WARNING THIS THREAD HAS SPOILERS FOR CP77, RED DEAD REDEMPTION 2 AND THE MOVIE SCARFACE
This is something I've been thinking about for a while now, on why I like some stories and dislike others. Every story is really a rags to riches story, its about a protagonist that overcomes an obstacle or achieves a goal and is a better person for it. I didn't like the story of CP77 at all and I will try to explain why.
Here is my Fun-Time chart for the classic movie Scarface (1983), i will use Scarface because its the perfect example of a rags to riches story.
IMO CP77 shares a lot of the same narrative elements as Red Dead Redemption 2 (another story I did not like) so I will draw some parallels to that game.
In RDR2 you follow a gang who is down on their luck trying to make it, yet suffers defeat at every turn while at the same time alludes to the good ol' times when they swindled, robbed banks, partied and lived it up. You the player feels cheated cause what you wanted was to play the game during the heydays of that gang when they were doing a bunch of cool shit. Instead we get a downtrodden gang that can't do anything, you feel cheated and robbed of a great story.
As you can see we never experienced any of the good times, the fun times with the gang, only the bad stuff.
Here is the chart for Cyberpunk 2077
Here we see we are cheated of the good times of V doing all the cool stuff we saw in the montage, doing heists, interacting with the different gangs, hanging out with Jackie, saving enough money to buy the apartment ect ect. Instead we are bullrushed into a story of the protagonist dying who's condition keeps getting worse as time passes with no friends. The majority of Fun was left out of the game. This is not a good story structure, you just robbed the player of the best parts of the story. Of course the story has other issues as well, too much Badlands, no interaction with any gangs, dead city and so on.
In short CP77 was a game that alluded to a great story but we never got to play, and that is a shame. If you want to to do a tragedy story that is fine, but you need to show the good times first before the peak and then show the bad times, but here all we get are the bad times. I hope CDPR can bounce back and deliver a solid story for Cyberpunk 2 and avoids creating this kind of a story that is downtrodden and uninteresting.
This is something I've been thinking about for a while now, on why I like some stories and dislike others. Every story is really a rags to riches story, its about a protagonist that overcomes an obstacle or achieves a goal and is a better person for it. I didn't like the story of CP77 at all and I will try to explain why.
Here is my Fun-Time chart for the classic movie Scarface (1983), i will use Scarface because its the perfect example of a rags to riches story.
IMO CP77 shares a lot of the same narrative elements as Red Dead Redemption 2 (another story I did not like) so I will draw some parallels to that game.
In RDR2 you follow a gang who is down on their luck trying to make it, yet suffers defeat at every turn while at the same time alludes to the good ol' times when they swindled, robbed banks, partied and lived it up. You the player feels cheated cause what you wanted was to play the game during the heydays of that gang when they were doing a bunch of cool shit. Instead we get a downtrodden gang that can't do anything, you feel cheated and robbed of a great story.
As you can see we never experienced any of the good times, the fun times with the gang, only the bad stuff.
Here is the chart for Cyberpunk 2077
Here we see we are cheated of the good times of V doing all the cool stuff we saw in the montage, doing heists, interacting with the different gangs, hanging out with Jackie, saving enough money to buy the apartment ect ect. Instead we are bullrushed into a story of the protagonist dying who's condition keeps getting worse as time passes with no friends. The majority of Fun was left out of the game. This is not a good story structure, you just robbed the player of the best parts of the story. Of course the story has other issues as well, too much Badlands, no interaction with any gangs, dead city and so on.
In short CP77 was a game that alluded to a great story but we never got to play, and that is a shame. If you want to to do a tragedy story that is fine, but you need to show the good times first before the peak and then show the bad times, but here all we get are the bad times. I hope CDPR can bounce back and deliver a solid story for Cyberpunk 2 and avoids creating this kind of a story that is downtrodden and uninteresting.
