Yeah, they still have the Metro stations, or at least one or two, in the game, though now they function like fast travel points only. Much of what they cut would have added greatly to the feel of the game. I wonder if some or most of it can be added in via DLC?
I’ve been having another odd visual bug recently, where either an item description window or the rectangular dialog box stays on screen after it should have gone away. I can fix the former by focusing in on another item, overwriting the box, but the latter requires a save game reload to fix it seems.
On another topic, I’ve been thinking a bit about the way the game is designed at the macro level. I have 94.5 hours in the game, split about half and half between my first street kid run and my current corpo run. No surprisingly, the second time through I’m hitting a lot more content than I got to the first time, especially quests that have longer chains and involve significant NPCs. It got me thinking a bit about how the player’s exposure to content is managed.
There is a ton of content in the game, but so much of it is so easy to miss. When you start, after the truncated origin story for your background, you are working with Jackie, and he’s a very compelling (to me) character, with great voice acting, good writing, and the makings of a great sidekick. So much so that you, the player, feel compelled to go along with his pacing, and you never realize that you can take as much time as you want before even getting into the chain that will lead to the first of the game’s big transitions. So it’s very easy to miss out on a lot of stuff that would be level-appropriate, and which would prep you well for what is to come.
After the big transition, the narrative gives you a compelling reason to beeline in a certain direction, but the gameplay and game world pull you in the totally opposite direction. This is where the bulk of the content is, but it’s very possible to take the logical approach of trying to solve the overriding issue with which you are confronted. If you do, as I did on my first run, you miss out on some of the game’s best stuff. The game does not do a very good job IMO of presenting choices to you, instead choosing to have tons of opportunities available but just sort of there, while presenting you front and center all of the main path stuff.
In the same way, the rather interesting different ending paths are not readily discernible either. I didn’t have a clue until after I finished my first run, that there were some very different ways it could have played out. Unless you read outside stuff (which I don’t think should ever be required for a game) or play through a lot of the optional but very important content in the game (the stuff the game almost actively steers you away from with its faux urgency and lack of clarity about anything other than the main quest), you won’t know that there are four paths you can take, or get a sense of how your actions affect the endgame.
I guess to me it feels like the developers really missed the mark here. It feels like two completely different game experiences, one open-world and flexible, the other more linear and story-driven, rammed together without the extra six months or so to weave them together properly.
