I would've preferred to have it as an excuse to have unexpected situations in-game, like going in space, fighting some monster, playing some fun minigame or taking drugs (think watch dogs)... But if it's gotta be batman investigation, so be it... A wasted occasion to do something fresh, but hey, it is what it is...
An acceptable point
in 2018
gameplay we could see an police investigation recreating a crime scene, was that intended to be the first version of brain dance ?
So police are already investigating in a augmented space and we are investigating in a virtual space. Interesting, so the batman kind of investigation was already in the game even before brain dance reveal.
Can we do random braindance investigations ? like we walk in a dark alley and see a dead corpse ,suppose he has the BD implant, will we be able to take that back to judy to edit and find out what happened ?
This by itself would provide so many side quest opportunities, like finding BD chip in random corpses, specific location or from traders.
The Original brain dance was used for entertainment purposes, will we be able to still do that in the game?
Yea, i'm suspecting 20% of the brain dances are for investigative purpose and the rest are for observation and exposition purposes. It would certainly be tedious if every single BD or even majority of the BDs are for investigative purposes.
My only concern is the skills that I've heard about thus far. They seem to mostly be xx% damage or accuracy or crits or hacking time which I'm not too huge of a fan of. I think they're necessary to combat and level progression, but I think that skills or milestones from those skills should influence how the character interacts with the world, what they perceive in it, etc.
Yes !!, if the "proficiency system" only increases the animation speed and damage value, that would be boring and unimpressive AF. I hope CDPR add multiple visible and distinguishable animations for the proficiency systems, rather than just a statistical change.
State of decay 2's proficiency system was so well made, maxing out a survivor's skill would give such a noticeable, visual and statistical change, that my entire approach to gameplay changed after maxing out the respective skills. They achieved this through every simple means. To be more specific -
(i don't remeber the exact name of the skills, so forgive my inconsistency there)
Leveling up Swordsmen skill would -
- Make survivor hold bladed weapons in a authentic guard pose.
- Attack animations with bladed weapons would change to a "sword-figting" style animations.
- Adds different set of Finishers.
- At max level, it would enable us to directly execute minor zombies.
- Statistical changes like damage, attack speed, weapon durability etc would improve throughout the progression.
Leveling up Sneak skill would -
- Enable us to sprint while crouching.
- Zombies would find it way harder to detect us.
- Loot way faster without making noise.
- Easier stealth kills on zombies.
Leveling up Acrobatics skill would -
- Make us "roll" when dodging (the default dodge is a sidestep).
- Roll is almost double the speed and distance of a sidestep.
- The animation looks so smooth and beautiful that it gives a new level of satisfaction.
- Make scaling walls and parkour way more smoother and faster.
- Different parkour animations.
- At max level, it would add the "leaping lunge attack". (which looks cool AF)
Leveling up Sharpshooting skill would -
- Make aiming extremely more steady.
- Huge recoil reduction.
- Increase weapon zoom distance.
- Increase weapon shoot distance.
- Huge weapon durability increase to sniper rifles.
- At max level, it would enable at headshot assist feature.
These are just a few of the skills and its proficiency changes that i can immediately remember, there are hell of a lot more skills. I'm a sword-fighting and meele type of player so i could remember meele skills easily. There are all kinds of skills for literally every type of player (gun type, stealth type, looting type, talking type, crafting type, running type, driving type etc etc).
There were so many skills to discover and each skill having its own tangible effect on gameplay. That proficiency system was soooo satisfying.
I hope Cyberpunk 2077's proficiency system also has a "tangible effect" on gameplay, throughout the progression.