The structure of the main quest is awful and it's not suited for an RPG

[moonknightgog]

• Most dialogues (98%) have no impact on the story whatsoever. The vast majority of dialogue only changes the next line of dialogue and that’s it.
• Only a very small subset of dialogues (around 2% of all dialogues) actually have any impact whatsoever. These are the choices pointed out in this guide.
• You will always end up on the same linear story path with the same objectives and missions no matter what. Even if you go for the choices in this guide or not won’t change what missions you get. The game is much more linear than it seems.
• What Endings you get is entirely decided by one set of Dialogues during the final mission. Anything you do (or don’t do) during the story leading up to the ending is completely inconsequential. There are no “wrong” choices.

Cyberpunk 2077 Story Choices Guide

A guide for all Cyberpunk 2077 Story Choices. This shows all alternate outcomes, mission paths, mission endings and important dialogues.

www.powerpyx.com

No branching quests except the one showed in the 2018 trailer, dialogue choices are meaningless, lifepaths might as well not exist at all, no choices and consequences. It's an awful main quest, and it's not how a role playing game is supposed to be designed. You can write the most amazing story ever, but it's not good enough in this genre if it's not reactive to the player's choices.
Why bother with dialogue choices and lifepaths if they make no difference?

No patch can save this, it would require an extensive rewrite of all the main quest. This is awful and hearthbreaking.

 

[AKANexus]

How many times did they write "No important choices. Nothing you do here changes the outcome of this mission or of future mission."?

 

[moonknightgog]

How many times did they write "No important choices. Nothing you do here changes the outcome of this mission or of future mission."?

Too many. It has the same level of C&C as GTA...an action/adventure. Maybe the twitter page was right, they wanted to make an action/adventure after all.

What a mess.

 

[MrCalaius]

It's not an RPG. It's "an open-world, action-adventure game".

Which is not a good thing, mind you. But here we are.

 

[feckyer1ife]

The main quest is more suited for a game like Mass Effect or Last of Us. Not an open world game. They could fix it by taking out all reference about only having a couple weeks to live and have Vik say you got about a year or so, that would be more fitting to this game. But the way its structured now ruins the game for me and any replay ability.

 

[Silariell]

It pains me to say this but...

Assassins Creed is a better RPG than CP77.

How did this happen?

 

[RaynStargaze]

No branching quests except the one showed in the 2018 trailer, dialogue choices are meaningless, lifepaths might as well not exist at all, no choices and consequences. It's an awful main quest, and it's not how a role playing game is supposed to be designed. You can write the most amazing story ever, but it's not good enough in this genre if it's not reactive to the player's choices.
Why bother with dialogue choices and lifepaths if they make no difference?

No patch can save this, it would require an extensive rewrite of all the main quest. This is awful and hearthbreaking.

I feel like the fact that they legit just showed the maelstrom/stout quest - and thats the only one where player choices have consequences truly makes it acting in bad faith and intentional deception.

Its even worse that the game acts as if choice matters. Like when they tell you that the pills actually do something.
The article really shows well how meaningless everything in the game is.

 

[moonknightgog]

I feel like the fact that they legit just showed the maelstrom/stout quest - and thats the only one where player choices have consequences truly makes it acting in bad faith and intentional deception.

Its even worse that the game acts as if choice matters. Like when they tell you that the pills actually do something.
The article really shows well how meaningless everything in the game is.

I think the 2018 demo was just a prototype, a vertical slice that was supposed to be replicated on a larger scale. They clealry didn't manage do it.

And yeah, every choices are just illusions. You don't even have the choice of choosing what are V's goals. Don't matter if Street Kid, Corpo or Nomad, he/she wants to make it to the "Major League". Because the writers say so

 

[Vejsa]

Nothing matters in this game. Everything you do, useless. Everything you WANT to do? Cut content.

 

[cypajek]

you know sideqest impact main story

 

[Vejsa]

you know sideqest impact main story

Barely. The main story ends the same way no matter which ending you get, in essence. The choices are artificial and only serve to dish up a different variation of heartbreak.

 

[moonknightgog]

you know sideqest impact main story

They don't. They only impact the endings. And not in a meaningful way.

 

[Silariell]

you know sideqest impact main story

In a minor way.

You could say you choice to visit a store and buy food impacts the story because it lets you regenerate health and finish the level 0.05% faster.

The link in the OP shows that most of even the main quests don't impact the story.

There's precisely 2 side quest chains that impact the main story in a major way, the rest do not.

 

[MeinChurro]

you know sideqest impact main story

"You can choose to die this way instead!"

 

[replayNinja]

Another day another senseless post. No offense. The choices so far in my experience are no different from the witcher 3. They affect the outcome of the characters involved and change future interactions and missions but the main story is the main story. the very first mission demonstrates this if you end up killing Royce early on for example and on and on. These posts seem little more than an echo chamber to parrot things with very little validity. The legitimate bugs, while I have experienced none, I hope are addressed but thank goodness the majority are too busy enjoying the game because the rest are just toxic AF.

 

[MeinChurro]

Another day another senseless post. No offense. The choices so far in my experience are no different from the witcher 3. They affect the outcome of the characters involved and change future interactions and missions but the main story is the main story. the very first mission demonstrates this if you end up killing Royce early on for example and on and on. These posts seem little more than an echo chamber to parrot things with very little validity. The legitimate bugs, while I have experienced none, I hope are addressed but thank goodness the majority are too busy enjoying the game because the rest are just toxic AF.

No. People with this kind of thinking are toxic. Rather, than discuss the flaws they'd rather "enjoy" whatever is given to them. That's the real echochamber.

You can settle for mediocrity, I (we) won't.

 

[crspears]

you know sideqest impact main story

most of the sidequests are broke anyways, and I don't there are any impactful outcomes. In losing my religion, I used a non lethal weapon, the monk still called me evil for killing people. I thought it was scripted as johnny comes out and shit talks him, but apparently it was supposed to work, and those who did non lethal takedowns still got called evil.

Also guys, remember this? https://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2018/06/21/no-the-witcher-3s-ciri-wont-be-appearing-in-cyberpunk-2077/

What happened to the Night City that was so serious and narrative so carefully tuned, that Ciri couldn't make a cameo in a sidequest, or an easter egg? Ciri literally references Night City in The Witcher 3 Main Story dialogue. The deep and engaging RPG and Night City with a mastercrafted narrative and worldbuilding is NOWHERE to be seen in CP2077

 

[thewarsend]

I think the 2018 demo was just a prototype, a vertical slice that was supposed to be replicated on a larger scale. They clearly didn't manage do it.

And yeah, every choices are just illusions. You don't even have the choice of choosing what are V's goals. Don't matter if Street Kid, Corpo or Nomad, he/she wants to make it to the "Major League". Because the writers say so.

I was pretty much thinking this. 2018 demo was just a prototype and they couldn't replicate it on a large scale.

If you look carefully at the final product, all the signs are there. Lots of cut features from the demo and a lot of one off features like hackable doors, destroyable walls and whatnot. That first mission is the only time you can hack a door, as far as I can tell there are no other examples of it. All other doors in the game are either unlocked, unlockable by brute force or tech knowledge, or locked permanently instead. Pretty inconsistent I'd say. Also, I can't seem to find any other example of destroyable walls anywhere else in the game.

As for cut content, you were able to choose your backstory in the 2018 demo:

Which would have been great if it was combined with the "Lifepath" we got in the final game. It would have only added/changed a few lines of dialogue, but those would matter for roleplaying purposes if nothing else.

I could give a lot of examples and these are only the stuff we know about. Game was over simplified roleplaying wise.

 

[moonknightgog]

the very first mission demonstrates this if you end up killing Royce early on for example and on and on

That is the only mission that is reactive to player choices.

 

[RaynStargaze]

Another day another senseless post. No offense. The choices so far in my experience are no different from the witcher 3. They affect the outcome of the characters involved and change future interactions and missions but the main story is the main story. the very first mission demonstrates this if you end up killing Royce early on for example and on and on. These posts seem little more than an echo chamber to parrot things with very little validity. The legitimate bugs, while I have experienced none, I hope are addressed but thank goodness the majority are too busy enjoying the game because the rest are just toxic AF.

Off the top off my head and these are just some of the largest ones:

Bloody baron:
wife lives he goes away to treat her
wife dies he goes nuts
kids live/die

Temeria:
Roche, Gwent card and Short haired girl die, North fights off NG, Djikstra rules with his whole monolgue attitude
Dijkstra dies, North gets annexed and is slowly assimilated into NG
Radovid stays king and everything is awful
You can see some of these changes in the game world with the nonhumans being burned / not burned while the game is still going.

Skellige:
Cerys/Dude become rulers, way different questlines for each - literally completely different

Ciri:
based on how "greedy" geralt behaves Ciri princess / Ciri witcher
Worst case: Ciri dead + world dead

Kaer Morhen defence:
Who shows up depends completely on previous choices!
Only 1 choice leads to sourceress in Velen help and stay alive -> hooks up with lambert as well
Djikstra: only helps if you recover his treasure
Roche: only helps if you save short hair girl

There are so many more even in the smaller questlines
A random dialogue choice in Kaer morhen where you talk "trash" at Yennefer has her teleporting you into a lake because shes mad.

Or when you use triss as bait and you hear her scream - the onyl way to get dijkstras treasure is to follow a very specific path and NOT use axii.

There are sooo many of these.

Comparing the "story reactivity" in witcher 3 to this game is beyond absurd.