Shit. They're actually gonna make me watch an anime, aren't they... And on Netflix, too - really would rather not give them money after they wasted the potential of The Witcher's excellent short stories.
Anyway, gameplay looks fun. Don't like the trailer in terms of style - feels neither punk, nor futuristic to me. Almost felt like I was watching a Michael Bay/GTA/CoD campaign trailer. The gameplay snippets looked promising though. It just worries me the type of person CDPR seem to be targeting with the marketing and - ostensibly - the game.
On that note, still concerned about the RPG depth. Previews have been gushing over the supposed "huge" amount of perks, but from my experience main stream journos consider anything with even a hint of complexity to be next level. Plus, a lot of these perks sound like they're just slight increases to skills, as opposed to anything substantial. For example, in TW3 those were usually grouped under 1 perk with multile levels, as opposed to being spread out over multiple perks, which seems like it's the case judging by some of the previews. This means that the actual number of meaningful perks might be much lower than it seems at first glance.
I think one preview mentioned that one of the devs was talking about decisions with delayed consequences (a staple of the first Witcher game) and the team discussing internally the value of creating content that a lot of players won't see. If this is true, I have to say that it upsets me that this is even a discussion point - it's a big part of what made The Witcher special and I hope to see more of that, not less. If the open world is getting in the way, I'd personally rather lose the open world than the other way around.
Car sections look good. Some previews have concerns over the driving mechanics, others say it's fine. I'm not expecting iRacing levels of driving mechanics here, so as long as the dirving is fun and doesn't get in the way, I'm good.
Life paths to me are both good and disappointing at the same time. I like the idea in general and I'm glad they're doing it, but where I'm disappointed is that this has already been done before and I have seen no evidence that CDPR are trying to push it further. They seem to have just settled for the established norm in that regard. I expect more from them, personally.
Combat looks fine - nothing mindblowing but I don't really expect that from an RPG. The tighter the combat, the more I suspect its RPG roots are weaker, tbh. Point in case: ME1 vs ME2.
I cringed when V said 'hella'
. Teenagers talk like that, not adults.
Keep in mind, Night City is in California
Also, teen lingo today is the adult lingo of tomorrow and so on.
What does bother me though is that from all the previews and from what we've seen, there haven't been any normal-feeling characters. Everything I've seen has been of characters being turned up to 11, which is something The Witcher was able to avoid and do far better imo - creating believable characters.
The Cyberpunk approach (from the admittedly little material we've seen) seems closer to Blood and Wine or GTA/RDR's side content, where every character needs to be wacky or unusual in some way. In B&W it was fine because it was an expansion and it fit with what Toissaint is like. In Rockstar's games, it just means I can't take the side content seriously because you have a fairly serious main plot with good characters, and side content that seems like it's a parody.
What The Witcher did well was to put normal (but still compelling) characters in unusual situations and I hope there's more of that in Cyberpunk. I know it's meant to be style over substance in Night City, so maybe it's a problem with the IP itself, but it
is a problem. There needs to be a balance, especially when we're talking about a long game like this. Even the 1 corporate agent we've seen was over the top. Hopefully, it's a case of only seeing so little of the game, as opposed to something that's prevalent throughout the whole game.
But nitpicks aside, game's looking solid overall, November can't come soon enough.