I think it would have been really goodMaybe the game would have benefitted by an actual journal written by V that as you progress the story unfolds and summarizes it?
I think it would have been really goodMaybe the game would have benefitted by an actual journal written by V that as you progress the story unfolds and summarizes it?
Yes i think changes to the journal would go a long way.I'm not really sure that the story (story coherence perhaps?) would have changed that much in a hub based design , I mean the story writing would have been the same.
Some of the complains that I see about underdeveloping VDBs (just to use the topic under discussion as example, could be other plotlines that people felt too open ended) I think are more rooted in the style of the source RPG and the base literature than in the open world vs hub based design.
Many times the protagonist is just a mr/mrs/miss nobody that get caught in something bigger and tries to survive/escape from that situation, with limited resources and visibility of what is going on in the background and under risk of being manipulated by one or other "power actor". In terms of the world as a whole nobody cares about them, even if by accident they are involved in some big world event.
Maybe the game would have benefitted by an actual journal written by V that as you progress the story unfolds and summarizes it?
If you only focus on main quest, yesAct 3 is just... Nocturne OP55N1 and Mikoshi.
You're right that Act 3 is longer if you take side quests into consideration, but I specifically talked about the main storyline only, because I feel that the third act could have benefited from at least one more main quest.If you only focus on main quest, yes
The problem here is that people who missed new side quests in Act 3 didn't do so because they deemed them not important enough to complete, but because they didn't know the game is going to have anything new, as the Point of No Return quests are usually introduced when the game has no new side quests to offer, and after all the notable characters are introduced.(There are many side quests launched in Act 3, They are optional but which would have found their place in the main quests line in many other games. CDPR choose to let us decide if they could be important or not, and for me, it's a good)
Fully agreeThe problem here is that people who missed new side quests in Act 3 didn't do so because they deemed them not important enough to complete, but because they didn't know the game is going to have anything new, as the Point of No Return quests are usually introduced when the game has nothing new to offer, and after all the notable characters are introduced.
People miss content on their 1st playthroughs all the time, I missed Leliana entirely in my 1st Dragon Age: Origins playthrough, but I don't think I ever saw players missing out quests to such an extent as they did with Cyberpunk's Act 3 quests and I think it's because Nocturne OP55N1 is made available too early.
So I think you CAN make it work, just that with players getting distracted by the other quests, it's imperative to make sure the main story is communicated in such a way that the player's goals and where they are in that story are always clearly telegraphed, whatever else is going on.They used three-act structure to form main storyline.
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Act 1 is coherent - V is closed in Watson, act 3 is ok.. but act 2...
Act 1 can take 6-10 hours, then act 2 can take lke 50 hours... Maybe if you're focused only on main storyline, it can work.
I don't know what is right balance here, because of nature of open-world games, there's so many distractions during act 2...and you can make quests in different orders...
Yep it's johnny (i think, seen how it's written and told).Since the main story quests aren't going to be rewritten, one way better to anchor the player's main story quests might be to rethink how the journal presents information. Giving the journal Johnny's voice (I think??) is cool and immersive, but that's no good if the player then can't understand where he is in the story. Sometimes you have to break the immersion and just treat the player as a player.