Night City looks great, but is by no means a realistic open world metropolis. You all know what I mean: not only bugs and glitches, but the complete absence of crowd AI, driver AI, a functional crime/wanted system, realistic NPC reactions, and meaningful interactivity outside of quests. What happened CDPR? I can't help but to suspect that over-ambition drove CDPR way over their heads, and they committed to something that they were unprepared to make.
Think about it: CDPR had previously made zero games with shooting, zero games with driving, zero games with stealth, zero games with crowd AI, zero games with a crime/wanted system, zero games with deep NPC interaction outside of quests, and zero games with procedurally generated enemy encounters. What on earth convinced CDPR - a studio not exactly known for its technical prowess - that they could outperform GTA V's and RDR2's open world building, and make "the most believable city in an open world game to date" in one go?
Compare that to GTA V, an open world that is by no means perfect, yet before making that game Rockstar had an entire franchise (GTA 3, VC, SA, 4) plus some driving games (Midnight Club) to hone their driving programming. They had the Max Payne franchise to practice programming shooting, RDR1 to practice storytelling, and virtually every game before that to practice crowd AI. And in GTA V it all came together. This is not to say that GTA V is perfect - far from it - but that to even build a functional and believable modern open world it takes years of accumulation of technical experience.
Witcher 3 also lacked crowd AI, crime system, or realistic NPC reactions, but those points didn't stick out so much because, first, roleplaying as a witcher discourages players from messing around; second, most locations in Witcher 3 are in a stable situation lore-wise, and worked fine without random enemy encounters, hence no need for advanced NPC AI. Most fights in Witcher 3 are not in human settlements. Also the shining spots of Witcher 3 redirected attention from its flaws. But Night City is different. It is a crime-ridden modern metropolis with constant violence, armed with a brutal police force, and V is a mercenary on the street who does get his/her hands dirty at times. This kind of open world needs crime and violence to be believable, so it needs crowd AI, crime system, realistic NPC reactions etc. that GTA has but Night City doesn't.
Obviously I'm not an insider and I can only guess, but my guess is that all those praises from the Witcher 3 went to CDPR's head, and convinced them that it's actually not that hard to build "the most believable city." How hard can it be? You just put down some NPC spawning spots, create a bunch of arts for a bunch of NPCs (which, granted, they did a good job with that), put in some combat scenarios here and there, and voila, the most believable video game city. Did they not at least wonder how far they fell behind technically compared to the open worlds of GTA or RDR2?
Going forward, CDPR should really respect the profound difficulty of video game world building and put their ambition in check. Making a super believable modern open world is pretty damn hard - why wouldn't it be - and it takes lots and lots of technical power and experience. It's better to make one solid step forward at a time and succeed, than to take a leap that only ends up landing facedown in the muck.
Think about it: CDPR had previously made zero games with shooting, zero games with driving, zero games with stealth, zero games with crowd AI, zero games with a crime/wanted system, zero games with deep NPC interaction outside of quests, and zero games with procedurally generated enemy encounters. What on earth convinced CDPR - a studio not exactly known for its technical prowess - that they could outperform GTA V's and RDR2's open world building, and make "the most believable city in an open world game to date" in one go?
Compare that to GTA V, an open world that is by no means perfect, yet before making that game Rockstar had an entire franchise (GTA 3, VC, SA, 4) plus some driving games (Midnight Club) to hone their driving programming. They had the Max Payne franchise to practice programming shooting, RDR1 to practice storytelling, and virtually every game before that to practice crowd AI. And in GTA V it all came together. This is not to say that GTA V is perfect - far from it - but that to even build a functional and believable modern open world it takes years of accumulation of technical experience.
Witcher 3 also lacked crowd AI, crime system, or realistic NPC reactions, but those points didn't stick out so much because, first, roleplaying as a witcher discourages players from messing around; second, most locations in Witcher 3 are in a stable situation lore-wise, and worked fine without random enemy encounters, hence no need for advanced NPC AI. Most fights in Witcher 3 are not in human settlements. Also the shining spots of Witcher 3 redirected attention from its flaws. But Night City is different. It is a crime-ridden modern metropolis with constant violence, armed with a brutal police force, and V is a mercenary on the street who does get his/her hands dirty at times. This kind of open world needs crime and violence to be believable, so it needs crowd AI, crime system, realistic NPC reactions etc. that GTA has but Night City doesn't.
Obviously I'm not an insider and I can only guess, but my guess is that all those praises from the Witcher 3 went to CDPR's head, and convinced them that it's actually not that hard to build "the most believable city." How hard can it be? You just put down some NPC spawning spots, create a bunch of arts for a bunch of NPCs (which, granted, they did a good job with that), put in some combat scenarios here and there, and voila, the most believable video game city. Did they not at least wonder how far they fell behind technically compared to the open worlds of GTA or RDR2?
Going forward, CDPR should really respect the profound difficulty of video game world building and put their ambition in check. Making a super believable modern open world is pretty damn hard - why wouldn't it be - and it takes lots and lots of technical power and experience. It's better to make one solid step forward at a time and succeed, than to take a leap that only ends up landing facedown in the muck.