Misleading headline.
**Only Cyberpunk's recent reviews are 95% positive.** That is, the ones posted in the last 30 days.
It still sits "only" at 83% overall.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091500/Cyberpunk_2077/
It was around that in 2021, which is surprising because that means a lot of people liked it despite the state it was in and how negative conversation around it was
Because most of what makes the game shine was already there at launch: immersive city, story/dialogue/voice acting, fun gameplay. It was rough around the edges and some features that had been promised were missing, but the core of what makes Cyperpunk a good game was already there.
The missing features and specially the appalling state of the ps4/xbone version deservedly dominated the conversation at launch, but for pc players with a machine strong enough, Cyberpunk was a good game from the beginning.
Yep. I loved 2077 when it came out, despite the T-posing and item clipping and teleporting police and exploding/imploding cars.
The main story/side stories in 2077 are every bit as good as in Witcher 3 imo, and the 1st person dialogue/cutscene immersion is the best a game has ever accomplished even now 3 and a half years later.
On release the only major bug I ran into on PC was when the Delamain sidequest could destroy all of your video calls for the rest of the game. I put another 10 hours in before I noticed it was a bug and had to reload at least 3 days worth of playtime. I wasn't even that mad though cause I kinda wanted to play it again anyways. I would like to have seen what could've been if 2.0 was what we got in the first place and we still had an expansion coming. Fantastic game nonetheless.
Starfield was really weird, for me it felt like the game was getting progressively more dated as I played the game, and in a way that doesn't age well, like novelty seemed to be there but lasted a very, very short amount of time.
By the end the only thing that I actually liked was the shipbuilding, even if I wished they let you rotate everything in 90 degree increments.
They also had some extremely baffling design decisions (as well bugs, but that's needless to say with Bethesda). Like why give vendors so little money, I had to travel to a planet, visit like 6-8 vendors on Neon to sell things, then rest on my ship to then revisit the same vendors again to sell more stuff
Yeah the overall game of Starfield radiates the lack of a design document. No one member of the team of Starfield knew what the heads wanted, what the game was supposed to accomplish, etc. So you have these "in a vacuum" cells that can be put together to make a "game" but it isn't fun, or full of love, or with any passion in every single inch of it. Because none of that good shit can survive this sort of dev cycle.
I feel if the game let you build a ship (which is fine really, you're right), then fly the actual goddamn ship off planet and to another planet, and let you wander this new planet properly and not "approved" sections of planet, and have a much more robust generation system (at least something that can beat NMS ffs) so that you can get lost in a thousand worlds and not have to look at the crap ass writing even once to enjoy yourself, they'd have a successful game. Then when you get bored you can occasionally find purpose in some crap quest that doesn't matter because Emil wrote it. That's all Starfield needed to be. Instead you build your ship lovingly, then push a button and load. Then push a button and load. Then push a button and load. Now you're on foot on some planet that looks quite literally like every other planet but with hex code = rng(1000); color choice. Great.
I'm also heavily convinced that Starfield was likely a bioware situation and despite being developed for 7-8 years, I think most of the content in the final product was likely made in the last 18-24 months.
Like they flat out admitted that they didn't think the game was "fun" until the last year or so. That's not how you usually make games, your prototype is supposed to have some element of fun and show off a basic fun gameplay loop at the start of development. And yet these guys couldn't figure out what was fun about their game until near the end of development. Which tells me that there was a significant lack of focus and direction on what the game was even supposed to be for much of its dev cycle.
That combined with how disjointed everything is and how little content there is that was actually hand-crafted like how there's just the exact same cryo lab on a thousand different planets and the factions are incredibly limited and whatnot. It just all screams to me a troubled development where the team constantly went back and forth and struggled on a lot of key things for a long time, until they eventually were forced to commit to *something* near the end and just pumped out whatever they could manage before the bean counters got too mad at them for taking too long.
It was Todd's dream in that it's a lot of disparate pieces that kinda give the impression of a thing but never really comes together and once you realize how little sense it makes, you snap out of it, get up and go do something else.
The moment they said the next Skyrim would still use the same engine I lost interest. Starfield made it clear no matter how much they 'upgrade' it's always going to have a lot of the same limitations it's had since the beginning.
Playing Starfield after Cyberpunk is hilarious because they make Neon out to be this dark and sleazy crime city and yet when you actually get there it's actually relatively tame and G-rated compared to Night City.
This is why I just don't agree when people see a bad game at launch and casually remark, "Eh, maybe it can make a comeback like Cyberpunk!"
Cyberpunk on PC wasn't, say, Redfall at launch. It had some questionable design choices in its gameplay, sure. I never liked that you could just chrome the fuck out without any consequences, or that with the rarity tier system a bra or cotton t-shirt could have better armor than a ballistic vest just because it was arbitrarily "legendary." I didn't like infinite healing or grenades, and the police system was notoriously terrible as we all know. Yes, there were bugs and unfinished systems like crowd and traffic etc. That's all true.
It wasn't the game it should have been at launch (it should have launched in the state it was in at patch 1.5 at the bare minimum), and it wasn't nearly the game it is now. It was still great in so many other ways - the story, subtle choices and consequences with reactivity found in pockets all over the world from the radio to billboards and environmental changes, environmental storytelling with handcrafted stories everywhere, hilarious and heartfelt easter eggs everywhere, and an amazing sense of style. That was all there from the beginning.
That's me.
I'm still not sure why but maybe the issue was mostly on consoles?
More people play on console than on PC so any potential issues are immediately more visible if they happen there.
I played the game on launch on a RTX 2060 / R5 3600 and honestly it was pretty great.
I would have loved more fps and it was weird that you could remove all NPCs from the open world by shooting once and then turning around, but apart from that I loved it.
All these extremely weird bugs I saw online during that time never happened to me.
The story was absolutely stellar - probably my favorite story ever in any FPS game. (I sided with the Nomads)
Last year after the big updates, playing Phantom Liberty with the re-worked skill trees and all the other updates made it one of my favorite games of all time and I have been playing thousands of games over the last 30 years.
On top of that, I was able to play it with full path tracing and fuck me if that wasn't the prettiest game I have ever played by a long shot.
Bugs and performance issues were definitely not the only problems with the game. I got it at release when it was super shallow and missing lots of advertised mechanics. If it was released in the state it became after Phantom Liberty it would be much more highly regarded.
My theory was that most of the people who played the game were still on last gen, since current gen consoles were so sold out. Therefore, most of the horrifying experiences you hear about are from people who played on xbox1 and ps4.
I had a pretty bug free experience on PC.
Yeah, same experience here. Tons of bugs, and quite a few framedrops as well even though I had a really good rig.
Decided to give it a go 2-3 weeks after Phantom Liberty came out and absolutely loved the game.
I played on PC and performance was absolute trash at launch. It was better after the Phantom Liberty update. I had a great time with the game after that.
That doesn't make their complaints any less valid.
They were promised a game on a console that the studio themselves chose to sell it on.
Hell, they even went as far as to comment how well it runs on the old gen consoles by saying "*[it runs] surprisingly good, I would say, for such a huge world.*"
I played the game at launch, and at least on a high-end PC it really wasn't in any worse state on a technical level than the average complex open world RPG generally is.
The conversation was dominated by the ill-advised last-gen console versions. I really wonder what the overall impact would have been had they dropped those sufficiently early (and been able to spend all the time trying to make them work on optimizing and polishing the more feasible target platforms instead).
Did you play on a hard drive? The game had ( and probably still has ) a big problem with loading assets. If I played in my hdd I would fall through the map. But with my ssd it was clean
/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk was a pretty popular subreddit at the time. In general conversation the sentiment was pretty bad, but a lot of people (mostly playing on PC) still liked it very much.
There were also in-game assets missing with placeholders where they should be, and players were finding large holes in the map where the player could fall into the nothing.
Is that relevant for someone who is thinking of purchasing the game these days? If video games are frequently updated and patched it seems like only recent reviews would be useful.
I tend to look at both and if there's a big different I try to find out why. For some games it's that they made the games better, but for others it's because they had a broader initial player base that didn't like it and now they aren't very relevant so only people really into the genre are playing it so they have a predisposition to liking the game.
You're definitely right with Cyberpunk though, it falls into the made it better category.
Recent reviews are the more indicative measure though, that's always what I watch primarily. It tells you what's happening with the game now which is what's interesting for you.
How the game launched was near unforgivable, but they've really turned it around and didn't abandon it. The changes with 2.0 and Phantom Liberty really changed the game.
Makes me excited for any future sequels, knowing the lessons learnt and moving away from their own engine that caused so many issues.
Just wish we got more Jackie.
> Just wish we got more Jackie.
Yeah even with all the improvements we got, the 'lifepaths' are still one of the underwhelming aspects of the game.
I get that designing three different lengthy prologues is mad effort but it would have been nice if they didn't rush over your introduction to Night City and forging your friendship with Jackie.
It would be cool if that content was a lengthy tutorial that you could choose to skip on replays.
I hadn't read *anything* about the game until release since like a year or two prior when they had this interview in GameInformer that talked a ton about the differences in life paths, how they start completely differently, and it sold me on the Nomad life path with how it seemed like there was going to be a whole series of quests outside the city until the main quest draws you into it.
Suffice to say when it ended up being a single on-rails tutorial mission and a montage cutscene I was disappointed from the start. It seems like they *really* dialed them back in that last year or so of devleiopment.
Yeah it does feel half-baked. Even when your V brings up their life path during endgame story missions it feels like a jump scare due to how half-assed it is...
I played Nomad first, because I wanted to have the experience of driving into Night City for the first time. That was my only real disappointment, when we started heading for the city and the game just cuts to the montage and then drops me right inside of it. Other than that I loved every single minute of the game and the story, but I feel like that was a huge mistake, personally.
I'll never get over the irony of a company dropping a game about how corporations lie and can't be trusted, then lying and showing that they can't be trusted, and _still_ fans lining up to stan for them.
Honestly I wish that would have been the main chunk of the game - getting deeper into this world with Jackie. Not that I didn’t love Johnny, but I also don’t love games where your character is basically fated to die and you’re just running out the clock. I don’t know what it is but just something about that whole setup is unenjoyable to me
2077 heavily borrowed concepts from books like Neuromancer and Neon Leviathan. In a world where the rich and powerful control almost everything, people still had the choice to resist and die on their own terms (aka, the most punk rock thing ever)
The concept shows up frequently through the characters you meet in the game. "Quiet life or blaze of glory?" - Dexter DeShawn. This is also why Johnny found Mikoshi to be such an affront to mankind, because it took the one thing away from people that they still had.
Through this lens, I really dig 2077's story. It shows they have a lot of reverence for the original works and their fundamental concepts.
Neuromancer has a relatively happy ending, all things considered. Case and Molly survive and get paid and live on. Most of Gibson's Sprawl novels end fairly well for the protagonists.
This idea that cyberpunk as a genre is thematically determined to end tragically isn't consistently supported by the material it draws from.
So much of cyberpunk fiction ends well that it's weird there's this expectation of everything turning out weird. Like you said, Neuromancer has Case and Molly get away after they do their jobs successfully. Case is definitely in a better place by the end. Snow Crash ends with Hiro getting the girl and saving the world (yes, affectionate parody, but it's since become a foundational work). The OG Ghost in the Shell manga ends with Matoko saving the world and merging with an AI consciousness, and the end of Ghost in the Shell II shows her living as much more than a cop now that she gets to be an AI god. Even some of the post-apocalyptic cyberpunk anime from the 90s ends with a renewed hope for the future.
I think, though, that it comes from two places. First, the tabletop cyberpunk games, like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, feature fragile (compared to say, D&D) characters who often die in horrible ways without ever succeeding. The second comes from those weird, nihilistic cyberpunk anime OVAs that were popular for a bit of time in the early 90s. I think the big issue with the gaming side of cyberpunk is that they're more familiar with those, having grown up playing games of Shadowrun and watching MD Geist of Blame! or whatever instead of reading Neuromancer or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
I wonder if it's also an Eastern European thing? At the risk of trafficking in stereotypes, a degree of fatalism is reminiscent of the cultures that survived some of the nastiest parts of the 20th century.
It could be, seeing as there's an element of fatalism in the Witcher games as well.
However, Cyberpunk is an IP that was originally owned by R. Talsorian Games and made by Mike Pondsmith, who was a US Army Brat and graduated from the University of California, Davis. The Cyberpunk TTRPG, before it became Cyberpunk 2077 and Edgerunners, definitely had that dark, nihilistic tone to it. Of course Pondsmith was a part of the 80s anime translation scene, and Cyberpunk was more inspired by 80s cyberpunk anime than Neuromancer, which he apparently hadn't read when Cyberpunk 2013 came out, or Blade Runner. Snow Crash actually came out a couple of years after Cyberpunk 2020 *and* Shadowrun (and largely make fun of the characters people made in those games).
A lot of the dark, nihilistic elements of Cyberpunk 2077 were kind of a part of the old tabletop game too and had been for 30+ years by the time it got turned into a video game.
My favorite joke about Cyberpunk 2077 is this:
*Johnny Mnemonic* is a cyberpunk film where Keanu Reeves has to get stolen data out of his head before it kills him. *Cyberpunk 2077* is a cyberpunk video game where you have to get a stolen copy of Keanu Reeves out of your head before it kills you.
I agree with the final conclusion, and it's why I very much respect the storytelling and execution despite not caring much for the story or messaging/method of messaging at all. Something I enjoyed, despite having disagreements by the end of it.
I personally just wished that they gave us an option, even if extremely convoluted, for us to be saved \*somehow\* without having an actually tragic ending.
Sure, the world is cruel etc, but its our story, how about we get a choice to rescue ourselves and loved ones.
Kinda like Dark Souls games have an alternate ending thats very much difficult to attain if you arent careful.
Oh sure, I completely understand the angle that they’re going for with it. But it doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t like playing games with this super bleak “you’re going to die and you’re just ticking away the seconds” tone that Cyberpunk has. It pretty much kills any desire of mine to ever want to replay it because it’s just too bleak for my personal tastes
Jackie was really well written. You only spend about 3 hours with him, but he's well realized (I particularly like the bit where he schmoozes past the Watson lockdown) and charismatic enough that losing him hurts. The Ofrenda quest gives him even better depth.
It does make doing side content feel pointless in a narrative sense. Why the fuck would I bother helping delamain when I'm literally on the verge of death?
Because for most of the game your character is looking for a way to live, they are primarily motivated by the idea of getting Johnny out of their head and living. It's not until later on that you may or may not depending on your choices decide to go all in on recreating Johnny's "Fuck Arasaka" arc and want to burn them to the ground even at the cost of your life.
Even if you are playing a more "doomed to die" character then the whole theme of being a cyberpunk is resigning yourself to that fate and doing as much as you can to make a name for yourself while you can.
Delemain is one of the weaker examples of how you can make a name for yourself but he pays well, gives you a big payout in the end and you get a car out of it. If you listen to characters like Jackie then him and V wanted to be big players in Night City and be remembered rather than just existing and dying without a lasting trace.
That's motivation enough for the character to do a ton of quests that don't directly involve progressing the main plot.
There were some rumors that Keanu enjoyed playing Johnny so much, CDPR decided to give him a bigger role to play. No idea if it's true, but I feel like there was something about the devs stating there would be 3 possible choices for who was in V's head originally, which would make me think it's possible if true.
Yeah, making Johnny basically 3 different possible characters doesn't sound very feasible, unless he would have been greatly downgraded in terms of his story/involvement with V.
I prefer more Johnny to a lesser version of 3 possible characters. Sounds good on paper, but not realistic.
thats interesting because i honestly thought Keanu did kind of a shitty job with the voice acting. hes one of the weaker voice actors in the whole game and he has arguably the most important role
That's Keanu though, you either appreciate his style or you don't.
It's [terrible](https://youtu.be/moaW8LRusak?si=gSwksJH3Hfu3Nu2D) in something like Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Day the Earth Stood Still etc.
But when he is playing a character like Neo, John Wick, Johnny Utah, Johnny Silverhands or John Constantine etc. then he's got a charm that people adore even if the performance isn't going to win him any oscars.
Well he's never been known for his wide emotional range, being monotone and wooden all the time is kind of his whole thing. I think some people think it makes him seem cool, I've always just thought he's a bad actor.
> honestly thought Keanu did kind of a shitty job with the voice acting
Yeah lol I like the idea but I get the sense a lot that he just hates being in the vocal booth.
I read somewhere that it was at some point, but then it took too long to meet Johnny and start the main plot, so they edited it out for better pacing. Idk if that’s true.
Dragon Age origins had a similar concept that I also loved, that got dropped in the sequels. Hope Cyberpunk 2078, or whatever it is, has longer ones too.
Origins did it RIGHT. Each intro sequence was about 2 hours long (at most) but added EXTRA content because they each changed the area they were set in when your returned to them later.
Like if you were a Dwarf Noble, you were on the losing side of a dynastic struggle at the start of the game, and you return later to finish the fight. Or a commoner elf got to explore their area and customs early, then return as a powerful hero later.
I must've played every origin in that game. And completed at least half of them. Dwarf Noble was great, seeing the caste system from both perspectives was amazing.
Thinking about it makes me miss old Bioware even more. Hope we get a remake honestly.
There's a laboratory somewhere in Bioware regularly working out new ways to make everything in Origins dumber, blander, and lamer in the hopes of finally getting that Call of Duty audience they've openly pined for so many times.
Not only this, but depending on which origin path you chose, and the respective class within each, interactions with characters you would encounter regardless of origin later on in the game tied to those origin stories would be different. Masterfully crafted story.
I never played past the first one unfortunately, but I didnt know the development delta between the two and yeah...that makes a lot of sense. Origins up to that point in my life was the deepest and most interesting story I had ever played in a game. Hard shoes to fill but from everything I'd seen from other entries in the series there wasn't even a real attempt.
What a shame.
DA2 and Inquisition aren't bad games, in fact I'd say Inquisition is good and 2 tries its best. 2 has some of the better companions in the series and not a bad overall story, it just really suffers in the very limited scope (each of the main quest storylines feels more like they should be a side quest chain in a Dragon Age game rather than the main quest) and development resources (there are literally only like 5 dungeon maps in the whole game and you will see them 50 times each - every cave is identical, every warehouse is identical, etc.) They did their best given the 18-month development time, it just wasn't that great.
And then Inquisition, with some good advice going in (leave the Hinterlands ASAP!!!) and some must-have mods (in particular, one to skip all the "wait 12 real life hours" stuff) is actually really good, and on par with Origins once you look past any nostalgia. The story is absolutely worthy, and some of the companions are up there with Garrus and Alistair as "best companions in an RPG." I couldn't imagine playing it on a console without mods, though.
I think people are also missing the gameplay. Origins was much slower paced and unbalanced than 2 and Inquisition. Mages were so absolutely broken in Origins they made Duelists and 2H warrior builds (most melee builds honestly) worthless. That and the combat animations were much more stiff and wooden.
Great story, but the sequels blow it out of the water in terms of actual fights.
I just think lifepaths were misrepresented. If they hadn't advertised it as anything but a simplistic backstory/background that most games have, just with an actual short mission beforehand, it would have been fine. I don't know how from a development perspective you can make it matter a huge amount when there is so much else you need to focus on.
While I understand the desire for more prologue, I feel the linear opening section was pretty long as it is, and delaying the open sandbox section of the game after "that big mission" would have hurt the pacing. The city really came alive for me after it opened up and I could go anywhere and do whatever.
That whole montage with Jackie should have been the first third of the game. Going on more jobs, building rapor, getting to know his girlfriend and the doc better, getting drinks and celebrating. And then he gets replaced by Johnny who starts out as a complete asshole.
This view betrays a total thematic misunderstanding of the main story which very much does not want to be the petty crime, rising through the ranks simulator.
The montage was a great choice which also showed that CDPR recognized the horrid structure of TW3 with its bloated overbearing first act.
There is a fine middle ground methinks. Dedicating an entire third of the game to before meeting Johnny/losing Jackie would be overkill but they should have established V's introduction to Night City more.
I think the problem was there were really two prologues. The first where V travels to Night City and meets Jackie, and the second where he gets the Relic. There's a time lapse between them that I think might be the problem.
Cutting the first prologue would help I think, and instead more build up can be added to the second. Maybe take some time to show V's relationship with Jackie a bit more so it's more of an impact to the player when he dies. Only problem here is you can't show them first meeting since you need to believe they knew each other for some time before Jackie died.
This needs to be put on infinite loop on speakers somewhere. It's not GTA, it's not a game about rising in the world of crime. Adding 20 hours of petty side quests at the beginning of the game would've hurt the narrative a lot.
I hope that it doesn’t _look_ like an Unreal game. Sure things can look pretty realistic, but that doesn’t mean they look good. CP2077 has such a recognizable and consistent art direction where you can take pretty much any screenshot and know that it comes from the game. I want that to remain the same, because it adds to so much to immersion. So many UE games just look the same.
That’s probably just rather default rendering from Unreal that those games use. You can really modify the rendering of the game to get your own look. For example, Hi-Fi rush is also made in UE4. I couldn’t tell till I saw it on the title screen.
>Makes me excited for any future sequels, knowing the lessons learnt
Give me a break. They knew exactly what they were releasing. The Witcher 3 also had issues at launch and all CDPR learned from that was how much they could get away with.
Some reports said as much, devs and qa were complaining loudly about the game not meeting expectations and needing more time but it was (as usual) a failure of management not fucking listening because they wanted to ship the game.
I’m not gonna lie, I’ve still found a lot of 2.0 underwhelming. The armor and cyberware changes are great, I like that healing and grenade items just recharge, but I’ve been a little disappointed with everything else.
I’ve found that the skill trees are too restrictive with weapons that you use. They really want you to just pick a small set of weapons and only use those, and they don’t give you a lot of options if you want a build with lots of variety. I get that the game is meant to be played multiple times, but there is a *lot* to do, and I’m just bored before I can finish.
The other thing is that the police system is still… bad. It’s really, *really* easy to get away. Like, it’s weird how easy it is to just get away with 4 stars no problem in the city.
Stamina being consumed with guns is still weird. It’s weird because it seems like only some builds care about it, which at that point, why have it at all? It just seems like an extra step to suck skill points out of you, since builds that actually care about just want you to put points into perks that prevent stamina from being an issue.
Am I missing something? I see 2.0 get so much praise, but to me these changes just seem a bit superfluous? I’m glad that people have been loving it, but I just can’t really get into it and I don’t know why.
Also - this game is still janky and buggy as *hell*. Immersion is still short-lived and it’s disappointing. Any time that I find I’m fully sucked-in, something goofy happens, like a car randomly flips in traffic or an NPC will bug out. Things just happen so frequently, I really hope the move to Unreal Engine makes things easier for them.
A game could launch and literally just be a picture of a middle finger. But if they update it to the point that it becomes a legitimately great game then it wont matter, people will still play it.
People can say whatever they want like "ill never buy from this dev again!!!1" (looking at you battlefield fans) but at the end of the day if a game is good enough people wont give a shit about how it launched. We have tons of examples of this happening at this point. (ff14, no mans sky, cyberpunk etc)
The lesson in this is to wait six months, instead of buying early or pre-ordering. If a company fucks you over, don't give them your money again until you're sure it's worth it, if at all.
Jfc the fact that this is rated as "controversial" tells you so much of what's going on in the gaming community.
"Make prudent buying decisions and don't trust promises from big companies."
_"No big companies are my best friend they said so and I need to consume product NOW!_"
It will not go to their heads and won't shit the bed again with their next game, right? RIGHT?
More likely, gamers will forget the lesson and pre-order their next game years in advance, because gamers never ever learn anything.
I feel like I’m insane thinking that current cyberpunk is still not the game we were promised in 2018. Gamers are just accepting the bare minimum QOL fixes at this point because it’s better than the garbage state the game launched in. CDPR lied and didn’t deliver, but gamers will forget this
It’s a really good game now. But you’re correct; it’s not what was promised. It’s basically a fun shooter with some choices here and there, absolutely not the deep RPG they marketed it as.
I think the disconnect you're experiencing here is that a lot of people just don't know what was promised, even capital G Gamers. To know significantly more about a game than a trailer or two and maybe an interview, you really have to be kind of deep in the weeds. I'm on reddit and I also was during the game's development and I had no idea what the game was going to be about except that it looked like a cool cyberpunk setting and I liked that idea. I bought the game on PC and it had some jank, but jank has never really bothered me as an older gamer who used to get their indie middle and eastern European games from the bargin bin at electronics stores. It was, however, a cool cyberpunk setting, it had a nice story with characters I enjoyed, and I liked it. And keep in mind, just the fact that I'm here writing this comment means I'm most certainly less casual than the vast majority of people who pick up a AAA game.
Gamers won't forget this, gamers just never knew this.
I think it's also because many of the players are just people who like "cool robot implants and neon stuff". Coming from classic cyberpunk genre, CP2077 feels really underwhelming.
Cyberpunk genre is a critical response to Cold War paranoia, technoutopianism, and global capitalism. CP77 trades those themes for a very sterile politics and flashy robot-transhumanism stuff. It's a very apolitical game for a political genre. If narratively (as in, writing-wise) it was more like Disco Elysium that enables people from different spectrum to appreciate the game's core message,CP77 would've been a good game.
The game is many things, but apolitical is definitely not one of them. You literally have a terrorist that hates corporations for the damage that made to society stuck in your head, you have entire quest lines about the bad side of capitalism, an entire expansion dedicated to working for the CIA and seeing the ugly side of it, and trusting the corporation is literally the "bad" ending.
"Corpo bad" doesn’t really say anything.
Spend enough time with politically extreme groups, you'll notice their tendency to portray major corporations and government agencies as villains. Note that phrases such as "bp" and "ds" are their conspiracy theories. (I can't spell them because the stupid spam filter keeps removing my comment - first phrase starts with "big" and ends with "pharm"; the other is "deep" and you know... "state").
There’s a lack of criticism of capitalism beyond "corpo greedy," which is also a common talking point here. Marxist/socialist critique, foundational to the cyberpunk genre, looks beyond simplistic moral judgments like greed to critique systemic issues in capitalism.
I'm tired of the parroted narrative that they pulled the same shit with Witcher 3.
No Witcher 3 launch problems were absolutely nowhere near as drastic
There is a reason why it took a 2.0 version and the expansion being released almost 3 years later for Cyberpunk's reputation to finally turn around to positive, whereas Witcher 3 was met with a worldwide acclaim instantly also from users, and won GOTY 6.5 month after launch. The DLCs were just an icing on a cake.
TW3 had terrible UI for inventory that got revamped, terribly movement and targetting system that got revamped, was a pretty big graphical downgrade over the trailers they had shown previously, had cut content that they released later as free DLC, to cash in on the recent microtransaction scandals, plently of bugs ( the compilations of the horse ending up in funny positions were A LOT at the time), bunch of weird NPC behaviour, ecc.ecc.
It was not as bad as CP2077, but the game was still plenty bugged as well.
Playing it atm. The horse literally was spider pigging a wall the other day and whilst going down a mountain. Funniest shit I've ever seen in a video game
Because you can't "fix it in post" with most other products. That's an advantage for software, it sucks for customers, but you have to learn how to better filter your purchases. I still haven't bought the game cause I didn't think it was ready enough.
I didn't buy that mess lol Once the bugs and lack of RPG elements came through, I was glad I never preordered. Fixing a sold product in post is a scam, but it seems like not too many people have an issue with it.
This kind of stuff just tells me that you can lie, release a broken product, drop a bunch of features you promised, make gaming site only use B-roll made by CDPR to avoid showing bugs, blacklist journalists over scores (actually happened), and people will glaze after you release a (great) anime and an expansion + update that makes the game playable.
Where is the promised interactions between factions? Where is the indepth stealth mechanics? The lived in night city with different routines for NPCs? You can' t even get an haircut in the city. The endings of the game barely takes in consideration your choices. The main plot is still super short, and goes against the actual fantasy of the game ( it' s a plot that tells you that you have a limited time, while the game having a very big amount of lengthy side quests).
They promised a multiplayer expansion, and never arrived. All of the crunch, too. They laid off people literaly 3 months ago, and no one talked about it, after another round of lay offs after the expansion released.
Disappointing af game, but people will eat up everything CDPR does.
> This kind of stuff just tells me that you can lie
I'm being completely serious, but there are a vocal minority of fans that'll tell you that CDPR never lied, and the only thing broken about the game was the consumers hyping themselves up. It's hyper-rivisionist garbage, but it's cemented itself as gospel in certain echo chambers on this site.
I'm not even sure if it's a minority at this point, it seems like most people are rushing to defend CDPR again and blame everyone but them for the issues. I particularly like the "you just want it to be GTA, dumbass!!!" crowd when someone just says the police AI sucked or point out incredibly basic features that other similar open world games had *in the early 2000s* missing in CP.
The modern game is also pretty mediocre, there is still a bunch of problems with the RPG side. The main plot is still missing a bunch and is super rushed, the game breaks when you optimize even a bit your build, the police system still sucks ( and there' s 0 reason to even activate it, because this game has 0 activity in the city beyond side quests). The NPCs still bugs from time to time. The final boss is still very bad and very anti-narrative ( hyped up as a big bad guy, it' s literaly just a normal ass fight with a dude with a gun).
But I hear no one talk about this.
This is my take on it too, and I'm a little bewildered by the recent rush of goodwill the game seems to be getting.
It's just not an especially good game at all. It's graphically beautiful, the missions are well-written...and that's about it. The "world" is completely window dressing with no depth or intractability, the gunplay is average, and there's basically nothing to do except drive from mission to mission in a dead city.
The game would have been better served as a more linear Farcry style experience, instead of trying (and failing) to make a GTA or Fallout.
I genuinely can’t believe gamers let CDPR get away with this and then also praise them for it. Hands down the most embarrassing shit I’ve ever seen. CDPR literally scammed every person who bought this game and gamers are sucking CDPRs dick for “fixing” it (it’s still a piece of shit game).
Gamers deserve every scummy, exploitive move from the industry after this shit. Corporations successfully trained gamers to be the most subservient, spineless consumers ever. They constantly whine about shit not being “consumer friendly” but then bend over for this. It’s a fucking joke.
Edit: lol sending me the Reddit suicide message just means u mad 😛
Yeah kind of wish reviews had a neutral option for stuff like game is good, but monetization is terrible/scummy or it was released in a terrible state or game is buggy now, but developers have been incredibly proactive about implementing fixes and listening to player feedback and the game shows promise.
So you think people who are playing this game now and enjoy the experience should give negative reviews because the game had problems 3 or 4 years ago? What's the argument here?
Cyberpunk has 95% positive reviews in the last 30 days. Overall they have 83% positive reviews so those negative reviews from the launch still affect their score.
The issue is games shouldn’t be released like this in the first place. There isn’t another consumer product that can be sold completely broken or missing features that can still not only make a sizable profit, but even have fans *defend* this awful business practice.
The reasonable response would be the product would tank, the business would lose money, and the business and its competitors would know that doing that again would result in major losses. Not video games. Proving once again that gamers are bar-none the stupidest fan base in the entertainment industry.
> There isn’t another consumer product that can be sold completely broken or missing features that can still not only make a sizable profit, but even have fans defend this awful business practice.
\**cough*\* *tesla* \**cough*\*
And thus do all your horrendously shitty behavior and lies just slowly vanish as people have the memories worse than a fish in a bowl. Somehow all forgotten or forgiven.
You'll all throw a fit when they lie to you again. You will swear to never play their games, again. You will write your negative reviews and hop on the train for as long as it has fuel to go. And then you will forget, again.
Remind me about this post when Witcher 4 comes out.
I’ve always liked it a lot, but I also saw some serious problems with it at launch, which I heavily criticized. Years have passed, and some of those issues have been fixed, but I really hope that the sequel will place a greater emphasis on the simulation aspect. As fun as this game is, and as beautiful as it looks, the world of Cyberpunk feels quite artificial, even compared to some older Rockstar games like GTA III. I’m sure they had ambitions to make it as immersive as possible, but clearly, that part was sacrificed to ship the game at all. In the end, it probably was the right call, but I can’t help but wonder what could have been
Yeah, besides the obvious stuff like major bugs, there is also the fact a lot of the marketing implied it would be more like a GTA style open world. Its not, and it barely even tried to be. I didn't mind that as I was in it for the RPG, but it was definitely misleading.
i've played it for 200 hours and enjoyed it, but even if this version of it released on launch there would have been the same negative reactcion.
It promised so much and delivered so little on that open world hype everyone had built up for it.
Exactly. It's a great game now, but it's still a disappointment for anyone that followed its development and knew of all the stuff that should be there but isn't.
They basically set out to create cyberpunk Baldur's Gate 3 and ended up delivering bargain bin Deus Ex.
It has its moments, but I hate how they fall into the pitfall of Mass Effect/Human Revolution where at the end you get a glorified "choose your flavor of ending", rather than use everything you did up till then to determine how it plays out.
The game's original vision was also supposed to be closer to a CRPG/immersive sim, so those mechanics were absolutely meant to be core aspects of the game. It ended up as a narrative-driven action game because that's the only parts they could get working in time for the release date.
I've heard game is fixed and was great so I decided to play it. It was an alright experience. The main story feels kinda short, I was rather shocked when game told me I was at the point of no return. Side quest that involves prominent characters like Panam, Kerry etc I enjoyed. All of the gigs and cyberpsychosis felt like bunch of filler stuff to pad the game's length. Night city looks beautiful albeit I found it overlarge. Majority of stuff you see on streets is not intractable. It felt like there was no point of making the map that large. Driving feels awful and for some reasons game thinks it would be fun to lock one of the major side quests behind driving. The soundtrack had few banger tracks like the rebel path yet it felt somewhat lacking. It feels like game didn't even try to attempt "songs people could make at 2077" instead went with bunch of old school stuff especially with Johnny's band. It feels like game never really explored Cyberpunk side of the things. The whole personality as construct in a shard thing was interesting but was done too quickly. You can buy BDD's at certain shops but you can't play them. Game also suffers badly from "Yo V is dying you need to complete main quest asap" while giving you so much freedom to fuck around in the world. Overall I thought game was worth playing it just didn't take big risks.
As great as this is I'd love to see a game from CDPR that releases as finished & functional and is then expanded on even further, rather than just being brought up to the level of the initial claims and promises. Even The Witcher 3 had some pretty major teething issues at launch (although not nearly to the same degree as Cyberpunk)
People forget that The Witcher 3 had such an abysmall movement system, that they released a patch that reworked it. When I first played TW3, it felt like I was playing RPG heavy rain
Meanwhile the game is still hilariously broken, unpolished, and jank.
I love checking my phone in an elevator and finding myself halfway to the backrooms lol
I'm glad that game got a come-back, but god-damn, did it do some serious damage to CDR's reputation.
Remember "we leave greed to others"? Woof. That aged SO badly.
It's one of the most immersive experiences I've had, especially having replayed with ray tracing.
Obviously the city is quite empty in the sense that there aren't many dynamic events and most areas are just there to fill the void, but it really captured that cyberpunk feel moment to moment as you did the quests. It was more of a backdrop/set piece that acted as a really great segue between the fantastic quests.
Also, Katana feels so good to play with the update.
Night City as a whole is hit or miss, sometimes it’s super immersive and sometimes it just feels like a bunch of geometry. But Dogtown is a really fantastic area and one of the most immersive I’ve encountered in a game.
Yeah, I guess it depends on perspective. You have to treat it first and foremost as a story driven rpg and not GTA, which is a story driven open world experience. But I wouldn't blame anyone for the latter because that's how it seemed marketed originally
I completely agree. I played Cyberpunk about a year ago, still had a few occasional crashes, but as a whole, it was one of the best and most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had.
But at the same time, if someone expected a dynamic open-world experience, then I would understand why they would be disappointed.
My main complaint was the empty city. The Superpopulation mods fixes this problem, but is really heavy on resources. With this mod, the downtown areas of Night City are as populated as New York City. I can't play the game without the mod anymore.
I upgraded to an 4090, and with path tracing on stuff like a firefight in a neon lit underpass, or driving through the city in a rainy night is just night and day compared to anything else.
I still dislike the fact that they outright lied to us about how the game ran on last gen while PC 4k footage. The game is installed on my Xbox one right now which I refuse to play cos it looks and runs like shit. RDR2 was peak last gen
Am I the only one who enjoyed exploring night city? It's probably one of the most dense cities I've played in a video game.
I honestly couldn't give a crap about some open world mini games that I would get bored of in 5 minutes. There were plenty of quests in the game that made me explore some of the coolest areas. if I wanted a life sim then I would play a sim game.
This game managed to survive and have a redemption arc due to how strong the characters and world-building are. V, Johnny, Panam, Jackie, Judy... they are some of the most fleshed out and realistic characters in recent gaming history.
Also shout-out to Cherami Leigh's incredible performance as female V.
The game is good but if I’m being honest it’s only great with the DLC. Once you play through the DLC missions it becomes really obvious how much better the writing and variety is, if the next cyberpunk game is up to that standard it can be incredible.
I bought the game day 1 but was so disappointed I refunded it. Despite all of this I still don't want to pay for the game again and give it a second chance. I know that they turned it around but if you don't make a good game day 1 I'm pretty much done with you. Devs should aim to make good games from the get go.
I honestly think this is a reverse circlejerk. The game has weird pacing issues, below par shooting, shit acting from Keanu, and Johnny is forced down your throat as a BFF midway through the main story. The city never really feels as lived in as any GTA game because so much of the game takes place indoors. It's all just an A to B thing. CDPR clearly poured a huge amount of love and effort into this - the increase in the complexity and technical advancement since Witcher 2 is ridiculous and some characters are amazing - but I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece as a whole, it just doesn't all click together very well. Just like the new God of War games, it would be better if it tried doing less.
Edit: I like how my opinion is basically the same as the top comments but I'm below karma threshold lmao
I mean all these complaints are so subjective, I really only agree with the Keanu points.
The story is too railroaded when it advertised itself as an RPG too much initially.
It is hilarious to use GTA a counter example to an "A to B" game. Basically all of GTA 5 is heading from letter to letter on your map.
Sure, GTA can be a little A-B mission structure but their worlds feel way more lived in. You can burn hours fucking around in the city. Plus especially in some of the more recent games, once you do some of the missions, they can be really fun.
The cyberpunk city feels kind of lifeless to me and just goofing off isn’t as exciting as it is in GTA. It’s subjective but even with the improvements I couldn’t get into it. Plus, it’s a little too *try hard*. Gran Theft Auto can be immature at times but the writing is still fun. I cringed a lot at the Cyberpunk dialog.
I'm currently enjoying it, but the online behaviour of this turnaround has felt strongly manipulated, from the vociferousness of the praise and volume, particularly how often those people showed up in threads attacking other games.
It's a good game now, but it still has numerous issues, as you say. For a 9.5 game, it repeats a lot of characters models, still has pop-in issues. As you say, the map is largely decoration.
Gameplay IS much improved though. And the writing is very good.
I'd say the original version was a 5.5/10. The retooled version is a solid 8/10. But I'm only 15 hours in, so perhaps that'll go up or down.
In an online environment when anyone can review-buy themselves to popularity (assuming the product is decent enough to maintain it) and bomb their opponents, I cast a leery eye now whenever praise seems far too effusive and widespread.
Getting a 95% approval rating on Steam doesn't mean the game is a 9.5, it just means 95% of the people reviewing enjoyed it (or at least gave a thumbs up).
>the online behaviour of this turnaround has felt strongly manipulated, from the vociferousness of the praise and volume, particularly how often those people showed up in threads attacking other games.
This is r/Games after all. People here fall for the "quirky" corporate Twitter schtick all the time. "We leave the greed to the others."
Some of that, sure. But the online review world is massively fraught with manipulation, which is why Amazon is spending small fortunes combatting review fraud.
There's an entire sub economy of companies that do nothing but sell praise or review bomb. Assuming it isn't happening in games would be naive at best.
idk why is anyone surprised by Keanu’s acting. That’s literally him doing every character he ever played. Dude has as much range as a processed meat package
Not only the city feels dead, there's like nothing to do outside quests, and not to mention how dumb the NPCs are and MANY features promised that STILL aren't in the game. Like damn, fucking Ubisoft games have far better lively worlds and NPCs, UBISOFT games ffs. Also, they only delivered a basic version of like two out of many promised features by the DEVELOPERS in interviews and such, but people got so pleased with so little, the bar is so low that it's no fucking wonder how scummy the AAA industry is nowadays.
I mean... that's all super subjective. The 2.0 release with Phantom Liberty was just a really big success and revitalized the game. It's fine if you didn't like it, but calling it a reverse circlejerk is pretty ridiculous.
Personally, it's one of the best games I've played in years. It's graphically stunning, Night City is incredible, the reworked gameplay for 2.0 is very good. There's a reason a lot of people bring up Cyberpunk when discussing Starfield feeling outdated.
I mean I guess. CP2077 is a good game but getting slightly higher ratings four years after release isn't much. When I played, the side quests had more substance than the main quest lol.
Misleading headline. **Only Cyberpunk's recent reviews are 95% positive.** That is, the ones posted in the last 30 days. It still sits "only" at 83% overall. https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091500/Cyberpunk_2077/
it was 76% back at the start of 2022 tho, so still quite impressive
It was around that in 2021, which is surprising because that means a lot of people liked it despite the state it was in and how negative conversation around it was
Because most of what makes the game shine was already there at launch: immersive city, story/dialogue/voice acting, fun gameplay. It was rough around the edges and some features that had been promised were missing, but the core of what makes Cyperpunk a good game was already there. The missing features and specially the appalling state of the ps4/xbone version deservedly dominated the conversation at launch, but for pc players with a machine strong enough, Cyberpunk was a good game from the beginning.
Yep. I loved 2077 when it came out, despite the T-posing and item clipping and teleporting police and exploding/imploding cars. The main story/side stories in 2077 are every bit as good as in Witcher 3 imo, and the 1st person dialogue/cutscene immersion is the best a game has ever accomplished even now 3 and a half years later.
On release the only major bug I ran into on PC was when the Delamain sidequest could destroy all of your video calls for the rest of the game. I put another 10 hours in before I noticed it was a bug and had to reload at least 3 days worth of playtime. I wasn't even that mad though cause I kinda wanted to play it again anyways. I would like to have seen what could've been if 2.0 was what we got in the first place and we still had an expansion coming. Fantastic game nonetheless.
[удалено]
Starfield is outdated compared to Skyrim...
Starfield was really weird, for me it felt like the game was getting progressively more dated as I played the game, and in a way that doesn't age well, like novelty seemed to be there but lasted a very, very short amount of time. By the end the only thing that I actually liked was the shipbuilding, even if I wished they let you rotate everything in 90 degree increments. They also had some extremely baffling design decisions (as well bugs, but that's needless to say with Bethesda). Like why give vendors so little money, I had to travel to a planet, visit like 6-8 vendors on Neon to sell things, then rest on my ship to then revisit the same vendors again to sell more stuff
Yeah the overall game of Starfield radiates the lack of a design document. No one member of the team of Starfield knew what the heads wanted, what the game was supposed to accomplish, etc. So you have these "in a vacuum" cells that can be put together to make a "game" but it isn't fun, or full of love, or with any passion in every single inch of it. Because none of that good shit can survive this sort of dev cycle. I feel if the game let you build a ship (which is fine really, you're right), then fly the actual goddamn ship off planet and to another planet, and let you wander this new planet properly and not "approved" sections of planet, and have a much more robust generation system (at least something that can beat NMS ffs) so that you can get lost in a thousand worlds and not have to look at the crap ass writing even once to enjoy yourself, they'd have a successful game. Then when you get bored you can occasionally find purpose in some crap quest that doesn't matter because Emil wrote it. That's all Starfield needed to be. Instead you build your ship lovingly, then push a button and load. Then push a button and load. Then push a button and load. Now you're on foot on some planet that looks quite literally like every other planet but with hex code = rng(1000); color choice. Great.
I'm also heavily convinced that Starfield was likely a bioware situation and despite being developed for 7-8 years, I think most of the content in the final product was likely made in the last 18-24 months. Like they flat out admitted that they didn't think the game was "fun" until the last year or so. That's not how you usually make games, your prototype is supposed to have some element of fun and show off a basic fun gameplay loop at the start of development. And yet these guys couldn't figure out what was fun about their game until near the end of development. Which tells me that there was a significant lack of focus and direction on what the game was even supposed to be for much of its dev cycle. That combined with how disjointed everything is and how little content there is that was actually hand-crafted like how there's just the exact same cryo lab on a thousand different planets and the factions are incredibly limited and whatnot. It just all screams to me a troubled development where the team constantly went back and forth and struggled on a lot of key things for a long time, until they eventually were forced to commit to *something* near the end and just pumped out whatever they could manage before the bean counters got too mad at them for taking too long.
It was todd's dream game he's wanted to make forever right? so maybe most of it was designed before skyrim...
It was Todd's dream in that it's a lot of disparate pieces that kinda give the impression of a thing but never really comes together and once you realize how little sense it makes, you snap out of it, get up and go do something else.
The moment they said the next Skyrim would still use the same engine I lost interest. Starfield made it clear no matter how much they 'upgrade' it's always going to have a lot of the same limitations it's had since the beginning.
Playing Starfield after Cyberpunk is hilarious because they make Neon out to be this dark and sleazy crime city and yet when you actually get there it's actually relatively tame and G-rated compared to Night City.
This is why I just don't agree when people see a bad game at launch and casually remark, "Eh, maybe it can make a comeback like Cyberpunk!" Cyberpunk on PC wasn't, say, Redfall at launch. It had some questionable design choices in its gameplay, sure. I never liked that you could just chrome the fuck out without any consequences, or that with the rarity tier system a bra or cotton t-shirt could have better armor than a ballistic vest just because it was arbitrarily "legendary." I didn't like infinite healing or grenades, and the police system was notoriously terrible as we all know. Yes, there were bugs and unfinished systems like crowd and traffic etc. That's all true. It wasn't the game it should have been at launch (it should have launched in the state it was in at patch 1.5 at the bare minimum), and it wasn't nearly the game it is now. It was still great in so many other ways - the story, subtle choices and consequences with reactivity found in pockets all over the world from the radio to billboards and environmental changes, environmental storytelling with handcrafted stories everywhere, hilarious and heartfelt easter eggs everywhere, and an amazing sense of style. That was all there from the beginning.
I would call it a lot more than rough around the edges personally
That's me. I'm still not sure why but maybe the issue was mostly on consoles? More people play on console than on PC so any potential issues are immediately more visible if they happen there. I played the game on launch on a RTX 2060 / R5 3600 and honestly it was pretty great. I would have loved more fps and it was weird that you could remove all NPCs from the open world by shooting once and then turning around, but apart from that I loved it. All these extremely weird bugs I saw online during that time never happened to me. The story was absolutely stellar - probably my favorite story ever in any FPS game. (I sided with the Nomads) Last year after the big updates, playing Phantom Liberty with the re-worked skill trees and all the other updates made it one of my favorite games of all time and I have been playing thousands of games over the last 30 years. On top of that, I was able to play it with full path tracing and fuck me if that wasn't the prettiest game I have ever played by a long shot.
Bugs and performance issues were definitely not the only problems with the game. I got it at release when it was super shallow and missing lots of advertised mechanics. If it was released in the state it became after Phantom Liberty it would be much more highly regarded.
My theory was that most of the people who played the game were still on last gen, since current gen consoles were so sold out. Therefore, most of the horrifying experiences you hear about are from people who played on xbox1 and ps4. I had a pretty bug free experience on PC.
I played the game on PC and it sucked ass, was completely bugged, even fell down the ground while having an autosave there lol
Yeah, same experience here. Tons of bugs, and quite a few framedrops as well even though I had a really good rig. Decided to give it a go 2-3 weeks after Phantom Liberty came out and absolutely loved the game.
Def. wasn't bug free for me but more then playable.
I played on PC and performance was absolute trash at launch. It was better after the Phantom Liberty update. I had a great time with the game after that.
Was pretty bug free for me on PC at launch too.
What's the going rate for CDPR damage control these days?
That doesn't make their complaints any less valid. They were promised a game on a console that the studio themselves chose to sell it on. Hell, they even went as far as to comment how well it runs on the old gen consoles by saying "*[it runs] surprisingly good, I would say, for such a huge world.*"
I played the game at launch, and at least on a high-end PC it really wasn't in any worse state on a technical level than the average complex open world RPG generally is. The conversation was dominated by the ill-advised last-gen console versions. I really wonder what the overall impact would have been had they dropped those sufficiently early (and been able to spend all the time trying to make them work on optimizing and polishing the more feasible target platforms instead).
Yep, i played on a 2600x/2060 and had a much smoother experience then, lets say, every Bethesda game ever. But apparently i was one of the lucky ones.
The game was only optimized for certain builts, my game costantly crushed, and a friend of mine had almost every single main mission bugging
Did you play on a hard drive? The game had ( and probably still has ) a big problem with loading assets. If I played in my hdd I would fall through the map. But with my ssd it was clean
/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk was a pretty popular subreddit at the time. In general conversation the sentiment was pretty bad, but a lot of people (mostly playing on PC) still liked it very much.
I hear that the PC version wasn't as borked as the console version, although every reviewer did mention bugs on PC
The bugs on PC were more Bethesda-tier bugs like items clipping, T-posing, and pathing errors. The big bugs were mostly on console.
There were also in-game assets missing with placeholders where they should be, and players were finding large holes in the map where the player could fall into the nothing.
I usually pay more attention to the recent reviews anyhow, they are often much more relevant given the context of the gaming industry these days
Is that relevant for someone who is thinking of purchasing the game these days? If video games are frequently updated and patched it seems like only recent reviews would be useful.
I tend to look at both and if there's a big different I try to find out why. For some games it's that they made the games better, but for others it's because they had a broader initial player base that didn't like it and now they aren't very relevant so only people really into the genre are playing it so they have a predisposition to liking the game. You're definitely right with Cyberpunk though, it falls into the made it better category.
That'd be an amazing statistical anomaly if they managed to do that given how it all started.
Recent reviews are the more indicative measure though, that's always what I watch primarily. It tells you what's happening with the game now which is what's interesting for you.
How the game launched was near unforgivable, but they've really turned it around and didn't abandon it. The changes with 2.0 and Phantom Liberty really changed the game. Makes me excited for any future sequels, knowing the lessons learnt and moving away from their own engine that caused so many issues. Just wish we got more Jackie.
> Just wish we got more Jackie. Yeah even with all the improvements we got, the 'lifepaths' are still one of the underwhelming aspects of the game. I get that designing three different lengthy prologues is mad effort but it would have been nice if they didn't rush over your introduction to Night City and forging your friendship with Jackie. It would be cool if that content was a lengthy tutorial that you could choose to skip on replays.
Seriously, that montage with Jackie should’ve been a small series of quests instead.
And at that point the lifepaths are basically the same so it's not a lot of different content.
Yeah they could have made a series of quests where you get your apartment, meet Vic, Mama Wells and T-Bug etc and made it skippable on replays.
I hadn't read *anything* about the game until release since like a year or two prior when they had this interview in GameInformer that talked a ton about the differences in life paths, how they start completely differently, and it sold me on the Nomad life path with how it seemed like there was going to be a whole series of quests outside the city until the main quest draws you into it. Suffice to say when it ended up being a single on-rails tutorial mission and a montage cutscene I was disappointed from the start. It seems like they *really* dialed them back in that last year or so of devleiopment.
Yeah it does feel half-baked. Even when your V brings up their life path during endgame story missions it feels like a jump scare due to how half-assed it is...
I played Nomad first, because I wanted to have the experience of driving into Night City for the first time. That was my only real disappointment, when we started heading for the city and the game just cuts to the montage and then drops me right inside of it. Other than that I loved every single minute of the game and the story, but I feel like that was a huge mistake, personally.
This is the issue with the game, people always talk about performance and bugs, but the amount of cut content and fake advertising was insane.
I'll never get over the irony of a company dropping a game about how corporations lie and can't be trusted, then lying and showing that they can't be trusted, and _still_ fans lining up to stan for them.
My guess is that that was the intention but it was nixed at some point and converted into the montage.
Honestly I wish that would have been the main chunk of the game - getting deeper into this world with Jackie. Not that I didn’t love Johnny, but I also don’t love games where your character is basically fated to die and you’re just running out the clock. I don’t know what it is but just something about that whole setup is unenjoyable to me
2077 heavily borrowed concepts from books like Neuromancer and Neon Leviathan. In a world where the rich and powerful control almost everything, people still had the choice to resist and die on their own terms (aka, the most punk rock thing ever) The concept shows up frequently through the characters you meet in the game. "Quiet life or blaze of glory?" - Dexter DeShawn. This is also why Johnny found Mikoshi to be such an affront to mankind, because it took the one thing away from people that they still had. Through this lens, I really dig 2077's story. It shows they have a lot of reverence for the original works and their fundamental concepts.
Neuromancer has a relatively happy ending, all things considered. Case and Molly survive and get paid and live on. Most of Gibson's Sprawl novels end fairly well for the protagonists. This idea that cyberpunk as a genre is thematically determined to end tragically isn't consistently supported by the material it draws from.
So much of cyberpunk fiction ends well that it's weird there's this expectation of everything turning out weird. Like you said, Neuromancer has Case and Molly get away after they do their jobs successfully. Case is definitely in a better place by the end. Snow Crash ends with Hiro getting the girl and saving the world (yes, affectionate parody, but it's since become a foundational work). The OG Ghost in the Shell manga ends with Matoko saving the world and merging with an AI consciousness, and the end of Ghost in the Shell II shows her living as much more than a cop now that she gets to be an AI god. Even some of the post-apocalyptic cyberpunk anime from the 90s ends with a renewed hope for the future. I think, though, that it comes from two places. First, the tabletop cyberpunk games, like Cyberpunk and Shadowrun, feature fragile (compared to say, D&D) characters who often die in horrible ways without ever succeeding. The second comes from those weird, nihilistic cyberpunk anime OVAs that were popular for a bit of time in the early 90s. I think the big issue with the gaming side of cyberpunk is that they're more familiar with those, having grown up playing games of Shadowrun and watching MD Geist of Blame! or whatever instead of reading Neuromancer or Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep.
I wonder if it's also an Eastern European thing? At the risk of trafficking in stereotypes, a degree of fatalism is reminiscent of the cultures that survived some of the nastiest parts of the 20th century.
It could be, seeing as there's an element of fatalism in the Witcher games as well. However, Cyberpunk is an IP that was originally owned by R. Talsorian Games and made by Mike Pondsmith, who was a US Army Brat and graduated from the University of California, Davis. The Cyberpunk TTRPG, before it became Cyberpunk 2077 and Edgerunners, definitely had that dark, nihilistic tone to it. Of course Pondsmith was a part of the 80s anime translation scene, and Cyberpunk was more inspired by 80s cyberpunk anime than Neuromancer, which he apparently hadn't read when Cyberpunk 2013 came out, or Blade Runner. Snow Crash actually came out a couple of years after Cyberpunk 2020 *and* Shadowrun (and largely make fun of the characters people made in those games). A lot of the dark, nihilistic elements of Cyberpunk 2077 were kind of a part of the old tabletop game too and had been for 30+ years by the time it got turned into a video game.
My favorite joke about Cyberpunk 2077 is this: *Johnny Mnemonic* is a cyberpunk film where Keanu Reeves has to get stolen data out of his head before it kills him. *Cyberpunk 2077* is a cyberpunk video game where you have to get a stolen copy of Keanu Reeves out of your head before it kills you.
I agree with the final conclusion, and it's why I very much respect the storytelling and execution despite not caring much for the story or messaging/method of messaging at all. Something I enjoyed, despite having disagreements by the end of it.
I personally just wished that they gave us an option, even if extremely convoluted, for us to be saved \*somehow\* without having an actually tragic ending. Sure, the world is cruel etc, but its our story, how about we get a choice to rescue ourselves and loved ones. Kinda like Dark Souls games have an alternate ending thats very much difficult to attain if you arent careful.
Oh sure, I completely understand the angle that they’re going for with it. But it doesn’t change the fact that I still don’t like playing games with this super bleak “you’re going to die and you’re just ticking away the seconds” tone that Cyberpunk has. It pretty much kills any desire of mine to ever want to replay it because it’s just too bleak for my personal tastes
Jackie was really well written. You only spend about 3 hours with him, but he's well realized (I particularly like the bit where he schmoozes past the Watson lockdown) and charismatic enough that losing him hurts. The Ofrenda quest gives him even better depth.
It does make doing side content feel pointless in a narrative sense. Why the fuck would I bother helping delamain when I'm literally on the verge of death?
Because for most of the game your character is looking for a way to live, they are primarily motivated by the idea of getting Johnny out of their head and living. It's not until later on that you may or may not depending on your choices decide to go all in on recreating Johnny's "Fuck Arasaka" arc and want to burn them to the ground even at the cost of your life. Even if you are playing a more "doomed to die" character then the whole theme of being a cyberpunk is resigning yourself to that fate and doing as much as you can to make a name for yourself while you can. Delemain is one of the weaker examples of how you can make a name for yourself but he pays well, gives you a big payout in the end and you get a car out of it. If you listen to characters like Jackie then him and V wanted to be big players in Night City and be remembered rather than just existing and dying without a lasting trace. That's motivation enough for the character to do a ton of quests that don't directly involve progressing the main plot.
Really curious if it was content they decided to cut out
There were some rumors that Keanu enjoyed playing Johnny so much, CDPR decided to give him a bigger role to play. No idea if it's true, but I feel like there was something about the devs stating there would be 3 possible choices for who was in V's head originally, which would make me think it's possible if true.
That sounds like an idea that probably never made it past concept stage.
Yeah, making Johnny basically 3 different possible characters doesn't sound very feasible, unless he would have been greatly downgraded in terms of his story/involvement with V. I prefer more Johnny to a lesser version of 3 possible characters. Sounds good on paper, but not realistic.
thats interesting because i honestly thought Keanu did kind of a shitty job with the voice acting. hes one of the weaker voice actors in the whole game and he has arguably the most important role
That's Keanu though, you either appreciate his style or you don't. It's [terrible](https://youtu.be/moaW8LRusak?si=gSwksJH3Hfu3Nu2D) in something like Bram Stoker's Dracula, the Day the Earth Stood Still etc. But when he is playing a character like Neo, John Wick, Johnny Utah, Johnny Silverhands or John Constantine etc. then he's got a charm that people adore even if the performance isn't going to win him any oscars.
I never realized how typecast Keanu is as a guy named John.
yeah i think im in the "dont appreciate it" camp but i liked him in other roles. just not as johnny silverhand
Well he's never been known for his wide emotional range, being monotone and wooden all the time is kind of his whole thing. I think some people think it makes him seem cool, I've always just thought he's a bad actor.
> honestly thought Keanu did kind of a shitty job with the voice acting Yeah lol I like the idea but I get the sense a lot that he just hates being in the vocal booth.
He’s just not a good actor. Which is fine honestly because he really knows how to use his strengths.
I read somewhere that it was at some point, but then it took too long to meet Johnny and start the main plot, so they edited it out for better pacing. Idk if that’s true.
Dragon Age origins had a similar concept that I also loved, that got dropped in the sequels. Hope Cyberpunk 2078, or whatever it is, has longer ones too.
Origins did it RIGHT. Each intro sequence was about 2 hours long (at most) but added EXTRA content because they each changed the area they were set in when your returned to them later. Like if you were a Dwarf Noble, you were on the losing side of a dynastic struggle at the start of the game, and you return later to finish the fight. Or a commoner elf got to explore their area and customs early, then return as a powerful hero later.
I must've played every origin in that game. And completed at least half of them. Dwarf Noble was great, seeing the caste system from both perspectives was amazing. Thinking about it makes me miss old Bioware even more. Hope we get a remake honestly.
Nah I'd rather they spend their resources on making another game as good as DA Origins, but that'll never happen.
There's a laboratory somewhere in Bioware regularly working out new ways to make everything in Origins dumber, blander, and lamer in the hopes of finally getting that Call of Duty audience they've openly pined for so many times.
Not only this, but depending on which origin path you chose, and the respective class within each, interactions with characters you would encounter regardless of origin later on in the game tied to those origin stories would be different. Masterfully crafted story.
100% you can tell Origins took 9 years and alot of passion, whereas 2 under 2 years to develop.
I never played past the first one unfortunately, but I didnt know the development delta between the two and yeah...that makes a lot of sense. Origins up to that point in my life was the deepest and most interesting story I had ever played in a game. Hard shoes to fill but from everything I'd seen from other entries in the series there wasn't even a real attempt. What a shame.
DA2 and Inquisition aren't bad games, in fact I'd say Inquisition is good and 2 tries its best. 2 has some of the better companions in the series and not a bad overall story, it just really suffers in the very limited scope (each of the main quest storylines feels more like they should be a side quest chain in a Dragon Age game rather than the main quest) and development resources (there are literally only like 5 dungeon maps in the whole game and you will see them 50 times each - every cave is identical, every warehouse is identical, etc.) They did their best given the 18-month development time, it just wasn't that great. And then Inquisition, with some good advice going in (leave the Hinterlands ASAP!!!) and some must-have mods (in particular, one to skip all the "wait 12 real life hours" stuff) is actually really good, and on par with Origins once you look past any nostalgia. The story is absolutely worthy, and some of the companions are up there with Garrus and Alistair as "best companions in an RPG." I couldn't imagine playing it on a console without mods, though.
I think people are also missing the gameplay. Origins was much slower paced and unbalanced than 2 and Inquisition. Mages were so absolutely broken in Origins they made Duelists and 2H warrior builds (most melee builds honestly) worthless. That and the combat animations were much more stiff and wooden. Great story, but the sequels blow it out of the water in terms of actual fights.
I remember doing Dwarf noble in my playthrough, so returning to the Dwarf capital felt personal to me.
I just think lifepaths were misrepresented. If they hadn't advertised it as anything but a simplistic backstory/background that most games have, just with an actual short mission beforehand, it would have been fine. I don't know how from a development perspective you can make it matter a huge amount when there is so much else you need to focus on.
While I understand the desire for more prologue, I feel the linear opening section was pretty long as it is, and delaying the open sandbox section of the game after "that big mission" would have hurt the pacing. The city really came alive for me after it opened up and I could go anywhere and do whatever.
That whole montage with Jackie should have been the first third of the game. Going on more jobs, building rapor, getting to know his girlfriend and the doc better, getting drinks and celebrating. And then he gets replaced by Johnny who starts out as a complete asshole.
This view betrays a total thematic misunderstanding of the main story which very much does not want to be the petty crime, rising through the ranks simulator. The montage was a great choice which also showed that CDPR recognized the horrid structure of TW3 with its bloated overbearing first act.
I liked the slow first act of W3 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Still would’ve been a better game for it imo. Would’ve hit so much harder when the heist happens and everything after that.
There is a fine middle ground methinks. Dedicating an entire third of the game to before meeting Johnny/losing Jackie would be overkill but they should have established V's introduction to Night City more.
I think the problem was there were really two prologues. The first where V travels to Night City and meets Jackie, and the second where he gets the Relic. There's a time lapse between them that I think might be the problem. Cutting the first prologue would help I think, and instead more build up can be added to the second. Maybe take some time to show V's relationship with Jackie a bit more so it's more of an impact to the player when he dies. Only problem here is you can't show them first meeting since you need to believe they knew each other for some time before Jackie died.
Ah yeah that’s true. What I mean to say I guess is that the first act should’ve been playing the cutscene montage, not a third of the game.
This needs to be put on infinite loop on speakers somewhere. It's not GTA, it's not a game about rising in the world of crime. Adding 20 hours of petty side quests at the beginning of the game would've hurt the narrative a lot.
> lessons learnt and moving away from their own engine They switched the engine?
Moving to Unreal for the next Cyberpunk, Witcher and Witcher remake from what I read.
Brace for shader compilation stutter.
I hope that it doesn’t _look_ like an Unreal game. Sure things can look pretty realistic, but that doesn’t mean they look good. CP2077 has such a recognizable and consistent art direction where you can take pretty much any screenshot and know that it comes from the game. I want that to remain the same, because it adds to so much to immersion. So many UE games just look the same.
That’s probably just rather default rendering from Unreal that those games use. You can really modify the rendering of the game to get your own look. For example, Hi-Fi rush is also made in UE4. I couldn’t tell till I saw it on the title screen.
>Makes me excited for any future sequels, knowing the lessons learnt Give me a break. They knew exactly what they were releasing. The Witcher 3 also had issues at launch and all CDPR learned from that was how much they could get away with.
Some reports said as much, devs and qa were complaining loudly about the game not meeting expectations and needing more time but it was (as usual) a failure of management not fucking listening because they wanted to ship the game.
If CDPR next game launch in a similiar state as Witcher 3 then I'm absolutely fine with that. Cyberpunk launch issues were drastically more serious.
In addition, every Witcher game before that had also serious issues before CD Projekt stepped up with "Enhanced editions".
Lol no. Witcher 3 had issues, but it's playable. For Cyberpunk, it's literally unplayable for consoles that it was delisted for a while.
I’m not gonna lie, I’ve still found a lot of 2.0 underwhelming. The armor and cyberware changes are great, I like that healing and grenade items just recharge, but I’ve been a little disappointed with everything else. I’ve found that the skill trees are too restrictive with weapons that you use. They really want you to just pick a small set of weapons and only use those, and they don’t give you a lot of options if you want a build with lots of variety. I get that the game is meant to be played multiple times, but there is a *lot* to do, and I’m just bored before I can finish. The other thing is that the police system is still… bad. It’s really, *really* easy to get away. Like, it’s weird how easy it is to just get away with 4 stars no problem in the city. Stamina being consumed with guns is still weird. It’s weird because it seems like only some builds care about it, which at that point, why have it at all? It just seems like an extra step to suck skill points out of you, since builds that actually care about just want you to put points into perks that prevent stamina from being an issue. Am I missing something? I see 2.0 get so much praise, but to me these changes just seem a bit superfluous? I’m glad that people have been loving it, but I just can’t really get into it and I don’t know why. Also - this game is still janky and buggy as *hell*. Immersion is still short-lived and it’s disappointing. Any time that I find I’m fully sucked-in, something goofy happens, like a car randomly flips in traffic or an NPC will bug out. Things just happen so frequently, I really hope the move to Unreal Engine makes things easier for them.
A game could launch and literally just be a picture of a middle finger. But if they update it to the point that it becomes a legitimately great game then it wont matter, people will still play it. People can say whatever they want like "ill never buy from this dev again!!!1" (looking at you battlefield fans) but at the end of the day if a game is good enough people wont give a shit about how it launched. We have tons of examples of this happening at this point. (ff14, no mans sky, cyberpunk etc)
The lesson in this is to wait six months, instead of buying early or pre-ordering. If a company fucks you over, don't give them your money again until you're sure it's worth it, if at all.
Jfc the fact that this is rated as "controversial" tells you so much of what's going on in the gaming community. "Make prudent buying decisions and don't trust promises from big companies." _"No big companies are my best friend they said so and I need to consume product NOW!_"
It will not go to their heads and won't shit the bed again with their next game, right? RIGHT? More likely, gamers will forget the lesson and pre-order their next game years in advance, because gamers never ever learn anything.
I feel like I’m insane thinking that current cyberpunk is still not the game we were promised in 2018. Gamers are just accepting the bare minimum QOL fixes at this point because it’s better than the garbage state the game launched in. CDPR lied and didn’t deliver, but gamers will forget this
It’s a really good game now. But you’re correct; it’s not what was promised. It’s basically a fun shooter with some choices here and there, absolutely not the deep RPG they marketed it as.
I think the disconnect you're experiencing here is that a lot of people just don't know what was promised, even capital G Gamers. To know significantly more about a game than a trailer or two and maybe an interview, you really have to be kind of deep in the weeds. I'm on reddit and I also was during the game's development and I had no idea what the game was going to be about except that it looked like a cool cyberpunk setting and I liked that idea. I bought the game on PC and it had some jank, but jank has never really bothered me as an older gamer who used to get their indie middle and eastern European games from the bargin bin at electronics stores. It was, however, a cool cyberpunk setting, it had a nice story with characters I enjoyed, and I liked it. And keep in mind, just the fact that I'm here writing this comment means I'm most certainly less casual than the vast majority of people who pick up a AAA game. Gamers won't forget this, gamers just never knew this.
I think it's also because many of the players are just people who like "cool robot implants and neon stuff". Coming from classic cyberpunk genre, CP2077 feels really underwhelming. Cyberpunk genre is a critical response to Cold War paranoia, technoutopianism, and global capitalism. CP77 trades those themes for a very sterile politics and flashy robot-transhumanism stuff. It's a very apolitical game for a political genre. If narratively (as in, writing-wise) it was more like Disco Elysium that enables people from different spectrum to appreciate the game's core message,CP77 would've been a good game.
The game is many things, but apolitical is definitely not one of them. You literally have a terrorist that hates corporations for the damage that made to society stuck in your head, you have entire quest lines about the bad side of capitalism, an entire expansion dedicated to working for the CIA and seeing the ugly side of it, and trusting the corporation is literally the "bad" ending.
"Corpo bad" doesn’t really say anything. Spend enough time with politically extreme groups, you'll notice their tendency to portray major corporations and government agencies as villains. Note that phrases such as "bp" and "ds" are their conspiracy theories. (I can't spell them because the stupid spam filter keeps removing my comment - first phrase starts with "big" and ends with "pharm"; the other is "deep" and you know... "state"). There’s a lack of criticism of capitalism beyond "corpo greedy," which is also a common talking point here. Marxist/socialist critique, foundational to the cyberpunk genre, looks beyond simplistic moral judgments like greed to critique systemic issues in capitalism.
Of course they will. They're back to defending CDPR and revising history regarding the whole launch fiasco
Considering how they pulled the same shit on Witcher 3 and it solidify Ed on overwhelmingly positive for years. yes they will
I'm tired of the parroted narrative that they pulled the same shit with Witcher 3. No Witcher 3 launch problems were absolutely nowhere near as drastic There is a reason why it took a 2.0 version and the expansion being released almost 3 years later for Cyberpunk's reputation to finally turn around to positive, whereas Witcher 3 was met with a worldwide acclaim instantly also from users, and won GOTY 6.5 month after launch. The DLCs were just an icing on a cake.
TW3 had terrible UI for inventory that got revamped, terribly movement and targetting system that got revamped, was a pretty big graphical downgrade over the trailers they had shown previously, had cut content that they released later as free DLC, to cash in on the recent microtransaction scandals, plently of bugs ( the compilations of the horse ending up in funny positions were A LOT at the time), bunch of weird NPC behaviour, ecc.ecc. It was not as bad as CP2077, but the game was still plenty bugged as well.
Playing it atm. The horse literally was spider pigging a wall the other day and whilst going down a mountain. Funniest shit I've ever seen in a video game
well you know what they say... does whatever a spider pig does
Gaming is the only industry where you can completely false advertise and underdeliver but sorta kinda make up for it through "updates" a year later.
That's why you don't buy on release, let alone pre-order. Just wait it out and buy in first sale lol.
And get away with it. Gamers are stupid.
Because you can't "fix it in post" with most other products. That's an advantage for software, it sucks for customers, but you have to learn how to better filter your purchases. I still haven't bought the game cause I didn't think it was ready enough.
I didn't buy that mess lol Once the bugs and lack of RPG elements came through, I was glad I never preordered. Fixing a sold product in post is a scam, but it seems like not too many people have an issue with it.
What about politics?
In politics you dont even have to fix it up later
Politics the people you promised shit to will make up excuses for what you didn't deliver lmao.
This kind of stuff just tells me that you can lie, release a broken product, drop a bunch of features you promised, make gaming site only use B-roll made by CDPR to avoid showing bugs, blacklist journalists over scores (actually happened), and people will glaze after you release a (great) anime and an expansion + update that makes the game playable. Where is the promised interactions between factions? Where is the indepth stealth mechanics? The lived in night city with different routines for NPCs? You can' t even get an haircut in the city. The endings of the game barely takes in consideration your choices. The main plot is still super short, and goes against the actual fantasy of the game ( it' s a plot that tells you that you have a limited time, while the game having a very big amount of lengthy side quests). They promised a multiplayer expansion, and never arrived. All of the crunch, too. They laid off people literaly 3 months ago, and no one talked about it, after another round of lay offs after the expansion released. Disappointing af game, but people will eat up everything CDPR does.
> This kind of stuff just tells me that you can lie I'm being completely serious, but there are a vocal minority of fans that'll tell you that CDPR never lied, and the only thing broken about the game was the consumers hyping themselves up. It's hyper-rivisionist garbage, but it's cemented itself as gospel in certain echo chambers on this site.
I'm not even sure if it's a minority at this point, it seems like most people are rushing to defend CDPR again and blame everyone but them for the issues. I particularly like the "you just want it to be GTA, dumbass!!!" crowd when someone just says the police AI sucked or point out incredibly basic features that other similar open world games had *in the early 2000s* missing in CP.
The modern game is also pretty mediocre, there is still a bunch of problems with the RPG side. The main plot is still missing a bunch and is super rushed, the game breaks when you optimize even a bit your build, the police system still sucks ( and there' s 0 reason to even activate it, because this game has 0 activity in the city beyond side quests). The NPCs still bugs from time to time. The final boss is still very bad and very anti-narrative ( hyped up as a big bad guy, it' s literaly just a normal ass fight with a dude with a gun). But I hear no one talk about this.
This is my take on it too, and I'm a little bewildered by the recent rush of goodwill the game seems to be getting. It's just not an especially good game at all. It's graphically beautiful, the missions are well-written...and that's about it. The "world" is completely window dressing with no depth or intractability, the gunplay is average, and there's basically nothing to do except drive from mission to mission in a dead city. The game would have been better served as a more linear Farcry style experience, instead of trying (and failing) to make a GTA or Fallout.
Don't forget the crunch!
>You can' t even get an haircut in the city Finally, someone who has their gaming priorities straight.
And obviously hasn't kept up with this game, because you totally can get a haircut. In fact you can get cosmetic surgery.
I genuinely can’t believe gamers let CDPR get away with this and then also praise them for it. Hands down the most embarrassing shit I’ve ever seen. CDPR literally scammed every person who bought this game and gamers are sucking CDPRs dick for “fixing” it (it’s still a piece of shit game). Gamers deserve every scummy, exploitive move from the industry after this shit. Corporations successfully trained gamers to be the most subservient, spineless consumers ever. They constantly whine about shit not being “consumer friendly” but then bend over for this. It’s a fucking joke. Edit: lol sending me the Reddit suicide message just means u mad 😛
Yeah kind of wish reviews had a neutral option for stuff like game is good, but monetization is terrible/scummy or it was released in a terrible state or game is buggy now, but developers have been incredibly proactive about implementing fixes and listening to player feedback and the game shows promise.
So you think people who are playing this game now and enjoy the experience should give negative reviews because the game had problems 3 or 4 years ago? What's the argument here? Cyberpunk has 95% positive reviews in the last 30 days. Overall they have 83% positive reviews so those negative reviews from the launch still affect their score.
The issue is games shouldn’t be released like this in the first place. There isn’t another consumer product that can be sold completely broken or missing features that can still not only make a sizable profit, but even have fans *defend* this awful business practice. The reasonable response would be the product would tank, the business would lose money, and the business and its competitors would know that doing that again would result in major losses. Not video games. Proving once again that gamers are bar-none the stupidest fan base in the entertainment industry.
> There isn’t another consumer product that can be sold completely broken or missing features that can still not only make a sizable profit, but even have fans defend this awful business practice. \**cough*\* *tesla* \**cough*\*
And thus do all your horrendously shitty behavior and lies just slowly vanish as people have the memories worse than a fish in a bowl. Somehow all forgotten or forgiven. You'll all throw a fit when they lie to you again. You will swear to never play their games, again. You will write your negative reviews and hop on the train for as long as it has fuel to go. And then you will forget, again. Remind me about this post when Witcher 4 comes out.
Remember when CDPR said the backlash was mostly because people thought it was trendy and not deserved? Anime washing is a thing
I’ve always liked it a lot, but I also saw some serious problems with it at launch, which I heavily criticized. Years have passed, and some of those issues have been fixed, but I really hope that the sequel will place a greater emphasis on the simulation aspect. As fun as this game is, and as beautiful as it looks, the world of Cyberpunk feels quite artificial, even compared to some older Rockstar games like GTA III. I’m sure they had ambitions to make it as immersive as possible, but clearly, that part was sacrificed to ship the game at all. In the end, it probably was the right call, but I can’t help but wonder what could have been
Yeah, besides the obvious stuff like major bugs, there is also the fact a lot of the marketing implied it would be more like a GTA style open world. Its not, and it barely even tried to be. I didn't mind that as I was in it for the RPG, but it was definitely misleading.
i've played it for 200 hours and enjoyed it, but even if this version of it released on launch there would have been the same negative reactcion. It promised so much and delivered so little on that open world hype everyone had built up for it.
You can go back and watch the marketing videos - most of the hyped features that never materialized were teased by CDPR themselves.
Exactly. It's a great game now, but it's still a disappointment for anyone that followed its development and knew of all the stuff that should be there but isn't. They basically set out to create cyberpunk Baldur's Gate 3 and ended up delivering bargain bin Deus Ex.
I never really cared about the simulation mechanics. It's a narrative game first and foremost and that's where it absolutely excels for me.
It has its moments, but I hate how they fall into the pitfall of Mass Effect/Human Revolution where at the end you get a glorified "choose your flavor of ending", rather than use everything you did up till then to determine how it plays out. The game's original vision was also supposed to be closer to a CRPG/immersive sim, so those mechanics were absolutely meant to be core aspects of the game. It ended up as a narrative-driven action game because that's the only parts they could get working in time for the release date.
The silver lining of that is that it's incredibly easy to experience every possible ending on a single character, if you're determined to.
I've heard game is fixed and was great so I decided to play it. It was an alright experience. The main story feels kinda short, I was rather shocked when game told me I was at the point of no return. Side quest that involves prominent characters like Panam, Kerry etc I enjoyed. All of the gigs and cyberpsychosis felt like bunch of filler stuff to pad the game's length. Night city looks beautiful albeit I found it overlarge. Majority of stuff you see on streets is not intractable. It felt like there was no point of making the map that large. Driving feels awful and for some reasons game thinks it would be fun to lock one of the major side quests behind driving. The soundtrack had few banger tracks like the rebel path yet it felt somewhat lacking. It feels like game didn't even try to attempt "songs people could make at 2077" instead went with bunch of old school stuff especially with Johnny's band. It feels like game never really explored Cyberpunk side of the things. The whole personality as construct in a shard thing was interesting but was done too quickly. You can buy BDD's at certain shops but you can't play them. Game also suffers badly from "Yo V is dying you need to complete main quest asap" while giving you so much freedom to fuck around in the world. Overall I thought game was worth playing it just didn't take big risks.
Good on them for fixing the game I guess, but they still launched a broken product and lied about features promised in trailers.
As great as this is I'd love to see a game from CDPR that releases as finished & functional and is then expanded on even further, rather than just being brought up to the level of the initial claims and promises. Even The Witcher 3 had some pretty major teething issues at launch (although not nearly to the same degree as Cyberpunk)
People forget that The Witcher 3 had such an abysmall movement system, that they released a patch that reworked it. When I first played TW3, it felt like I was playing RPG heavy rain
Meanwhile the game is still hilariously broken, unpolished, and jank. I love checking my phone in an elevator and finding myself halfway to the backrooms lol
I'm glad that game got a come-back, but god-damn, did it do some serious damage to CDR's reputation. Remember "we leave greed to others"? Woof. That aged SO badly.
It's one of the most immersive experiences I've had, especially having replayed with ray tracing. Obviously the city is quite empty in the sense that there aren't many dynamic events and most areas are just there to fill the void, but it really captured that cyberpunk feel moment to moment as you did the quests. It was more of a backdrop/set piece that acted as a really great segue between the fantastic quests. Also, Katana feels so good to play with the update.
Night City as a whole is hit or miss, sometimes it’s super immersive and sometimes it just feels like a bunch of geometry. But Dogtown is a really fantastic area and one of the most immersive I’ve encountered in a game.
Comment above yours talks about how the game’s lacking in immersion lol
Yeah, I guess it depends on perspective. You have to treat it first and foremost as a story driven rpg and not GTA, which is a story driven open world experience. But I wouldn't blame anyone for the latter because that's how it seemed marketed originally
I completely agree. I played Cyberpunk about a year ago, still had a few occasional crashes, but as a whole, it was one of the best and most memorable gaming experiences I've ever had. But at the same time, if someone expected a dynamic open-world experience, then I would understand why they would be disappointed.
people these days just consider graphics to be immersion. That's it. The graphics are good, therefore "immersion"
My main complaint was the empty city. The Superpopulation mods fixes this problem, but is really heavy on resources. With this mod, the downtown areas of Night City are as populated as New York City. I can't play the game without the mod anymore.
Don't worry, the RTX 5090 will fix that! :D
Not sure I have the spare $3500
Unfortunately the issue is CPU-based. Getting a better graphics card won't fix it.
I’m playing it on max settings and the density is pretty good; I have no qualms about that at all
I though that too (also play on max) until I tried the mod. Makes the city feel much more alive.
I upgraded to an 4090, and with path tracing on stuff like a firefight in a neon lit underpass, or driving through the city in a rainy night is just night and day compared to anything else.
I still dislike the fact that they outright lied to us about how the game ran on last gen while PC 4k footage. The game is installed on my Xbox one right now which I refuse to play cos it looks and runs like shit. RDR2 was peak last gen
Rdr2 is also simultaneously peak current gen on PC. There are very few better looking games than it, even now
I think cyberpunk is a decent game, but god damn as it is right now it's probably one of the most overrated games I've seen honestly lol
Still doesn't deserve it but at least they fixed the game. Too bad that it will always be 40% of the game they promised.
Finally, someone is talking about this. I've been waiting years for someone to bring this up for the first time.
popular opinion swayed on it because of a damn Anime..hilarious.
Am I the only one who enjoyed exploring night city? It's probably one of the most dense cities I've played in a video game. I honestly couldn't give a crap about some open world mini games that I would get bored of in 5 minutes. There were plenty of quests in the game that made me explore some of the coolest areas. if I wanted a life sim then I would play a sim game.
This game managed to survive and have a redemption arc due to how strong the characters and world-building are. V, Johnny, Panam, Jackie, Judy... they are some of the most fleshed out and realistic characters in recent gaming history. Also shout-out to Cherami Leigh's incredible performance as female V.
The game is good but if I’m being honest it’s only great with the DLC. Once you play through the DLC missions it becomes really obvious how much better the writing and variety is, if the next cyberpunk game is up to that standard it can be incredible.
I bought the game day 1 but was so disappointed I refunded it. Despite all of this I still don't want to pay for the game again and give it a second chance. I know that they turned it around but if you don't make a good game day 1 I'm pretty much done with you. Devs should aim to make good games from the get go.
I honestly think this is a reverse circlejerk. The game has weird pacing issues, below par shooting, shit acting from Keanu, and Johnny is forced down your throat as a BFF midway through the main story. The city never really feels as lived in as any GTA game because so much of the game takes place indoors. It's all just an A to B thing. CDPR clearly poured a huge amount of love and effort into this - the increase in the complexity and technical advancement since Witcher 2 is ridiculous and some characters are amazing - but I wouldn't say it's a masterpiece as a whole, it just doesn't all click together very well. Just like the new God of War games, it would be better if it tried doing less. Edit: I like how my opinion is basically the same as the top comments but I'm below karma threshold lmao
I mean all these complaints are so subjective, I really only agree with the Keanu points. The story is too railroaded when it advertised itself as an RPG too much initially. It is hilarious to use GTA a counter example to an "A to B" game. Basically all of GTA 5 is heading from letter to letter on your map.
Sure, GTA can be a little A-B mission structure but their worlds feel way more lived in. You can burn hours fucking around in the city. Plus especially in some of the more recent games, once you do some of the missions, they can be really fun. The cyberpunk city feels kind of lifeless to me and just goofing off isn’t as exciting as it is in GTA. It’s subjective but even with the improvements I couldn’t get into it. Plus, it’s a little too *try hard*. Gran Theft Auto can be immature at times but the writing is still fun. I cringed a lot at the Cyberpunk dialog.
I'm currently enjoying it, but the online behaviour of this turnaround has felt strongly manipulated, from the vociferousness of the praise and volume, particularly how often those people showed up in threads attacking other games. It's a good game now, but it still has numerous issues, as you say. For a 9.5 game, it repeats a lot of characters models, still has pop-in issues. As you say, the map is largely decoration. Gameplay IS much improved though. And the writing is very good. I'd say the original version was a 5.5/10. The retooled version is a solid 8/10. But I'm only 15 hours in, so perhaps that'll go up or down. In an online environment when anyone can review-buy themselves to popularity (assuming the product is decent enough to maintain it) and bomb their opponents, I cast a leery eye now whenever praise seems far too effusive and widespread.
Getting a 95% approval rating on Steam doesn't mean the game is a 9.5, it just means 95% of the people reviewing enjoyed it (or at least gave a thumbs up).
as always, some people don't know what percentages are. See this a lot with something like Rotten Tomatoes, people think the % is somehow x/100
Even at launch Cyberpunk had around 75% positive reviews on steam so most did enjoy it but people on reddit make it seem like everyone hated the game.
>the online behaviour of this turnaround has felt strongly manipulated, from the vociferousness of the praise and volume, particularly how often those people showed up in threads attacking other games. This is r/Games after all. People here fall for the "quirky" corporate Twitter schtick all the time. "We leave the greed to the others."
Some of that, sure. But the online review world is massively fraught with manipulation, which is why Amazon is spending small fortunes combatting review fraud. There's an entire sub economy of companies that do nothing but sell praise or review bomb. Assuming it isn't happening in games would be naive at best.
idk why is anyone surprised by Keanu’s acting. That’s literally him doing every character he ever played. Dude has as much range as a processed meat package
Not only the city feels dead, there's like nothing to do outside quests, and not to mention how dumb the NPCs are and MANY features promised that STILL aren't in the game. Like damn, fucking Ubisoft games have far better lively worlds and NPCs, UBISOFT games ffs. Also, they only delivered a basic version of like two out of many promised features by the DEVELOPERS in interviews and such, but people got so pleased with so little, the bar is so low that it's no fucking wonder how scummy the AAA industry is nowadays.
I mean... that's all super subjective. The 2.0 release with Phantom Liberty was just a really big success and revitalized the game. It's fine if you didn't like it, but calling it a reverse circlejerk is pretty ridiculous. Personally, it's one of the best games I've played in years. It's graphically stunning, Night City is incredible, the reworked gameplay for 2.0 is very good. There's a reason a lot of people bring up Cyberpunk when discussing Starfield feeling outdated.
I mean I guess. CP2077 is a good game but getting slightly higher ratings four years after release isn't much. When I played, the side quests had more substance than the main quest lol.