Technology worse than 2020 books?

[azriel77]

Technology worse than 2020 books?

Going to start a separate thread spined off from the oversexualization thread since it has nothing to do with it. Doing some copy and paste.

EDIT.
Here: http://www.nowgamer.com/ps4/ps4-pre...ique_mix_of_nextgen_hightech_and_lowlife.html

"The biggest battle we are having is we have to regress the technology enough to where we wouldn’t find a natural process of technological development," says Pondsmith, "where you are walking around with jet packs and flying cars and winged helmets. Lucky for us, we had a Corporate War that damn near destroyed most of the planet."

Not only that, but a flood of lethal computer viruses has meant people can no longer communicate over the net. In many ways, the tech of 2077 is less advanced than that of 2020, and this is a key to maintaining the cyberpunk feel according to Monnier.

"To keep the feeling of cyberpunk, you kinda have to keep things broken just enough. You have to keep the technology curve down to where it’s still people, interacting on a personal level."

Rant on/
No cyberspace? That sucks, I mean...really, really, sucks. Well, so much with keeping with the books. This is obviously to force players to stay in the real world and do real world things. *sigh* If you look at the list of "what will be your first character type" at least half said netrunner. I suspect there will be a lot of disappointed fans of the cyberpunk books.

I really do not want to have to physically sneak in offices/places to hack into systems. That goes against that type of character, I also do not want to replace the net with some Alternative reality junk to again, force us to stay in the real world. I want the net at a home network like in the books. Grrr!
/Rant off

Sorry for the rant, but that just killed a big chunck of my enthusiasm for this game.



Again, that is very disappointing. I thought we would at least have 2020 level technology. Now we won't even have that? What the hell? Lots of disappointing things here.

I know, i was a lil disapointed too
But on another hand, it would probably be the hell of a job to create a descent "real" cyberspace wich would require a third sandbox just for it, also it's their first Cyberpunk game (and they said they're interested into turning it into a licence), i bet we'll have a real cyberspace, if not in this one, maybe in a game or two, once they'll masters the "core" of the game and will be able to expand it, even as a GM on the pnp, it's pretty hard to make a descent real world and a descent cyberspace at the same time without a lot of preparation, so i can imagine the difficulty into turning it to a video game.

I think Maelcom is reading a lot into a very vague statement. It's possible they will have a fully realised 2077 Night City Netspace for hackers, only not perhaps the craziness that veteran 2020 players might recall.

They can't do everything - some things are going to have to go. I, too, hope for Netspace. After the CP2020 canon DataCrash in 2025, though, the Net as you know it in 2020 has taken a major, major hit. It's still being rebuilt in 2077.

Now, this might just be the excuse as to why you can't hop over to a mainframe in Tokyo and start hacking, where Night City is your forced playground. But maybe it will mean a more localized hack. If that's the case, oh, well. Netrunners have to do all sorts of things to overcome obstacles - in the very paranoid future, it's quite possible external access is much harder than in 2020.

Case once rode into orbit to get inside a datafortress - you gonna say you're better than him?

Also, off topic.

Ahhh....

Don't have too much sex in cyberspace - you'll get viruses. Yeah.

 

[azriel77]

I could buy that they cannot go all over the world, but I cannot buy after 52 years the net does not exist. I would argue that each city built its own hub, and to go to other cities/international has to go through a very high security network that is flat out impossible without special heavy and expensive hardware that only special corporations have. This could be a safety net to prevent another virus bomb. But the city itself could have its own network.

Now, if CDPR wanted to be lazy, they could just make a copy of the city in wire frame that is actually connected to the real world networked parts. When you hack a network, you actually affect the real world., the areas are patrolled by virtual security and viruses are running around. The character could still have an avatar and cool powers that are programs.

The characters and world are not bound by physics, characters can walk up buildings, fly, they can summon viruses, pass through walls with the right hack..etc. The areas have virtual programs that defend areas, you could run into other netrunners. While everything is wireframed/cyber looking, the only places you can go to/affect are those connected to the internet.

Shadowrun returns took out the matrix originally, but when they tested it, they found that they really wanted the matrix and just made a wireframe representation of areas and it worked pretty good. Not perfect, but preferable to boring text hacking.

I would prefer this lazy way to not having cyberspace.

 

[Sardukhar]

Thiiis is actually quite a question for us all. Damned if I can recall what thread it's under, so let's re do it!

Some of this is canon- Cyberpunk 2020 derived plot events. The Datacrash shut down the Net. Everywhere. It also wiped out paper information. Rache was thorough and had years to plan and set it up. He's a genius and a unique talent. He's what we've feared ever since kids like Kevin Mitnick proved they can do what they want with your computer long before you know what they are up to..

So that's 2020 storyline: No Net. Gone. Even hardcopy backups, even on-paper backups, Rache got to nearly everything.

By 2077, a lot of it has been repaired. But not all. And, of course, no one is very trusting anymore. What if another Rache Bartmoss is out there? What if Rache never even died, ( he did)? What if...what if he uploaded his mind somehow?!!! ( He didn't). So, yeah, no one really trusts the Net and it's not what it was.

In gameplay terms, only Mike Pondsmith and CDPR can really tell us how that will translate. Keep in mind, their stated objective is to re-create the feel of playing Cyberpunk 2020. Let me say that again.

Their stated objective is to re-create the feel of playing Cyberpunk 2020.

Not 2025, or 250 or what-have-you. But that weird hyper-tech/low-tech you see in 2020, where cars with wheels are the common way of getting around, guns still fire bullets, guitars change the world and you can inject yourself, mind-first, into the consensual hallucination that is cyberspace.

So that -is- their objective. It's not likely to change, unlike what features they implement or what classes or what guns or vehicles or not. They are trying to give you the same feeling and setting they had when they first sat down and played Cyberpunk 2020 sometime in the early 1990s. That's the goal.

Whether or not they do it will depend on how good a game they make and how similar your experience playing 2020 is to what CDPR and Maximum Mike consider an epochal 2020 game.

I'll take those odds.

 

[wisdom000]

Thats canon V3, not 2020... which was, in terms of Cyberpunk RPG continuity, garbage.... (not that it wou.dn't have been interesting as a stand alone, or even alternate timeline like Cybergeneration)

I can't tell you how dissapointed I am that V3 and it's events will be incorporated into the world of 2077... V3 is the one thing, depending on how much of it they include, that could make me lose interest in the game altogether...

CP 2020 was hard science fiction, near future speculation, V3 was pure fantasy, and while the Datakrash may be tengentially possible, the paper eating virus was just flying dragons and sparkly unicorns vomiting rapping leprechauns fucking silly.

 

[Suhiira]

CP 2020 was hard science fiction, near future speculation, V3 was pure fantasy, and while the Datakrash may be tengentially possible, the paper eating virus was just flying dragons and sparkly unicorns vomiting rapping leprechauns fucking silly.

Once again I agree 100% with wisdom000.

Ok, lets say the entire Net was corrupted in 2020 (or whenever).
The game is set in 2077, 57 years after that event.
In real life it's 2014, 57 years ago ... 1957 ... the net didn't even exist, and computers took up entire rooms.
The real net was built from nothing in less then 57 years, in 2077 they have the already have knowledge of basic structure etc. They could, WOULD, rebuild the net in some form. It's to valuable and useful not to.

The idea of cities/corps/etc. each being an isolated hub with REALLY stringent government/military/corporate authorization to communicate between them could work, and make sense. You can e-mail the NSA or CIA anytime you want, just try to get into their secure systems and see what happens.

But no net?
I don't buy it at all.

 

[azriel77]

Yea, the idea that cybernetics exist, but the net does not is ridiculous.

Not just the net, but I really do not like the idea that technology will be less advanced than 2020. It should at least be the same level or even slightly more. The biggest problem I had with deus ex:HR was that it really did not feel futuristic. Oh sure, your character had cybergear, but remove him and it might as well be modern times. I want the world to scream that it is the future.

Another thing that stuck out in Deus Ex:HR was the lack of other cybernetic people. I mean, this is available technology, but where were the others? The only ones you saw was plot element people. The gear might not be on everyone, but enough random NPC's should be using advanced tech, an exotic, cybernetic...etc. and common enough that your character should not bat an eye.

 

[Garrison72]

Some points:

-That is a fairly casual statement by Pondsmith, I wouldn't take it as confirmed info. Especially since stuff changes during the dev process. I've seen no less than a dozen or so 'confirmed' features, stuff CDPR said they were going to include in TW2, that never happened.

-It could be that certain tech has advanced well beyond 2020 levels, but other types have actually regressed. A plausible scenario, and one with great potential I think.

-You guys are forgetting the trailer. Unlike other game devs, CDPR works closely with Platige Image to ensure that trailers represent the games down to the finest details. They really are sticklers about this, to the point that their artists and writers collaborate with PI. So if we look at the trailer, we see a world well advanced - futuristic mega-city, exo-suits, flying cars, advanced weaponry, titanium skin weave, the works.

 

[Sardukhar]

Firestorm books are 2020 canon, though. That's Rache planting all this stuff. You see the first waves of the cyberviruses go out.

I seriously doubt we'll see anything as unlikely as the paper-eating virus from V3, that's pretty far out there and was really only needed for V3, and they've said V3 is not in the game.

Your definition of what is and what isn't V3 may vary from Mike's and CDPRs of course. I'd say anything that showed up in the V3 book is unlikely to bee seen much in 2077, but Firestorm books and the Collapse that followed are in there. Mostly as devices to let them bring the tech into modern times, with cell phones and the like.

Again, I'm sure we'll have a Net of some kind. Regardless of the interview bit Maelcum posted, they've also talked about how important it is to make this feel like Cyberpunk 2020. And the Net, and Netrunners, are a big part of that feel.

Hey, Wisdom, you'll appreciate this: why the Firestorm books failed for me, nicely summed up:

"In the course of the adventure setting, the characters are hired to hunt down a pesky netrunner who is making their anonymous employer unhappy. Little do they realize that the hacker is the infamous (and already "dead") Rache Bartmoss. Regardless of what they do, their employer pinpoints the apartment with an orbital mass-driver and vaporizes it. "

I understand why they might want to do that and I sympathize, but as a Ref and a player, that just gets my hackles up. Takes away the whole reason I roleplay in the first place.

 

[Decatonkeil]

Yea, the idea that cybernetics exist, but the net does not is ridiculous.

Not just the net, but I really do not like the idea that technology will be less advanced than 2020. It should at least be the same level or even slightly more. The biggest problem I had with deus ex:HR was that it really did not feel futuristic. Oh sure, your character had cybergear, but remove him and it might as well be modern times. I want the world to scream that it is the future.

Another thing that stuck out in Deus Ex:HR was the lack of other cybernetic people. I mean, this is available technology, but where were the others? The only ones you saw was plot element people. The gear might not be on everyone, but enough random NPC's should be using advanced tech, an exotic, cybernetic...etc. and common enough that your character should not bat an eye.

Wait, there was no shortage of people with cybernetics in DE:HR, and that can also be seen as a problem in most cyberpunk media, which CP2020 dodges with the idea of cyberware being a fashion statement: otherwise it seems that everyone is a "carpenter with a bad aim".

That and cyberpunk, as a genre, being better at reflecting current problems than future ones, although it's really cool when they foresee future ones, which they often do.

Yeah, I don't see CP2077 not having the net, and your solution of a wireframe version of the real world sounds good enough. Still, I just think that the net is just not something that just about anyone has access to: it's not as much as GITS:SAC's net which is pretty much an Internet where everyone can dive into (although not everyone is as skilled at it) but more of a Neuromancer's Matrix which only experts "can" explore. Maybe a good way to make the Netrunner figure that much more mythical. I imagine it this way: instead of every user neurally interfacing with it and diving into the net, they use computers connected to the net in a simmilar fashion to how we do it, and maybe it's even less pervasive than in our times, but then there's these experts, the Netrunners who "get into it".

 

[wisdom000]

I understand why they might want to do that and I sympathize, but as a Ref and a player, that just gets my hackles up. Takes away the whole reason I roleplay in the first place.

Yeah, I can't disagree with you at all one that note.... if you tell me nothign I do in the game matters, then what the hell am I playing the game for?

It's why I ended up hating the last Bioshock game.

 

[vtmb]

Yeah, I can't disagree with you at all one that note.... if you tell me nothign I do in the game matters, then what the hell am I playing the game for?

It's why I ended up hating the last Bioshock game.

Heh that's why it's one of the most important games in recent memory along things like the stanley parable or side quest. It's proper meta, treating the character and player roles the same. Bioshock games are shit shooters, but they offer a chance to redeem the character whose helped by the player so that both get deceived in the end according to designer direction. That way a player should get to know better what kind of medium a game is and get a different look of choice stuff and story structure.

 

[wisdom000]

Heh that's why it's one of the most important games in recent memory along things like the stanley parable or side quest. It's proper meta, treating the character and player roles the same. Bioshock games are shit shooters, but they offer a chance to redeem the character whose helped by the player so that both get deceived in the end according to designer direction. That way a player should get to know better what kind of medium a game is and get a different look of choice stuff and story structure.

Nah, it was just shit.... I wasted my time playing it, glad I didn't pay for it.

 

[Sardukhar]

Nah, it was just shit.... I wasted my time playing it, glad I didn't pay for it.

I didn't think it was shit, but it was bloody frustrating how they did that. Since you didn't really change the story with your choice and nothing you did as a player made any real difference - it turned out to be a well-written beautifully set shooter. Which was fine.

But it's hardly an important game. A shooter with a twist ending just isn't important. I've read that story in other medium before, it's an old sci-fi theme, and you've probably seen variations on TV and in movies.

Without choice, you're simply playing out the role, and not your role, but the designers.

Maybe if they hadn't had to cut so much from it to make launch. Ken Levine is closing Irrational down - he wasn't satisified with B:I either it turned out.

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

At least we know that CDPR would not do that to us.

Anyway, as far as the net is concerned I think that 'localised' nets that encompass either cities or sections of them would both make sense with the post firestorm canon and solve the issue of players not being able to access data outside the 'physical' gameworld.

I really, REALLY hope they ditch lasers. I hate energy weapons.

I would like to see AVs as a luxury/premium transport option while standard automobiles would be the norm.

No insta-healing. I want 2077 to be as lethal as 2020 was. Keep healing in the 'days' region and I am happy. Maybe a similar process to 'Wanted' but with nanites.

 

[wisdom000]

I didn't think it was shit, but it was bloody frustrating how they did that. Since you didn't really change the story with your choice and nothing you did as a player made any real difference - it turned out to be a well-written beautifully set shooter. Which was fine.

But it's hardly an important game. A shooter with a twist ending just isn't important. I've read that story in other medium before, it's an old sci-fi theme, and you've probably seen variations on TV and in movies.

Without choice, you're simply playing out the role, and not your role, but the designers.

Maybe if they hadn't had to cut so much from it to make launch. Ken Levine is closing Irrational down - he wasn't satisified with B:I either it turned out.

The premise of a multi-dimensional game rocks,the execution of it was just balls. It should have started somewhere familiar, grounded in reality, then Branched out into the fucksauce souffle it became... Instead right off the bat you are on a floating island, and all sorts of wierdness is going on. Then you get glimpses of modern new york, and sogns from the 70's and 80's, and then it's atlantis.... and none of it, not a single thing you did mattered in the game. It might as well have been a book, or a cartoon or something, because honestly I would have rather just sat back and enjoyed the story if thats all there was to it anyway.

This is why games need to be about more than just story. Why freedom matters. Why choice matters. If all you are doing is telling a story, then not only are there better mediums for that, but you are missing out on why video games are distinctly different from movies or books.

 

[wisdom000]

At least we know that CDPR would not do that to us.

Anyway, as far as the net is concerned I think that 'localised' nets that encompass either cities or sections of them would both make sense with the post firestorm canon and solve the issue of players not being able to access data outside the 'physical' gameworld.

Or you know, just not mention the grander world of the net as being outside Night City...

I mean GTA 4 and 5 had the internet, yeah it was kinda lame in that it didn't offer much, but the Net in Cyberpunk doesn't have to offer much outside itself either. As a secondary open world, even if it just encompasses the city, then no one will notice or care if they can't escape the city unless someone points that out to them.

I really, REALLY hope they ditch lasers. I hate energy weapons.

Amen, amen amen, hallefuckinglujah amen... yes they exist in the pnp game, as ridiculously expensive, inneficient, and underpowered piles of crap. Only really useful in space. No energy weapons, no freeze rays, no fucking stupid silly weapons...

I would like to see AVs as a luxury/premium transport option while standard automobiles would be the norm.

No insta-healing. I want 2077 to be as lethal as 2020 was. Keep healing in the 'days' region and I am happy. Maybe a similar process to 'Wanted' but with nanites.

All those a-m,ens above, yeah insert em here too. And I want damage to have consequences... if I am hit in the leg my character should limp, hit in the right arm my character should have trouble aiming... hit in the head, everything is blurry an sounds wierd.... If shit gets blown off, like a hand or a foot, it shouldn't just be instant deqath either, I should have to crawl to safety, get to a hospital or back alley clinic and cyber prosthetic replacement...

 

[crrpt_dntt]

The more I think about it the more curious I get about the backround story the guys and girls at CDPR's CP2077-team are making up right now. I'm talking about the more ore less immediate precedent history of Night City which left it sort of low tech to what players might expect from a 2077 setting. I bet all those NPCs in the city are gonna talk about it, will be directly or indirectly affected etc.

I know that they are trying to sort of make things like tech-level and such similar to what they were some time in the CP2020 books but they can't just create recurring events with similar outcomes and everything's fine now can they?

 

[chriswebb2020.736]

I mean GTA 4 and 5 had the internet, yeah it was kinda lame in that it didn't offer much,

This says it all for me. It would be lame if 2077 had a 'full net' but I couldn't hack bank accounts of random people in a dozen countries. The isolated net makes sense and it would achieve the same goal.

I'm talking about the more ore less immediate precedent history of Night City which left it sort of low tech to what players might expect from a 2077 setting. I bet all those NPCs in the city are gonna talk about it, will be directly or indirectly affected etc.

Why? When was the last time you talked about events from the 60's, 70's or 80's? How often have you talked about them?

I honestly doubt that the events would be mentioned much, except maybe in passing. I would expect to find out much more in 'historical references'.
That or an awesome prologue narated by Max Mike.

 

[crrpt_dntt]

Why? When was the last time you talked about events from the 60's, 70's or 80's? How often have you talked about them?

Well the 60s thats some 50 years ago. That would mean that the events from which Night City, more concretely the net-structure and other types of higher electronics systems in 2077 couldn't be managed to be reversed though the big catastrophe took place in the 2020s (not even by it's alive and kicking massive corporations) .
Even if it where something that happened some 30 years ago I would expect some broad improvement unless humanity lost all satellites and also the capability of sending them into space.

I actually expect the big bang to have happened some 10 or 15 years ago. Enough time to rebuild city structures and more of the absolutely necessary stuff - possibly some of the higher tech structures for those in power - but maybe not quite enough time to make higher tech available again to all those with lesser or little power.

So if it's not that long ago I would expect those who had access to higher tech and other older privileges to reminisce about them, or even curse those developments depending on their nature.

 

[Sardukhar]

60s influences us powerfully today. Feel free to reference that statement to see just how many policies and policy makers are still with us, legal precedents, cultural vents, you name it. Even the 40s and 50s. The argument can and has been made that we're still struggling to climb our way back into a post-War economy and culture and it's screwing us. As well as everyone else.

If you are 10-20 now, you will be a policy maker 30-50 years from now. The people who were kids in 2020 and young people, run the world in 2077 and will run it for awhile, given life-extension tech.

Their memories of the era after the 4th Corp War, (stop spitting, Wisdom! It's undignified!), will greatly determine the politics and socio-economic structures of 2077. They will have been building the tech for the last 30 years and now decide the budgets for that tech, the direction for research, all those bennies from being in power.

Morgan Blackhand, Alt, Rache Bartmoss, Thompson and Johnny Silverhand are to 2077 what John Lennon, Allen Ginsberg, Hunter S. Thompson, Richard Nixon and Richard Feynman are to us now. They laid the cultural tracks that even today we trot along or jolt ourselves out of, willingly, knowingly or not.