Romances: Disparity in quality and quantity

[rippercityransom]

Yeah, that left a bad taste in my mouth even though I get what he's saying. It somehow makes it...more? frustrating? to hear that explanation. Like, I get that there's more variables to River's story, I get it, but how does it make it better that there's no romance anything until the last five minutes of the storyline (not counting snide comments from Johnny)? It justifies it but also absolutely doesn't.

I'm not totally sure I can word this in a way that isn't pure sodium but I swear I'm trying. I can't pull much positive from that whole interaction. While it's always a good thing to remember that devs are people and to appreciate the time creators put into their projects, players can't actually, really appreciate the amount of time a thing took to make just because it took a lot of time. It's well and good to bring up that River's quests had a lot of variables, but one of those variables is "lol you killed him." And if braindances were harder to make, I would have loved to skip a braindance scene or two if it meant I didn't have to get thrust immediately into the "I miss you" call without any other sort of lead-in considering that was the only option a straight female V had.

Then the way he brought up the Witcher romances almost made it sound like the "we're just a slave to the narrative" reasoning that I mentioned as one of my worst case scenarios a few posts/pages back. "One option just fit in better" is great when you're talking about choosing between one of two female options for a set straight guy PC. When you're talking about 2 out of 4 orientations not "fitting the ideas" it hits a little different and a little more square in the chest. That's ignoring entirely that it's highly unlikely anyone thought that River and Kerry's personal arcs were in danger of feeling bloated. 3 quests for River. 3 quests from meeting him to sealing the deal.

That's not all of it by a long shot, there was so much there to unpack in such a short amount of time. (Edited a bit for next-day regret for the high sodium content.)

 

[Guest 4412420]

That video was... not promising. I'm not sure he misunderstood the question so much as was just confirming that River has less content on purpose because braindances take more time to make, so he has the same amount of effort put into him on a "time invested by devs" front, and the same case for Kerry. Unless I am also misunderstanding or being overly pessimistic. So if they invested 10 hours total in each character, they spent 6 hours on Panam and Judy's main quests and had 4 left over for romance content, but Kerry and River took up more time in their main quests so they had 9 hours invested in the quest and only 1 hour of dev effort left over for romance content. So his explanation is they didn't play favorites because they all got 10 hours of attention, even if we as players only see 10 quests vs 3.

I'm trying to stay optimistic because he did talk about the questlines only.

As far as Kerry's questline is concerned I have only good things to say. I found his storyline really well done, his character was also well developed. The attention, effort, hard work and love they poured into his story is clear to see.

River's quests are without a doubt made with quality too, and I'm sure braindances are tricky to implement. Yet, I still wish he had more because it doesn't feel like I got to know him as well as the other three.

Romances are a different can of worms. I don't remember how much dialogue River has, and I hate to boil it down to numbers, but as far as romance specific dialogue for Kerry goes, he has 3. 4 if you count the "should I feel special?" "maybe". From the creative standpoint I find it difficult to believe that anyone could look at this and say: "Yeah, that's fine. Fully developed romance right here." because that's simply not enough dialogue to build a believable romantic connection.

During the endings, whether Kerry promises to stay with V until the very end, breaks up with him or leaves an angry voicemail because he thinks V ghosted him, he acts like what he and V have is serious and real. 3-4 dialogue options are not enough to build a relationship where this kind of behavior makes much sense. The Sun and the Star endings have time passage where they had time to spend together and further develop the relationship. Temperance and the Devil endings do not. This applies to River too.

Edit: as for The Witcher thing, they still listened and added some new content for Triss. I hope they'll do the same here, because the situation in Cyberpunk is worse. Triss was a romance option since the very 1st game and TW2 defaults to her romance. Kerry and River only have what they have. There are no previous games where their romances were more fleshed out.

 

[Ninivekha]

Thanks for the stream and the timestamp.

Yeah, that left a bad taste in my mouth even though I get what he's saying. It somehow makes it...more? frustrating? to hear that explanation. Like, I get that there's more variables to River's story, I get it, but how does it make it better that there's no romance anything until the last five minutes of the storyline (not counting snide comments from Johnny)? It justifies it but also absolutely doesn't.

For me it looks even worse than before, it means it is not a problem to be fixed.
They put all the effort into its character story and forgot about the romance.

 

[rippercityransom]

They put all the effort into its character story and forgot about the romance.

Yeah that was my biggest issue. :/ I get that he's a normal character first and that his story quests are the thing that benefit everyone that meets him, but he's also the only straight female romance so when they put all the effort into his main story mechanics and little to none into the romance content, it shorts straight f!V's story in a way that straight m!V and lesbian f!v didn't get shorted, and gay m!V gets the same treatment. They got a lot of main story content and more romance content so saying they got the same amount of attention just seems really unlikely. He also didn't talk about the way they're treated in the endings, but maybe he's not allowed or he didn't think it was relevant to the question asked.

Romances are a different can of worms. I don't remember how much dialogue River has, and I hate to boil it down to numbers, but as far as romance specific dialogue for Kerry goes, he has 3. 4 if you count the "should I feel special?" "maybe". From the creative standpoint I find it difficult to believe that anyone could look at this and say: "Yeah, that's fine. Fully developed romance right here." because that's simply not enough dialogue to build a believable romantic connection.

A while back, when you did the video comparing and I played through River's quests to write it out, I kept an eye out for anything that seemed like it would be FemV specific, but I really didn't see anything outside of Johnny's comment and maybe the getting a beer comment after you first meet him. I haven't sat down and compared the quests between male and female V (not that it would take long ha! ... more laughing so we don't cry ) but I couldn't pinpoint any spot that really lended itself to building to the water tower scene where River says it's "too late" for not falling in love with V. Like you said, outside of the questlines themselves, there's really no way to spin it that makes it look like they were given equal attention. Now that I've had some time to sort of come down from the initial outrage I can fully admit that River's line is usually brought up as people's favorite when they're not talking about-- well you know. The quest itself is pretty good... if he was just another NPC. But then they clipped a romance tag on him and forgot to flesh that out alongside the quest, which they really needed to do if they were going to have him confess his love after 2 quests of action and a then pot of jambalaya.

I'm trying to stay optimistic because he did talk about the questlines only.

Really leaning on that strength of your optimism to maintain healthy levels of salt. Nothing I say is ever meant to demean the work that goes into the game, I know it's grueling and under-appreciated and they've had a rough 8 months. I think it's just easy to get defensive and react negatively as a player when you've got so many years in gaming, and so many of those years are spent kind of defending your ability to maintain space there in the first place. People can be very cruel and this kind of disparity can, will (and has been in some very horrible comments I've seen on Reddit and Twitter) be weaponized as just another way of saying "these games aren't actually for you." Even if it's said in the most gentle and honest way, like "the story came first", it still sucks. At the end of the day, that's it. It is a sucky feeling. The intent is one thing, but the impact is another. Road to hell-- as the saying goes.

I also hope they can pull it around a little like they apparently did for Triss, but like you said, this situation is just so much worse. This wasn't just about which love interest did people like more/want more of, this is about 2 of the orientation-exclusive romances and whether those orientations fit well into the story. :/

 

[Guest 4412420]

I don't want to jump to conclusions, because there had been times where people misunderstood what the developers said. Hell, it happened to Paweł too when people misunderstood his joke and assumed CDPR will start dropping free DLCs very soon.

It's obvious that all of their quests received attention, hard work and care. It's entirely possible that I'm getting this completely wrong, but it feels like implementing all the complicated mechanics that were needed for Panam's quests didn't require sacrificing romance content: be they dialogue options or animations like V putting his arm around her. What was about Kerry's and River's personal quests that romance specific dialogue required to properly develop their romances had to be so significantly reduced?

Post automatically merged: Aug 22, 2021

I also hope they can pull it around a little like they apparently did for Triss, but like you said, this situation is just so much worse. This wasn't just about which love interest did people like more/want more of, this is about 2 of the orientation-exclusive romances and whether those orientations fit well into the story. :/

With Cyberpunk romances they have more variables to consider. Including different sexualities. I genuinely believe that this was unintentional and that they didn't want people to feel like certain sexualities are less important.

 

[seracy]

I think it's just easy to get defensive and react negatively as a player when you've got so many years in gaming, and so many of those years are spent kind of defending your ability to maintain space there in the first place.

This about sums it up. I'm sure there are people who are confused as to why there's so much fuss about optional side content. This is an area where we've had to fight for our own ground for many years while being met with silence from devs and attacks from toxic gamers.

The frustration is not solely from these characters but this content is not perceived in a vacuum. We're talking about demographics of players that historically were 1) ignored completely or 2) invited to the table but served less. In this context, the reaction is pretty much expected.

That said, I do believe they genuinely want to make the content we would be happy with. They're at a point from experience where they've really refined female romances. They have a lot of good things to build on and also learn from for the male ones. I personally don't think they will or can allocate the resources to make these changes to the base story. I just hope they are more careful going forward. When I played through that content it was like hitting a wall where I suddenly felt like an "other", less important player because the content was so focused on Panam/Judy.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

Panam/Judy were parts of the main quests so maybe CDPR started their story/romance before on the "to-do" planning. For River/Kerry, they maybe/probably started to work on them after by thinking they would have the time to did it entirely.
But like for a lot of things in the game, thanks of all "recent" events, they had not enough time remaining to finish them before the release... and also not enough time until now for fix and add things.
I don't see all of that disparity like "intended" or "Kerry/River were less important", but only due to the big lack of time at the release and the big lack of time for these things until now...
But it still my point of view (if it's not that, I don't understand how it's possible).

 

[Guest 4412420]

I kept an eye out for anything that seemed like it would be FemV specific, but I really didn't see anything outside of Johnny's comment and maybe the getting a beer comment after you first meet him. I haven't sat down and compared the quests between male and female V

I forgot to reply to this in my previous post, but in Following the River, when V is stirring jambalaya, she can say that River looks different, more well rested. River replies that he wanted V to see a more relaxed side of him. That one is female V exclusive.

I don't see all of that disparity like "intended" or "Kerry/River were less important", but only due to the big lack of time at the release and the big lack of time for these things until now...

I think the reason you're more optimistic than us is because you romanced Judy and had a more pleasant experience. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad you and everyone else who romanced either Judy or Panam had a great time, but more positive experience means a more positive outlook. Those of us who romanced Kerry or River didn't get the same, so our outlook is more negative as a result.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

I think the reason you're more optimistic than us is because you romanced Judy and had a more satisfying experience.

Maybe a little, I'm not gonnat lie.
But mostly because CDPR is pretty big studio with hundred of employes (with different sexual orientation, if I can say that) who decide to make romances for each one. So I can hardly imagine that is intended to make two "good" ones and ignore the two others.

And why do/promote those kind of events if CDPR effectively think that minorities (or men's romances) are not so/also "important".

Pride Month charity stream is coming!

Love conquers all! In celebration of Pride Month, we are hosting a charity stream on our Twitch channel this Friday, June 18th, from 9AM to 10PM CEST. Nine of our team members have joined up for stream sessions from our games old and new all day long to raise funds for the charity KPH. Kampania...

forums.cdprojektred.com

So the only reason in my opinion (and I hope), it's the lack of time before the realease and the lack of time until now (like a lot of things in the game, it's not as if the game was bug free and polish).
And until now, sadly the goal was "simply" to fix bugs, nothing more...
Kerry have now, a bug free quest line, I think. Most of them have been fixed like his weird bathrobe, V's hand that went through Kerry's shoulder during "Rebel!Rebel!".
River's quest line is "relatively" bug free now (after many patches), but he started with a messy quest line "The Hunt". But it remains some bugs I think.

 

[rippercityransom]

if it's not that, I don't understand how it's possible

If Pawel answered the question the way it was asked and it's not an unfortunate misunderstanding, he pretty much explained how it could have happened and been 100% intentional.

Spoiler: Timestamps and comments

3:25:19 he leads with that first little heart-punch: "We also had time constraints with Judy and Panam, so I would say this was our artistic decision. Because all those storylines are a bit something different, right?" He goes on to say that they didn't want to make the shorter storylines longer just to maintain the same amount of content because it would weaken them.

At 3:26:17 he says: "There was lots of reasons why we ended up with the length of those storylines like that. For instance, the quests that Kerry and River have cost a lot of work."

3:26:57 in reference to River's storyline in particular he says: "For you, it might look like 'okay, that story is shorter' but it's not-- because we have put in so much, the same amount of time and effort to build it." He talks a bit about the way you can make wrong choices in River's quest and how much time that takes.

3:27:25 is where I got the most disheartened when he says: "I know for you, subjectively, you look at it and you're like 'uh-uh Judy and Panam have, let's say, 5 hours, so why Kerry and River don't have 5?' Well because looking at the work we put in, that was the same amount of work. Nobody treated them as less important. It's just some of those mechanics that we have used in some of the storylines are just so much more demanding to build. That's the reality.

3:28:15 also got me tripped up because in reference to the difference in Triss/Yen he basically says "we didn't mean to make one less interesting or have less content, it was that the mechanics and ideas we had just happened to play out that way."

So while he was talking about amount of time in their quests, which I think everyone agrees that no one really expected it to be an even 5 hour split for all the romances, some of the phrases (bolded in spoiler) he uses makes it sound like everything was calculated and played out how they wanted. Keeping in mind that he's been misunderstood before and that he's only one person on a team of people, it sounds like they A.) really believed they went with quality over quantity and/or B.) didn't think the story would benefit from more River/Kerry interaction and wrote it--and those Vs- off as good enough.

He starts the whole thing basically shutting down that River and Kerry were victims of time constraint by establishing the awesomely crafted romances built for Panam and Judy were also under the same time constraints so any decisions made after that were artistic, doubling down by saying they spent the same amount of time on each of them and none were considered less important. I'd like to stress again that it's entirely possible he's just talking about raw numbers and he/the team doesn't know about or isn't acknowledging yet the complaints about the interaction themselves and not just the amount of time. It just kind of sounds like even if he were to be talking about the content itself and not the time the answer would be the same, the way he said Triss and Yen being less/more interesting than one another just played out that way.

 

[LeKill3rFou]

If Pawel answered the question the way it was asked and it's not an unfortunate misunderstanding, he pretty much explained how it could have happened and been 100% intentional.

Spoiler: Timestamps and comments

3:25:19 he leads with that first little heart-punch: "We also had time constraints with Judy and Panam, so I would say this was our artistic decision. Because all those storylines are a bit something different, right?" He goes on to say that they didn't want to make the shorter storylines longer just to maintain the same amount of content because it would weaken them.

At 3:26:17 he says: "There was lots of reasons why we ended up with the length of those storylines like that. For instance, the quests that Kerry and River have cost a lot of work."

3:26:57 in reference to River's storyline in particular he says: "For you, it might look like 'okay, that story is shorter' but it's not-- because we have put in so much, the same amount of time and effort to build it." He talks a bit about the way you can make wrong choices in River's quest and how much time that takes.

3:27:25 is where I got the most disheartened when he says: "I know for you, subjectively, you look at it and you're like 'uh-uh Judy and Panam have, let's say, 5 hours, so why Kerry and River don't have 5?' Well because looking at the work we put in, that was the same amount of work. Nobody treated them as less important. It's just some of those mechanics that we have used in some of the storylines are just so much more demanding to build. That's the reality.

3:28:15 also got me tripped up because in reference to the difference in Triss/Yen he basically says "we didn't mean to make one less interesting or have less content, it was that the mechanics and ideas we had just happened to play out that way."

So while he was talking about amount of time in their quests, which I think everyone agrees that no one really expected it to be an even 5 hour split for all the romances, some of the phrases (bolded in spoiler) he uses makes it sound like everything was calculated and played out how they wanted. Keeping in mind that he's been misunderstood before and that he's only one person on a team of people, it sounds like they A.) really believed they went with quality over quantity and/or B.) didn't think the story would benefit from more River/Kerry interaction and wrote it--and those Vs- off as good enough.

He starts the whole thing basically shutting down that River and Kerry were victims of time constraint by establishing the awesomely crafted romances built for Panam and Judy were also under the same time constraints so any decisions made after that were artistic, doubling down by saying they spent the same amount of time on each of them and none were considered less important. I'd like to stress again that it's entirely possible he's just talking about raw numbers and he/the team doesn't know about or isn't acknowledging yet the complaints about the interaction themselves and not just the amount of time. It just kind of sounds like even if he were to be talking about the content itself and not the time the answer would be the same, the way he said Triss and Yen being less/more interesting than one another just played out that way.

I have two "problem" to really believe him that, even if he's seem to be honest.
1 - He's not native english speaker, so if it's like me (even more in oral in a live stream), a misunderstood could come very fast. But that's not the most important point
2 - When he stream like that, had he really the "right" to said this kind of answer :
"Sorry, yes, it's true, we rushed these two romances because we had to release the game anyway. it's a shame but we had more time..."
I don't think so. Hence "artistic", "choice", "work done in",... For me, he "avoid" a little bit the subject and don't really want to enter in those details in the live stream.

If the game at the release was "finished", bug free and some DLCs was released in january, I would have a totally different point of view. Way less optimistic, probably totally pessimistic... But for the moment all that has been done is to correct the "disastrous" state of the game. It proves that they ran out of time before the release... and not just a little...

 

[Guest 4412420]

And why do/promote those kind of events if CDPR effectively think that minorities (or men's romances) are not so/also "important".

I mentioned in my previous post that I believe that the final result was unintentional, and that pride charity stream is one of the reasons. I refuse to even imply any kind of malice on CDPR's part, and if anything I said came off like I did, I truly apologize.

Some people did end up feeling this way because of how Kerry's and River's romances currently are. I know that CDPR cared. How respectfully they handled Judy's sexuality is a far cry from the infamous lesbomancy line in TW2, Kerry's sex scene doesn't look like something a developer that's uncomfortable with the thought of two men having sex would create or want in their game.

Even when taking CDPR's good intentions into consideration, the final result gave us two beautifully developed romances for Judy and Panam and two underdeveloped ones for Kerry and River. If time constraints really was the root of the problem, it still gives an impression that Judy's and Panam's romances were prioritized, rather than all 4 being put on a back burner.

When it comes to sexualities and how they're represented in games it's a complex topic, but when they were brought up here, I don't think anyone meant to say that CDPR didn't care. It's simply that people were left disappointed and perhaps expected that regardless of their sexuality, V will have equally developed romances. An expectation that the game didn't live up to.

 

[rippercityransom]

2 - When he stream like that, had he really the "right" to said this kind of answer :
"Sorry, yes, it's true, we rushed these two romances because we had to release the game anyway. it's a shame but we had more time..."
I don't think so.

I mean absolutely no offense, but I just don't have it in me to hope for things like that at this point. I'm taking everything at face value as much as I can because even the smallest amount of hope that something like River's call would be fixed in 1.3 after all those months only delivered disappointment. So I don't want to look at something he's actually saying and just assume he means something different and they're truly planning on doing something about it. If they make moves to address the difference, I'll be surprised, very pleasantly surprised even. I just can't/won't believe that they're going to when the semi-official word is "nobody treated them as less important, that's the reality."

 

[LeKill3rFou]

We can only judge the situation with what we have. Even when taking CDPR's good intentions into consideration, the final result gave us two beautifully developed romances for Judy and Panam and two underdeveloped ones for Kerry and River. If time constraints really was the root of the problem, it still means that Judy's and Panam's romances were prioritized, rather than all 4 being put on a back burner.

I speak without really knowing but, if I were in the CDPR's pants with the "base" story. Here is my list of priority for starting the job and assign peoples on it. So I suppose, they started working by order of priority.

N°1 - Panam quest line : She have a main quest part and one ending. Her part must to be done, impossible to do without.
N°2 - Judy quest line : She have a main quest part.
N°3 - Kerry quest line : No main quest part, but he's introduce by Johnny quest line later.
N°4 - River quest line : No main quest line part and introduce "only" by a side quest.

Now, if you lack of time really bad... (because it's not finished, but you MUST release the game), it's seem evident that N°4 have receive less work than N°3, N°3 less work than N°2... And when you look the reality in the game, that seem to be the case.
(no need to talk about main/side quests, because I think mostly all the side quests would must been in the main quest line. That was a BIG mistake).

But yes, maybe I'm totally wrong, and try to see the good where there isn't... If after the paid DLCs and many updates, nothing has changed, I admit that it will piss me off, to being wrong...
So for now, I choose to be optimistic and cross my fingers to be right

 

[Guest 4412420]

I speak without really knowing but, if I were in the CDPR's pants with the "base" story. Here is my list of priority for starting the job and assign peoples on it. So I suppose, they started working by order of priority.

N°1 - Panam quest line : She have a main quest part and one ending. Her part must to be done, impossible to do without.
N°2 - Judy quest line : She have a main quest part.
N°3 - Kerry quest line : No main quest part, but he's introduce by Johnny quest line later.
N°4 - River quest line : No main quest line part and introduce "only" by a side quest.

You're right that characters who have main story or ending involvement would be prioritized as that content is essential. In my post, though, I talked about romances only. It's even more optional than sidequests, and romances are irrelevant to the main story or the endings. Judy's and Panam's still received more content, which feels like even their romances were prioritized.

So for now, I choose to be optimistic and cross my fingers to be right

I'm trying to stay optimistic too, but what I hope for and what I expect are two entirely different things. I hope that they see this as important enough issue to fix, I hope that they'll keep our feedback in mind for their future games. But that's not what I expect.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

So while he was talking about amount of time in their quests, which I think everyone agrees that no one really expected it to be an even 5 hour split for all the romances, some of the phrases (bolded in spoiler) he uses makes it sound like everything was calculated and played out how they wanted. Keeping in mind that he's been misunderstood before and that he's only one person on a team of people, it sounds like they A.) really believed they went with quality over quantity and/or B.) didn't think the story would benefit from more River/Kerry interaction and wrote it--and those Vs- off as good enough.

He starts the whole thing basically shutting down that River and Kerry were victims of time constraint by establishing the awesomely crafted romances built for Panam and Judy were also under the same time constraints so any decisions made after that were artistic, doubling down by saying they spent the same amount of time on each of them and none were considered less important. I'd like to stress again that it's entirely possible he's just talking about raw numbers and he/the team doesn't know about or isn't acknowledging yet the complaints about the interaction themselves and not just the amount of time. It just kind of sounds like even if he were to be talking about the content itself and not the time the answer would be the same, the way he said Triss and Yen being less/more interesting than one another just played out that way.

First off, I think he answered the question the way he did because it's difficult to answer. Especially given the current atmosphere where every word he does or doesn't say is going to get tossed under a microscope.

Anyways, I think what he was trying to say is the romances weren't built to be symmetrical on all fronts. This is not to say the goal was to give Judy/Panam more attention or make them "better". It's more to say asymmetry in the romances is perfectly fine. On this point, assuming it's a correct interpretation, I agree with him.

For clarification, by asymmetry I mean differences across the romances. Those romances involve different characters met at different points in the game. They involve different preferences and things of this nature from a relationship perspective. Ideally they wouldn't take a one size fits all approach to them. It makes more sense to consider how each should fit into the existing content and incorporate them accordingly. With each and every individual romance ending up compelling in it's own way.

The time constraints commentary sounded more like a general "there are only so many hours in a given day" statement. I wouldn't read too much into it. The message there is probably to say sometimes the developers may want to do more but cannot do so. Reality can be a bitch like that sometimes. Like Judy in the Sun ending... I'll probably get pounced on for that little quip.

Now, if you lack of time really bad... (because it's not finished, but you MUST release the game), it's seem evident that N°4 have receive less work than N°3, N°3 less work than N°2... And when you look the reality in the game, that seem to be the case.
(no need to talk about main/side quests, because I think mostly all the side quests would must been in the main quest line. That was a mistake).

Yeah, the logic fits as one way for River/Kerry to draw the short straw when up against time constraints. Based on the stream commentary it sounded like they built the narrative and incorporated the romances into it after the fact. That makes a lot of sense. At least for optional romances. Kerry/River are met later in the game though. It stands to reason if the "we're launching" sirens went off easily a year too eariy then content towards the tail end would suffer the brunt of the fallout.

Although, IMO the issue with River is it played out more like an awkward tinder hookup instead of an actual romance. Put differently, I don't think his romance was sub-par because there wasn't suitable exposure/time for it to develop. It ended up as it did because the execution was off.

On a more productive note... That's where I'd start for River if those romances are going to be addressed. Address the execution. Granted, fixing him by adding more content to incorporate "better" execution could work. Instead of overhauling what is there.

 

[rippercityransom]

First off, I think he answered the question the way he did because it's difficult to answer. Especially given the current atmosphere where every word he does or doesn't say is going to get tossed under a microscope.

Oh it's difficult for sure, he's walking into a minefield every time he does pretty much anything on that stream. That's why I tried to be careful when stressing there was a lot of ways to take it and that any particular interpretation isn't going to be the universal truth. I didn't really mean to break out the microscope, but more like some drugstore reading glasses. Mostly because it's all we've got so far.

I agree that asymmetry is to be expected and isn't a negative on its own. I said before that if they hadn't fumbled it so hard in the balance I'd prefer the way they tackled romances in Cyberpunk over comparable games. It's a lot more organic than every character having "Event A after story mission x: 25% complete and a flirt option, Event B after story mission xx: 50% complete and they flirt back" etc. This is just a bit more asymmetric than I can stomach.

To contribute to being productive instead of waiting for the sky to fall: I think the best thing to look at is the "I miss you" line in his call. Feels like that would solve at least half of his issue if they could make it make sense. Love River. Adore River. Still weird when he called and said it when I was still waiting for my first flirt option to pop up for him, back when I had no idea the length of his quest chain. I thought him and V were still just good buddies at that point. I'd already groped at and had a heart-to-heart with Panam by that point so I didn't think they'd go that subtle on the build-up. They don't need a whole new mission, they just need to add some context somewhere in his second one or through a text/phone call before the invite to dinner.

 

[Yllana_Ardais]

I don't think think time constraints can be used as a reason for the lack of content for River and Kerry. The writing of a game is usually finished a lot earlier than the programming. If normal development procedures are being followed, the characters, their relationship with V, their questlines and the dialogue should have been written and defined months (years?) before the actual programming. You don't come up with a new important character in the last months while the game is being polished, scribble down their romantic dialogue and start coding at the same time, that's just not how it's done. And, to bring up the artbook again: I'm relatively sure the artbook that came with the special edition and that shows that River and Kerry apparently weren't even worth the same number of pages as the girls, was produced and printed months before the release. They must have known for a long time that there was going to be a disparity, they did not cut out stuff last minute that they didn't finish on time.

 

[JuanEvil]

I don't think think time constraints can be used as a reason for the lack of content for River and Kerry. The writing of a game is usually finished a lot earlier than the programming. If normal development procedures are being followed, the characters, their relationship with V, their questlines and the dialogue should have been written and defined months (years?) before the actual programming. You don't come up with a new important character in the last months while the game is being polished, scribble down their romantic dialogue and start coding at the same time, that's just not how it's done. And, to bring up the artbook again: I'm relatively sure the artbook that came with the special edition and that shows that River and Kerry apparently weren't even worth the same number of pages as the girls, was produced and printed months before the release. They must have known for a long time that there was going to be a disparity, they did not cut out stuff last minute that they didn't finish on time.

I agree with you. While I do think that the lack of time was definitely a issue with the male LI's, I don't think that was the only (or even the biggest) reason. To me it's clear that Kerry and River were not a priority or treated with the same care as Judy and Panam. It's the fact that both of them are tied to the bad ending (unlike the girls), both can be easily missed if you're not really interested in completing everything the game has to offer, the fact that V can't even flirt with Kerry before their first kiss, the exemple you gave about how they have less pages in the artbook compared to the girls just proves, at least to me, that they were not that important to CDPR as the girls, and that makes me really sad because I love Kerry and River, but right now I don't really have any hope left that they will adress their lack of content in the game. I want to be wrong, but... yeah.
Sorry if I sound too pessimistic, I'm just really disappointed.

 

[Restlessdingo32]

Oh it's difficult for sure, he's walking into a minefield every time he does pretty much anything on that stream. That's why I tried to be careful when stressing there was a lot of ways to take it and that any particular interpretation isn't going to be the universal truth. I didn't really mean to break out the microscope, but more like some drugstore reading glasses. Mostly because it's all we've got so far.

It's all good. The microscope comment was meant in a general sense by the way. It was not in any way directed at your post specifically.

Admittedly I was going off body language with those comments. He started to talk address the romance question then paused a little to kind of think about what he was going to say before he did so.

I agree that asymmetry is to be expected and isn't a negative on its own. I said before that if they hadn't fumbled it so hard in the balance I'd prefer the way they tackled romances in Cyberpunk over comparable games. It's a lot more organic than every character having "Event A after story mission x: 25% complete and a flirt option, Event B after story mission xx: 50% complete and they flirt back" etc. This is just a bit more asymmetric than I can stomach.

No arguments here. I think the commentary in the stream clip was deliberately steering away from being specific. It was more geared to describe what thought process goes into it during development. It didn't directly answer the question completely. It's absolutely understandable why the answer was provided that way though.

To contribute to being productive instead of waiting for the sky to fall: I think the best thing to look at is the "I miss you" line in his call. Feels like that would solve at least half of his issue if they could make it make sense. Love River. Adore River. Still weird when he called and said it when I was still waiting for my first flirt option to pop up for him, back when I had no idea the length of his quest chain. I thought him and V were still just good buddies at that point. I'd already groped at and had a heart-to-heart with Panam by that point so I didn't think they'd go that subtle on the build-up. They don't need a whole new mission, they just need to add some context somewhere in his second one or through a text/phone call before the invite to dinner.

Yep, I thought River came out of nowhere as a romance too. The setup to make the connection between first meeting and romancing him didn't quite deliver. This is where a character like Panam or Judy came off as different. That connection was there for those romances.

I don't think think time constraints can be used as a reason for the lack of content for River and Kerry. The writing of a game is usually finished a lot earlier than the programming. If normal development procedures are being followed, the characters, their relationship with V, their questlines and the dialogue should have been written and defined months (years?) before the actual programming. You don't come up with a new important character in the last months while the game is being polished, scribble down their romantic dialogue and start coding at the same time, that's just not how it's done.

The dialogue and writing may have been done but putting it into the game is kind of a major step. It's conceivably possible all the dialogue/writing was done but time constraints didn't allow all of it to be used. Yes, that's speculative because it would depend on when the work to put romances into the game was done during the process. It would depend on whether certain romances were done earlier or later. Regardless, it is a possibility.

Once again, does it really matter going forward though? I seriously doubt the romances played out this way because CDPR was intentionally playing favorites. It seems more likely they simply screwed it up or something else went wrong. In either case it's more useful, from a feedback perspective, to point out where it went wrong and how to potentially improve the romances.