Open world in support of/working against the story

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DISCLAIMER : I'm starting a thread on this subject because I haven't seen this discussion coming up a lot ; most of the open world talks are about what it does good/bad, the lack of features and such. I don't want this thread to be about this.

I've finished the game two times, and I've been feeling the need to post about my experience because I think it has something to do with how the industry feels the need to develop games currently.

On my first playthrough, I did everything I could that was thrown at me by the game, from the most mundane thing to the most important of tasks. The story unfolded in what I'd call a great way (in my opinion) but I also felt like all the side content (by side content I mean : gigs, NCPD, pretty much all "mercenary" stuff) I did was somehow unnecessary. I couldn't really pinpoint why though. Sometimes I'd think it was because some of those were just filler content, but by my second time of playing I found out it wasn't really because of that.

On my second playthrough I decided to give a more "streamlined" approach to how I played, so I went with the main story bits, plus the side character stories, plus some other quests I picked and did along without really thinking about it (Peralez, Delamain, Sinnerman to name a few). My experience felt far more organic and eventually satisfying. When I reached the ending, I felt way more emotionnaly connected and invested in my character because I hadn't spent so much time "dragging" in Night City.

Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics. I felt the same when playing RDR2, I felt the same when playing basically every open world game there is (Horizon, every AC, Ghost of Tsushima...), and even to some extent while playing the Witcher 3 (I found the expansions, being way smaller in size, to be better paced and to tell a tighter story).

My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?
 
you could ask the same for GTA or Assassinscreed games
or even the Farcry games...
why not just a hose level designs?

because noone whants that anymore
everyone whants Open world
go around and explore stuff...
find eastereggs
or just find beautifull places

and in my opinion
next to the great story
NightCity is just gorgeous
 
you could ask the same for GTA or Assassinscreed games
or even the Farcry games...
why not just a hose level designs?

because noone whants that anymore
everyone whants Open world
go around and explore stuff...
find eastereggs
or just find beautifull places

and in my opinion
next to the great story
NightCity is just gorgeous

Thanks for sharing your view.
Sure thing, Night City is gorgeous and it's nice to explore and find easter eggs and such. That's something open worlds do pretty well. I wonder if it's really necessary to go open world for it though.
When I look at single person non open world games, even such as old Mass Effect (which weren't open worlds), you still had gorgeous vistas and exploration in them. Now in Andromeda, they went for way bigger maps, and it felt unnecessary most of the time as 90% of the map was just there for you to travel through without ever stopping by. The story felt not as tight and well paced as the first 3 Mass Effect, or to give some comparison, to what you have in terms of pacing in a Naughty Dog game or the latest God of War, which aren't open worlds.
 

Guest 3847602

Guest
Well, Assassins Creed games (the old ones, 2007-2015) had utilized parkour mechanics and social stealth so the big, open world made sense for them.
As to why open world games have become industry standard, its Skyrim effect - that game's unprecedented success (for and RPG) and people getting sick of corridor shooters and loading screens. You may remember that ME2 was criticized for its narrow corridors and ME3 for reusing small multiplayer arenas for side missions. Explorable area of Citadel in both games was criticized for being too small compared to the one from the first game.
Would I like CP as much if it was hub-based, linear game? I don't think I would, honestly. My immersion is not shattered by not being able to talk to random people on the street or getting drunk at the bar, etc. Night City just needs to look like the real thing and npcs to follow normal routines while I'm completing quests. And it does.
 
My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?
you could ask the same for
Hey,
I agree with this at least to some point.

As far as I am aware, the only AC game (content) "worth" being open world is Valhalla.

Also, I don't see anything going wrong with CPs (main story) if you would be fast traveled to individual locations (NC districts, badlands,...) (only) (by progressing the story).

Actually, CP even does work this way to some extend, e.g.:
- Scavengers and Sandra Dorsett
- Konpeki plaza
- Dex and No-tell motel
- Royce and All foods
- Evelynn and Clouds
- Voodoo boys, the chappel, and the mall
- ...

As far as I understand, these are not connected and influenceable by any other nor "the open-world".
E.g.:
- You can't kill Royce before the trade just to later meet Brick instead, getting flathead for free - that is, for the money Dex already paid
(- You can't fly away from Konpeki plaza (using Sarutobu's ID or something,...) by that flying...ship...?)
- You can't ask about, infiltrate nor hack Voodoo boys to get some more info about them, which could lead to some pretty different ending,...?
- You can't keep and use Stout's hacked chip to e.g.: fry out whole Konpeki or Voodo boys,...?
(- You have to return to Dex in a No-tell motel)
- ...

I don't know. I don't see the open world to bring anything new to if the game was completely corridorish.
 
DISCLAIMER : I'm starting a thread on this subject because I haven't seen this discussion coming up a lot ; most of the open world talks are about what it does good/bad, the lack of features and such. I don't want this thread to be about this.

I've finished the game two times, and I've been feeling the need to post about my experience because I think it has something to do with how the industry feels the need to develop games currently.

On my first playthrough, I did everything I could that was thrown at me by the game, from the most mundane thing to the most important of tasks. The story unfolded in what I'd call a great way (in my opinion) but I also felt like all the side content (by side content I mean : gigs, NCPD, pretty much all "mercenary" stuff) I did was somehow unnecessary. I couldn't really pinpoint why though. Sometimes I'd think it was because some of those were just filler content, but by my second time of playing I found out it wasn't really because of that.

On my second playthrough I decided to give a more "streamlined" approach to how I played, so I went with the main story bits, plus the side character stories, plus some other quests I picked and did along without really thinking about it (Peralez, Delamain, Sinnerman to name a few). My experience felt far more organic and eventually satisfying. When I reached the ending, I felt way more emotionnaly connected and invested in my character because I hadn't spent so much time "dragging" in Night City.

Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics. I felt the same when playing RDR2, I felt the same when playing basically every open world game there is (Horizon, every AC, Ghost of Tsushima...), and even to some extent while playing the Witcher 3 (I found the expansions, being way smaller in size, to be better paced and to tell a tighter story).

My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?

As stated in my review of the game.
This is not an open world RPG and how the story is written and presented the game would have profit greatly if it was more linear and closed.

Jump in as V the street kid merc who gets Silverhand construct stuck in his mind.

Tries to get rid of it, only to make peace with Johnny and letting go in the end.

The Ballade of Johny Silverhand - the end.

It would be a much more cohesive game and experience.

The game as it is just feels like a mixture of visions, none fully realized.
 
No, a linear game would not have served the story. That's not to say the game had to be open world (I think a hub system with mission choice would have worked, too, with only a minor hit to immersion), but the game absolutely should not have been more rigid as you are calling for.

Open worlds do one narrative element better than all other types of game design and that element is core to this game. Adirectionality, a protagonist tossed in the deep end with no firm grasp of where to go, requires a large degree of player choice. Doesn't get larger than a giant world to explore.

That's not to say adirectionality is always done well. CDPR could have done a lot better in terms of activity variety and tying activities together narratively, but a more rigid game structure would have drastically hurt the narrative. As an example, the very first thing on the cutting room floor in that scenario is
Jackie's funeral
It'd have been shoved into the recovery montage and reduced to a few seconds.
 
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The core problem with open world games is lack of fluidity in narrative due to player "cherry picking" . The core problem with a fluid narrative is an enclosed cycle where the player has no real influence in game-play.

Putting the two together causes a lot of problems from both to converge. It is only with very clever story writing, pacing, and world creation that you can avoid these pitfalls in gaming. CP2077 misses the mark, which is where the disconnect starts to happen right at the opening of the title.

We have a character creation ability to be whomever we want - But we are always V
We have a life path choice - That has no options in how we approach it.
We have a character forced upon us at the start who we are supposed to "bond" with over time - We get a montage with no player inputs and no story.

From there things go downhill even further.
However what CP2077 does have in its favour, is some good gameplay mechanics and core elements. The problem atm is that the combat system is completely out of balance, which creates a two-fold problem in the core game. Need & Greed aspects fail because of bad crafting, upgrading and generally underwhelming implementation of the systems which preclude long term gear ownership. Which then causes the player to try and "explore" in to areas that are storyline based, meaning events end up out of order or triggering incorrectly or not at all.

What it needs is a major bug hunt. Once that is out of the way then at least have a game that might be "iffy" in places but has good gameplay to offset it. At least thats my thinking. The core issues will remain, but those are improvable over time and with some good coding.
 
Open world created possibility to do different things, for different reasons.

TL/DR: It enable me to get good, game and have a good experience in the process.

Open world enable enables lot's of mission of various types, that then enabled going to different character build than originally planned.

Open world enabled to get really good insight to world. Gangs, crime and relation of that to game world, it ended up being a huge factor to why I was motivated to suspend my disbelief. A lot of content looked like they were lifted from actual police cases. That's thematically important, it's one aspect of cyberpunk, technology may give new methods to commit a murder, but does motive behind crime change, which is to ask, can we expect to chance world via technology alone? for example.

First it was just to test my character build in Watson, rather than anything else. Then after more of the world became accessible, I still kinda had that approach but I started noticing things. Essay could be written about environmental story telling aspects of this game. It enabled exploration and find out more about the world visually and via shards and stuff at the same time I was getting used to what is attribute, skill and perk systems impact in terms of practical game play.

At some point I noticed that what I had originally planned with my character build really didn't matched how I wanted solve problems in game. I was aware that you can re-distribute attribute points at Ripper Docs but it looked pretty expensive and doesn't do anything to attribute related skill levels. So doing all sort of things enabled to take entire different approach and make that work. I originally intended to pistol swinging cool hacker, but ended up with hacking, shotgun wielding Arnold/Terminator who was also above average cool. Stealth/cool and good CQC abilities if/when something goes wrong. Really enjoyed taking Arasaka tower with that.

Open world enable enables lot's of mission of various types, that then enabled going to different character build than originally planned. It gave huge insight to life in the Night City.

What comes to general population of Night City. I overheard conversations here and there. There were couple of interactions that made sense to me, like a beggar asking for money. When there's violence people run away and that's what I expected. In terms of reactivity I noticed that people took back some areas I cleared from 6th. Street Gang.

I have seen a lot of critique against how citizens in Night City work and I have seen big words thrown around and I still don't get it.

I have seen Skyrim mentioned, never played it but for me it looks like 12 people in villages in middle ages. Small societies, everybody knew each others, it's opposite from cities of today and mind set of big city paranoia which makes sense in CP 2077. Why in the world would these people act like villagers hundreds of years ago?
 
Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics. I felt the same when playing RDR2, I felt the same when playing basically every open world game there is (Horizon, every AC, Ghost of Tsushima...), and even to some extent while playing the Witcher 3 (I found the expansions, being way smaller in size, to be better paced and to tell a tighter story).

My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?
I don't think you can get around talking about lacking features when talking open world games. But ill try to keep it to a minimum :)

I will agree with you that, if you have a game with a very specific main goal, like in CP that you have to save yourself or it could be a game where you have to save the world within 24 hours or something. A completely open world is not really needed or beneficial I think, compared to a semi open world game like Prey or something. Simply because the pressure put on you as player to solve this issue is pointed out as being very important and therefore you should focus on that.

Open world seems to work much better in games like Fallout and Skyrim, where you have a mission, but it is not as urgent as you going to die. For instant in Fallout 4 you have to find you son, even though it is urgent, your son have been missing for 10 years and you as player don't really know whether he lives or not as a lot of things could have happened in those 10 years.
Also you are thrown into a world of utter chaos and mutated creatures, which your character knows nothing about, so simply running from A to B is not especially wise, even from the perspective of the protagonist. Therefore seeking help and make allies to help you make sense. Which then allow for a good reason or foundation of making an open world game, where you have lots of different options and features of how to make these allies, gather informations and so forth.

Also introducing Silverhand as a second protagonist or someone you constantly have to listen to, sort of ruins it a bit as well I think. Because your character feel possessed or at least should be somewhat worried about this person constantly interfering. Also Silverhand for some weird reason, is able to interact with the real world despite being in your head, which is kind of strange. This could work as a good side mission of getting rid of him and the game would simply continue afterwards, but as a main quest in an open world game not so much I think.
Which does bring us to the lacking features, because open world games is only really interesting if there are stuff to do. Not only that but there also need to be a lot of variations to what you do, whether that is combat, going to bars, BDs buying houses etc. or you as player being able to cause some effects on the world one way or another, or the world changing over time, this is what makes open world games interesting.

Looking at Fallout 4, you have you settlements, they get attacked, you often meet your caravans traveling around. You have the Brotherhood of steel showing up and suddenly you have Gunships and them fighting stuff around the map, opening up new missions which weren't available before, will you side with them or work against them? Even NPCs will comment on them arriving and what they think about it and so forth. Nothing like that really happens in CP, you have the killing of the Arasaka leader and you hear about it in the news, but the game itself doesn't really reflect it. Like people coming after you, maybe some of Arasaka's enemies/competitors reaching out to you, offering to help you etc. To me, I think the issue is that the main story is so linear that you can't really change it and nothing major besides this is going on in the city that would change the world. The gangs are very passive, the politicians again doesn't really end up in anything important either etc. Everything is focused on this narrow plot about Arasaka and therefore I would agree that CP would probably have been better off as a semi open world game.

But then again, they could allow for a sandbox mode and open the game up for modding, which I think would ultimately outshine the original CP game as being the best part of it.
 
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Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics.
Given that CP is more of an adventure game than an RPG, they probably would have been better off making it less open world than it is. But this is also closely related to the story told in CP, as it doesn't really work to well with an open world setup.

Pretty early on you are told you are going to die in a few weeks or so, yet you as a character still see the need to go around doing all kinds of random stuff for people? buying cars? etc. I doubt any sane person would care about these things in such situation.

Had the game evolved around you being a mercenary trying to make it in Night city, with all sort of things going on, corruptions, backstabbing etc. maybe trying to find a friend that went missing, trying to figure out what happened to them, it would probably have worked better.

Another issue as I see it, is the way that companies deal with open worlds, where you have these generic camps of enemies that are just waiting for you to go kill them, sort of like the MMORPG camps. To me I don't think CP had needed to do that, because most of the times, these camps feel misplaced.

I think they would have been better off with having dynamic gang wars, which didn't involved the player as such, but which they could get caught up in, simply by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Said in another way, make the world feel like its about something other than the player, that each gang, police, faction have their own goals.

I do however think that CP is slightly different from other open world games like Fallout and the Witcher, where you have all these different types of enemies, which can be made interesting in their own way, simply because they are fantasy monsters. Whereas CP its pretty much only humans and occasional drones or robots. So it quickly becomes tedious killing them, because it doesn't really matter if its a policeman or a gang member.

So in my opinion, CP should have made the open world experience based on other things than what these games does. Such as running your own gang, mercenary guild or whatever would make sense in the setting.

Also adding open world content which are more relaxing, like going to bars, BDs, food integration etc. would have been a cool idea.

CP could easily work as an open world game, but they should have thought more outside the box, rather than trying to copy from all these other games in my opinion.
 
DISCLAIMER : I'm starting a thread on this subject because I haven't seen this discussion coming up a lot ; most of the open world talks are about what it does good/bad, the lack of features and such. I don't want this thread to be about this.

I've finished the game two times, and I've been feeling the need to post about my experience because I think it has something to do with how the industry feels the need to develop games currently.

On my first playthrough, I did everything I could that was thrown at me by the game, from the most mundane thing to the most important of tasks. The story unfolded in what I'd call a great way (in my opinion) but I also felt like all the side content (by side content I mean : gigs, NCPD, pretty much all "mercenary" stuff) I did was somehow unnecessary. I couldn't really pinpoint why though. Sometimes I'd think it was because some of those were just filler content, but by my second time of playing I found out it wasn't really because of that.

On my second playthrough I decided to give a more "streamlined" approach to how I played, so I went with the main story bits, plus the side character stories, plus some other quests I picked and did along without really thinking about it (Peralez, Delamain, Sinnerman to name a few). My experience felt far more organic and eventually satisfying. When I reached the ending, I felt way more emotionnaly connected and invested in my character because I hadn't spent so much time "dragging" in Night City.

Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics. I felt the same when playing RDR2, I felt the same when playing basically every open world game there is (Horizon, every AC, Ghost of Tsushima...), and even to some extent while playing the Witcher 3 (I found the expansions, being way smaller in size, to be better paced and to tell a tighter story).

My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?
I think they did try to make the two cohere to an extent by gating the rest of Night City other than Watson for Act 1. In that sense, you have a chance to establish the wider world without giving players THE WHOLE world to get lost in before the plot has even begun.

I suppose you could argue that another way of combining open and narrative approaches is to open different neighbourhoods as the main quest develops, and once the main quest is done everything is open and a whole set of new gigs are added. That does, however, force players who want a more open world game to get right to the end of the main story to achieve it.

The commercial reality is that at the moment people want these HUGE open worlds, and if you're making a game with a very, very large budget you need to serve the audience to be sure you can make that budget back.

People here and on steam also ridicule the point made by CDPR that a lot of people never finished the main story in Witcher 3. That it was simply too long, and that as a result CP went shorter. But in actual fact, for non hard-core gaming addicts, I can well believe it because Witcher 3's main story goes on forever.

Not everyone wants to dedicate a month or several months of their gaming time to following a single storyline and may prefer to dip in and out (cf in a completely different medium the complaints that the new Star Trek series are serialised). That is certainly the case with people who may game for three or four hours a week. The game must provide for that and, if the main story is to be short, there must be other content as well.
 
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DISCLAIMER : I'm starting a thread on this subject because I haven't seen this discussion coming up a lot ; most of the open world talks are about what it does good/bad, the lack of features and such. I don't want this thread to be about this.

I've finished the game two times, and I've been feeling the need to post about my experience because I think it has something to do with how the industry feels the need to develop games currently.

On my first playthrough, I did everything I could that was thrown at me by the game, from the most mundane thing to the most important of tasks. The story unfolded in what I'd call a great way (in my opinion) but I also felt like all the side content (by side content I mean : gigs, NCPD, pretty much all "mercenary" stuff) I did was somehow unnecessary. I couldn't really pinpoint why though. Sometimes I'd think it was because some of those were just filler content, but by my second time of playing I found out it wasn't really because of that.

On my second playthrough I decided to give a more "streamlined" approach to how I played, so I went with the main story bits, plus the side character stories, plus some other quests I picked and did along without really thinking about it (Peralez, Delamain, Sinnerman to name a few). My experience felt far more organic and eventually satisfying. When I reached the ending, I felt way more emotionnaly connected and invested in my character because I hadn't spent so much time "dragging" in Night City.

Which brings me to talk about the underlying issue here : I came to ask myself, would the game be better without it being open world ? Again, at the risk of repeating myself, I don't want this topic to be about the open world being broken or lacking features. I'm talking about overall design in games in general and the decision to make open worlds in narrative driven games. I can't keep wondering why open worlds designs are so popular despite being almost all the time working against the story mechanics. I felt the same when playing RDR2, I felt the same when playing basically every open world game there is (Horizon, every AC, Ghost of Tsushima...), and even to some extent while playing the Witcher 3 (I found the expansions, being way smaller in size, to be better paced and to tell a tighter story).

My point is, why investing so much in work and time in working around implementing an open world, when your game would feel far more tight and have a better pacing as a narrative experience ?

The open world in this game, works best if you don't do everything, but instead do things you want to do, for whatever reason. I had many playthroughs, and I never did every quest on the map in a single playthrough.

The open world in this game is very good imo, but its not designed to be done in a checklist fashion. Its mostly supposed to create a full and believable city. You do extra content when you need to for money, or because you don't want them to kill that hostage, or you are curious what the story behind this area/gig is.

And, imo the game would be significantly lesser without it. In fact, in multi playthroughs, I tended to enjoy the gigs and side quests more than the main quest. Or rather, enjoyed the general open exploration on my own terms.

Basically, the player is supposed to consume the open world as needed, which is different for each player, depending on what their desires are at any particular time. Its like a buffet. It represents the city that exists outside of minimum requirements.
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As stated in my review of the game.
This is not an open world RPG and how the story is written and presented the game would have profit greatly if it was more linear and closed.

Jump in as V the street kid merc who gets Silverhand construct stuck in his mind.

Tries to get rid of it, only to make peace with Johnny and letting go in the end.

The Ballade of Johny Silverhand - the end.

It would be a much more cohesive game and experience.

The game as it is just feels like a mixture of visions, none fully realized.

completely disagree here, and its totally uneccessary to gut the game, you can already have a tight narrative experience if thats all you want. The city would be crap as a corridor, because it wouldn't feel like a real city. Also the city is full of interesting little stories, lore, and side content. The point of an open world in a narrative story is for the player to express the character and explore the world. Doing the open world content gives you a much better understanding of the context of the world, or allows you to express other sides of your character. My streetkid, i played as a person with a connection to Heywood, valentinos and Padre, So I wanted to do his quests, without killing valentinos, and I really wanted to explore and understand the context of the area. This was just as or more entertaining, in that playthrough, as the main story.
 
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Guest 4400165

Guest
I don't think the game would have benefited from leveled design (as in KOTORs, Mass Effects/Dragon Age 1). I do mind constant "bandit camps", though, but it's a necessary filler.

I came to the conclusion that the story should've been done first (maybe some stuff along the way), then the rest and a couple of things indicate that it, probably, is like how the devs intended it to be: 1) main missions aren't difficult and you have help most of the time; 2) being more skilled at something doesn't give major additional benefits (no additional objectives, different/better outcomes, etc.), only makes the completion easier and faster; 3) unlike in other popular franchises, main missions in CP2077 aren't locked behind anything, the progression is natural; 4) aside from being the main reason to play, main missions introduce us to the world (gangs, districts, people, the global situation and such); 5) uhhm...V is always reminded that they're permanently dying and they're getting worse fhe further the story develops.
 
Given that CP is more of an adventure game than an RPG, they probably would have been better off making it less open world than it is. But this is also closely related to the story told in CP, as it doesn't really work to well with an open world setup.

Pretty early on you are told you are going to die in a few weeks or so, yet you as a character still see the need to go around doing all kinds of random stuff for people? buying cars? etc. I doubt any sane person would care about these things in such situation.

Had the game evolved around you being a mercenary trying to make it in Night city, with all sort of things going on, corruptions, backstabbing etc. maybe trying to find a friend that went missing, trying to figure out what happened to them, it would probably have worked better.

Another issue as I see it, is the way that companies deal with open worlds, where you have these generic camps of enemies that are just waiting for you to go kill them, sort of like the MMORPG camps. To me I don't think CP had needed to do that, because most of the times, these camps feel misplaced.

I think they would have been better off with having dynamic gang wars, which didn't involved the player as such, but which they could get caught up in, simply by being at the wrong place at the wrong time. Said in another way, make the world feel like its about something other than the player, that each gang, police, faction have their own goals.

I do however think that CP is slightly different from other open world games like Fallout and the Witcher, where you have all these different types of enemies, which can be made interesting in their own way, simply because they are fantasy monsters. Whereas CP its pretty much only humans and occasional drones or robots. So it quickly becomes tedious killing them, because it doesn't really matter if its a policeman or a gang member.

So in my opinion, CP should have made the open world experience based on other things than what these games does. Such as running your own gang, mercenary guild or whatever would make sense in the setting.

Also adding open world content which are more relaxing, like going to bars, BDs, food integration etc. would have been a cool idea.

CP could easily work as an open world game, but they should have thought more outside the box, rather than trying to copy from all these other games in my opinion.

dying in a few weeks, at a certain point you accept you have long odds of survival, but you still want to live life. For terminal patients doing things other than just survival related things is key to general well being, and state of mind. Thats reality, it might be counter intuitive to you, but its real life. Who wants to be trapped in room thinking about whether they are going to die, with nothing to look forward to other than the next surgery, or doing a job to pay for the next surgery.

And there really aren't that many generic groups of enemies waiting to be killed here, you are actively going to groups territory, or business and murdering them. This is like a guy being like, why are all these cops hanging out at this precinct waiting for me to kill them? Almost every group placed in the game has a reason for being where they are, Murder hobo V is the weird one in these situations.

And its weird you say that part about the world existing outside of V.... its literally true, they do have gang wars which have nothing to do with you, and the people that exist all have their own reason for being there that has nothing to do with V. And mostly, these people would prefer if you minded your own business.

play the game in a more non lethal. stealth fashion, and read emails/shards, and observe the areas, you'll hear conversations and realize nobody is there for V. They exist for their own reasons/purposes

Also, I would say you really aren't supposed to be killing people just because they are there in this game, it isn't really how its designed. You only really should be killing people if you have to, in order to achieve some objective. Maybe its because I always played at the highest difficulty, and generally ended the game when I became too OP, but getting into pointless open conflicts is usually not productive.
 
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play the game in a more non lethal. stealth fashion, and read emails/shards, and observe the areas, you'll hear conversations and realize nobody is there for V. They exist for their own reasons/purposes
Yes, if you sneak in a assault (obviously if you rush in with a shotgun, that don't work...)
Everyone have a little background (enemies discuss/holocall/dispute). And if you read the shards, you can have more informations about differents GIG, quests or NPC/Fixer... :)
(and that, for me, it's particularly well done. If you take time for discover it)

Edit: and it's all translate in french... awesome job... :)
 
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