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.
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.