It explains why there's this massive gap in optimism between the two groups about their future with the game. It's probably a lot easier to have faith you'll like what's coming up next when it's pretty clear their vision is focused almost entirely on you from the start. You can see that represented in a post somewhere on the forum where someone shared that Paul Tassi article saying CDPR should make the two upcoming expansions exclusively about Panam and Judy: one expansion per "true" love interest. This forum can't stand the guy most of the time but the second he pitches writing off River and Kerry...
The article never went into why that would really suck for straight women and gay men players, but that's not surprising when you look at the pushback we've had for talking about that exact topic here; either they don't notice or they don't think it's a big deal. We-- I mean, River and Kerry-- aren't that important in the grand scheme of things. The fact that it's not unlikely for it to play out that way makes it a little bit funny.It's possible, but I don't think most of us are holding our breath for it.
All we can do is express a desire for it so the devs know we'd like it.
Paul Tassi is so blind to everything but his own perspective that he recommended players to try out the "good" ending (the Star), because everything else would leave you depressed because you can't leave town with your girlfriend and look for a cure. Without giving a second thought to players who couldn't leave town with their boyfriend, because they were stuck with the "V becomes a suicicdal asshole" ending if they want to keep their male Lis. He embodies straight male gamer privilege to a t. I wonder why Forbes allow articles like that to be published on a regular basis...
I don't agree with a lot of what Tassi says either, but isnt his opinion that:
"that's the "good" ending"
not in alignment with the criticism that:
"if V has a male LI, the ending won't be as good"?
Or did I miss something? I also got the impression that he felt the "good" ending was just the least shit option, narratively speaking -- and basically indicative of the idea that the writers made Panam the "default" LI, which felt like a criticism he was making (I'm really going off my memory of that article, though, so I could be talking shite).
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In any case, I thoroughly agree that male LI's pretty much always get the short end of the stick in these types of games and that sucks. I guess there's a lot of disagreement on what should be done about it but personally I would prefer if they had just made one of the main LI's male in the first place.
Though, If they can flesh out the side LI's via DLC and make it work, all power to them, but for me, the most compelling LI's are always going to be the ones that feel the most necessary to the main plot - as opposed to the ones that only exist in optional side quests. When it's done that way, it feels a bit tokenistic.
From a representation POV, I would rather the main LI's were diversified, as opposed to: straight dudes get the main LI's, straight women and gay men get the side LI's.
Which is why -- and I know most think I'm a heretic for saying this -- but I still think that for story/action/RPG games like this, a valid solution could've been to have 1 or 2 REALLY well written LI's, rather than several LI's of varying quality, but make their appearance/gender customisable, and get at least 2 actors for each of them, etc.
We know it can work with a main character, which I like - I like the idea that I can have a compelling protagonist and be any colour, gender, cis, trans, etc. so I don't see why it couldn't work with a secondary character also, like it did in ME Andromeda.
I know a lot of people think that hinders how fully fleshed out a character can be - and I agree that it can... but that's not always the case. Loads of characters in movies and tv shows do not have to be a specific colour or gender at all, unless that character's story is specifically bound to those things (e.g. in Barry Jenkins' "Moonlight", the protagonist HAS to be a black male due to the themes of that story, whereas most of the protagonists in the MCU don't have to be white men, most of them could've been anything really).
HAVING SAID THAT, I would still love to see an RPG pull off several LI's (not customisable) that are ALL main characters, all critical to the main plot, with compelling romance arcs that are fully fleshed out and not tokenistic... without compromising the quality of the story. But so far I haven't seen a single game pull that off :/
That article was a long time ago so I mght not remember all of it, but my impression was that he didn`t even take players who romanced one of the guys into account when he declared The Star as the only good ending. More like "I finally found the good ending, you guys all have to try it!"
It was this one ?
A Warning To Pick The 'Best' Ending Of Cyberpunk 2077, Or Regret It
In short, there are definitely what feel like “right” and “wrong” endings in Cyberpunk 2077, something I didn’t realize until I played them all, and understood I had definitely picked “wrong” in my first playthrough.
www.forbes.com
I love : "Araska was the bad ending, I noticed it after trying the others..."
Guy must not know this game is a custom RPG story, therefore canon is entirely up to the player regardless of the amount of content the characters possessIt was this one ?
"The only good ending" for him, without saying (nor testing) that it couldn't be the same if you romance other LI. Tassi... Either he didn't know it was possible to romance River and Kerry or he didn't care. I don't know which is worse.A Warning To Pick The 'Best' Ending Of Cyberpunk 2077, Or Regret It
In short, there are definitely what feel like “right” and “wrong” endings in Cyberpunk 2077, something I didn’t realize until I played them all, and understood I had definitely picked “wrong” in my first playthrough.
I love : "Araska was the bad ending, I noticed it after trying the others..."
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I love me some Judy lesbian action, but I gotta say your statements are unfortunately correct. The game has not properly delivered the experience of a decadent techno-dystopia such as the one we see in Westworld or Altered Carbon, and Cyberpunk was supposed to be EVEN MORE hardcore than thoseRomance in Skyrim was so ridiculous.
I checked out the timestamp from Pawel's video and it makes me cranky. I get that you want to be artistic and not hit any "quotas", but it is interesting how CDPR managed to cater to the demographic group of straight guys with both Judy and Panam so hard even though that is possibly the most boring and unartistic group to cater to in a Cyberpunk game. I would have respected them if they had made V pansexual, or explored concepts like what sexuality and romance even means in a world where you can reshape your body and mind quite easily. That would have been interesting and artistic. But no, instead they focused on Panam and her ass and on hot lesbian action with Judy and then have the gall to claim it was for artistic reasons and not because that's what straight male players are into (mostly) and they don't give a damn about ther rest of their players.
it's so very artistic that there is no male bisexual fling, that the male "strippers" are a bad joke and that River`s and Kerry's romances are way undercooked. They bothered with patching Judy's dopplegänger in her apartment after she was supposed to leave for her roadtrip, but they did not bother rescuing River from the limbo he's been stuck in since the end of his questline. How very artistic.
Maybe it would be the best if they just shut up about it instead of trying to justify it with "The Vision". It's hard not to get angry when "The Vision" always works against women and queer people.
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This guy's been churning out Cyberpunk articles like butter. He knows. Wrote an article about the love interests. Called Judy a good "backup", complained that he couldn't romance Panam with female V, and called Kerry the lamest of the four.
Something Feels Off About Cyberpunk 2077’s Limited Romance Options
Cyberpunk 2077's sprawling future has a strangely narrow view of romance, and effectively pre-determines your partner from the start.
www.forbes.com
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Speaking of romances and articles, here's another one. This one actually acknowledges the lack of development of both Kerry's and River's romances. It's nice that they pointed out something we've also talked about since the game's launch.
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I can understand why Clair is not an option. She still love her husband (dead the year before), even more than the life itself
She's clearly not open to "live" another romance for now.
1. Netwatch is not even scratched if you sided with VDB's. You only managed to sever their connection with VDB's network. Hell... If Netwatch can be easily neutralize then the entire dialogue with Alt doesn't make a lick of a sense... They're dead, what is she afraid of then? Arasaka? She breaches their ICE like its nothing. Best example that consequences doesn't matter? Delamain - you can either merge his AIs or reset the core and then proceed to completely destroy the core - game doesn't take this to the account... So it pick at random what type of delamain will pick-up from the Villa at the end. In the worst case scenario you can get stuck in delamain's garage. Not to mention that if you choose to destroy delamain (even without resetting or merging) cabs are still running around NC... Without Delamain existing. You would think that they either cease to exist or they will revolt like the others, but no.
2.Gangs will ALWAYS (in the hostile area) attack you no matter how many quest or NCPD side jobs you did, so it not even a consequence of your action, just a lazy game design. Woodman will talk to you regardless of that mission so I don't know how this dialogue changes something. You can meet certain NPC and do quest for them and all you get in return is a acknowledgment of your existence & presence in the game. The game advertised as RPG, dunno, but for me it's still a low bar achievement. I don't really want to repeat myself, but this game is really undercooked. CDPR doesn't explore nomad or corpo paths at all... and the funny thing is that Biotechnica in the game is experineting with cloning people, which essentially without personality construct are behaving like empty shell, to mitigate that Bio's tries to insert Arasaka's "secure your soul" chips into those bodies without success. Bam - 6 & 7 ending. You can side with Kang Tao, BioTechnica and Petrochem to either resurrect Silverhand and retain your damaged body, or transfer your "soul" to new vessel. Another ending could be a secret one where you have to do extra steps for aforementioned Corpos to unlock secret ending, dunno digging up dirt to ensure that they won't screw you over or something similar. I'm writing this extremely late so I run out of ideas on top of my head. For TRUE Nomad path you could do something involving different nomad factions, but again CDPR were too ambitious (and maybe inexperienced) and looking at the state of the game and how many of the systems and desing are just blatantly unfinished or abandoned halfway through I don't think that this - e.g story - was intended, it really feels like a something put together in absolute rush.
3. All great, but I can counter that he can see V as a mean to and end since he is a hot mercenary. You don't have a lot of time to develop this kind of bond. A little chit-chat with coffee on the go, few moralizing dialogues during his selfish quest to undermine Us Cracks mainly to hammer some reason into his head, two kisses out of nowhere and a nice song at the boat, where you can spill some beans about yourself. Sure, we can argue that people, relative stranger, that doesn't know anything about one another can fall in love, but c'mon, Panam & Judy talk about their past and they actively took interest into V's past, present & future. Kerry doesn't even acknowledge - at least he doesn't seems to - that V's dying and sooner or later will lose his life or his best friend will take over V's body.
I don't think that you need to introduce new characters to replace dead ones, it would be the worst possible way to introduce consequence to RPG game. Let say if you lose Panam before apprehending Hellman then you should come up with an alternative path to bring that AV down without Panam, if if that mean the quest becomes harder. In Dragon Age Origins if you lose Lelliana (because you chose defiled Andraste's ashes) she'll attack you and she'll. Same with Wynne, Alistair, Zerwan, Shale, Oghren - you can pretty much lose entire squad in this game... They again those consequences are nullified by Bioware because they realised that they want to carry over some characters to sequels and, for example, Lelianna is resurrected... Which only happens when you don't have a finished and planned story/script from the very beginning... Or you have to cut content because your estimates regarding time needed to implement such complex decision and the entire tree of actual consequences behind (not to mention that game enigine would need to support that) them are unrealistic. Or you're constrained by the project's budget which can be linked to several different reasons why - unfortunately - CP2077 was delivered in this state.If you betray Panam, in view of the messages/calls that she have send to V, I hardly see how CDPR could reintroduce her in V's life. Ok, she's not dead, but I think V is dead for her and she never wants to deal with V ever again
And "adding" a death for all others seem easy to me. After a quest, if you don't help them :
- Panam > Mitch send you a message that Panam died because you have let them alone facing Militech and block you.
- Judy > Tom send you that Judy died in the cloud, betray by Maiko and block you
- Kerry > A simple news on TV/radio who say that he die "stupidly" in the Riot by trying to threat US Crack).
Very easy to add few dialogue lines/messages/calls in addition to an expansion. If in some playthroughs, one/all are dead, they "simply" have to introduce new characters for doing the same quests.
Again and again, I'm talking only about "Death for River and not for others" and nothing else. River death isn't a problem in my opinion because those who have River alive (it's good, no problem), those who have River dead, CDPR simply have to introduce a new character (and everyone will have the same content/quest/whatever)
In the same way that if they add VDBs/Netwatch expansion.
Either you team with Netwatch > VDBs are dead
Either you team with VDBs > Netwatch are dead
Either you team with VDBs and kill them all after > All are dead
I don't know if you get my point or if it's me who don't understand what you said
(well, about Panam, to follow you)
- Panam help you to find Hellman, so I don't know when/why/how you can betray her at this moment.
- Panam could die only if you betray her during her own side quests which are not required for complete the game (so after and independently of the main quests).
- I'm talking about new characters in an "futur" expansion and not in the main game. And also, I'm not talking "resurecting" old ones, but introduce new ones... If V need help for something in an expansion, you have to either keep an old character (who need to be alive) or introduce a new one (if the old ones was dead). Because I don't know, but generally, V doing quests not really "alone"...
A little example who not include romance :
If there is an expansion with VDBs involved and if you have kill everybody in the main game (Netwatch Side or simply for by revenge).
It seem obvious to me that Placide and Brigitte will stay "dead" and that CDPR have to reintroduce some new VDBs. A "Netwatch/VDBs" expansion without any Netwatch/VDBs characters doesn't seem to be a good idea...
It seem obvious to me that Placide and Brigitte will stay "dead" and that CDPR have to reintroduce some new VDBs. A "Netwatch/VDBs" expansion without any Netwatch/VDBs characters doesn't seem to be a good idea...
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Usually, characters whose fate is dependent appearances in future content are more or less cameos, or nothing critical to the plot, like in Mass Effect, for example. Leliana's possible death being seemingly retconned and then explained away in a twist that might as well equal M. Night Shyamalan's, is the only exception I can think of.
Should Cyberpunk's love interests make an appearance in the expansions, their roles will most likely be unimportant to the overall plot, so there would be no need to replace anyone with new characters. Assuming CDPR listened to people's criticisms and will treat all romance options equally from now on.
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Yep honestly I don't expect that they'll take a big part, but at least they could appear even if the "main story" of the expansion is not about them
Like let imagine if V is back to Night City for, I don't know, a VDBs related quest line (or Militech/Mr Blue Eyes/whatever), to be able to see his/her LI outside of the quest line, could be cool (and in the case where V don't have a LI (or because his/her Li is dead), a possibility to romance a new character).
I hope
Andraste just couldn't let her die after she performed so well in that fearsome foursome lmfao
But even in the witcher I recognized this bias a biy. Did you notice how all the male prostitutes are making disgusting sounds like clearing throat or spiting?
Yeah, they clearly don't enjoy their job. I also thought that many TW2 prostitutes had deeper voices than the soldiers of Flotsam/Kaedwen. I guess it's made that way to portray that profession in a way closer to reality.
Concerning the bias you mention, you could say it's reasonable to be portrayed like that in a medieval-like world, but it shouldn't be that way in a futuristic dystopian metropolis
Yes I agree about the medieval vs futuristic (although if there are male prostitutes working at the medieval brothel they should have the attitude of being atractive to get clients) but the bias I mean, it seems to me someone or a consensus at CDPR is to not agknowledge a male can be atractive, or a female/gay man are worthy of having the sex-appeal instinct recognized; it's not an uncommon practice. A lot of people genuinely don't consider women have sexual pleasures and desires.Yeah, they clearly don't enjoy their job. I also thought that many TW2 prostitutes had deeper voices than the soldiers of Flotsam/Kaedwen. I guess it's made that way to portray that profession in a way closer to reality.
Concerning the bias you mention, you could say it's reasonable to be portrayed like that in a medieval-like world, but it shouldn't be that way in a futuristic dystopian metropolis
Undeniable. Even today, women still get the short end of the stick (to put it mildly), more than anyone.