Cyberpunk 2077's Gameplay?

+
If you're a fan of CDPR since Witcher 2 days, you should remember that CDPR is being CDPR in case of CP77 too. Great visuals, questing and characters combined with basic and clunky at times gameplay.

I'm reserving my judgement till I see the final result. But if people hope that the game will miraclously turn every element of gameplay into something comparable to the best in the genre.... It's simply unrealistic expectations. Where the game will standout for sure is quests.

UPD. I'm not trying to discourage criticisms, though. They're valid. There's definitely room for improvement.
 
Last edited:
For an immersive game ,customization plays a vital role like char, weapons , misc , and vehicles. It is indeed sad to know that there won't be any vehicle customization in the game, was seriously hoping for that, still we have to see what options are available for the main character.
Speaking of customization, their previous title The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt had limited customization options like the armor for eg, if you see the stats then you can't hope for the appearance , I too accept that is realistic and historically genuine though it is still a game but the Witcher faction armors were better than the easily accessible ones but they were limited. Hoping CDPR works on that aspect.
As for the world Cyberpunk is set in , it is pretty normal to have vehicle customization, they go craze after body mods why not vehicle mods ? Just an thought, not only appearance but performance. It'll be a major factor in Races (hoping that they are in the game) we could hunt for a high performance car but not all players do that. Plus if the needed car is in a spot where u can't access it , like in middle of rival gang hideout (assumption) it'll be tiresome to fight all the way through (excluding the peace options if available).
If they bring that in future patches it's well and but for an ambitious game as this, it should have been there from the start , would be good if CDPR reveals more on that matter ( why they removed vehicle customization).
Post automatically merged:

If you're a fan of CDPR since Witcher 2 days, you should remember that CDPR is being CDPR in case of CP77 too. Great visuals, questing and characters combined with basic and clunky at times gameplay.

I'm reserving my judgement till I see the final result. But if people hope that the game will miraclously turn every element of gameplay into something comparable to the best in the genre.... It's simply unrealistic expectations. Where the game will standout for sure is quests.


I accept that the quests will be outstanding , CDPR has their way with quests and story but its not the only focus of the game
they aspire it to be the most immersive game , immersive in all aspects not just the story and quests.
There's no drawback in visuals in CDPR titles , Cyberpunk is no exception either.
 
Last edited:
DataEntity.390

From the tone and way of your replies, i get the feeling that you think i'm "ranting" about cyberpunk. Its quite the opposite, I'm just a CDPR fan that had high expectations considering CDPR are an extremely ambitiously developers and they actually delivery their promises. All the features i explained will only make the game better than it already is.

The animations are stiff and jittery, clear sign of a work in progress.

The game is supposedly fully completed and is under testing phase. Still they could change and improve certain things, that is what makes our discussions and this forum meaningful.

The fact that its work in progress is understandable. But the main issue here is that the system hasn't been improved in any significant or tangible way since the witcher 2 days. Why is CDPR using copy-pasting the same mechanic. It doesn't feel nostalgic, it just feels boring.

These Fist fighting minigames are the perfect place to try out various new enemy move styles without affecting the story of the game. Like if every fist fight contestant had a fromsoftware game boss feel, that would be the best way to implement it. but i know that would take to much time, so it need not be polished, even if was 20% of that, it would have been way better than what it is now.

CDPR were a small company in the witcher 2 and 3 days, but now they are a big company, they even beat ubisoft on stock net worth.

At the time of announcing Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR said that it would be the exact opposite of the witcher and better in every than the witcher, because they wanted to improve themselves as a studio. But seeing the same unarmed combat system from the witcher 2 directly contradicts that.

So, driving no longer needs the same techniques after hundred years of automotive development?

I'm assuming that you are talking about the manual gear shifting etc, you are probably saying that Cyberpunk world cars have gear controls behind their steering wheels or automatic gear shifts etc.

From my perspective, that seems like a good development excuse, because we live in the current world and what we think cool is fast and precise brake/accelerate/clutch and gear shift animations. Even profession Nascar cars have that manual gear controls.

Having animations for gearshifting, breaks etc will increase our immersion levels massively. If CDPR are forcing us to play an FPP game then why not give us tangible and visible incentives to do the same. It even need not be the most accurate animation, just knowing that the animation exists is hell of a lot satisfying even if the animation looks bad. Considering no other game has that level of detail.

Five days ago, senior level designer Miles Tost;

Sure Miles Tost keeps bringing up "RPG" in every sentence. But on official announcements, CDPR stopped using "RPG".
- They changed their steam description of CP77 from "First person RPG game" to "First person Action adventure game" (this happened long ago, so i forget the exact words)
- In their latest "The Ballad of Buck Ravers" music video's description, they mentioned cyberpunk as "Cyberpunk 2077, the open-world, action-adventure story from CD PROJEKT RED "

they didnt even call it a "game" there, they are call it action adventure "story".

Like I asked in the dedicated thread, define customization?

Define customization? are you just being a dick here? everyone clearly knows what vehicle customization is.

Changing the appearance, like paints, body mods, wheels, window tints, underglow, etc they need not have 200 options under every category, even having 5 options would suffice.
Changing vehicle performance, like increasing speed, acceleration, frame durability, tire durability etc.

Even Witcher 3 had this, like changing the saddle and blinders of Roach is "modifying appearance" and the increased stamina and fear tolerance is "modifying performance". Am I being clear enough now?

Having predefined cars is a cool thing too, cause they have a car called "Aerondight" in CP77(a cool easter egg) as shown on "The Gig" trailer, sure they might want aerondight and other similar cares to have a specific look and feel. But still.

Trains are not being removed, you just cannot board them.

Well those trailers and wallpapers clearly show the opposite. Many old games had rideable trains and even more games had moving trains. The subway feature could have replaced the witcher 3's sign post fast travel mechanic. But just having the feature to have a train ride will surely raise immersive.

So, an updated lighting engine is censorship?

If its just lighting, its not a bad thing. Many movies, TV shows, Animes etc use lighting as an indirect means to censor gore/nudity etc. But I'm not here to see some free nudity nor to blame the lighting.

cp77 censorship.png

The main issue here is the changes to her face textures, the 2018 has a dread look to her face with all the eye shadow being smudged, showing indications of pain and tears and pupil not being visible as she's unconscious. But the 2020 face looks like she almost has a "pleasant" look rather than a dread look. This is the censorship i'm worried about, not the tits. (breast physics were weird af in the 2018 demo)

We have seen two early game boss fights, which are optional, btw. If you don't want to fight the boss, you can circumnavigate the fight and that is a perfectly legitimate way to resolve the mission.

You can't use the reason of "don't fight the boss if the boss sucks" here, bossfights are the major part of any game. Eredin had so much build up in the witcher 3, even the game was titled "wild hunt", but the boss fight at the end was just too weak and not memorable at all. you cant just "circumnavigate" Eredin.

The boss mechanics of Eredin was pretty similar to all the other bosses, so when i say the boss fights of CP77 are bad, im speaking on the concern of the later and story deciding boss fights being bad.

And it is in that where the focus of the game lies and probably it's replay value

I don't have to replay the entire game to see all dialog options, I just have to reload a quick save. And once you know all outcomes, it just becomes boring. Having replayability is having different gameplay mechanics to master on the consecutive playthroughs, like guns, unarmed combat, meele combat, aiming, driving, hacking, etc.

If that's not your cuppa-tea, what can you do?

I've played the Witcher 3 for some 700 hours. So THIS IS my cup of tea.
And I want to have a really good cup of tea, which I haven't already tasted before.
 
Last edited:
- Censoring and Watering down adult themes

Comparing the rescue mission, of the corpo girl in the maelstorm hideout, scene. It seems like CDPR has watered down the scene by making the women look less damaged (tortured/abused) and censored the scene by making the place way darker to make the nudity harder to see.

I think that part has not been censored and that censorship is optional as a whole in the game.
 
I think that part has not been censored and that censorship is optional as a whole in the game.

it may also have to do with making marketing content for a global market. Japan's version is apparently going to be hella censored which is rough for Japan (gore as well as nudity) BUT there will not be any censorship in any other markets as far as we know (i imagine some middle east countries will demand some censoring). so in making a video that is to be shared globally at the same time, they'd have to acquiesce to the countries which are demanding less nudity/gore.

all of that to say...i still don't understand this general nihilism at the mere mention of things not being what they thought or what devs were working on 2 years ago. at every point the CDPR has made clear that features they were working on including could be removed entirely. it seems a lot of people missed this?
 
There are many misinterpretations of what is being said to what is actual reality or confirmed.

1. If I am not mistaken, somewhere someone mentioned that each vehicle has its own animation rig, and having car customization ontop of that would be horrendously time and resource consuming,not worth the effort at the moment when they have other things more important to fix and tweek. Each car has its own personality and style and stats, while cool to be able to tweek things on it, the game isn't about your car.

And the Interview quote is this -"When it comes to vehicles, as a player, you can own different vehicles but you do not really customise them, you actually own vehicles that have already been customised," Sasko explained . "You can find different vehicles that are already (tuned-up) but you do not do it yourself." Tuned-up would mean the speed/or other things, not the LOOK, nowhere did he say the look of the vehicle. I think the word customized is being used or represented in a different way here, even thou in the previous sentence he does say you do not really customize them, they have already been customized. And emphasizes that YOU do not do it yourself. There should be some clarification and hopefully in the coming wire events it will be.

2. The Maglev/Trains: Several Press/Media on youtube who played said. Are being used for fast travel and cannot be boarded like the trains in RDR2, where you can walk around in them...not that they arent being used, just not fully open to explore. (Thou I believe that they were used for fast travel in that game too)

3. Animations, driving or otherwise and combat come last: Game development 101. You build the world and story and people first, then go over the animations and other aspects, of which they have 5 months nearly half a year to do so at the time of the preview build.

That being said the wire event and b-roll combat in several places, but not all ...looked worse than the deep dive and previous gameplay demos, which could be due to different scenes or weapons/character models that haven't been fully animated or finished. Although the people who played it had mostly good things to say, and some pointed out that as they skilled up the skills it did feel better like you were less of novice a using weapons.

Only time will tell.
 
It's not nitpicking, not everyone have the same priorities of what is important in a game.

the developers who are developing the game probably have the final say of what is important in the game that they are developing since they are prioritising the functionality of the game over what they want in the game that they, the game developers, are developing.

because they wanted [insert feature they had to scrap for whatever reason even though the reason is, invariably, we couldn't solve for that feature's inclusion']

i am frustrated by people's lack of empathy and lack of understanding of how things are made
 
"But the main issue here is that the system hasn't been improved in any significant or tangible way since the witcher 2 days. Why is CDPR using copy-pasting the same mechanic. "

This is straight up incorrect, if you're not just ranting or just complaining for complaining I can't understand why would you write something like this.

I doubted whether to write anything or not, as its obvious to almost anyone that this is not a QTE minigame with scripted fight animations, but an actual hand to hand fighting system instead with controls for movement, different attacks, blocking, all in real time, with AI for enemies, and with collision or hitboxes. Actual health and damage are involved, probably affected by stats, more than one enemy can be in the same fight, the fights take place in the actual gameworld thus you have to take the environment into consideration for moving; basically this couldn't be any more different to witcher 2.

The system could be terrible or whatever, we'll find out that at release, but why are you comparing this to witcher 2 is beyond my understanding, its like comparing a god of war or david cage QTE scene to actual gameplay of an action game and saying the same mechanic has been ported.

As for animations, everywhere, melee or otherwise, hand to hand or katana, its all work in progress with 5 months ahead. In videogame dev, animations are one of the things that look the absolute worse until release. It's always like that except for very specific examples of games with insane team and budget sizes like RDR or Assassins' Creed, or games with inherited animation systems from previous projects (again assassins' creed). Go look at early footage of witcher 3 or other games, they all have a TON of jank as they should have and if they dont its usually in the main content like just walking or core combat. We're talking about side stuff like hand fighting here, which also happens to be hard to make it look right. Dying Light or Mirror's Edge don't count ofc as those games are entirely based around that specific thing.

Now about vehicle customization, last I heard before night city wire was that the system was NOT in the game, but they were going to try their hardest to include something along those lines. So nothing was removed, and even if it was, thats just fine, game is in dev, you do whatever it takes to maximize the core values of the product and launch it in the best state.

The whole censorship thing is just purely subjective interpretation seriously, not only her face looks way more bruised in the new footage, but also nudity is still there and perfectly visible to the point they felt they had to actually pixelate her body for the trailer, and you can bet anything you want that if any game wanted to censor something, the nudity would go away first rather than the violence, especially in a cyberpunk game. Not to mention trailer had already more violent scenes than that one like stabbing a guy and lifting him, which btw we kill him, unlike the lady which we're helping instead.

Bosses look pretty lame, I'm with you on that, however them being based on weak points isnt bad per se, thats just one element. For example with Royce, obviously the main challenge of that fight is mobility and timing based, not about aiming so much as you seem to believe. Its kinda obvious as if the weak points were the true main point of a boss fight, then the weak point itself would move a lot and be hard to hit, like it happens in some resident evil games for example, Royce stays put firing at you. This being said, bosses in shooting games are kinda crap in all videogames pretty much, so CDPR would be on par with the industry standards. Sekiro cannot be considered, its a completely different game especially where it matters the most for the boss fights that it has, which aren't anything inventive or super well made, just trading blows, timed blocks, and running and jumping around, so the combat basics. It LOOKs like it has good bossfights but only cause it has a good core combat system.

Wall running afaik was never mentioned, only wall climbing, and that is confirmed still there, I heard it in an interview or preview last week. (EDIT searching I just read Max Pears was asked about it, and said it was removed, so idk if that was climbing with the blades or actual running, but if it is then too bad :( )

I'm not sure why you feel this is a movie type game, is there no exploration which affects your playthrough? no stat based stealth and hacking? no character customization and gear upgrades for different situations? no choices in the story and conversations which also seem to be impacted by your char build? This game seems to have more player interaction and legitimate choice than various of the games you mentioned as being more gameplay focused. What quality will it offer is a different discussion, but this is not even remotely close to anything addressable as a movie game.

Don't feel so disappointed man, it reads as if you had unrealistic expectations for this game, like a lot of people out there, and you thought this would be the best part of every other AAA combined into one, which it was never meant to be ofc, it can't be and it shouldn't be. There are more important things to do in a cyberpunk game than vehicle customization or train riding or even hand to hand fighting. We all hope the game is the best thing possible, but there's still a hierarchy of what matters most, so some things will be great, others acceptable, others bad, etc, and its the acceptable and bad ones, the ones that allow the great ones to be great.
 
Last edited:
From the tone and way of your replies, i get the feeling that you think i'm "ranting" about cyberpunk.


Nah, I'm just a grumpy old man.


The game is supposedly fully completed and is under testing phase. Still they could change and improve certain things, that is what makes our discussions and this forum meaningful.


Feature complete, which is to say that the systems that shall be in the game at launch are now finished. Though the content in them is not necessarily so.


CDPR were a small company in the witcher 2 and 3 days, but now they are a big company, they even beat ubisoft on stock net worth.


Mythical Man Month
At the time of announcing Cyberpunk 2077, CDPR said that it would be the exact opposite of the witcher and better in every than the witcher, because they wanted to improve themselves as a studio. But seeing the same unarmed combat system from the witcher 2 directly contradicts that.
Assuming it's the same. We have seen a glimpse of it. It could be direct copypasta or it could be a iteration on that system.
I'm assuming that you are talking about the manual gear shifting etc, you are probably saying that Cyberpunk world cars have gear controls behind their steering wheels or automatic gear shifts etc.

The flappy paddle gearbox is still fundamentally automatic. But yes. Automotive manufacturers are planning to phase out manual gearboxes in the coming decade. So by '77 they would be deader than dead.
they didnt even call it a "game" there, they are call it action adventure "story".
Do you expect then that Cyberpunk 2077 is not a game? Simply because some focus group finds "action adventure story" to be more appealing, doesn't mean that CDPR has completely redone the design of the core gameplay loop.
Define customization? are you just being a dick here? everyone clearly knows what vehicle customization is.
I'm a dick everywhere. But right now, I'm not sure that this idea has been communicated clearly. Some of CDPR staff have said that there is customization, some have said there isn't, but in a context that makes it kinda unclear what they mean.
Could be that you can indeed repaint, but not retune, your car. Could be that you can't.
Well those trailers and wallpapers clearly show the opposite. Many old games had rideable trains and even more games had moving trains. The subway feature could have replaced the witcher 3's sign post fast travel mechanic. But just having the feature to have a train ride will surely raise immersive.
In the dedicated thread I said;
Programming something like a train is not a non-trivial task on the physics side of things. You need to have a physics map on the inside of the train that is separate from the exterior of the train, while still having a bilatheral influence of inertia. Otherwise the trainride would feel fake.
What I suspect is that RedEngine doesn't play nice with a separate physics map. And that attempting to do without a separate physics map, while having nVidia's hairworks enabled, would look like everyone had some angry and weird cross between hair and a Metroid stuck to their heads.
But aparrently mass transit is the 2077 version of fast-travel via signpost. You go to the station, possibly click on a subwaymap, then click on a station there and presto!
But the 2020 face looks like she almost has a "pleasant" look rather than a dread look. This is the censorship i'm worried about, not the tits. (breast physics were weird af in the 2018 demo)
They redid / improved most textures and models, between 2018 and now. Perhaps in that process the model just became more plain. And they don't have the resources or desire to revisit the "dread look."
You can't use the reason of "don't fight the boss if the boss sucks" here, bossfights are the major part of any game. Eredin had so much build up in the witcher 3, even the game was titled "wild hunt", but the boss fight at the end was just too weak and not memorable at all. you cant just "circumnavigate" Eredin.
The boss mechanics of Eredin was pretty similar to all the other bosses, so when i say the boss fights of CP77 are bad, im speaking on the concern of the later and story deciding boss fights being bad.
We miscommunicated. I mean that CDPR is putting resources into giving players the ability to skip or avoid boss battles. Rather than evolving boss battles a great deal.
I don't have to replay the entire game to see all dialog options, I just have to reload a quick save. And once you know all outcomes, it just becomes boring. Having replayability is having different gameplay mechanics to master on the consecutive playthroughs, like guns, unarmed combat, meele combat, aiming, driving, hacking, etc.
Why savescum enjoyment away, when you can double down by rolling a different character that takes a different narrative bath?
Post automatically merged:

Yes, exactly my concern.
And that is what I expect. With guns instead of swords, customizable Gerald and a Roach that goes wroom.
 
Best written and wrapped-up post-NCW gameplay criticism I saw so far.
State of Decay 2, [...] still they WILL die in a single headshot.
Shooting a giant in the eye oneshots it in Witcher3 though, yet trolls are so very rare.

On the excuse side - About bullet things, it is the first time CDPR tackles gunplay mechanics.
I would understand if CDPR focused its resources towards getting even better at what they were already excellent at.
Most often than not, companies do not change at the core, they polish their best aspects.
CDPR went from 200 developers on the witcher3 to 600 on CP2077 : coordinating state-of-the-art quality in every department is a giganormous undertaking.

The improvment between wticher 1 to wticher 2, and the wticher 2 to wticher 3, was so huge. I hope that improvement leap happens with Cyberpunk too, I dont see it yet.
I think this is the part of your post where you are the most unfair. Comparing leapfrogs in witcher series to a whole new IP. Yes the subject is gameplay but you simply cannot ignore the rest.

Isn't it too late to meet the deadline and make such complex changes?
Those need hacks or even significant developments on the game engine, animations, QA...
I fear that, for the hardest-to-implement complaints you expressed, it is either : the feature is already good in a build that was not shown for some surprise effect, or it can become good only with an unseen-before game+engine modkit API, or in 2077 when CDPR releases source code.
Wildly diverging from the topic, I have been thinking for some years that in the software industry at large, a law imposing open-sourcing after x years of profit would have the global rate of progress skyrocket. Proprietary is about reinventing the wheel at every company.

Off-topic-through the roof, my biggest deception so far is that CDPR did not devote 500k$ to stuffing a hundred people dancing, drinking, chatting, staring in Lizzie's club.
 
Last edited:
I'm reserving my judgement till I see the final result.

Yea, ill try to be optimistic, after all they do have almost half a year ahead of them.

But if people hope that the game will miraclously turn every element of gameplay into something comparable to the best in the genre.... It's simply unrealistic expectations.

It doesn't have to be the best in every aspect, but it could definitely be better
To be specific, in the case of unarmed combat, it doesn't have to look the exact same way as mirrors edge or other similar games with amazing FPP unarmed combat. But it could have moves like kicks, drop kicks, grabs, throws. At the very least, it could have different and distinguishable punch animations.

Right now, cyberpunk doesn't stand out in any gameplay mechanic.
Lot of elements from the Wticher 3 were considered as the best, at its time.
like horse riding, dragon age inquisition launched around the same time as the witcher, but if you compare the hose riding animtion, it had the difference of day and night.

I am hoping cyberpunk has some elements like that too.
from the gameplay footage i've seen so far, it only has a story and dialog system that stand out.
Post automatically merged:

I guess no game is immune to nitpicking. November can’t come fast enough.

Well, when CDPR said that this would be "the most immersive" game, that enabled us to have high expectations.
Post automatically merged:

There are many misinterpretations of what is being said to what is actual reality or confirmed.

True, we need some clear communication, i was hoping devs would clarify certain facts in this fourm.
Post automatically merged:

the developers who are developing the game probably have the final say of what is important in the game that they are developing since they are prioritising the functionality of the game over what they want in the game that they, the game developers, are developing.

Sure, the devs have the final say on what will be and what won't be in the game. But ultimately the game is being made for the consumer. That's what sells the game. CDPR knows this, that's why they are the most consumer facing game company out there.

Witcher 3 set the standards for all the AAA games that came out following its release. The game had gameplay features that we needed but didn't know. Like when we were suffering from all the "tailing missions", Witcher 3 had a ganeplay feature where if we run, the one that leads us would also run and be always ahead of us. Every game after witcher 3 implemented this feature.

But in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, it feels like its struggling to meet the current day standards on the gameplay front.
 
Last edited:
The game had gameplay features that we needed but didn't know...But in the case of Cyberpunk 2077, it feels like its struggling to meet the current day standards on the gameplay front.
emphasis mine. you feel but you don't know. i feel and i don't know anything about this game. i speculate and hope.
CP2077 is not The Witcher games so there is not a 1:1 comparison or transfer rate.
struggling? based on the 6 hours of reviews i read on 25 June it's doing fine for a game that isn't done development. it feels like the game that isn't done...isn't done. but that's just a feeling since i'm not a developer on that game.

CP2077 won't be anything other than CP2077. but all i keep hearing is how it'll disappoint because it's not Mirror's Edge's parkour or GTAV's driving or NFS's car customisation. but it's not done and it's not any other game. It's its own.
Let Cyberpunk 2077 be Cyberpunk 2077, and let it be finished first.
 
Lot of elements from the Wticher 3 were considered as the best, at its time.
like horse riding, dragon age inquisition launched around the same time as the witcher, but if you compare the hose riding animtion, it had the difference of day and night.
Shadow of the Colossus had the best horse riding experience at that point and it held the title since 2005. Probably till Metal Gear Solid V took over. Witcher 3 horses looked good, but stiff controls, limited use and pretty clunky horseback fighting held it back. What other elements were considered best?
 
Top Bottom