Cyberpunk has the worst location story telling in recent game history

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HI guys!
I just finish the game but the amount of disappointment I had is unspeakable. One of the major issues I have is the location storytelling. In witcher 3, your main story comes with different locations during progress and you connect and talk with different people so you know what's going on there. Like free city Novigrad or Skellige. Ever Skyrim has a small story for each city so you care about the location. But cyberpunk has non of that, it's not in the main story nor sidequest. It's more like "Oh nomad so it's outside city and Judy live in a poor neighborhood because she's a street kid or oh Japan town so it sells Japanese stuff" It's all visual but nothing makes you know more about the location. I honestly don't care any location in the city because it all the same. CDPR should feel shame that some games 10 years ago like Dragon Age Origins do a better job on-location storytelling than cyberpunk 2077. Like how you fall from Witcher 3 which I think it's a master of location storytelling to Cyberpunk? What happens? Did all witcher 3 develop gone or something? This feels like a ub game.
 
I like it when i'm constantly moving around tbh. I guess you could do Fixer quests to learn more about a locale.
 
HI guys!
I just finish the game but the amount of disappointment I had is unspeakable. One of the major issues I have is the location storytelling. In witcher 3, your main story comes with different locations during progress and you connect and talk with different people so you know what's going on there. Like free city Novigrad or Skellige. Ever Skyrim has a small story for each city so you care about the location. But cyberpunk has non of that, it's not in the main story nor sidequest. It's more like "Oh nomad so it's outside city and Judy live in a poor neighborhood because she's a street kid or oh Japan town so it sells Japanese stuff" It's all visual but nothing makes you know more about the location. I honestly don't care any location in the city because it all the same. CDPR should feel shame that some games 10 years ago like Dragon Age Origins do a better job on-location storytelling than cyberpunk 2077. Like how you fall from Witcher 3 which I think it's a master of location storytelling to Cyberpunk? What happens? Did all witcher 3 develop gone or something? This feels like a ub game.
Game needs small hubs with hidden (umarked) long branching side quests chains unlocked via speaking to NPCs, bars of the game could do that for example. Such and old concept (big world, small villages / towns, full of things to do and unlock / discover), now for CP2077 we have one huge city, so we need small hubs in the form of places (small streets, bars, etc.) where the player knows he should come back from time to time and speak go every NPC to unlock engrossing lore reveling we made dialogue and new quest chains. Each hub themed according to it's location in the city, and having appropriate long quest chains that fit with said theme and lore of that location. This is what this game desperately needs: hubs, classic RPG hubs.
 
Regina and Wakako are teh only fleshed out Fixers that give any real insight to the areas they operate in. You never meet any fixer face to face outside of these. You can finish the main story and the only fixers you actually need are Wakako, Mr Hands...and Rogue but you get like one side gig for rogue.

Totally agree on your point theres a few throw away lines but there should be a face to face meeting with the Fixer with an introduction to the area to help ease the player in. Not just 'Hey go here I need someone killed' because you drove past it.

You get a text from Ibarra to come meet him in his chapel...nothing happens...there's no conversation and one time I went to his marker and he's not even there.

They use the Delamain quest to run you all over town to collect contacts, its funny how simple it is.
 
Game needs small hubs with hidden (umarked) long branching side quests chains unlocked via speaking to NPCs, bars of the game could do that for example. Such and old concept (big world, small villages / towns, full of things to do and unlock / discover), now for CP2077 we have one huge city, so we need small hubs in the form of places (small streets, bars, etc.) where the player knows he should come back from time to time and speak go every NPC to unlock engrossing lore reveling we made dialogue and new quest chains. Each hub themed according to it's location in the city, and having appropriate long quest chains that fit with said theme and lore of that location. This is what this game desperately needs: hubs, classic RPG hubs.
This.

A game world needs these anchor points to contextualize story and progression throughout the game world, especially in a large open world like Cyberpunk has. Their absence contributes to leaving Night City feeling shallow and empty.

Same thing with the lack of dungeons. Any time you do find anything while exploring, it can be cleared in a few seconds or at most a couple of minutes. Everything is just enemies standing around, either in a little encounter zone or a sequestered building. Zero depth or variety; homogeneous.

Fallout vaults, Skyrim nordic crypts and Dwemer ruins...Cyberpunk has nothing that even comes close. When I consider how atmospheric and haunting Night City is, and then imagine all the squandered possibilities, I could cry.
 
Yeah, I can't help feeling like CDPR's design team just didn't do their homework before starting.
And I think their QA department didn't get independent testers who'd never played the game before--much less worked on it--to check it before release.

Roughly 50% of the complaints I see boil down to, "Every other similar game has X, and X is pretty basic; why doesn't CP2077 have it?"
And a lot of the quotes from the devs seem to say, "This isn't what people are going to expect, but it's so cool, anyway!" or, "This functionality isn't important, so we'll leave it out, and players won't care because the rest of the game is awesome!"...and that just didn't turn out to be true for the players.
I think CDPR developed this game in an echo chamber, and didn't realize what the customers wanted.

That's my hypothesis and, frankly, it's justified given the evidence, the vibe CDPR has given off while discussing the game.
 
HI guys!
I just finish the game but the amount of disappointment I had is unspeakable. One of the major issues I have is the location storytelling. In witcher 3, your main story comes with different locations during progress and you connect and talk with different people so you know what's going on there. Like free city Novigrad or Skellige. Ever Skyrim has a small story for each city so you care about the location. But cyberpunk has non of that, it's not in the main story nor sidequest. It's more like "Oh nomad so it's outside city and Judy live in a poor neighborhood because she's a street kid or oh Japan town so it sells Japanese stuff" It's all visual but nothing makes you know more about the location. I honestly don't care any location in the city because it all the same. CDPR should feel shame that some games 10 years ago like Dragon Age Origins do a better job on-location storytelling than cyberpunk 2077. Like how you fall from Witcher 3 which I think it's a master of location storytelling to Cyberpunk? What happens? Did all witcher 3 develop gone or something? This feels like a ub game.

actually, if you read the fixer's gigs, and the emails, you find out each area has different set of events and background stories, flavor. If you wanted to see various world locations, thats just not this game. Its about a city.
 
actually, if you read the fixer's gigs, and the emails, you find out each area has different set of events and background stories, flavor.
Ugh. So much reading in this game! Some of those shards are huge walls of text.

If I wanted that, I'd fire up my Kindle.

This flavor should have been in dialogue or represented in the behavior of the NPCs; other games have done it. Like how Fallout 4 had all those tapes you could put in the Pip Boy and could walk around listening to it like it's an MP3 player. Way better than all that damn reading. I love to read, but...not in a game.

And it should be obvious simply from walking around.

San Diego and Seattle (to name the two I know from experience) definitely have their "wrong side of the tracks" and their "high-rent districts"; Night City is perfectly realistic in that respect... but it doesn't mean anything to gameplay, really. Not unless it's a mission. It's ultimately empty.
 
Regina and Wakako are teh only fleshed out Fixers that give any real insight to the areas they operate in. You never meet any fixer face to face outside of these. You can finish the main story and the only fixers you actually need are Wakako, Mr Hands...and Rogue but you get like one side gig for rogue.

Totally agree on your point theres a few throw away lines but there should be a face to face meeting with the Fixer with an introduction to the area to help ease the player in. Not just 'Hey go here I need someone killed' because you drove past it.

You get a text from Ibarra to come meet him in his chapel...nothing happens...there's no conversation and one time I went to his marker and he's not even there.

They use the Delamain quest to run you all over town to collect contacts, its funny how simple it is.
you can meet every fixer face to face except Mr Hands. Dino is sitting in a rock bar thats like a mini Afterlife, his style is generally more moral than the other guys, he doesn't like wanton killing, and his gigs overlap with corporate more.

El Capitan is trying to be an up and coming Padre/wakako, and he generally tries to keep six street and valentinos slightly off kilter.

Padre sits on a bench near the boxing match, and there's a lot of drama he's involved in within his area.
 
This flavor should have been in dialogue or represented in the behavior of the NPCs; other games have done it. Like how Fallout 4 had all those tapes you could put in the Pip Boy and could walk around listening to it like it's an MP3 player. Way better than all that damn reading. I love to read, but...not in a game.
Agree but it's just not comparable...
In Fallout, there are not as much holobands, if there are 50, it is the maximum. In Cyberpunk, it past easily 500 shards...
If you don't want to read them, as you wish ;)
(no need to answer)
 
Ugh. So much reading in this game! Some of those shards are huge walls of text.

If I wanted that, I'd fire up my Kindle.

This flavor should have been in dialogue or represented in the behavior of the NPCs; other games have done it. Like how Fallout 4 had all those tapes you could put in the Pip Boy and could walk around listening to it like it's an MP3 player. Way better than all that damn reading. I love to read, but...not in a game.

And it should be obvious simply from walking around.

San Diego and Seattle (to name the two I know from experience) definitely have their "wrong side of the tracks" and their "high-rent districts"; Night City is perfectly realistic in that respect... but it doesn't mean anything to gameplay, really. Not unless it's a mission. It's ultimately empty.

To me, gameplay was exploring the city and figuring out whats going on there. The npcs have convo's with each other, the RIP murals tell you whats going on. They got different clubs/bars/types of npcs in each area.



But yeah, if you aren't into reading/investigating/exploring/observing without a voiced narrative and active events, there is a lot less lore/content for you.
That said, I don't think the game has a small amount of voice work.
 
Agree but it's just not comparable...

Frankly, I don't see why not.

In Fallout, there are not as much holobands, if there are 50, it is the maximum. In Cyberpunk, it past easily 500 shards...

So you don't think it's feasible, then, rather than comparable?

If you don't want to read them, as you wish ;)

I still think it's bad game design to include several novels-worth of text.

(no need to answer)

And yet...

To me, gameplay was exploring the city and figuring out whats going on there.

Me, too.

The npcs have convo's with each other, the RIP murals tell you whats going on. They got different clubs/bars/types of npcs in each area.

But it's all surface level, is the point. Throwaway flavor rather than anything significant.

But yeah, if you aren't into reading/investigating/exploring/observing without a voiced narrative and active events, there is a lot less lore/content for you.

Reading is something I do on the couch or in bad, not in my gaming chair while playing a game.

That you've expanded the issue beyond reading is...missing the point.

That said, I don't think the game has a small amount of voice work.

Irrelevant. The point is about reading in a game.
And that there is so. damned. much. of it. Too much.

I think you just missed opportunity to know locations.

In ways most people don't want from a game.

There is plenty of stuff about districts, loads of shards where you get to know districts like Pacifica, badlands etc.

Don't want it from shards. It should be in a manner more interactive than that.
That's kinda the point.

You can talk to quite a few NPCs about that as well.

Only a few of 'em. It's not the same.

Sure you can skip them but dont complain that its not there.

The complaint is that you have to do homework to get it.
This is a game...not a TED Talk.
 
I respect your opinion but for me its just laziness.

It's not laziness, it's a matter of priorities.

I'm playing a game. I want to play.
If the game is making take several minutes to read through some of those long, long, long walls of text, it yanks me right out of what I was doing. It's like a movie that has an intermission, but during the intermission you have to do chores.

Yes its a bit of homework because its not mandatory stuff but if youre interested in that but find reading too difficult than I really dont know what to tell you.
Not difficult.

Inappropriate.


Imagine you're in the middle of a horror movie--Texas Chainsaw Massacre, let's say--and then for no reason whatsoever, there is a musical number, Broadway-style.
Kinda gonna yank you right out of the experience, innit? Well, it's the same with games that make you read. A game is supposed to be interactive, but here I am, probably in the middle of something, and all of a sudden I have to sit down to someone's 12-page short story.

Yeah...no. It's just the wrong time and place for reading, the wrong medium for reading.
If a game contains that much text, it had better be a text adventure a la "Zork"; otherwise, it's not appropriate.
 
Irrelevant. The point is about reading in a game.
And that there is so. damned. much. of it. Too much.
I like reading in games but I guess they could of had a few of the actors reading out the shards for players who don't want to, but even after reading, the various zones don't feel as different as what the writing says, the entire city feels static (and 90% closed off), not a living, beathing ecosphere.
A game world needs these anchor points to contextualize story and progression throughout the game world, especially in a large open world like Cyberpunk has. Their absence contributes to leaving Night City feeling shallow and empty.

Same thing with the lack of dungeons. Any time you do find anything while exploring, it can be cleared in a few seconds or at most a couple of minutes. Everything is just enemies standing around, either in a little encounter zone or a sequestered building. Zero depth or variety; homogeneous.
The gangs are all homogenous that I've seen and there really isn't much to differentiate between the different parts of the city, I'm as likely to have a fight in the worst or best part of town. The police are no good, basically just act like another gang if you get too close - got an NCPD job to clear out something where they were under fire, helped them out then got too close to one of the cops and instantly became wanted... WT actual F?!?

And yea, dungeons (or at least an inhabitated city wide sewer maze going deeper to some secret).

Outside of the main plot (which so far has been awesome) there are no interesting stories (that I've found), just shoot / cyber / slice n dice this group of people for X reward, even out in the badlands. Also, maybe not show all the icons on the map, get these jobs thru' emergent gameplay.

And, for the love of gods, remove the NPC crouching animation and just have them all run off, it's worse than the traffic jam caused by me parking my car with one wheel slightly still on the road. If you can't do basic crowd / driving AI maybe don't make a game in an open city with crowds and driving.
 
I'm playing a game. I want to play.
If the game is making take several minutes to read through some of those long, long, long walls of text, it yanks me right out of what I was doing. It's like a movie that has an intermission, but during the intermission you have to do chores.
You know it's possible to read those shards later (in calm), like after you have finished a GIG, you can read the related shards (without breaking your immersion).
I like reading in games but I guess they could of had a few of the actors reading out the shards for players who don't want to
You mean all the shards ?
For me, too much shards for that (more than 500 shards).
(I likes the fact a narrator was reading all data entry in ME1, but it's the same as Fallout, the number is absolutely not the same).

Outside of the main plot (which so far has been awesome) there are no interesting stories (that I've found), just shoot / cyber / slice n dice this group of people for X reward, even out in the badlands. Also, maybe not show all the icons on the map, get these jobs thru' emergent gameplay.
If you talk about the NCPD scanner hustles, Assaults in particular, i could agree. But if you sneak, you could listen interesting dialogs (obviously not aviables if you drop a grenade in middle of them or arrive with a shotgun in hands). And many of the Assaults have a link to GIGs, quests.
 
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HI guys!
I just finish the game but the amount of disappointment I had is unspeakable. One of the major issues I have is the location storytelling. In witcher 3, your main story comes with different locations during progress and you connect and talk with different people so you know what's going on there. Like free city Novigrad or Skellige. Ever Skyrim has a small story for each city so you care about the location. But cyberpunk has non of that, it's not in the main story nor sidequest. It's more like "Oh nomad so it's outside city and Judy live in a poor neighborhood because she's a street kid or oh Japan town so it sells Japanese stuff" It's all visual but nothing makes you know more about the location. I honestly don't care any location in the city because it all the same. CDPR should feel shame that some games 10 years ago like Dragon Age Origins do a better job on-location storytelling than cyberpunk 2077. Like how you fall from Witcher 3 which I think it's a master of location storytelling to Cyberpunk? What happens? Did all witcher 3 develop gone or something? This feels like a ub game.
Really? Even in one district differences between subdistricts are significant. Watson: Kabuki, Little China, North-District, Harbour, Arasaka Waterfront+Konpeki Plaza, Oil Fields - that's just from my head, I don't remember everything.Architecture, style, pedestrians, cars are different, during night even lightning is different - North District is red af during nights.
How the hell you can't tell difference between Jig-Jig Street and Kabuki? Arryo and Pacifica? City Centre and Ranco Coronado?...LOL.
Witcher 3 can't even compare to one district, let alone to whole game. If you like more fantasy setting that's fine, but objectively Cyberpunk's envoirmental storytelling, realism, architecture, worlbduilding is much better than in Witcher 3.

The gangs are all homogenous that I've seen and there really isn't much to differentiate between the different parts of the city, I'm as likely to have a fight in the worst or best part of town. The police are no good, basically just act like another gang if you get too close - got an NCPD job to clear out something where they were under fire, helped them out then got too close to one of the cops and instantly became wanted... WT actual F?!?
Really? Gangs are homogoneus? Did you miss quests with techno-necormancers? How similiar are Tyger Claws to Mealstrom, have you been inside Mealstrom club, Tyger Claws clubs?Wraiths and Valentinos...yeah very similar. Gangs have different cars, different weapons, abilities, enchancments, even religion... Listen to different music (there's radio station in game dedicated to Valentinos...) and you know just live in different parts of city.
 
Coming back to reading, I don't mind. I'm the type to read all the books (TES, TW, DOS,...), to read all the computers in Fallout, in short everything that can be read.
I see it as world's background (may be useful in TES for example, to understand some responses from NPCs in Skyrim if you haven't played the previous episodes).
 
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