class skills and the skills you actually cared about as bottom-tier skills so you could control leveling and get the max amount of attribute gain out of the whole convoluted system. Assuming you wanted to level at all, since enemies were hard coded to match your level, and as you got better, they got better faster, so it was actually better not to gain levels at all (something that's still true in Skyrim to this day, though its harder not to level in Skyrim and it has an absurd amount of exploit bugs that make it a non-issue. The joys of re-using the same base engine for decades and never really fixing anything.)
The Elder Scrolls series has always been a great world with good story lines and crappy mechanics. Be nice if ESVI breaks the cycle.
Voss wrote: My memories of Morrowind are mostly of putting a rock on my spacebar to jump repeatedly and wandering off to get lunch while leveling athletics, or blocking attacks from mudcrabs (and then healing) for 20-30 minute stretches. The game mechanics were atrocious and backwards, and leveling 'correctly' to get the right attribute gains involved a pile of scratch paper and building your character backwards- putting skills you didn't want to use as your primary class skills and the skills you actually cared about as bottom-tier skills so you could control leveling and get the max amount of attribute gain out of the whole convoluted system. Assuming you wanted to level at all, since enemies were hard coded to match your level, and as you got better, they got better faster, so it was actually better not to gain levels at all (something that's still true in Skyrim to this day, though its harder not to level in Skyrim and it has an absurd amount of exploit bugs that make it a non-issue. The joys of re-using the same base engine for decades and never really fixing anything.)
The Elder Scrolls series has always been a great world with good story lines and crappy mechanics. Be nice if ESVI breaks the cycle.
I honestly wouldn't even go that far. Humanocentric fantasy world with elves #2412, but with a couple anthropomorphs and not dragons (until they included dragons).
The story lines are largely fodder for ridicule, being generic to blah, with cardboard cutout nothing characters with a few repetitive lines.
What they're good at is letting players poke into corners of the map, getting into trouble, and general hack & slash.
Some of their story line's are definitely generic and bland.
Most of the games though have som really good ones. I'm thinking the Dark Brotherhood, which is always full of fun intrigues, Thieves Guild from Oblivion, and Last Dragonborn quest line in Skyrim. Hidden in those games are story lines that could easily have been their own games. The variety of things to do is what I think helps make ES games stand out, along with the freedom to define your own interactions with the game world.
Cyberpunk could really use some of that last one I think XD To go back to the topic of the thread, I think 2077 suffers from a lack of context when it comes to V. V is just a bland vessel for things to happen to, but for whom no choices really matter. V just goes around making corpses in occasionally humorous side quests, well defined environs, and a city where you can't really be anything but a corpse maker. Having completed all the game's quests at least once, only a few really stand out to me and most of them piss me off. River's character is kind of disturbingly 'nice guy' but his questline is initially quite fun with the investigation. It's the point I strongly felt brain dances and investigations were a horribly under utilized aspect of the game.
The Peralez quests are awesome fun and really cool for world building and the abrupt ending to that quest line with no real resolution left me feeling kind of insulted. I want more quests like helping River find his nephew and going swimming with Judy and less bland Arasaka family drama and boohoo Silverhand. The game really missed out I think not focusing more heavily on Noir gameplay opportunities. I really hope for a major DLC release that focuses more on this. Let us interact with the city's gangs more, pick sides, get involved more directly with political and corporate intrigues and corruption. Less scifi Entourage, more scifi Law and Order. Gangs of Night City. The title even writes itself!
In other news, we're slated for some FreeLC it seems. CDPR has confirmed they still plan to release some in early 2021, but have not specified yet what this will entail. I think likely suspects would be barber/cosmetic tools for after character creation (this is one of the first things added to Witcher 3 I think).
The reason I never got into Morrowind was after 10 hours play time I just hadn't got anywhere.
I had a friend who had a similar complaint about Skyrim. The problem is that some people are just fine wandering around an open world finding random stuff to do, while others (like you and my late friend) prefer to have some sort of direction. Cyberpunk would actually be fine for players of both types in this regard, EXCEPT...
One of the very first things you're told after getting the chip is that you don't have very long to live. You've got a deadline, doncha know? And if you don't get this thing fixed real quick, your brain is going to get overwritten.
Except, well, it's not. You've got enough time to wander around and do pretty much whatever you want. That timeline doesn't really mean anything. This is a video game industry-wide trope. The only game in recent memory I can remember that actually had a timeline that meant something was Mass Effect 2, in which you had a very limited window of time after your crew gets kidnapped to launch the final mission. Otherwise, your crew starts getting killed before you arrive to save them. Some players hated it, but I think it had more to do with the fact that they didn't realize that they had suddenly switched over from "do whatever you want and the universe will wait for you" mode to "hurry up and finish or bad things happen!" mode, as the game made no mention of that fact.
Adding to that general sense is the sidequests. Someone calls you up out of the blue and says, "Can you come seem me right now? I want to talk to you about something." And your choices are either, "Sure, I'll be right there," or "Sorry, I don't think I'm interested." And, of course, when the game says "right now", what it really means is "as soon as you can find some time after finishing up all of the random jobs for the fixer whose neighborhood you're currently wandering through". In the real world, "right now" usually means something much more urgent.
It's the point I strongly felt brain dances and investigations were a horribly under utilized aspect of the game.
Agreed. We go through the big tutorial on the brain dance system with Judy, and learn about all of these nifty features. And then in probably half of the very small handful of brain dances you see later, you only use the visual part of the feed. Audio comes up in the other half along with visual. And I don't think I've used thermal outside of the brain dance of Yorinobu's room.
The Peralez quests are awesome fun and really cool for world building and the abrupt ending to that quest line with no real resolution left me feeling kind of insulted.
I was afraid of that. I got a phone call that looked like the quest might pick up again, had an option to pick a response, and.. nothing. Since I haven't finished the game yet, I was hopeful that it would pick up again. But at the same time, I also had a sneaking suspicion that the warning you get was directed more at the player than at V.
Arasaka family drama could be good. Again, I haven't finished the story yet, so I don't know what ultimately happens. But you've basically got three heirs - Saburo's surviving son, his daughter, and a grandkid. And all of them could potentially end up running the most powerful entity on the planet. Realistically, there should be some cut-throat maneuvering going on - by shadow handlers who stand to gain if the one they support takes power, if not the primaries themselves. If it's not handled in an amazing fashion, then that's on the writers.
As for Silverhand... I already noted in a previous post that the developers seem to have changed the very first bit of fiction created for the setting seemingly for the sole purpose of making him very unlikable.
Edit -
Someone else that I would have liked to see more of is the woman that you rescue at the start.
Spoiler:
You get a side mission from her that involves recovering a data shard that she lost when she got kidnapped. If you hack it (ignoring her explicitly asking you not to), you learn that she hacked Night Corp, and uncovered information on an AI that Night Corp is developing that can make a designated target paranoid. The shard ends with a note that Night Corp has found a new target for the AI. And then if you read the shards in the woman's apartment, you find some increasingly paranoid comments.
That could have been a neat story to do more with, imo.
Eumerin wrote: As for Silverhand... I already noted in a previous post that the developers seem to have changed the very first bit of fiction created for the setting seemingly for the sole purpose of making him very unlikable
I honestly went from disliking his character to outright resenting him after the Sinnerman quest.
Rant incoming plus some minor spoilers.
Spoiler:
The quest is actually kind of cool, featuring a prisoner who wants to make a brain dance of his own crucifiction in some bizarre attempt at religious redemption aftering murdering people for a bit or so. There's some drama with the families of his victims, the media company trying to market the BD, and some religious introspection that was interesting in a cyberpunk game. It's a cool quest but I hate it for 1 reason;
It's initial a quest to help a guy murder the guy who killed his wife. That goes sideways fast and he winds up dead. Then the guy who killed his wife comes to you and says 'I need your help, please come' and I'm just completely weirded out by the context of this from an in-character perspective. My job was to kill this guy, and now I can't kill him and he wants my help? I ask why. The response: a repeat of the first statement with no additional context. The game proceeds to play this stupid avoidance game where the other characters are needlessly and pointlessly vague about what's going on, refusing to answer the most basic question of 'why' in any meaningful way, and persist in asking you to accompany them and that they need to move quickly. They give zero answers to any question in what has to be the most hamfisted case of Theresnotimetoexplainitis I've ever seen in fiction. The whole bit is obviously a very dumb and brain dead attempt at making a leap of faith metaphor but it's freaking stupid all the same. My character has zero reason to do anything, especially when there's a cop right there and no answers are given for even the most basic of questions.
All of that is pretty bad, but I got pissed at the game, the writers, and Johnny's character when he pops in and says with a giant gak eater grin 'if you don't do this I'm never talking to you again.'
It's at this point I actively resent Johnny's characters and whoever made him such a big part of the game. His character isn't just an donkey-cave, he's an donkey-cave for the sole sake of being an donkey-cave. There are quests in this game where Johnny mocks you for getting yourself involved in anything that isn't solving your brain problem. There are quests where you're actively solving your brain problem where he still mocks you because Takemura is a waste of time (he kind of is is the least useful quest line in the game, but still). There are quests where he mocks you for 'selling out' for both helping corporations, opposing corporations, helping the cops, opposing the cops, helping Judy, helping Wakako, basically anything in the game actually. He rants about Arasaka being corrupt and corporate colonialism destroying the world, but he worked with Militech to nuke Arasaka tower in the first place. There are quests where he calls you a fool for trusting anyone to help you and here he is, with three people refusing to answer any questions in anyway, saying he'll never talk to me again if I refuse to go with them?
You game writing fethers, I would outright refuse that quest every damn time if Johnny actually followed through on that threat because as of that line I'm basically done with him.
Johnny's entire life philosophy after playing the entire game to as close to 100% completion as I care to attempt, seems to simply be pursing being the universe's most egregious narccissitic douche. He will mock you and anyone else for anything and everything, to the point of being a total hypocrite. He's the edgy teenager's definition of an insightful rebel, and what I imagine you'd get if Jim Stark decided the end of Rebel Without a Cause wasn't a tragedy and kept being a self-destructive git for the next thirty years. The only time he's not a complete feth gakker, is when you're helping him with Rogue, Kerry, and his old friends. Most of whom he doesn't even talk to or seek resolution with, despite claiming to want to help them after I imagine treating them like he treats you (kind of amazed Kerry and Rogue want to talk to him at all, IRL, Johnny would be the definition of a toxic relationship). That halfhearted effort isn't enough heart of gold under the sheer alloy armor of jerk that is his characterization.
It's enough to basically kill my motivation to do repeat playthroughs cause I just don't want to hear anymore of Johnny's damn lines, bs sophistry, and incoherent nonsense. The game could arguably get a reward for making me hate a fictional character this much but I just can't help but see him as a giant anchor around the entire game.
Ah, you mean the quest where a guy hired me to kill his wifes murderer. The quest, where I took a turn to the wrong street during the car chase and because that street was blocked by the po-po's, I couldn't drive after the murderer and he got away clean.
The quest that ended with the guy kicking me out of his car and cursing me for being such an amateur. And he refusing to pay me the eddies… That quest?
Lol, your description sounds kind of more interesting than what I got out of it. I'll see if I'm actually gonna play that quest in my second playthrough…
As for Johnny and the games endings:
Spoiler:
I kind of grew used to him during the game. It's not like he had a good thing going, being dead and all. I kind of understand him being PO'd about his whole situation. And he sort of mellowed a lot towards the end. He started being a self centered jerk, but actually ended up trying to help V in the end and being pretty unselfish about it too.
I played the Rogue ending with him leaving with Alt as my main ending and I actually liked that ending (even though it is not a very happy one). I went in a second time to check the Reaper ending and Johnny actually respected V's desicion to end it all in that roof. I sorta liked that ending also even if it will never be my characters canon ending.
I saved the Nomad ending (whatever that is) for my second playthrough I just started. I don't like the Arasaka people at all, so that is my least favourite ending (I haven't seen it yet though, so might change my mind afterwards, but it wouldn't be my first choise to go through).
I'm not sure either about letting V to become an AI is something I would choose.
I'm kind of hoping a DLC will give us an option to actually heal V, but after seeing two endings, I'm not expecting for that to happen. Happy endings seem not to be on the plate in this game world...
what can happen assuming you get out of your car to shoot the guy whose stopped with the cops, your employer runs ahead with a pistol like a fething idiot, and gets exactly what you'd expect to happen in that situation (insta shot and killed) so the guy whose the prisoner actually takes a liking to V for some reason, (why? well not really sure I'm given the impression he's a touch cray cray) ask offers to pay you what you would have been paid to "just accompany me for the day" well it turns out this guy found religion on death row, and is wrapping some gak up before his execution, now here's the crazy gak, remember when I said he found religion? well he struck a deal with a movie studio, and they arranged to basicly have his execution be.. special, as in they're doing a BD of him getting crucified, we're talking "passion of the christ in BD format" here) anyway the quest has you talking with him etc it's definatly a bit odd, that said I'm a pretty apathetic atheist, in that I don't belive in god and don't care one way or another partiuclarly so long as you keep it away from me, so I didn't get as much from this quest as someone else might.... that said the idea of the BD being made well... that doesn't suprise me at all.
In other news, we're slated for some FreeLC it seems. CDPR has confirmed they still plan to release some in early 2021, but have not specified yet what this will entail. I think likely suspects would be barber/cosmetic tools for after character creation (this is one of the first things added to Witcher 3 I think).
There is a huge amount still needed beyond bug fixes to make the game anything like the next gen immersive experience they orignally claimed
At a absolute minimum they need to fix:
* Cops AI - They need some - its currently less than PS2 games * Cops in cars, AVs etc - seriously.....
* No teleporting Cops
* Regions without police or Militech response - as they state in the game but they appear everywhere...
* Cops reacting to gunfights not just by shooting the PC * Vehicle AI - They need some - its currently less than PS2 games - not just on rails
* Civilian AI - They need some - currently less than PS2 games
* Civilians reacting more than crouching - in many areas they should fight back - its Cyberpunk!
* Fast travel fix - to travel to another point for the same tired loading screen each time - just fast travel from the map to a FT point.
* Ability to cosmetically change appearance of both the character and clothing / armour to stop you looking like a tool with mismatched junk. Seriously PS2 games you could get a haircut / change tatoos - for a game about appearance - this is just total BS * Cyberwear cosemtic mods
However I thnk we will just get more Johnny fething Silverhand BS and some cosmetics - Oh well
Out of that list, the only things I care about are possible cosmetic mods.
There isn't any reason to interact with the civvies or the cops or the traffic. Even if they improve them, there still won't be.
Fast travel loading screens likely isn't fixable. That's simply a consequence of a huge game world with a lot of objects and however they coded that aspect in the first place.
I don't pay attention to the civilians in this game (pedestrians and cars), so the minimal AI is not a big deal for me.
And I actually act pretty law abiding way in this game (don't drive over pedestrians or wave my guns around in non-combat situations), so I don't have pretty much any interactions with the cops. In GTA/Saints Row games, when I grow bored, I'll start acting badly on purpose to draw in the cop response for fun. I don't do that in Cyberpunk.
What irks me somewhat in this game is the cyberware installation, or the lack of it. You choose the cyberware to buy and it is automatically added to your body… I'd like to have a bit longer procedure for that. Get in the chair and the doc puts the machine over the body part to be installed. Fade to Black. Sight returns and you get off the chair.
Something to make you feel like you are actually undergoing a surgery and not just perusing a catalogue. They can make the animation skippable for the impatient ones, but I'd like to see the procedure at least started, getting anasthesied and then waking up. It's not a bug deal, but little more immersion.
I didn't visit the doc that many times in my playthrough for it to get old.
I'd also like to remove the armour system from the clothing system. In GTA and Saints Row you could wear whatever you wanted and it didn't affect the gameplay. In CB, the armour values force you to wear stupid micro-pants because it has two more armour points than your Jeans… At least this is a first person game, so you don't have to watch your character wear those stupid outfits (unless you look down…)
The clothing thing is weird. It follows a gaming trend where they put in a lot of ugly, terrible pieces of clothing/armor that you just have to deal with (when really, mods are the thing that matters)
But they also implemented an over-layer outfit system (and seemed to be planning on doing something with your apartment closet, rather than your stash) but just... didn't.
Basically there is a mission (or two?) that uses outfits, your 'recovery' outfit and a bunch of Arasaka hazmat suits. And that's it. It seems like an unfinished feature.
I detest the level requirements for gear. I should not be a specific level to put on a pair of pants.
And clothing stores should be fully stocked with their own clothing selection. I shouldn't have to refresh a store's stock to get a specific top I want from a random pool for that store. That store should always have that top in stock. Different rarities of it, fine, but always have that style and color.
And shouldn't there be something like Amazon in Night City? Why isn't there online ordering with same day delivery in Night City?
Just started playing on my XBOX one, and I've been really enjoying the game. I'm pretty overwhelmed by all there is to do, I might restart and make a new character when I have a better idea of which perk/skills set I want to do. Focusing right now on Brawling with a big hammer. Starting the Heist mission.
Voss wrote: Out of that list, the only things I care about are possible cosmetic mods.
There isn't any reason to interact with the civvies or the cops or the traffic. Even if they improve them, there still won't be.
Fast travel loading screens likely isn't fixable. That's simply a consequence of a huge game world with a lot of objects and however they coded that aspect in the first place.
I mostly agree, police response needs some work as sometimes you accidently get them to show up (it's pretty rare if you play smart and not like an idiot but it happens)
Well, I've got about 15 hours into the game. It's definitely a good game and I like the story. My real issue is that, unlike most open world games, the main questline never seems to have that moment where it calms down and lets you just go and explore. While you are not under any time constraints, the story makes it feel like you are, so it is very easy to just railroad through it. It's not a great way of trying to have an open world when the story doesn't quite mesh with it. The story also doesn't really have your choices matter unfortunately.
I am also disappointed by there not being as much stuff to interact with. The vast majority of NPCs are not intractable with, which is unfortunate. All those cool looking vendors and such, you can only buy from certain ones. There are tons of things you think you should be able to interact with that you just can't. Which is a shame because everything is so pretty and lifelike that you want to.
I agree that the clothing system for armor is dumb. There should be armor slots and then cosmetic slots. After all, they made a big deal about your appearance. And even implied that dressing appropriately for where you were going was important. So make it important, but don't make it compromise your protection. They should also have places where you can alter your appearance after character creation.
Driving is also a little rough around the edges.
I'm hoping they take some time to add some expansion depth to the little things to increase the immersion, rather than it just being a combat stealth puzzle game.
chromedog wrote: Johnny Silverhand has ALWAYS been a dick, though.
He was in 2013 cyberpunk rpg, and he hadn't changed in the 2020 rewrite.
Every step of the NFA short story in the rulebooks he's a screwup. Alt has her own rescue all sorted. Then he shows up and screws it up for everyone.
And if they kept it at that, it'd be fine.
But they don't...
Spoiler:
Nukes in a city
organizing riots as a distraction that he admits he knows will kill 'their' people
V's initial reaction to his memories- that he hates _everyone_. Not just Arasaka, but even the crowd he's singing in front of in the club
He seems to classified everyone according to... their utility function (to him)- either people to kill, people to use or people to abuse, or people it doesn't matter if they die or not.
Not going to throw psychological terms at him, because a lot of it is just bad writing, but CD Projekt's version of Johnny isn't a dick or a screwup. He's a full-on monster
It's also worth noting that at no point did the universe revolve around Johnny in the TTRPG, not from what I can tell. It's okay to be a dick when you're a secondary character who can serve as an entertaining feth up or a hate sink.
It's less okay when everything is about a dick and what a dick they are, unironically and in 2077 Johnny takes being a dick to its ultimate end goal, which is basically a egomanical sociopath with main character syndrome. Johnny's character plays out like every edge lord rogue ever played by a first time RPer who thinks being an donkey-cave makes someone complex and exactly like that fething guy, Johnny kills the mood constantly and makes everything less fun.
Voss wrote: [
And if they kept it at that, it'd be fine.
But they don't...
I snipped the spoilers.
In fairness, the first spoiler item was NOT CDPR's idea. That happened in the pencil and paper game as a result of the storyline advancing. It even got a mention in the now non-canon Cyberpunk V3 rulebook.
LordofHats wrote: It's also worth noting that at no point did the universe revolve around Johnny in the TTRPG, not from what I can tell. It's okay to be a dick when you're a secondary character who can serve as an entertaining feth up or a hate sink.
I think one thing I can say here, as a result of the humble bundle sale on the TTRPG books and my slowly reading them, the only way the "universe" revolves around Johnny and his rage-boner toward 'Saka, is to assume he IS the universe. . . . and I mean, if we're looking at the memories presented in 2077, if him dropping nukes in an elevator, dropping one of the main Arasaka buildings in the entire world (it's touched on in game that old-man Arasaka's office in NC was a replica of his home office in Japan, so really, Johnny wasn't even hitting the main main target) and being at his level of douche-baggery doesn't change a damn thing in-world. . . well, the world doesn't revolve around him.
What I'm getting from the original TTRPG materials is basically Necromunda without the Grimdark just for the sake of Grimdark. . . like, there's a certain level of palpable "reality" injected into the setting. I look at these materials as a sort of lense into the world of 1988, the author's feelings that corporations were becoming ever more powerful, more powerful than the nation's government, etc. and what THAT world looks like when taken to an extreme. All of the main secondary character profiles I've read in the 2nd ed book so far, all of the characters are as big a douche as ol' Silverhand is, if not more so. Not to spark a discussion on the P word here, what I'm suggesting is that we're seeing an author, or group of authors' take on things, their expression of a lot of thoughts, and some work, some are rather silly.
ever so slightly off topic. . . I recently saw that a new edition of pnp game was coming out, "Cyberpunk: RED" . . . anyone got a line on if its out, how much, and where one can get it online?
Isn't Cyberpunk all about appearance and customisation? Well not in the game!
