[Spoiler] Stout's Super Goons

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I never called Stout on my first play through, and now I am so glad, because going to that meeting makes me feel like an incompetent scrub. V doesn't have brain problems later from the Relic, it's from the writer that keeps hitting her on the back of the head.

Looking at that situation, I'm like, "Okay, I'll knock out her two goons and then we can talk on even terms." But nope. The writer has decided you have to be powerless in this scenario so they just turn off all of your abilities. Her bodyguards are immune to my Legendary Quickhacks, ignore grenades, and magically prevent me from even targeting them with a weapon.

You WILL get hit on the head and held at gunpoint. You WILL answer her questions or DIE.

And after she calls me a bitch, roughs me up, has her man plug into my brain against my will, and threatens to kill me, then I have no dialogue choice but to BEG her to let me help her with her convoy problem?

Hard Pass.

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If you are corpo you don't need to beg her to let you help her because you have insight into the corpo counter-intel playbook. You kinda threaten her and the threat is real because she knows if she doesn't listen to you, she is 100% going to get fired or worse.

As far as story requiring suspension of disbelief and going along with narrative conceits. Well of course. You are not a totally free agent when you participate in anyone else's story. Otherwise you might as well complain why you couldn't just sleep in when Jackie comes to pick you up to meet Dex. He finds another merc. You get to live as a scav exterminator for the rest of your days!
 
As far as story requiring suspension of disbelief and going along with narrative conceits. Well of course. You are not a totally free agent when you participate in anyone else's story.

I do understand that, but I still have problems with this scene.
1. This is a situation where V should be able to protect herself. The fact that she is unable to do so creates a break in the narrative.
2. It is fine to create situations where V is unable to initiate violence. However, I believe it is a violation of the player's trust to turn off their ability to engage in combat, and then have NPCs engage in combat against them while they can't defend themselves.

I think a designer can achieve the narrative goals of scenes like this without mashing the player's nose in the dirt while their hands are tied. When you decide to force a defeat on the player you should take extra care with how you do it. I don't think this scene made that effort.

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Yea its like in the trailer after v goes to meet Dex when the heist goes wrong, V puts up a huge fight and basically dismembers the hustle, and T Bug had to hack him to allow dex to kill him.

Then in the game V just gets knocked over the head and shot.
 
It's just a story, man. It's not literally happening to you.

All good protagonists are forced to eat shit sometimes.
 
Might I suggest that deliberately trying to break the narrative will disappoint you?

That mission is placed firmly within the "you're just getting out of the small time" framework, not the "Matrix entry to Arasaka" framework. If you're wondering why your level 50 V equipped with full legendaries is getting knocked in the head, perhaps because you're intended to be a level low-mid single-digits V with a funny t-shirt and a pistol at that point?

Saying "hah! I broke the game flow as hard as I could to prove the plot doesn't work if I'm a massively powered legend of the afterlife when it starts!" will, surprise surprise, make the plot about just starting to step up not make a whole lot of sense.
 
Otherwise you might as well complain why you couldn't just sleep in when Jackie comes to pick you up to meet Dex. He finds another merc. You get to live as a scav exterminator for the rest of your days!

I get your point. I want that as a DLC though.
 
I think a designer can achieve the narrative goals of scenes like this without mashing the player's nose in the dirt while their hands are tied. When you decide to force a defeat on the player you should take extra care with how you do it. I don't think this scene made that effort.
If I was writing the scene. I would have used a hack that disabled V's body. That way it makes more sense. Since they removed the whole take the guys gun from 2018. V doesn't have any real interactions needed. Just talk and have them lay on the hood. The scav's take all of V's junk in the revenge mission. And that's why it's actually hard. Directly depower the player through the story.

And not do cheap things. Like say the secret ending and it not allowing you to heal all the way up. Because they had no way to make it actually harder. You pull the V is dying card. You have to pull that card in ALL endings.
 
Can you hook up with Stout as a female? Asking for a friend who wants the best melee weapon.

I was disappointed female V can't meet up with Gilchrist afterwards.
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Like say the secret ending and it not allowing you to heal all the way up.

That's why that was happening! They still stood no chance against the hammer
 
Can you hook up with Stout as a female? Asking for a friend who wants the best melee weapon.

I was disappointed female V can't meet up with Gilchrist afterwards.
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That's why that was happening! They still stood no chance against the hammer
Yes. Think about it for a second. The only difference between the secret ending and other endings. Is you don't have two NPC characters. Which are programed to not properly help you. They will take out like one or two guys. Than go back into Storm Trooper mode. There's no difference between the secret ending. Besides cutting out the first run sections.
 
I stealthed most endings, Alt did the rest, but the secret one was pretty fun, guns blazing all the way. It wasn't as hard as I expected, i didn't max my pistol skill to get the final perk but I did need the second life and the other health cyberware. I didn't die though. I could have used more challenges like it in the game.
 
Saying "hah! I broke the game flow as hard as I could to prove the plot doesn't work if I'm a massively powered legend of the afterlife when it starts!" will, surprise surprise, make the plot about just starting to step up not make a whole lot of sense.

I did the content available in the starting area, bought a cyberdeck in the starting area, and made the quickhacks I was able to make at level 11. I don’t think that’s “breaking the game”.

But my point is that this encounter is frustrating because (IMO) it deprives the player of agency without sufficiently good reason.
 
I did the content available in the starting area, bought a cyberdeck in the starting area, and made the quickhacks I was able to make at level 11. I don’t think that’s “breaking the game”.

But my point is that this encounter is frustrating because (IMO) it deprives the player of agency without sufficiently good reason.
For me what scene tried to convey. Being against people more dangerous than me worked, but I guess it was easy to subscribe to that as my V was still quite green character at that point, don't remember what level exactly.

This is a good discussion though. How to make it work otherwise? Give player skill check, say Body 20 that is unattainable with 3+7 attribute points at the start. But that would still leave a matter open with higher level characters, like in your example, 10+ 10 additional attribute points from leveling up, would be enough to max Body.
 
This is a good discussion though. How to make it work otherwise? Give player skill check, say Body 20 that is unattainable with 3+7 attribute points at the start. But that would still leave a matter open with higher level characters, like in your example, 10+ 10 additional attribute points from leveling up, would be enough to max Body.

My thought would be to make Stout immortal, but make her guards normal NPCs. When they grab you, you could break out. The framing is very important in situations like this. I'd present it as something like.
"Play it cool and hear her out."
"Break out and fight." (could have a Body req)

Now the player has a choice. They can let the goon hang onto them and see where this goes, or they can initiate combat. If the player goes through the interrogation and gets roughed up, it's a choice they made, to see what they might gain from that route, or because it seemed more in character for their V.

If the player breaks free they might get killed. Or they might defeat the goons. If they defeat the goons, the conversation they have with Stout is more even. Probably starting with her saying she really needs to hire better help.

But for players who prefer, the goons can also be attacked from a distance if you scout the meeting, or really killed right away if you want. Then Stout is just standing there next to their corpses when you walk up, and you have that more even conversation from the get-go.

And I'd probably add some kind of benefit for players who played into the scene and let the goons rough them up. Like Stout gives them a piece of information in that conversation they don't get from the other one, because when she feels in control of the situation she's more loose-lipped. (Maybe she only sleeps with V later if she got to rough V up, because she's into that!)
 
In one of the early marketing trailers V gets an option to grab the gun of the bodyguards. And V has Jackie as backup....

It's really fucked up how they changed that.
 
My thought would be to make Stout immortal, but make her guards normal NPCs. When they grab you, you could break out. The framing is very important in situations like this. I'd present it as something like.
"Play it cool and hear her out."
"Break out and fight." (could have a Body req)

Now the player has a choice. They can let the goon hang onto them and see where this goes, or they can initiate combat. If the player goes through the interrogation and gets roughed up, it's a choice they made, to see what they might gain from that route, or because it seemed more in character for their V.

If the player breaks free they might get killed. Or they might defeat the goons. If they defeat the goons, the conversation they have with Stout is more even. Probably starting with her saying she really needs to hire better help.
There's cheap bastard way out of this, as there are two goons. While being able to break out from one with Body 20 other would have skill check for 20 Reflexes :p

But perhaps it could add flavor, V could get killed (likely) or making skill Body skill check could lead to "maybe you (the Militech) should hire better help". That would then possibly lead to different things.

Killing the goons is bit problematic as they are there to enable Meredith to achieve something, but ultimately it's all about faction, Militech.

I like your idea though. For most part I like how things work in CP 2077, like the Sinnerman sidejob, I feel there are really good reasons behind design of that. But then in other hand I hated how some things worked out in Mass Effect 3 back in the day, there were few situations there where player character was cut scene stupid or powerless and that was really jarring.
 
@brannonb

If I recall, you can't craft a legendary quick hack until Int 20, which in turn requires you be at a minimum of level 14 (7 CG max +13 advances.) which is Act II territory. But I digress.

The larger issue I think becomes one of how do you make players feel in someone's power in a game that is otherwise solidly power fantasy in it's mechanics and has extremely high dev requirements? I say this as someone who didn't realize Sinnerman had an extended plot on the first playthrough, because what could be more natural than wasting Vasquez? He has a big red health bar and he just shot bill! Even leaving aside the tendency for players to pull triggers as their preferred answer (especially in a game where dialogue is mostly for narrative, not for problem solving) players as a whole tend to try for "the best" outcome and usually define that one as where they are the bad ass and have the agency. Look no further than the ending outcry to see just how far people will scream their hair out if for a moment their artificial power or agency is reduced, or to the multitude of people demanding that difficulty be cranked because they rushed to make the perfect build. Players in general will move mountains to avoid feeling helpless if there is an option.

And yet, sometimes you do want a power differential to be clear. Cyberpunk runs on the idea that there are big people and little people, and woe be unto the little person who steps too far - there's a reason hat is a modern legend, and not biz as usual. You want two guards to be more than light calisthenics, or want Dex to actually be able to betray you rather than cause a boss fight that players will fight a million times to get the "best" outcome (or they scream bloody murder when even after winning they end in landfill...what an ass-pull! How could you take my choice! My V is WAY more badass than that!). In some games you do this by making all violence a potentially very bad day for the player if things go wrong, but those are not typically action RPGs. Cutscene power is how that happens in games where otherwise you are routinely slaughtering things. And at this point in the game, Militech is definitely supposed to be a heavy hitter that steps on bugs like you.

As an addition, it's funny how players want more freedom but not consequences - the logical response to "I'll snipe her guards" is "get in the truck and bail, flag V for violent demise at a later date", not "stick around for cool plot options that do the same thing but make my V feel like a bigger badass." Cake and eating I suppose.

Then we come to options-within-cut-scenes. Not gonna lie, I really like these - the Royce showdown is a great set piece. For all that, the central theme is that V is a bad ass. You pistol whip him, shoot him, fry his guards with a clever trick, basically do anything other than hand him your own cash - all glory to V. They struggle to handle situations where V is not.

On top of all that...in ye old days of Fallout 2 or these days Age of Decadence, giving the player options meant tweaking a written line of text and flagging some different 2D models with 4 facing options as hostile. Oh, and players didn't complain if after they killed everyone in vault city, vault city was janky. In a game like CP2077 every additional real option is a time consuming and expensive undertaking. Bugs happen. Delays happen. Crunch happens. Money gets spent. Other branching ideas have to be accounted for or more likely handwaved at some point. All the things people hate about your company for not being its ideal happen. And if you know you're coding in an option that will actively negate lots of other options since players go for bad-ass...well that can't seem too appealing. Especially because players work on a permanent N+1 with N being assumed as bare competence even if it was plenty of effort- "well, why can't I do THIS?! You LIED to me!" is a typical refrain.

Do I wish we had better interactions with NPCs? Oh, absolutely. I also realize that is no small ask. But to my mind we need far more cases where the player is put in their place through a variety of tools in those conversations, and not an expanded way to be even more badass.
 
The larger issue I think becomes one of how do you make players feel in someone's power in a game
that is otherwise solidly power fantasy in it's mechanics and has extremely high dev requirements?

This is an excellent point and one I think a lot about as it pertains to narrative design. As I mentioned above, and I think you agree, there are a lot of potential landmines along the path of removing player agency. When you give the player only one choice, and that choice leads to a bad outcome for the player, it feels bad. Like the player got punished for doing something they didn't want to do, that you made them do.

Someone else brought up the difference in the promotional cutscene where Dex shoots V, versus what happens in the game. That's a nice example too. Imagine that you had a cutscene in the trailer that was what happens in the game. V walks out of the bathroom, gets hit on the head, then lays on the floor looks up at Dex and says "Fuck you" while Dex casually shoots V in the head.

The cut scene doesn't look like that, because V would look like a careless punk who got thugged by a bodyguard and then let someone shoot them without even trying to fight back. Nobody would be excited to buy a game and play that character based on a scene like that. But that's the play experience.

But in the promotional cutscene V puts up a huge fight, dismembers the bodyguard, and is only taken down by someone who is clearly a skilled netrunner, who barely manages to hold V long enough for Dex to shoot them. V was a badass fighting to the last second.

That's a huge difference.

When you're going to defeat the player, it really helps to make the player feel like they were competent but overwhelmed, rather than a dummy who should have seen it coming.

Militech is definitely supposed to be a heavy hitter that steps on bugs like you.

See, that's not what's happening in this scene though. This isn't you vs Militech. This is you vs Meredith operating outside the system on some shit she should not be doing, with just the people she can trust to keep their mouths shut. She is isolated and vulnerable, which I assumed is why she's so angry and aggressive--she's scared.

As an addition, it's funny how players want more freedom but not consequences - the logical response to "I'll snipe her guards" is "get in the truck and bail, flag V for violent demise at a later date", not "stick around for cool plot options that do the same thing but make my V feel like a bigger badass." Cake and eating I suppose.

I don't disagree with you about the possible outcome of attacking the guards. I would be 100% fine with the outcome of attacking the guards being that Meredith bails and you cut off that storyline. Because then you'd have the chance to choose to walk into the lion's mouth in order to pursue that storyline, and you'd know you could have beat these guys up if you wanted to, but you've decided to let Meredith have the upper hand and see where this goes.

That's a meaningful choice and it feels very different to the player.

Do I wish we had better interactions with NPCs? Oh, absolutely. I also realize that is no small ask. But to my mind we need far more cases where the player is put in their place through a variety of tools in those conversations, and not an expanded way to be even more badass.

I really don't play games to have the experience of "being put in my place" :)

However, as I said, I think it is fine for players to be put in a position where they can't succeed. It's a vital part of the three act structure for the character to be down and out at some point.

What I object to is the way it is executed at places in this narrative, where you are forced into choices you know are wrong, that V should know are wrong. It's like watching someone in a film make an obviously stupid decision that gets them killed. You don't want to be that person. You don't even feel bad for them. That person is a dummy who walked into a bullet everyone in the audience could see coming.

So if the designer is going to force V to lose, the player/audience should be able to see how the situation wasn't winnable, or why V couldn't have seen that coming. It preserves (IMHO) the player's ability to identify with V.

These have gotten pretty long, but I appreciate the points you've made and thanks for taking the time to do so.
 
The game is very linear, like drones exploding when they reach a certain point, it's one of this game's many weakness.
 
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