Open world || Witcher 3 || GTA V || What Should Fans Expect?

[ViJackie]

When Mr. Pondsmith described his night city to us back in early promo videos of CP2077, he set the tone
for a new world in development--both in his mind, for years, and in the CDPR studio--and set
the bar at a high level in terms of what the fans can expect.
But whose hands is this game actually in? What are the developers actually capable of and where have they
succeeded in the past?

I'm not a GTA 5 guy but when my friends say come on, I don't mind.
Only 33 hrs in steam to this day. I played it today for a couple hours, just meandering
and pulling any sort of tom-fuckery I can whether it be to gamble, kill my friends,
fly air planes, or pull a heist. But my favorite part was to drive 1st person mode in the night time, especially
with the snow setting they have now. Now what I did probably didn't even scratch the surface of what
open-world features Rockstar has to offer in that game, but honestly I get a headache trying to figure out
how many things there are to do. And I guess that's a good thing.

Now I think if any fans are expecting this type of open-world setting, then I think that's not realistic
of what CDPR can do. We should abandon that idea, for now.

And now what of Witcher 3? In terms of open-world....well theoretically there is none!
Other than having the ability to challenge an npc to gwent, all the time-sinks (other than the main story)
in that game rely on hand-placed side-markers, excellently-crafted side quests--of which there are plenty--and
a house which you can sort-of customize in Touissant.
Was the lack of an open-world in that game a brought-up problem?
I'd say no.

What makes Night-city urge fans to want a more open-world compared to TW3?
Because no one cares to explore a medieval mountainous setting scattered with
1-story dwellings and peasants?
As Pondsmith said it, we are seeing this "verticality" factor now in this game, and its calling fans to
want to explore it and pay attention to it more because of its scale and incredibly immersive setting.


What am I trying to say with this mini-essay after 80hrs in this game?
That I'm satisfied in terms of side-quests, main story, and hand-placed markers.
The sidequests in this game are fewer than TW3 but I guess the trade-off here is that they are
much longer in CP2077 AND that they focus on the development of important characters, rather than
day-to-day people in TW3. And i'm okay with that. Fuck the night-city people, they're assholes, and we're no charity worker unlike Geralt.

BUT, the setting is crucial here and the world needs more life. By its very design and intent behind it,
its calling for more to do and it is absolutely essential that it receives it in the future.

ty happy holidays

p.s. obviously this post puts all game-breaking bugs aside. That shit should be fixed first
Most crucially the optimization of this game across all pcs.

 

[lelxrv]

Witcher 3 had a fitting setting for limitations of it's open world. Geralt isn't an outlaw (most of the time), so he can't cause mayhem and there's no reason to build complex systems for that. Open world there is basically scenery that you can enjoy while you move from one quest marker to another. Cyberpunk, on the other hand, is entirely different story. For it to work in similar fashion they needed to create a game about someone like a police officer, who has to obey the law. So any action outside police routine and you get a game over screen. This way the city can be turned simply into scenery that you can enjoy while moving from one quest marker to another. But with freedom that the game and the setting advertise, you can't really survive on just hand-crafted stuff. You need more reactive environment.

 

[zorba1138]

TW3 had very basic crowd mechanics and there is a good reason why all the major story quest events in the cities were in their own little instance essentially TW3 always isolated the major story events from the open world and CP 2077 doesn't do as much of that.

In TW3 the combat was also done primarily outside of the major population hubs and overall the world was much less populated.

CDPR learned the hard way that making GTA is hard, it's quite clear that they faced a lot of technical challenges, I'm not so sure if the state of the game is due to the development of the main characters TW3 main and secondary characters were far more developed and you had more dialogue options. In CP2077 you have the same dialogue option regardless if you romance someone or not or if you even have the option to do which just reeks of a major cockup somewhere down the line.

The fact that every mechanic and subsystem in the game is also in a completely unfinished state indicates that CDPR switched their development effort towards something else.

My personal theory would be that during the development of CP2077 CDPR noticed just how successful and more importantly profitable GTA Online became.
They've talked about CP2077 MP and they specifically said it would be it's own independent release just like GTA Online.
The early mechanics they showed during the early demos were very interesting but one thing was clear most of them will not work in multiplayer and this is the core issue here.

At some point I think they've decided to overhaul the engine and the core game mechanics to work in a long term monetized multiplayer (both MP and monetization were confirmed in interviews by CDPR) and what we got as the SP component of CP2077 is essentially the alpha build of that.

The overhaul to support MP took too long and CDPR simply hit a timing wall there was no way to delay this game further because they needed to ship this game on PS4/Xbox One consoles and Dec 2020 is pretty much the deadline for that generation.

Delaying the game by another month would not have solved the issue, delaying the game by another year was impossible so we got what we got.

 

[ViJackie]

Open world there is basically scenery that you can enjoy while you move from one quest marker to another. Cyberpunk, on the other hand, is entirely different story. For it to work in similar fashion they needed to create a game about someone like a police officer, who has to obey the law. So any action outside police routine and you get a game over screen. This way the city can be turned simply into scenery

Maybe I don't quite understand what you're saying but I don't see why the city can't be enjoyed as it is right now.
But to your first point, yes, there is far less mayhem that can be caused in TW3 and far less to be worried about in terms
of how the engine performs.

To go back to my point, I think the scenery is there, just not the soul

 

[zorba1138]

Witcher 3 had a fitting setting for limitations of it's open world. Geralt isn't an outlaw (most of the time), so he can't cause mayhem and there's no reason to build complex systems for that. Open world there is basically scenery that you can enjoy while you move from one quest marker to another. Cyberpunk, on the other hand, is entirely different story. For it to work in similar fashion they needed to create a game about someone like a police officer, who has to obey the law. So any action outside police routine and you get a game over screen. This way the city can be turned simply into scenery that you can enjoy while moving from one quest marker to another. But with freedom that the game and the setting advertise, you can't really survive on just hand-crafted stuff. You need more reactive environment.

Unless you cheese and essentially exploit current broken mechanics (which are all of them) surviving MaxTac is pretty much impossible in theory, the border guards (I've jumped the wall by disabling the teleport) are unsurvivable even with "cheats" they and the turrets insta kill you.

If you cheese TW3 you could do w/e the fuck you want too, but both CP2077 and TW3 have the same "limitations" even embedded in the lore, there is little chance of you actually surviving an all out assault by NCPD + MaxTac in the CP universe solo either regardless of how much of a solo baller you are.

The fact that currently they are fairly easy to kill even at level 20-30 is probably the biggest disappointment the hardest ones are still the Trauma team because they don't scale to your level like the police does so they are always level 50 and no they don't drop their helmet sadly it's not an element in the game.

 

[lelxrv]

Maybe I don't quite understand what you're saying but I don't see why the city can't be enjoyed as it is right now.
But to your first point, yes, there is far less mayhem that can be caused in TW3 and far less to be worried about in terms
of how the engine performs.

To go back to my point, I think the scenery is there, just not the soul

In Witcher 3 not interacting with anything beyond quests is natural to the setting (you can't and you shouldn't because you're Geralt). In CP77 it offers you ability to cause mayhem, but the systems are non-existent. Like devs said closer to release (paraphrasing) "you can mess around but it's better not to do it and you will see why". Well, we can see why now, and it's hardly because, by the rules of the universe it's based on, you can't survive Max-Tac, but everything non-handcrated is broken or doesn't exist.

 

[ViJackie]

At some point I think they've decided to overhaul the engine and the core game mechanics to work in a long term monetized multiplayer (both MP and monetization were confirmed in interviews by CDPR) and what we got as the SP component of CP2077 is essentially the alpha build of that.

Let's say they had even 5 years to think about this (not counting pre TW3).
Wouldn't you expect CDPR to have seriously expanded its studio by now if they thought they were
going to tackle such a big project. Even a year wouldn't suffice to turn this boy into a worthy adversary
to GTA 5's online system.

If CDPR is in it for longer than they were with the 30+ patches in TW3 then we're looking at several more years of
development.

My point is that CDPR doesn't have to go above the call of duty. They are not masters of open-world
but are masters are meticulous quest crafting, and ground-breaking setting immersion that introduces
never-before seen sci-fi worlds.

Post automatically merged: Dec 28, 2020

In Witcher 3 not interacting with anything beyond quests is natural to the setting (you can't and you shouldn't because you're Geralt). In CP77 it offers you ability to cause mayhem, but the systems are non-existent.

Both Geralt and V aren't lunatics. But yet in both games there are options kill innocents--for Geralt those are only guardsmen.
But you're saying that you should be able to get away with a crazy V going on a kill spree. That right now is an issue to do spawning police and as you said a non-existent police/bounty system. That stuff can be patched.
Yet I don't understand, of course you will be more in danger than geralt can ever be because 2077's weaponry and lethality makes swords look like feathers.

 

[lelxrv]

Both Geralt and V aren't lunatics. But yet in both games there are options kill innocents--for Geralt those are only guardsmen.
But you're saying that you should be able to get away with a crazy V going on a kill spree. That right now is an issue to do spawning police and as you said a non-existent police/bounty system. That stuff can be patched.
Yet I don't understand, of course you will be more in danger than geralt can ever be because 2077's weaponry and lethality makes swords look like feathers.

If V isn't a lunatic, why is there an option to be one? But it's not really the main issue. The main issue is the most banal (yet very hard to do) mechanics like organic crowds reactions and cop AI are missing. And there's no way around it. You either do it well or structure your game differently, like more isolated environments, hand-crafted encounters, no free roam etc. like it was done in Deus Ex series.

 

[ViJackie]

If V isn't a lunatic, why is there an option to be one?

Geralt isn't either but I can still throw 5 simultaneous bombs at Anna Henrietta's guardsmen for no reason can't I?
The basis of their characters aren't determined by the player, they are predetermined by writers and thats how this game operates. If you wanna kill then kill, you'll just have to deal with the broken cop system atm.

How would being a cop change you killing innocents. The only way you can get a quick game-over screen is this way.

This convo is getting off topic

 

[lelxrv]

Geralt isn't either but I can still throw 5 simultaneous bombs at Anna Henrietta's guardsmen for no reason can't I?
The basis of their characters aren't determined by the player, they are predetermined by writers and thats how this game operates. If you wanna kill then kill, you'll just have to deal with the broken cop system atm.

How would being a cop change you killing innocents. The only way you can get a quick game-over screen is this way.

This convo is getting off topic

See the edited answer.

 

[zorba1138]

Let's say they had even 5 years to think about this (not counting pre TW3).
Wouldn't you expect CDPR to have seriously expanded its studio by now if they thought they were
going to tackle such a big project. Even a year wouldn't suffice to turn this boy into a worthy adversary
to GTA 5's online system.

If CDPR is in it for longer than they were with the 30+ patches in TW3 then we're looking at several more years of
development.

No one said they'll be successful at it but the direction they chosen is clear, they looked at GTA online and the money printing machine it has become and wanted some of that action.

And TW3 didn't had 30 patches even if you count all the PS4 Pro post GOTYE exclusive hotfixes.

Yes CP2077 has far biggest issues than TW3 had, I personally don't think they'll be fixed in the SP mode at least not the mechanical issues I do think that "open world" experience will be provided eventually through the MP mode if the studio doesn't collapses that is.

 

[alebersam]

I totally like the set up of the city, it's amazing and without a doubt its the best decoration for a game ever created. But for me it's just that a decoration, just like the ones in witcher, and i don't think it needs more attetion on that matter. I don't want to interct with the hundreds of unknow citizens, theres no reason for that, any effort should go on improved history characters, not random dudes.

The only thing a miss in the city is more normal interactions, like being able to sit in a bar and eat or drink (with should be easy as animations for that are already in the game from the cutscenes) sit in a club to see a stripdance, maibe some random minigame (cybergwent? ) and stuff like that...

By any means i think the should put effort in a crime and punish system, V isn't a cyberpsicho, this is out of the character. V is a merc, mercs work araund the edges of the law, but not directly fighting it like one man army, this is why when a mission is around do something clearly illegal, its set up to be hidden and not get caugh.

If you start killing random people in the middle of the street i can't care less if police teleport in your face or you get a directly game over screem.

 

[Salfin]

When Mr. Pondsmith described his night city to us back in early promo videos of CP2077, he set the tone
for a new world in development--both in his mind, for years, and in the CDPR studio--and set
the bar at a high level in terms of what the fans can expect.
But whose hands is this game actually in? What are the developers actually capable of and where have they
succeeded in the past?

I'm not a GTA 5 guy but when my friends say come on, I don't mind.
Only 33 hrs in steam to this day. I played it today for a couple hours, just meandering
and pulling any sort of tom-fuckery I can whether it be to gamble, kill my friends,
fly air planes, or pull a heist. But my favorite part was to drive 1st person mode in the night time, especially
with the snow setting they have now. Now what I did probably didn't even scratch the surface of what
open-world features Rockstar has to offer in that game, but honestly I get a headache trying to figure out
how many things there are to do. And I guess that's a good thing.

Now I think if any fans are expecting this type of open-world setting, then I think that's not realistic
of what CDPR can do. We should abandon that idea, for now.

And now what of Witcher 3? In terms of open-world....well theoretically there is none!
Other than having the ability to challenge an npc to gwent, all the time-sinks (other than the main story)
in that game rely on hand-placed side-markers, excellently-crafted side quests--of which there are plenty--and
a house which you can sort-of customize in Touissant.
Was the lack of an open-world in that game a brought-up problem?
I'd say no.

What makes Night-city urge fans to want a more open-world compared to TW3?
Because no one cares to explore a medieval mountainous setting scattered with
1-story dwellings and peasants?
As Pondsmith said it, we are seeing this "verticality" factor now in this game, and its calling fans to
want to explore it and pay attention to it more because of its scale and incredibly immersive setting.


What am I trying to say with this mini-essay after 80hrs in this game?
That I'm satisfied in terms of side-quests, main story, and hand-placed markers.
The sidequests in this game are fewer than TW3 but I guess the trade-off here is that they are
much longer in CP2077 AND that they focus on the development of important characters, rather than
day-to-day people in TW3. And i'm okay with that. Fuck the night-city people, they're assholes, and we're no charity worker unlike Geralt.

BUT, the setting is crucial here and the world needs more life. By its very design and intent behind it,
its calling for more to do and it is absolutely essential that it receives it in the future.

ty happy holidays

p.s. obviously this post puts all game-breaking bugs aside. That shit should be fixed first
Most crucially the optimization of this game across all pcs.

We were sold a bill of goods. Its about communication. They had way more resources and hands on deck for cyberpunk then with W3. They said all the right words, of course we thought they were going to deliver they always had.

It's not like the witcher at all, in the witcher you have the dynamic of humanity vs monsters/elves. Those are very important themes especially in Witcher 1 where you have to make some pretty big choices and end up with some pretty big consequences. Witcher 1.

Nothing matters in Night City. Lop your arms off for mantis blades? Fine. Whatever.

Do a mission and save vs sacrifice someone? Who cares.

Are you more machine or human? Lolz just mod allz the slots.

It shines during those side quests where you feel like a solo, like witcher 1-3 always shined during the monster hunts where you felt like a witcher. The story was always good, but the real meat and potatoes of the game was quaffing cat and descending into the inky darkness where mere mortals would not could not tread.

There are moments like this but they're so few.