I personally couldn't care less about Cyberpunk 2077 being worse off when compared to Rockstar's games in terms of detail, physics and immersion. What I care about is that it's not even on the level of quality of Witcher 3 and that it's less of an RPG than we were promised. CDPR clearly didn't care at all about the community they already had in their pocket. They must have thought that people complaining that Fallout 4 was less of an RPG than any other iteration in the series was just noise. In the end what we got was a gameplay-wise generic ripoff of Far Cry with little to no systems with a stellar linear writing and artistic design, but had clearly no vision. Systems and features have been stripped off of the game with nothing to replace them.
You're telling me that you're pulling out humanity loss, wall climbing, wall running (I wonder where this "verticality" is in game), the flathead, knowing there wouldn't be driveable AVs... ok, reducing the scopes on those aspects sure is going to give them time to focus on the roleplaying and different playstylsed aspects... nope.
Witcher 3 had Gwent, we were going crazy giving CDPR ideas about minigames they could put in and there isn't a single one? And we can't even complain that it detracted from focusing on actual mechanics, because they put none?
The whole, core philosophy behind this game, it being Cyberpunk, and it coming supposedly from a pro-consumer company that was all about "games for gamers, by gamers", that wanted to make "first and foremost an RPG", that aimed at giving us a truly next-gen game... should be to excel at choice and consequence and use the interactive format to aid this. What is next gen about you being able to use pistols, shotguns and rifles?
Why can't I have fucking drones? Why did you seem to draw attention to destructible environments if my monowire isn't even going to chop people in pre-set cinematic ways like Geralt would chop bandits, let alone affect the geometry of models?
Why isn't there choice and consequence? They obviously chopped the three variable lifepath that included childhood heroes and reasons to be in NC to put nothing in its place.
See, this is why Witcher C&C works: You've got a preset character, sure, but any time you get into a moral crossroads all possible choices are very Geralt like, you do a), b) or c) because:
- You are human/ fight for humans.
- But you aren't human, you're a mutant, a non-human and an outcast.
- Coin.
- You kill monsters.
- But witchers prefer lifting curses when possible.
- Humans or other non-humans are the real monsters.
- "Secks."
Now we get a "non-preset PC". The lifepaths give you EXACTLY THE TEMPLATE OF THE CHOICE AND CONSEQUENCE:
- The Nomad -> Libertarian, loyal, romantic, lover of freedom.
- The Corpo -> Anarcho-capitalist, selfish, lover of power, influence and comfort.
- The Streetkid -> The seduction of violence, angry at everything, streetwise, unable or unwilling to escape the past.
And they did nothing with it. The closest I've been to telling characters my opinion the way that I could in Witcher 3 with Zoltan, Yennefer or Regis just to name a few... is a couple of dialogues with Johnny Silverhand. The rest of the dialogues I've had are only:
Option 1: make progress in a pre-set path.
Options 2 and 3: dive deeper into exposition in this or that order.
Option 4: dive deeper into exposition only available through certain stats.
