Nothing ground breaking? Have you played the game? This is THE most detailed, believable city in a game. Sure, you can't watch NPCs go about their lives (which seems to be a big complaint [...]). But who actually cares? You want to watch thousands of random unimportant NPCs walk to work? Take a dump? I don't get it. That will never happen in a single player game. The world is so immensely detailed there is NOTHING out there that is even comparable.
Yet most of the doors are locked, all the stalls are not for you unless a quest drags you there. Can't sit anywhere, can't lean, can't even bloody sleep in your own bloody bed. The Act 1 loading screen doesn't match the apartment details. There are huge swaths of basic blocks masquerading as buildings - some without collision, some with fucked up UV's, some with basic texturing. Arasaka Waterfront, Petrochem's area, Biotechnica's, the bloody city jail, All Foods section and I can continue ad nauseum. Sure, you get to find one or two doors that open after circling, jumping, double jumping your way around such an area. Sometimes it's a maxdoc v.1, sometimes basic crafting components, sometimes just an ashtray. The fact that it's big means fuck-all in the end - aside from the performance drop, ofc. Big and sterile or small and bustling with life and fun activities, what would you choose? Ever single activity you can have is... dumped there. Buy a car! Buy 45900 more cars! Get involved in NCPD hustles taking place everywhere
at the same time, ONCE. And then... enjoy an even more deserted city. And don't get me started on the AI of all the city's inhabitants (be they friendly, foes or neutral, on foot or on wheels...
I've spent well over 200 hours exploring the city on foot. Looking for interesting places. What I found out was that some locations are one-time use only, like Konpeki, which you can't access before the story, even if it's a bloody hotel, not a datafort, or like the scenes of completed side-quests that get swarmed by NCPD and... you know how its AI functions...
The city is gargantuan, yes. And the framerate plunge in the area you start in is a good indication of that. But it's bloody depressing to keep seeing "[Locked]" everywhere and only trash for you to pick up, regardless if you're level 1 or level 50.
An upgraded Dues Ex? Dude, side quests in CP are the size of whole levels in the Deus Ex series. You also truly have a choice how to approach situations. Deus Ex always had limited options and conveniently placed ducts to make you feel like there was an open approach. But once you realize how limited the levels in those games are in comparison you'll realize how truly huge and ambitious CP is as a game.
I remember a time when, after Act 1, you'd have branching story, taking you through entire different areas, different cast of characters and ending on completely different tones. And you could still make meaningful choices along both paths, save Saskia, save your love interest? Behead a king or not... That kind of stuff.
Then, we have CP2077, with some of the quests showing what the devs have envisioned, but then getting all the follow-ups that hint at how they ran out of time to transform that vision into the actual product. Scripted car chases that end the same way regardless of you being active in them or out for a beer. Dialogue choices that change absolutely nothing (best example is when you have 5 seconds to decide if to punch Thompson or not and... you know what happens). The way you choose to handle The Pickup can have serious implications too! You might end up with a sex scene designed for a female V and a dildo souvenir... because that's all there it to Militech (even if the shards paint a much grimmer picture). The Heist looks like it had multiple paths but no longer does.
You truly have a choice on how to approach stuff? Like... Whether to kill Cpl. Hare out-front, or talk your way through and hear him kill himself later (while you're actively helping your fixer find a cure for the very condition he's suffering from)? Yeah, the quest locations do allow for different tactics (although, why even bother if the outcome's the same?). I mean, does it really matter if I side with Meredith in The Pickup or wreck her plan? Does it matter if I stumble upon the intel on Gilchrist or not? Not to mention what happens if I take my time and achieve 20 body to open the door...
The point is, we oughta look at what the game is as a whole, not individual pieces. And, as a whole, your choices mean next to nothing, your lifepath even less, your approach to the challenges is rendered meaningless by both the enemies' AI and the consequences of your actions there (let's look at how you could've joined MaxTac after the Jinguji incident, but you can't, how working for/with NCPD still has them see you as a hostile even when all their hustles have been resolved). CP2077 took the approach of an Asian MMO to quests for the most part. A lot of "!" all over the map with barely a handful of the side tasks not showing up on the map - and that probably because all the side quests of purchasing cars have cluttered it too much already).
What they wanted for this game is miles away from what was delivered. Painfully obvious when you observe how, no matter the route you take, you're being tossed back on the same rail that has the gull to even loop on itself. And, to pour salt on the wound, the scripted sequences that don't change based on your input can't be skipped forward. 30+ minutes of nothing, from exiting the elevator till you wake up under the (somehow) running shower. 20+ minutes of preparing to take down an AV in which your active input is clicking 3 times and shooting 3 drones. Wow! Followed, of course, by another 10+ minutes of faulty drone scanning of a scene that doesn't change (albeit, it kinda shows that it might've been supposed to, based on the dialogue). Looking for Alt is another activity on rails - with a painful amount of pointless dialogue options, some of them timed.
And the endings... the meaningful choices you make... The impossible task of doing what was already done to you once to save yourself. The necessity to flatline one character or another for the emotional punch, even if the game doesn't really give you enough time with them to care... Oh yeah. Very deep stuff. You know, in CP, I
wanted to care about anyone I had the opportunity to interact with more than once. In ME on the other hand, you get to do it organically. If you choose not to care in ME2, you will see the consequence of that too. Here? Regardless of what you do, of what you say, your acquaintances are gonna spew their dialogues and exit stage the moment they're no longer needed or just become a random npc with only one dialogue line. Where's the depth in that?
What are you playing on that the bugs make it impossible to enjoy? I am on a 3 year old PC with a 1070 and I can almost max the game out at 2k (no RTX obviously) and it runs smooth. One crash to desktop in close to 70 hrs. I just exited a vehicle during a race and the game went to a black screen. Aside from that, it has been perfect.
How many times you can't pick up the loot, how many times is the environment killing you out of the bloom, what about glitching enemies, access cards that block your door while the message reads "Access granted", etc. There's literally no aspect of the game that didn't fall under the guillotine due to time constraints and it shows. Crashes are rare for me too (had 2 so far in 400+ hours), but the game-breaking bugs are there. The situation of some people who had the bad luck of having Mower seep through the floor, making it impossible to complete a game-wide quest chain, comes to mind.
And you know what the biggest problem is? The fact that CDPR's leadership doesn't see any of the above as problems. Based on their public statement, the PC version is of, at least, stellar quality 9/10 and 10/10! Because I-fuckin'-GN said so... They're right there with the other heavy-hitters of the gaming industry. Their attitude reminds me of Todd "It Just Works" Howard and their approach to game production is painfully similar to Bioware's Magic shitfuckery...
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