1)Cyberpunk 2077 (why? Because it's where I've always wanted to be and due to my life, where I've always felt I am. People can complain about missing features {rightly so, and I won't fault you} and bugs, but the atmosphere, the environment. We are two steps away from it in America. It's "real" to me. And I needed this game this year. For me, they delivered. The devs, not the company as a whole. The trying as hard as you can to fail anyway? Me and the devs have a lot in common. )
2) Witcher 3 - Masterpiece, speaks for itself
3) Witcher 1 - An ambitious attempt at something the studio had no right to try. And what was accomplished was incredible beyond belief.
4) Witcher 2 - wanted to love it but it just drove me away with all the fundamentals. 3 proved that wasn't what they should have been shooting for despite the excellent story telling.
With this release I will never pre-order anything ever, period. Proves that corporate interests will ruin anything it becomes involved with. But I will look for the passion, dedication, and sheer effort I've loved since I bought that weird ass Witcher 1 enhanced edition waaaaaaaay back in the day. If the devs have their way, everything will be put to rights, and if it doesn't, I'll blame the corpos in CDPR. Why? Because I'm a fanboy? Sure, if you're that small minded to ignore nuance. I believe in the same guys that made the games I enjoy profusely to this day. Not the spineless shills that somehow effed up the one thing in gaming that should have been a slam dunk, hands down, across the board.
Don't believe me, then you haven't driven across Night City in the right car, headed to the right mission, with the right build, and having the right song playing. That feeling, it's never been created in any game I have ever played. It's here. Buried under all the other BS at times. But it's definitely there. And if you missed it, I'm sorry for you choom. I truly am, you missed out.
Any other studio, I'd have written off. But these cats, they get it. That's the reason Mike Pondsmith gave them the shot in the first place. And unless something profusely effed up happens from here to then, I still have faith it will get even better. The last bastion of gaming. Guess I am a fanboy after all. But from what I got from the first and third Witcher, the guys actually making the games earned it. I believe in them. I see and feel the work they put in it. And they might still fail me, and I'll gladly play the fool after that. But for now the artists, level designers, riggers, programmers, etc, they earned my respect and adoration with the experiences they have gifted me from before. I ain't throwing that away because the executives they trusted threw their work under a bus. I know what it's like to give your all and have some suit piss all over what you created. So I guess we will see.
