So, Bethesda or Rockstar made it possible to have huge, open worlds on today's systems (especially the very limited consoles) but CDPR will have a problem in 2015, when the specs both for PCs and consoles go way up?
Sorry, I don't buy that.
Our always-developing technology lets you do things on bigger scale with fewer resource and technical limitations, not the other way round. I expect CDPR to be able to do more game development with less resources. Especially considering that labour here is cheaper than in US or Western Europe.
Sorry I couldn't read the whole thread, but what I gather is that you guys are talking about the eternal dilemma of whether we should have a fully voiced protagonist in Cyberpunk 2077 or not.
As you know, I prefer non fully voiced, for the simple reason that it makes the game more flexible. Dialogue lines can be added or removed or edited at any time, even in the later stages of game development. I do like voiced protagonists, but the problem is that traditionally we have only been given a set of one or maybe two (male and female) voices to choose from and we simply may not like them, and that could ruin our game experience.
Voice acting makes the game more cinematic, but it also means that all scripts and dialogue lines have to be ready at a certain point to get everything recorded on time, while the rest of the game is made. For certain games where decision making is not a basic game element (action games for example) this is not a problem. You simply play through a script. But on computer RPG''s where you're supposed to have options, and these options should open up new gameplay opportunities available only on certain conditions, the dialogue trees grow exponentially and voice acting costs (and time) may rise through the clouds.
However, as you say, maybe by 2015 CDPR will be able to pull this off. Maybe we can have different sets of fully voiced lines, for both genders. By then, maybe audio compression technology will improve and so will memory management. Consider that relatively bland looking games like Dragon Age: Origins took up around 20 GB. Imagine how much could be done, efficiently, with 20 fucking GB? CDPR already did something impressive by removing most loading screens from TW2. If they improve their code maybe they can extrapolate that to other features and have an open world game with TW2's gameplay.
Most of the time it's not even about hardware limitations, but about using the hardware appropriately. Many modern PC games wouldn't really need such advanced gaming hardware if they were properly designed and optimized. But we know how the industry rolls, we end up buying Beta versions and then paying again for the "stable" version through patches and DLC.