Ludonarrative dissonance

[CTPhipps]

I think this is just a function of open world RPGs as a whole. You have to put aside the idea that there's a urgent plot period. Because if a plot means ANYTHING AT ALL then you will not arguably put it aside.

Why is Geralt hunting monsters? His daughter is in danger!

Why is Geralt working to stop witch burnings? His daughter is in danger!

I do think that the "six months to live" thing should have been at the start of the game rather than the aftermath or more clearly spelled out.

Maybe that would make some of the dissonance, such as it is, easier to justify.

 

[Xen40k]

@Techno_Core

I agree.
This game really needs an expansion that cures V and allows you to roam the city and do all those things that CDPR's marketing department promised us (like buying a luxuary apartment, spending time in clubs etc.).

Spoiler: Ending

For me the ending where Mr. Blue Eyes promises V a cure and in return V steals something from that space station might be a candidate for an expansion/sequel.

I do think that the "six months to live" thing should have been at the start of the game rather than the aftermath or more clearly spelled out.

Maybe that would make some of the dissonance, such as it is, easier to justify.

Spoiler: Correction

Correction; the 6 months to live are after the "cure". Before the cure it seems to be a matter of days before V collapses and literally loses his/her mind.

 

[CTPhipps]

Correction; the 6 months to live are after the "cure". Before the cure it seems to be a matter of days before V collapses and literally loses his/her mind.[/SPOILER]

No, because you have at least weeks to go in-game if you do all the content. You're dying but you have pills that could prevent it from happening within days. If you had days left you wouldn't have pills that could speed it up or not.

But no, my suggestion is you should have Victor clarify its months away from death so you don't feel weird about doing side content.

It's not much of a change if it doesn't change anything.

 

[Wepx]

Every bit of marketing for this game was "wow look how cool NC is" but as soon as NC opens up, you're playing a character whose lifespan can be measured in the low-to-mid triple digit hours. The driving force behind the main storyline disincentivizes you from doing anything other than what's necessary -- it's even reinforced, all the time, by the relic malfunction warnings. I have to believe there were separate teams for the story and the world that never spoke to each other.

And this is why CDPR has abyssmal reviews on glassdoor and every single one of them talks about management and leads being just a bunch of imbeciles. I do not blame the devs whatsoever when it comes to the game. Everything that was cut, every bug, everything goes back to atrocious product management. Because I can bet my left nut that the codemonkeys did everything they could... as every programmer I've known does and are always butchered by bad management

 

[PepeSmug]

No dissonance here, I'm trying to become a Living Legend by emptying out every vending machine in sight. Perfect immersion, perfect roleplay perfect story. I have no problem with this. Guys it runs great on my 3090 bring on the DLC.

 

[Night_City_Native]

To be fair, that was also a problem in The Witcher 3...

Geralt is supposedly in a race against time to find Ciri before the Wild Hunt does and failing on that quest may lead to the world being destroyed. Despite that fact he can spend much of the game doing side gigs for peasants and romancing a few people in between rounds of Gwent.

 

[lyin321]

One solution IMO would be if the six months montage you have with Jacky after the lifepath prologue was an act where you roam the city and do side missions and stuff.
Another would be if the story is as right now, but you are not given the solution (or at least leads to where you can find one) so quickly. Maybe a dying V have to still go and do side missions and stuff in the hopes that having more money and connections will allow them to find a lead to the cure.
....or maybe have it as it is right now, but introduce 'dead ends' where you can go and enjoy the world. As it is you have to headcanon(or simply not care about the story) why you are doing something else, instead of doing the thing that will save you(and that likely have a very limited time frame).

you get this death sentence hanging over Vs head too quickly.

It should have been like "oh, I have these headaches and sometimes that asshole appears and talks to me, weird"...while you try to hide from Yorinobu's eyes and also get back into merc business...that first act after the heist ... should have had no artifical time limit, should just allow us to explore and do jobs etc until the main story slowly creeps back to you, and up to the last third picks up the pace...

The damocles sword of doom also should have been just Yorinobu and Arasaka eventually realizing you are a witness, a potentia lthreat to the heir, and in possession of valuable tech they would rather just cut out of your head...

Johnny ... should have been just the annoying sidekick, providing valuable intel and contacts etc, but ultimately you would want him out of your head because it gets annoying and drives you slowly mad, not because your brain fries...

But we got what we got...

I sort of agree with you. Personally, I don't mind the 'immediate death' plot, it was just paced horribly imo. But you not believing Vik that you are dying could have easily been an option.
....oh and I love your idea of the main plot (after your death) slowly creep to you.

 

[Volkbrecht]

To be fair, that was also a problem in The Witcher 3...

Geralt is supposedly in a race against time to find Ciri before the Wild Hunt does and failing on that quest may lead to the world being destroyed. Despite that fact he can spend much of the game doing side gigs for peasants and romancing a few people in between rounds of Gwent.

While that is true, the medieval setting of W3 mitigates that problem. The "race" Geralt was in includes riding your horse through vast stretches of land, having to make a living while you do, plus the need to gather your intel from sources you first need to establish a relationship with. Sure, it would have been neater to not hide all the cool gear in remote places, and I also think that such games, where an established character is used, should not waste the players time with leveling up and figuring out skilltrees, but instead make character progression happen via tools that are picked up on the way.

Cyberpunk is different in that the progress of the main storyline is just a phonecall and/or a short car ride away, things that we all know from our daily lives don't take a lot of time and effort. Anytime we want to, we can decide to just continue with the one thing that will hopefully safe our life. Instead we are invited to basically procrastinate and put the one important task off for a little while, die a little more each day we do, but hopefully retaining the physical and mental prowess that is needed to take on a big evil corporation.

 

[Agen7Smi7h]

First of all, YAY I got to use that phrase!

Secondly, personally I think it's a mistake to have gone through the incredible lengths the devs went through to achieve creating Night City, to give me such an amazing open world to play in, but then narratively tell me I'm dying quickly. I mean, it just makes every side-job and gig ring a little hollow. I noticed it when I wanted to buy a particularly expensive car so I gigged pretty hard to earn the eddies and it suddenly struck me: What the hell am I doing? This makes no sense for my character in-game.

They built an incredible world for me to play in, then gave my character an in-game reason to not enjoy it, while at the same time trying to give me the player tons of reasons to explore and enjoy it.

I think I'd like the option of creating a character not tied to the main storyline.

100% Agree. Ending really ends this game, I see no point in playing again. In fact I've already uninstalled it and bought Asassin Creed Odyssey - what a GAM OF GAME! Hole shit bolls. That's RPG, I just made entire island sick with one choice :/ Ooops! Scale of that game and content in it is overwhelming.

In science-fiction realm (in cyberpunk on top of that!), with so many possibilities CDPR just choose to go soap opera, what a shame, what a waste of opportunity to twist our minds. Remeber first impression of Matrix anyone? After getting out of cinema, I really couldn't tell if I'm in the matrix or RW. Damn!

And for real, creating a game, with ability to replay it again and again, making your character die at the end is just stupid. I don't mind go out in the blaze of glory, but where is my choice? I already wrote that in some other thread, but entire story reminds me of Game of Thrones, epic story with epic failure of an ending, makes you wish you never saw it in the first place.

I really hope, they will sort it out, I hate waste in any form. I hope they will give us more complex endings, more opportunities to affect a world. I wish them best and keep my fingers crossed for them.

Back to AC Odyssey then, Kassandra will finally have sex with older lady She deserves a rest after all that beautiful and gorgeous slaughter!

Cheers!

 

[CTPhipps]

Eh, can't you just assume they're fine in the Panam ending?

Just assume they found a cure.

It's not hard. The Old World is full of weird tech.

 

[lyin321]

Eh, can't you just assume they're fine in the Panam ending?

Just assume they found a cure.

It's not hard. The Old World is full of weird tech.

Probably sarcasm, but to answer anyway - then they should have made something like bg2 (or some such isometric rpg from early 2000). But they chose to have such nice graphics, so much focus on the immersion. As far as I am concerned they basically say: 'Don't go imagining how the stuff you are told goes will go. We will instead just show you'. And that is great, but leads to problems as described in this thread

 

[Icinix]

Freedom and player agency in an open world RPG?!

MADNESS!

 

[SakariFoxx]

Dying quickly translates into half a year, at no point do you have a stop watch over your head pushing you forward.

 

[alebersam]

What OP clains isn't something unique to the game. You can't find the same in every game that follows a main plot/secondary quest structure. Main plot usually have a sense of urgency for narrative purposes and side things always seens weird if you stop to think at that. For example:

Fallout 4: "I need to rescue my baby... Wait, a heist in the mayor vault you said, sounds good I can buy Shaun one of those two hundreds years old radioactive teddy bears with the money. Can we stop at this settlement on the way? Preston said they have problems, run off of toyler paper... "

Witcher 3:"I'm going to find ciri, she's in danger... Look at this board! I gwent tourney. Well if ciri is old enough to tattoo a rose in her p**** she's old enough to deal with the wild hunt by herself"

DOS2: "we need to go to the ship before the hammer chase us" "wait a moment, we return to Fort Joy to kill all the remaining magisters then we take everything that isn't nailed down, dawn the game has a lot of interactity, we'll take some nailed things too. Then we sold then to the merchants and then we kill the merchants too"

ME: "the collectors kidnap the entire crew" "yes I'm on my way, but let throw another probe on uranus, it's funny".

This game in fact isn't one of the worst at these. For various things:
- V is a predefined character despite you can customize apparence. Not fall easy into desperationis part of V's character. You can clearly even see it in one of the six months ends.

-V is a merc, being in constant dead thread is part of the job.

-The game have several moments of wait until tomorrow for X search info or whatever. This gaps was make short, usually a day or less, for gamey purposes some people will want to only follow the main quest. But usually are in fact unrealistically short how npcs does so much in so short time. So nobody's prevent to create in your mind a more realistic gap of several days to do other shit

 

[TemplarGFX]

I have the distinct feeling that we were meant to play the 6 month montage with Jackie originally, and during this time is when you do most of the side-quests and gigs and get yourself all setup and on the way to a living legend. Then you meet Dexter and get the job of a lifetime, only for it to all go to the gutter and you end up with Johnny in your head and a ticking time bomb. With little to do left on the map, the rush to save yourself would be much more fitting, and the life you have built would have more weight on the player to try and save it

None of the side quests and fixers seem to care in the slightest your dying. You can be coughing up blood and falling over right infront of them and they just continue giving you these silly non consequential jobs.

 

[Techno_Core]

Dying quickly translates into half a year, at no point do you have a stop watch over your head pushing you forward.

I believe the 6 months is what you get if you succeed in removing Johnny. With Johnny still in your head it's much shorter. The game really presses it with your coughing, optic glitching and passing out.

 

[TemplarGFX]

I believe the 6 months is what you get if you succeed in removing Johnny. With Johnny still in your head it's much shorter. The game really presses it with your coughing, optic glitching and passing out.

Unfortunately you can skip time 24 hours again and again and again and nothing happens to you. I think Ive gone more than 6 moths (in game) just screwing around and refreshing shop inventories but my V is still alive. When I realised theres no consequence for pushing time forward by months it really made the story feel flat

 

[lelxrv]

I see it frequently brought up regarding CP77, but did people care about the same thing in The Witcher 3?

 

[Techno_Core]

Unfortunately you can skip time 24 hours again and again and again and nothing happens to you. I think Ive gone more than 6 moths (in game) just screwing around and refreshing shop inventories but my V is still alive. When I realised theres no consequence for pushing time forward by months it really made the story feel flat

Funny for me it was the opposite. The open world felt flat when I realized that narratively I shouldn't be enjoying it because of the existential threat of going insane by losing my identity followed by death.

 

[TemplarGFX]

Funny for me it was the opposite. The open world felt flat when I realized that narratively I shouldn't be enjoying it because of the existential threat of going insane by losing my identity followed by death.

Yeah it makes no sense.

Oh I have a week to live, my brain is being fried and someone else's consciousness is taking over me? I think I'll spend all my time collecting guns, clothes and a garage full of cars!