Cyberpunk 2077

[Jastall]

Decided to start a new character. RTX still tanks this game's performance in crowded interiors (Lizzie's in particular murders my poor PC) but feels much better in exteriors than what I remembered.

There's chainswords in the game now which is never a bad thing. Didn't see special aminations or executions for them yet tho.

I wasn't expecting changes on that front or anything but the game's opening is still pretty weak. The inconsequential lifepath and training montage feels like they took the place of actually fun gameplay sequences. On the other hand grabbing the Flathead is one of the most open quest in the game when it comes to player choices; go in guns blazing, pay for it and fight because malware, don't pay and fight, execute the boss and fight, remove the malware so everything goes smoothly, there's plenty of possibilities for different builds. Sadly I can't remember the rest of the main quests being this well thought out, at best you either get a sneaky option or a shooty option.

[Endus]

I wasn't expecting changes on that front or anything but the game's opening is still pretty weak. The inconsequential lifepath and training montage feels like they took the place of actually fun gameplay sequences. On the other hand grabbing the Flathead is one of the most open quest in the game when it comes to player choices; go in guns blazing, pay for it and fight because malware, don't pay and fight, execute the boss and fight, remove the malware so everything goes smoothly, there's plenty of possibilities for different builds. Sadly I can't remember the rest of the main quests being this well thought out, at best you either get a sneaky option or a shooty option.

That quest still depresses me, because I recall the early announcements where they were discussing using the Flathead as a character-controlled drone, as a whole skill tree basically. Like, if you've played Watch Dogs 2, that kind of thing but with heavy weaponry. The mission where you DO use the thing is so toned down and that segment almost feels like an old point-and-click adventure game, getting people into the right positions for the Flathead to advance. It's so clear they had to cut it for technical/time reasons, and it's sad.

[Koriani]

That quest still depresses me, because I recall the early announcements where they were discussing using the Flathead as a character-controlled drone, as a whole skill tree basically. Like, if you've played Watch Dogs 2, that kind of thing but with heavy weaponry. The mission where you DO use the thing is so toned down and that segment almost feels like an old point-and-click adventure game, getting people into the right positions for the Flathead to advance. It's so clear they had to cut it for technical/time reasons, and it's sad.

Agreed x2.

I enjoyed the game, enjoyed many of the quests storylines (those that had them) and at least the illusion of options - but all of it, to me, also showed me "what could have been" if they'd had the full time and ability to do what they originally intended to do. The 'bones' of that 'better game' is there - but not flushed out. And that disappointed me on the whole thing. :/

Even the quests that appear to present a real choice - don't. At least, outside of the few that actually effect your 'ending', the rest change nothing of the game or how the game progresses, regardless of what 'options' you choose. Sure, an NPC here or there is alive or dead - but none of those NPCs being alive/dead changes the world of the rest of the game or how your story goes.

Coming off what they did with quest storylines in Witcher from years before - huge letdown and huge 'stepdown' in game quality, to me. What was a dev company that actually took the time and effort to create a game with *actually impactful* Quest choices that changed multiple things about the game world around the player/characters in large and small ways - to do what felt like "half the game" with their next big AAA release? Even enjoying the game - it was still disappointing.

Don't regret the purchase. Great world/environment/setting. Fun/Entertaining game (long as you don't mind lack of balance, borked talents, being OP, etc). Good, and even great moments, in the storytelling of the quests. But after coming off the Witcher - still feeling so much 'less' than it should, or could, have been. And due to their poor, greed based, choices about the development and shit-release - destroyed whatever belief I had that this dev company was any different, or better at their craft, then anyone else.

And that's disappointing, too.

[Endus]

Even the quests that appear to present a real choice - don't. At least, outside of the few that actually effect your 'ending', the rest change nothing of the game or how the game progresses, regardless of what 'options' you choose. Sure, an NPC here or there is alive or dead - but none of those NPCs being alive/dead changes the world of the rest of the game or how your story goes.

To be fair, a lot of quests having fairly meaningless outcomes based on player choice, like "is it NPC A or NPC B who dies", while not actually having any significant effect on the worldspace in any way whatsoever, that's entirely Cyberpunk, both the RPG and the genre.

A major genre touchpoint is that the corps are essentially untouchable in terms of power and influence, no matter what silly little meatbags might pull off while bumbling around out there. Even if said meatbag is a corpo VP or high-end journo; they're just higher class of meatbag, they're not the equals of the non-human corporate giants that rules society.

The game lets V have about as much effect on the world as any Cyberpunk genre story does. That we're all ants and the giant corpo farmers don't care what us puny little ants are doing and the best we can often hope for is being unnoticed enough they don't get the insecticide, that's a cyberpunk genre trope.

Coming off what they did with quest storylines in Witcher from years before - huge letdown and huge 'stepdown' in game quality, to me.

I'm gonna disagree, here; Witcher 3 suffers a lot from similar issues; you can "flavor" the outcomes of quests but you can't fix the world setting. The best you can hope for is lower-level "let the evils of man suffer their karmic fates".

Gorgeous game, great gameplay, but it's not nearly as responsive to player choice as a lot of people pretend. Most quests boil down to a binary choice, and that choice is often "kill the tragic monster" and "let the monster get its just revenge on the humans that wronged it". And the lasting effects of either choice, most often, are basically meaningless outside the quest reward.

[Jastall]

Agreed x2.

I enjoyed the game, enjoyed many of the quests storylines (those that had them) and at least the illusion of options - but all of it, to me, also showed me "what could have been" if they'd had the full time and ability to do what they originally intended to do. The 'bones' of that 'better game' is there - but not flushed out. And that disappointed me on the whole thing. :/

Even the quests that appear to present a real choice - don't. At least, outside of the few that actually effect your 'ending', the rest change nothing of the game or how the game progresses, regardless of what 'options' you choose. Sure, an NPC here or there is alive or dead - but none of those NPCs being alive/dead changes the world of the rest of the game or how your story goes.

Coming off what they did with quest storylines in Witcher from years before - huge letdown and huge 'stepdown' in game quality, to me. What was a dev company that actually took the time and effort to create a game with *actually impactful* Quest choices that changed multiple things about the game world around the player/characters in large and small ways - to do what felt like "half the game" with their next big AAA release? Even enjoying the game - it was still disappointing.

Don't regret the purchase. Great world/environment/setting. Fun/Entertaining game (long as you don't mind lack of balance, borked talents, being OP, etc). Good, and even great moments, in the storytelling of the quests. But after coming off the Witcher - still feeling so much 'less' than it should, or could, have been. And due to their poor, greed based, choices about the development and shit-release - destroyed whatever belief I had that this dev company was any different, or better at their craft, then anyone else.

And that's disappointing, too.

I'll be honest, I don't think any of the Witchers besides 2 went heavy on the reactivity either, what with the Roche and Iorveth paths being very different for the most part. Even then act 3 funneled the story backed to a mostly pre-planned route you don't have much control over and which doesn't matter one bit come game 3.

Meanwhile 3's main story proceeds in a basically identical manner regardless of what you do, with the only major decision capstone being what happens to Ciri in the last 10 minutes of the game, alongside some major side-quests deciding the fate of some characters (such as the assassination of Radovid). As well, there are rarely several ways to resolve quests in creative fashion. You Witcher sense your way to the objective, slash what needs slashing, and sometimes get to choose the lesser of two evils at the tail end of the sidequest. At best you can use higher Axii level to force persuade but I didn't find it came up very often.

In this manner I feel Cyberpunk is in line with previous titles, and hell at least it has a few different ending scenarios and missions (defend Arasaka from Yorinobu, storm Mikoshi on foot with Rogue or alone, assault the place with the Basilisk and the Nomads) where the endgame of the Witcher titles were basically identical. My bigger beef is more that quests like the Flathead recovery teases the idea of a game that has multiple possible paths taking various builds into account, something that never really materializes afterwards. Many story quests are almost entirely on-rails, the sidequests at best follow the Witcher 3 model and the vast majority of gigs are go there, shoot or sneak, get paid, with sometimes a Body or Intelligence check making the quest marginally easier. It's not bad, mind you, but it's not great either.

[vian]

"Day 1 jank" doesnt excuse the shit show that was performance on earlier consoles. They shouldnt have sold the game on those platforms like they are not with the DLC which is the correct call.

The games won me over and once I updated my drivers I stopped having crashes but come on lets not pretend the game didnt have problems. We also dont need to harp on about it either.

CD projekt red is not the promised developer to bring balance to the gaming force. At least they corrected their mistakes and moving forward are not repeating the same shit as I said by selling to earlier consoles so you cant have a go at them for admitting their flaws and not just taking customers money and pissing people off with poor performance which is what happened and you can understand why some people would be pissed.

Don't care about consoloids nor do I care about people with barely can run it systems.

All that matters is if I enjoyed it, and oh boy did I.

[Otaka]

So how is the game at the moment? Is it worth a replay?

If you wanna replay the story then... sure?
Not alot has changed, its like replaying witcher 3 basegame again atm... some dlc missions and lots of QoL and completely revamped talent trees. But other than that its the same game.

Mods are there too to change it even more if you fancy... they just released the modding tools so some mods on that side too.

The game seems to have a memory leak atm (perhaps the newest patch?)... can play a few hours no problem but at some point the game usually goes to 15 fps and doesnt improve at all, so have to restart to fix it. Very unfortunate...

EDIT: Oh and the revamps have made it possible to do a knife-build. Ive already been scouting out a knife-netrunner build.
The perk for knives makes them throwable and recall to you automatically... so wielding 3 knives means you can throw them all and most likely the first one has already returned by the time the third one is being thrown, depending on the knife ofc (different recall times).

I tried with one knife and once thrown it auto-equipped my next weapon which was a gun... so wielding only knives might be more fun so it has a rotation.

[RobertoCarlos]

Don't care about consoloids nor do I care about people with barely can run it systems.

All that matters is if I enjoyed it, and oh boy did I.

Subjective opinion doesnt allow one to hand wave away issues as if they didnt exist.

Props for enjoying the game but that doesnt mean you can say "day 1 jank" with a straight face when the game issues went beyond performance on ps4 etc

[vian]

Subjective opinion doesnt allow one to hand wave away issues as if they didnt exist.

Props for enjoying the game but that doesnt mean you can say "day 1 jank" with a straight face when the game issues went beyond performance on ps4 etc

Considering i had zero issues, yes, yes I can.

[RobertoCarlos]

Considering i had zero issues, yes, yes I can.

And I'm sure a lot of people driving ford explorers in 2002 said the same thing and looked just as stupid.

[rhorle]

And I'm sure a lot of people driving ford explorers in 2002 said the same thing and looked just as stupid.

That is so incredibly random. Have you been holding a grudge against the car for 20 years and just waiting to use it in a sentence?

[RobertoCarlos]

That is so incredibly random. Have you been holding a grudge against the car for 20 years and just waiting to use it in a sentence?

It was one example of possible millions where most people can expect normal conditions from a product in this case a car or video game.

And if others notice an issue because there is a bug or defect that effects 1% of users, then they have a valid claim to complain and point out said bug/defect and hope for a fix or replacement.

That doesnt mean someone can say "it didnt happen to me so It cant be true those issues were just paper talk from dem haters" as that is being painfully unaware of ones experiences does not alter someone elses and certainly doesnt alter objective facts.

[Feltima]

The salt over this game is insane. The game launched two years ago, it was a dumpster fire release and now it's been patched to high heaven to be a serviceable open-world RPG. It's crazy that a top-tier anime based on the source material gave the game a second chance, and gamers are still full of incredible levels of salt that the company offered to refund you for anyways. It must really grind folks' gears the game is getting a second chance and a bunch of people that didn't have any expectations or heard it was trash years ago is now having a blast.

It's going to be interesting to see with CDPR does with this massive morale boost. I've got a feeling that even if they stick to only a single expansion, the sales/concurrent player count is probably going to push them to make an expansion campaign that's pretty ambitious. Cautiously optimistic about this Cyberpunk renaissance. After playing through 1.6 it's clear they got their house back in order enough to do some serious work. Fingers cross they surpass folks' expectations with this expansion and let the IP take a breather on a good note like TW3 before we get the inevitable 20XX sequel in UE5.

[KrayZ33]

I had a very difficult time with this game when it came out.
Is the AI "better" now?
I'm well aware that I will eventually run into some stupid stuff even in 1.6+, that's not necessarily what I'm thinking about.

But when you walk into hostile areas that are the size of a single household and its backyard, some enemies aren't aware anything is happening after you've thrown grenades and killed half their squad and still make "selfies" next to some ride.....well, that just kills the whole thing and immersion the game has to offer.

I will probably play it again when the DLC hits. From the beginning... but man, if that kind of shit is still up and about when I play it again... I'm not certain f I can go through with it, maybe if I go 100% netrunner or something and use the "sonic shock"/"ping"-quickhack as an excuse in my head.
I mean, imagine this: The bad guys are to some degree all connected in a network, blowing up your cover should 100% result in punishment that makes everyone aware of you, even if they don't know exactly where you are. Acting as if nothing has happened yet is just killing it.

edit: off-topic, but I actually hope they will release a multiplayer game for CP. The hacking and gunning feels like it should work fine in MP... like in The Division, just better.

[rhorle]

I finally logged on to check out the little bit of edgerunner content and skills are reset. Not a big deal but I have to remember my build after months of not playing. The worst part is the 1.6 change to sniper rilfes. It now requires body 10 to "use the full potential" but they didn't reset stats with the changes. Basically screws up the method/build I beat the game with on save.

I can use a mod since I'm on PC to fix stats but still dumb they don't offer a way to do it in-game. It might suck for people that can't use mods and go to play the expansion when it comes out with an old save.

[Feltima]

I had a very difficult time with this game when it came out.
Is the AI "better" now?
I'm well aware that I will eventually run into some stupid stuff even in 1.6+, that's not necessarily what I'm thinking about.

But when you walk into hostile areas that are the size of a single household and its backyard, some enemies aren't aware anything is happening after you've thrown grenades and killed half their squad and still make "selfies" next to some ride.....well, that just kills the whole thing and immersion the game has to offer.

I will probably play it again when the DLC hits. From the beginning... but man, if that kind of shit is still up and about when I play it again... I'm not certain f I can go through with it, maybe if I go 100% netrunner or something and use the "sonic shock"/"ping"-quickhack as an excuse in my head.
I mean, imagine this: The bad guys are to some degree all connected in a network, blowing up your cover should 100% result in punishment that makes everyone aware of you, even if they don't know exactly where you are. Acting as if nothing has happened yet is just killing it.

edit: off-topic, but I actually hope they will release a multiplayer game for CP. The hacking and gunning feels like it should work fine in MP... like in The Division, just better.

The enemy AI has improved considerably since release, they are as reactive and smart enough to provide a fun gameplay loop. The game feels more balanced in general as well.

[vian]

And I'm sure a lot of people driving ford explorers in 2002 said the same thing and looked just as stupid.

Dumbest thing I've read in a long while, cheers.

[Razamith]

Flurry of CD Red tweets today

https://twitter.com/CDPROJEKTRED_IR/...I8N5ETTXjVGntw

Three witcher projects (one being a trilogy)
Cyberpunk Expansion (known)
Cyberpunk sequel
New IP

[Endus]

Flurry of CD Red tweets today

https://twitter.com/CDPROJEKTRED_IR/...I8N5ETTXjVGntw

Three witcher projects (one being a trilogy)
Cyberpunk Expansion (known)
Cyberpunk sequel
New IP

I'm glad the shaky launch isn't driving CD Projekt Red away from the Cyberpunk IP. The sequel won't even really need a new engine since the current one mostly works just fine, so they can focus on adding features to that setup. While I expect the expansion to be related to V's story, obviously, I really hope the new Orion game has absolutely nothing to do with him or any of the major characters from the first game, except as cameos to weave the narratives into the same setting. I'd much prefer a "wide" approach to storytelling in the Cyberpunk universe, telling a whole bunch of unrelated stories that might even take place simultaneously and not even notice the others are going on, to a "long" approach where there's one continuous storyline that's continuing to develop.

[gondrin]

I'm glad the shaky launch isn't driving CD Projekt Red away from the Cyberpunk IP. The sequel won't even really need a new engine since the current one mostly works just fine, so they can focus on adding features to that setup. While I expect the expansion to be related to V's story, obviously, I really hope the new Orion game has absolutely nothing to do with him or any of the major characters from the first game, except as cameos to weave the narratives into the same setting. I'd much prefer a "wide" approach to storytelling in the Cyberpunk universe, telling a whole bunch of unrelated stories that might even take place simultaneously and not even notice the others are going on, to a "long" approach where there's one continuous storyline that's continuing to develop.

Much like Hello Games with No Man's Sky, no dev should shy away after a bad launch. Own up to it and fix it. Games are far harder to develop and are set to a higher standard than they were in the past. Witcher 3 itself was a mess at launch(there still are some critical bugs in the game like a game breaking inventory bug), along with Skyrim(really Bethesda, only 32 bit support, no 64 bit support at launch?). WoW was a huge mess at launch. This doesn't excuse any of those issues but own up to them and get to fixing them.

As we can see, No Man's Sky is the best example of this by far.