This is a long answer, so if you want a TLDR, here it is: Me, a CP2020 fan mourns about the features that should be because they exist in the books/other rpgs.
I have to step in, there are very valid points in this thread, devs must read it.
First of all let me say that i'm currently playing the game, taking my time, exploring everything. and haven't finished it yet.
Most people have been waiting for this game for 8 years, a lot of people have been waiting for it since 89. I've been wishing for a cyberpunk game since 1992 when I got the main CP2020 book.
My friends have a blast with crappy open world like the ones from Bethesda, and I always tell them the same "Want to see a well done open-world game, where the sidequests matter and mean something? Play the Witcher 3" I always considered it to be excellent. But I would agree that due to its setting, had fewer side activities than other open worlds.
When the initial Cyberpunk 2013 concept came out (The pre-rendered Max-Tac trailer) i hope we were going to see the Night City from the books (That it always looked to me more New York-ish than Los Angeles-ish) then changes started to happen during development.
First it was going to have online features, then don't, ok, no biggie, Witcher 3 didn't need them and it was amazing.
The director of the game changed mid-development, rumours said they pulled back a lot of what they have thought and made, don't know if it's true, but it would explain a lot of things. Including why it took 8 years for this.
Then they showed the game, and there it was, Night City....which it looked hella lot like a futuristic Los Santos, but fear not! It's CDPR, they always excel on what they do. And c'mon it's Night City! I wanted to play a netrunner or a media. But instead, we got V...which can only be a punk with some limited hacking skills and totally oriented to combat.
"Oh, ok, it's fine, the story will be cool and the immersion in the Net will be mindblowing still" - I thought "And there are drones!"
Then they started to promise a lot of cool features, people got angry about other stuff (like being able to choose your genitalia or the pronoun the rest of the characters refer to V, or the infamous "oh no, there is a trans person in that Evil-company-soda-commercial!, That means CDPR is making fun of trans people!"). I was just thinking that the game looked incredible, the trailers were amazing, and hoping that CDPR didn't listen to critics and kept the world faithful to the source material (Not being disrespectful, it's just that CP2020 world is an evil dystopia that isn't polite nor respectful if it isn't profitable)
At this point, I was trying not to get hyped, but I started re-reading my CP books. And oh boy, the memories with friends, the famous npcs...
Months passed, I upgraded my pc with an RTX 3080.
The game came out.
What was supposed to be an RPG is just a shooter. All skills are for combat, there are stores where you can ONLY buy junk (the sex shop, f.ex it offers BDs but you can't use them nor watch them) the hacking isn't that full-body immersion in the net like in the books (except in that point of the story) just a hex...boring...puzzle?
No vehicle customization (Also no flying vehicles, in the pnp game mostly everyone used one). No weapon customization. The Interface is basic and not comfortable to use. There are no simple things like a walk toggle. Or if you were in stealth when a conversation jumps in you can't get up.
No immersive NPCs, they just are...there. The world isn't interactable, the bands are there but they don't hate you or know you in the slightest. You can't join them, befriend them or go on war after a faction because factions do not exist. You can't fight Arasaka by asking for help to a rival corpo, f.ex. Trauma Team is just a prop, a decoration for the world, they don't show up to pick a client you just flatlined (nor you can hire their services) They just appear in the Sandra Dorsett quest like everything else from CP2020: doing a cameo.
The main story is cool (especially if you are a CP2020 fan) but where are those fantastic sidequests from TW3? Why all we have is some text from a fixer or the cops to "kill random NPCs", "enter x or y place and pick a or b item and drop it in w or z spot". How bad do you have to do it for making Bethesda (FUCKING BETHESDA) to look better than you? Those guys are repeating the same formula for over a decade, saying the same lies, and selling us over and over the same game with the same bugs with different setting and better graphics.
This is a looter-shooter, and not a very good one, instead of the great RPG we were promised. Patches will fix the insane amount of bugs and the terrible performance, yes. But what about the game itself?
People will be happy with a tattoo parlor, a hairdresser and 3rd person camera? That's all it would take?
I don't think so. This game needed another year (or two) for development not to polish it, to add all that's missing, to rework the game from the ground up and turning into a proper RPG. Where are the net immersions? Where are the other corpos? (Because Militech people shows up in the prologue missions but after that? It's just the only corporation is Arasaka, and Kang Tao at some brief moment) Why the cyberware doesn't mean crap? No humanity loss = no tough choice about cyberware, no reason for not being fully chromed.
Also no bio-ware (same as cyberware, half the humanity loss, organic in nature thanks to DNA editing but more expensive. It was in the books, people bought fish gills or weird crap like that)
Also, spanish localization is an absolute cringe clusterfuck. with quest titles named after spanish 80s songs (Johnny Cash changed for Alaska, if you dont know who she is, dont youtube it, your sanity will appreciate it) or a lot of characters, specially two characters that speak perfect english with NO spanish latin american expressions suddenly in spanish are full mexican (Judy and Panam. I get that Judy is latina because of her surname, but she speaks with no accent nor latin expressions in english. Why does she speaks like a soap opera actress in spanish?) and their dialogs are full of "pinche","chingada", etc that aren't in the original. (Like Jackie and his mother, character that do speak with hispanic expressions in the original and that has been respected in the translation) This got to the point of finding an asian police officer that talked like this.
I don't know if the change of director was true, or who called the shots in...well, everything that is wrong with this game. I just hope that that person gets fired knowing that they sank what could have been the biggest, fullest, and greatest RPG of this generation.
My question, to the community and to the devs is...will we have the "No man's sky" treatment here? A series of really big patches (more like free expansions) that add everything that was promised and turn a disastrous launch into a successful game? Can it be?
I wish. With all my heart.
Sorry about the long post. Got a lot to take off my chest.
