I defend the game's design, except for one thing: The quest structure

[cerberusdest]

The game is largely full of really smart, even innovative design decisions.
However there's some really questionable decisions when it comes to quests.
Especially the fixer gigs - These are meant to be discovered as you go about the world, but they tell no coherent story or have any significance or visible impact on the world.
I was surprised in my playthroughs that there are actually so many of these hidden everywhere in the world, and what' more, individually, they're all really quite fun. But I feel that their potential is really diluted by having them loosely strewn about the map like this.
I really wish they had done just a little extra to tie the fixer quests together or incorporate them better with the main quests.

 

[Kra-ven]

Good to know.

 

[PepeSmug]

They're hidden?

 

[DemDiamond]

Not all characters can have the same relevance for obvious reasons but I felt that fixers like Regina are about mostly disconnected from the game essence. She just calls you the entire game and she has no need for anything but about studying cyberpyschos. Once I visited her randomly and she is just in her base/apartment leaning in the window looking the skyline of NC all the game. Not gonna discuss what happens when you finish all her tasks...


PS: Also I remember it was hilarious back when I had the first call of Mr. Hands. The guy just finds your phone number somehow and calls you in the shadows just to tell you hey, so you're new here right? I have job for you if you call me back.

 

[cerberusdest]

Not all characters can have the same relevance for obvious reasons but I felt that fixers like Regina are about mostly disconnected from the game essence. She just calls you the entire game and she has no need for anything but about studying cyberpyschos. Once I visited her randomly and she is just in her base/apartment leaning in the window looking the skyline of NC all the game. Not gonna discuss what happens when you finish all her tasks...


PS: Also I remember it was hilarious back when I had the first call of Mr. Hands. The guy just finds your phone number somehow and calls you in the shadows just to tell you hey, so you're new here right? I have job for you if you call me back.

Yeah this is what I mean, why not have some one or two extra quests per each fixer to make gaining standing with them matter? Perhaps tie unique loot with those quests, or make gaining standing with them as requirement for one final tie-in quest..

 

[CTPhipps]

You actually can have them affect missions.

* If you kill Jotarou in "Monster Hunt" you can intimidate Forest into cooperating.

* If you do Wak's missions beforehand, she'll give you the Death Moth braindance.

 

[zorba1138]

The quest system is like everything else in this game and unfinished placeholder.

I don't think that the fixer missions were intended to be like they have, the game files have a concept of street stories which represent some of the minor quests that are not triggered via fixers. The fixers were intended to be analogous to the monster contracts in TW3 but it doesn't seem like they had enough content overall so they essentially merged the street stories with the fixer missions to create the minor quests we have.

The fact that you need to get to a any place and the fixer calls you and says hey man I got a mission here is simply stupid. And you can also see how the content was cut, some of the fixers especially Padre and Regina have more of an over arching story to some of their missions there likely used to be a primary side quest chain for each zone structured around the fixer for that zone like the Militech-Araska false flag/war with Padre and the rest of the fixer missions were just filler monster contract style quests.

Sadly we will likely never see this fixed until CyberPunk 2 if that ever comes around, but the fixers really need two types of a mission a zone story quest line and the misc contracts and the misc contracts should really be more time sensitive and have more failure mechanics and these are the contracts that should feed into the street cred and reputation system (that we also never go).

 

[amblin83]

The main quests were sewn together very abruptly and most support role NPCs felt very flat, lacking proper involvement and character development .

The map design is among the best I've seen , very complex and beautiful but it's empty , V in this game is just a soulless vessel.

 

[Blurts]

The map design is among the best I've seen , very complex and beautiful but it's empty , V in this game is just a soulless vessel.

It's like they spent 7 years designing this amazing looking world, then 12 months trying to rush whatever content they could into it. And it feels like they ended up with a rushed story and shallow open world gameplay.

 

[CTPhipps]

I don't know what you guys mean as the map is filled with fully fleshed out content and short missions.

Every little quest has a short story with it and that's far different than any other game on the market.

 

[HellKnightX88]

they tell no coherent story

Every single one of them has a little story to tell and some are even connected with eachother if you read the emails, notes and listen to the guard conversations. Jotaro and Bugbear for example are mentiond in 3 or 4 quests even though they each have only 1 quest that involves them directly.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

really smart, even innovative design decisions.

Where?

 

[CTPhipps]

Where?

The fact there's actual story to even the Assaults.

 

[zorba1138]

I don't know what you guys mean as the map is filled with fully fleshed out content and short missions.

Every little quest has a short story with it and that's far different than any other game on the market.

You gotta be trolling at this point...

 

[Shaamaan]

The game is largely full of really smart, even innovative design decisions.

I'll bite. Can you name those design choices? About the only thing that's done well is the city itself - it looks great (provided it doesn't glitch out) and doesn't feel like a copy-paste job. The visual art style is also fairly solid. Everything else feels half-baked.

Maybe the ability to call the car / bike and have it drive to you is innovative (I mean, you can call animals in other games, but I can't recall calling vehicles like this)? But then why don't we ever see other bikes or vehicles driving around with no drivers? V can't be the only person with this "call vehicle" tech, right? So... no, even this is half-baked.

 

[apeabel]

I'll bite. Can you name those design choices? About the only thing that's done well is the city itself - it looks great (provided it doesn't glitch out) and doesn't feel like a copy-paste job. The visual art style is also fairly solid. Everything else feels half-baked.

Maybe the ability to call the car / bike and have it drive to you is innovative (I mean, you can call animals in other games, but I can't recall calling vehicles like this)? But then why don't we ever see other bikes or vehicles driving around with no drivers? V can't be the only person with this "call vehicle" tech, right? So... no, even this is half-baked.

It's frustrating because there are many things in the game that I consider to be game of the decade material. It just feels like every single mechanic wasn't fully done yet, but due to the decision to publish everything had to work and work right now.
So a majority of systems were left unfinished or at the very least unpolished. You see and feel it throughout the game.

 

[CTPhipps]

You gotta be trolling at this point...

I feel the same about all the people who basically say, "This should have deeper more interwoven story! LIKE DESTINY!"

And I'm like...wha?

 

[Shaamaan]

I feel the same about all the people who basically say, "This should have deeper more interwoven story! LIKE DESTINY!"

And I'm like...wha?

I think the joke here is that Destiny is less on-rails than Cyberpunk at this point? I dunno...

 

[zorba1138]

I feel the same about all the people who basically say, "This should have deeper more interwoven story! LIKE DESTINY!"

And I'm like...wha?

The shards you pick up are not unique they can be found all around the game world and for the most part having nothing to do with the story.

If you think that having a bunch of filler content that nothing but there's a few mobs in a given location and you need to kill them and loot a body/container to complete the quest is a smart game design I'm sorry but you are trolling.

They had a street stories system planned it's still partially in the game but they pretty much scrapped it.

Nothing in this game is finished, every core game system is broken beyond hope, CDPR needs to be shamed until they pretty much say we fucked up and we'll do better next time.

 

[kofeiiniturpa]

The fact there's actual story to even the Assaults.

What’s specifically ”smart” or ”innovative” about that?