I'm really happy to see this. As fumbled as the launch was, I played it on PC and found the world and its characters to have more depth than I'd personally experienced in a video game before.
What broke my heart was to feel viscerally how much time and love the developers had poured into the game, dedicating years of their lives, only to have it all overshadowed by a disastrous, rushed launch. I for one am glad to see the game getting a shot at redemption, and I'm glad more people are getting to experience what IMO is a masterpiece of digital storytelling.
There's a kernel of a good game in there. But the big issue in my opinion is that outside of the main story missions, the world feels completely dead.
Night City is huge and you can tell that there was a lot of passion and care put into the design, at least from an art perspective. But the player has no incentive to explore it.
I see three main reasons for this:
1. You don't stumble upon content organically. Every event is premarked on your map and will remain frozen in time until you get there. And I mean every event. Even firefights between different NPC factions. They don't happen randomly/organically. They happen at premarked spots on your map. You're a tourist with an itinerary in an amusement park as opposed to a person navigating a living, breathing city.
2. There is zero reason to go anywhere without a quest marker. You aren't rewarded for peeking into random corners, for going off the beaten path, like you are in a game like Skyrim. If you do, you are met with an eerie sort of emptiness. Just lots of RNG NPCs, and a feeling that you were never meant to go there.
3. If you follow the markers to the side content, it's pretty hit or miss. There are a few extended, multimission side quests that are legitimately interesting. But the regular side missions (called "gigs") all sort of blend into one. They sort of remind me of COD missions: Exposition is thrown at you like a firehose with a monologue, then you kill a dozen NPCs, and only after the smoke settles do you realize that one of them happened to be the big baddy. And then the mission just sort of ends. And none of the characters involved ever come up again beyond a passing mention in conversation (usually). Sure, the story is there, but it doesn't feel like it has any relation to the gameplay.
So what you're left with is a city that is nothing more than a backdrop for a fairly linear main quest, which while decent, isn't all that remarkable on it's own.
So much was left on the table. I hope CD Projekt make a sequel where they take the time to really flesh out the world. They could have a classic on their hands if they do.
This for me is one of the reasons why Diso Elysium is such a masterpiece. There is no corner in the game without a secret, yet it never feels like it forces gameplay into these corners, the mystery appears naturally and implicitly in everything.
Very different type of game compared to CP77, but it has become my gold standard of RPG storytelling.
yeah I almost completely agree. I feel almost no need to do any side quests (of which some are impossibly difficult until you've passed the end game). The thing that really bugged me more than anything was I just thought the controls for the game weren't very tight. Driving felt a bit too floaty and the gun controls on PS5 were very lacking (compared to say GTA5). There is glimmers of greatness, I just think they bit off more than they could chew.
> I hope CD Projekt make a sequel where they take the time to really flesh out the world.
Sounds more like they should go back to making more expansions (they had planned three, it's been cut down to only one) to really flesh out this game, rather than dumping it and starting from scratch. Seems like a waste otherwise.
What the world needs is random NPC events and non-quest things to find in the world.
- Overhear conversations about someone going to do a clandestine deal, then rob that person and the person they are trading with for way more money than a typical NPC and a neat item.
- Random gang-v-gang or gang-v-police turf war battles should pop up. NPC's should notice when you're 'helping' and not attack you.
- NPCs should occasionally try to rob you or sell you sketchy stuff.
- NPC should be doing interesting things, but all their animations are just 'walk around' or 'standing still'. You should be able to follow an NPC to get a peek at their life so they don't seem like arbitrary robots.
- Hidden caches with actually-useful or amusing items to encourage exploration
- Build out spaces that aren't used in quests, so exploring doesn't feel like you've just given yourself spoilers.
Couldn't all of that be added in via expansions, DLC, or patches (what's the difference anyway) without changing the underlying engine? It's just strange that a game that was worked upon for so long (including after its release) is seemingly unsalvageable. I would think that they could expand more.
All of that should have been integral to the initial version of the game. I'd balk at a game that lets you play singleplayer but you have to pay extra if you want the world to feel real.
Sure, but 1) you'd have to pay for a sequel anyway and 2) there's still the possibility of free DLC/patches.
My main question is does anyone know if 2077 is just so technically broken, systematically, that it's impossible to patch in all of that. Was it just improperly designed from the ground up to support its ambitions. Because if not, then I view throwing away all of the work done for the existing game, in order to start a new one, seems like a waste and another potential boondoggle.
I'm very sure that CDPR never wanted to create a GTA full of random crap happening on the street with no story connections.
I think a lot of you misunderstood what kind of games CDPR makes. You also didn't get randomly mugged on the streets of Novigrad just to be hunted by the guards.
>Overhear conversations about someone going to do a clandestine deal, then rob that person and the person they are trading with for way more money than a typical NPC and a neat item.
The open world was an albatross they should have ditched in favor of the main quest; the campaign is cinematic and awesome, the combat is bomb, but the world is... well, you traverse it, and that's about it.
To be honest I was so amazed by the feel of the world that I completed the mainquest (and all side quests) by either walking or driving there. I rarely used any form of waypoint to skip the inbetween.
I think the architecture, the roads and the districts are very well designed. I think the quests take you to interesting no places and show interesting perspectives on life in sich a city.
What the game lacks to some degree are more emerging observable things with the NPCs moving throughout the city. There should be more things happening. Be it quarreling couples in 100 variations, a car crash that is being locked down by police or emergent behavior between police, gangs, emergency services, hookers, onlookers. Create situations that emerge from the systems of the city.
I played the same way. Well, I took a motorcycle because the traffic was always way too slow. Sometimes I'd stop to Judge Dredd some random Crims if it was on the way. The world looked pretty, but the traffic and pedestrian AI was just so weirdly silly that it wasn't exactly an immersive experience. Relaxing to blast through traffic at 120kph on an Akira bike though.
The world is full of small stories and big - from environmental storytelling to chunks of short gigs each showing a slice of the world and people in it.
It's kind wierd to skip the part that this game is best at (just like Witcher 3 was).
> I'm really happy to see this. As fumbled as the launch was, I played it on PC and found the world and its characters to have more depth than I'd personally experienced in a video game before.
I think it pales in comparison to many other games. Including The Witcher 3, another CD Projekt RED creation.
However, I also agree that it got unnecessary hate. Sure, it was a bad decision to launch it on the previous console generation. There were some bugs, but I haven't encountered any show stopping bugs when playing on day 1 _on Linux_ even!
Yeah I gave it a second try this past summer after buying it at launch, playing three hours, then getting frustrated at the crashes and general gameplay. Once I got past the prologue, I think the game really started to get interesting. I sort of had the impression it was a "cyberpunk" GTA before, but the depth of the story as it progressed gradually won me over.
I tried it, expecting it to be awful. I actually really enjoyed it. It's not an FPS and they probably over-hyped it but the world was very engaging and the story I believed. To be honest, I'd have preferred it without the guns, but maybe that is just me…
Those first 15 hours or so were amazing - the rest of it less so but still great. If they had just kept up the prequel level of storytelling it would have been mindblowing. Still a great game.
Uh, even their own screenshots show civ 6 and football manager higher, and those are primarily single player games. Weird submarine marketing piece for a widely panned game, just in time to get hype up for their dlc.
Civ 6 had a free weekend just a few days ago, so that would definitely skew the ratings. And football manager has a very dedicated and large fanbase, a lot of whom literally dont ever play any other games except football manager.
More importantly, not sure why you brought up the "primarily single player games" part, given Cyberpunk 2077 is a single-player-only, while both Civ 6 and Football Manager 2022 have pretty active multiplayer usercounts.
So if we count single-player-only games, as the title implies, it all seems correct.
I'm wondering if it'll make for a good case study for cross-media tie-in material actually helping the main product. Pretty sure anime for non-anime usually ends up bad, and even when they are good I don't think they really make much of a difference (Matrix Reloaded didn't need the Animatrix to be a box office success).
I loved cyberpunk so much, but I did wish the launch wasn't so bad. The game really is a great game and all you can see online is "it was bad. it is bad.".
Mostly because of the incredible, and plausible, features they promised but didn't deliver and the fact that some things in the game are still in many ways broken. A few versions ago perks that sped up your reload speed did literally the opposite which was surprising to say the least.
But to me there exists nothing that holds a candle to its cyberpunk world. Both the general vibe and execution in-spite of it's well known flaws.
I tried to play Elden Ring on PS5. It was fun and I would like to keep playing it but it's just way too hard for me. It seems like it's just hard for the sake of being hard. I guess that's FromSoftware's MO though. In any case, I stopped playing it. Just don't have the time when there are more enjoyable games to play.
That's pretty much how it works with their games. Punishingly difficult. Often with unfair mechanics that you can only properly counter after having died many times and memorizing arcane sequences.
Its a very polarizing kind of game. But those who like it, love it. Those who dont, dont buy the game.
It's hard, but offers more options to facilitate gameplay than the others in the series. Devs seem to encourage communication with the player community as a means to get ahead, but really, players just read the fextralife wiki guide which can trivialize (most of) the game. Use the exploits if you find it too hard.
I think the quest system was a glaring failure that did not translate well from the previous games, where you were all but guaranteed to stumble into NPCs just by going this way or that. Without checking the wiki I probably wouldn't have completed many. That aside, it's a huge success with a ridiculous amount of content. An average FS game would take me 40-50 hours, this one took 120+ to complete, and that's skipping some catacombs.
I've played DS1, DS3, and Sekiro, and thought ER was the easiest of those FROMSoft titles. Two of the biggest changes they made to facilitate that were to limit invasions to co-op play (unless you opt-in to be invaded solo) and Spirit Ashes for boss fights.
It's still very difficult, but I think if you find a good walkthrough, like FightinCowboy, it makes the game a lot more approachable.
There isn't a difficulty "slider" or "setting" in elden ring. You can approach the game from different styles/strategies that may result in it being easier or harder though.
People play games years after launch. I played Witcher 3 2-3 years after launch, I bought Cyberpunk one year ago and I did not install it yet, waiting for a reasonable GPU to be available. I know people that play 10 year old games (for example the X Universe series or Mass Effect), so measuring player number is interesting, but not that important.
I just buy games years after launch once the eager masses have help work out all the bugs and the DLC's are all thrown in with the game for $10. It's very hard to want to pay $60+ for what is often an unfinished mess in modern gaming.
I am trying to get the developers paid, so I am not waiting to buy but to play the games. Yes, having the bugs fixed and DLCs available is a great extra. But buying overpriced GPUs with power consumption of an electric car is a showstopper for me.
Out of curiosity, were you previously introduced to the Witcher in some previous form (games, books, etc)?
I personally found the opening of Witcher 3 so utterly boring I gave up playing, and in general folks seem to agree that a) it's pretty damn slow to start, and b) coming into the story having already experienced the franchise makes it a lot easier to get through those first 5-10 hours.
I played the games in order. The first two have aged quite a bit, and in particular I felt 2 had some issues that I would have given up on if I wasn't aiming at playing the whole corpus.
But I did know all the main characters when I came into 3, and so I did understand the stakes from the beginning of the game.
The story is fine and the game has good graphics, but the fights made me stop playing because they were so bad compared to games like Zelda Breath of the Wild.
Story is wonderful, immersive, not many games make me feel for characters but Witcher III does, same as Mass Effect series. On the other hand I'm different than you, for me fights mechanics (while I liked it too) are not as important as story, world, characters and music.
I think it would have been better if they hadn’t gone so ambitious with their marketing. I bought on launch and have beaten it a couple of times. It’s a super fun game, with 3 or 4 viable play styles.
I just tried something else out on a 2nd play through. There's a lot of variation available. The difference between a Sandevistan run, quick hacking, and something shootier is really large.
They can't make up for the shitstorm and hate train they caused after release. /r/cyberpunkgame/ became unreadable when I unsubbed. The alternative sub is called /r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/ The name speaks for itself.
I just started playing it this weekend, and am shocked at how good the game actually is. Due to the initial negative feedback I didn't go in expecting cyber-GTA, and frankly that's made a huge difference.
Go in expecting a good story in an open world and you'll have a lovely time.
Has something changed since launch making it worth replaying? It worked fine on my 3 year old PC, but the story seemed a bit linear to motivate me to replay it. Has content been added?
Which means Factorio and Civ6, among others, are right out of the discussion. Because those games support multiplayer, even if its relatively rare to have multiplayer games on those.
It just goes to show that regardless of criticism online, marketing is what sells games (and indeed, anything). The fact that they fixed the game partially does help, but it is not a necessary property of selling a game.
it's funny given that Cyberpunk 2077 was never promised as a single-player-only game. A not-so-insignificant portion of those purchases were motivated by the developers talking about multiplayer gameplay previous to launch, i'm glad that they got some gameplay out of it, but I would have felt pretty cheated.
This is basically a meme at this point, but why would you buy a game before its launch? It's not like Steam is going to run out of downloads.
I think there would be a lot less toxicity and all of us would be better off if gamers stopped taking developer plans as gospel and 'promises'. Plans change. Scope changes. Specification changes.
What broke my heart was to feel viscerally how much time and love the developers had poured into the game, dedicating years of their lives, only to have it all overshadowed by a disastrous, rushed launch. I for one am glad to see the game getting a shot at redemption, and I'm glad more people are getting to experience what IMO is a masterpiece of digital storytelling.