Some mistakes I hope CDPR avoids with the narrative/missions regarding predictabilty and danger

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Warning: Long

Intro

Note that I made this post partly from Mike Pondsmith's statement that (paraphrasing) "The world is a dangerous place and will always try to bring you to your knees". This combined with my firm belief that a predictable story is always mediocre compared to an unpredictable one, both in terms of journey and destination.

One of the major faults of many games, movies and books is that "You could easily see it coming".

Sense of danger/predictability during missions

So what they often do is make it blatantly obvious when a dangerous situation arises. For video games it becomes formulaic as in:
Introduction -> Beginning mission -> Follow up mission -> "climax" mission. Gradual increase in danger and difficulty.
See the problem here? One expects a gradual buildup in danger through the narrative of a questline. What they could have done.
Introduction -> Beginning mission (litte danger) -> Followup mission -> (High danger) -> "climax" mission (No danger) or even...
Introduction -> Beginning mission (High danger) -> Followup mission -> (No danger) -> "Climax" mission (Little danger).

Since this is an RPG we have direct control over manipulating the level of danger a story/missionline has by doing alternate stuff, diplomacy/persuasion and such. However the potential danger (level of it) and the frequency of it (amount of situations that can arise) is still something core to the missions as they are designed by the devs and written by the writers.

The cornerstone of the game philosophy that this is a treacherous and dangerous universe, loses its value if danger is always high in both frequency and potency.
Meaning that there should always be some easy and non-threathening missions here and there to bring us at ease. If danger to the player from the world is always present, and predictable, it devalues the danger of the world.


Solution

The solution to this is INFREQUENCY to the danger of missions. Like this:

Mission A: You expect a lot of danger and there is a lot of danger
Mission B: You expect a lot of danger but there is little, however you can CAUSE the situation to be dangerous by expecting it (by your character being paranoid)
Mission C: You expect no danger, and there is none
Mission D: You expect no danger, but there is high danger

This as the polarizing sides, with things in between. There should be a high variety of no danger to high danger "sense" from the player regarding missions (expections based on context) and there should be a high variety of actual danger. This will lead to quests breaking expectations and meeting them both, which makes the game unpredictable.

Why is this important? Because if the player is always on edge, the world being dangerous loses its value. If the player can easily predict when a situation is dangerous, with high accuracy, it loses its value. Note that the mission shown to journalists at E3 was a good sign.

Something many a game "fucks up"

Something many a game fucks up with here is giving the player music, visual, audio clues to the player that "shit is about to go down". Note that exceptions here is FINE! For example a big story mission where the player expects it and it is justified in context. However many times playing video games, a "surprise" is ruined by blatantly obvious lore, conversation, music, visual clues shoved down your throat.

Conclusion / TL;DR

I'm hoping CDPR does this world justice in depicting how dangerous and treacherous it is (in fact, I don't doubt they will pull it off) however one of the major pitfalls of achieving this is ironically putting in too much danger and put it in the game in predictable context.

I'm truly hoping that there will be a high variety of missions in danger potency and danger frequency (adjusted by our character's actions and RP, this is an RPG afterall)
There should be situations where we expect a huge fight and there is none, and there should be situations where we expect no danger and there is a high potential level of it. Many devs makes their game too predictable (gradual curve in danger and difficulty over the course of a quest chain). And I'm hoping CDPR will address this and keep us on edge, keeping the core philosophy that the world is dangerous, without us learning to always spot when "shit will go down".

Your thoughts? Feel free to discuss!
 
This doesnt apply exactly to what you were saying, but it does relate to the danger of an area.

I think it'd be pretty cool to have night city separated into unofficial districts.

Each district states a murder rate, and obviously, the districts with the highest murder rates are the most dangerous.
 
I agree with you that many games are somewhat predictable and from what I know about the Cyberpunk lore the setting is anything but predictable. I hope that the game can throw some curveballs our way.

That said, its nice to have some downtime between missions you expected to be stressfull. To just have a mission with little to no combat when you just wish to soak up some atmosphere. I feel these kind of missions give you a chance to just unwind a bit and actually look at a place instead of just dodging bullets. Such missions are also a fine narrative tool for world building and I always appreciate the chance to mix action and downtime when I play an RPG.
 

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I have faith in CDPR's ability to keep things unpredictable, they sure surprised me a few times in Witchey 3.
 
I agree with you that many games are somewhat predictable and from what I know about the Cyberpunk lore the setting is anything but predictable. I hope that the game can throw some curveballs our way.

That said, its nice to have some downtime between missions you expected to be stressfull. To just have a mission with little to no combat when you just wish to soak up some atmosphere. I feel these kind of missions give you a chance to just unwind a bit and actually look at a place instead of just dodging bullets. Such missions are also a fine narrative tool for world building and I always appreciate the chance to mix action and downtime when I play an RPG.
Exactly. I want them to retain the sidequests feel of the Witcher 3(they didn't feel like sidequests, but part of a larger story) and step up in terms of variety and complexity(not just go there fight that.)
 
I think Resident Evil 4 did a great job of this... uhhh.. 'danger flow'. Sometimes you're thrown into a situation, sometimes you're just collecting nice stuff and buying stuff. That one part where you wander into an island laboratory with no background music and look onto a screen to see a gurgling spiky monster limping towards you down the hallway, that was powerful. I agree though, lots of games do it totally wrong.

Just a side thought, it would be cool if you made friends with a npc in the game and after a while you find out they're insane and they try to kill you in an alleyway. Just putting it out there >.>
 
I agree with you that many games are somewhat predictable and from what I know about the Cyberpunk lore the setting is anything but predictable. I hope that the game can throw some curveballs our way.

That said, its nice to have some downtime between missions you expected to be stressfull. To just have a mission with little to no combat when you just wish to soak up some atmosphere. I feel these kind of missions give you a chance to just unwind a bit and actually look at a place instead of just dodging bullets. Such missions are also a fine narrative tool for world building and I always appreciate the chance to mix action and downtime when I play an RPG.

Nice post, I agree. Can't enjoy the sun without shade.

Reminds me a bit of that one mission from Witcher 3 where Geralt sets off to help a lady reclaim her family estate from monsters (simple, right?) and finds not only monsters but (depending on your choices) Letho who set up traps to hide out for a while, and uncovers a secret in the basement -- the lady's husband went all The Cask of Amontillado on her brother and sealed him up in the house to die.

The pacing and action shouldn't always take a dark turn, either. I mean what's the point of getting invested in the stories of the people in Night City if there's a good chance V will be the last one standing at the end of the quest?
 
What I'd like to see is people backstabbing you after helping/saving them. More often than not in RPGs, every time you save someone or spare a villain or something they either thank you and that's it or they come back later to help you later in a quest. It's too predictable because you know the best thing to do is always the more moral thing.
Witcher 3 did it well in this Novigrad quest when after you help this female elf being harassed by bandits , she basically says "f*** off" to you. Hope there's more characters lile that in CP.
 
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You bring up some really good points which aren't limited to games, really any narrative is about constantly elevating the tension/conflict with every new development. I do agree that without contrast it does start to lose its meaning, and I think that is where many stories go wrong. I think there are multiple ways of combating it, I can't think of any examples of your suggested method though I'd be curious to see one.

Another good way is the how Jurassic Park/Marvel has been doing it, while you consistently raise the stakes you provide little punctuating moments like relief after a minor victory, empathizing during a reunion, or even just some humor help make the audience more comfortable which allows the stress to come back when the challenge starts back up again. This is helped if there are multiple major & independent "3-act structures" which allows a major conflict to be resolved which encourages a sense of relief/ease, which then gets shattered with the new inciting incident (6+ act structure).

From how they've talked about wanting to encourage exploration and seeing the cultural density in the trailer, I think they will deliver breaks to the tension through distraction of some sort. Your ally just got wasted by the high threat response team, and you barely made it out alive, but you are pretty sure you lost them, better blend into the crowd for a bit and keep your head down...whoah there's a human/robot boxing league and they are taking bets and contestants?
 
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What I'd like to see is people backstabbing you after helping/saving them. More often than not in RPGs, every time you save someone or spare a villain or something they either thank you and that's it or they come back later to help you later in a quest. It's too predictable because you know the best thing to do is always the more moral thing.
Witcher 3 did it well in this Novigrad quest when after you help this female elf being harassed by bandits , she basically says "f*** off" to you. Hope there's more characters lile that in CP.
And this makes the characters and the world feel more believable and not just black and white. You're absolutely right!
 
Witcher 3 did it well in this Novigrad quest when after you help this female elf being harassed by bandits , she basically says "f*** off" to you. Hope there's more characters lile that in CP.

This quest from The Witcher 2 is another example, and I remember at least one more from Wild Hunt. CP2077 will probably have similar situations, too, although these seem to be mostly in side quests.
 
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