It's cool everyone can define non-linear a little bit differently lol I see non-linear as meaning an "all roads lead to Rome" kind of situation. I think it takes a lot of skill to take a person from A to B, but B breaks into B1 and B2, but both of those have to lead to C in a way that feels natural.
I'd be more happy with less endings, but actually feeling like I could take different paths to get there.
To be fair, the most important thing about every ending where V still exists IS the same: you spend the whole game desperately attempting to chase away the spectre of an early death only for the anticlimax to reveal that it's still there, with some variance in how ambiguous the game is about whether or not V will even try any more.
Don´t know, I could have decided to seduce Adam Smasher to convince him to kill Yorinobu, then betray him and marry Hanako to rule Arasaka. Its really exponential growth based on degree of freedom,at some point you need to put a limit. I can only think about AI Dungeon, that is text based and still didn´t test how much branching capability has.
the problem I have with the opting out of hours theory, is you aren't opting out of anything, you can play the game multiple times.
the main difference is the game doesn't set up that many exclusive options.
they could have;
1)not unlocked any major side missions until after you complete 2 leads and half of takamura plot
2) had you select which faction you were siding with
made you have to choose between
Johnny side missions and ending,
panams side missions and ending or
takamura's, last mission and ending.
does that all of sudden make your choices better? even though you literally have more choices in the actual game? That makes the game more linear in that there is less possible difference in a characters journey.
and you are still choosing to do content or not do content. (missing out)
that you can only resolve by starting again, the same choice you can make in 2077, except in cyberpunk you get to make the decision, rather than have the game tell you, you can only associate with one faction.
I say the game is more RPG because the player is the one that chooses which stories and paths are exclusive instead of the game structure. You can choose to be a corpo who befriends Johnny, then sells him out to Arasaka, instead of one path where you hate Johnny and kill him in the ending. You can be a nomad who helped the aldecados, but decided NC and the merc life is your real life. instead of a straight line of lost nomad, befriends aldecados and runs away with them.
I still see it as opting out of content, I see what you're saying with it being an RP choice to work with Panam or not, Johnny or not, but it's still a game and that's how you get experience and money. In my ideal world you could choose to work with Panam or Saul in the tank mission, Nomads or a Corporation, Easter Bunny or Santa Claus something other than just "do this or don't." There would be a choice in that mission that coincides with the "Leave Night City" ending, but is different in its play, even if by just a little. Resetting my character just to go through content that I purposely ignored last time doesn't sound appealing to me. Resetting my character to experience different content that I couldn't because I was getting other content takes away the sting of going through the prologue again.
To be fair, the most important thing about every ending where V still exists IS the same: you spend the whole game desperately attempting to chase away the spectre of an early death only for the anticlimax to reveal that it's still there, with some variance in how ambiguous the game is about whether or not V will even try any more.
the most important thing about every ending depends on what each player decided what was the most important thing. For some players being happy with panam was the most important thing in the game. For others the relationship they had with Johnny was the most important thing. For others Takamura sempai was the point of the game. For others doing as much damage to arasaka as possible was the point. For some relationship with river is the center of the story.
For you, most important was V has a long life, So you are annoyed you didnt solve it. makes sense, but even on that goal you made significant progress. V was supposed to be dead, or overwritten in 2-3 weeks, they end the game with no chance of being overwriiten, and 6 months to try to survive longer.
life is a struggle, it never stops until your dead. In the CP world this is even more true, even if they didnt add the 6 months unless you find a cure angle.
To be fair, the most important thing about every ending where V still exists IS the same: you spend the whole game desperately attempting to chase away the spectre of an early death only for the anticlimax to reveal that it's still there, with some variance in how ambiguous the game is about whether or not V will even try any more.
There is also that. I'm definitely not going to argue the endings were all wildly different to justify the lack of branching. It wasn't "All roads lead to Rome" it was "This one road leads to three doors... all three doors lead directly to Rome (or you can off yourself.)" The long and short of it is V is in cyberspace or actively dying and we didn't really get to choose how we got there beyond one short phone call.
There is also that. I'm definitely not going to argue the endings were all wildly different to justify the lack of branching. It wasn't "All roads lead to Rome" it was "This one road leads to three doors... all three doors lead directly to Rome (or you can off yourself.)" The long and short of it is V is in cyberspace or actively dying and we didn't really get to choose how we got there beyond one short phone call.
To be fair, the most important thing about every ending where V still exists IS the same: you spend the whole game desperately attempting to chase away the spectre of an early death only for the anticlimax to reveal that it's still there, with some variance in how ambiguous the game is about whether or not V will even try any more.
Yep basically do you want some french fries with your death.
I think it would always stick in my craw but especially so when there's zero real choice about what your V's priorities are or who they are anymore in the ending.
I still see it as opting out of content, I see what you're saying with it being an RP choice to work with Panam or not, Johnny or not, but it's still a game and that's how you get experience and money. In my ideal world you could choose to work with Panam or Saul in the tank mission, Nomads or a Corporation, Easter Bunny or Santa Claus something other than just "do this or don't." There would be a choice in that mission that coincides with the "Leave Night City" ending, but is different in its play, even if by just a little. Resetting my character just to go through content that I purposely ignored last time doesn't sound appealing to me. Resetting my character to experience different content that I couldn't because I was getting other content takes away the sting of going through the prologue again.
You can get experience and money from other sources, infinitely I might add. There is no real reason to do any specific action for money/exp/street cred. Also you can beat the game at level 24 or so since the game scales.
For me, the first time I played, I knew I was going to play again, so I just didnt do the content that didnt fit that character. I didnt befriend Johnny, I had a panam option. I finished the game around level 30, didnt do the vast majority of side gigs. The second playthrough I had tons of new things to see. Point is, you can have a similar experience if thats how you want to play, by choosing to RP your character.
if the goal was to make people replay more, you are definitely correct, if the goal is to give the player more choices on how their character's story progresses and who the character is, I think the current version is closer to that.
I will say, the current version goes against many player's learned approaches to rpgs, or maybe gamer psychology. Many players are not RPing when they play an rpg, or rather they are RPing as a character who is mostly curious to see everything.
With that in mind, this game's open choose whatever you want approach, rather than creating a more structured exclusive narrative doesn't work well for many players.
That said my personality is generally to prefer more freedom rather than less, so I found it pretty well done. People could legitimately approach the game extremely differently, and see many different things. I was able to play once as heavy RP, and another trying to see everything available. And usually, I'd finish the game before I did everything.
I don't really know how people overall handled this aspect, but perhaps more people would rather the clear structuring. I dunno, but for me it made it overall a better game.
There is also that. I'm definitely not going to argue the endings were all wildly different to justify the lack of branching. It wasn't "All roads lead to Rome" it was "This one road leads to three doors... all three doors lead directly to Rome (or you can off yourself.)" The long and short of it is V is in cyberspace or actively dying and we didn't really get to choose how we got there beyond one short phone call.
you chose how you got there by who you chose to befriend. the roof options aren't always there, they are the direct results of choices you made earlier in the game. Also, for some people Judy was the whole point of the game. Nomad ending without Judy is not the same game as nomad ending with Judy. Some players literally only choose nomad ending to make Judy more happy, they could care less about nomad life.
One of the themes of the game is that life is not just about survival, its about how you choose to spend your time and whats important to you. This is why the worst ending, with the least achievements, is a V who ignores everything and only focuses on living alone. This is why when you beat the game, they essentially tell you, didnt like that ending? ok how about you go back and figure out what more there is to life than just surviving to continue to struggle to survive.
This is why the real way to get a better ending is to calm down, and do things ingame you find important and interesting or valuable, even knowing that your clock is ticking. Because guess what, your clock is always ticking.
A big point of the game is to ask, what are you living for?
Love and friendship, but I can't pick that ending because I get broken up with pretty rudely so I have to go play Big Boss Lady ending where V is obsessed with being a loner legend.
I will say, the current version goes against many player's learned approaches to rpgs, or maybe gamer psychology. Many players are not RPing when they play an rpg, or rather they are RPing as a character who is mostly curious to see everything.
This is probably their biggest issue, a person playing through the game the first time has no idea they're not supposed to be doing these missions if they want a good RP experience, they think they're just playing a game where quest = information for you to understand the game. It gives you a quest and you do the quest because you don't know any better, especially when it's labeled "main story." I think I disagree about the current way offering more character development though, you'd get just as much V character development forcing yourself to skip Panam's content as you would having a mission where you choose to work with someone else instead.
legendary merc goes to crystal palace - the best place in the whole cyberpunk universe
there are a lot of people so mb v will find someone
or return down bottom
legendary merc goes to crystal palace - the best place in the whole cyberpunk universe
there are a lot of people so mb v will find someone
or return down bottom
I will say, the current version goes against many player's learned approaches to rpgs, or maybe gamer psychology. Many players are not RPing when they play an rpg, or rather they are RPing as a character who is mostly curious to see everything.
It seems to me the problem with the game is the exact opposite, that ultimately the endings are more interested in conveying a theme rather than a conclusion to a character you RP'd. It is entirely possible, and even easy given the choices that dictate the ending, to consistently RP the entire game and be unable to get an ending that makes sense. Hell, it's easy to RP the entire game and find out that none of the possible endings make sense for your V, because when the time came to end the game, they cared more about Dex's lines in the beginning than anything you did in the game.
Love and friendship, but I can't pick that ending because I get broken up with pretty rudely so I have to go play Big Boss Lady ending where V is obsessed with being a loner legend.
This is probably their biggest issue, a person playing through the game the first time has no idea they're not supposed to be doing these missions if they want a good RP experience, they think they're just playing a game where quest = information for you to understand the game. It gives you a quest and you do the quest because you don't know any better, especially when it's labeled "main story." I think I disagree about the current way offering more character development though, you'd get just as much V character development forcing yourself to skip Panam's content as you would having a mission where you choose to work with someone else instead.
the difference is that you have the option of having the story play out the same as if they were exclusive, in addition to adding in combinations of those paths, that give a different feel.
for ex, you can be a guy who loves nomads, AND who forms strong friendship with Johnny, instead of that being mutually exclusive.
This makes some stories a bit different. The V who befriends a whole bunch of anti corpo types(like Johnny), gets a different pretty different vibe when they are having the final Johnny conversation, than the player who used pills and fought with Johnny the whole time. One might be a story of V getting rid of an evil terrorist brain parasite, while the other might be betraying your friend for your own ends. If Johnny path and takamura path are mutually exclusive, that type of story is lost.
It seems to me the problem with the game is the exact opposite, that ultimately the endings are more interested in conveying a theme rather than a conclusion to a character you RP'd. It is entirely possible, and even easy given the choices that dictate the ending, to consistently RP the entire game and be unable to get an ending that makes sense. Hell, it's easy to RP the entire game and find out that none of the possible endings make sense for your V, because when the time came to end the game, they cared more about Dex's lines in the beginning than anything you did in the game.
Agreed, the endings pigeon hole the player regardless of how they've rp'd before then. They definitely come across as somebody's attempt to browbeat rather than provide rewarding conclusions to individual player journeys.
I think you are mixing non-linear gameplay where you have freedom to undertake tasks in different order or not taking at all with non-linear storytelling. Also branching stories is linear at the end,even if you create infinite branches. Non-linear storytelling requires flashbacks and feedforwards( like burroughs in "the soft machine").
did you play in a band?
did you become friends with johnny?
did you sell Johnny out?
did you kill the vooddoo boys?
did you save Gustavo orta?
did you tell Saul what pan am was planning?
did you side with meiko?
did you save takemura?
did you join the nomads
did you find a love?
is panam a merc?
did judy find more happiness Tha. she ever found before?
did rogue want jonny to never see her again?
the story can be drastically different depending what choices you make. The whole entire point of the story, and character of the main protagonist can be totally different depending on the choices. Where the character ends up, and what happens to all the supportingbcharachters is based on the choices the main character makes. The state of politics in night city is dependent on their choices.
there is no way one can say that players choices don't effect the story in this game.
I know perfectly well what I'm talking about, you can't change the fate of V, you only change how he dies, you have a choose your ending option.
While the game has some non-linear sub-story, the main plot is pretty much linear, those choices you make in some quest don't alter any of that, you can't refuse the job, you can't save your friend, you can't refuse to put that chip in your head, the guy that contracted you always kill you after the failing quest......... should I keep going? The endings are pretty much a "choose how V dies" but is certainly a railroad of V dying one way or another.
All those other choices are worthless, the same thing happened in Mass effect 3 (no matter how much you raised the forces you still have to sacrifice yourself, taking out the choices from the players. to force some BS that in the end no one did care)
And Btw if you go to Steam you will see the game doesn't have the "Choices Matters" tag for that same reason.
This was never the game they promised.
I know perfectly well what I'm talking about, you can't change the fate of V, you only change how he dies, you have a choose your ending option.
While the game has some non-linear sub-story, the main plot is pretty much linear, those choices you make in some quest don't alter any of that, you can't refuse the job, you can't save your friend, you can't refuse to put that chip in your head, the guy that contracted you always kill you after the failing quest......... should I keep going? The endings are pretty much a "choose how V dies" but is certainly a railroad of V dying one way or another.
All those other choices are worthless, the same thing happened in Mass effect 3 (no matter how much you raised the forces you still have to sacrifice yourself, taking out the choices from the players. to force some BS that in the end no one did care)
And Btw if you go to Steam you will see the game doesn't have the "Choices Matters" tag for that same reason.
This was never the game they promised.
like i said its not the game doesn't have choices that change the story, it doesn't let you change the parts of the story you want to change.
V who is a corpo, who thought Johnny silverhand was a trouble maker who attacked his company. Who gets him trapped in his brain, and slowly becomes best friends with him, who then takes on his former corporation and sacrifices his body, while Johnny tries to knock him off the bridge to AI death, not wanting his friend to die to give Johnny a new life.
Is a totally different story than;
V who was a former nomad who loses belief in the nomad way of life, lives a city dream, until he loses everything, and on the way to surviving meets Panam, a fiery lover who makes him remember the value of family. Ignoring the psycho self obsessed rockerboy, when he is at the end of his rope, his family pulls him back up and takes down a corporation, saving him, and putting his family back on the map.
This is not some small time changes, this changes the whole plot of the story and the character arc of the main player, and most of the side characters.
There is no video game rpg where you control the whole plot, not any witcher game, not Skyrim, not divinity original sin. There are always some parts you must do to progress the game.
V doesn't die, V's future is unknown. V was supposed to die in heist, he was supposed to die from relic, what makes you think V's death is so certain now? And the point of the game is to choose how V lives, and what matters to V. By your definition, every human that ever died has the same story, because they all died at the end.
To be honest, V having to die no matter what you do is a plot hole, in my opinion.
The nanites from the biochip altered V's cells to accommodate Johnny, but if a biochip is capable of doing that, couldn't there be a counter-biochip that can reverse-engineer that process? For all her huge AI knowledge, Alt had somehow failed to consider this option. She is able to create programs on her own, and with her capacity to access pretty much anything digital - including Mikoshi database, she could have also created a program that could be placed on a new biochip, for the sole purpose to bring V's body back to its original state. The base of the biochip is the engram on it, and since Alt had full access to V's engram, this was very doable. If V was indeed too far gone, they wouldn't have any time left, instead of approx six months - which means it's not too late.
This suggestion opens possibilities for Johnny as well. Technically, he doesn't have to go with Alt, but instead remain as an engram on a newly created biochip and wait for a suitable body.
Alt was the best netrunner ever, and now a free AI with unlimited access to all sorts of data. It seems to me that she had used Johnny and V to get to Mikoshi, and that she doesn't really care for their predicament. If she did, she would have considered the "body factor" earlier and devised a workaround for them both. I think the axis of all endings here is actually Alt's crappy attitude. The only being that could really help doesn't give a flying F.
So, OK, Alt can remain a horrible entity all around - for the sake of the point that people are selfish pricks even if they turn into AIs, but we should still have the option to find a solution without her. At this point, I wouldn't even be mad if CDPR decided to make a DLC with a fulfilling, meaningful ending. Seriously, why would I even want to play a game if the outcome is doom no matter what I do? This "experiment" that I paid for and invested my time in has only left me feel bitter. I played the game with every possible build and ending, hoping I'd find something that would make me feel good and entertained...but I only ended up with this hollow sensation. They can fix bugs all they want, but what we really need fixed is the story.
