I disagree, they could have thrown in some dialogue choices, and made the action sequences playable. It would have maybe made the montage twice as long, which is still a very short amount of time.
But that's kind of what I mean. Twice as long wouldn't be good enough. If you make it interactive you'd need it to be longer to make it bed down emotionally, otherwise it feels cheap and random. Cinematics, used well, can be deployed to compress a lot of information and the passage of time in a way that feels much better than perfunctory interactive segments (which by definition need to happen in real time -- you can't speed through days or months while asking the player to play it) or (shudder) quick time events, where it just feels weird.
If an interactive segment doesn't devote proper time to what's going on, or takes you through lots of tiny soap opera events one after another, it can end up making you feel emotionally *distanced* because it becomes very disjointed and take away the player's feeling of agency. The Shenmue games were bad at this, oh so long ago: massive cut scene and then "oy, player, press a button in this ten second interactive bit". It felt robotic.
Someone already mentioned FO4, but can also re edit yourself in DS3.
But those games don't matter; what matters is that there are very few things more core to cyberpunk than the idea of customizing yourself. If any game should have a post-intro customization and can justify it, it's should've been this one. You can't even change hair, except for hats that force certain hairstyles lol
The montage felt cheap to me. As someone else mentioned I had no idea who Jackie's mom was, so it wasn't really all that informative. I think if the subject matter was different it might have felt different. Instead of showing mission like stuff, it should have focused more on the things to do in Night City. Of course they would actually need more things to do for that to work. Then at the end of the montage Jackie could have said "it's time to go to work V.", and then people would feel that if they did the jobs in the game, they could then turn around and do fun interactive stuff in the world.
Something like this would be cheap and out of place and it's irrelevant. This game is story-heavy and pacing story is thing, main character is V, not Jackie. Act 1 is prologue for some reason, you get title of game on screen after Heist. Three-act structure with plotpoints being headshoted by Dex after Heist and meeting Hanako and everything between. It's so simple to recognize, yet people whining about lack of Jackie, lol. There was enough Jackie for my taste. Jackie is not really deep character (not saying he is not good written, because he is), he is some kind of introduction to Night City (him dieing during act 1 also). I'ts very well done. Giving Jackie more screentime serves no purpose in story. And I think it's bashing game for no clear reason, because Jackie isn't really fan favourite, other characters are like Judy for example.
I never said give extra time to Jackie, they're several other characters in the montage like Mama Welles and Victor.
I think the issue was more that people wanted to play it, rather than that this was cut content and the montage was put in its place.
At least I hope people are not that naive.
Personally I thought the montage was very nice and tasteful. Never had issues with it.
At least I hope people are not that naive.
Personally I thought the montage was very nice and tasteful. Never had issues with it.
Same here. First time I saw it, I enjoyed it. I never considered it to be anything other than a "time jump" cut-scene. It is true that due to its fast pace, it can leave some confusion with regards to Mamma Wells. Also, there is the Padre continuity issue. In my first play through as a Nomad, V clearly met him in the cut-scene, yet upon first entering his patch in Act 2, it was if it was the first meeting. I'm now playing the Streetkid lifepath and V meets him right at the start and it is made clear that they are already familiar. I've yet to get to Act 2 to see if this is accounted for.
I've done both multiple Nomad and Corpo run now to see the response of Padre when you enter Heywood in act 2 and its always the same, as if you venture there for the first time.
I assume we can state that V should always know Padre by default and that the Streetkid even more indepth.
Maybe they should change the dialogue from the call to something like.
"I heard a familiar soul was travelling in heywood. Good to see you back in this part of town, my child."
And then send the text message.