Have potential... but we need a declaration from CD about all this stufs.
Just keep in mind that they had intended to release this game earlier this year before the pandemic was a widely known thing. Look at the state the game is in currently after three delays and imagine what they had planned to drop near the beginning of this year.
Train infra is already there, I think they decided tosave it for DLC?
As for each NPC having a life of its own... no game has that... not even GTAV... I think its easy to do but most developers don't put in the effort... for example the city games like simcity etc also claim the same thing but when you look closely its all smokes and mirrors and a facade...
Explain how Watch Dogs Legion is a "copy/paste" game when their AI is light years beyond Cyberpunk 2077? Their NPC AI system is great. If I follow an NPC in that game, they go through an entire day schedule and are where their schedule says they will be and doing what they say they will be doing. If their schedule says they will be at a bar drinking at a certain time, there they are. If the schedule says they'll be mourning someone, there they are. The NPC AI in this game for the most part is on rails, and short ones at that.
Legion's AI goes beyond that as well. If you hurt one of them, they will remember it to the point of harassing the character that assaulted them or even another member of the team because of guilt by association. Furthermore, if you hurt an NPC in that game too much, they will not only hate you but the people they have relationships with will hate you as well and might even try to jump you on the street because you hurt their friend/family member. If you help an NPC, not only will they remember you helped them but their friends and family will as well.
Bottom line, Legion's NPC AI puts Cyberpunk's to shame and is hardly "copy/paste".
No, im my opinion they just push the date to release. We have all the 'base', but need some work in code (NPCs include). Well, its my especulation, nothing more.
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The base or core game its the same. Ubi works fine, i dont doubt about it.
To be fair and for all the bugs and faults with their games, Bethesda's NPCs are as close to having a life of their own as I've seen, but that comes at a massive hardware resource cost and brings its own problems. There were "Molyneux" levels of hyperbole spoken about the world building and features of this game by the developers, so to end up with what we have got is very, very disappointing.
For me they have another version of the game, not yet finished, but the one they really wanted. What they did, in my view, and I'm just speculating, is to anticipate the game due to certain pressures.
But watch out, I'm just speculating. I believe that they really have a lot to say and to give to us, customers.
CD can't win no matter what, delayed a few times everyone complained so they release the game and everyone complains how bad it is (not that bad on XBOX ONE X just saying) give them some slack they all worked from home the past 9 months because of covid, they will fix it.
It's the same in any business where you get directors higher up puting on preasure to get things done.
It's the same in any business where you get directors higher up puting on preasure to get things done.
Im pretty sure what happened is they were pressured into announcing a release date in the first place by shareholders/investors, which in the end limited how much they could do with the game. Because if you have money running on something you are going to want a clear deadline for when you are going to see profits, and the people who really care about the game are not the ones who are responsible for it financially or have to negotiate with the financiers.
Its the old issue with any creative work, the people who pay for it usually dont care about the art itself and without them the project would never get made.
I mean how could they? How could they say anything with a straight face? They knowingly released the game in its current state and charged us 60 bucks for it; how the fuck could they then come out and say "oh sorry guys, our bad the game is a complete fucking dumpster fire"?
For years you have patiently waited and watched in the shadows as we desperately begged for Cyberpunk 2077 to penetrate our corneas, making its way between the fleshy folds of our brains. The longing for your Brain Baby almost drove us insane. Then when Covid 19 hit, you saw an out and a chance to mind f**K us like a 1 dollar hooker on half-price night. In-person Punked isn't allowed, so Cyberpunked we were, and 2077 is the year we will actually get to play the game... Well played CDPR... Well played.... (PS just the "tip" still counts, and so can we please hurry and have the rest)
Sincerely, thanks for your hard work and effort you have put into this game. With the rate of change we have seen in technology, I know that keeping up and creating something to live up to the hype was no easy goal. I would have preferred you waited, but I'll try to enjoy being part of the process as the story unfolds (Literally and figuratively because my game keeps crashing, and I have no idea what happens with V)
Sincerely, thanks for your hard work and effort you have put into this game. With the rate of change we have seen in technology, I know that keeping up and creating something to live up to the hype was no easy goal. I would have preferred you waited, but I'll try to enjoy being part of the process as the story unfolds (Literally and figuratively because my game keeps crashing, and I have no idea what happens with V)
As someone mentioned already, Bethesda does a pretty good job at it.
What we likely speak about are "persistent NPCs". They come at a price - they are simply and relatively not possible in city simulations. GTA has the same issue, drive around a block and see bums littering a side street at night, drive around a bit, actually, just go around two corners and come back and they'll be gone or replaced by others. There's actually a "persistence mod" for at least GTA 5 that ups the radius but it takes a toll on the processing.
Given how Bethesda NPCs are set up with their own schedule and often house or point of origin, this is why you will always be ultimately limited to either:
a) seeing too many at once and / or
b) having a fixed amount of NPCs in the game itself
It's a (or the) cost of current technology limits I guess. In a nutshell you can either have a limited range of persistent and tracked NPCs and / or a huge amount that is generic and recycable, not persistent in the world. We'd likely have to wait for a few new generations of hardware and maybe additional limited AI (or high-grade algorithm) support in development or maybe as live game component before we can reach a level that is nearing reality in that sense. The ultimate "life sim" would be a game where you have a game world where a large part if not all of the NPCs you see are unique, living somewhere, doing things throughout the day, named (even if not shown on screen, meaning Guard XYZ is shown but the person actually has a name and address) and they eventually retreat to their dwelling aka homes. A simulated daily work schedule, if they have work, and maybe special activities - like unwinding somewhere occasionally. And every (or a crapload of) NPC would be tracked at once.
So far, this can at best only be mimicked to various but limited degree or be covered online by players who do this job. Think of RP games or setups with sandbox elements or sandbox building elements, to be precise, so you can literally carve out your home. Even then it's often not thousands. Or maybe, but not at a time in a given place (unless "Dual Universe" or similar future games of that design type become successful).
But those would be players, still, not NPCs.
So we remain here, waiting and pondering when (or if) we reach this level of technology giving us a "Sims on steroids" plus the usual epic plots.
We can only wait. This will require some sort of AI and higher processing power down the line. Imagine that level, however. When perhaps at one point you no longer need to voice very line, when you can branch out and dynamically have voice lines generated as if coming from a voice actor who manually voiced the line - AI can do the rest for unplanned dialogue and reactions. Voice actors give the "base line", AI can fill the rest.
You could walk up to a random house (that, through new technology, actually is 'rendered' and has an interior even if the place has no meaning for the main plot nor even a side quest), knock and ask who lives there because you look for someone, even dynamically ask for names, or, heck, even use your own voice as new dialogue.
Alright, I'm noticing this is really stuff of the future. Questionable if I get to see THAT level of depth from NPCs or AI and of course the underlying technical aspects needed, but one can dream.
To get back on topic and to close this post, it doesn't have to be purely online (meaning real player interactions) nor that crazy level with AI and dynamic NPC personalities to make pedestrians or generated NPCs somewhat more thrilling. With more processing power, we can slowly get closer to a believable realistic level and not NPCs who completely serve as filler as they pop in and quickly pop out.
Persistence for your average NPC would be a start in future games, then upping the scale of NPCs in an area or the worldspace itself. I assume we get to see notable progress within the decade or the next. Surely some big steps will be made until projected technological singularity in the upcoming 40s or 50s or so.
NPCs are always a giant problem to be solved in games. NPCs seem to work as objects work, layered according to the approach of the player. I mean AI. In this case, I would look for solutions in partnership with Ubi Soft, their technology is exceptional about. But, we would run into executives ...
As technology and processing power will get better, so will NPC AI. The answer lies in the first sentence: AI.
AI will get better and help or assist man(kind) in more and more processes. I don't see why game development should be an exception. With projected "singularity" supposed to take place in reality until the 2050s, this is within reach and (most) of our lifetimes. No more tedious AI coding and fine-tuning as it'll do the job on its own more or less.
Of course, the general implications of AI are there, too. How many jobs will be lost, the threat of AI turning or going bonkers without Skynet popping up (but still resulting in large / massive damage) and more. Part of the Cyberpunk genre, too. But this thread isn't the right place for further debate on AI risks.
I mostly think that if it reaches a point it's used in assisting gaming and shortening development and tasks, then we get to see better or "the best" AI possible.
No more "0815" generic NPCs that need heavy coding to appear life-like, AI assistance and new algorithms calculate new and dynamic responses, possibly including using the base line voice actor file assigned and making new sentences on the run based on the scenario (staring an NPC down). Even more, random NPCs can each in turn gain a personality matrix in where they react to the player even more in-depth based on what the player does, at what time, how they look, etc. Imagine this for a cyberpunk game alone.
You look like someone from Arasaka whether you actually are or are just wearing the clothing? On first glance, especially those lower on the ladder of society make avoiding or pissing you off their priority - others could in turn be wary of you or attack you where as you wouldn't see the same reactions if you had different clothing or looks. It would be easier to set up AI behavior for generating such responses than manually doing each and every one of them yourself.
Will cost not just less work but less work in the other sense: Less jobs. That's the price of technology and making things easier, though.
But long story short, with such technology, every random NPC you see could in turn become an interesting encounter or a possible ally or enemy. If AI gets better and better, it'll even feel like you have another player there or, in other words, you will get to witness very dynamic and complex NPCs
But alas, that's future talk. Nothing we get to see the next few years. I'd say late decade or next decade should net us interesting updates and news in that sense - for game development, that is.
Not for a simple reason, but which we will not find answers in games, but in political economy - there is a point in capitalism where technology starts to be 'stopped' ... that point or limit is called 'profit' - it develops until then ... after that, they delay it. But this would be another debate that escapes the game debate, it would address jobs, laws, politics and, essentially, economics. But I don't propose to this debate here
Respectfully.
It's been a major disappointment. I guess the bottom line that we all can take is to never expect any game to be able to meet our expectations. No game should be treated like it's gonna be the holy grail of video games before customers actually get their hands on it.
Shit happens during the development of a game, and this year's COVID situation could have made the investors pressed harder on the devs to deliver results as soon as possible, making it worse.
Ideally, CDPR should have come clean to us if they're struggling to deliver a finished product within the deadline and delay the game indefinitely. But with all that money they already poured on marketing, ads, etc I guess it's a too pricey bet to take. Unlikely the investors will agree to that either.
Shit happens during the development of a game, and this year's COVID situation could have made the investors pressed harder on the devs to deliver results as soon as possible, making it worse.
Ideally, CDPR should have come clean to us if they're struggling to deliver a finished product within the deadline and delay the game indefinitely. But with all that money they already poured on marketing, ads, etc I guess it's a too pricey bet to take. Unlikely the investors will agree to that either.
Wouldn't call it a major disappointment. The main story parts are all quite good in my eyes, and even some side quest chains were (or are) engaging and drew me in personally. It's just that there's a certain "divide" and gap or disconnect between the main setting and other side activities / the world and its interaction or lack therefore in general.