Kofe Plays CP2077 [critical]

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So,, some of you know who I am and where I am coming from. But for those who do not, I've been here on the forums even before the forums got up. I've been posting about the game already when the forums were a "comments section" in the long since abandoned blog in 2012. I have been very vocal, and very critical about how the game seems to be going.

But now, I've got the copy of the game from someone - a friend, I dare say, with whom I've debated about things all these years - who trusted me with one, and he asked me to stream it. Well, I am NOT going to stream my game (because I do not know how to, and I'm not comfortable playing with an audience), so I will write about it.

This will be a very critical "let's play" -like endeavor to the game, and to me, I will shit on everything I deem worthy of shitting on, but I will also give credit when credit is due.

My idea is to roleplay as V and as him/her (I will roll a dice to determine whether male or female) I will take on what the game has to offer "in character", but I will also post my impressions. This means that once the game is out, inspite of all my criticism towards it in the past, I will delve into it, and do a "sort of" let'¨s play here on the forum. I will post about the things I do and do not - and do and do not like - and what I think about all that.

I hope that with all my work, I can continue this thread until the game is finished and the things I post will produce, is a finishded storyline with impressions of the game overall.

So thats that.
At 10th of december the journey will begin.
Thanks in advance: @Sardukhar
 
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I'm looking forward to read it on my free time, pal. Don't forget (if possible) to illustrate your post with a screenshot of your taste :howdy: Have fun !
 
I've never gotten into lets plays because I enjoy playing games not watching people play games. That being said, considering your approach and passion for the game, I'm interested in your thoughts on the game and after I've player it myself I'll likely compare my own thoughts to yours. Here's to hoping it's more enjoyable than not.
 
Ok. ~3 hours in so not much has had time to happen, but it's a start.

I might have to skip the ”in character” thing, because V is so defined that making a ”personal story” would be difficult.

I also wanted to take a few screenshots, but didn’t find a key for it.

My character turned out to be male. He’s a corpo and his stats are as follows:
Body: 3
Ref: 3
Int: 5
Tech: 5
Cool: 6

I chose hard as the difficulty, but I might turn it down to normal if things get too frustrating.

What I did was the intro, the mission about saving the woman from the tub and meeting with Dexter. And I am onto the Maelstrom mission. There's not much to tell about that, everyone's seen those missions. And so far there haven't bee any significant choicemaking or moments that are a result of previous choices.

But some impressions.

The game seems good for starters. Controls need a bit of getting used to as do the interfaces. Weapons seem somewhat inaccurate as they should for an unskilled character. It's not how I would prefer, but there is certain clumsiness to it that's better than what I expected. The game looks beautiful. The soundscape is a bit odd, as I'm sometimes hearing sounds of battle right beside me, but there's nothing happening anywhere.

Perks are a serious disappointment. Dull and unispiring +X% incremets on things, and at levelups I'm stressing because there's nothing that I'd actually want.

The bulletsponge enemies are also not hard, but simply frustrating. I love the fact that I am somewhat inaccurate with guns, but there's little reward in hitting someone because you know you need 20+ more of the same kinds of hits. Combat is generally also quite messy. It's fast and the the screen is very cluttered.

The tone of the game is excellent and the story feels interesting enough to follow. The AV ride at the beginning was very atmospheric, very Bladerunner like.

So far only few minor bugs. Sometimes the NPC's mouths don't move when they speak, the afore mentioned battle sounds I don't are supposed to sound as if they are right next to the player, looking at a mirror removes clothes and cuts the characters dick off, same happened at Viktors chair, while momentarily seeing myself from 3rd person perspective. There's also a weird delay in answering the phone, sometimes it feels as if the T key doesn't work, and sometimes V answers the phone before I even get to press T. Also, there doesn't seem to be a key to holster my gun.

I also don't really like how seemingly nothing was learned since the Witcher 3 dialog. There's a lot of talking, but fery few options and the choosable lines are sometimes not reflective at all of what comes out of V's mouth.

But so far that's all.

This game starts reeeeealy slowly gameplaywise, but the narrative side starts out so busy it's actually a bit hard at times to keep up with who's who and what actually happened.

I am having fun so far, but it is so early in the game that I can't make any definitive judgements. But it's a start.
 
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Ok. ~3 hours in so not much has had time to happen, but it's a start.

I might have to skip the ”in character” thing, because V is so defined that making a ”personal story” would be difficult.

I also wanted to take a few screenshots, but didn’t find a key for it.

My character turned out to be male. He’s a corpo and his stats are as follows:
Body: 3
Ref: 3
Int: 5
Tech: 5
Cool: 6

I chose hard as the difficulty, but I might turn it down to normal if things get too frustrating.

What I did was the intro, the mission about saving the woman from the tub and meeting with Dexter. And I am onto the Maelstrom mission. There's not much to tell about that, everyone's seen those missions. And so far there haven't bee any significant choicemaking or moments that are a result of previous choices.

But some impressions.

The game seems good for starters. Controls need a bit of getting used to as do the interfaces. Weapons seem somewhat inaccurate as they should for an unskilled character. It's not how I would prefer, but there is certain clumsiness to it that's better than what I expected. The game looks beautiful. The soundscape is a bit odd, as I'm sometimes hearing sounds of battle right beside me, but there's nothing happening anywhere.

Perks are a serious disappointment. Dull and unispiring +X% incremets on things, and at levelups I'm stressing because there's nothing that I'd actually want.

The bulletsponge enemies are also not hard, but simply frustrating. I love the fact that I am somewhat inaccurate with guns, but there's little reward in hitting someone because you know you need 20+ more of the same kinds of hits. Combat is generally also quite messy. It's fast and the the screen is very cluttered.

The tone of the game is excellent and the story feels interesting enough to follow. The AV ride at the beginning was very atmospheric, very Bladerunner like.

So far only few minor bugs. Sometimes the NPC's mouths don't move when they speak, the afore mentioned battle sounds I don't are supposed to sound as if they are right next to the player, looking at a mirror removes clothes and cuts the characters dick off, same happened at Viktors chair, while momentarily seeing myself from 3rd person perspective. There's also a weird delay in answering the phone, sometimes it feels as if the T key doesn't work, and sometimes V answers the phone before I even get to press T. Also, there doesn't seem to be a key to holster my gun.

I also don't really like how seemingly nothing was learned since the Witcher 3 dialog. There's a lot of talking, but fery few options and the choosable lines are sometimes not reflective at all of what comes out of V's mouth.

But so far that's all.

This game starts reeeeealy slowly gameplaywise, but the narrative side starts out so busy it's actually a bit hard at times to keep up with who's who and what actually happened.

I am having fun so far, but it is so early in the game that I can't make any definitive judgements. But it's a start.
Double tap the key to pull out your gun and it will be holstered.
 
I might have to skip the ”in character” thing, because V is so defined that making a ”personal story” would be difficult.

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Perks are a serious disappointment. Dull and unispiring +X% incremets on things, and at levelups I'm stressing because there's nothing that I'd actually want.

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The tone of the game is excellent and the story feels interesting enough to follow. The AV ride at the beginning was very atmospheric, very Bladerunner like.

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I also don't really like how seemingly nothing was learned since the Witcher 3 dialog. There's a lot of talking, but fery few options and the choosable lines are sometimes not reflective at all of what comes out of V's mouth.

I've selected what stood out the most to me of what you said with the bit about the perks being the most disappointing.

Just started the game for the first time I kick off my own adventure...after 8 years of waiting... here we go.
 
I'll toss in my impressions to if you don't mind @kofeiiniturpa .

I-7 3620 3.60 Ghz, 12 Gig of RAM, GTX 970
Runs surprisingly well at 1920x1080 with a mix of medium and high settings, shadows low, notion blur and ray tracing off, medium crowd density

I have about 20 hours in the game and just restarted having learned a few things from my partial playthru.
Citykid netrunner hard difficulty
Body: 4
Ref: 4
Int: 6
Tech: 4
Cool: 4

Graphically I'm blown away ... and this on a mix of medium and high settings ... any other game I've played I used ultra (I don't do action/FPS games).

The controls take a bit of getting use to, and as usual these days it seems the game was built for a controller but unlike many games the keyboard & mouse controls are serviceable. With a couple exceptions. The double-tap dodge (I find myself constantly dodging when my intent is to slightly tweak my position, particularly annoying when trying to be stealthy) and overall vehicle controls are horrible, to the point I just gave up on driving unless I really have to (and forget the racing minigame).

Combat is definitely twitchy but not unplayably so, I just accomplish less with more ammo but eventually they die. I'm not sure how much of the bullet sponginess to attribute to the enemy and how much to my own poor shooting. Since there doesn't seem to be any way to buy bullets I hope CDPR is generaous in it's drops. Smartguns are few and far between and I don't really expect to see many worth using till mid-game by which time why bother?

As @kofeiiniturpa said the perks are uninspiring, increases damage, increased crit chance, etc. all very FPS. The non-combat ones (stealth, crafting, sort-of hacking ... BUT hacking is really just an alternative combat ability) seem pretty OK.

Dialog options are mostly "ask a question" or "I'll do it", "I won't do it" I haven't to this point reached any of the "What is the nature of a man" dialogs so maybe ...
Overall well written and voice acted.

Bugs I won't bother mentioning because everyone is aware of them from other sources. Only one crash so far tho.

I give it a 9/10 due to the FPS combat and bugs. It's RPG, yes. But also a quasi-FPS (much less then total player control) , as expected, so I'm not down voting it much for that.
 
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Hey I saw you posted on are you disappointed thread and it seems you are. Would you say in your case it's too high expectations, buggy launch or just poor execution?

I feel like some people make reasonable claims like shit driving (though I can't really judge with all that laggin while in a vehicle) or virtual controlers used by disabled people not working, some make understandable like just a lil bit spongey enemies (but wtf did you expect it's an rpg with stats and levels from a dev that made witcher 3, balancing these numbers so it never feels spongey is hard) or perks (its fine for me, I read the complains about numbery perks in rpgs every time any kind of rpg comes out, no disappointment here cuz can't remember devs mentioning smth about unorthodox perk system, expected same numbery perks as always) and some are a little ridiculous like 3rd person cutscenes (though its an old case), the graphics looking worse than gta 5, music being bad etc.

The biggest flaw I see is not laggy/oversensitive driving cuz it can be fixed. It is not controler issues or minor bugs everywhere.
It is enemy AI. I didn't notice them becoming more agressive on higher difficulties and unfortunately it means that on all diffs it's equally bad. Sadly things like AI behaviour usually don't get a fix.


Right, one more question for you. I read somewhere that dialogues feel bad and awkward. Do you agree?
Ah, one more thing. I use that iconic pistol with additional headshot damage so I also can't really relate to y'all crying about bullet sponges. That baby kills fast my friend.
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Ah, would you mind estimating how many fps u have most of the time and posting a screen shot of your all graphic settings? Trying to find a sweet spot for gtx 1060 6 GB with i5-4690k. I prob will do some research what options are more intensive for 4 core cpu. Damn, i just realised how old this thing is and that i never cleaned it.
 
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I'll toss in my impressions to if you don't mind @kofeiiniturpa .

Feel free. I'd like to hear your thoughts.

Hey I saw you posted on are you disappointed thread and it seems you are. Would you say in your case it's too high expectations, buggy launch or just poor execution?

I have been disappointed at certain design decision. My "expectations" have been adequately low.

Right, one more question for you. I read somewhere that dialogues feel bad and awkward. Do you agree?

There are some a bit too tryhard parts here and there, but overall it is very passable - I don't require videogame writing to be Shakespeare. My beef with dialog is that there doesn't seem to be all that many options, V is voiceacted, and that the written lines don't always coincide with the spoken ones. I've also not yet found any instances of that "look around to get more choices" feature.

Ah, would you mind estimating how many fps u have most of the time and posting a screen shot of your all graphic settings?

I have had no slowdowns at all and my framerate has been set on 60.

Settings_1.png

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Mild spoilers ahead.

So 10 hours later, what has happened is that my (V's) bad luck that started from puking in a sink and getting violently played out from Arasaka in the beginning continues.

When I first met Dexter, hes seemed like a stand up guy. In a certain sense. Never trust anyone, that's the rule, and I thought I could play around it somehow. Opportunism is about making choices, and it seems I made a miscalculation about my prospects. I made a one kind of mistake by telling Dex about Evelyn, but I'm sure she would've fucked me over too somehow. For some reason it just seems appropriate.

I think at this point, Meredith is the only one of the "players" that hasn't fucked me over somehow. Yet.

But anyway, I needed the flathead in order to complete Dexters heist and it was at the possession of the Maelstrom gang. Fucked up nutjobs, the lot of them. Before closing the deal I met with Meredith, who seemed to be in some sort of predicament that had something to do with the melstrom. I managed to strike a deal with her. I pay the flathead with her spiked creditcard and let her finish up what's left of the gang.

So things went sour quickly when the card did it's job and I had to escape the Whole Foods facility. Me and Jackie snuk out of there, past everyone, past Royce, and made sure that as the Militech enters, they have something there to fight with. Along the way we set the gang's previous leader free from a closet where he was rigged to a mine with a mobility sensor. He was thankful, but decided to just sit down and stare at a wall.

All hell broke loose at the Arasaka penthouse. Some old goose got strangled and the building went on lockdown. Again me and Jackie snuk out of the building and I came to a realisation that Jackie must be a figment of my imagination because inspite that he is standing right in front of the enemies and even talks to me from there, nobody seems to make any notice. My mind must be in shambles because Jackie even moves through the barrels I'm hiding behind and throws them around with a terrible racket and still nobody notices, although since my covers have now flown away, they do see me.

Well, there's a silver lining since Jackie dies in what has to be the most melodramatic moment in my shitty little life. But that little bit of joy dies out as I get a bullet to my head, and then wake up in a landfill ready to be saved by a Japanese dude and then chased by some weird figures on motorcycles and then getting patched up, again for free, by Vik. That's some weekend for poor little V. And the cherry on top... I now have a ghost of a emo rockstar in my head, the removal of whom will kill me.

Life's not good for poor V, there're no breaks to be had. It's just one dilemma after another. And now I'm supposed to start figuring out how to survive.

Further impressions:

The narrative is really spastic at times. It seems to be in a terrible hurry to get certain things done and all of a sudden there are 20 minute cutscenes that jump around in time and place and where my role as a player is minuscule. The themes are solid, though, but... yeah.

The enemy AI is weird to say the least, but it helps because some of the levels are certainly not designed with proper stealth in mind.

Skills have started progressing now that the slowburn opening is behind, but there is still the thing about it, that I can not for the life iof me be excited about character progressiong, because it is so.... uninspiring.

Also the itemization is just as bonkers as it was on Witcher 3. I have running shorts in my inventory with 20 armor and cargo pants with 5,6 armor. And that's just one example.

The game is like an open world immersive sim and I am kinda having fun with it. But I can't get a decent RPG feeling from it no matter how I try. There is something about it that feels that it is just... mundane. Inspite the production values, very little actually stand out.
 
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I have had no slowdowns at all and my framerate has been set on 60.

Yeah, I have experienced slowdowns after patch 1.03 and haven't been remedied with 1.04, I have nearly the same graphic set up save for fog and reflections, also playing at 1080p, yet I was first comfortable at 55-60 outdoors, 70 indoors, now I'm pushing 45-50 outdoors, I attribute this to the fact that the engine is not too friendly for AMD users...

My Specs:
AMD R9 3900X
GTX 1080
64Gb DDR4 GSKILL 2400
SAMSUNG EVO 850 1TB SSD
 
Yeah, I have experienced slowdowns

I have no idea why my game 'technically' works fine and others don't. Not a clue.

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So after strolling the streets for some time and doing some menial tasks, attending Jackies funeral talking to "my pal" barry who I really don't know. I am suddenly at a situation that inspite my lousy streetcred and that I really am a nobody who knows and isn't able to do shit, I must be the most known person in the city and overworked as such too. My phone is ringing constantly as people whom I've never heard of are calling me and offering business deals and vehicles to buy and what not.

Poor little V, a former corpo who suddenly knows next to nothing about corpos or their behavior, is already, after getting shot in the head, a well known street level player in the city. I would guess that's a good thing, but I'm not really sure where to get started with all the chores.

The cops occasionally need my help with street level violence, but as I'm watching a scene where a bunch of thugs are sitting around and drinking, and amidst of them is a civilian rolling on the ground alone and screaming "Why are you doint this?", I'm not so sure the cops really need my help afterall.

Got a nice cybertattoo too whos funcition I have no idea of from an old woman. But I guess it's cool. Everytime I look in the mirror, my face seems like I'm being violently constiapted and a prolapse is emerging from my ass, but other than that, things seem relatively calm.

Evelyn is hidin and I'm supposed to find her. Bet she'll be overjoyed with me after I ratted her out to Dexter. And that Japanese guy, Takamura I think his name was - of whom I know next to nothing about, but who's suddenly my friend - is all over me on the phone with some weird oriental philosophies.

Things are probably getting tense in the city, since there are people on the streets and alleyways who start getting violent episodes as I approach them. I haven't showered in a while, so that might also be a reason why people don't want me near them.

But it's a sunny day in Night city and I'm off to do some more menial chores and search for that Evelyn, whose dyke friend told me her address.

Impressions:

As the game has opened up more, it gets more and more clear that the design work is unfinished. I wouldn't want to say that it's because CDPR wouldn't know better, because I relatively certain that they could. But it is what it is. And the weirdness of how the world works is very distracting.

It is clear that a lot of punches have been pulled with the narrative sequences and the "working" visuals, but it sorely reflects in how the game plays. I said it 8 years ago already... don't go overboard with narrative and visuals, focus on gameplay. But here we are.

It's a sad affair in that the game could have looked, played and worked overall better with a little less ambition and some choice design elemets being done differently.

So far, one of the things I am hoping for (in vain, I imagine) is that the awful way the vehicles handle would be adressed with a related skill that governs the accuracy of steering and how the brakes work. That even though it feels bad for starters, it gets better the more you drive. Not going deeper into what I think "should be" fixed yet. Gotta play some more.
 
Went on and helped a cop in distress. The goody two shoes, that I am. Poor bastard was being harrassed by three gangers in a sunny alleyway. The big sneak that I am, I hide behind a corner about five meters from the culprits, crouch and aim my silenced pistol at the head of a ganger. Poof, and he's gone. Such is life in Night City. One minute you're all cheer and heeey, let's bully a cop, the day couldn't be better, and then you're not, you cease to exist and some rugged sneak thief will loot your corpse.

The other two are clueless as to where the bullet came and start looking behind the barrles next to them, and then, I swear, they try to look if the culprit's behind sand grains on the ground. It's true. I could be there too. The cop still looks very sad and defamed. He's given up on life. I can not shoot any homeless people anymore, he must be thinking. I can not jack off to all those tranny advertisements alone in my shitty apartment anymore, he must be thinking. He just isn't "with us" anymore.

Once I poof the second of the three gangers, the last one finally understand that the bullets aren't coming from amongst the sand under his feet. He approaches the corner, he approaches me. I back off a few steps and wait until once he comes round the corner in front of me. He stares at me doing nothing for five seconds, and then I blast him in the head twice with a shotgun.

Nobody around cares. Nobody has flinched and nobody has calld the cops. And the cop I was supposed to be helping. You know, the one not "with us", is lietrally not with us anymore, he has vanished into thin air. So much for any thank you's. Not even a nod. Such is life in Night City. Good deeds pay no bills. But there's a silver lining. One of the gangers sport a fancy revolver, which I eloquently pocket. And I also attach a silencer and some holographic sights to it.

Later on Judy reveals to me that Evely might be in Clouds sucking some poor bastards dick. So I go on to check out. At the joint, a fuck doll freaks out at me for saying the safetyword after her behavioral chip makes her talk some bedroom philosophies, but she's not angry enough not to point to Ev's booth where some apparently very unprofessional coppers have left some surveillance footage. It reveals that the poor bird got an epilectic seizure. Good thing for her customer, she didn't have anything in her mouth. A colourful set of encounters lead me to some confused fag who then leads me to the joints manager. Aptly named Woodman.

Woodman is a cheerful chap who has sold the spastic little bird to a queery ripperdoc, to whom me and Judy head right away. The place smells like piss just like my now several days unwashed underpants and the guy who's supposed to be a doc, smells even worse. But I can sympathise with the dude. I for nothing else than to piss Judy off (and she is pissed). He has no reason to lie. And he then tells me that he, in turn, has sold Ev to a fixer. Poor bird gets thrown around like a bag of potatoes. Speaking of which... ah, but never mind that.

Like two master detectives that we are (it's almost like there was a yellow ball of kindness and helpfulness to always lead us exactly where we need to be, a guardian angle of sorts), we find out the fixer has some dealings with underground snuff porn ring, and that our little bird must be there. Bring on V, the master infiltrator and in no time I'm in the fenced courtyard of the facility.

Strange things happen. That's Night City. I'm crouched behind a container with my fancy new revolver and am aiming at the back of the head of a guard. Well, "guard" is a word too fancy for this guy, but anyway. Inspite of working fine just an hour ago, the silencer suddenly decides that now's not the time to be silent. The "guards" head disappears with a loud bang. It is my luck that the other "guards" at the courtyard - about five of them and the closest at the other side of the container - don't hear too well and nobody's alerted. But Judy does hear (bet she can hear a fly buzzing from 100 meters away) and decides to call me. There must've been some echoing too because she heard many shots, I only heard the one I shot, and the "guards" heard nothing at all. They don't even see their headless buddy. Or they simply don't care, because there's no way I'm that lucky that I'm infiltrating a facility full of deaf and blind "guards". But you never know what's going to happen. That's Night City.

I decide not to take anymore risks and go full stealth operator on the dudes with my bare hands. And soon enough, the courtyard and the first and second floors of the facility contain no other life than me. Jesus fuck, I'm good! I find a staircase going underground and Judy, who has just arrived after I did all the dirty work, wants me to guide her through the underground levels. She wants that, but still decides that standing in the stairs looking confused is what she should do. Pfft, women. I take a tactical break trying to figure out whether she actually wants to come with me or if the stairs are more interesting.

What I learn is that all snuff film makers are deaf and severely myopic. And so it happens, that I do not need to dirty my hands anymore, nor do I need a silencer. Fuck silencers. Only dicks and assholes use silencers. True infiltration connoisseurs shoot people as loudly as possible and still remain unseen. But hey, that's Night City.

So Judy eventually did decide to follow me to the underground and after some very loud sneaking, we find our little bird all plucked and nearly roasted. She’s hooked into a contraption and we need to unplug her and the thingamajick simultaneously. She starts counting. I patiently wait for her command to pull for a few seconds, but then I panick and scream NOW! Judy has the reflexes of a snake, and the birdie can grow a new set of feathers yet. And then it falls on me to carry her out. After getting to the elevator Judy fixed, I must've gotten a delirium episode, since I can't remember anything about the trip to her apartment, but Keahnny Silvercock teaches me to smoke on a cosy balcony, so that’s an epiphany of sorts. Never too young to start. What a fox, that one.

The coffin nails probably scramble with my brain even more, because I suddenly find myself desperately asking questions from an uncoscious girl and poking her while also talking to my head friend. Judy wants me to watch some braindances she found from the facility. Why would she want me to watch more snuff? What a silly lass.

photomode_15122020_002029.png

Our handsome little infiltrator.


Impressions:

The more I play the more apparent it gets that this game is far away from finished. And not only due to the technical hiccups, which I've had next to none in my ~20 hours.

I did some tryouts with the other two intros and it does seem that in accordnance to what follows, the game is developed mainly with a streetkid in mind, because that is what you become after the very short and seemingly inconsequential intros. Thematically and narratively speaking it is kind of the only one that "really" fits with the story. And corpo, which I am playing, is the worst fit since there's nothing to remind me of it aside from a handful of - also seemingly incosequential and largely flavorpurposed - dialog options. I dunno, maybe there is something in the long run, but so far... there is nothing reminding me that I was a corpo, aside from the afore mentioned.

At this stage, it almost seems that the game is at its best when not taken too seriously (inspite that it tries so very hard to be serious), which is a bit sad, all things considered. The setting is ripe with potential for a lot, lot more. And it's doubly sad because the "not taking it seriously" part is completely due to the gameplay, the writing part is just fine for a videogame. This could all be fixed of course, at least to some degree. But will it?
 
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