Terrible pacing

[DarkTl]

When I started playing corpo, I expected to work for corporation at least for a few (ingame) days. So that when they kick me out, it will feel like a major change in V's life.
Nope, it's literally 5-10 minutes, depending on how much you loot locations.

Same can be said about Jackie. Corpo V knows him for a long time, which means player will not experience meeting him for the first time. Instead player is forced to accept him as the best friend from second 1.
And the following time skip (where V and Jackie spend time together) does not help either. Time skip makes V and Jackie closer, but it does not make Jackie closer to the player.

All this very much reminded me about main character's brother/sister in intro of Dragon Age 2, where we are supposed to care about the death of a character we never seen before.

I dunno about other paths. But the corpo intro is very rushed. Very very rushed.

 

[Guest 4375874]

When I started playing copro, I expected to work for corporation at least for a few (ingame) days. So that when they kick me out, it will feel like a major change in V's life.
Nope, it's literally 5-10 minutes, depending on how much you loot locations.

Same can be said about Jackie. Corpo V knows him for a long time, which means player will not experience meeting him for the first time. Instead player is forced to accept him as the best friend from second 1.
And the following time skip (where V and Jackie spend time together) does not help either. Time skip makes V and Jackie closer, but it does not make Jackie closer to the player.

All this very much reminded me about main character's brother/sister in intro of Dragon Age 2, where we are supposed to care about death of character we never seen before.

I dunno about other paths. But the corpo intro is very rushed. Very very rushed.

completely disagree. As someone who skipped the first Witcher game for example and played 3 before 2, we were introduced to several characters that the main character (Geralt) already knew, Vesemir...Yennefer, Dandelion etc. It didn't stop the game from being enjoyable. I see no difference in this game so far. I haven't rushed the main story, I'm playing Corpo as well and I've been playing since launch but I do other missions and Jackie is still around and the friendship feels organic. I suppose you could play another life path if you want to meet Jackie for first time. No complaints here

 

[ShalmanezerIII]

He is right. I felt the same way. They should have done at least ONE small quest at the beginning inside the corp or to just follow the tasks that nasty boss gave V , at least a little bit. But you just get a quest from the BOSS and then - BOOM, some guy come to the bar after 5 mins and you no longer are a corpo and then you regret losing control over your life, and that is it, period, finito... This was very strange to me, too !! So, DarkTI - Im with you

 

[RobberCat]

Same here with the Nomad lifepath.
I was expecting to actually feel what being a Nomad felt like, being part of a tribe/family, anticipating the moment I'd be stepping into Night City for the very first time...

Spoiler: Mild Spoiler

But nothing like this happened.
You literally spend 2 minutes in the Badlands before crossing the border and find yourself in Night City.

And yes, on top of that, you don't even build any relationship with Jackie: I would have expected something as seen in games such as Mafia, where you work your way up through the ranks and kind of build (scripted) relationships with your companions. That's what made the "plot twists" shocking, in that game. But in Cyberpunk? No, the whole "emotional momentum" is supposed to be triggered by a 1 minute cutscene meant to shove feelings for Jackie into us.
Well, it didn't work in my case (and I'm "glad" i'm not the only one).

 

[DarkTl]

completely disagree. As someone who skipped the first Witcher game for example and played 3 before 2, we were introduced to several characters that the main character (Geralt) already knew, Vesemir...Yennefer, Dandelion etc.

The thing is, I knew them too, as a player. Because of reading books.

 

[Guest 4406876]

Anything that isn't Street Kid is rushed and brought up to pace without a reason to get another lifepath meaningfull unless you keep playing 100 hours more for maybe a 20 sec difference scripted down the line. Putting 3 lifepaths is useless, In the end they become all street kids and this comes from a pnp player.

 

[G30M1]

When I started playing corpo, I expected to work for corporation at least for a few (ingame) days. So that when they kick me out, it will feel like a major change in V's life.
Nope, it's literally 5-10 minutes, depending on how much you loot locations.

Same can be said about Jackie. Corpo V knows him for a long time, which means player will not experience meeting him for the first time. Instead player is forced to accept him as the best friend from second 1.
And the following time skip (where V and Jackie spend time together) does not help either. Time skip makes V and Jackie closer, but it does not make Jackie closer to the player.

All this very much reminded me about main character's brother/sister in intro of Dragon Age 2, where we are supposed to care about the death of a character we never seen before.

I dunno about other paths. But the corpo intro is very rushed. Very very rushed.

I watched people play the street kid version and it has the same time skip. It's awful, in my opinion. I don't see how you're supposed to have any kind of connection with the characters in the time skip when you see them for two seconds. Suddenly Jackie and V are best friend and it's just like.... kay. If you say so I guess. Considering that we know Jackie can die, I don't see how I would care. I've only watched up to the vr tutorial so far, but like... they gotta do a lot of work at this point to get me to care about Jackie before he dies.

 

[--Kory--]

I play the streetkid path, and it feels very natural to me. I didn't really like the time skip with Jackie, and some of the other rushed spots. Don't get me wrong though, the entire experience was intense, it has good slow moments for in depth story, and action packed gameplay and scenes.

But please, don't skip time with characters like Jackie. I was still upset about his death, because honestly who else does V have? lol I would like to party with, fight gangs, pull heists or fight crime with a genuine friend that you actually spend time with!

 

[Nikola_Nesic]

As someone who skipped the first Witcher game for example and played 3 before 2, we were introduced to several characters that the main character (Geralt) already knew, Vesemir...Yennefer, Dandelion etc. It didn't stop the game from being enjoyable. I see no difference in this game so far.

Well, you skip game order, so that's why you know several characters Geralt already know.
You need to play game in order, play game in order 1 2 3 and you meet a lot of people who are in TW3, and you get to know them and see why Geralt like them and think of them as friends.

 

[moonknightgog]

Agreed. Life patch should've been longer, slower paced. Making you try and feel the different lifestyles (working for corporations vs facing the wasteland as nomad vs trying to survive in the city streets) before making V change life.

An immense opportunity wasted. So disappointing.

 

[Spidermonk]

The more I think about it the more I really hate the montage. It was one of the worst design choices they could have made for trying to establish V and relationships to them. I started with Street background so that's where my angle is here.

In this type of game the player and V are one in the same. If you want to create a bond between Jackie and V you MUST allow the player to organically establish that relationship. This cannot be created through a series of clips showcasing what transpired between the two characters. ESPECIALLY WHEN THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE AN RPG WHERE WE HAVE CHOICES ON HOW V ACTS. When I was sitting there watching it I was thinking to myself, "Gee, why can't I play THAT game? It looks like some cool missions."

Losing control of decisions after it's been established that we're in control of the character feels bad. Not only that but it completely glosses over any character development in a mock trailer that's more fitting in an episode of Night City Wire.

The end result of this awful design choice is a disregard for characters who V is close to.

Spoiler

Specifically it makes it un-impactful when Jackie dies as there hasn't been any time to connect with the character.

Montages shouldn't be in an RPG. We're supposed to live those out real time...and then make crummy YouTube videos with a montage of our exploits.

 

[tavellone]

Yeah I agree, a bunch of characters get offed at the beginning of the game and I'm supposed to give a shit about them when I've known them for all of an hour and a meaningless montage? I am not far into the game and I am interested enough in the story to keep playing it and I hope the rest of the game holds up well, but a lot of the intro felt like I was forced to give a shit about a lot of things and characters that I really didn't give a shit about because I know nothing about them, even though the character of V has already decided for me that he knows all of these characters real well. Terrible pacing indeed.

 

[RobberCat]

In the end they become all street kids and this comes from a pnp player.

That's very true. In the end I'd prolly have preferred a built-in preset of skills meant to give a distinctive flavor to the Lifepath of choice (thus leading to a very specific gameplay). Remember Vampires The Masquerade and its clans? That. A Tremere mostly relied on magic, as much as a Toreador mostly relied on Charisma/Dialogues. But no, In Cyberpunk 2077 you can be a former Corpo who acts, walks and talks like an ordinary petty thief...And while I do understand their will to give players "freedom", I think it breaks the game from an RPG standpoint.

 

[ShalmanezerIII]

That's very true. In the end I'd prolly have preferred a built-in preset of skills meant to give a distinctive flavor to the Lifepath of choice (thus leading to a very specific gameplay). Remember Vampires The Masquerade and its clans? That. A Tremere mostly relied on magic, as much as a Toreador mostly relied on Charisma/Dialogues. But no, In Cyberpunk 2077 you can be a former Corpo who acts, walks and talks like an ordinary petty thief...And while I do understand their will to give players "freedom", I think it breaks the game from an RPG standpoint.

yes, well, there was something in the game for me with another corpo / no spoilers from me here / but it is short, unimportant and sucks because all the time you do act like a merc and thief ... you do not seem to be a corpo mentally after you get kicked out... I mean it is only natural- if V had a life for years , even after it is in fact over , then he should keep some psychological aspects in his new style, but I felt this did not happen

 

[moonknightgog]

So it appears that if you choose Nomad and Corpo, you meet

Spoiler

Padre

later in a quest for the first time....despite the fact that V is shown working for him in the time skip montage. Which makes it pretty clear the montage was content from the Street Kid life path, slapped onto all of three origins.

This is absolutely horrible, and I very much doubt a patch can fix it.

 

[Guest 4211861]

All the above posts and my own experience lead me to the conclusion:
The game was not ready for release.

Also, there should be a story-fixing patch at some point, to fix all the things that don't make sense and to fix the awfully short prologues and the lack of real familiarity with Jackie.

8 years of work and the early part of the story is tacked-on... what can I possibly say about that...

Great systems in the game, city, great graphics, cars, weapons, but CDPR by itself does not do story well, it needs a Sapkowski to help them.

 

[Silariell]

All the above posts and my own experience lead me to the conclusion:
The game was not ready for release.

I think it's tougher than that.

Speculation: the game was in development hell for a long time and it feels like the project was rebooted from being a 'gta about night city', to being 'a game about Keanu Reeves as Silverhand in the player's head', with not enough time and frankly management not knowing how they want to change what they had into what they want. So we got what we got.

I would love it if they released a 'story patch' and ironed things out to make more sense and also not be quite so rushed at the beginning; Though I am not sure how realistic it would be to expect this.

 

[Guest 4406876]

All the above posts and my own experience lead me to the conclusion:
The game was not ready for release.

Also, there should be a story-fixing patch at some point, to fix all the things that don't make sense and to fix the awfully short prologues and the lack of real familiarity with Jackie.

8 years of work and the early part of the story is tacked-on... what can I possibly say about that...

Great systems in the game, city, great graphics, cars, weapons, but CDPR by itself does not do story well, it needs a Sapkowski to help them.

I think they might need an exorcist.






yes it was a joke cmon let me say one

 

[Guest 4211861]

I think they might need an exorcist.






yes it was a joke cmon let me say one

I don't think there is a solution for this game's story, other than pretending it does not have one, the only way to enjoy this game.

 

[Porcelyn]

I feel you don't get nearly enough time with Jackie. He is only with you for story missions and it's over so fast I didn't feel anything when the inevitable happens.