If you read threads on this forum, you will notice that many players think they know what the main problem of the game is. And if you add together the most common complaints and suggestions, it turns out that everything about the game is bad and there is a need to redo it completely. But I'm not getting at the idea that we have different preferences and criteria for evaluating experience. It seems to me that I groped for what really matters, and in the best traditions of this forum, I myself want to now speak out about what is the main and the most important problem of the game, the problem of all problems.
Cyberpunk 2077 does not seem to have a clear center, a core. Can we say that this is a cinematically presented story? Yes, but only if you completed solely the main quests on easy difficulty. Is Cyberpunk a looter shooter? Of course, however, the game, in this case, looks like a mediocre looter shooter. Is cyberpunk 2077 an immersive sim? More likely it isn’t, because you cannot flush the toilet. Is there enough stealth action in the game to say that it belongs to this genre? Yes, but the game is constantly moving beyond stealth action and becoming a simple shooter. Is a Cyberpunk after all a good shooter? Well, it is generally not (although entertaining at first): there is too bad balance of difficulty and weapons, very mediocre AI. I won't even touch on the RPG topic...
Horizon Zero Dawn is an example of a game in which not everything works well either, but a clearly presented core allows the shortcomings not to have such a strong impact on the overall impression. The game has plenty of weaknesses: a banal plot (although the lore is very good) and implausible characters; the whole world revolves around the player; there are a lot of marks on the map, but there is nothing to explore; a lot of unrealized mechanics (infection zones – why are they in the game?); bad combat with human opponents; stupid ideological propaganda... Nevertheless, the game has a heart: the hunt for robotic dinosaurs in the setting of a beautiful post-apocalyptic world with tribes that do not understand the technology of their ancestors. This core saves the day because it's just fucking awesome!
It is obvious that Cyberpunk 2077 still has its own core, but it seems to me that CDPR somehow forgot about it when they began to assemble the game piece by piece in a hurry. Cyberpunk 2077 is a very deep in ideas and philosophy and an unprecedentedly well-presented story set in an incredibly detailed scenery of a dark future city. Cyberpunk 2077 is breathtaking quests plus a dialogue with NPCs, in which you catch every word. This is the atmosphere of the metropolis of the future, where no one gives a shit about you, however, you still want to prove to this city that you are worth its attention. And most importantly, Cyberpunk 2077 is a lie that must be believed for a while, and not a real-life simulator.
This game does not need real variability of walkthroughs and dialogues, because the price of its creation is lowering the quality of each story branch. You also don't need a real RPG component, as in a board game or as in Skyrim, for example, because it is impossible to make a mission good and equally suitable for both a machine gun and a katana, both for stealth and for open combat (all games that tried – failed). You don't need a real simulation of crowd behavior and the daily routine of individual NPCs, because in normal situations there is nothing to do in such a city. Otherwise, why are you sitting here and reading this text – go talk to passers-by on the street, it's so interesting!
Most of what the marketing department promised us and what many of you are missing have nothing to do with the most important thing in this game. If you want to turn Cyberpunk 2077 into a mixture of GTA, Deus Ex, Skyrim and SimCity, then you have come to the wrong developer. Everything that CDPR can do really well is either already in this game or will soon appear (if there are DLCs, of course).
The main problem with Cyberpunk 2077 is that there are too many unnecessary things in this game. For example, all these mediocre and non-working player progression systems only distract from the strong points of the game, drain developers' time and energy, and create weaknesses out of the blue.
Why does the game need random loot? Why bind the stats of enemies to the player's level? What is craft for? What's the point in different gangs and random encounters in which you can kill 3-4 bandits just out of boredom? Why split the weapon leveling into several skill trees if it turns the gameplay into a dull repetition of one template? What for was the choice of appearance and why do we need all these clothes if there is no need to look at the character and there is no potential for roleplay in the game?
I can continue the list for a very long time, and I can go over each item very thoroughly, backing up my words with the theory of game design, psychology or UX, with links to a dozen conferences such as GDC, 4C, DevGAMM and others. I can provide a qualitative structural analysis of gaming systems. Hell, I even tried to do this at first! I was writing this post for several days, I have two drafts of 5-6 pages! That's how hooked I was by all the good and bad things in the game!
The game needs to focus on its strong points, on what CDPR does better than others! The history and philosophy behind it, characters and dialogues, worldbuilding and visual presentation, immersiveness of non-interactive locations. All other gaming systems must support all of this, and not compete with the core of the game for the player's attention. At the moment, the game is trying to create a simulation of life in Night City, but instead it should provide an experience of immersion in a fictional world, and this is not the same thing at all.
And something more. My position has nothing to do with the thesis “this project was too ambitious”. It doesn't matter if the game has the ability to use your penis_2 or not, whether the loot and prices in stores are well balanced – all this should be part of the whole and work together. Even if the developers managed to implement each idea separately, the game with this approach simply would not work.
However, we must admit the obvious: the promise of features meaningless for such a game sells the game better than the promise of a good and adult story in a beautiful believable world. And if you fix bugs and fix the balance, the game will be a solid middling among the mediocre open-world action games created according to the Ubisoft model, and this will be enough for those who need money and restoration of their reputation.
Cyberpunk 2077 does not seem to have a clear center, a core. Can we say that this is a cinematically presented story? Yes, but only if you completed solely the main quests on easy difficulty. Is Cyberpunk a looter shooter? Of course, however, the game, in this case, looks like a mediocre looter shooter. Is cyberpunk 2077 an immersive sim? More likely it isn’t, because you cannot flush the toilet. Is there enough stealth action in the game to say that it belongs to this genre? Yes, but the game is constantly moving beyond stealth action and becoming a simple shooter. Is a Cyberpunk after all a good shooter? Well, it is generally not (although entertaining at first): there is too bad balance of difficulty and weapons, very mediocre AI. I won't even touch on the RPG topic...
Horizon Zero Dawn is an example of a game in which not everything works well either, but a clearly presented core allows the shortcomings not to have such a strong impact on the overall impression. The game has plenty of weaknesses: a banal plot (although the lore is very good) and implausible characters; the whole world revolves around the player; there are a lot of marks on the map, but there is nothing to explore; a lot of unrealized mechanics (infection zones – why are they in the game?); bad combat with human opponents; stupid ideological propaganda... Nevertheless, the game has a heart: the hunt for robotic dinosaurs in the setting of a beautiful post-apocalyptic world with tribes that do not understand the technology of their ancestors. This core saves the day because it's just fucking awesome!
It is obvious that Cyberpunk 2077 still has its own core, but it seems to me that CDPR somehow forgot about it when they began to assemble the game piece by piece in a hurry. Cyberpunk 2077 is a very deep in ideas and philosophy and an unprecedentedly well-presented story set in an incredibly detailed scenery of a dark future city. Cyberpunk 2077 is breathtaking quests plus a dialogue with NPCs, in which you catch every word. This is the atmosphere of the metropolis of the future, where no one gives a shit about you, however, you still want to prove to this city that you are worth its attention. And most importantly, Cyberpunk 2077 is a lie that must be believed for a while, and not a real-life simulator.
This game does not need real variability of walkthroughs and dialogues, because the price of its creation is lowering the quality of each story branch. You also don't need a real RPG component, as in a board game or as in Skyrim, for example, because it is impossible to make a mission good and equally suitable for both a machine gun and a katana, both for stealth and for open combat (all games that tried – failed). You don't need a real simulation of crowd behavior and the daily routine of individual NPCs, because in normal situations there is nothing to do in such a city. Otherwise, why are you sitting here and reading this text – go talk to passers-by on the street, it's so interesting!
Most of what the marketing department promised us and what many of you are missing have nothing to do with the most important thing in this game. If you want to turn Cyberpunk 2077 into a mixture of GTA, Deus Ex, Skyrim and SimCity, then you have come to the wrong developer. Everything that CDPR can do really well is either already in this game or will soon appear (if there are DLCs, of course).
The main problem with Cyberpunk 2077 is that there are too many unnecessary things in this game. For example, all these mediocre and non-working player progression systems only distract from the strong points of the game, drain developers' time and energy, and create weaknesses out of the blue.
Why does the game need random loot? Why bind the stats of enemies to the player's level? What is craft for? What's the point in different gangs and random encounters in which you can kill 3-4 bandits just out of boredom? Why split the weapon leveling into several skill trees if it turns the gameplay into a dull repetition of one template? What for was the choice of appearance and why do we need all these clothes if there is no need to look at the character and there is no potential for roleplay in the game?
I can continue the list for a very long time, and I can go over each item very thoroughly, backing up my words with the theory of game design, psychology or UX, with links to a dozen conferences such as GDC, 4C, DevGAMM and others. I can provide a qualitative structural analysis of gaming systems. Hell, I even tried to do this at first! I was writing this post for several days, I have two drafts of 5-6 pages! That's how hooked I was by all the good and bad things in the game!
The game needs to focus on its strong points, on what CDPR does better than others! The history and philosophy behind it, characters and dialogues, worldbuilding and visual presentation, immersiveness of non-interactive locations. All other gaming systems must support all of this, and not compete with the core of the game for the player's attention. At the moment, the game is trying to create a simulation of life in Night City, but instead it should provide an experience of immersion in a fictional world, and this is not the same thing at all.
And something more. My position has nothing to do with the thesis “this project was too ambitious”. It doesn't matter if the game has the ability to use your penis_2 or not, whether the loot and prices in stores are well balanced – all this should be part of the whole and work together. Even if the developers managed to implement each idea separately, the game with this approach simply would not work.
However, we must admit the obvious: the promise of features meaningless for such a game sells the game better than the promise of a good and adult story in a beautiful believable world. And if you fix bugs and fix the balance, the game will be a solid middling among the mediocre open-world action games created according to the Ubisoft model, and this will be enough for those who need money and restoration of their reputation.
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