rei
5883
Plus mods can fix annoyances/broken quests and some broken mechanics.
The food and consumables system is an entirely wasted affair as well.
Really great post, thanks! Really sums up my feelings as well. I don’t even particularly like story in games and this routinely has me pausing to listen and actually paying attention to that. It’s nice.
But the thing I really agree with is the Deus Ex comparison, and your enjoyment of the small loop of stealthing before things turn sideways and combat turns into a huge rumble. I did the Pacifica mission last night where you break into the abandoned mall and find all of the gang members there, and it was like a 20 or 30 person firefight that turned into just this enormous sprawling fight. I was double jumping from one side of the mall second level to the other, even onto the roof of a little kiosk and also onto the top of a huge piece of statuary, firing smart muscles into my enemies and feeling pretty freaking cool.
Do I wish there were better ways to recover from botching stealth? Absolutely. Do I wish you had a few more tools for moving enemies around and doing interesting things while stealthed? Absolutely. Deus Ex does these stealth elements so well, and there’s been so much improvement on these things in the far cry series, of all things, that I actually stopped playing for the last few months out of frustration. but last night I was stealthy when I could be and otherwise embraced going loud, and had a pretty damn good time.
I’ve come to sort of think that CDPR’s core competencies in game development/design aren’t the things that CDPR thinks are their core competencies.
In fact, I’ll go there: what makes The Witcher 3 such a great game aren’t the RPG elements. Combat is ok, but not great. The leveling up system isn’t too hot. The loot system feels like a bust.
BUT…what TW3 does great is something connected to that genre of game that many True Gamerz ™ tend to loathe: adventure games. The Witcher 3 is essentially one of the most deeply-designed exploration adventure games ever made – one that just happens to have some rpg elements tacked onto it. But the stuff that people love about the game – the characters, the world, the exploration, the voice acting, the lore, the writing, and the story overall – those are things that you’ll find in really engrossing new-school adventure games. (Or maybe not; the more I think on this, the more I think that in this case, the Witcher 3 set a bar above what everyone else in gaming is doing with those narrative and world-building elements.)
And so I think that CDPR was able to essentially make Witcher 3 about exploration and writing and story and the game’s greatness really didn’t rely so much on traditional RPG stuff. With Cyberpunk, I feel like we have a game that needs to lean far heavier into the gameplay – driving, gun battles, etc. – to work, because the story isn’t nearly as well-formed. And unfortunately, those RPG elements are lacking, and their lacking-ness (not a word) kind of throws the story issues into sharper relief.
Great post. I’d add to this that the theme and setting of Cyberpunk 2077 pretty much demands the exact things at which CDPR is least adept. Not “inept,” by any means–I really enjoyed a lot off the game, for many hours–but clearly not their sweet spot.
Take CDPR’s ability to do the enhanced adventure game thing, add in Obsidian’s translation of that to a shooter RPG, and toss in Bethesda at its best open-worlding, and you’d have the perfect game I guess.
Nesrie
5892
Well one of these is based on someone else’s writing and the other… not so much. Now I realize that it takes no small amount of work to adapt any written work into another medium, but it seems a little too generous to ignore the fact that the story is largely already there for them with one title.
I wasn’t ignoring that at all. I was, in fact specifically calling that fact out.
Nesrie
5894
Oh!
I thought you were giving CDRP the bulk of the credit, aka their core competencies and not someone else’s, and not the author. My apologies then. Carry-on.
Sorry. I may have been too economical in trying to describe it, but yeah, I full agree with you.
Basically, the Witcher books (and then even to some extent, the continuations in Witcher video games 1&2) basically teed up the story for Witcher 3 super well. They still poured great writing into it, but the overall plot was lined up for them perfectly so that it could come together so brilliantly.
For Cyberpunk, it feels like instead of having that story teed up, they were sort of like a movie-maker who was given a bunch of fantastic costumes, set designs, a big budget and even some expository background…but then had to make pretty much their own story almost from whole cloth on their own.
And as you say, those are two pretty markedly different tasks!
Or to put another way…it sorta feels like Cyberpunk 2077 is to videogames what the film 1941 was to movies: “We’ve got Spielberg! Belushi! Ayckroyd! A big budget! Special effects! How can this possibly not be funny?” But somehow, it didn’t come together.
MrTibbs
5898
CDPR have released a massive list of changes (at the bottom of their post they promise “and many more”.). Patch itself is dropping “soon.”
That is one long ass list of broken stuff that needed fixing.
I am still not gonna jump back in until they say they are done patching.
They are still on the ‘fixing’ phase, more than in the ‘improving’ phase. Let’s see if they improve the AI, rework the hacking, rebalance several perks, change the minimap behavior when driving, etc.
Razgon
5901
That was my thought as well - Oh well, we’ll see a year out or so.
Its pretty crazy, isn’t it?
Reminds me of when Windows 98 came out, where they said they fixed more than 3000 errors from Windows 95, which is not really a good point in their favor in my book.
If the errors exist, it’s better to acknowledge and patch them than not, no?
(It sucks they pushed the game out the door with those errors, for sure! But at this point and absent time machines, happy they’re trying to do something, I guess.)
Razgon
5903
Sure - but 3000 errors fixed means that there was 3000 errors in my product that they hadn’t fixed. How does this bode well for the current product as well? (The 3000 here refers to Microsoft, not to Cyberpink!)
Oh I agree its great they are doing something- I am just AMAZED at the amount of fixing the game requires, and I frankly find it concerning for its future health, so to speak.
I finished the game so I’m more waiting on gameplay changes before jumping back in. There’s so much potential here to go from meh to great.
I was never clear whether this was intentional or not. I’m glad(?) it’s a bug, because it made System Reset extra ridiculous.
Cyberpsychos and minibosses are now immune to Tranquilizer rounds and System Reset Quickhack.
