This is mainly a thread to rant about Cyberpunk story spoilers so if you're actually interested in this story don't bother looking at this thread. Even then though I think it's fair to post a lot of fellow cynics here are pretty fed up of the state of RPG storywriting these days.
I feel like Cyberpunk 2077 is Mass Effect 3 all over again and even on steam people are making comparisons to what Baldur's Gate 3 are doing with the story with Bioware. I took my own advice this time round and watched the no commentary gameplay and honestly yet again I was not impressed lol.
Even when you do your best to take the woke element out of the story, you quickly realise why they shove the woke elements of the games in so hard and it's to cover up the fact that ultimately the 'choices matter' marketing is pretty fraudulent in some cases. Allegedly Baldur's Gate 3 doesn't even have proper epilogues for the choices you make according to posters among other things though to be fair and not spread bullshit I don't know if they have plans to patch that in.
V's story is pretty self-fulfilling at the end of the day maybe or maybe I'm being unfair on the writers because perhaps their intention was to make some 'dark' ending for V no matter what. However if that's the case then really he's not the MC of this cyberpunk universe he's just some generic NPC who's going to die no matter what in this case and even the implied good endings seem to have him be miserable because he's a greedy fuck that wanted to have it all instead of live his life happily.
Perhaps I'm not giving the writers enough credit and this is supposed to be a social commentary on the consequences of greed in a cyberpunk universe however I don't think these woke writers are capable of that much subtlety. It feels like the choice matter games are all fake, at the end of the day you can't just say no and walk or fight out of a situation which would hugely impress me.
To posit a scenario that I would have written for a story like this. I would have given the player an entire option to ditch the chip and not insert it into your brain. That would have been really interesting, you could even make it the way more difficult option to survive through because of all the factions wanting you dead. However, you'd still have the chip generally on hand and you wouldn't need to worry about terminal illness. Carrying the chip around would be like having a live grenade in your pocket.
At the end of the day though it seems a lot of RPG writers don't want the PC having a happy ending or being all powerful for some bizarre reason. I'm going to always be checking for that shit now if I ever see an RPG pop up I like the look of and yes it does bother me a lot. Just another cautionary tail of don't buy a new game within a month of release.
Main Rant: If writers want to start killing off the protagonists of game stories, then they should have the balls to make new protagonists to continue the story overall rather than milking the same story endlessly that just isn't that interesting. Honestly fuck these people, if they want to go on strike I'll be thrilled, I could write better RPGs than they can and I realise that's very ballsy of me to post but I'm pretty confident in my writing skills. My only issue would be funding for voice actors but I wonder if I could make a multi-choice RPG with writing alone.
I feel like games should reward you more with better endings if you take the most difficult options. There was a little known shooter called Spec Ops The Line, while it didn't necessarily have that difficulty option what you could do was interact with things in certain ways at the end and it was an amazing piece of storytelling because the game choices were real. You could choose to shoot the soldiers that come and collect you or simply walk up to them and be peaceful etc.
In fact I need to post a link to show what I mean lol it's a pretty obscure title because of how average the actual game was. This is how you do dark and gritty writing properly.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lauUirttVhs&t=690s
Of course you like SO:TL. Probably the most overrated of the “video games are art” set (because Gone Home isn’t a game).
Little known?, its been talked alot about it, It had its moments sure, but i still can not get over the section where you are forced to do some stuff in order to progress the plot. (see the phosphorus part)
A game that is now delisted and cannot be gotten official anymore (bloody copyright) Alpha Protocol is suppose to have good options in its story flow chart.
I found that the line was kinda insufferable.
Feel like a hero now? Except you forced me to do this to progress the game.
I liked alpha protocol, even for all of its buggy mess.
The Line is wildly overrated. It’s baby’s first subversive video game story, wrapped in a painfully mediocre gameplay shell.
If you have options based on morality, you can't force someone to do them to progress the game, like you said.
Maybe if you're in a scifi or fantasy setting where the action/consequences are not immediately obvious by the name, and you have it happen very early so that in the future when given the option you can choose whether or not too, but otherwise it's a subversive, trashy strategy that just makes me hate you for forcing me to do it.
There were no choices. The game gives you two mututally exclusive options and then berates you for not knowing the second one exists because in a video game you've been conditioned to not expect it. Except when it gives you no option at all and still berates you.
It also considers the "evil" choice to be shooting the civilians who just chased down, beat, and then lynched your comrade. Who you had to listen to his horrific and terrifying final moments over the radio.
But you are still the "bad guy" for shooting them, because its only "evil" to kill people when you are White. Sand Niggers are just poor idiots who are victims of misunderstandings and circumstance! But not you, for some reason you can't claim that. You are just evil for daring to...try and help.