Cyberpunk 2077 - CDProjekt's New Joint

Games
#2814

I doubt they delayed it three times because they were perfectionists, let’s be realistic, it was because the game was purely unfinished.

I read the game was full of obvious bugs (some I’ve seen in the leaked videos) and constant crashing before the day 0 patch. They also said things improved a lot with that day 0 patch, but… as I said, it seems the game is coming hot.

Again, let’s be realistic: they delayed it 3 weeks from November to December because that was the maximum time they could allow themselves to be delayed, to still get the Christmas season, not because the game needed exactly 3 weeks of work. Maybe it really needed 8 weeks of work.

#2815

Expect to be outraged. They’ve been crunching for ages and delayed the game right up until the end of the Holiday season which I don’t think is coincidental. That doesn’t say “smooth and polished” to me, it screams getting the game out the door before Christmas.

I don’t think anyone pulls a last minute delay like that if the game just needs a few weeks of polish. It must have been fundamentally unready to ship and crunch or no there’s really only so much developers can do in three weeks.

#2816

For context, I was comparing it with Witcher 3 release, which for me it was great. 0 crashes in 120 hours, decent performance, only 1 bugged side quest, no obvious problems with other systems.

#2817

I’m expecting this to have a lot more issues than Witcher 3 at launch, but I’m also expecting CDPR will get it fixed and polished.

#2818

Yep. I can see this being a big, crowd-sourced late beta.

#2819

Well, yeah, obviously they aren’t going to release the game, do a pair of quick patches and the forget the game ever existed, EA style. They are all in.

#2821

Does anyone remember Alternate Reality: The City during the C64 Era? It was one of the first (if not The first) open-world city game. It was a big, grid-based city, like in The Bard’s Tale and others of that ilk, except instead of moving in 10’ blocks, each grid square was divided into steps- it took 5 or six to go one block (you still turned in 90° increments, though). It had a day/night cycle, hunger mechanics, shops, but no real plot I ever found- you were just a normal person abducted by aliens and dropped in this fantasy city, and had to learn to live there. Anyway, I mapped out that whole city on grid paper, step by step, and it was hard, because the game was damn brutal- you started with no real equipment and stats were assigned basically by a slot-machine-style series of spinning wheels. Good times.

#2822

Yes, I remember that game. I don’t really remember much in the way of details because, as you mentioned, there didn’t really seem to be any plot and I had no idea what I was supposed to be doing - the idea of ‘emergent gameplay’ or ‘making your own fun’ was completely alien to me at the time. I guess it was probably pretty groundbreaking though, looking back on it. Wasn’t there more than one Alternate Reality game, like maybe a Dungeon or something?

#2823

Yeah, there was a AR: Dungeon sort-of sequel. There were a few places in the City you could enter it- you’d be prompted to insert that disk if you went there, but I think you could just start there. I seem to remember something similar about leaving the City via the gates, but I may be making that up in my memory, and it certainly never came out.

#2824

That game was ridiculous.

#2825

Yeah, our mainframe sysadmin gave me a copy back in the mid 80s and I played it a ton. I loved it in spite of not knowing exactly what I was supposed to be doing. I remember it being so different from anything else I’d ever played to that point.

#2826

Related to the state of the game at release, I can see this reviewing slightly lower than The Witcher 3. Any remaining bugs will be an easy target for reviewers, and the subject matter is a bit out there compared to near-universally-agreeable content like Geralt wandering through medieval times.

It just feels like the game would have to be remarkably epic in scope and execution to overcome those slight disadvantages. Which could happen!

#2827

When we moved last year, I came across maps I had drawn for various things, including Wizardry 7 and one of the Bard’s Tale games. If you haven’t played them, and don’t mind the aesthetics, you’d probably like Etrian Odyssey

#2828

From what CDProjekt mentioned after the delay, it sounded like they were mostly happy with how Cyberpunk ran on PC and Next Gen consoles and that the delay was primarily due to the difficulty in trying to get things working on Xbox One and PS4, so for those on more powerful hardware, it may be in pretty reasonable shape.

#2829

We donated most of our game collection (of vintage stuff) to my college for use with and by our Game Studio. Occasionally they put stuff on display, and one of the things they displayed was my wife’s copy I think Ultima IV, complete with her hand-drawn maps and notes.

#2830

The build on the disc is the build sent for certification which is several months old. Games get improved massively at this last stretch, I am actually quite confident that with the day 1 patch, game will be reasonably well polished (akin to Witcher 3). At least on PC.

#2831

I hand-mapped MUDs on graph paper for years. I absolutely loved it. I believe for me it tickled the ‘artsy’ side as at the time it was a completely analog experience while playing a digital game (enhanced by the fact that I have no actual artistic talent - drawing squares on graph paper matched my abilities).

#2832

The plan (for the original 8-bit Atari version at least), was to release expansion disks that used the city as a sort of hub. E.g. if you try to leave the city, it prompts you for the Wilderness disk. There were Arena, Palace, Dungeon, Wilderness, and a couple others planned.

#2833

You’re right! I thought I’d remembered the Wilderness, but now that you mention it, yeah, there were entry points for the Arena and Palace, too. I should load that up on an emulator. I wonder what the ‘best’ version was? I played on Commodore. Game was so goddamn ahead of its time.

#2834

Several leaked images, first one is NSFW with a PENIS. It doesn’t contain story spoilers, but some images of crowds, inventory, crafting and perk screens.
https://imgur.com/a/ xw22y4o

(remove the space in the link!)