For a second, I thought you were talking about our Romanian commentator but then I remembered that's the actual name of the MC of this game..
What saved Cyberpunk was Edgerunners, that reinvigorated attention to it and the timing for was good as it had been patched a lot by then. That game just promised too much and didn't meet the high expectations set, like No man's sky or Fallout 76. They aren't bad games NOW but first impressions matter.
Cyberpunk’s biggest problem is actually its story. It’s garbage. The plot is garbage. The characters are garbage. The dialogue is garbage. This was obscured by all of the bugs and unfinished mechanics. Now that the game is mostly fixed, it still has a bad story. No fixing that.
That's one of the things I've heard, it has the same problem as Fallout 4 (very lackluster story but fun gameplay especially if you like building) which is probably why people latched onto Edgerunners so had because that WAS a good story.
They should've probably done the GTA online thing of being a mute character that is in the places where shit happens.
The playable prologue in cyberpunk 2077 has you “becoming a criminal”, but then the game takes control away from you and shows a cinematic montage of all the shit you did to first establish yourself as a criminal. Making friends and enemies, learning the city and the culture, earning your reputation, years of grinding - all that fun foundational storytelling is delivered to you passively in an in-engine cutscene. It’s one of the dumbest story decisions I’ve ever seen. That shit should have been the game. Instead, there’s a massive time jump paving over the most important part of the story, and then you have no proper investment in the characters when the “real story” begins.
Not to mention that they also take away your choice in cybernetics/humanity.
There is no story to be told about staying a pure flesh suit, or developing psychosis as a chrome-head. That should have been the main crux of the story, like it was in Edgerunners.
I think they got too used to having a premade character like Geralt. In Cyberpunk it should have been treated like you were generic, more like Skyrim. The most you can really customize Geralt is his hair, clothes, and some preferences he has. The main character of Cyberpunk could have been anybody, but the story does not reflect that.
The Witcher was also about a white man being an outcast bounty hunter within a European society. Cyberpunk isn't nearly as appealing.
They were always going to be hamstrung once they started taking DEI nonsense into the equation. The minute they announced the removal of gender from the character creator and stated they were going to be more "inclusive" it was obvious the story was going to be maimed as a result, because you can't tell a compelling story without conflict, and conflict has to involve uncomfortable stances one way or another if it doesn't involve a generic war setting.
We saw the exact same thing happen with Starfield -- a game where your character was a blank slate, but they were so intent on not offending anyone, they had nothing to say either through the characters or the scenarios. It was all just generic.
It was funny because the one storyline that tried to get into the weeds of Night City's depravity resulted in people complaining about the story being too dark -- I think it was the Evelyn character who committed suicide after being gangraped/abused and used for dark web content after she was kidnapped?
Whether as a premade character or as a blank slate, the game just seems really slapped together, and it has no grounded character tone or consistency to its world. In many ways it feels like a giant modded version of GTA V with better graphics.
Everyone jumped on Keanu Reeves' nuts but not only is he as wooden and lifeless when voice acting as he is when regular acting, but Johnny Silverhand is also just a shitty, cringy character.
Even if they wanted to expand on it hardcore as you say, do they even have the skill to fix it? We know that they want the ESG fun money since they are starting to make those reports, which is another indication that the profits are not enough.
This is what normies like, they like standing in a fucking static box watching stuff go by and getting distracted by the pretty shinies which explains why game devs like them as customers so much more than gamers. The joke is with the transit system you can't even poke around inside the tram itself, they're being amazed by your character
This reminds me of Deus Ex Human Revolution and its subway but it had atleast a event happening on the sub xD.
The joke is with the transit system you can't even poke around inside the tram itself, they're being amazed by your character being completely static and switching to different positions with an animation sequence.
They're also four years too late to a system that actually lets you move around in the tram in real-time, and doesn't take any of the gameplay mechanics away from you... you can even get killed by it if you stand on the tracks:
https://youtu.be/8l4_brSbdRE
They had to make Vee as generic as possible. That way, they could write the generic story so the options really do not change the outcomes of the story. Why would they do this? Reduce the cost of voice acting and writing. Each option had to be voice acted by Vee. Each drastic branch would result in hundreds of hours of more recording and writing time.
Is it possible to make a branching RPG like New Vegas with a protagonist who has a voice? With AI voice generation, very possible. Without AI, not financially possible.
Does this excuse “choices matter” with your only choices are forms of Yes or maybe later? Fuck no.
If you’re a fan of RPGs, then AI is absolutely the future. Just look at the world of Warcraft classic mod that gives recorded dialogue to every quest in the game. It’s by no means perfect, but it is shockingly good - and fairly transformative - for what it is.
Chatbot and text to speech doesn't sound like advanced futuristic A.I either.
The trains should have let the player wander about or even fight or climb out them.
I don't know if I'm being stunning and brave by saying this, but I stuck a fork in Cyberpunk 2077 when the 40 minute gameplay demo came out. The one that almost everyone wowed about. If you compare it to the teaser trailer from 2013, the tone is completely different, and not for the better. Although the teaser was purely cinematic, it was interested in the darkness of transhumanism, but the entire gameplay trailer is about hustling. Almost every piece of dialogue is overbaked: "got news as big as my balls!"
The gameplay itself is far from the transformative systems that we were promised. It's forced first person in a setting where the entire premise is built on your physical appearance. The shooting is your standard pseudo-cover FPS system with or without the destructible walls, the melee is your typical awkward FPS spamming with or without mantis blade climbing.
I thought the 40 minute demo was crap because it was literally nothing new. It was just more of the same old same old. It may as well have been Call of Duty Black Ops 3.2.
I didn't get why people were so excited about the game based on that 40 minute demo when nothing about it was unique or original.
I also wholeheartedly agree with you about the 2013 teaser. That teaser is still one of the coolest game teasers made and it has more character and ambiance than the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 even with the newest patch. Just as you said, it promised a lot of interesting potentiality based on transhumanism, the militarised police state, and a cool dystopian environment. There was just so much there contained in that teaser that promised so much where the finished game delivered so little.
Took the words right out of my mouth. The teaser had things the game almost completely lacked: tragedy and poignancy. Oh sure, they have their sidequests, and boy does the main plot reach hard for pathos, but how are we supposed to feel for dyed in the wool hedonists bent on running their lives into the ground with vice, murder, and gadgets? What little is there to understand about them? Cyberpunk is defined by fantastical materialism, but counterweighted by the individual humanity and value of the people caught up in the dystopia. Without that, you only have exploitative kitsch.
The main hook should have been a deeper, open-world dive with what Dues Ex: Human Revolution touched on with the natural rejection of biomechanical prostheses and an attempt to overcome those roadblocks at the cost of humanity.
Once again, Edgerunners managed to touch on this pretty much perfectly without getting knee deep into 18th century German-influenced ontological drivel. It was about the human element, and something people could relate to -- and the loss of that element. It was ultimately a tragedy.
But you nailed it about the story in Cyberpunk 2077 -- why should we care about hedonistic degenerates? They offer nothing of value to life or society, but are simply a snapshot in the ever-devolving breakdown of society. Essentially, the "heroes" were actually the villains.
Also, the worldbuilding made no sense. They had a ton of people walking around all chromed out who weren't cyberpsychos, and yet many of the cyberpsychos were no more chromed out than average everyday NPCs and other named NPCs moseying about. It had no consistency or logic. Some people had their whole heads replaced but weren't psychos, but some people only seemed to have parts of their bodies replaced and were psychos. It was more unexplored and unexplained phenomena that just happened to be there that players moved through with zero consequence or care. I guess that kind of summed up Cyberpunk 2077 in a nutshell: corporate slop without consequence or care.
Cyberpunk 2077's sole purpose is to forcefully re-insert Johnny Silverhand into the world after getting his useless terrorist ass deservedly killed. Either in the flesh (where a little cybersurgery can be done to make him look like his old self) or as an almighty AI god who could probably just upload himself to a physical body anyway. And to have him be played by Keanu Reeves endlessly to attract the normies who are convinced he's a good actor because of what the cinemtographers, stunt coordinators, and stuntmen did in those John Wick movies. All so he can dominate and be the center of every major Cyberpunk story going forward. V was just the expendible loser we're stuck playing as to facilitate that.
For a second, I thought you were talking about our Romanian commentator but then I remembered that's the actual name of the MC of this game..
What saved Cyberpunk was Edgerunners, that reinvigorated attention to it and the timing for was good as it had been patched a lot by then. That game just promised too much and didn't meet the high expectations set, like No man's sky or Fallout 76. They aren't bad games NOW but first impressions matter.
Cyberpunk’s biggest problem is actually its story. It’s garbage. The plot is garbage. The characters are garbage. The dialogue is garbage. This was obscured by all of the bugs and unfinished mechanics. Now that the game is mostly fixed, it still has a bad story. No fixing that.
That's one of the things I've heard, it has the same problem as Fallout 4 (very lackluster story but fun gameplay especially if you like building) which is probably why people latched onto Edgerunners so had because that WAS a good story.
They should've probably done the GTA online thing of being a mute character that is in the places where shit happens.
The playable prologue in cyberpunk 2077 has you “becoming a criminal”, but then the game takes control away from you and shows a cinematic montage of all the shit you did to first establish yourself as a criminal. Making friends and enemies, learning the city and the culture, earning your reputation, years of grinding - all that fun foundational storytelling is delivered to you passively in an in-engine cutscene. It’s one of the dumbest story decisions I’ve ever seen. That shit should have been the game. Instead, there’s a massive time jump paving over the most important part of the story, and then you have no proper investment in the characters when the “real story” begins.
This is narrative 101.
Not to mention that they also take away your choice in cybernetics/humanity.
There is no story to be told about staying a pure flesh suit, or developing psychosis as a chrome-head. That should have been the main crux of the story, like it was in Edgerunners.
I think they got too used to having a premade character like Geralt. In Cyberpunk it should have been treated like you were generic, more like Skyrim. The most you can really customize Geralt is his hair, clothes, and some preferences he has. The main character of Cyberpunk could have been anybody, but the story does not reflect that.
The Witcher was also about a white man being an outcast bounty hunter within a European society. Cyberpunk isn't nearly as appealing.
They were always going to be hamstrung once they started taking DEI nonsense into the equation. The minute they announced the removal of gender from the character creator and stated they were going to be more "inclusive" it was obvious the story was going to be maimed as a result, because you can't tell a compelling story without conflict, and conflict has to involve uncomfortable stances one way or another if it doesn't involve a generic war setting.
We saw the exact same thing happen with Starfield -- a game where your character was a blank slate, but they were so intent on not offending anyone, they had nothing to say either through the characters or the scenarios. It was all just generic.
It was funny because the one storyline that tried to get into the weeds of Night City's depravity resulted in people complaining about the story being too dark -- I think it was the Evelyn character who committed suicide after being gangraped/abused and used for dark web content after she was kidnapped?
Whether as a premade character or as a blank slate, the game just seems really slapped together, and it has no grounded character tone or consistency to its world. In many ways it feels like a giant modded version of GTA V with better graphics.
Everyone jumped on Keanu Reeves' nuts but not only is he as wooden and lifeless when voice acting as he is when regular acting, but Johnny Silverhand is also just a shitty, cringy character.
No Man's Sky, with a catastrophic release, was totally fixed by the devs over the months, and then some.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e55R72et5ec
Skip to 5:45 to pass the ''pre-context'' and dive into the meat of the subject.
Even if they wanted to expand on it hardcore as you say, do they even have the skill to fix it? We know that they want the ESG fun money since they are starting to make those reports, which is another indication that the profits are not enough.
This reminds me of Deus Ex Human Revolution and its subway but it had atleast a event happening on the sub xD.
They're also four years too late to a system that actually lets you move around in the tram in real-time, and doesn't take any of the gameplay mechanics away from you... you can even get killed by it if you stand on the tracks: https://youtu.be/8l4_brSbdRE
Exact same thought.
I might buy it with him as the protagonist, gotta say.
They had to make Vee as generic as possible. That way, they could write the generic story so the options really do not change the outcomes of the story. Why would they do this? Reduce the cost of voice acting and writing. Each option had to be voice acted by Vee. Each drastic branch would result in hundreds of hours of more recording and writing time.
Is it possible to make a branching RPG like New Vegas with a protagonist who has a voice? With AI voice generation, very possible. Without AI, not financially possible.
Does this excuse “choices matter” with your only choices are forms of Yes or maybe later? Fuck no.
If you’re a fan of RPGs, then AI is absolutely the future. Just look at the world of Warcraft classic mod that gives recorded dialogue to every quest in the game. It’s by no means perfect, but it is shockingly good - and fairly transformative - for what it is.
Chatbot and text to speech doesn't sound like advanced futuristic A.I either. The trains should have let the player wander about or even fight or climb out them.
I don't know if I'm being stunning and brave by saying this, but I stuck a fork in Cyberpunk 2077 when the 40 minute gameplay demo came out. The one that almost everyone wowed about. If you compare it to the teaser trailer from 2013, the tone is completely different, and not for the better. Although the teaser was purely cinematic, it was interested in the darkness of transhumanism, but the entire gameplay trailer is about hustling. Almost every piece of dialogue is overbaked: "got news as big as my balls!"
The gameplay itself is far from the transformative systems that we were promised. It's forced first person in a setting where the entire premise is built on your physical appearance. The shooting is your standard pseudo-cover FPS system with or without the destructible walls, the melee is your typical awkward FPS spamming with or without mantis blade climbing.
William Gibson's tweet is probably the best summary of the game.
Same here.
I thought the 40 minute demo was crap because it was literally nothing new. It was just more of the same old same old. It may as well have been Call of Duty Black Ops 3.2.
I didn't get why people were so excited about the game based on that 40 minute demo when nothing about it was unique or original.
I also wholeheartedly agree with you about the 2013 teaser. That teaser is still one of the coolest game teasers made and it has more character and ambiance than the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 even with the newest patch. Just as you said, it promised a lot of interesting potentiality based on transhumanism, the militarised police state, and a cool dystopian environment. There was just so much there contained in that teaser that promised so much where the finished game delivered so little.
Took the words right out of my mouth. The teaser had things the game almost completely lacked: tragedy and poignancy. Oh sure, they have their sidequests, and boy does the main plot reach hard for pathos, but how are we supposed to feel for dyed in the wool hedonists bent on running their lives into the ground with vice, murder, and gadgets? What little is there to understand about them? Cyberpunk is defined by fantastical materialism, but counterweighted by the individual humanity and value of the people caught up in the dystopia. Without that, you only have exploitative kitsch.
Exactly.
The main hook should have been a deeper, open-world dive with what Dues Ex: Human Revolution touched on with the natural rejection of biomechanical prostheses and an attempt to overcome those roadblocks at the cost of humanity.
Once again, Edgerunners managed to touch on this pretty much perfectly without getting knee deep into 18th century German-influenced ontological drivel. It was about the human element, and something people could relate to -- and the loss of that element. It was ultimately a tragedy.
But you nailed it about the story in Cyberpunk 2077 -- why should we care about hedonistic degenerates? They offer nothing of value to life or society, but are simply a snapshot in the ever-devolving breakdown of society. Essentially, the "heroes" were actually the villains.
Also, the worldbuilding made no sense. They had a ton of people walking around all chromed out who weren't cyberpsychos, and yet many of the cyberpsychos were no more chromed out than average everyday NPCs and other named NPCs moseying about. It had no consistency or logic. Some people had their whole heads replaced but weren't psychos, but some people only seemed to have parts of their bodies replaced and were psychos. It was more unexplored and unexplained phenomena that just happened to be there that players moved through with zero consequence or care. I guess that kind of summed up Cyberpunk 2077 in a nutshell: corporate slop without consequence or care.
Cyberpunk 2077's sole purpose is to forcefully re-insert Johnny Silverhand into the world after getting his useless terrorist ass deservedly killed. Either in the flesh (where a little cybersurgery can be done to make him look like his old self) or as an almighty AI god who could probably just upload himself to a physical body anyway. And to have him be played by Keanu Reeves endlessly to attract the normies who are convinced he's a good actor because of what the cinemtographers, stunt coordinators, and stuntmen did in those John Wick movies. All so he can dominate and be the center of every major Cyberpunk story going forward. V was just the expendible loser we're stuck playing as to facilitate that.
I nominate you for Best Summary
Everybody uses paid DLC as a way to stretch a games profits.