Gameplay choices vs. story consequences and problems with ludonarrative dissonance.

[Throcket]

So you're making more Cyberpunk? That's great! Cyberpunk 2077 was pretty good overall, and I enjoyed The Phantom Liberty particularly, but there’s one fundamental issue with Cyberpunk that, if avoided, would have made Cyberpunk one of my favourite titles of all time.

Dear CD Projeckt red, please respect players’ gameplay choices and the way they affect story, dialogue choices and character reactions. If the game gives me the choice to make a character that’s focused on melee combat and stealth, please don’t force a weapon into the character’s hand for the sake of some scripted action scenes! This is incredibly jarring and somewhat defeats the object of giving players this choice in the first place.

Secondly, and this is a big one: If for example I choose to play 100% non lethal (because you’ve made this possible within the game), please respect this decision in the attitudes of other characters and in story consequences. I spent hours making sure that I killed absolutely no one in the lead up to the scene where V speaks to Johnny about his killing thousands of people in the terror attack on Arasaka tower, and Johnny replies with something like: “You’ve killed people aplenty”. Not only is this incredibly jarring, it completely ignores and disrespects the way I have chosen to play the game. I chose to play it this way because the game allowed me to and yet the consequences just aren't present in the narrative.

Finally, we need to talk about ludonarrative dissonance. Please be better at avoiding this. Please think about the emotional flow of the game and how certain back to back gameplay incidents affect this. A couple of examples: V has just refused to kill for Claire Russell, and Claire is understandably upset by this. There is a break in the mission after this point where the player can visit the Afterlife… except at The Afterlife, Claire is her normal default self and does not acknowledge what has just happened. Where is the consistency, where is the emotional flow?
Another example: After the assortment of scenes where V discovers Johnny in her head, the player is finally set free and able to go back out into the world. One of the first missions available is the one where the Delamain cab crashes into V’s car. Now at this point, at least in the player’s mind, V is not cool with Johnny, they have not made amends yet, but in this mission V speaks to Johnny like they are already chooms. Again, where is the emotional flow and consistency between these missions?

I already like your game but I wanted to love it. Giving attention to these sorts of things would make it all the more immersive.

@Draconifors, @Riven-Twain, @SigilFey, @devivre or @Sunsibar

 

[Riven-Twain]

Post moved. Feel free to re-title.

 

[Throcket]

Thanks. TLDR: I'm basically asking that if you create gameplay/playstyle choices for players in a future release, these choices should be respected more consistently in scripted events, narrative consequences and character reactions throughout the game + please don't forget about emotional continuity between missions

 

[ShinAkira00]

This comes off as a needles gripe. Recognize that you are in a dystopian world...so yes that does mean, as part of the wider narrative, you will be in situations that you may not be able to avoid. If it was a case where they forced you to use a weapon for an entire quest then I would agree but as someone who just finished the entire base game using a Katana only, I did not find that to be the case.

I do however agree with your last paragraph about player interaction with characters. There are points in the story where a character or NPC reacts to you in a way that is unrealistic following a series of events. These mostly seem to be caused by how a sequence of quests are done and the devs perhaps not anticipating what order players would do these quests. This can easily be solved by limiting what quests are open to you before another becomes available but of course if they did that people wouldn't like it.
They could also ensure they record appropriate dialogue options depending on the quest completion and order but that's more script, more recording and so on, i.e. more cost. It just depends on what they decide is a priority, but I do agree it should be addressed.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I agree with @ShinAkira00, it's because players have the choice to complete most of quests in the orgers they want. So it would be difficult or/and expansive to take account of every "past events", what's players did or said and recording multiple dialogue lines or adapt NPCs behaviors to react accordingly.
But there are also some "mistakes", the beginning of Delamain is one of them. It shouldn't be available as soon as you leave the apartment, but rather after at least, meeting Goro at Tom's Diner or even better after the very first main quest whatever the one players decide to complete first.

Let's hope without have to worry anymore with the game engine (or less at least), CDPR will have more time to adapt everything depending of player decisions/actions in the next game.

On side note, I'm surprised about Claire. In theory, if "things" goes wrong, she shouldn't welcome you at the Afterlife and still be angry against you.
From memories :

Spoiler

If I remember, if you said you'll help her to kill Sampson but continue the race and/or loose, she will no longer welcome you at the Afterlife and won't be nice anymore.

 

[Throcket]

This comes off as a needles gripe. Recognize that you are in a dystopian world...so yes that does mean, as part of the wider narrative, you will be in situations that you may not be able to avoid. If it was a case where they forced you to use a weapon for an entire quest then I would agree but as someone who just finished the entire base game using a Katana only, I did not find that to be the case.

I do however agree with your last paragraph about player interaction with characters. There are points in the story where a character or NPC reacts to you in a way that is unrealistic following a series of events. These mostly seems to be caused by how a sequence of quests are done and the devs perhaps not anticipating what order players would do these quests. This can easily be solved by limiting what quests are open to you before another becomes available but of course if they did that people wouldn't like it.
They could ensure they record appropriate dialogue options depending on the quest completion and order but that's more script, more recording and so on, i.e. more cost. It just depends on what they decide is a priority.

Regarding your first paragraph, what I'm asking is: why give players the choice of playstyle and then fail to honour it properly? Do they want us to play a character or a cookie cutter V? it should be one or the other, not stuck in a halfway world between the two.

Post automatically merged: Jan 15, 2024

I agree with @ShinAkira00, it's because players have the choice to complete most of quests in the orgers they want. So it would be difficult or/and expansive to take account of every "past events", what's players did or said and recording multiple dialogue lines or adapt NPCs behaviors to react accordingly.
But there are also some "mistakes", the beginning of Delamain is one of them. It shouldn't be available as soon as you leave the apartment, but rather after at least, meeting Goro at Tom's Diner or even better after the very first main quest whatever the one players decide to complete first.

Let's hope without have to worry anymore with the game engine (or less at least), CDPR will have more time to adapt everything depending of player decisions/actions in the next game.

On side note, I'm surprised about Claire. In theory, if "things" goes wrong, she shouldn't welcome you at the Afterlife and still be angry against you.
From memories :

Spoiler

If I remember, if you said you'll help her to kill Sampson but continue the race and/or loose, she will no longer welcome you at the Afterlife and won't be nice anymore.

I totally get your point, every game has a budget and a time limit, and it shows in the base game for sure. But that doesn't mean what currently exists cannot be improved upon in the next game. Regarding Claire, it's possible this got fixed at some point? It's been a while since I played the main game

 

[Tarille]

If the game gives me the choice to make a character that’s focused on melee combat and stealth, please don’t force a weapon into the character’s hand for the sake of some scripted action scenes!

To be fair, the "Scripted action scenes" are implemented terribly in so many ways...

I assume you're refering to the plethora of car chases where V has to shoot at bunches of dudes chasing them. Where you're stuck using a pistol (And only a Pistol, like bruh, I'm carrying around a AR, Sniper Rifle and Precision Rifle and I can't use them because "Reasons"? Heck even the limitation on use while driving a vehicle makes 0 sense given the automation of vehicles)

Of course, these situations will always be impossible to implement a friendly way for a melee/stealth character (Unless you get some actually decent leg cyberware so can jump onto enemy vehicles, melee the drivers and then leap back to your escape vehicle)

But it's so disappointing that everything is so limited in them. Pistol only (So easy if you've got a souped up Tier 5++ pistol and a bunch of pistol talents and awful if you're stuck with the T1 Unity default gun you use if you're not currently carrying a pistol) and you can't even use Vehicle hacks (And in some cases, can't even use quickhacks on the people either)...

I spent hours making sure that I killed absolutely no one in the lead up to the scene where V speaks to Johnny about his killing thousands of people in the terror attack on Arasaka tower, and Johnny replies with something like: “You’ve killed people aplenty”.

Technically, you only was a pacifist since you gained control over V.

V has a past reaching beyond the start of the game, wherin they could have killed a bunch of people. Of course, such a thing still undermines the whole playstyle choice and its impact on the story and character...

Not only is this incredibly jarring, it completely ignores and disrespects the way I have chosen to play the game.

True. It's also not particularly difficult thing to implement. At least for lethal vs non-lethal. Dishonoured has has such a system for ages with its Chaos where changes occur the more lethal you are.

This can easily be solved by limiting what quests are open to you before another becomes available but of course if they did that people wouldn't like it.

I suppose that depends. I know that some people have been annoyed by this system being implemented into the Gigs, but most of that is due to the way this was suddenly done and with little tangible reason for such restrictions.

At least with missions designed around a system of procedurally unlocked content, it can have a more natural flow to how content is accessed and would be as unassuming as the LI questlines where you do missions and it unlocks further missions later.

And it's not like ALL content needs to be gated like this, only stuff where attitudes of characters can be asychronous with what their current disposition should/could be (Which will likely be more lenient in future titles as it's unlikely you'll have someone trapped in your brain with rocky initial reactions from both parties)

 

[ShinAkira00]

I agree with @ShinAkira00, it's because players have the choice to complete most of quests in the orgers they want. So it would be difficult or/and expansive to take account of every "past events", what's players did or said and recording multiple dialogue lines or adapt NPCs behaviors to react accordingly.
But there are also some "mistakes", the beginning of Delamain is one of them. It shouldn't be available as soon as you leave the apartment, but rather after at least, meeting Goro at Tom's Diner or even better after the very first main quest whatever the one players decide to complete first.

Let's hope without have to worry anymore with the game engine (or less at least), CDPR will have more time to adapt everything depending of player decisions/actions in the next game.

On side note, I'm surprised about Claire. In theory, if "things" goes wrong, she shouldn't welcome you at the Afterlife and still be angry against you.
From memories :

Spoiler

If I remember, if you said you'll help her to kill Sampson but continue the race and/or loose, she will no longer welcome you at the Afterlife and won't be nice anymore.

The Delamain Quest is a good example. If you go to get your car before meeting Goro then Johnny pops up in the passenger seat and acts like you're best friends, when in fact he just tried to attack you the night before. This quest was clearly supposed to be after meeting Goro where Johnny says he had a change of heart and no longer wants you dead. It's one of the more jarring interactions.

Regarding Claire. Even when you get the correct outcome it's a bit annoying. Claire is angry at you and that's ok but she screams the same dialogue at you every time you visit the Afterlife. Not sure why they didn't just have it happen once and then she just ignores you after that. I had to return there to complete a few missions or to just chill because it's my favorite club in the game and every time I walk through the door she's screaming at me..."YOU...OH NO..."

They need to polish little details like these, if only for emersion's sake.

 

[Throcket]

True. It's also not particularly difficult thing to implement. At least for lethal vs non-lethal. Dishonoured has has such a system for ages with its Chaos where changes occur the more lethal you are.

I'm glad to see Dishonored mentioned actually, and I would also add Prey as a good example of a game that properly takes into account gameplay choices when dealing out story consequences. Obviously I'm not trying to make any direct comparison with CP2077 here, but it would be nice if the design philosophy for the next game paid a similar level of attention to character agency through ludonarrative consistency.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

The Delamain Quest is a good example. If you go to get your car before meeting Goro then Johnny pops up in the passenger seat and acts like you're best friends, when in fact he just tried to attack you the night before. This quest was clearly supposed to be after meeting Goro where Johnny says he had a change of heart and no longer wants you dead. It's one of the more jarring interactions.

It's just a guess, but it's maybe keanu's fault for once. And I'm not joking for once too
We know keanu really loved Johnny and asked CDPR to add more Johnny's lines afterward. So maybe it's one of the Johnny's lines added by CDPR afterward (like several Johnny's lines time to time which seem a bit off). Because without Johnny, the beginning of the quest would have been fine at this moment. It's only V-Johnny interaction which seem weird at this point of the story.

Regarding Claire. Even when you get the correct outcome it's a bit annoying. Claire is angry at you and that's ok but she screams the same dialogue at you every time you visit the Afterlife. Not sure why they didn't just have it happen once and then she just ignores you after that. I had to return there to complete a few missions or to just chill because it's my favorite club in the game and every time I walk through the door she's screaming at me..."YOU...OH NO..."

I can't say, I always managed to "please" Claire by following Sampson even If I said I would race only to win. So in all my playthroughs since release, she always welcomed me nicely (so I'm not sure how exactly to manage to make her angry^^).

 

[Netrunner2go]

I can't say, I always managed to "please" Claire by following Sampson even If I said I would race only to win. So in all my playthroughs since release, she always welcomed me nicely (so I'm not sure how exactly to manage to make her angry^^).

Yeah same… since „race only to win“ grants you Sampsons car i never tried another option on purpose… didn’t even know that you can mess up the relationship with Claire until now… ^^‘

 

[ShinAkira00]

Yeah same… since „race only to win“ grants you Sampsons car i never tried another option on purpose… didn’t even know that you can mess up the relationship with Claire until now… ^^‘

I wouldn't say it's "messing up", I just had no interest in any relationship with the character so I chose a different option. I only did the quest because I'm forced to in order to do street racing. So most likely I chose to not help her after I won the final race. She was very erratic, and I just wanted to get it over with. After that she just shouts at you every time you enter the bar, quite annoying.

Post automatically merged: Jan 16, 2024

It's just a guess, but it's maybe keanu's fault for once. And I'm not joking for once too
We know keanu really loved Johnny and asked CDPR to add more Johnny's lines afterward. So maybe it's one of the Johnny's lines added by CDPR afterward (like several Johnny's lines time to time which seem a bit off). Because without Johnny, the beginning of the quest would have been fine at this moment. It's only V-Johnny interaction which seem weird at this point of the story.

We don't know any of that, that's just speculation and even if it's true there's no way to know whether that specific quest was affected in any way or if it was already written that way. At the end of the day that's the writers and developers' job to recognize that something doesn't flow organically and to make changes where necessary.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

We don't know any of that, that's just speculation and even if it's true there's no way to know whether that specific quest was affected in any way or if it was already written that way. At the end of the day that's the writers and developers' job to recognize that something doesn't flow organically and to make changes where necessary.

Well, we do... Not from CDPR themself, from Johnny italian voice actor
So again, CDPR likely added lines to Johnny here and there (and some of these lines seem a bit off, like if added afterward).

No, the Italian voice actor for Johnny had said that "his workload has effectively been doubled due to Reeves' enthusiasm for appearing in the project".
Meaning the total number of lines character of Johnny SIlverhand has in the game. Not his role.
So, in order to achieve this, CDPR had either:
A) completely overwrote the existing plot where Hollywood superstar was supposed to play the role of a relatively minor character; plus this character's writing was apparently so impressive that Hollywood superstar asked for game's writers to add more lines of dialogue for the character he was playing
or
B) increased the frequency of Johnny's comments during gigs and sidequests

So again, if you simply remove the little dialogue with Johnny in the car, there is no longer any issue with the quest nor the time the quest is available.
That's why I guess, this line is a part of the lines they added "because of Keanu" and was added "at the last minutes" as best as they could like most of Johnny comments during GIGs or little side quests which seem to get out from nowhere (but I said "mistake", because before release, I also guess they had more to take care of than this little lines^^).

 

[tavellone]

I'm not sure why there's a big argument here about Johnny's line in the Delamain quest considering that CDPR actually did change it so that Johnny is hostile towards V if you do that mission early on and vice versa. It's been like that since patch 1.63 I believe. Only if you have a positive relationship with Johnny does he give the line that used to play.

Anyway, one major gripe I have with many open world games is the false sense of urgency that is pushed on the main quest. RDR2 had this problem to some extent where you're supposed to be an outlaw constantly on the run but you're expected to believe that you can sit around fishing for days on end and traveling around doing random shit. Of course this can be handwaved a little bit given that your gang could be safe for months at a time, but Cyberpunk's false urgency is absolutely ridiculous. Even if you do literally everything in Watson before the heist, 3/4 of the game is set after you are told that you have weeks to live, 'a month, tops'. Yet you're expected to believe that this person is going to be fucking around doing random gigs and involving themselves in political conspiracies and involved in all sorts of time wasting. Shit, you even get an iguana egg that takes THREE MONTHS to hatch. Half of the gigs and quests involve day long time skips, so half of V's lifespan is supposedly wasted sitting around waiting for other shit to happen. Open world games should never have the majority of the main story tied to some fake urgency because it makes the whole story laughable and flimsy and to me it shows that the writers do not have enough confidence in their writing being interesting if it isn't in your face and immediate that they have to implant in the player's head that they need to experience this story as quickly as possible. That, or the writers are pretentious and think that the player doesn't have the attention span to be interested in a narrative that slowly builds dynamically. Beyond that, many quests involve a character saying 'meet me tonight at blahblablah' yet you can just leave them there waiting for you for days or weeks on end. I know this is a video game, but stuff like that is bad to me. It shows a real disconnect between the writing and the game world implementation.

A lot of the fals urgency could have been avoided if the relic eating V's brain aspect had been pushed closer to the end game and the main story being longer. I still think CDPR made a big flub by looking at The Witcher 3's length as a bad thing and halfing the story length. I know why it was done because CDPR explained that a lot of people didn't finish The Witcher 3 because of it's main story length, but who cares? Do they really think the majority of their sales are from people who finish the game? The vast majority of people who play these games don't finish them and slicing off content isn't going to significantly change that and I don't think it influences people buying the game to a great extent anyway. Besides which, I'd much rather have a longer storyline and completely removed the stupid fixer jobs which are mostly completely devoid of any noteworthy or interesting story, except with written exposition and let's face it, if CDPR care about removing shit nobody will see, I think probably 1% of people actually read the data shards that gives a bunch of meaningless story that nobody cares about.

 

[Throcket]

This thread may have gone off track a little, it was originally intended as an appeal to prioritise narrative consequences for gameplay actions better in the next game. I didn't originally intend just to air my grievances, I tried to give examples of where Cyberpunk fell down in the aforementioned, and I'm sort of half hoping this thread falls in front of the right pairs of eyes.

I'd also love to be a bit more constructive and actually make suggestions on how to go about it, but I feel this would create an essay too long for a message forum like this one lol. It would likely require digging into the core game design philosophy and probably also require knowledge of how CDPR currently go about designing this kind of thing (which I lack obviously).

 

[Tarille]

I'd also love to be a bit more productive and actually make suggestions on how to go about it

The actual answer to it is actually rather simple. At least in terms of narrative.

It's simply to create different states that activate upon different actions and then use such states at relevant times.

At which point it's just a matter of acknowledging which actions you allow players to perform (Such as lethal vs non-lethal, or decisions within a mission) and creating the relevant states to reflect the possibilities.

The incorporation of player builds into "Forced Action Sequences" would be much trickier to tackle (I.e. Aforementioned car chase sequences... As a melee build) though, one could simply... Not have these. Honestly, there's few times where these things even felt organic or necessary as is in 2077...

One could go into more detail into adding more features to the different states and states based on even more types of actions (Like how your build functions, like are you sneaking around doing ghost clears, netrunning and hacking your way through things, or Ramboing through guns blazing?) but that's more in the vein of specific design choices for the game.

While correct usage of states is the general idea to polish (Since it's already used for most actual narrative progression and things like relationships, do X action > get Y state).

Make sure that the choices you give the player, get the relevant states that make sense, using whatever means. Be it creating more dialogue to reference different actions, or gating access to certain events behind actions - Actions like completing certain missions or making certain dialogue choices (I.e. No choom Johnny appearances if you only pick the "Fuck off" dialogues with him)

 

[Throcket]

Make sure that the choices you give the player, get the relevant states that make sense, using whatever means. Be it creating more dialogue to reference different actions, or gating access to certain events behind actions - Actions like completing certain missions or making certain dialogue choices (I.e. No choom Johnny appearances if you only pick the "Fuck off" dialogues with him)

Essentially this, though I would express it with the following guidelines:

If you give the choice of lethal and non lethal in your game, then make this meaningful in the overall narrative and not just for a handful of specific missions.

If you give the choice of playstyle in your game, then make it meaningful in the narrative too. Respect it, don’t take it away from the player without a plausible narrative reason.

If you have to have scripted action scenes in your game, then please find a way to respect the player’s weapon choice, otherwise narratively give a reason for why a weapon is or isn't present for that scenario.

If you offer an open world game experience where players can switch between missions and freeplay, pay particular attention to the emotional flow of the game and how character relationships are changed by previous events. (I think CDPR already do this, but whatever process they used wasn't enough to catch everything).

 

[ShinAkira00]

Essentially this, though I would express it with the following guidelines:

If you give the choice of lethal and non lethal in your game, then make this meaningful in the overall narrative and not just for a handful of specific missions.

If you give the choice of playstyle in your game, then make it meaningful in the narrative too. Respect it, don’t take it away from the player without a plausible narrative reason.

If you have to have scripted action scenes in your game, then please find a way to respect the player’s weapon choice, otherwise narratively give a reason for why a weapon is or isn't present for that scenario.

If you offer an open world game experience where players can switch between missions and freeplay, pay particular attention to the emotional flow of the game and how character relationships are changed by previous events. (I think CDPR already do this, but whatever process they used wasn't enough to catch everything).

I think we've pretty much underlined the solution but we also need to understand what is or isn't feasible from a business perspective. Every game has limitations in the development process and this is no different. If I play the Witcher 3 and a particular part of the story requires me to craft and use a bomb or crossbow, no matter how much I dislike and do not use them....well I'm going to have to for this quest.

Your suggestion regarding gameplay and weapon choices is not feasible. You'd be asking the devs to significantly restrict their story or put additional resources into creating additional scripted scenes for something that has little or no benefit. That is unrealistic and will not happen.

 

[Tarille]

Your suggestion regarding gameplay and weapon choices is not feasible.

I mean... It is.

It's not particularly hard to create consistent narratives with gameplay and weapon choices.

For example, the scripted scene at the end of Act 1 where V is pulled out of the garbage and given a pistol by Takemura provides a reasonable narrative to why: 1) V's quickhacks don't work and 2) Why V only can use a pistol for that scene.

This doesn't "Restrict their story" nor does it require "Additional resources creating additional scripted scenes" it simply is putting the scene into a reasonable narrative framing.

Same thing as lethal vs non-lethal where you simply don't add the line "You've killed plenty" if you've not been doing lethal kills. Doesn't restrict the story (As this is not even a particularly key story point)

 

[ShinAkira00]

I mean... It is.

It's not particularly hard to create consistent narratives with gameplay and weapon choices.

For example, the scripted scene at the end of Act 1 where V is pulled out of the garbage and given a pistol by Takemura provides a reasonable narrative to why: 1) V's quickhacks don't work and 2) Why V only can use a pistol for that scene.

This doesn't "Restrict their story" nor does it require "Additional resources creating additional scripted scenes" it simply is putting the scene into a reasonable narrative framing.

Same thing as lethal vs non-lethal where you simply don't add the line "You've killed plenty" if you've not been doing lethal kills. Doesn't restrict the story (As this is not even a particularly key story point)

I didn't say it was hard, just costly with little to no economic benefit. The example you gave is a good one, several others fall within the same framework.

Let's explore the heist for example. As you escape the hotel you are required to take out several drones following you. OP is suggesting because he opted for melee, that scene should include a scripted option for melee combat. Sure, it is possible but how feasible is it to script a secondary or tertiary scene (depending on what other players feel they should have, this could be several) for such a sequence that has very little impact on the overall story.

This doesn't exist in any game in existence because every game has it's limitations. This is a narrative driven game, so yes the narrative may dictate that you perform things a certain way in order to move the story along. We don't need to stop at every fork in the story to have some in depth, branching gameplay option. From a business perspective that is never going to be a feasible option. We need to understand that game development is a balancing act, developers don't have an infinite amount of time and resources.