Cyberpunk 2077

[Velorath]

[Surlyboi]

Also, T.S. Eliot reference was, *chef's kiss*.

[Surlyboi]

Was this an utter shitshow on last gens? Fuck yeah it was but that’s fucking life in Night City. And hell, life in game development in general. Wear a helmet, get your fucking refund and put it toward a better fucking rig.

lol what

You know exactly what I mean. We've all been doing this shit for how long now? Playing games that actually choked the shit out of our machines and then playing the catch-up game with hardware. Software vs hardware has always been a goddamn arms race between lazy coders who got their hands on top of the line hardware and hand waved the lower specced shit thinking their optimization was far better than it actually was and hardware developers that positively threw the newest and latest at them to say, "it runs on our shiny new shit"

The cycle's been that way since at least fucking Quake and the fact that supposed gamers are still surprised by it is fucking ridiculous.

[Ashamanchill]

...

[Riggswolfe]

ahahahahahahahahahahahaha. This shit reminds me so heavily of Warhammer Online, or Age of Conan. Shit that has been done before but this company decides to reinvent the wheel. They do so as some sort of square or tetrahedron, while it's fanboys declare how much better it is than the circular nonsense that came before it.

To reiterate: ahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

You're comparing it to MMOs? That's silly. The game's fun. Some people don't like it. Shit happens but seriously, comparing it to MMOs? That's just plain silly. This game really only had 2 major issues that are impacting how people feel.The stupidity with old consoles and how their hype machine got out of control and promised stuff the game couldn't fulfill.

[Velorath]

Was this an utter shitshow on last gens? Fuck yeah it was but that’s fucking life in Night City. And hell, life in game development in general. Wear a helmet, get your fucking refund and put it toward a better fucking rig.

lol what

You know exactly what I mean. We've all been doing this shit for how long now? Playing games that actually choked the shit out of our machines and then playing the catch-up game with hardware. Software vs hardware has always been a goddamn arms race between lazy coders who got their hands on top of the line hardware and hand waved the lower specced shit thinking their optimization was far better than it actually was and hardware developers that positively threw the newest and latest at them to say, "it runs on our shiny new shit"

The cycle's been that way since at least fucking Quake and the fact that supposed gamers are still surprised by it is fucking ridiculous.

CDPR released Cyberpunk on platforms where they knew it would run like shit, and this was after making public statements that it was running better than expected on those platforms. They didn't send out any review copies of the console versions, and even for the PC version they prohibited reviewers from using any video other than stock footage provided by CDPR. It was scummy as fuck and beyond "wear a helmet" shit.

[Sky]

Was this an utter shitshow on last gens? Fuck yeah it was but that’s fucking life in Night City. And hell, life in game development in general. Wear a helmet, get your fucking refund and put it toward a better fucking rig.

For PC gaming, sure. For consoles, I'd disagree. And I place the blame as much on Sony and Microsoft for extending the console generation to the point that games developed for end-cycle machines ran poorly on early-cycle machines. The strategy seemed to be working ok until the next cycle starts... MS in particular I've heard has been particularly dicky about 'it needs to run on all xbox one cycle hardware'. It's a laudable goal to get your console to the point of PC scalability, but it failed spectacularly here.

I mean, I'm playing perfectly fine on a 2011 PC...but I've used my sneaky PC mastery to upgrade to SSD (albeit SATA) and the gpu is from 2014 (a year after Xbox One launch consoles). The graphical settings really make the game pretty nice at what I guess is extreme low res these days (720p), but the lighting and materials and whatnot look amazing in motion.

So it's partly on CDPR for not scaling down to that old shitty hardware but also on console manufacturers for requiring devs to support such ancient shit. I think even a 720p/medium settings mode for 1st-gen consoles would've worked fine to make it playable and avoid a lot of the kerfluffle (there's plenty of valid kerfluffing to be done, but this particular fluffled ker has made it out to be the antichrist of all games ever created, I guess).

[Velorath]

If developers can't get their games to run on the base PS4 or Xbox One then they should just release the game on next-gen consoles only. CDPR didn't have to release Cyberpunk on previous-gen consoles but with the next-gen versions apparently not ready yet the clearly didn't want to pass up the money. Bottom-line, CDPR knowingly released the game in the state it was in. I wouldn't even give a fraction of the blame to MS or Sony here.

[Fabricated]

The Previous-Gen versions were inexcusable and shouldn't exist tbh. They should've just cancelled them and sold it only on PC and next-gen.

[eldaec]

If developers can't get their games to run on the base PS4 or Xbox One then they should just release the game on next-gen consoles only. CDPR didn't have to release Cyberpunk on previous-gen consoles but with the next-gen versions apparently not ready yet the clearly didn't want to pass up the money. Bottom-line, CDPR knowingly released the game in the state it was in. I wouldn't even give a fraction of the blame to MS or Sony here.

Thing is there is nothing in cyberpunk game design that shouldn't run on older consoles, CDPR just needed to turn the settings down further. If I was running CDPR there is no way I could justify not releasing this game and taking the money.

[Hoax]

lol have we gone this soft?

-so you are too poor to own the new gen console or gaming pc
AND
-too ruled by hype to wait for the game to release and for word of mouth to tell you if its truly good (review embargo is meaningless bc you should never trust vg "journalists" ever)

in what universe do i feel bad for any of these children? how many games that could have been good/better have been ruined in order to dumb shit down for console?

polish my armor with their tears moment for me for sure.

[Velorath]

lol have we gone this soft?

I think it's more a sign of going soft when you start making excuses for the companies rushing development, releasing busted products, and misleading customers. Clearly nobody is holding a candlelight vigil for the poor people who only own a base PS4.

[01101010]

lol have we gone this soft?

-so you are too poor to own the new gen console or gaming pc
AND
-too ruled by hype to wait for the game to release and for word of mouth to tell you if its truly good (review embargo is meaningless bc you should never trust vg "journalists" ever)

in what universe do i feel bad for any of these children? how many games that could have been good/better have been ruined in order to dumb shit down for console?

polish my armor with their tears moment for me for sure.

Whoa... what? Sure there is too poor to own a next gen console, buuuuuut.... you can't really find a PS5 anywhere but eBay for a 100% mark up atm. And the PS5 version of the game is not even out . So I guess we have gone soft, but there are other variables affecting this.

[Count Nerfedalot]

Greed and hubris combined to result in a software development company trying to do more than it could afford to do well with the manpower it was willing to pay for and ending up releasing too soon and in a state even worse than the average bugtastic shit barfed out these days.  Surprising? No. Sign of the apocalypse? No. Excusable? Also No.

[Sky]

This is such a bizarre game. You can clearly see the masterpiece they were working on, but then there are so many cuts. A lot I can understand, clearly their scope was beyond their ability (edit: I mean in the time available!)

But for Legendary crafting clothing options, you get lamé hotpants. Luckily you also get a couple jumpsuits to hide your kinky little booty. But the lack of a simple themed outfit as the default unlock for crafting tiers is just absent-minded. It would've taken exactly the same amount of work to get it right. I'm also bummed that NPCs don't drop their outfits, missed a fun collectible minigame there, but I get that would actually require more work... I wonder if the outfit slot in the inventory that I've used 0 times in the last 100ish hours was for a cosmetic option?

Another cosmetic system that looks like it existed once is for weapons. Every now and again I find this cool-looking weapon (paint job, flames or w/e). So there had to have been a system scrapped for customization. I hope CDPR is able to recover from the public indignation and flesh these systems out in patches/expacks. So much cool stuff sitting just outside of the periphery.

The truly bizarre part is how good the game is despite all the cuts. Imagine if RSI had to ship after 4 dev years!

[Riggswolfe]

Most of you have probably seen this already but a an alleged dev has talked about the game and some of the behind the scenes shit that went down and cut content and such.

https://www.reddit.com/r/GamingLeaksAndRumours/comments/kpl567/alleged_cdpr_dev_talks_about_the_state_of/

Highlights:

The first two patches should come out mid-March, despite what's been said by top execs. There will be major departures from the studio in the coming months. Dev morale is on an all time down and Sony is roasting our asses due to the gigantic volume of refund requests.

I don't think this is right. I think they'll put out patches in January and February for face saving if nothing else. That said, those first few patches went a long way with bug fixing so if later patches are more intensive it might go back to March.

You'd be amazed by how much is already done. That "cut content so people finish the main quest" talk was all bulls***. Most apartments with "Closed (locked)" indications used to be lootable, we've scrapped 50,000+ lines of dialogue and I believe the June update will bring a whole lot of cut content back into the game.

Address the cut content as well. If they see that you guys are asking for s*** to be put back into the game, we might actually make the game we intended back in 2018. There used to be a huge underground part of the city that the public never got to see because it "looked ugly" to the execs. It was f***ing awesome and felt like the malkavian/nosferatu path on Vampire the Masquerade.

I'd be interested to see if dataminers can back any of this up as I'd assume that dialogue would still be in there somewhere. The idea of an underground would be cool. I suspect it may have needed lots of work. If this is legit I could see it getting added back in as an "expansion."

There was a whole AI routine with minor gang violence in those areas. Stuff you could sit back and watch unfold or directly influence. There was also a lot of drug use with kids that eventually got cut due to inside censorship. There were priests and hare krishna side arcs that got cut due to censorship. Miles wrote a sidequest where a Max Tac officer offed himself and you could take its place but it created such a complex detour from everything tonally that it got cut as well. I hope it comes back, because it felt amazing to get into their headquarters and hack s***. You'd see the police trying to operate and breaking down mid-arrest due to your shenanigans.

Hmmm...there is a side quest with some monks in the game right now. If this is all true it sounds silly that it was cut out.

We've scrapped two whole arcs because the mission cleaned a save due to a bug with character placement. We've also scrapped a big portion of the underground and sewers because of bugs. Night City had three different types of cab besides Villefort and drivers would hold whole conversations and give quests. That also had to be scrapped.

Police pathfinding script worked wonderfully until somebody screwed the pooch. All I know it is already being fixed. It was a major oversight, of course.

Morgan Blackhand's backstory and a nod to the Coporate Wars. The DLC's will add a lot to the crazy and cool ideas Mike gave us when we began briefing the project. You guys should have the complete game by the end of next year, if everything goes well. I really gotta go now. Take care."

More "if this is true it sounds good" stuff. I think if we see police fixed relatively quickly it'll make this post more believable. Anyway, grain of salt and all that.

[Khaldun]

Hah, if NPCs always dropped what they were wearing, I would be a much bigger murder hobo than I am already.

But yes, crafting is fucking weird and underthought.

The game seems so right also for a reputation system both with NPCs and factions--you really feel its absence as time goes on.

The depressing thing is that some of what's not complete or right probably can't be modded in or DLC'd in.

Does anyone know how to tell what your reputation with Johnny is? I feel like I should qualify for the "secret ending" but it doesn't seem to trigger for me.

[Riggswolfe]

Your rep with Johnny is the middle number at the top when you go into the screen where inventory and such is. If it says "You Only Live Once" you qualify for the secret ending. Left is your street rep, middle is Johnny and right is how close to death you are though it doesn't really seem to affect anything.

[Sky]

Your rep with Johnny is the middle number at the top when you go into the screen where inventory and such is. If it says "You Only Live Once" you qualify for the secret ending. Left is your street rep, middle is Johnny and right is how close to death you are though it doesn't really seem to affect anything.

So much of the UI is I thought that was progression through storylines. I'm also a bit baffled by status icons, I just noticed them recently since they're almost too unobtrusive. Still, no idea what is what and I just kind of ignore them completely.

[schild]

100% of that is believable since CDPR is always content first, quality like, fifth

[Velorath]

I hope this leak is false because "We were going to have more rooms of useless junk to loot", "We made a big area like the agreed upon worst part of that old Vampire game", "We were going to have some AI", and "The dog ate our police pathfinding" don't exactly send the message that there's a better game in here they can bring out.

[schild]

i said content first, not good content first

i've never seen *anyone* talk about X great scene or set piece in any of their other games

just lots of "why are geralts feet so baby smooth" and "hah goth gf"

[Riggswolfe]

i said content first, not good content first

i've never seen *anyone* talk about X great scene or set piece in any of their other games

just lots of "why are geralts feet so baby smooth" and "hah goth gf"

I get that you enjoy hating on things that are not Disco Elysium but come on. Witcher 3 is raved about constantly and is the main reason this game had so much hype. That game regularly gets cited as the best RPG of last decade in various polls and articles. It doesn't just make the list, it's almost always in the number 1 spot. People still talk about quest writing such as the bloody Baron quest and how good the characters are.

So for you to say that you've never seen anyone talk about great scenes in any of their games is just laughable. It's only possible if you literally avoid any talk of gaming that isn't on this board.

[Sky]

Peak hipster nonsense.

[schild]

It's only possible if you literally avoid any talk of gaming that isn't on this board.

ah

[Velorath]

To be fair, the Bloody Baron quest is pretty much the one example that gets posted pretty much every single time Witcher 3’s story gets praised. I get that there are a lot of people who love the story in the Witcher games (they’d have to love it because it’s sure not the gameplay that’s carried that series through 3 games), but having played through 3 myself I’m hard pressed to actually remember anything about the story. Granted I’ve played maybe a combined total of 2 hours of the previous games so these are not characters I’m heavily invested in.

[Riggswolfe]

To be fair, the Bloody Baron quest is pretty much the one example that gets posted pretty much every single time Witcher 3’s story gets praised. I get that there are a lot of people who love the story in the Witcher games (they’d have to love it because it’s sure not the gameplay that’s carried that series through 3 games), but having played through 3 myself I’m hard pressed to actually remember anything about the story. Granted I’ve played maybe a combined total of 2 hours of the previous games so these are not characters I’m heavily invested in.

There are definitely big story moments though some of them only really hit hard if you've played the previous games and/or read the novels. The events before, during and after the Battle of Caer Morhan for example. The Bloody Baron is definitely the go to example for "look atr how great this game is" but it's not like it's the exception and the rest of the game is mediocre it's just one of the quests that really stuck in people's minds for various reasons.

The point of my reply to Schild was his silly comments about how no one talks about great moments in their prior games. You only have to spend like 5 seconds on Google to find that that's far from the case.

[schild]

nobody googles "great moments in games"

my point wasn't silly, you can find anything if you go out of your way to find it but this isn't like fuckin deus ex, people don't praise their shit unprompted or outside of a place where people are doing explicitly that

basically, their stuff isn't *that* good and the gameplay is like, well velorath already said it.

[Khaldun]

I think we don't as much around here because that's more the kind of conversation people have with relative strangers on really huge forums. I mean, if I were going to start going fanboy on Witcher 3, I'd mention how good a lot of the sidequests are in terms of writing too--each smaller monster fight is excellent in terms of the sequence of investigation, the backstory, the specificity of the things you have to do to beat the monster. I'd mention quite a few of the story arcs once you get to Novigrad, too, though those sometimes had an annoying fetch-quest structure to them. The questline that finishes off "The Last Wish" and resolves Yennefer's relationship to Geralt is great. I think also I just like the degree to which even the minor characters seem to belong to the world in terms of mood and feeling. I think the grand story of the Wild Hunt and Ciri is pretty good if a more standard sort of thing. Skellige is fine but more conventional.

I think with Cyberpunk a lot of the POI quests surprised me as being rather good and more detailed narratively than I expected them to be.

[Riggswolfe]

You don't have to go out of your way to find people heaping praise on the Witcher 3. Like I said, it consistently gets mentioned as one of , if not the best RPGs of the last decade. It outdoes games from series like Mass Effect, Dragon Age, Pillars of Eternity and Divinity Original Sin consistently in both player polls and gaming articles. You personally may not like CDPR or the Witcher 3 but you're heavily outnumbered. Either you're wrong or they've somehow managed to seduce the majority of players, critics and journalists into thinking the Witcher 3 is the RPG of the decade. It is *that* good. Your opinion on the matter notwithstanding.

It doesn't just win Game of the Decade when placed against other RPGs, it sometimes wins even when put up against ALL games though not as consistently.



Sadly, they pissed it all away with the Cyberpunk marketing and issues on last gen consoles but oh well.

[Phildo]

Both of the DLC quests for Witcher 3 were fantastic as well.  Poor vampires, man.

[Khaldun]

But also, it's like a great ending, you know? An actual retirement to grow wine and have sex with a sorceress, etc.

[schild]

It is *that* good. Your opinion on the matter notwithstanding.

Post Disco Elysium, nothing is *that* good. Not even Deus Ex.

[Riggswolfe]

It is *that* good. Your opinion on the matter notwithstanding.

Post Disco Elysium, nothing is *that* good. Not even Deus Ex.

I barely remember Disco Elysium other than "kind of fun but so damned pretentious." Perfect game for a hipster. It practically wears a beret and smokes clove cigarettes.

[Tebonas]

At least for me, the Witcher games were always "I endure some parts of the game like the combat system and quicktime-like action scenes (fuck you, Dragon) for the excellent world building and story" deals for me. Cyberpunk 2077 is exactly the same for me, the combat is a 100 times better than the Witchers, for that it is glitchy as hell.

CDPR patched passable combat into Witcher 2 after the fact, I have the utmost confidence they patch out the glitches of Cyberpunk as well!