NPC's with binary reactions worked ok in TW3 because Geralt was a fixed character and the meat of the game was him adventuring by himself, minding his own business and getting shit done. Using the same limited AI in a future megalopolis...just doesn't cut it. NPCs don't react properly to general threats or actions from V. After shootouts, I'll find the same NPC crouching in a corner ten minutes later, frozen in place. Or they'll do it right in the middle of a shoot out. Or they might stand there as the bullets whiz by. They often don't look at V when talking to him. They have the same canned animations and fixed dialog. It seems about 40% of the NPCs are bugged so their mouth doesn't move when they talk. Vehicle AI is similarly limited. This is aside from the bugs that plague enemy AI, where they stand frozen in place till you shoot them or they're blind in their peripheral vision, making stealth a breeze. They're often really slow to pull out their guns and start shooting even after the threat icon is red. Compare this to the Assassin's Creed games, GTA, Sleeping Dogs, Red Dead 2 - any modern open world game, and it's clear that an important element in Cyberpunk is missing. And it's dampening the experience far more than I expected.
I know this stuff isn't part of the core gameplay loop, but after playing about 30 hours, it's painfully apparent how lifeless Night City is out of scripted quests. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they can improve on this aspect without some kind of major overhaul that'd disrupt many other systems. I really hope I'm wrong.
I know this stuff isn't part of the core gameplay loop, but after playing about 30 hours, it's painfully apparent how lifeless Night City is out of scripted quests. Unfortunately, I'm not sure they can improve on this aspect without some kind of major overhaul that'd disrupt many other systems. I really hope I'm wrong.
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