Cyberpunk 2077 - new CDProjekt Red - The Bear and Badger

Paul the sparky

@g

I wish I could be on the same page. Sounds like you're going along the same lines as Dying Light, getting swept up in the atmosphere. But for all the great design and immersion going on there's more to pull you out of it. Goobs mentioned the rain against a car window earlier, which I've not really paid attention to but I'll accept it's great, yet if you get out of the car you'll find that the rain magically stops about hip height. It doesn't actually hit the fucking ground. Once you realise that it's another spell breaking before your eyes. It's less smoke and mirrors and more a half lit cig by a broken window pane, and that's across all aspects of the game. Choices, reactive world, gangs, cops, cars, enemy AI are all bobbins

mistercrayon

regmcfly wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

regmcfly wrote:

mistercrayon wrote:

Yeah it was a weird situation.

Spoiler:

They big up both and then it becomes nothing. The most unglorious chainsaw used for editing I suspect!

It's the diamond narrative structure. I bet it was absolutely designed that way to keep things reined in. Game presents same illusion of carving one's own narrative that The Walking Dead did a decade ago.

It was more that the two factions don’t show up again. The set up for the

Spoiler:

voodoos
is pretty heavy - it’s own braindance investigation, a whole area and so on. I suspect there was more in advance.

Personally I’m not really bothered about this illusion of choice. I see it as a problem if you scratch at it but if you play it as a one and done and do it instinctively then the illusion holds. It only really has to sustain itself that much for me because, much like in real life, you shouldn’t be able to see what the alternative choice looks like.

But it's not like real life - it's a game that people play to completion or to see everything. Let's not bring in a false equivalence like that when save states exist.

Games like this are ones that people put several playthroughs into because they want to see how things play out differently- in fact we have had people on here designing to do that. The three pathways at the start lure you into that. My big frustration is that none of that matters. Not. One. Bit.
It's not an RPG, it's a narrative adventure game. And none of us consume games in a bubble, and none of the above was in the promise of the game in the run up to release.

Yeah I’m not saying people won’t play the game this way (and there are some aspects that I think are regretted and cowardly implemented to support “gamer” mentality) I’m just saying if you play the game the way I do you’re less likely to be disappointed that there’s an illusion of choice.

I just think to play it multiple times and see problems then it’s playing the game incorrectly for the product that’s there.

Now obviously there isn’t a “wrong” way to play but I think if you go to a magic show and then frisk the magician it’s rich to complain that the ball only floated because of strings. So either play multiple times and see your choices don’t matter or play it once and pretend your choices do matter.

I know what a video game is and I know the former only leads to a worse experience.

Maybe they promised a different game to you and that’s a shame I think if you didn’t get what you thought you were going to get.

I must say whenever I was presented with a choice I was always tense about what I would do (I think the spirit of RPG is to suspend disbelief - even in DND you are lead on a path by a GM, so for me RPG is streetkid sees a guy and would help them or shoot them, regardless of whether you get the briefcase at the end)

Speedhaak

Paul the sparky wrote:

@g I wish I could be on the same page. Sounds like you're going along the same lines as Dying Light, getting swept up in the atmosphere. But for all the great design and immersion going on there's more to pull you out of it. Goobs mentioned the rain against a car window earlier, which I've not really paid attention to but I'll accept it's great, yet if you get out of the car you'll find that the rain magically stops about hip height. It doesn't actually hit the fucking ground. Once you realise that it's another spell breaking before your eyes. It's less smoke and mirrors and more a half lit cig by a broken window pane, and that's across all aspects of the game. Choices, reactive world, gangs, cops, cars, enemy AI are all bobbins

It's alright they're already working on 2.0 - a few weeks after release...

Armitage_Shankburn

Would appreciate if people discussing ending would make a separate spoiler/ending thread.

Verecocha

Don’t know if there’s been a number of updates but I must’ve had a week or so off and since coming back it’s ran absolutely perfectly. Only player 3 or 4 hours but it’s nice to not have any issues whatsoever.

Verecocha

It’s nice that I’m rushing whatever I have to do in the day so I can get back to this.

Speedhaak

Glad you are enjoying the game dude. Upon reflection, one of my main issues is with the inherit difficulty of marrying sandbox exploration with a city-scape design. I only realised this after thinking about it when I just couldn't put my finger on why organic exploration wasn't doing it for me.

In games like Fallout, Skyrim, Assassin's Creed or any open world game to date really - exploration is reinforced by it's environment. All of the aforementioned games take place in either a fantasy universe or a futuristic one where the vast amount of play space is wilderness. I think this is a very important factor and one that enables the game designers to facilitate more intuitive and reactive exploration of the game world without having to rely on markers, mini maps and the HUD.

In Skyrim (although this applies to any of the aforementioned games) points of interest are distinguished from the over-world largely due to the developers ability to draw the players eye to objects or structures that are unique to the game's main 'field / map'. In Skryim, you make your way to the top of a hill to see a tower off in the distance, or a fort down in the valley below. Caves, Cities, Huts and Houses all become beacons to the player as they announce themselves from the general game-world making it easy and rewarding for the player to just wander about, organically identifying potential adventures by just looking at your surroundings.

I found this the opposite and quite difficult in Cyberpunk. The city is so rammed (not necessarily a band thing for atmosphere) and busy that I found it very difficulty to enjoy wandering about without constantly having to consult the mini-map or main map. Due to the nature of a city being vastly the same structures stacked in my opinion produces this unfortunate side affect of making potential points of interest very hard to discern compared to the games mentioned above.

Just my two cents.

Subbax

Can you zoom on the minimap? I remember this being a gripe as I could've seen more things to do.

pantyfire

That’s me caving in and doing the end content before I’d finished all side quests.
I went the route I did because ‘friendz’ but I will go back and take the route I actually wanted to, I’m kinda happy with my path choice but damn the very end and the credit roll hit me in the feelz.
Feel a bit drained right now.

g.man

Well it's taken about 65hrs to get there, but finally, my wardrobe is coming together...

Also, mild apartment spoiler...

Spoiler:

Blocks100

@Speedhaak. It's an interesting point you make about Skyrim, Fallout etc. But even those games rely on the 'magic compass' to direct you to points of interest. Skyrim special edition and subsequent patches to Fallout 4 allowed the developers to substantially increase the draw distance, enabling the player to see far off fortifications etc. But the the creation engine in consoles still struggled to render far away objects all the time, so the player still had to rely on the HUD.

It's a pity cyberpunk didn't introduce its own version of the magic compass, but allow players to filter it according to their desired points of interest. Example, show me to the nearest cyber prostitute etc.

Speedhaak

I suppose what I was driving at was the visual language of the games and how they differ and subsequently how (in my opinion) it's harder to organically draw the player to potential points of interest or emergent gameplay when everything gets lost in the noise of a city-scape.

Standing atop a mountain or hill in any of the games I mentioned above and it's very easy to quickly identify places of interest. I just found this extremely hard in Cyberpunk as there is no 'negative' space to separate out the interesting places intuitively to the player.

stonechalice

Is anyone still playing this on base PS4? I know Jon was. Have they patched it to an agreeable degree? My mate has just bought this on PS4, then asked me if I knew what it was like. I felt bad telling him so just posted him the IGN review.

JonB

I've just gone back to it today as it happens. It's better than it was for sure, but still pretty ropey. I still get the occasional crash, but mostly it's lots of little things, like overlapping dialogue, floating objects and characters warping around to get to scripted positions. And general performance - still got the disappearing pedestrians and textures loading in late, and that overall grainy feel.

The improvements have made it more stable though, so I'm not having to constantly save and reload during missions because something really bugs out and breaks.

I wouldn't recommend it then, but it is playable.

stonechalice

Are the floating objects and overlapping dialogue etc present in the new console versions? I hear one person say the PS5 version is fine and another say it's a mess.

JonB

Someone else would have to confirm, but I think they are, yes. But frame rate, loading times and other basic performance stuff will be much better.

MattyJ

I've seen some floating items every now and then, haven't had dialogue issue though

Verecocha

I fucking love this game.

g.man

MattyJ wrote:

I've seen some floating items every now and then, haven't had dialogue issue though

I get all sorts of occasional dialogue issues. Missing voices. Overlapping voices. Voices with tunnel echo. Voices so quiet they're barely audible. If there weren't subtitles in this game, it would be a disaster trying to follow the stories.
Funniest recent glitch was getting a ride from the copper you help, and watching him just plough through pedestrians left right and centre, while driving me to our destination.
You do not fuck with the law in Night City.
Still loving it though.

pantyfire

On base bone the first patch vastly improved stability and texture loading. The second one made things worse again, but it seems to have settled down.
It’s most deffo playable on base old gen but it swings from looking like ps3 graffix to really very pretty.
If you can live without the amaze visuals then it’s a perfectly playable game.

MattyJ

g.man wrote:

MattyJ wrote:

I've seen some floating items every now and then, haven't had dialogue issue though

I get all sorts of occasional dialogue issues. Missing voices. Overlapping voices. Voices with tunnel echo. Voices so quiet they're barely audible. If there weren't subtitles in this game, it would be a disaster trying to follow the stories.
Funniest recent glitch was getting a ride from the copper you help, and watching him just plough through pedestrians left right and centre, while driving me to our destination.
You do not fuck with the law in Night City.
Still loving it though.

They also seem to not care much when I accidentally swing out wide on my bike and take someone out. They forget all about me a couple of blocks away.

Also still loving it

JonB

Just finished it again with a different ending. Think that's enough now. It crashed during the credits, of course.

Still, more satisfying conclusion this time.

Spoiler:

Verecocha

Just finished it for the first time. Chose:

Spoiler:

Was happy with the conclusion and my choice. Might try the other choices just to see how it all differs. Absofuckingloutely loved the game. Not sure about the very last scene with...

Spoiler:

Anyway, I loved it, and hope there’s some DLC to bring me back.

Speedhaak

The story and characters are great. I just can't looked past the fucking atrocious AI and bugs. But, when they fix it this will definitely be in my top 10 games.

ZMM

Finished the story too, it's just crashed during the credits. Kind of ironic.

regmcfly

Fitting, not ironic, right?

ZMM

Yeah, it's fitting.

But even without the crashes, wow, as a piece of immersive entertainment, and pure escapism, it was incredible. I didn't want it to end. This and Death Stranding have convinced me that videogames have a far greater power to sway one's emotions than any other entertainment medium. Books, movies, TV. For me, anyway! I look forward to what the next decades will bring because it's gonna be amazing, probably preferable to real life. The future's virtual! I couldn't have imagined playing anything like this 20 years ago.

b0r1s

Got my refund from Sony on this and have bought for £26 on PC. Think my laptop can handle 1080p with ray tracing. Only negative is the laptop fans so will go headphones on this. But it will be a nice reason to spend some extended time on my great laptop screen that is woefully underused.

b0r1s

Well it works very well. Got a city full of people, ray tracing on, DLSS all at 1080p on the laptop and it looks very pretty. Getting between mid 30’s and 50 fps. Debating about switching off RT but don’t really want to as the the lighting, shadows and reflections really add to the game.

No crashes so far but just did the opening mission.

Armitage_Shankburn

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