Do you like predefined elements - story-wise, characters,...?

[0248991]

Hey,
there are many elements in the game that are not influenceable but have at least a minor role in the story.
Just to list a few popular ones:

Spoiler: Spoiler

• Everyone involved in Heist quest dies
• Evelynn dies
• Judy is lesbian
• Smasher kills Saul (if you join Aldecados?)
• Paralez quest has no ending(...?)
• Phone calls and messages(Takemura, Jackie, Judy, Panam,...) deepen bonds with characters without actually having a consequence. This leads to emptiness and frustration after they leave/die/...?
• Having more implants doesn't make you feel more like a machine? Nor does it have any consequences...?
• Some AIs(such as Brandon, Delamain viruses, Skippy,...) could be nice to deal with somehow, but there are options or consequences...?

So the main question is if you mind these design choices?

From this point of view, I think that CP maybe "utilizes"/"bugs to" also have emotional, subcontextual and other impacts...?
I think I haven't seen such concrete, personal and yet stable, believable (and relateable) (character) design in any game to date.

Do you think CP does (correctly) step out of the mainstream with this?
Do you enjoy the quests being more cinematic (in form of event->reaction) rather than (more traditional) choice->consequence?
(The main differences being the initiator of change(world/player) and amount of different choices and outcomes you can get)

 

[Guest 3847602]

Spoiler

I like it, especially "Paralez quest being inconclusive". I've seen people complaining about it, but to me the mystery behind it works in its favour. Giving all answers to the players would diminish it.
What I like less is the absence of truly happy ending for V.

That being said, I don't think CP is stepping out of mainstream with this. Quite the opposite, this approach of narrowing available choices for the sake of more focused narrative and greater emotional impact is very mainstream thing to do. It's just that the writing is much better than in other big-budget games.

 

[CS554]

Would have been easier to discuss if spoiler tag were used in title.

In context how items on your list are presented in game, they work.

Certain element from tabletop Cyberpunk don't exist in CP 2077 as tabletop is multiplayer game with different character classes and certain element is there to create tradeoffs which purpose is to keep all classes viable. There's no reason for this and CP 2077 as it's a single player game.

 

[Maranares]

I feel like the game has a nice balance between gameplay and cinematic exposition. First person view always make you part of the action, even when you're just following a linear path or a dialogue with only one outcome. Yes, more variety in the way the main quest unfolds, with more branching paths, would be nice, but the story is gripping and has enough variety, even with "predefined elements" (which are needed to make the story work).

You want a game with long cinematic segments and little to no gameplay involved? Go play anything by Hideo Kojima, expecially the Metal Gear Solid franchise. Those are basically playable movies, where the "playable" part has little role.

 

[FLyingMonkeyPaints]

I do wish they had adhered more closely to the cyberpsychosis lore of the pen & paper game. Basically, the more metal you add to your meat, the more machine-like you become, and the less empathy you have for other people. In later stages, "normal" people start to annoy you, and then anger you, until finally you become enraged and go insane.

It would have been really preem to have to manage your implants and augmentations based on how much humanity you'd lose (in the original game there was an "empathy" score that equated to "humanity points" to manage). There could have been additional dialog responses as well depending on how low your empathy became, with your responses becoming more terse and machine-like as you sank lower down into being more machine than human.

 

[GloriousRuse]

I think these are two schools that have long been "mainstream" for video game RPGs, with their success largely a matter of expectations and quality of execution rather than school of thought.

Classically on one end you had JRPGs which told a story with essentially a pre-defined arc, characters, and reactions. Take FFVII, widely considered one of the most beloved RPGs of all time - I think the only "options" the main character have are telling someone you prefer a tan or pale skin, and ever so indirectly lining up one date.

Western CRPGs typically cast characters as far more of a blank slate, to be defined in personality by the player (at least within the spectrum of what is feasible to program) and to have much greater impact on the paths within the story and it's ultimate outcome even if the overarching story mostly stays the same. The old fallouts are prime examples.

Recently the biggest hits have been a blend of those - partially because of player desires, partially because there are business constraints that scale disproportionately at the AAA scale. Mass Effect basically codified this into "run a couple hours of content with a a little choice or two (that don't change anything besides Shepard's personality) then make one big choice for this chapter" combined with the ever popular illusion of romance. Dragon Age did a lot of the same thing with throwing an open world on it. The Witcher 3 refined that formula, keeping a few plot choices but narrowing down most of the character personality options to "some version of Geralt."

I've mentioned it elsewhere, but CP '77 is far more "Geralt" than "The Grey Warden" in nature, and that sticks in a lot of craws when people think V is their character and not a pre-defined character.