They had 300 million dollars to make the game. There was nothing stopping them from making a proper story. Except themselves rushing, cutting things out, and having incompetent leaders. That was the budget of Avengers End Game.
and I bet 100 million of that went to Keanu Reeves (unless he did it for nothing out of goodwill).
And I'm sure Avenger End Games did not take 10 years to make either.
It doesn't come down to writing alone. You can create an elaborate, branching story with many expansive, webbed pathways but it still must be put into the game. This means graphical assets, animations, scripted sequences, the list goes on from here. All of that stuff takes time, effort and testing. If side-content has connections to this narrative you're now looking at further testing at a minimum.
Many of the gigs in the game are very short. They don't provide much wiggle room. Enter a room, assassinate some character, exit the room, gig closed. Pick up a shard here or there along the way. It's far more likely these are setup this way because it's less consuming in those other areas. The putting it into the game part. It's not because the writing flopped.
In fact, I would not be surprised if portions of the game were originally written very differently but had to be scaled down because of these other areas. Someone swung for the fences with a deadline and whiffed on the ball completely.
If you look at many of these simple gigs and compare them to the high quality alternatives, where you get a good bit of engagement with the quest, it's not a leap to assume it played a role. Many of those higher quality alternatives do not have much in the way of choices and consequences in them. They are still well put together. In my opinion anyway. They closely follow the setup of most of the side-quests. Which are, again, well put together in most cases.
No, this is not to say those high quality alternatives or side quests offer much in the way of choices or consequences. Some do offer both in some capacity though. The ones failing to do so aren't what I'd call "bad" because of it. They're just different. On the flipside, I would label the simple, fetch style options lacking.
The writers probably did want to offer more choices. They ended up unable to do so because someone within a higher position makes bad choices. Those bad choices lead to bad consequences. For both the writers and the players. Choices and consequences, hehehe.
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I highly doubt that Reaves was that expansive.
I say it's safe to assume that they really started working after the Witcher expansions were out and fixed. So the actual development time was more like 4 years. If the rumors are true, they basically started over in 2016 AND 2018...
Pushed the button too soon.
The short development time would however explain why most gigs are so unfinished. Basically everything in this game feels unfinished to be honest.
All good points and I can see where you're coming from, I guess I just have a different take. Suppose the product of good writing as there's a need of us to be active participants.
The ending you're speaking of actually was green lit behind Riddley Scotts back by the execs without his consent because they wanted a cozier Disney ending to please the audience. However, this is not the true ending as any Blade Runner fanboy would know. It was only after Scott got old and lost his edge as a film director that he conceded to this speculation that Decker and Rachel took of together to make babies.
Doesn't take a fanboy. Studio ending is despised for a reason by many.
I kind of like it. Leaves something up to the imagination. Rather then being spoon feed story outcomes.
Eh, even the "real" ending of Blade Runner ends on a hopeful note. It's really not that dark, just less corny than the theatrical ending.
It is interesting how many different takes and interpretations that CP2077 has generated though, many of them completely contrary to one another. I'm still on the fence over whether this is due to intentional ambiguity on the developer's part, or just the byproduct of a tonal mess... like with most things, the answer probably lies somewhere between the two.
Lot's of things are really carefully crafted: https://forums.cdprojektred.com/ind...nally-thought-spoilers.11074310/post-12806027
Note: What we know about Saburo's history and corporate war - Cronus was a god of chaos.
There's even more to that than that, covered in video linked earlier in same topic.
Carefully crafted?
Not really. "Wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle"
Not really. "Wide as an ocean, shallow as a puddle"
I agree and would like to add what you said - it is the easy way out.
What is harder - think of writing and scenes on say post hook up dates with Judy and conversations regarding other quests in the game (so much crosswalking necessary) or just end things after the hook up.
Which is easier - change conversations around the city about Sinnerman or you and Johnny/Catholics having a discussion on why and why you helped. Or just end things.
Which is easier - do Sandra follow-up and just end things there - or add a quest or discussion on the cororation doing a different type of persuasion than the may or quest - far easier to just end things there.
As the more you do - the more people may like/dislike the ending.
The more you do - the more work is involved as well as complexity.
Gee - let's just end quests immediately and little call backs and leave things ambiguous is the lazy way out as every quest the same way. It's NOT a well written David Lynch story with some resolutions and some unknown situations and interpretation - EVERY quest and the endings to the game are totally ended prematurely with little care about consequences.
Just like the entire writing of the game post chapter one. The earliest written quests are the only ones dealing with ramifications and cause and effect.
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If they cared about player choice or agency - they would let you go into clouds on your own and handle things yourself. Either after the tiger claw retribution - or before - instead of meeting them on balcony your V goes in solo and wipes out the tiger claws silently - which keeps the two dolls from having to try the untested technology in a dangerous assault.
But those would involve choices and agency and cause and effect.
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In Vegas I would have no hesitation betting on the new lead game designer and rewrites rewrote the game to have quests be more elder scrolls go in - kill - get rewards - with a little dialogue or notes and never refer to them again - instead of the well written and branching quest for Dex.
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A lot of the minor side stories feel weird (I fully agree about Sinnerman and Heroes), but honestly I'm actually completely on board with the way the LI side stories end. Made a video about it, even. Short version, though:
The reason we don't have agency is that we don't have agency in this situation. As much as we're basically tanks by level 50 we (I think intentionally) can't alter entrenched power structures in the city. We were never going to wipe out the Claws. The writing was on the wall with this one when V asks Judy if she's thought about this at all and she immediately says no. There's a running theme of people getting punished for trying to do the right thing in this world, generally, and Judy keeps bashing her head against that wall until she decides she has to walk away.
I....actually love that you all go your separate ways. Everyone's got their own things to deal with, and I like that you're not the center of their world (as you are in so many other games)
I honestly kind of wish they'd scrapped the open world and made it more like Deus Ex: HR with hubs and focused on extending / branching the stories, because outside of the visuals the open world is the weakest part of the game.
The reason we don't have agency is that we don't have agency in this situation. As much as we're basically tanks by level 50 we (I think intentionally) can't alter entrenched power structures in the city. We were never going to wipe out the Claws. The writing was on the wall with this one when V asks Judy if she's thought about this at all and she immediately says no. There's a running theme of people getting punished for trying to do the right thing in this world, generally, and Judy keeps bashing her head against that wall until she decides she has to walk away.
I....actually love that you all go your separate ways. Everyone's got their own things to deal with, and I like that you're not the center of their world (as you are in so many other games)
I honestly kind of wish they'd scrapped the open world and made it more like Deus Ex: HR with hubs and focused on extending / branching the stories, because outside of the visuals the open world is the weakest part of the game.
No honestly open world is fine. But I think do away with the choices or at least make the choices very minor (like deciding if some minor character dies and it would affect gameplay but not overall plot, like GTA IV where you decide to kill Dwayne or Playboy X). I think a linear plot would have been much easier for the devs and writers to deal with.
I don’t think linearity would do the game any favours, I think being able to make your own choices and shape the story is one of the elements preventing it from being a cyberpunk Far Cry game. If it’s based on a tabletop RPG, being able to customise your story should be pretty fundamental.
Even if he charged a few million it's a cheap change comparing to the rest of development. I wouldn't;t blame him for all the fallacy and use and excuse why the game looks like that. He did his job (poorly or not is a different story), promoted it, and moved on. He's not one of CDPR leads by any means. I would be also very careful to use him as an excuse to explain why the story doesn't;t add up. Even if his involvement sparked some change it wasn't his doing. He's not the writer not the lead creative. If the team got starstruck and follow every idea he gave. it's not his fault but people who couldn't say no. And if you manage a huge multimillion-dollar production you have to say no on a daily basis
Or too late. Perhaps the game went through so many changes way before the release.
Also just to stay on topic. I found some of the quests interesting but Heros and Sinnerman didn't make the list. The heroes simply because I didn't spend enough time with Jackie to be hit emotionally by his funeral. It was sad because it was a funeral. V's speech wasn't even something I could fully back up since I didn't know the guy, what he liked or not. I learned most of the thing about him inspecting his garage, not through interacting. In its stead, V is having a book that Jackie read (did he really or it was just on the shelf?) talking metaphors about a character in the writers' head not really present in the gameplay.
The sinnerman on the other hand felt like a copout, a shocking, very direct reference to the sacrum hit in the head by profanum. The only reasonable ending to the story is to kill the guy before he sells his faith as entertainment. It's severely lacking any commentary about exploiting people's believes for monetary gain, except "it happens". It shocking because most of the video games and media, in general, avoid such a topic, but it's shocking for the sake of a shock. What's the message here? That Mel Gibson is a horrible person making tons of money on Passion? On the other hand, Cyberpunk didn't go one step further exchanging sleazy Rachel with a bishop of a catholic church or a rich preacher. That would be too much. Too aggressive? Too offensive? Would it be smart> Probably not but then did this braindance change anything? Influenced somebody? Had any effect on the world? Frankly, religion and faith in general, are vastly ignored in the game used primarily as a shock value. Strange judging by the fact that the game is about dying and one of the most important spot is called "Afterlife". The Sinnerman is just pure symbolism without substance, putting V in the shoes of an executioner that she already walked for most of the story anyway.
Even if he charged a few million it's a cheap change comparing to the rest of development. I wouldn't;t blame him for all the fallacy and use and excuse why the game looks like that. He did his job (poorly or not is a different story), promoted it, and moved on. He's not one of CDPR leads by any means. I would be also very careful to use him as an excuse to explain why the story doesn't;t add up. Even if his involvement sparked some change it wasn't his doing. He's not the writer not the lead creative. If the team got starstruck and follow every idea he gave. it's not his fault but people who couldn't say no. And if you manage a huge multimillion-dollar production you have to say no on a daily basis
Or too late. Perhaps the game went through so many changes way before the release.
Also just to stay on topic. I found some of the quests interesting but Heros and Sinnerman didn't make the list. The heroes simply because I didn't spend enough time with Jackie to be hit emotionally by his funeral. It was sad because it was a funeral. V's speech wasn't even something I could fully back up since I didn't know the guy, what he liked or not. I learned most of the thing about him inspecting his garage, not through interacting. In its stead, V is having a book that Jackie read (did he really or it was just on the shelf?) talking metaphors about a character in the writers' head not really present in the gameplay.
The sinnerman on the other hand felt like a copout, a shocking, very direct reference to the sacrum hit in the head by profanum. The only reasonable ending to the story is to kill the guy before he sells his faith as entertainment. It's severely lacking any commentary about exploiting people's believes for monetary gain, except "it happens". It shocking because most of the video games and media, in general, avoid such a topic, but it's shocking for the sake of a shock. What's the message here? That Mel Gibson is a horrible person making tons of money on Passion? On the other hand, Cyberpunk didn't go one step further exchanging sleazy Rachel with a bishop of a catholic church or a rich preacher. That would be too much. Too aggressive? Too offensive? Would it be smart> Probably not but then did this braindance change anything? Influenced somebody? Had any effect on the world? Frankly, religion and faith in general, are vastly ignored in the game used primarily as a shock value. Strange judging by the fact that the game is about dying and one of the most important spot is called "Afterlife". The Sinnerman is just pure symbolism without substance, putting V in the shoes of an executioner that she already walked for most of the story anyway.
Not to mention Sinnerman is just artistic license. You do not crucify someone and then have him die immediately. In fact the whole point of nailing someone to a cross is to make his death as prolonged and agonizing as possible. Normally the person take weeks to die (and it's not a good week either). But perhaps V would have been given the option of shooting him between the eyes to put him out of his misery, or be sadistic and prolong his suffering. But the mission just shows he dies immediately after being nailed to a cross.
My thoughts exactly. "Wait till Joshua dies" And I was like - Am I gonna stand here for 3 days? Really? That's gonna be fun. Which means this braindance is bullshit. Which means no one achieved anything (AGAIN)
Giving V a choice to kill him just before crucifixion would actually make a lot of sense. You can kill him, sure but way before you know what his plans are which means "the second playthrough". It just ends the mission. Assassinating Joshua would actually mean that his death is not exploited so it's at least anti-corpo. Somehow Johnny is ecstatic about giving the corpos what they want.
You know what if the story of CP2077 is not dissimilar to Call of Duty Black Ops 3? The story of Black ops 3 is actually the main character died after the first mission, and the second mission was just the part where the neuro interface was installed but if you read the secret docs and stuff, it shows that they actually died from complication of the surgery. And so the rest of the game was them reliving someone else's memory right until he actually died.
Maybe V actually died when Dexter shot V and the rest of the game was just V imagining stuff along with Johnny's engram.
If you think about it, go to the Carborendum, where you were supposed to look for Andrew's niche in that quest where you were supposed to counsel that ex cop. If you look around in that area there are niche for almost every main character in the game, including River, etc. and even V is in there.
So maybe the truth is, V is already dead. Judy says this when you were watching Evelyn's BD. Said "you know what I see when I look at you? A walking, talking corpse.".
Explains all the weirdness in act 2.
Maybe V actually died when Dexter shot V and the rest of the game was just V imagining stuff along with Johnny's engram.
If you think about it, go to the Carborendum, where you were supposed to look for Andrew's niche in that quest where you were supposed to counsel that ex cop. If you look around in that area there are niche for almost every main character in the game, including River, etc. and even V is in there.
So maybe the truth is, V is already dead. Judy says this when you were watching Evelyn's BD. Said "you know what I see when I look at you? A walking, talking corpse.".
Explains all the weirdness in act 2.
That would make way more sense and it would have to be addressed at the end. If it's not mentioned it's just a fan theory that makes you feel better about the experience you had with the gam but not intend. Also, it would make every single relationship and romance irrelevant since they never really happened. It makes a good start for the next game/next story but it would come across as a)afterthought b) panic mode and damage control, not as intended. The story would also try to ask a different question (not that it's great in asking any questions) not what is soul or what makes you "you" but what is reality.
It doesn't even have to be Dex. We have Sanda Dorsett's virus to play with too.
