At first I was convinced that it was wrong to publish the game so early and it should have been more polished.
But looking back now – and especially how little CDPR got done in the seven months after release – it's clear the game couldn't have gotten much better, even if they waited another year.
So what I am NOT saying is:
– I like the game as it is -> I wished for more (minigames, interactivity, better quests overall, better AI in battles/driving)
– It was right to pretend, the PS4 bugs are not so bad - > It absolutely wasn't
What I AM saying, is:
– it was good to finally stop the crunch in the studio -> would have been even better to not crunch at all
– from a business standpoint, the game had to come out, especially since everybody was waiting for it so long AND we had a pandemic and not much else to look forward to. It would have been an even bigger marketing and backlash nightmare if the game came out as it is now (Patch 1.3) in June 2021.
I was lucky: My PC ran it with good settings, I enjoyed my first playthrough – and it stayed my only playthrough, sadly, because of the already mentioned missing interactivity. So, for me all the patches up until now changed absolutely nothing.
Maybe some of you have heard about path dependence*. It's a concept in social sciences and economics and one of the main takeaway-messages is: Sometimes small decisions in the beginning (decision=choosing a path) lead to consequences which can cause big mistakes. I think, CDPR made some of those small choices, and looking back at them, they finally pulled the emergency parachute and released the game.
So, discussion time: What do you think?
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence
But looking back now – and especially how little CDPR got done in the seven months after release – it's clear the game couldn't have gotten much better, even if they waited another year.
So what I am NOT saying is:
– I like the game as it is -> I wished for more (minigames, interactivity, better quests overall, better AI in battles/driving)
– It was right to pretend, the PS4 bugs are not so bad - > It absolutely wasn't
What I AM saying, is:
– it was good to finally stop the crunch in the studio -> would have been even better to not crunch at all
– from a business standpoint, the game had to come out, especially since everybody was waiting for it so long AND we had a pandemic and not much else to look forward to. It would have been an even bigger marketing and backlash nightmare if the game came out as it is now (Patch 1.3) in June 2021.
I was lucky: My PC ran it with good settings, I enjoyed my first playthrough – and it stayed my only playthrough, sadly, because of the already mentioned missing interactivity. So, for me all the patches up until now changed absolutely nothing.
Maybe some of you have heard about path dependence*. It's a concept in social sciences and economics and one of the main takeaway-messages is: Sometimes small decisions in the beginning (decision=choosing a path) lead to consequences which can cause big mistakes. I think, CDPR made some of those small choices, and looking back at them, they finally pulled the emergency parachute and released the game.
So, discussion time: What do you think?
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Path_dependence