Cyberpunk 2077 story telling - a missed opportunity. [Opinion]

[reubenfr]

This thread is about storytelling and not about the bugs ( I rarely encountered on my rtx2060 laptop) and AI.
I have just completed cyberpunk, clocking in about 60hrs. Unlike the popular internet trend, I have to admit that I enjoyed most parts. Being a huge fan of witcher saga, I came here for the cd project reds story telling and I am equal parts astonished and disappointed when the end credits rolled. It didn't leave me with the same impact of the witcher 3 or red dead redemption.
But compared to those two games I felt cyberpunk had very good individual quest- lines and some varied characters but some how they all did not glue together to give an unified experience to the main story.
The display of point of not reture was a deal-breaker in immersion. Once I stoped and did side jobs and retuned to the main quest it didn't have the same continuity. I have few questions for the developed and game directors.

1. Do you really have to split it into main jobs, side jobs and gig? It would have been more organic if it had been just, Character jobs (insted of main and side jobs), gigs and vehicle jobs.
2. Do you really need to have a time bomb ticking from the start of act 2? Felt red dead redemption 2 worked because for most part the goal of Arthur and the gang was to survive the day, so doing almost anything ment working for that goal,here it is not the case.
3. Do you really need to show point of no return? It breaks the immersion. Missions could have been introduced more organically without separating as side and main jobs, and after completion of certain amount of missions the you could have started the timeline ticking and organically started the nocturne op55n2 mission.
4. Why was relation ship with Jakie reduced to a 6 month montage?

With brilliantly written characters like Johnny,. River, Panam, Judy, Kerry, Peralaezs tekamura, Jakie etc..the game could have left a great impact but has failed.

 

[Icinix]

Yep - I love the game, I really do - I'm still heavily invested in it now.

..but it's a missed opportunity.

They didn't raise the bar on previous story telling / role playing games - I don't even think they reach the existing bar.

The story feels like a tug of war between your character, your characters relationships, and some linear moral story the writers are trying to convey. The sum becomes weaker than its parts.

I've been saying to anyone who'll listen from the the very first steps into the main story, and it's even more prominent on my second, that the game doesn't lean enough into it's strengths (the relationships with other characters) and leans to hard into the Johnny story (the weakest part of the game).

There is some hints and tantalizing almost awesome things with the fixer gigs and the stories that evolve through doing those...if they incorporated more into the other characters you build relationships with, you'd have this extraordinary world and real RPGing experiences. As it stands, it's just all so isolated from each other. This is a game of to do lists as we focus on The Ballad of Johnny Silverhand....

...it's all just such a damn shame...you can see this incredible experience and world occasionally bubbling up from below....but it never explodes into cyberpunkish orgasmic glory.

 

[sinkiy]

This thread is about storytelling and not about the bugs ( I rarely encountered on my rtx2060 laptop) and AI.
I have just completed cyberpunk, clocking in about 60hrs. Unlike the popular internet trend, I have to admit that I enjoyed most parts. Being a huge fan of witcher saga, I came here for the cd project reds story telling and I am equal parts astonished and disappointed when the end credits rolled. It didn't leave me with the same impact of the witcher 3 or red dead redemption.
But compared to those two games I felt cyberpunk had very good individual quest- lines and some varied characters but some how they all did not glue together to give an unified experience to the main story.
The display of point of not reture was a deal-breaker in immersion. Once I stoped and did side jobs and retuned to the main quest it didn't have the same continuity. I have few questions for the developed and game directors.

1. Do you really have to split it into main jobs, side jobs and gig? It would have been more organic if it had been just, Character jobs (insted of main and side jobs), gigs and vehicle jobs.
2. Do you really need to have a time bomb ticking from the start of act 2? Felt red dead redemption 2 worked because for most part the goal of Arthur and the gang was to survive the day, so doing almost anything ment working for that goal,here it is not the case.
3. Do you really need to show point of no return? It breaks the immersion. Missions could have been introduced more organically without separating as side and main jobs, and after completion of certain amount of missions the you could have started the timeline ticking and organically started the nocturne op55n2 mission.

With brilliantly written characters like Johnny,. River, Panam, Judy, Kerry, Peralaezs tekamura, Jakie etc..the game could have left a great impact but has failed.

The main thing that chapped my ass is how short the campaign was. Witcher 3 was leaps and bounds better story telling. Not to mention longer and more satisfying ending. Not better ending but satisfying because it felt normal length. Cyberpunk was chopped up and. bad bad pacing because it was so short. I feel they cut the game short and ruined their intended story. Who knows maybe they are lying and never intended a longer story. It wasn't satisfying because each character had no game time. 8 stupid boxing quests nobody cares for could've instead been character missions..

 

[reubenfr]

The main thing that chapped my ass is how short the campaign was. Witcher 3 was leaps and bounds better story telling. Not to mention longer and more satisfying ending. Not better ending but satisfying because it felt normal length. Cyberpunk was chopped up and. bad bad pacing because it was so short. I feel they cut the game short and ruined their intended story. Who knows maybe they are lying and never intended a longer story. It wasn't satisfying because each character had no game time. 8 stupid boxing quests nobody cares for could've instead been character missions..

Absolutely, felt the game is way too short. All these characters grow on you and then that is it, it ends abruptly.

 

[I_Willenbrock_I]

My problem is that it feels very unnatural to play side missions, when you are literally running out of time plotwise.

It's a shame, because the side missions and gigs range from hilarious to sad. Everything was there. Very well designed and wel written.
Problem is that our clock is ticking.

 

[dannydesktop]

You absolutely need to show the point of no return since

Spoiler: SPOILER

It throws you back to your last save after you complete it as if nothing happened.

So i mean if you wanna talk immersion breaking, THAT would be way worse and confusing to experience without the notification. It would be better to simply lock you out of main mission or offer it at all until you at least completed the other character arcs.

 

[deadmau]

Yeah, the way they handled the ending is pretty lame

 

[reubenfr]

Yep - I love the game, I really do - I'm still heavily invested in it now.

..but it's a missed opportunity.

They didn't raise the bar on previous story telling / role playing games - I don't even think they reach the existing bar.

The story feels like a tug of war between your character, your characters relationships, and some linear moral story the writers are trying to convey. The sum becomes weaker than its parts.

I've been saying to anyone who'll listen from the the very first steps into the main story, and it's even more prominent on my second, that the game doesn't lean enough into it's strengths (the relationships with other characters) and leans to hard into the Johnny story (the weakest part of the game).

There is some hints and tantalizing almost awesome things with the fixer gigs and the stories that evolve through doing those...if they incorporated more into the other characters you build relationships with, you'd have this extraordinary world and real RPGing experiences. As it stands, it's just all so isolated from each other. This is a game of to do lists as we focus on The Ballad of Johnny Silverhand....

...it's all just such a damn shame...you can see this incredible experience and world occasionally bubbling up from below....but it never explodes into cyberpunkish orgasmic glory.

Yup! Totally agree. Also felt that the game did not improve upon the storytelling technique on first person rpg. All the immersion problems involved with the genre applies to cyberpunk as well. V is calm in one dialogue and in the very next sentence we get a angry tone. All this breaks the immersion.

Post automatically merged: Dec 30, 2020

You absolutely need to show the point of no return since

Spoiler: SPOILER

It throws you back to your last save after you complete it as if nothing happened.

So i mean if you wanna talk immersion breaking, THAT would be way worse and confusing to experience without the notification. It would be better to simply lock you out of main mission or offer it at all until you at least completed the other character arcs.
[/QUOTES
If the mission structure has been more organic it is not needed. It looks like a temporary fix.

Post automatically merged: Dec 30, 2020

You absolutely need to show the point of no return since

Spoiler: SPOILER

It throws you back to your last save after you complete it as if nothing happened.

So i mean if you wanna talk immersion breaking, THAT would be way worse and confusing to experience without the notification. It would be better to simply lock you out of main mission or offer it at all until you at least completed the other character arcs.

If the mission structure had been more organic it is not needed. It looks like a temporary fix.

 

[iamthesparky]

1. Quest organization: I enjoyed not knowing which quests would affect the end because that feels more realistic, so the split was welcomed.
2. Time bomb: So many games feel like there's a time restraint, when in fact there isn't one. So this is just yet another game that says "hurry up" in the narrative, but also wants you to spent 100 hours playing side quests. It didn't bother me.
3. Point of no return: I think these should be obvious, but like in this game it was basically a tutorial window, so that was jarring.

As for the underutilized characters, I think they should have been involved more, maybe instead of Fixers we could have had these characters be quest givers, then it would make more sense to want to meet and get to know them.

 

[CTPhipps]

Honestly, this blows the Witcher 3 out of the water. I felt the Monster Hunts and side-quests in that game were incredibly boring and not worth doing. However, the storytelling for the Gigs and Sidequests in this game were fantastic. They were everything I wanted from a Cyberpunk 2020 Edgerunner game.

I wanted to be a mercenary working the streets against the corpos, crime bosses, gangs, and corrupt government, which is exactly what they gave me.

The main quest? It's okay. Dying is a pretty direct way to make sure your character is invested but I could have spent the entire game killing pimps and white slavers for the Mox.

I also would have done away with the Vehicle Quests entirely. They clutter up the map and make it harder to know what's a real quest and not. Have all of the cars available on the net to buy but don't have Fixers e-mailing me.

 

[reubenfr]

1. Quest organization: I enjoyed not knowing which quests would affect the end because that feels more realistic, so the split was welcomed.
2. Time bomb: So many games feel like there's a time restraint, when in fact there isn't one. So this is just yet another game that says "hurry up" in the narrative, but also wants you to spent 100 hours playing side quests. It didn't bother me.
3. Point of no return: I think these should be obvious, but like in this game it was basically a tutorial window, so that was jarring.

As for the underutilized characters, I think they should have been involved more, maybe instead of Fixers we could have had these characters be quest givers, then it would make more sense to want to meet and get to know them.

Not all characters quest affect the ending, Even in those quest we make the choices. They could have worked on hiding the choices in a natural way

 

[Bassdeff]

The missed opportunity I see is the 6 month montage of V and Jackie. You then do 1 introductory mission and you are off to the big leagues with Dex. It's very little to go on when trying to define their relationship, by the few conversations with him and little tidbits from Misty and Mama Wells I deduced that they were best mates but it would have been nice to expand on that a little. The game is littered with side quests, they could have easily used a few of them to build up our emotional connection to them not to mention building up some street cred to get notice bigger players in town.

 

[reubenfr]

The missed opportunity I see is the 6 month montage of V and Jackie. You then do 1 introductory mission and you are off to the big leagues with Dex. It's very little to go on when trying to define their relationship, by the few conversations with him and little tidbits from Misty and Mama Wells I deduced that they were best mates but it would have been nice to expand on that a little. The game is littered with side quests, they could have easily used a few of them to build up our emotional connection to them not to mention building up some street cred to get notice bigger players in town.

Yes absolutelythe 6 month montage was clearly a missed opportunity.

 

[PepeSmug]

It wasn't a missed opportunity judging by how it has been received by the majority.

Not sure how splitting up the quests is more ore less organic. Mashing them altogether would just clutter the quest log. I already found it hard enough to find the quests I wanted to do at any given time.

The ultimatum is unfortunate, as it feels incongruous with the arcadey, looter-shooter gameplay and endless generic open world content of the cookie-cutter gigs and dispatches. It's not a big deal for people focused on the main storyline, which seems to be the focus of CDPR and most of the people that like the game.

 

[Krul2k]

I agree with one thing, the underdeveloped characters.

 

[reubenfr]

It wasn't a missed opportunity judging by how it has been received by the majority.

Not sure how splitting up the quests is more ore less organic. Mashing them altogether would just clutter the quest log. I already found it hard enough to find the quests I wanted to do at any given time.

The ultimatum is unfortunate, as it feels incongruous with the arcadey, looter-shooter gameplay and endless generic open world content of the cookie-cutter gigs and dispatches. It's not a big deal for people focused on the main storyline, which seems to be the focus of CDPR and most of the people that like the game.

Yes it is received well and I enjoyed it very much. But comming to cyberpunk just after I finished rdr2, felt the technical aspects of storytelling was not handled properly. But as individual stories cyberpunk has some of the best characters and emotions. Only problem is the individual parts were better than sum of the parts.

 

[claudiu111]

Have you seen how young their lead designers are? It's clearly not the same team that made The Witcher 3.

 

[reubenfr]

Have you seen how young their lead designers are? It's clearly not the same team that made The Witcher 3.

Didn't follow much of their pre release promotions. Sure inexperience of the lead designers can also bethe problem. Also for a studio doing a morden setting rpg for the first time, it is quite an achievement.

 

[mbrto]

i absolutely love the story and the characters of this game
maybe there will be a dlc with jackie

 

[Martynxas]

I gave story little thought, i think it would have improved it hugely.
1. Your main goal of the game is to hit major league along with Jackie.
2. You do quest, gigs whatever, increase your street cred, buy nice cars, Guns, level up.
3. Make some missions which finally introduce you to major league.
4. Only then you get introduced to dex and start with the current main quest.
By doing this you solve pacing, lets you calmly explore thw world, get to know its characters and enjoy last questline without any interuption