i forget if i mentioned this earlier... but, the cyberspace session with the VDB, after viewing the alt sequence, i think it would have been perfect for a v with an above average amount of intelligence or tech to tell johnny that alt was still alive, and saka didn't killer her, he did when he unplugged her all willy-nilly like that. you should never just unplug a netrunner like that etc, etc.
Well, I don't think we know for sure now. Just a couple pages back there were scans from the tabletop handbook which say Johnny didn't kill Alt. In the game too, Alt never said "Johnny disconnected me" ("It should be obvious to you since you were responsible for her death", V: "It was an accident"; but it's all very vague).
Johnny (in the game) says at least twice that Alt was already dead when he disconnected her.
Another thing is, just unplugging a netrunner makes their brain burn, according to other quests. What happened to Alt (escaping to the net rather than melting the synapses) should be made clearer.
Well, I don't think we know for sure now. Just a couple pages back there were scans from the tabletop handbook which say Johnny didn't kill Alt. In the game too, Alt never said "Johnny disconnected me" (directly; she blames him for her death, but it's all very vague).
Johnny (in the game) says at least twice that Alt was already dead when he disconnected her.
i recently played through that section twice (i tried the other life paths to see what was actually different about them), she was still moving quite noticeably at that point. but, then again thinking of the evie/judy/tub/death scene... a dead body doesn't bleed, so evie's body shouldn't have caused a large pooling of blood when placed on the bed (unless her heart was still beating). so, who knows?
i recently played through that section twice (i tried the other life paths to see what was actually different about them), she was still moving quite noticeably at that point. but, then again thinking of the evie/judy/tub/death scene... a dead body doesn't bleed, so evie's body shouldn't have caused a large pooling of blood when placed on the bed. so, who knows?
We as the players are pretty much f****d. We have our own character, but we´re unable to form him/her like we wanted to.
We don´t have any say in this game, because nearly everything turns out the same no matter.
It´s a real shame.
This should´ve been a game to please all it´s players to the max, but failed hard.
The players due to their actions should form their V the way they like. There are so many points in the story, where I´m missing multiple decisions, which could completely change the go of the story and of course how it ends.
There should´ve been all kinds of endings:
1. You survive the chip shit and then either stay in NC or leave it, both with LI or without. That should be based on what the player wants.
2. You go for the fame of being a legend, like doing it for Jackie, but don´t have much time left on your hand.
3. There is that cyberspace option, where I don´t know yet what it could lead to, but it´s there.
4. You give yourself to Arasaka to get rid of the chip, but also abandoning all your friends and your LI. You may get something back from Arasaka, but they own you now.
These are just few options how it should´ve been and what I personally expected. It should´ve been about the PLAYER!
We as the players are pretty much f****d. We have our own character, but we´re unable to form him/her like we wanted to.
We don´t have any say in this game, because nearly everything turns out the same no matter.
It´s a real shame.
This should´ve been a game to please all it´s players to the max, but failed hard.
The players due to their actions should form their V the way they like. There are so many points in the story, where I´m missing multiple decisions, which could completely change the go of the story and of course how it ends.
There should´ve been all kinds of endings:
1. You survive the chip shit and then either stay in NC or leave it, both with LI or without. That should be based on what the player wants.
2. You go for the fame of being a legend, like doing it for Jackie, but don´t have much time left on your hand.
3. There is that cyberspace option, where I don´t know yet what it could lead to, but it´s there.
4. You give yourself to Arasaka to get rid of the chip, but also abandoning all your friends and your LI. You may get something back from Arasaka, but they own you now.
These are just few options how it should´ve been and what I personally expected. It should´ve been about the PLAYER!
Technically, they are there.
1. The Sun if you believe that the heist goes well. Or Nomads.
2. See above.
3. Cyberspace is there.
4. Sign the contract if you believe that you'll get a new body.
The key word here: if you believe They've made it "bittersweet" (in their opinion) by introducing plot cancer, but also tried to sell hope and open-ending.
Technically, they are there.
1. The Sun if you believe that the heist goes well. Or Nomads.
2. See above.
3. Cyberspace is there.
4. Sign the contract if you believe that you'll get a new body.
The key word here: if you believe They've made it "bittersweet" (in their opinion) by introducing plot cancer, but also tried to sell hope and open-ending.
In the current version you don´t make the story, you´re a passenger! That´s the difference. What you get, should be affected by you and not solely the writer!
And its not like the world in CP77 is super-detailed etc. It's very shallow too.
There are no garbage collectors, no ambulances (trauma team is for the rich, but what about the poor?), no firefighters etc.
The city is quite frankly empty.
Where is the noir feeling of all the cyberpunk stories?
Where is the danger that lurks in the alleys?
Why the police won't fight the gangs off the streets?
Why the gangs have so much power?
Why the corpo's would live in this city anyway?
Why anyone would want to live in this place?
Why this city is so important, anyway?
Why the common people won't just make a revolution and bring down the corporations, if they are that bad to them?
Why the workers won't unite?
I had so many unanswered questions like this, playing this game... From the simplest things to the most important ones in this universe.
To be fair, I can imagine it is very hard to create such a complex living world in a cyberpunk universe because of the sheer complexity of this world and genre in general. That's probably why the 2077 world looks like it is...
There are so many different reliationships etc. within the corporations, fractions and people, nomad clans etc. in this world. To show them all to the player and explain them so he can understand this, it could take a lot of resources to just do this one thing. Its really hard to make it seem like a real different-timeline world that could actually happen if couple of things go wrong in the world. All in all, CP77 doesn't look believeable to me...
I think also, because they tried to make it so "cyber", that they missed the basic personality of humanity.
Humans are social beings. We create groups of friends, or at least people we could get along with, and create communities. I do not think that this would be abandoned even in Night City. Yes, we see love with Jackie and Misty and we see groups of people banding together like the Valentinos, but the reason for this (as I interpret the game) is not because of human nature. This would be most evident among the poor that has noting to trade and therefore is not as affected by the "megacorp personalities". It is this I believe is what Mike Pondsmith is trying to convey (other than a socialist manifesto). Am I making any sense?
Someone said that Jackie is the one person that defies this. That he is a good guy. And I somewhat agree. But my main problem is, why cant V be that as well?
The one reason I've come up with is that the story does not allow this. V needs to be as cynical as the "rest" and to make it so we are bereaved of all choice, hence all the shallow and lack of meaningful decisions.
I could buy this and play that role if this was explained to me. This is V. This is what drives the person onwards and these are the goals and motivations in his/her existence. Now we are left with three life-paths that apparently does nothing more than give us some specific lines in some conversations. And ourselves. We as players need to know what we are up against to to make viable choices and to do that we need to play the game through a couple of times just to get a bearing.
In my first play-through I was abhorred at how Johnny treated V/me and wanted nothing more to do with him. This lead me to pursue the quickest route to get rid of the relic and Arisaka, I did not want to ask Panam for help since I had this foreboding feeling that everything was going to hell already, and i didn't sign the contract because I valued my freedome more than an eventual life in Cyberspace. I was fully expecting Weavess to appear in the meeting with Alt, specially since the droning music was so like that in the Witcher. What a gut wrenching experience this was.
I realized that I must have done something wrong and wondered what. No choice i had made seemed more right or logical. The horror when I realized that the ending was the same regardless...
I cannot fathom how anyone would think that this story or ending is even close to good and well written. Or even enjoyable...
Thank you for letting me have that of my chest. Its comforting to know that I'm not the only one perceiving the game being as "bad" as it is. Bad in quotes since its utterly amazing to walk the streets of Night City taking in the milieu and seeing the detail put into it.
Sometimes when thinking about the endings that are not there, I miss Hanako taking you right to Mikoshi one-to-one, killing her, and uploading Alt Who then neutralizes everyone in the building.
And then Johnny going "well, that escalated quickly". Which would be even better if he couldn't read V's mind because of blockers, and thought V's sticking with Arasaka.
V (with the help of Alt) taking out the whole Arasaka Tower without a single shot and surprising the biggest arsehole in the game by being an even bigger, but a sneaky arsehole.
Sometimes when thinking about the endings that are not there, I miss Hanako taking you right to Mikoshi one-to-one, killing her, and uploading Alt Who then neutralizes everyone in the building.
And then Johnny going "oh, this escalated quickly".
Even worse for me, you can define V decently up to a certain point but the story becomes progressively more railroaded and restricting the closer you get to the ending. So you end up losing control of a character that the game itself previously let you develop.
Yeah the city was supposed to be overcrowded but there's barely anybody on the streets. The apartments are huge and Judy, a PORN editor has a COTTAGE by a lake like every hard-working person in every overpopulated city. Why are there so many empty buildings if people sleep on the streets? Why do the corporations work with the gangs not with the police since the police are their private army anyway? And then the police send V to fight the gangs who work for corporations?
Pacifica doesn't make sense at all. It's around the corner, really. Why did it fail?
Why no corporation clean this city once and for all? Why working for a corporation is a bad thing and working for a gang is way better? Why is the cyberware cheaper than trauma team membership?
Why does everybody mumble that the corporations are evil wearing Arasaka cyberware and using Militech guns? It's like complaining that Amazon is horrible while ordering another package from there. Punkish as hell.
How do the corporations make money? Who's the actual end client? People are poor, there are maybe 5 rich bastards, so how does it work? And no, federal contracts don't really explain it since federal means paid from taxes. What taxes?
1)Whether the apartments are huge depends on your frame of reference. many find V's apartment small, and V is doing pretty decent at that point.
2)Judy doesn't own the cottage by the lake. The cottage is abandoned, and its by the lake because when the corporation flooded her town with toxic water, one crazy dude refused to give up on the town, and built the house there, and died from being exposed to toxins. Also porn is extremely popular in that world
3)there are empty buildings with people sleepin on the streets because they often kill people who refuse to pay rent and stay on property. one of the NCPD missions has you kill everyone at this company that couldn't pay rent, but tried to keep the business going. Trust that irl, in many cities, there are tons of empty spaces while people sleep in the streets
4)corporations work with gangs and police. The police are their own organization and don't always do what a specific corporation wants, they also occasionally want to enforce a system of laws. The gangs operate outside the law, and are sometimes useful to manipulate. The gangs also have their own politics, act independently or try to ignore their sponsors (you can see this with maelstrom and militech alliance. The ncpd recently started paying bounty hunters, because their is so much anarchy they can't keep up, and probably because its cheaper.
5)Pacifica failed because the companies building there pulled their money and resources out when it seemed like a bad bet
6)corporation doesn't clean the city because its doesn't serve the corporations profit/ideaology. Maintaining a city is costly, and requires a belief that the city should be maintained. Note that corporate spaces are better maintained. Working for a corporation is bad to certain people. Gangs are joined for other reasons, mostly culture/identity. Some people see it as the same thing.
7)cyberware and trauma team aren't in competition. trauma team is a premium healthcare service. Cyberware is just artificial body parts. If you mean ripper vs cyberware. Rippers are generally their own small business/practioners, and they have no where near the resources/technology/emergency services
8)No one has any real choices but to buy from the corporation. If I'm a mobile developer, I may hate Google and Apple, it doesn't matter, I have no other option but to use them. Many people right now have no real option but to buy from Amazon as well.
9)corporations ultimately are not just about money, but power and control. Money is a means of measuring your resources and economics. You can give people money, and get back more value. Back when US built railroads Companies paid Chinese to work on it, but then they charged them rent/food costs(they had no choice they traveled from China to work) almost equal to their pay. They basically gained value from their labor.
10) the clients are the poor and the rich, and other companies.
a lot of these things are actually exactly how it works in the real world, The main difference is if it goes too far off balance there is usually a war. But I guess that did happen in cyberpunks universe, just that the corporations won most of the wars.
Sometimes when thinking about the endings that are not there, I miss Hanako taking you right to Mikoshi one-to-one, killing her, and uploading Alt Who then neutralizes everyone in the building.
And then Johnny going "well, that escalated quickly". Which would be even better if he couldn't read V's mind because of blockers, and thought V's sticking with Arasaka.
V (with the help of Alt) taking out the whole Arasaka Tower without a single shot and surprising the biggest arsehole in the game by being an even bigger, but a sneaky arsehole.
For a big city they're all quite huge, including V's. Middle of the city and no roommates. Even more if you compare them to the average flat in Hong Kong or Tokyo.
For a big city they're all quite huge, including V's. Middle of the city and no roommates. Even more if you compare them to the average flat in Hong Kong or Tokyo.
