Fair point, I won’t belabor any further. :-)
Oh, you asked about gold choices, not the blue choices.
Off the top of my head, assume examples of the “information” driven choices, I believe there were some choices with the super creepy “Fingers” ripper doc, based on of you had talked to Woodman about some stuff from blue choices.
Similarly, though not stemming from choices, i encountered conversations that came from me reading emails before i had the discussion. Like i had some gig where at some point the guy offered to bribe me… but i had read an email suggesting that he was already broke. I had an option to call him on his lying. But later, i actually ended up throwing and doing that gig again, and that time i didn’t bother reading through all the computers again, and at the final conversation with the guy i didn’t have that option… that was actually the first time i noticed that things like reading the emails actually had an impact on things beyond just color commentary.
I mean, it’s still essentially color commentary i guess, but it’s multiple levels of color commentary.
There’s a gig somewhere where you’re just supposed to sneak into a building and steal some data for a fixer. Get the data, leave the building, and bam, quest done in a couple of minutes.
If you don’t do just that but also explore the area thoroughly, you find in the basement a facility where somebody is basically stripping implants off dead bodies. Do a bit of snooping, and it turns out that whoever is running the operation isn’t just finding bodies, they’re kidnapping people off the streets and killing them for their parts.
The place connects to the shop of a ripperdoc clinic. If you go to that ripperdoc normally and ask where the guy gets his wares, you’ll get some evasive answer and that’s it. But with the evidence gathered by going off the beaten path in a non-descript minor side quest, you now know he is lying. And can then end up with conversation options to either blackmail him for a 20% discount on everything, or kill him and lose access to that particular business for the rest of the game. Yay, gameplay consequences!
(Actually, he’ll try to escape if you don’t take the discount. No idea what happens if you allow the escape.)
Again, this is all minor stuff, but it’s similar to how Witcher 3 worked. Mainline the side quests by doing nothing but follow the quest markers, and you got a linear narrative. Do more than the bare minimum, and maybe Geralt could figure out what really happened, and you’d get a little bit extra out of it.
It really might be just an expectations issue. We know how Witcher 3 worked, and it should be unsurprising that Cyberpunk was basically the same.
Heh, yeah,i encountered that chop shop before i ever met the ripper doc… When I first walked into his shop, via the stairs coming up from the basement, he first says to me, “Uhhhhh… Where’d you come from?”
I don’t agree that that is true, unless you cherry pick your comparison to only those games that are exceptional on that front like Alpha Protocol and Witcher 3. I think the vast majority of C&C games do around what Cyberpunk does, maybe a little bit more, maybe a little bit less. I think Cyberpunk signposts it a lot less so it’s frequently not obvious that you have had an impact, and I think it’s likely that the fact that you dislike Cyberpunk makes it feel like it does those things less than some of the other examples you gave. But if you actually look at a choice-outcome flowchart for each side by side? Pretty sure it’s going to be on par.
You realize that saying “good game design” or “good storytelling” as standards for what makes a choice-outcome structure “meaningful” is about as helpful as calling a game “fun” when you describe what you like about it, right? And yeah, I read your review, and your posts, and I’m pretty clear on what your problems with the game at large were and why you didn’t like it. I actually don’t think the mechanics are all that great myself - the perks are boring and don’t feel impactful, the driving is hard to control and not very satisfying, your point about being inundated with loot is pretty spot on, etc. I’m not really having a problem with that, because I also find it pretty low friction and it’s just routinely satisfying to go around dismembering people with my katana. Maybe I’ll get bored with that after another 20 hours, who can say? I do think it has good writing and am really enjoying the storytelling and characters minus Keanu (except I’m starting to find their habit of having you sit while an NPC orates at you so they can minimize the amount of rendering they have to do (I assume, at least) a little overused), but obviously that’s extremely subjective. What I don’t get - and like I say, you don’t need to explain to me really because it’s fundamentally not that important to what I’m saying, but if you want to take another stab feel free - is what you think Cyberpunk isn’t doing that would be required for you to consider it reactive to your choices. The only concrete thing I’ve taken away is that you think it should impact the endings, and I just can’t think of more than a couple of games - definitely not including most of the ones you brought up - where mid-game choices play into the ending in more than a “mentioned in an epilogue scroll” sort of way. So surely that’s not your only standard. And yes, yes, you want it to have some sort of gameplay or story impact. But they do in Cyberpunk, so I can only assume you want it to happen in a particular way? I dunno.
The one thing I have learned from reading this thread as mostly a passive observer/no-posters…never trust anything @TheWombat says.
Good CRPGs will and can allow your own character choices, gameplay choices, and expressions to thrive. It is not some cold mechanical thing. Ignore his distain for story and charaters!
Case in point, he loves Fallout 76. Devoid of all that. Purely mechanical. A most terrible RPG.
I do think one of the challenges of CRPG design is finding ways to develop ‘cold mechanical’ gameplay systems that approximate and allow ‘character choices, gameplay choices, and expressions.’ I have increasingly lost interest in that form of character choice that allows me to choose between this and that well-crafted dialogue option.
However, the CRPG is a big tent, as genres go (and it has insidiously invaded many other genres too, like a virus that just won’t quit). It contains multitudes…
Absolutely. Moreover it is very hard(and rare) to do this. I don’t expect every RPG or every type to nail it (or even peruse it), but when they do it, it is something special.
Agreed. I’ve enjoyed (and even loved) plenty of less ambitious CRPGs. Recently playing the Gold Box games reminded me, for example, how effective simple encounter placement and exploration can be, wrapped around a solid combat engine. I do love games that go the extra mile for living-world-ness, though. Always have, at least since Ultima V…
Ultima V IS the secret best Ultima. Shhh!
I’m with @TheWombat. I have no issue admitting I like many works that are not very good or just plain bad (I would say most things I enjoy I dint think are very good indeed, but I enjoy them nonetheless), and that I fail to engage with works that are very well structured but just not for me, although this is less common (because failing to engage makes it much more difficult to assess).
It’s not a hard concept to grasp. You can like something a lot and yet think it’s not very good. Mostly because for whatever reasons you get to enjoy it despite the very obvious flaws and problems you still see in it. Comfort food, preaching to the choir, etc…
Now if what you are saying critical assessment can and do contain info about the personal liking of the reviewer… well they do, of course, but for a critique to be good they normally to contain more than that or at least be an engaging literary exercise. Nobody reads Tom for the final score (wether he liked it or not), but for his more in-depth assessment. Which is still a personal opinion, ofc, but not limited to personal liking.
My wife would largely agree with you.
I think @Juan_Raigada has made my point on this quite well. Assessing something as a critic or formal observer is far different than deciding whether you like it or not.
This can even apply in areas outside of the creative arts, though admittedly it gets murkier. For instance, in academia, it is very common for reviewers of articles or books to express their disagreement with nearly everything someone writes, but still heartily endorse the piece’s publication (and even defend it in print) because from a critical perspective, it makes a valid point and makes it within the conventions of the discipline at hand. It is also very possible to agree 100% with something, and lambaste it for being, in a critical sense, a poor piece of work or one that does not follow the right methodology.
Sorry. I thought your post was one of those weird takes where someone on the internet was complaining about true criticism being an objective measure of a product while critics are just biased fanboys/haters. I agree with the above.
Heh, yeah, the Internet is a terrible place to communicate, generally. All good.
When I was a journalist, I tried to live that idea, but (and kudos to Tom for doing this so well for so long!) it is hard when any attempt at nuance, subtlety, or substantial discussion runs into a buzzsaw of emotion-driven love/hate fanaticism that demands validation over examination.
I rarely finish games I start, I just don’t have enough time. Alpha Protocol is one of the only games I can think of where I got to the end and immediately started playing again from the beginning so I could choose a different path. I’ve finished the whole thing 5 times.
I definitely need to go play Alpha Protocol, and soon. The discussion in this thread moved the game near the top of my backlog.
I did that with KotOR.
I personally like having a variety of dialogue options to choose from even if all of them lead to the same result. I find it enjoyable to choose to be cooperative or sarcastic or angry in the moment and I don’t need different outcomes to enjoy those small decisions. I like reading my options and then choosing one. I also like the timed dialogue choices for how they provide some extra pressure to say something or remain silent.
Much like in Red Dead Redemption 2, I think the narrative variety for Cyberpunk doesn’t come in the main plot but in the smaller moments of individual exploration where I can discover little incidents or encounters that might feel unique to my play-through. I’m 100% fine with having the bulk of the main plot be the same for everyone with minimal branching outcomes.
The main reason Cyberpunk isn’t nearly as gripping for me as RDR2 (and many other games) comes down to something I’ve known since CDPR announced this title… I’m not that into cyberpunk. Exploring worlds and meeting characters in this niche sci-fi genre doesn’t thrill me anywhere near as much as other genres like fantasy, gangster, action, war, or westerns.
That said, it sure looks cool to walk around and take in the sights of Night City. I just have very little personal interest in the central elements of cyberpunk as a genre. But I knew that going in so it’s all good!
I would like to add that the ramen shops are horseshit. I want to pull up to the counter and get served a proper hot meal and then eat it. Not open a merchant window with snack bags to buy for my inventory pile. This is a ramen shop, not a vending machine! Blechh.
But this is the dystopian future. Everything is vending machines.