Cyberpunk 2077 game design discussion

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A good game normally has a focused, core gameplay experience around which the rest of the game is anchored. This experience then has a number of gameplay loops which act as pillars to support this experience (these are essential gameplay systems which are critical to executing the core experience). Then of course there are extra features to add 'coolness' but which are iterated on and sometimes added to or cut through the development cycle. My problem is that CP2077 couldn't define its core experience and ended up with several 'experiences' all vying for dominance in the game. It is trying to be a looter-shooter, RPG, driving simulator, FPS, Open World explorer, and other things all at once. There was no gameplay hierarchy in the early stages of design. This is the root of their technical issues too - and the same reason recent Bioware designs flopped. The lack of laser focus on what the player's core experience needs to be, and to which all systems must be subservient, meant they ended up developing more than one game and trying to merge them all together - which ended up both a design and a technical nightmare.

When first announced, this game was supposed to be an RPG, with player choice in interacting with a world being the core. This then shifted as more and more action and simulation elements clearly took the front seat and player choice was shunted down on the priority list. Content that was supposed to support the core gameplay experience was then cut, as all focus was on driving mechanics, combat, seamless open world, and other (admittedly cool) ideas, but this division of focus meant a lot of features were added, but none of them executed as well as they should've been. A brilliant roleplaying game with bad shooting, could still fall back on it's roleplaying, likewise a great shooter with meh vehicle physics can rely on its FPS chops, but a game with masses of meh systems has nothing to fall back on.

With that criticism, though, I will give the designers one big badge - the city layout and physical design is really quite something. If the city could've been a bit smaller but with more interactive NPCs, open shops, environmental stories, etc, that alone could've become the foundation of a great exploration game. Also, I found the writing and overall narrative arc to be pretty good - just very linear. On my second playthrough I'm finding the experience more or less identical with only token changes in experience here and there.

It will be difficult to rectify this design flaw as it is a fundamental design issue which should've been sorted before the first game asset or line of code was created. But with such an amazing setting, a well designed DLC story (with a strong core focus and gameplay hierarchy) can create micro game experiences that really hit the mark and win back fans. I hope to see some serious design rethinking, and hope they don't spend all their focus going ahead on just 'ironing out bugs'.
 
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