Obviously they didn't "literally copy-paste" the fist fight codes from the previous games (i hope so).
If you compare a fist fight tournament match from the Witcher 3 with that fist fight seen from Cyberpunk, what difference do you see or feel other than the perspective change?
For me, i see that
- the enemies attack in almost the same intervals, and even in the same attack variations. This is a Cyberpunk world, why aren't the enemies have some augmentation for more impactful punches (could be indicated through simple smokes coming out of their arms or elbows), or speed boosters for dash. Well the boss from the animals gang did have a dash move, so does having a simple dash move make them a boss? come on !!
- the actions available at the player's disposal are literally the same, a light attack, a strong attack, a dodge/ sidestep, a basic kick. needless to say all the animations look lame and boring.
- the hit impacts feel the same, but even worse in Cyberpunk, when the player character gets hit, there is only a UI indication and a slight player character position displacement.
- when knocking out an opponent, he immediately falls down in the same fashion as seen in the Witcher 3, even the same ragdoll or rolling in pain animation. if there is a difference, i really couldnt notice it.
- strategy employed were the same, you wait for them to attack and then land a counter attack.
- collision detection and audio queues were extremely weird. And i don't think its due to the fact that the demos were played through a streaming media (similar to stadia and steam remote play), that would only explain the slow react because of latency/ping.
- when counter attacking, 3 impact sounds were played, but the actual contact points were just 2, the block and the attack. The third sound had no purpose other than creating a false psychological assumption that the fight was "fast paced" but in reality there were only two actions done there. I really didn't think CDPR would implement something like this.
Initially i was thinking "why is he stating the obvious", then i went to recheck how fist fights were in witcher 2, yea my bad there, i completely forgot that fist fights were quick time events in witcher 2 (its almost been a decade), but hey, the moves he does in witcher 2 seem way better than those in witcher 3, like the fast flurry punches.
Sorry about that lol, I suspected that you were talking about witcher 3, but since you repeated TW2 various times I took my chances.
Alright so now I'm much closer to your opinion about hand combat, on paper it's pretty much similar to TW3, except that I think many of your valid and undeniable criticisms are explained by what footage we saw. This was prologue content, we're looking at the stupidest and less capable enemies and at the most basic V you could get as a fighter. If as we progress through the game, we don't get new types of attacks or actions, and we don't face enemies with increased capacities as well, then you are 100%, but that's all hypothetical for now. While the witcher 2 did had better animations its just not gameplay anyway so you know already, its always the same with games: easy to make stuff look good if its just a movie.
And again about hit detection, sounds, feedback, etc., do keep in mind this is all footage far away from release, I'm expecting things to get a lot better when the game launches like with other games. 85% of dev time is implementing, creating, and making stuff function, the last 15% is making it good. If it doesnt get better, then you were right.
Lot of people feel that animations are the ultimate last and final part of developing a game, that might have been the case before, but now with motion capture, i dont think they would hold that as the literal last piece of development. every mechanic from siting to fighting has to be done in coordination with its animation.
I'm pretty sure CDPR doesn't consider these as WIP, who in their right minds would show WIP content to news outlets and in trailers?. I'd wager CDPR uses these 5 months to remove bugs like glitches, collision clipping, path finder, damage values, collision detection etc. I'd be more than happy if they do improve these combat systems and add animations. But i'm under the impression that they have already finalized these.
The early trailers from the witcher 3 have pretty solid and good looking mechanics. They did remove sliding and monster mounting as shown in the swords of destiny trailer, but there was never too much hype for those features.
Motion capture doesn't really change the process order all that much, you still start with a certain animation, whether captured or not, and you still need to polish it all the way til release. Remember Mass Effect Andromeda? that legendary trainwreck had both motion captured and hand made animations that were not polished sufficiently.
What I understand about making game animations, (I'm kind of a game developer but not on animation so bare with my limited knowledge of it), is that gameplay and controls always come first, and visual quality comes second (unless you have specific games that don't care about gameplay much like old ass creed games where interaction loops were super limited and it was more like triggering fighting mocap than actually being in control of each attack and so on). So what you do is: first you make sure the animations are appropriate and match with the game's logic, and then when that means you have a working playable game, you use the time you can to blend them and fix them without breaking the controls with additional delays or anything like that. This is why games always have that jank before release if they're trying to have gameplay with significant control over individual actions (instead of triggering a full combo or a grab), because they need to make sure the game works, that you can move and cancel moves with game design based timing, so animations will look like shit interrupted and all.
What CDPR seem to be making here, is hand combat with priority on agility, controls, quick reactions (opposite to what TW3 was btw with its clunkiness), and that is harder to make look good. That doesn't mean it has to look bad, but whether one prefers more something that plays good or something that looks good, is subjective. I personally prefer responsive controls and close one to one input to character action.
This is absolutely 100% work in progress, really, trust me on that, or ask some devs of any game. What you show and how depends on your marketing and dev process, but its ALL WIP, in all cases. CDPR has a history of showing honest and balanced footage in trailers and gameplay videos. Generally studios cherry pick what already looks acceptable and improve it as much as possible if its a specific demo for E3 or something, but at this stage where they already even let people play the game? this is not curated or controlled, its the real deal, and the real deal is rough.
TW3 early footage, look at the griffin hunt in 2014 for instance, even jogging looked bad vs. release, one of the most fundamental animations you're gonna see all the time in the game, and Geralt didn't even adapt to terrain inclination by then.
The purpose of showing trailers and gameplay footage are to represent to final product and make potential buyers interested in the game. It's marketing, i repeat, no one in their right minds would show a WIP content on their trailers and advertisements in any industry.
The purpose of pre release material is to convince potential buyers, but that's just the description of your ultimate goal, not of how you're going to achieve it. To achieve that, some try to show flashy graphics whether they're true or false about a possible release version, or maybe they conveniently avoid showing uncut gameplay, some features, unplanned AI behavior, etc. Others, like CDPR, do a balance of curated footage to hype and impress, but also with honest raw footage to build trust that this is a real product working in real time. Remember the debut trailer of 2018? some NPCs even lacked heads, literally, and they left that in. And like I said before, in the BEST scenario possible for the look of an unreleased game, its STILL not a representation of final quality at all.
If you check again previews for E3 2018 demo for journalists, you'll hear again and again, how a big part of why journalists were impressed is because they did show the game's problems and unpolished stuff along with the impressive visuals or whatever. Cause vertical slices or straight up fake pre-rendered footage have been used to fool press and people too many times. Basically, looking too good is suspicious (and can get you in BAD trouble if later you have to downgrade early yet real footage), and showing imperfections is part of a good and safe marketing strategy for a real product and not a lie.
In your exact words, I'm pretty sure there were more important things to be done in the witcher 3 than "Gwent" which is not anywhere even near the core mechanics of the game, and not even considered a side stuff mechanic. So please, CDPR are more than willing to put resources into side and non-core mechanics.
You know how detailed Gwent was in witcher 3. But shit like unarmed combat in cyberpunk "is the core mechanic" as it exists as a reliable alterantive in combat. Which looks extremely boring and dull right now. Unarmed combat doesn't have to be as detailed and complex as a fighting game. But it certainly needs more, and that's the point of this thread.
Oh you are completely right, I don't think CPDR aren't willing to put resources on side stuff, some times they do, other times they don't, and it depends on the content and the game. My point is that they shouldn't do it much.
I don't quite agree with their decision of making GWENT detailed in TW3 (although we dont know how many resources it really took so it could've been really cheap, its still just programing and card art, not 3D animations stealing workers from sword combat or boxing), and I agree with you that unarmed combat in CP2077 is something far more important than that, yet also expensive to implement, tweak, and polish.
I never wanted it to be the best of every other AAA game.
But seeing sword animations like Skyrim (2011 game) and unarmed combat like witcher 3 (2015 game) and other similar features that haven't evolved at all are what disappoints me. And this is CDPR we're talking about, they are all about making ambitious titles. So expecting better or atleast on par with other good games isn't too much to ask.
Its disappointing, I hear you, and for me too, but their priorities seem to remain the same: story, graphics, choice and consequence, art quality in writing, music, and visual design. That's a tall order already to be industry leading. Game design, gameplay systems, and everything related to that, has always been a weak point in their games sadly. They're getting better, but its still not quite there. Its the first time they do 1st person, gun combat at all, driving, or a large city.
In a simple numerical example, let's say my expectations of cyberpunk's gameplay was 100
I wouldn't have cared or would have been satisfied enough if the game's actual gameplay was 50-80
But what i'm seeing on the trailers and gameplay footages are 20-40
that's why i feel so disappointed.
And with all the features being removed like vechile customization, trains etc etc
It's definitely not helping.
When you consider the hype we had for the game. Is it really unrealistic expectations?
Right, that sounds like an awful gap, I get it now. I'd say my expectations for gameplay are like 70/100, 100 being the best gameplay possible for this kind of game. And so far it seems like a 70 actually. Maybe less, maybe more, well to be precise in some places more, in some less. Let's not forget though, that gameplay quality does not always involve things that are easy to spot in footage, especially in an RPG.
The hype discussion is very complex and interesting, cause CP2077 is a special game that blends many different kinds of expectations that very different gamers could have. But we all have our darlings, so it depends on what were the ones that carried the heaviest hype weight for you. If gameplay was it, then idk what to tell you, I think most people that know this company never had high hopes for its gameplay. Now if we talk about the other stuff... thats a another matter.
Additionally, in these 8 years we've been waiting, the project changed a lot, and information was sparse. Originally, what we knew about the og CP2077 was insane, a perhaps impossible to make game (for any current company, even Rockstar), and that gradually got more and more down to earth. Remember it was meant to be pretty close to the pnp game?, with mainly optional quests forming your unique char's story instead of an overpowering main story like most AAA rpgs, and even third person + 1st person were considered.
Then that changed completely, and it got closer and closer to a witcher 3 structure RPG even if it's still very different and more open. If you didn't keep up all these years with the news, or you didn't know exactly whats the project they're aiming to make in the last few years, I can imagine that the reality of it must be very hard to tolerate. But if you did follow all this stuff, then idk how you felt about it.
Was there ever any substantial indication or "promise" by CDPR themselves that they were going to make a game with excellent gameplay that's massively improved over TW3? To me there wasn't, but we all interpret stuff differently, so fair enough I can't say whether your expectations were unrealistic. Other than CDPR, it is true press and gamers overhyped this thing incredibly, so that makes it harder to get a grip of what the company actually meant and had the capacity to do.
I always pay close attention to what the devs say, and especially to what they DON'T say, that reveals the truth the same if not more.
