Thoughts on the story [Spoilers]

[Kysali]

So, I have been thinking about the story recently, also due to several posts on here.
So I wanted to take a bit of a deeper look at the story, at the game itself and how it meshes together.

The very first thing that immediately caught me as jarring, was the 6 months montage. After the Intro, you want to explore Night City, you want to finally be let loose and be allowed to explore this game world. But instead, the game tells you, that your character did that. But it doesnt let you play it.
Instead, your character is railroaded into a mindset and into a position, you have no say over.

This then becomes extremely obvious, when you meet Dex Deshawn, who asks you if you want to become a Legend, and your only options are three flavors of yes.
This left me with a sour taste in my mouth, I wanted to say, i do not want to be a Legend, because that isnt what I wanted to play. I wanted to be just another merc in a big city. Wanted to explore that city, meet people and just be a part of this world.
I wanted to play exactly that, what was replaced with a montage.

And this is crucial for a few reasons. The main stories main theme is that of Legacy, what it means to be a Legend, and what actually matters in life. The entire story hinges on the assumption, that the player and V want to become Legends, so that Silverhand then is held in front of them as a mirror of what becomes of legends.
You visit Silverhands grave, which is just a junkyard, without any markings or memories towards Johnny.
You get to see where the lives of his friends went, those that did chose to live safe but long lives.

However, Vs story hinges on the "Heist" mission. On "Being in the Major leagues". The entire idea of Johnny in Vs head is a result of that. Of wanting to be a legend, of wanting to pull the great heist and go from poor Merc to rich legend.
But as a player, I didnt have that wish, I didnt have that goal. I was railroaded into that mission, because I wanted to explore the game world.
I could not just explore the world in act one and decide to not go for the legendary route.

There was a significant disconnect between the motives of me as a player, and of my character. And this is, why in the end, the story didnt resonate with me. I never decided to go on this journey, I was forced to, by the game. I was made to expirience a story, I had no emotional connection to. All I wanted was to be just another Merc, I wanted to explore this city and get to know the people in it.
But the game would not let me, withholding it in a way, where it shows to me, that my character did, what I wanted to play... but that I wasnt allowed to play it.

So then of course getting a sense of "The result of my actions" in a promised death of my character, it felt unearned, it felt forced onto me. I did not care for a Legacy or being a Legend. And by the end of the story, I had no emotional connection to that idea at all. So when I was told that my character would die in 6 months... It was just cynical garbage. Because I did not chose to go that route. When I interacted with Johnny, he felt foreign, childish, and unimportant. he did not feel like a mirror of my actions, and of my goals in the world.
There was no narrative arc, that I could really get invested in, because these themes did not apply to me. And therefore should not apply to my character.

And this is what I feel a lot of people struggled with in the end, and why the story is poorly recieved. This story would work in a linear story game, where you see every angle, and then come to a conclusion. But it does not work in this medium. It does not work, if the player really only wants to see the world and explore it, if the player doesnt need to be told the moral of a story, as they wouldnt have gotten into the story, if they werent forced to.


It feels like all in all, it's another case of a good story written for the wrong medium. An open world game with character creation and everything, should let you decide how you interact with it, who you want to be in this world.
It has to let you decide, if you do the heist or not, without withholding the entire game from you, if you dont.
If I play Skyrim, I dont have to kill a single Dragon, and can still sink 500+ hours into a single playthrough. Because the world and the main character do not revolve around the main story. Instead, the main story is one of many options for things to do in this world. And if you really want to, you can just go out hunting for the rest of your life in that game.
If I play New Vegas, I decide who I side with, with the game literally letting me side with every major faction.
These two are quite opposite options for how to use the open world to your advantage in the story you tell. Giving you total freedom in story and gameplay, instead of having a linear story in an open world.

 

[Droladya]

V is a setted charactor.
You do have three lifepath, but it all point to one destiny.
They doesn't connect the lifepath to the heist so that you can hard to build the emotional linkage, it's a mistake.
But I think you'd better accept it's not you but a setted charactor.

And Johnney is not a legend in the mirror.
He is a jerk, he did some creazy shit and now what?
His body lying at a junkyard, his crews live much better and longer, his song has been forgotten, his fans are old and dumb.
What the hell legend he is?

 

[Kysali]

V is a setted charactor.
You do have three lifepath, but it all point to one destiny.
They doesn't connect the lifepath to the heist so that you can hard to build the emotional linkage, it's a mistake.
But I think you'd better accept it's not you but a setted charactor.

And Johnney is not a legend in the mirror.
He is a jerk, he did some creazy shit and now what?
His body lying at a junkyard, his crews live much better and longer, his song has been forgotten, his fans are old and dumb.
What the hell legend he is?

"V is a setted charactor"
Yea but thats my point. That makes no sense in a game like this. For the witcher games it made sense, because for one, the first two games were linear story games, so you got to know the character over a long time.
And then his motivations were extremely simple in TW3 and extremely well explained.

TW3 showed you exactly how Geralt feels about Yennefer and about Ciri. It needed no excuse to get you to try and go after them, because by the time you do, you have an emotional connection to the characters yourself.

Thats why I say, the 6 months are so crucial. That time could've been used to put the player into Vs mind. Into the idea of wanting to become a legend.
As said, as it is its a massive disconnect between what V is doing and what the player wants to do.
The reason why TW3 was so great was, because there wasnt a moment in that game, where you felt out of touch with Geralts actions.

But cutting out the emotional setup for the story makes it just not work.


And as for Johnny.
Thats the point of the story. Johnny was a night city legend, but look where that lead him. He blew up Arasaka Tower with a nuke, he has a drink named after him in the afterlife, and yet... his grave is a junkyard.

You not getting that, kinda proves that they failed to properly present their story.

 

[Droladya]

"V is a setted charactor"
Yea but thats my point. That makes no sense in a game like this. For the witcher games it made sense, because for one, the first two games were linear story games, so you got to know the character over a long time.
And then his motivations were extremely simple in TW3 and extremely well explained.

TW3 showed you exactly how Geralt feels about Yennefer and about Ciri. It needed no excuse to get you to try and go after them, because by the time you do, you have an emotional connection to the characters yourself.

Thats why I say, the 6 months are so crucial. That time could've been used to put the player into Vs mind. Into the idea of wanting to become a legend.
As said, as it is its a massive disconnect between what V is doing and what the player wants to do.
The reason why TW3 was so great was, because there wasnt a moment in that game, where you felt out of touch with Geralts actions.

But cutting out the emotional setup for the story makes it just not work.


And as for Johnny.
Thats the point of the story. Johnny was a night city legend, but look where that lead him. He blew up Arasaka Tower with a nuke, he has a drink named after him in the afterlife, and yet... his grave is a junkyard.

You not getting that, kinda proves that they failed to properly present their story.

The problem is, the story is start after the heist.
The main story is mess so that you think the 6 month is something important.
Acutally not.
"V got a chip that would killed him in someday and struggle with the inner confilict of Arasaka."
A beginning of legend, but not going as a legend.

 

[5irCastic]

I get what you're saying mate, but I think you are confusing open world games with open story games, or rather the idea of an open story game. An open world game is simply that, a world that is open for you to explore without limitations, and while the first act of cyberpunk isn't open world, the rest of it is. At this point most games, or at least role playing games, are open world. Open story however is different. The closest thing to an open story game would be something like a pure roleplay game, which are rarely seen outside of other, pre-existing, games as roleplay servers such as vr chat, gmod, etc. Red Dead Redemption 2 is open world but only has two endings with both having the same effect on the main character in almost the exact same way as V.

As for Skyrim, Cyberpunk can be played in the way that you play Skyrim. Granted, you have to first do the heist mission, but after that it's really just up to you. Skyrim could actually be seen in the same way with starting in Helgen, despite the length of time to go through Helgen is much smaller compared to getting outside of Watson.

Cyberpunk isn't really meant to be an open book, more like a limited choose your own adventure. Games like Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, The Witcher 2 and 3, and more are just like this. Cyberpunk's story has different endings (which admittedly could have been expanded upon in some way) while still maintaining the main point(s) of the overall story just like the previously mentioned games. Ultimately the point of storytelling is to instill emotion, something I think Cyberpunk succeeds in rather well, it portrays an almost hopeless world, a world where corporations sit at the top and everyone below are viewed almost as ants, sometimes being a nuisance but hardly consequential and I feel the endings all portray that perfectly. It really just boils down to preference in all honesty.

In regards to the whole montage thing and not being able to play after the ending, well we already know that the game isn't entirely finished. Even if it wasn't a scrapped idea, CDPR could easily do something like Bethesda did with Fallout 3 and the Broken Steel DLC if nothing else.

 

[Armedain824]

Having not played the Witcher series and having played both the original RPG of Cyberpunk with friends as well as the Fallout series (from Fallout 3 onwards), I can wholly agree with the OP.

1. Legend or not, the RPG is usually about the player(s) vs. the Corporations. - I was totally set on getting ready to take on Yorinobu and Arasaka, in the shadows, until I built up strength to fight them, expecting Mr. Silverhand to be the legend that pulls my fat out of the fryer so I could make a comeback.

2. Probably being spoiled by Fallout 3, 4 and '76, I was expecting to build my companions, maybe have one or two join me on occasion (okay, Panam and Judy did, but only for their sidequests, none of my own - No, I didn't do the companion follow glitch ) and have all of Night City to explore at my leisure - Well, the latter was SORT of true, but the former certainly wasn't, and Johnny doesn't really count since all he does is weigh in on some gigs with his own cynical rhetoric that you can only skip through if you're sick of hearing from him (and by my second play-through, boy was I!)

3. I didn't MIND the 6 month thing, but honestly, only in the Corpo lifepath did I really think highly of him. The Nomad and Streetkid meetings with Jackie set him up as quite the buffoon and I probably would have ditched him at the soonest convenience within that 6 months. "You and me, we have chemistry.." Sure, Jackie, sure... OH, look at the time, gotta go!...

I certainly didn't trust Dex and it was only logical that buffoon Jackie would think he was hot-sh** instead of being a hot mess. He mentions how cool Rogue is, but falls to Dex who we have no idea who or what he is. Then we're "rollercoaster"'ed into the Heist, having the chip put in our head and getting SHOT in the head, as well.

Yeah, the main story leaves a LOT to be desired and my third play-through is going to be where I totally dis' (diss?) Mr. Silverhand as often as I can because I'm going to be stuck with one of the endings, anyway, why not tick him off, where possible.
"Would you take a bullet for me?"
"H-E-double-hockey-sticks N-O, ya' self-righteous loser..."

Oh, and at least in the Fallout series (apart from the Las Vegas game) you can still explore when the main story arc is over (as long as you don't sacrifice yourself... )...

 

[Zannen_Desune]

I felt like the main story was fine and the side quests were interesting, but the balance in when the story and sidegigs were offered was wrong. The second half of the game feels excruciatingly lonely after a little while. Like, you finish a certain amount of stuff and suddenly Johnny goes mostly silent, fixers stop calling you unless you're right next to a gig, your romance options have been exhausted because you can only ever go on one date with a person... it just feels really hollow.

 

[Droladya]

I felt like the main story was fine and the side quests were interesting, but the balance in when the story and sidegigs were offered was wrong. The second half of the game feels excruciatingly lonely after a little while. Like, you finish a certain amount of stuff and suddenly Johnny goes mostly silent, fixers stop calling you unless you're right next to a gig, your romance options have been exhausted because you can only ever go on one date with a person... it just feels really hollow.

The main story are not completed, nor the game play part.
They cut the story off then stitch the ending up.
But there are many part can't be simply stitched.
While you clean the mission and gigs, NC became a ghost city.

 

[Kysali]

I get what you're saying mate, but I think you are confusing open world games with open story games, or rather the idea of an open story game. An open world game is simply that, a world that is open for you to explore without limitations, and while the first act of cyberpunk isn't open world, the rest of it is. At this point most games, or at least role playing games, are open world. Open story however is different. The closest thing to an open story game would be something like a pure roleplay game, which are rarely seen outside of other, pre-existing, games as roleplay servers such as vr chat, gmod, etc. Red Dead Redemption 2 is open world but only has two endings with both having the same effect on the main character in almost the exact same way as V.

As for Skyrim, Cyberpunk can be played in the way that you play Skyrim. Granted, you have to first do the heist mission, but after that it's really just up to you. Skyrim could actually be seen in the same way with starting in Helgen, despite the length of time to go through Helgen is much smaller compared to getting outside of Watson.

Cyberpunk isn't really meant to be an open book, more like a limited choose your own adventure. Games like Fallout: New Vegas, Fallout 4, The Witcher 2 and 3, and more are just like this. Cyberpunk's story has different endings (which admittedly could have been expanded upon in some way) while still maintaining the main point(s) of the overall story just like the previously mentioned games. Ultimately the point of storytelling is to instill emotion, something I think Cyberpunk succeeds in rather well, it portrays an almost hopeless world, a world where corporations sit at the top and everyone below are viewed almost as ants, sometimes being a nuisance but hardly consequential and I feel the endings all portray that perfectly. It really just boils down to preference in all honesty.

In regards to the whole montage thing and not being able to play after the ending, well we already know that the game isn't entirely finished. Even if it wasn't a scrapped idea, CDPR could easily do something like Bethesda did with Fallout 3 and the Broken Steel DLC if nothing else.

Yea.
I mean, i get that it is what it is. Its probably just my own view on ludonarrative story telling, that breaks it for me.
I do not like it, when the gameplay and the story go two entirely seperate paths.

And to me that is important, a good RPG should try to avoid creating a ludonarrative dissonance.

[EDIT: TL;DR: the story is great, and the open world are great. But they work against each other. The story isnt a good medium to engage with the gameplay and the gameplay isnt a good medium to engage with the world.
And essentially you want to have gameplay support the narrative and the narrative support the gameplay, as most great games do, be it RPG or action game.
This is especially the case here, because it is such a strong and tight story, that it actually suffers heavily from the gameplay, and simultaneously the gameplay being so open and exploration oriented suffers from the urgency of the main story.]

If you take something like TW3, as the finale of the witcher series, the first two of which were linear story games, then it works. We already know the characters, and the purpose of the story is self evident.
Meanwhile it also leaves a lot of openness to actually explore the world. There is no shortcut through the story, instead, your quest to find first Yennefer and then Ciri gives you a red line to follow. But it also leaves you some freedom to explore on your own.
And most importantly, it gives you a reason to go into all parts of the world.

The story while having some urgency through the worry about Ciri, it never has a deadline. It never tells you, that you have a lack of time to explore.

And this is where CP77 falls flat on its face. The main story right at the moment it opens up the world to you tells you, that you have only a few weeks to live. Now ofc in gameplay thats entirely irrelevant. You can skip forward in time for an entire year and the game will never actually kill V.
But it still creates this dissonance between wanting to explore and uncover mysteries around the world. And the story that tells you to focus on it entirely, as else you are going to be dead soon.

So, my point isnt, that "Oh its an open world game, it has to give me an open story" but more, from a ludonarrative standpoint, this story would work way better in a linear story game, where every part of it has time to shine. While for an open world game, something like New Vegas story works way better.

In New Vegas, you have to constantly make decisions for and against people and factions, and that has a tangible effect on the game world. Work for the NCR, and Ceasars legion will eventually attack you on sight.
And every conflict basically has this underlying choice, where you decide who you help.
And TW3 had that too, to a large degrees. Moral choices, if I want to help someone or not. If I want to kill a monster or not. Where I decide, how I percieve a person and creature. And where my decisions finally have consequences. Where if I rescue someone, they may slaughter an entire village, or where if I dont rescue someone, someone may kill someone else on a hunt for vengence. etc.

This is the level of story telling that I was expecting, because it actually creates a sense of purpose for the open world, within its narrative.

CP77 suffers from what most open world games suffer from. It has an open world for gameplay, but its story, and sidequests do not benefit from the open world at all.
And all of that creates this ludonarrative dissonance, between what you do in gameplay, and what the story assumes you do. And a good RPG should avoid that.
So imo CP77s story as it is, would have been better in a linear RPG, instead of an open world game.

 

[Zannen_Desune]

In New Vegas, you have to constantly make decisions for and against people and factions, and that has a tangible effect on the game world. Work for the NCR, and Ceasars legion will eventually attack you on sight.
And every conflict basically has this underlying choice, where you decide who you help.
And TW3 had that too, to a large degrees. Moral choices, if I want to help someone or not. If I want to kill a monster or not. Where I decide, how I percieve a person and creature. And where my decisions finally have consequences. Where if I rescue someone, they may slaughter an entire village, or where if I dont rescue someone, someone may kill someone else on a hunt for vengence. etc.

This is the level of story telling that I was expecting, because it actually creates a sense of purpose for the open world, within its narrative.

CP77 suffers from what most open world games suffer from. It has an open world for gameplay, but its story, and sidequests do not benefit from the open world at all.
And all of that creates this ludonarrative dissonance, between what you do in gameplay, and what the story assumes you do. And a good RPG should avoid that.
So imo CP77s story as it is, would have been better in a linear RPG, instead of an open world game.

You make some really solid points, yeah. I agree, completely.

 

[nadsh]

If the 6 months after the prologue allowed to flesh out V's goals and reasons for doing what they do, yes. But this could be done throughout Act 1 and Act 2 as well, just with some additional dialogue lines.

I remember picking some lines that made it evident that while for my V being a merc was better than the alternatives (corpo lifestyle or living away from cities), she didn't bought into the whole "legend" thing as much as Jackie did and definitely didn't see death as a reasonable price to pay to get into the big leagues (conversation outside of V's apartment while Jackie is eating and talking about Dex, talk with Jackie and Claire in the Afterlife, during the cab drive before the heist, etc). This aside the fact that some people get to be legends AND live in the game universe, as long as they compromise, have a certain amount of luck and are not incredibly naive about the whole thing.

The railroading of V's mindset towards the ending alongside the lack of different outcomes bothered me much more. There are so many possible reasons for V to want to live, both within and outside NC, yet we never get to determine them.

 

[Droladya]

Yea.
I mean, i get that it is what it is. Its probably just my own view on ludonarrative story telling, that breaks it for me.
I do not like it, when the gameplay and the story go two entirely seperate paths.

And to me that is important, a good RPG should try to avoid creating a ludonarrative dissonance.

[EDIT: TL;DR: the story is great, and the open world are great. But they work against each other. The story isnt a good medium to engage with the gameplay and the gameplay isnt a good medium to engage with the world.
And essentially you want to have gameplay support the narrative and the narrative support the gameplay, as most great games do, be it RPG or action game.
This is especially the case here, because it is such a strong and tight story, that it actually suffers heavily from the gameplay, and simultaneously the gameplay being so open and exploration oriented suffers from the urgency of the main story.]

If you take something like TW3, as the finale of the witcher series, the first two of which were linear story games, then it works. We already know the characters, and the purpose of the story is self evident.
Meanwhile it also leaves a lot of openness to actually explore the world. There is no shortcut through the story, instead, your quest to find first Yennefer and then Ciri gives you a red line to follow. But it also leaves you some freedom to explore on your own.
And most importantly, it gives you a reason to go into all parts of the world.

The story while having some urgency through the worry about Ciri, it never has a deadline. It never tells you, that you have a lack of time to explore.

And this is where CP77 falls flat on its face. The main story right at the moment it opens up the world to you tells you, that you have only a few weeks to live. Now ofc in gameplay thats entirely irrelevant. You can skip forward in time for an entire year and the game will never actually kill V.
But it still creates this dissonance between wanting to explore and uncover mysteries around the world. And the story that tells you to focus on it entirely, as else you are going to be dead soon.

So, my point isnt, that "Oh its an open world game, it has to give me an open story" but more, from a ludonarrative standpoint, this story would work way better in a linear story game, where every part of it has time to shine. While for an open world game, something like New Vegas story works way better.

In New Vegas, you have to constantly make decisions for and against people and factions, and that has a tangible effect on the game world. Work for the NCR, and Ceasars legion will eventually attack you on sight.
And every conflict basically has this underlying choice, where you decide who you help.
And TW3 had that too, to a large degrees. Moral choices, if I want to help someone or not. If I want to kill a monster or not. Where I decide, how I percieve a person and creature. And where my decisions finally have consequences. Where if I rescue someone, they may slaughter an entire village, or where if I dont rescue someone, someone may kill someone else on a hunt for vengence. etc.

This is the level of story telling that I was expecting, because it actually creates a sense of purpose for the open world, within its narrative.

CP77 suffers from what most open world games suffer from. It has an open world for gameplay, but its story, and sidequests do not benefit from the open world at all.
And all of that creates this ludonarrative dissonance, between what you do in gameplay, and what the story assumes you do. And a good RPG should avoid that.
So imo CP77s story as it is, would have been better in a linear RPG, instead of an open world game.

The main story could be better.
There is a very good motive that the chips is threat V's life but not in a hurry.
They can remove the ill part and give you a easy environment.
Find some way to save himself could be a slow and wide journey.
They can even give you a chance to use the pill and bring Johnney back at fighting, that would make it much like a super weapon and reduce the pression.
But the story is, chips hit you and force you move to the ending.
And Johnney indulged himself if V let him drive.
After that, you will realized your life is so short under the threat of chip.
In the end, tooooo short the story is, they build very strong conflict but have no space to make everything in sense.

 

[Witzzard]

If the 6 months after the prologue allowed to flesh out V's goals and reasons for doing what they do, yes. But this could be done throughout Act 1 and Act 2 as well, just with some additional dialogue lines.

I remember picking some lines that made it evident that while for my V being a merc was better than the alternatives (corpo lifestyle or living away from cities), she didn't bought into the whole "legend" thing as much as Jackie did and definitely didn't see death as a reasonable price to pay to get into the big leagues (conversation outside of V's apartment while Jackie is eating and talking about Dex, talk with Jackie and Claire in the Afterlife, during the cab drive before the heist, etc). This aside the fact that some people get to be legends AND live in the game universe, as long as they compromise, have a certain amount of luck and are not incredibly naive about the whole thing.

The railroading of V's mindset towards the ending alongside the lack of different outcomes bothered me much more. There are so many possible reasons for V to want to live, both within and outside NC, yet we never get to determine them.

Gotta agree.
The First Act works well enough with the story we've got. The aftermath of the Heist has quite a few more problems - e.g. Johnny not having a somewhat more consistent relation with V in side gigs; some plotholes and such...

So to me, while i'd like to see the 6 months possibly sometime. If i'd have to choose getting more later on with our current game, or that - i'd vote for stuff later on.
Though i'd completly be in favour of any CP2078 concentrating more on a story that invovles the street level heisting and gaining fame feel of what is shown in the montage and work up to the heist.

 

[Mushashi7]

So, I have been thinking about the story recently, also due to several posts on here.

...advantage in the story you tell. Giving you total freedom in story and gameplay, instead of having a linear story in an open world.

Well, yes, you are forced to follow the story in some sense. But as soon as you have been at Victor's you can slip away. Dex will be waiting for you no matter what. A patient man that Dex...

I did this and cleaned the entire North Side before I went on the Heist.

Yeah, you unfortunately have to do the Heist to have the lockdown lifted. And I must say it really tests my patience since you are bound to watch this entire scenery from the point where you arrive at the hotel where Dex's waiting and finally wake up at Victor's. It takes 50 minutes! When you've played the game more than twice you REALLY don't want to watch all this again. Problem is you can't just leave your PC and get a cup of coffe or talk a walk because you have to press 'F' now and then and 'W' to crawl through the rubbish on the junkyard. This is a major turn off to say at least. I hope they fix this and enables fast skip past it.
But as soon as you wake up at Vixctor's you can do whatever you want.