Cyberpunk 2077 - An open minded review

[@Chintmaster]

The looting thing is absurd. The enemies you kill have extraordinary sophisticated technology you could pilfer but instead you're picking up ashtrays. The player behaves like a scavenger in a post-apocalypse, not some cool merc in a high-tech dystopia.

[@Razzmacgazz69420]

They copy pasted Borderlands’ loot system and it doesn’t really feel well implemented

[@Chintmaster]

@@Razzmacgazz69420 I find scrapping things to be incredibly tedious, is that what you mean?

[@JBQQ4U]

Felt that way any time I killed Militech/Arasaka personnel. Like, c'mon shouldn't I get some badass corpo armor or mods from these peeps?

[@Chintmaster]

@@JBQQ4U Yeah. If it's a game balance issue, then say you can't really pull out the whole mod without using surgery, but maybe you could remove components that can be turned into a lot of crafting material. Have that be the source for crafting material instead of picking up weird knickknacks and scrapping them. I mean that must be what the bulk of junk materials are for, they're only $3 so they must be for scrapping. They should just be fewer things that can be scrapped but they're worth more in scrap, severely cut down on tedium of looting and of scrapping.

[@Three60Mafia]

@@Chintmaster there's a perk that auto-scrapes junk.

[@akamikeym]

You're spot on with your fixer mechanic. The game desperately needed a way of organically feeding you missions rather than spamming your inbox.

[@eyoshinthemaximum]

Yea...... holy hell

[@ranro7371]

Tasty pc is the only decent review I've seen for this game.

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

Hey, Vee! Listen!

[@arshiaaghaei]

That serves its purpose tho. It's defo not super unique, but then again, people did expect too much from the game. And aside from the bugs, performance and AI issues, the rest of the game is pretty solid

[@donsg6010]

They just added this in the new patch!

[@gotd4m]

Honestly, I thought the life paths were all very different, and would affect the game tremendously, for a long long time. Thats because i chose street kid. The entire game felt like it was built around that life path. It fit perfectly. Imagine my surprise when I started a new character as a nomad. I honestly believe the game was built around street kid for the first few years, then they decided to ads the other two as an afterthought.

[@itsaUSBline]

I don't know. I played as a Corpo and felt the exact same way. It felt like the game was mostly designed around being a Corpo and felt like I would have missed a whole lot if I had chosen the other two.

[@cesarrivera8626]

@@itsaUSBline no way I played as Corpo the first go around and stopped halfway through because it just didn't feel right. I restarted the game as a Street Kid and it fit way better. It's unfortunate really because I wanted a Corpo playthrough but no matter what your character feels like a Street Kid.

[@onaucc9899]

I personally wanted a Corp Playstyle that consits of scheming, manipulation, (ab)using power etc, and while the typical PR speak of "You can do anything and play however you want" made it seem like that was possible (if not in a Cyberpunk Setting like this, where could it be happening?), that's obviously not how the game was designed. It should have been, but wasn't. If you embrace that it's JUST a shooter / combat game and (pretty much) NOTHING more, when it comes to progressing the story, then it's a great game. And i love it; i can really enjoy it that way. But that's just not what i or many, many other people expected and wanted when PR told us we could play as Corpo, Street Kid or Nomad and that we could play in a massive open world however we want. Because let's be honest: "However you want" means HOWEVER you want you can progess the Story, NOT "However you want, as long as that involves shooting enemies, slapping them with a Katana or hacking them... Engaging in actual (more or less) hand-to-hand combat". And while i'm not sure if CDPR ever explicitly said "however you want", that sure as hell was at least HEAVILY implied by trailers, press conferences and the marketing campaign as a whole.

[@arshiaaghaei]

@@cesarrivera8626 Corpo really fits well with the secret ending specially tho. It has quite a short prologue, which is a flaw, but then again, death threats etc

[@jamiehalleran6421]

@@itsaUSBline I honestly think it all depends on your first play through. I felt the same as you and the first guy and I played as a nomad. V being an outsider at the start and gradually learning more about night city felt more natural to me because I was also learning about night city. I felt more of a disconnect in the street kid and corpo play through

[@SergioPower21]

Watching this in January 2024 is crazy how many suggestions Neverknowsbest made in this video to make the game better ACTUALLY were implemented in the game. I hope he does a revisit some day.

[@DATskorge]

I don't think he would

[@sub-jec-tiv]

It’s hilarious how suddenly all the people who were talking smack about this game, now after the anime and a few tweaks (seriously it’s not all that different from day one), same people acting like it’s amazing. I played it day one on PS4 pro, had no gamebreaking bugs, just some funny exploding cars and things. But when i said that on YT or Reddit, it was a dogpile of hateful comments about how i’m an idiot, CDPR suck, the game is a pile of trash. Now, same people acting like it’s brilliant.

[@threestars2164]

Only bootlickers would revisit this trash game.

[@itsmedjoom987]

@@sub-jec-tivit’s crazy, but honestly the game still isn’t as good as it should be tbh. It feels just, lost and empty in a way of not things to do, but of any sort of creativity or soul. I’ve played the game near 100 hours on my ps5 after 2.11 was released and it just doesn’t feel like the game it should be.

[@theelectricprince8231]

​​@@itsmedjoom987 the game should be 3rd person, it should have more mobility options and less focus on gunplay. The gameplay feels like borderlands with a Cyberpunk skin. All the cyberpunk features feel surface level and take a step back to the gunplay. The fps perspective is a limit on the gameplay design and limits aspects like pakour, platforming, exploration and stealth.

[@sergeantamol497]

I wholeheartedly agree about the loot spam in modern games being annoying. It is always just busywork. I remember playing Gothic 2 where getting a new armor was always a big deal. Getting a leather armor, the first real armor was meaningful because you had to work for it. Either complete a quest for a discount, shell out a lot of money or steal it with the use of a spell. I enjoy such approach much more. On another note, I'd love to see you make a video on Pathologic 2.

[@nighttimestalker]

Dragon's dogma imo has a great example for loot. There isn't just an ass load of random gear. There's gear sets. That you may find pieces for or for the most part, have to grind and buy them. There are some side weapons that aren't part of a fear set. But they have to be found from dungeons or doing side quests. 2077 is literally a looter shooter. And it does not fit this genre.

[@mattdespard6576]

Baldur's Gate 3 and the DoS series are the WORST for this. Totally agree and appreciate it being called out

[@Spellweaver5]

However, even though getting armor was a big deal, the actual amount of loot was still staggering. You could not go 5 steps without stumbling onto something to pick up: a plant, a corpse, a mushroom, an old weapon. And that wasn't a bad thing at all, quite the contrary but it's just incorrect to assume it wasn't there.

[@jimmym3352]

He made a good point about this. I was wondering why I have no desire to play this game, and this is one of them. Too much inventory management. I would rather have less, but more meaningful loot to pick up. Problem is people complain when you are clearly fighting enemies with clothes and weapons, and you can't pick them up. I'm old enough to remember Baldur's Gate when you find that first +1 ring of protection how wonderful it was. They weren't spammed everywhere. Though Baldur's Gate had loot overload problems too, so nostalgia isn't completely rosy. But after the initial game, you learn to stop picking up non magical stuff.

[@Democlis]

​@@jimmym3352 I don't mind the complaint about "why can't you fully loot an enemy?" i just think they could just deal with it using loot filters. Me personally, i would just set it up that with two very simple rules, if an enemy drops something that is valued less then, let's say 3%(or even a 3% default but customizable in options), of your total "net worth" in the game or if it's worse/equivalent to what you own then it doesn't appear as loot, explain it with in-game logic that is just not worth it to the character, it would be a simple check of "Worth the money OR the stats to justify the time spent? then make it available, otherwise just mask it"

[@briarblack7437]

31:10 "who decided that picking up useless crap non stop is what people wanted from rpgs" Todd Howard.

[@mindfortress105]

hey, it works, the sales numbers say so. What a minority of people think doesn't matter to any profit oriented company

[@1LuvMLPFiM]

I am guilty that games like Fallout awakened the hoarder within me lol

[@jjforcebreaker]

@@mindfortress105 people are not buying Bethesda games because of shitty loot systems, but because they are big, open world immersive, light rpgs. You have a very strange thought process. Junk loot in Fallout 3 contributed to its sales as much as penis options contreibuted to sales of CP2077, or Shark Cards to popularity of GTA V.

[@HayabusaKnight]

the witcher 3 does that.

[@RED-jg6mt]

rip :(

[@thesaucyprophesy2939]

Love the video, just chipping my two cents lol I don't really agree with giving cyberpunk the point over the witcher for having lifepaths, given the fact that while the witcher didn't have them at all, the opening story was all the better despite that. Cyberpunks lifepaths are incredibly shallow choices that all lead to the same prologue after ten minutes and would've been better replaced with one specific, more fleshed-out prologue and character background

[@RustlessPotato]

Technically, Witcher 1 and 2 are the lifepaths of Witcher 3 ? Does that work ? :P

[@ultrahero2115]

The Jackie montage after the tiny prologue was just a flat out failure of story telling.

[@jonet_h]

@Olaf Sigurson the game barely recognizes your choice so does it matter if your character is just known as street kid only in name?

[@rawbebaba]

Cyberpunk doesn't have life paths though. Only 1 decision matters at all, and that's the convo with Johnny at his grave.

[@georgeferrett1799]

DA Origins did life paths better over ten years ago with more choice and more effect on story and less development time.

[@rram6875]

Finally played it after phantom liberty came out. One of the best gaming experiences I've had.

[@sub-jec-tiv]

It’s not even that different. I loved it at launch. Hilarious how a hit anime and some minor tweaks will change the narrative.

[@rosameltrozo5889]

It's still a mediocre generic open world game, at least it's not completely broken now.

[@rram6875]

@@rosameltrozo5889 You make it sound like an ubisoft game. It may not be the rpg that fans expected but it's not generic wtf.

[@rosameltrozo5889]

@@rram6875 It's on the ubisoft ballpark

[@cendresaphoenix1974]

Wow really? Go play red dead, KCD, or heck Skyrim?, new vegas?, ect? You seriously can't think of anything better than that Dialogue simulator? OOF

[@ReaLMoisan]

As someone who's been a gamer since Atari 2600 and Intel 80286, I haven't bought an RPG until at least a year has passed after it's release, and has been my policy since before Oblivion was released. Once patches became a thing, I stopped buying any RPG or Triple A game until at least a year has passed. Now I won't buy such a game until Game of the Year, Complete, Definitive Editions are released. Sorry, I want to play such games once, with all the DLC and other content, and with the least amount of bugs. No hype will persuade me otherwise. This policy is the reason I can look so fondly back at series like STALKER, Elder Scrolls, Witcher, Metro, and Mass Effect.

[@lordofchaosinc.261]

Andromeda is still bad though.

[@ReaLMoisan]

@@lordofchaosinc.261 Never played that one. Looked like shit, and not worth my time. First three were solid, even 3 after the release of all DLC and the extended cut. And I waited for all content to be released before playing it too. No Mass Effect 3 ending disappointment for me.

[@jakobsylvester7449]

Well unfortunately with cb2077 I dont think that a definitive edition would make it a great game. Better than what we got but this game would need a rework on scale of no man's sky to be anything amazing because the basic design was utterly broken down the line.

[@RandoBurner]

Aye,plus you could see that this will be bad because they hyped the graphics,not the game.I think graphics became very minor for me since 2007 or so.All games look good today...

[@CreedManiac99]

@@lordofchaosinc.261 I honestly thought it sometimes had pretty stunning visuals (the first time you enter a vault stayed with me) and the combat was fun, while the story was somewhat intriguing at times and "meh" for the rest. Same thing really as what I felt like playing through Dragon Age: Inquisition, another widely disliked game. I played both of these on their definitive editions so I hadn't experienced the pre-patches state of the games.

[@ZeSgtSchultz]

Man I just really wanted to play the montage, all those looked like fun started missions to get me hooked on Jackie and Tbug.

[@ali_p_q7920]

Biggest disappointment with the game. I can forgive everything else, but not giving us play time to actually deepen our relationship with Jackie and T-Bug was a very poor decision.

[@johnmccarron7066]

Looking at your comment, I was thinking maybe they should have just left us access to a single neighborhood, or portion or a neighborhood, with a starting batch of fixer missions and a first-time fixer, and a prologue campaign that leads up to the heist. That would have allowed the player time to ease into the game world, do some early gate leveling, and actually formed a relationship with your crew. As much as their deaths hit after such a short time knowing them, imagine how it would have hurt after a solid hour of in game time.

[@ali_p_q7920]

@@johnmccarron7066 The Watson lockdown is a clear indication that they intended to do it the way you suggested. But then they scrapped it and gave us that montage instead.

[@johnmccarron7066]

@@ali_p_q7920 I felt that, too: I pretty much take the hint and clean out Watson on each playthrough.

[@ali_p_q7920]

@@johnmccarron7066 I also do a bit of that. Get at least some decent street cred and gear before I do the heist.

[@thesummerofmark]

When you said “see you in 2021” I didn’t expect you to drop a video literally in the second day of 2021. What a nice surprise

[@henrik1743]

Let alone cyberpunk, what an absolute hustler

[@weirded1948]

Ikr, and it's a vid that's over an hour long? Props to him.

[@henrik1743]

@@weirded1948 this vid is gonna skyrocket his 100k sub goal lmao

[@henrik1743]

@james conlin you don't need to tell bro

[@user-tg6cj1yp3u]

kzbin.info/www/bejne/f4maZH2Caq1gpNk

[@leramar]

CDPR really fanned the flames of hype to an insane degree. What did they expect? "Yeah you'll be able to do this, and that, as well as aaaallll of those things too!" Of course it's on the consumer to take things a company says with a pinch of salt. But If CDPR hadn't promised the world in the first place then less people would have gone into the game expecting the world.

[@DenienN]

Should we take a look at what happened with no man sky? Media was at fault there, raising the hype

[@Wackaz]

One of many major problems with capitalism is that us consumers are expected to take what a company says with a pinch of salt, which just shows how messed up and wrong our economic system is.

[@QuarkLepton356]

To be clear though, CDPRs "hype" focused on what was actually in the game. This is not a No Man's Sky situation where they promised things that the game didn't and never had. They got people excited by setting the tone and world building early and IMO they delivered on those aspects. It was the technical aspects of the game that were the issue in this case. The game didn't perform well for most people. I like @NeverKnowsBest had a few minor issues playing the game on relatively moderate hardware, and nothing game breaking. I didn't play it on console so I can't speak to that, but I am of the belief that on PC part of the problem was people cranking the settings to the max without the hardware to back it up. Gamers don't just get on the hype train too easily, they get on the hate train too easily. People that have never played CP2077 are trying to shit on how it plays or it's story because that's the thing to do.

[@HelloOnepiece]

@@QuarkLepton356 Nah they promised a liviong breathing world, but Night City feel more dead than Novigrad, they basically copy pasted TW3 formula just will less meaningful content. Thing is, fantasy wildernesss and a giant city are different enviroment, and need different design

[@cool_sword]

I'm all for holding companies to account. But this is a case of blindly trusting advertising, then getting upset when the product doesn't live up to it. I don't know why, but in the games industry you seem to have a combination of companies that can get away with a lot in their ads but also, and this is more noteworthy to me, a consumer base that believes ads uncritically. Tangentially and more funnily, you have the capital G Gamers who defend capitalism to the death in between getting burned by falling hook line and sinker for the advertising for the games industry's biennial Tinatic. It's worth noting that a bit of dishonesty in advertising is allowed in the US, which is where I live, and probably other European jurisdictions at the very least. I'm sure in many jurisdictions the puffery/lying line becomes more blurry when making forward looking claims. In addition to this, the point of advertising is to move product, not to accurately describe products. These two things often overlap merely coincidentally - there's a reason why you need laws to ban dishonest marketing. More simply, No one who spoke to anyone who's lived through one or two big non-Rockstar open world releases should have been as hyped as people were. They're not usually this bad, but they're always very buggy and the marketing is always full of shit. Every single thing we can say about the games industry, advertising, profit-driven economies, etc. points in the direction of the hype being unreasonable. I hate to be more critical of customers than big dicked game producers, but I've seen people end up hating products I enjoy simply because I don't watch many ads, get excited for books and games, etc. to think it's largely their fault. This review only solidifies that for me.

[@Glassandcandy]

I’m surprised it took so long for me to find someone to talk about the biggest problem with the game: feature creep. I mean the writing has been on the wall for years. Hell there were even reports from insiders working on the game who said management were constantly demanding new designs and mechanics even late into production. Feature creep kills games. It’s like the first thing you learn about making games: keep it simple and manage your expectations, things/ideas will be cut at some point.

[@Ava6581]

That would explain things like the underwater combat perk.

[@merc-svt9701]

@@Ava6581 yeah like what the hell?! lol there really is a lot of things that are not finished in this game, but to be honest, if they add all these in later, than i can see this game being amazing.

[@WillFly4Food23]

After seeing how big a role Keanu plays I think it's pretty obvious what happened. Keanu came in everybody loved him, and upper management decided to change the entire story after the prologue and some of the endings to accompany him in them, and Keanu didn't start working with them until 2018...... So we got a rushed version of the game that they could make in two years while everyone scrambled to reformat story missions/side quests and everything else. Hence all the cut content jank stories missing graphical elements, missing gameplay elements etc...

[@roojackaroo8517]

Also, they clearly had to change a lot of shit since Keanu only joined the game in 2018 and they likely had an entire story before that which they scrapped to make him a main character.

[@TaigaGaoo]

@@WillFly4Food23 Or, hear me out: Johnny and Keanu were part of it from the start. Really, the devs themselves have said that the issue was that management didn't gave them enough time+wanted too many things and made too many promises. No need to put a tinfoil hat and say that Johnny/Keanu, which are the main driving force and by far the best character in the game were a last minute change that forced the devs to remake the game. It's specially asinine to think that they did that in a year where working almost everywhere came to a halt thanks to a pandemic for quite a few months.

[@SinerAthin]

Fun fact: During the latter half of the 20th century, Japan boasted a powerful economy in the world. This created the theory that Japan might be a candidate for Asia's or the World's next superpower. Of course, this theory's lack of attention to things like population and geography meant that it was erroneous, as Japan's shadow was soon eclipsed by China's. But during those years was when a lot of cultural ideas, such as the cyberpunk theme, flourished. This is why Japan is often so prominent in the setting.

[@jac1011]

that's very misleading. cyberpunk just IS japanese. Akira, battle angel, Ghost in the shell. these are all japanese IP. Hologram kois are not a mainstay of the genre because of Japan's economy it's because japan just put stuffed them in there and everyone else thought it was cool (and it is cool)

[@jackrussell3084]

Eclipse by China? Only because the West agreed to buy their cheap CRAP!! 😂😂😂😂 Japan actually innovated to get where they are and modernised. Like comparing an apple with mouldy cheese.

[@jackrussell3084]

@@electricfishfan you guys must be pretty young. In the 70s and 80s Japan was seen as the leader of innovation and electronics. Game devices and the Sony walkman and robotics are some examples. Japan just seemed like the future now.

[@miketube4692]

@@jackrussell3084 Japan is like 30 percent the size of the us but trust me, i went there and the tech is like cyberpunk shit

[@shellshockedgerman3947]

@@jackrussell3084 Its the truth. Japan won't be able to hold much of its strength compared to China since its losing what made it stand out in the first place. Also, the Chinese industry right now literally used what the Japanese industry used back then to kickstart their growth, cheap products with inconsistent quality.

[@thats4thebirds]

I can literally change my eyeballs but can’t get a haircut. There’s some fundamental stuff cut out of this game if we’re talking immersion hahaha It’s a true shame. There’s an intangible hook that has sunk into me with this game, but I feel disappointment around every turn when faced with frequent cut content or scaled back content.

[@olikardy8429]

I'm fairly certain there was meant to be a faction system at some point. There were a couple of times someone said to my V something like "the Tiger claws won't like this" like I'd have to watch out for them in particular or something.

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

@@olikardy8429 I assumed that was a given. Is it possible that no one in CD PR has played a Fallout game? Those bosses that you can kill or let live (like the Sasquatch woman) seem to be part of a missing faction system too. And, idk, I expected that if I killed a hundred Tyger Claws, they would send someone after me. Maybe even other mercs that I had met before... But no, no faction cares about you decimating their ranks. And there's no 'other mercs', really. Fixers give you work like you're the only one in town. And, join a faction or make enemies of them? Woah that must be us asking too much. Gotta wait another generation for that to be possible... lmao

[@thats4thebirds]

@@olikardy8429 for sure. Like how “you don’t want to be on netwatch’s bad side” but there’s literally no consequence to fucking that dude up instead of the voodoo boys.

[@ducky36F]

I’m sorry but “I can’t get a hair cut” is one of the most absurd nitpicks I’ve ever heard. Says nothing about the game and conveniently allows an easy criticism without having to actually play. You can’t get a hair cut in half a dozen other great rpgs as well.

[@thats4thebirds]

@@ducky36F listen brother, pretending the criticism is as simple as “I can’t get a haircut” is pretty lame. It’s a symptom of something Never talks about in this review. This world does not feel alive even under the smallest scrutiny. Part of that is making me feel like I can style myself up LIKE THE GAME IMPLIES. Wether that be hair or my nails or changing my skin to chrome etc. I also mentioned there are several pieces that break immersion. The cell phone thing is huge. The NPCs and AI etc. But whatever, yeah I guess allll that is just low hanging fruit.

[@CatDribble]

My issue with johnny is that I didn't want him to steal the show from my characters story, yeah he does take up a lot of screen time and it's really well done, I personally was just hoping for an rpg around my character not around johnny.

[@Wveth]

It is about your character though. V is the star, it's their character arc you're witnessing for most of the game. Yes, Johnny is also a main character but the story is far more about what's going on in V's head than Johnny's.

[@traiforse5777]

Johnny just takes up spaces and spotlight from V by waltzing in nearly every scene. V/Players can't get a break from Johnny, he invades V's moments all the time to drop some witty comments, just literally anything as long as he's talking. The forced first-person without cinematics also made it worse, since we basically felt like a floating head or a cameraman. Johnny makes the story unnecessarily rushed and annoying via the "you have cancer" plot, and limit's V's journey to be the vehicle for Johnny because V got dragged into finishing what Johnny started. To me it is so forced and pathetic way to make you like him, made it look like CDPR wanted you to see that they have Keanu and desperately wanted to SEE him and hear him talk because they've spend so much money and development on putting Keanu in instead of a branching story and other contents they promised. It's a forced bonding that gave me vibes of Stockholm Syndrome and gaslighting of his ideals, since you are forced to agree with him and you HAVE to do what he wants. The one time you don't (Devil's ending), you are punished and tormented until you submits and regrets it in order to make Johnny's points justified, because it's ALL about him.

[@bobbeatbox]

@@Wveth what is going on in V head . . . its johnny (thats the point) but i agree the star is V and you can "tame" johnny or hate it all the way and want to get rid of him ect . . . whatever you choose it fit . . . and whatever your choice is it "yours" , V or Johnny that made it ? having him coment every of your decision probably affect you and your choice (in game 1 obviously cause in game 2 or more you play to try diferent choice) i dont play my 1st game thinking oh i want to be 100% good or 100% bad i do it (what i consider neutral) instinctively with my own choice (johnny have a "discutable" morality but in Night City atmosphere he is often right (well he know the city more than you thats obvious) doing the oposite of what he say is often the "bad" choice even if what he said "sound bad" . . . on other situation he is just an asshole and you better do your own way , but the more time you spend with him in your head the less you are able to notice the diference . . . johnny is more a guide in the city or a narator of every of your action

[@angeloalvarez5520]

​​@@traiforse5777you don't have to agree with Johnny or attack Arasaka. But the writing does seem to condemn you in the devil ending

[@letefte]

I agree with the statement that there hasn't realy been a deep AAA rpg in quite a while. At least a western style one. We need more games like Dragon Age: Origins and KOTOR 2. Oh well, we still have the crpg revival if we want some deep rpg experiences.

[@collapsiblechair9112]

I played a fantastic game where I assumed the role of a man battling against changing times and the advance of progress while trying to stay true to himself and his friends. It didn't have lots of stats and nor had character creation but I felt invested in the role I was given. RDR2 was one of the best role playing games I've ever, erm, played.

[@ducky36F]

Not going to happen. People talk about wanting a kotor-like game. But then they want modern game play, an open world and voiced protagonists. Which already makes it 100x harder.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

@@ducky36F "Voiced protagonist" stop pretending you know what people want. People gave Bethesda no end of shit for having a voiced protagonist in Fallout 4

[@ducky36F]

​@@cyberninjazero5659 Well I want you to be right for the record so someone please convince triple A developers that's the case 😂

[@cyberninjazero5659]

@@ducky36F Bethesda is on the record calling it a mistake for Fallout 4. Baldurs Gate 3 is coming out without a voiced protag. Bioware started the voice protag trend in mass effect but kept it for all of there games from then on because of laziness. Outside of those examples the few new RPGs with character customization that have come out don't have Voiced Protags. It's a Bioware staple that one fallout game experimented with and regretted you can't call it an industry trend based off that. (Even CD PR I think only did it because they were used to it from Witcher, not because of audience demand, speaking for myself the voiced protag was a red flag). You can argue about the Open World stuff (I don't know what you mean by "modern-play" so I can't say how that does or does not effect RPG-ness) but I'll staunchly argue that "customer demand" isn't/wasn't driving the decision for this game to have a voiced protagonist

[@Ava6581]

45:31 I think most people just wanted the game to be Deus Ex meets Grand Theft Auto.

[@jaiadlakha212]

And with a hint of skyrim

[@Itama22]

And some Witcher and Mad Max and "Insert generic Shooter-Game" and Fallout: New Vegas

[@cyberninjazero5659]

That's because playing the game makes it clear that's what CD PR was going for but failed to achieve. I didn't have that expectation going in. I was open minded expecting "An Action RPG" it was when I played the game that the constent thought of "GTA does this better" or "Deus Ex wouldn't have forced me into combat in this mission" popped into mind, it wasn't due to the marketing that I compared it to those games but what due to what was on the (metaphorical since I downloaded it) disk.

[@yourpalsammy9773]

Ironic, considering that was essentially what they were promising, and kinda how it turned out, only averaging In some aspects, doing well at a good few, then dropping the ball at so many others.

[@javieremoya]

sort of...I came in expecting something unique....however fundamental lessons in open world design were flat out ignored. I understand gta does it better but that NPC AI and driving have been solved in 2001. I enjoy the game and I hope they update those features than need work

[@dawn2891]

Can we talk about how invasive the main story feels in comparison to side content? It feels like two different teams designed them. And if your past the prologue it feels really uncomfortable tearing yourself away from the campaign to grind, get money, and buy vehicles. Considering your dying then all of this should be meaningless.

[@loldoctor]

Yeah, it reminded me of FFXV where the tone of the main story makes the side quests seem really pointless if not outright harmful.

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

yep. Awful game design in that sense.

[@dawn2891]

Michael Ian Ross it’s frustrating because I do like the main story. However the deeper I get into it the more the game hammers in how little time my character has. This makes it so difficult for me to engage in side activities because the rewards are rendered meaningless to me. And on the other hand. Engaging in side quest is fun and rewarding. It gives me time to build my character the way I want. The right clothing, vehicles, and weapons. But then I just get turned away from doing the main story. Because I know deep down all of it goes with the inevitable death of my character.

[@WillFly4Food23]

The urgent missions would make sense in smaller scales. Rush off to do this right away because you don't have much time. But it's like one mission and you do it and bam you're golden you got time to kill. I felt really awkward because I wanted to finish the entire game before the end but every time I did a main mission or one of the main side quests they'd be in my ear to do the next part immediately. I felt like the game was rushing me towards the end. Quick this way, don't look at that, we didn't have time to do anything with x, just follow this mission bam okay you're done now go do this, quick get to the end you're dying right? why do you keep doing side quests you're dying stop that. Okay go here. I swear they gave us a phone and a useless option to call people. Why not just let us call people when we want to do a mission instead of them calling us saying be here 4 a.m. sharp don't be late. Then I got to feel like an ass a week later getting back to them like an antisocial nutjob. Like have you just been coming here everyday for a week hoping I'd show up today?

[@dawn2891]

Tyler No everything you just said is exactly how it feels to play this game. It literally never gives the player room to breath and explore the world.

[@ImBarryScottCSS]

One of the final points is about the ticking bomb incorporated into the game. So so SO many RPG's do this and it infuriates me. If you actually try to 'role play' the role playing game you find that all the interesting sidequests and adventures in the game make absolutely no sense for the protagonist to pursue as THE WORLD IS GOING TO END. Why would you waste time helping a witch to find her cat if the big bad man was hot on your tail and about to detonate a plot nuke? Far too often this leaves me looking for a break in the main quest arc where it seems reasonable that the player would have spare time to do random bits and avoiding the next main quest for ages because I know it will reintroduce the end of days pressure. This is lazy writing and holds games back as a storytelling medium. It bugs me.

[@angeloalvarez5520]

I don't think it's lazy writing necessarily

[@jonnykhatru]

​@@angeloalvarez5520 yeah not necessarily lazy just lacking in that way

[@olikardy8429]

The answer to the RPG critisism is just that the WItcher is barely an RPG either. I'd describer both as action games with light role playing game elements. But further than that the key thing for any RPG to have, imo, is choices and conseuqences that you can use to role play your charachters personality and charachter. The Wither 3 was fairly limited in that regard but I felt it gave me a certain amount of leeway as to what my Geralt was like as a person and what he thought about the different charachters and factions in his world and he could strongly influence their outcomes. This is pretty lacking in cyberpunk. V's personality is basically set in stone. You'd have thought with V not being an already established literary charachter there would be much more room to decide what sort of person they are and what they think about the world around them but there is actually slightly less! With that being the case it doesn't then magically beocme more of an RPG because it lets you do a stealth playthrough.

[@raifthemad]

Ah, you're one of the choices and consequences crowd. If you've frequented some rpg forums in the last few decades, you've surely seen countless "What is an RPG" threads that never get resolved and there are plenty of people with different views of what an RPG makes. I lean more closely towards the characters attributes should determine the outcome in any situation, not players. And only filthy casuals, who get their ideas of what an RPG is from marketing departments, would think that Witcher 3 is one. I'm not saying that I don't like C&C, when well done it's always welcome. I just don't think that it is what makes one into a roleplaying game.

[@HelloOnepiece]

@@raifthemad What is an RPG was always hard to define, even harder since videogames started using the term. Also add that even videogame RPG had 2 evolution path, one on the east and one in the west, then came Bioware who created the "cinematic" RPG genre

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

@@raifthemad As much an incredible stretch as describing Cyberpunk 2077 as an immersive-sim due to having simulation elements.

[@franzpattison]

Get a call from a fixer: "Hey cousin, let's go bowling!"

[@thesaucyprophesy2939]

Hope you have a good year bro, you deserve it for this

[@franzpattison]

@@thesaucyprophesy2939 😂

[@Grobut81]

It did remind me of that yeah, but only at first. You can ignore these fixer calls for as long as you want, all that happens is that the mission gets added to your list of avalible missions, but you don't have to drop everything and do these missions when you get them, you can put it off for as long as you want. It doesen't fail, or become unavalible at any point, the fixer won't call you about the same mission again, it's just added to your list. Once you realize this, it's nolonger that annoying, you just start thinking of it as "oh, another mission became avalible". The big problem with your cousin wanting to go bowling in GTA4 all the effin' time was that there were consequences for blowing him off once too many. The game didn't just give you the option, you were required to engage with this dating simulator esque mechanic, and to do so when the game wanted you to do it, not when/if you wanted to (and it was awful, i hated all these stupid minigames. I probably woulden't have hated them if i weren't forced to do them, but because i was constantly forced to play them i grew to loathe them all). Same with Preston Garvey, the other comparison that gets brought up. The problem is not so much that he calls you and says "come here and shoot raiders", the problem is that you have to drop everything you're doing and go deal with it, right friggen now, because there are consequences for not doing so. The game keeps interrupting you. You're trying to find duct-tape and the game won't let you get on with it. The one really annoying quest in CP2077 is the missing car's one you get from Delamain, because untill you complete it, he'll keep calling you as you're traveling around and saying "i lost track of a car here, look around for it". I recommend just completeling that questline as soon as you get it, or it's going to keep annoying you.

[@jakobsylvester7449]

@@Grobut81 Cant remember any consequences in gta4. You could just decline and move on. It was also used as a joke during one of the missions. Like in this initial comment.

[@adamf.barbieri8788]

Wrong, its: Delamain: *I've lost contact with a vehicle nearby your location, would you mind looking out for it* V: Fine, I'll be on the lookout The player: REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

[@Crit-Chance]

"Coming when it's ready" Remember that? Cause I sure do.

[@RED-jg6mt]

sigh

[@joeandrew8752]

Prembridge farm remembers

[@goaway6181]

It probably would have if the fans were going absolutely crazy over begging it to be released dude! NMS

[@gracecalis5421]

@@goaway6181 That had nothing, literally nothing, to do with their decision to release early. They wanted to release early so they could pretty up their fiscal year by catching those holiday sales to boost their revenue.

[@goaway6181]

​@@gracecalis5421 It probably absolutely played a factor! But to say that the fan response to continuous delays, which would've been very detrimental, didn't play a factor at all is just tone death! The team literally received death threats over continuous delays - the human cost of the fans and hype shouldn't be ignored. What you're talking about may well probably be the ultimate administrative decision in regards to release, but "literally nothing" is ignoring and absolving toxic behavior aimed towards CDPR's devs.

[@PunkerNinetySix]

Thank you for your up for being fair. I was starting to believe I'd never find a video discussing the game in the way you did. Your closing comments on hype and hate are spot on. I urge anyone who is interested, setting aside the rocky launch, the overselling, the failed promises, to just play this and decide for yourself. It is not perfect, but I can say that, with the recent patches for PC players, the game is nothing close to how it launched in terms of problems. Issues are still there, but I can back what NeverKnowsBest said about experiencing minimal game breaking problems, nothing that reloading a quick save could not fix. For all the horror stories out there I was astounded how little my immersion was broken; the game just plain ran well on my PC (console is still a different story, I know). I just finished the game and, while I understand everyone's tastes are different, this is one of my top 5 favorite experiences in gaming. Had I listened to the hype and the reviews, I do believe that would have been somewhat ruined for me. Some standout things for me personally: the immersive sound design, the sense of scale you feel walking the city streets, the beauty of this games art design and the way they nailed the asthetic, character facial animation that stands as some of the best I've seen in gaming, the soundtrack (Refused!), the way the world of the CP2020 tabletop RPG comes to life in Night City, companion quests that I still can't stop thinking about, and even the combat (once you get past the lower levels of your character's progression) kept me entertained with trying out new quickhacks and gun combos (loved hacking enemies to have them go cyberpyscho as a distraction tactic while I stealthed my way around).

[@lt_johnmcclane]

I’d rather not encourage game devs to keep releasing unfinished games

[@Yusuke_Denton]

Absolutely, though I really wish there were more "companion quests", and the ability to set up squads to go on random/custom gigs. That's essential to replicating the tabletop experience.

[@budlikycz2445]

Try Noah Caldwell Gervais he has a lot of great indepth essays on a games. There is Cyberpunk too

[@rogueofennui]

30:44 - Holy cow I want this addressed. I've enjoyed 2 looter shooters, Borderlands 1 & 2. After that I really wish the dramatic looter systems of pretty much all video games would just die already. Why the hell am I picking up a used coffee cup in the middle of a life and death battle so I can craft a legendary Stick I Picked Up Off the Ground that's better than my common Katana of a Thousand Whispers?

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

exactly. 'Behold V, he is on is way to be the greatest merc in Night City... Watch how he runs through the city stealing food and drinks from everybody! Even ashtrays he takes with him! A true legend!' Seriously tho, game design needs to start being a bit coherent. No more urgent main mission and random sidequests that demand cognitive dissonance of you, please.

[@arsenii_yavorskyi]

and don't forget about level restrictions on items.

[@brucel337]

My legendary melee dildo was crafted from recycled bubblegum ONLY! Save the rain forest!

[@WillFly4Food23]

@@Yarblocosifilitico The urgent missions would make sense in smaller scales. Rush off to do this right away because you don't have much time. But it's like one mission and you do it and bam you're golden you got time to kill. I felt really awkward because I wanted to finish the entire game before the end but every time I did a main mission or one of the main side quests they'd be in my ear to do the next part immediately. I felt like the game was rushing me towards the end. Quick this way, don't look at that, we didn't have time to do anything with x, just follow this mission bam okay you're done now go do this, quick get to the end you're dying right? why do you keep doing side quests you're dying stop that. Okay go here. I swear they gave us a phone and a useless option to call people. Why not just let us call people when we want to do a mission instead of them calling us saying be here 4 a.m. sharp don't be late. Then I got to feel like an ass a week later getting back to them like an antisocial nutjob. Like have you just been coming here everyday for a week hoping I'd show up today?

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

@@WillFly4Food23 haha exactly. Makes no sense. Plus the game picks up the phone for you even if you ignore the calls... Why not give the important NPCs apartments in Night City so you can meet them there instead of having Jackie wait on his bike for days while you do sidequests? It would be cool too if you could call ppl to help you out on missions, like maybe I have no hacking skills but I'm friends with Judy so I could take her with me if the mission requires hacking.

[@funguy398]

I can't agree more with "useless loot" bit

[@RhizometricReality]

I kinda like it, but the awful inventory management and stash sorting does take away from that. Item hoarding to sell is a satisfying feel, stealing everything I can get my hands on, like a possum

[@EricMalette]

After the Ghost Recon fiasco, seeing the loot in this game was a surprising and major disappointment. You know when you're dealing with grey, green, blue, purple and orange, you're in for a miserable deluge of meaningless and boring swaps. Don't get me wrong: the weapons in this game all look feel and sound fantastic. But FFS.

[@michaelsteffensen6844]

@@RhizometricReality I don't understand how AAA games like this still can't manage decent inventory management (never mind the generally terrible UI as a whole). Implementing some decent sorting and management functionality would be a drop in the ocean compared to the effort required for other aspects of the game, yet it's still lacking.

[@RhizometricReality]

@@michaelsteffensen6844 i agree, but that's a problem with underdeveloped loot management, not the function of looting everything

[@RhizometricReality]

@@EricMalette its not so bad

[@platinumshadow5626]

Thank you for introducing me to that synthwave rendition of "Where Is My Mind" by The Motion. That is so beautiful.

[@zerosnakemyth7274]

Retrowave by the motion i believe.

[@baguette5648]

just search synthwave where is my mind and its the first thing that comes up

[@aegyobot1923]

gross.

[@misterkefir]

I second this.

[@parthdave2501]

Thank you so much for this comment, I really wanted to know which version it was! Really loved it

[@MeatSnax]

CDPR really backed themselves into a corner promising to release on 8th gen hardware. They delayed it so many times that releasing any later would have made a PS4 edition obsolete. The best thing to do would have been to release the PC port, cancel 8th gen ports and focus on getting 9th gen builds out as soon as possible, but they'd already burned through all of their customer's and stockholder's patience. It's nobody's fault but their own, but still, I can't help but feel a little bad for them. You can tell they really wanted to make the greatest game of all time but they bought in to their own hype just a little too much.

[@MeatSnax]

@Payton Cantrell partly, but they didn't do anything to temper those expectations. They really were talking about the most advanced game of all time, then they just dropped GTA 4 with a high def cyberpunk skin

[@jacketofthe80s13]

@Payton Cantrell moron. fans werent cd projekt releasing fucking news articles about the absurd shit in there game that never came. if they were honest instead of saying "games gold now delay" they would have been fine my god dude

[@jacketofthe80s13]

@Payton Cantrell I wish it actually had ai that didn't walk in a set path up and down the fucking street. also cops wtf are the cops even?

[@jacketofthe80s13]

@Payton Cantrell they showed these insane expectations. they published these fucking expectations. wtf? look every promised article and video of game play features. story features as choices and life paths. options like being able to play stuff for god sake all you spend your money on is weapons, bs cars that you can find in a fucking cave for free, health, and hacker chips. the rest is useless. "in night city you can be everyone" nope street kid after every fucking intro and can't change anything except clothing. they have all these bars. and I can't get into one bar fight or play pool darts something the things are right there.

[@craigcutler6919]

@Payton Cantrell Yeah because "simulation" will go over well in the new SJW morality hellscape that we currently live in, was okay when GTAV came out not now, it would have been another thing for people to complain about. Not having "simulation" still didn't stop the cries of phobia and ist and it would have been much much worse if it was there.

[@Trippaloski]

The only use-case where picking up every single loot is not a chore is the one where loot is scarce and essential for survival

[@WillFly4Food23]

I think it'd be fine with a few mods to crafting and selling. A sell all button in certain areas, I can take disassembling weapons and armor one at a time but just make it so you can't disassemble things you have equipped. Force the player to offload gear they want to keep and give us sell all or disassemble all options. Clean your menu's up! It took me nearly 60 hours to figure out I could sell quickhack components which is good because I had like a million of the damn things and couldn't use them for anything.

[@Gungrave123]

Bloodborne handled itemization perfectly.

[@Regic]

@@WillFly4Food23 bannerlord handled it the best in my opinion: you mark items you want to keep and can sell everything else with one button. Simple, fast and avoids the immersion breaking "everyone has a weapon yet I can only loot 1 out of the dozens" mechanic present in many games.

[@trashpanda5869]

@@WillFly4Food23 after playing Dishonored 2 will never tolerate the bullshit item, loot and crafting systems in most games.

[@riccardoman7620]

S.T.A.L.K.E.R.

[@ruckus420]

There's a notion in critiquing art that something can be greater than the sum of its parts, this is how most people view the Witcher 3. Most people I've seen acknowledge the floaty and samey combat, and the shallow rpg elements, however, the story massively outshines these problems to such an extent that people call it the best game ever made. And as for Cyberpunk, many feel that due to how much is broken, been removed, and straight up not developed such as physics and ai that we're used to seeing for years in open world games, the negative far outweight any incremental improvements over the Witcher 3.

[@stonaraptor8196]

i always thought Witcher 3 was a very boring game but would have made an interesting story. If only the combat was good and the movement. And exploration. Basically everything besides the story i found to be very mediocre and boring.

[@CrossProton]

@@Kgamer64 I don’t think that this is what was meant. Not everything in Witcher 3 is perfect. Some mechanics were much better done in other games. I, for one, found races stupid, didn’t like gwent, hated the looting system and found exploring from question mark to question mark tedious. And yet, despite all of these flaws and imperfect mechanics, to me it is a MUCH better game. I think Nakey Jakey put it very well - if you take uncharted’s mechanics separately, there are dozens of games that do each one of them better. And yet, when they come together the way they do, uncharted becomes an overall much better experience for players In other words, although this criticism is valid, it overlooks the bigger picture

[@CrossProton]

​@@Kgamer64 sorry, I tried to explain their perspective but, evidently, have done a poor job of it Their criticism was of the 2nd part of the video, which compares and 'grades' cyberpunk and witcher based on parameters like gameplay mechanic, rpg elements, story choices etc. The point there was that this approach is flawed because 'something can be greater than the sum of its parts', to quote the initial comment. As such, despite having a worse gameplay, skill tree etc., the witcher, when taken as a whole it is an overall better experience than cyberpunk.

[@jamesburke9865]

@@Kgamer64 The combat in Witcher 3 isn't great but it's not bad. The AI and physics in Cyberpunk is REALLY ASS. And what does AI and physics make up? The BASIC elements of a believable world. What was Cyberpunk's main selling point? What was it's TRUE main character? Night City, the open world itself. CDPR failed at the fundamental core of their game in CP 2077. This is not the case with the Witcher 3. Fundamentally, Witcher 3 is an adventure epic with Geralt and CDPR did a perfect job delivering that.

[@jacketofthe80s13]

@@CrossProton i honestly though witcher 2 was better in all honesty. even the witcher 3's world felt empty unless you went to the question marks

[@f3uibeghardt522]

You can customize Roach in Witcher 3. You can give him various saddlebags, saddles, blinders and trophies.

[@15redleg]

And when you get a new horse, say a black one, He calls it Roach and so even Roach changes colour.

[@PatientEmber]

@@15redleg best comment

[@DogfaceSquirrel]

It's been part of the Witcher stories and novels since day one - she is always a mare, and the horse itself changes but she's always "Roach". It certainly didn't hurt CDProkejtRed not having to change the name/Geralt's dialogue even after he gets a new horse.

[@f3uibeghardt522]

@@DogfaceSquirrel Roach is a mare? But don't you remember in the DLC when Geralt has to take that hallucinogenic potion, and Roach starts talking to him, and it's clearly a male voice? I don't know much about the Witcher lore at all, so maybe that could be written off by claiming it was a drug-induced sequence that didn't reflect Roach's true voice (of course, horses don't have a voice - at least not like _that_ , but you know what I mean).

[@DogfaceSquirrel]

@@f3uibeghardt522 Geralt actually says it in the game, where he expected her to sound more girly, and Roach calls Geralt out on it, like "how would you know what a female horse sounds like?"

[@Ellimist000]

And yes, in a game about cybernetics, why add stats to t shirts?

[@bobbeatbox]

because adding those to the piercing and tattoo would be ridiculous

[@bmscarecrow.]

When you talked about fixers/street cred/gigs what you said is exactly what I was thinking, its a huge missed opportunity for both immersion and player sanity. I found it quite fun to get phone calls and texts from characters but the fixers kinda ruined this at points, I would hear the text sound expecting some cute text from Judy, River, Panam, or Takemura but end up getting a text about a car for sale. The first time you hear from Regina Jones is also incredibly jarring because you will likely be meeting Dex right after and his introduction is quite cinematic while also elevation fixers to a seemingly important role in the world. Since you are also working closer together in this system in opens up a chance to make a meaningful side-quest with these characters, maybe after you've done enough gigs for them they will see you as a friend and open up or value your skills and give you a more interesting gig.

[@Guthixian_]

And to top it all off the fixers don't even call you in the endings (except for Rogue) so their presence in the main story is reduced to nothing

[@grueti21]

did you visit jones in her apartment? Absolutly pointless. Don't know why they put the fixers with character models and levels in the game.

[@Guthixian_]

@@grueti21 There are so many people on the Steam forums asking if the cyberpsycho questline is "bugged" because it ends without a reward or a resolution 😒

[@grueti21]

@@Guthixian_ lol i didn't even finish that quest. I did like 12 psychos and just stopped because they were boring.

[@darkheathen6765]

Isn't regina Jones from mean girls?

[@lothricc8736]

I've lost count of how many times Regina Jones has called me right before a gun fight with any hostiles lmao

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

Another setle... -I mean someone shoplifted at the local 7/11!

[@thats4thebirds]

I also think the verbiage pushed by CDPR is outright gross. “We should have paid more attention to last gen consoles” That’s horseshit. This game was supposed to release on 3 different dates before new console gen even started. What would they have blamed it on then?

[@joshgroban5291]

How is that bullshit? Why do you think they delayed it again and again? To plant roses in the arasaka building? It was definetly going to be worse if they released it on time, and last gen release is already bad CDPR is a PC game company. Only witcher 3 was actually released with xbox and PS alongside it. And if you play cyberpunk, it definitely feels like a console port from PC at times. It's very obvious they were making a high end PC game and then optimized it for console at the last second. Also, everyone knew the Xbox Series X and PS5 would be a thing before they were announced, especially game developers. Come on.

[@smallhatshatethetruth7933]

@@joshgroban5291 but most people have last gen consoles so you have to optimise it for last gen consoles. especially when it was announced in 2012 was it?

[@SilentGhost91548]

@@smallhatshatethetruth7933 the game was announced in 2012 but actual development didn’t start until late 2016. Meaning they were going to development the game for next Gen consoles anyway.

[@joshgroban5291]

@@smallhatshatethetruth7933 dude, announced in 2012, i doubt coding and game design started in 2012. Witcher was still a thing. not that CDPR is excused, but as a pc game company they made a pc game first only to turn it around into a bad last gen console port.

[@smallhatshatethetruth7933]

@@joshgroban5291 well they announced it too early, they should have announced it as they were finishing the Witcher. Yeah they should have never said the first release date. How bad must have it been then?

[@qbel4255]

One thing about W3 and CP combat: enemy variety. I know making them varied in CP is harder as you just cannot come up with different monsters. Still, Witcher was much more creative

[@Yusuke_Denton]

You probably meant visually, but they should have wildly varying behavior and tactics based on level and intelligence stat too.

[@budlikycz2445]

What good is enemy variety when your only means of attack is light or heavy. With a fucking random animation bullshit tied to your attack. How the fuck can I know if that white haired fucker is going to do teleport dash to attack or roll and attack. How can I know if he attacks quickly or he will spin like a retard and attack slower. W3 have one of the shitiest combat gameplay I have experienced. Fuck that game.

[@stanners1714]

@@Yusuke_Dentonto be fair, even mechanically it’s way easier to make varied encounters within the bounds of the Witcher universe. There’s a pretty decent number of fights in the Witcher that require at least some consideration for the specific abilities of the monster you’re fighting (think flying, charging, the leshen’s vine and root type abilities, and bosses like the caretaker and detlaff).

[@stinkbanana2522]

They should have slapped Early Access on it, blamed corona and everything would have been fine. Should have been like "Hey it's not done, but we know you're sick of waiting so here's EA, it's mostly done" on the yellow screen of death and that would have been it.

[@Artemis583]

Yes, this! Totally agree. It works for Larian, it would have worked for them.

[@astrojeet]

Agreed. But it's easier said than done.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

Problem is they went gold in April so they were kind of in the middle of a web of lies already by that point

[@astrojeet]

@@cyberninjazero5659 They went Gold in October not April.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

@@astrojeet huh, they really should've taken the opportunity to blame the pandemic and only launch in Early Access (Assuming they needed more money that badly after 4 years of development, though in that case maybe not spending 14 quadrillion in marketing and focusing more on the dev side would've helped)

[@marcino457]

This is a good video, but the whole "RPG or not" point felt like a huge strawman argument. Nobody's arguing that Witcher 3 is a better RPG, the general consensus on the internet is that it's pretty bad at allowing you to roleplay because Geralt is a pre-written character. You're not playing a Witcher you created, you're playing THE Witcher. So you need to be limited to shallow role playing options because only choices Geralt himself would consider can be allowed. Cyberpunk is based on a tabletop game and V is a player-created character, so naturally people expected to be able to mold them as they please. The only aspect that's forced on you is your name, and that's because NPCs need to be able to address you in dialogue. You bring up combat, but that's the shallowest level on which you could role play. "Am I going to cut this guy in half with my katana from stealth?" or "Am I going to blow this guy's head off with my huge gun?" is not really a deep choice, and while it certainly increases replayability, it's not something that makes a game a good RPG. It's about shaping your character the way you want them to be as a person, making meaningful decisions based on their personality and molding them into your own. Cyberpunk has little to none of that. Your entire point centers on the fact that no matter what CDPR promised, we should've looked at their previous games and concluded that Cyberpunk won't be a good RPG solely based on that. And that it shouldn't be compared to other RPGs, only the Witcher, to determine whether it actually is an RPG. I'm sorry, but that's such a ridiculous statement to make.

[@TheMasterMind144]

Even in the Witcher 3 while you do play a predetermined character with a predetermined past and personality the game still gives you options of playing various "flavors" of Geralt. You can play a more "classical" witcher who doesn't do anything unless paid to, tries to get as much money as he can from people and generally doesn't care that much about others, or you can play a more compassionate Geralt who cares about the struggles of ordinary people, refuses to accept pay when the people paying him need the money more than him and so on. The game gives you these options in many missions, both side missions and main story quests, and there are actual repercussions for Geralt's action based on the choices you make. Sure this might not qualify as proper "role-playing" because your options are still very limited yet somehow this implementation was still miles better than what they did in Cyberpunk where around 98% (literally, people actually counted them) of the "choices" that you are given during the main story lead to nothing changing and where you can't really play anything other than a really edgy and seemingly perpetually angry V character. If we were to compare the two I'd definitely argue that TW3, while not being an amazing RPG compared to other RPG games out there, is still a better RPG than CP2077.

[@torrb420]

The whole video kind of is low hanging fruit strawman argumentation...while talking out of both sides of the ass. Complains about missing and broken features like the cop AI system, and yet state "what were you expecting? GTA? Heheheh" "you have such blind hate and overly exxagerated hype for this game" then goes on to express the very things why this game became the meme it is. "You cant call this a shallow RPG when Witcher was a shallow a RPG amd ite called perfect by the #gamers" when the complaints for CP2077 isnt even factoring Witcher 3.(witcher 1 was an actual decen rpg, witcher 3 was just a great action open world title with decent character choice and a damn well written narrative...even if the plot is meh). This whole video feels like a strawman while bringing up the very criticisms those are hitting this game with as legitmate, because its his video so it makes it more valid coming out of his mouth. You can not criticize a game for being essentially unfinished, for the same reasons we all have seen on the internet, by criticizing those who are criticizing the game for the same reasons that this video is criticizing the game for. Shit tier review.

[@endertuber8300]

All of you are so damn right, little plus: the Table-Game-like RPG component was pushed heavily even by the most recent trailers, people have the full right to criticize a game lacking almost all the features Its hype was built on by CDPR itself.

[@rusty7448]

@@torrb420 The point is that most of the critics tend to focus solely on the criticism, exaggerated by the hype and overly set expectations, without pointing out the good stuff or the fact that many other games do suffer same (or worse) "birth pains". The mood right now really is "it's sexy to be raging about CDPR/Cyberpunk." Are they wrong? Probably not. Can't deny the obvious overlooks. But if it wasn't for the hype (and frankly probably also this covid-shit), many of them would just glance over it like "the usual open-world bugs". Even Witcher 3 has many montages with how stupid Roach can be. Some of the Skyrim bugs (love the "hit-by-giant" one) are pretty hilarious, too.

[@Mac10Demarco]

This video was really dumb in many ways. Especially imo the part where he says “How did people expect a deep AAA RPG? There hasn’t been a deep AAA RPG in nearly 10 years!” Okay, well Cyberpunk trailers talked about RPG elements, different choices and ways to play. Do I even need to mention it’s based off a table top RPG game? How much more RPG can you get? Oh wait! In the beginning of the video he says he’s not gonna go off of what CDPR promised, but only critique the game as it is. He didn’t even bother comparing it to similar games but instead the Witcher 3 and claimed it’s only fair to do so (I understand it’s the same dev but still).

[@SayMy_User_Name]

The armor attributes got my character lookin like lady Gaga half the time

[@jfelton3583]

This is so annoying. However i think this is something that will be fixed

[@b3at2]

Thats because you don’t know how to craft and find crafting specs that have more desirable looks.

[@SayMy_User_Name]

@@b3at2 well thanks buddy u have a great sense of humor don’t let anyone tell u different

[@siddwitmusic477]

You can reroll the shops to get Epic clothing. Almost all pieces of clothing have an epic variant (in the shop)

[@RicardoMenson]

Stat on the armor itself dosent matter that nuch towards mid/late game. IDK if its bug or not, but single armadillo mod has more aromor than most clothes base stats. So only thing that matters is amount of mod slots (unless you want min/max and have just a little bit more armor)

[@keijidash9646]

The biggest issue I have with this game is that it’s clearly designed to give you a mind blowing experience in the beginning. The multiple pathways in The Pick Up lead you to believe that every mission will be this way. Just enough time for the positive reviews to come in. It’s not until you start a second playthrough that the cracks begin to show, and the true shallow nature starts to become apparent. This shortsighted approach SEVERELY hampers replay ability because by the time they do fix all the bugs, the propensity for people to care diminishes completely. By the time DLC does release, how excited will anyone be to play it?

[@Duran762]

Agreed until they released Edgerunners on Netflix. Amazing show that it brought many back into the game.

[@denishrg9843]

@@Duran762 Muh animooo

[@pagatryx5451]

@@denishrg9843 Malding.

[@denishrg9843]

@@pagatryx5451 coping

[@pagatryx5451]

@@denishrg9843 I dont think you know what that word means... But I guess you saw it said on Fortnite. So good response.

[@Jeremiah15100]

44:45 while I agree with a lot of what you said prior to this point, it is only cdpr's fault. This deflects from the deceptive marketing (which originally included or lied about certain aspects) and the companies changing priorities as they have grown in size and popularity (the big wigs in the company thought that they should compete outside their ability/experience by pulling from GTA primarily and from other games in lesser quantites)

[@prathamyadav2508]

But doesn't this game do things worse than Witcher 3, the AI and all? I haven't played it, just asking

[@notbanned6158]

@@prathamyadav2508 From what i have seen and played, yes, even worse is that some things from Witcher have been copy pasted ( animations is one of them, same scared held up hand animation as the Witcher)

[@MKhrome]

While the blame lies with CDPR most of all, there's no excuse for being as gullible as some people have been. In some ways it's very similar to No Man's Sky, where there were a lot of people who expected a 15 person dev (at the time) to create "the game of all games with everything ever". Yes, Sony perpetuated the hype, but the general rule is "if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is" still applies: Corporations are not to be trusted. It's ironically the very message of Cyberpunk, but this flies straight over people's heads for whatever reason. It's "breathtaking" how many people *still* don't get it. It's not like the gaming industry has done this for over 4 decades now. People blamed Atari for overhyping ET. People blamed Molyneux for overhyping Black & White and Fable. People blamed 3D Realms for overhyping Duke Nukem Forever. People blamed CDPR for overhyping Cyberpunk. How does it go? "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

[@ThexDynastxQueen]

@@MKhrome Fans certainly aren't always...savvy but I think the difference is CDPR knowingly built up a reputation that reassured them the game could meet most of it's marketed expectations even if it took longer. By using the _"Coming: When it's ready"_ line CDPR played this trust up and let preorders start in June 2019. No "AAA" company should be trusted of course but it's more understandable why here it happened VS say a game from Ubisoft where it's like...come on yall.

[@drbobcat6]

@@MKhrome The big difference is that CDPR made explicit, factually incorrect statements about what the game would entail. When presented with the opportunity to better manage the expectations of consumers, they instead doubled-down on the marketing speech and lies. Sure, I absolutely will agree that people need to take care of themselves, protect themselves from those that would exploit them, the exploiters in question nonetheless deserve scrutiny. People may take efforts to protect their homes from burglary, but that does not mean the burglars themselves are less guilty of a crime. Similarly, those in charge at CDPR are guilty of taking advantage of their customers' trust.

[@Skyfox94]

30:59 - the worst part about this are the millions of consumables. There's literally dozens if not hundreds of different food and drink items that you can pickup and drink or eat. CP2077 isn't the only game that does this, The Outer Worlds did this too and it annoyed the crap out of me and was a surefire way for me to basically not bother with the consumables apart from the health inhaler. It also wasn't ever necessary either. The only thing this does is clutter up the inventory and make it very annoying to organize your inventory. I stopped picking up loot after a certain point because I just couldn't be bothered to sort out which items could be useful and which were junk, I couldn't even be bothered to disassemble them since it might happen that I accidentally disassemble something I wanted. The game warns you when you want to sell iconic (the games version of "unique) or legendary items but it doesn't check for that when you disassemble items. Edit: 33:52 - another note on this is that weapon mods, even if they are the same (like the same type of optic) have different stats every time, some might give you a .02 second reduction in ADS time and others give you a .034 reduction. They look the same. They have the same rarity level most of the time. Why would I bother looking through all my 20 Gimlet Red Dot optics to find which one is the best?

[@arsenii_yavorskyi]

for me it's not even the sheer quantity of the loot, it's the fact that a lot of it is literally unusable due to level restrictions, and by the time I reach the required level I already have better gear.

[@Aggrofool]

I hate MMO/Destiny loot design in my single player games

[@WillFly4Food23]

It's really weird too because some Iconic weapons you can rebuild from scratch and others require you to have the base gun in your inventory. Also Skippy was literally like one of the last guns in the game I found because I did missions based on area they were in and general difficulty of said area. So finding skippy I was already max level and had 4 weapons that so outclassed it, it made it useless.

[@rockzs74r]

Breath of the Wild actually managed to make consumable meaningful and essential that everyone enjoys collecting foods and and cooking with various recipe that give various effect. Cyberpunk completely eliminate the fun on consumable by having Maxdoc and bounce back so easy and so cheap to obtain that there is no point on eating burrito or ramen And the clothing as well I can get a high quality armor without needing to look like Lady Gaga because the game reward you more for wearing clothing sets rather than just the highest stat. So no one actually mismatch their outfit just for stats

[@Skyfox94]

@@rockzs74r I agree, though in regards to the clothing, they don't even give you a preview of what it'd look like on your character before you pick it up or buy it. So often times I'd buy something for my male V and it'd be some mega tight almost leggin-esque stuff that just doesn't suit my taste and looks like it was made for the female V. In general it seems that they figured most people would play the female V as she gets a *lot* more options.

[@Frank-kq4te]

People are not taking issues with The Witcher3 not being a full rpg but more of an action game, because they role play as a set character, predefined in his behavior, with no intention on customizing him like a crpg, you act like Geralt would act, and take decision that Geralt as his own character would. On the other hand, cyberpunk features a first-person character that's supposed to merge the player in the character they are playing, fully customizable, with lifepaths and so on, yet there are no outcomes for your choices and skill checks in dialogues that does not change anything in the game. Yet you are supposed to role a character, that you made, with a predetermined voice, tone and behavior, in a story of predetermined outcomes for the vast majority of the time. So even if the witcher 3 is less an rpg than cyberpunk, the latter should have been much more rpg by itself. The witcher is a game based on a book, with notorious characters, with a much heavier narrative claim, while cyberpunk is a game based on a tabletop rpg; here's the issue, in the witcher 3 noone expected to play a fully customizable story, while in cyberpunk the said times and times that would be the case, being able to play a multibranching story as close as possible to the original concept of the original papaer game. They even aried the creator of the paper game, resulting in a mass disappointment when the game came out to be far from what they promised, a much more railed story with less choice than fallout 4, and that's all to say. Another point to make is, when you say people should not critizes cyberpunk to be a shallow rpg, but to find a true argument. All you said to that point was that cyberpunk was more of an rog than the witcher3, without spending a word about how good or valid of an rpg tw3 is. Comparing a bad rpg to a slightly better rpg, doesn't make the latter a good rpg by its own. Cyberpunk is a shallow rpg,no matter how every other game are shallow rpg too. The fact that there are not good rpg out there, doesn't magically make cyberpunk a good rpg. Comparing cyberpunk to a worst rpg, doesn't justify cyberpunk to be a bad rpg. With this logic, people should not point out how fallout 4 was a bad rpg, just because assassin's creed origin exhist, or just because dragon age inquisition was a worst rpg, or vice-versa. And honestly, your balme on the people wnating everything was so cheap. Strawman after strawman, going on saying everybody was expecting this game to be perfect in every way and having every element known to man. That was a low point on your video. The reality, people expected exacthly what the 2018 preview told them the game would be. A deep,true rpg, with a multibranching story, a fully customizable character to the point that even your dick was in the customization. Turns out that was the most customizable thing out there.

[@TehSlice360]

Nailed it. I was really wracking my brain when he compared it to The Witcher 3, trying to prove a point. I couldn't quite formulate why it didn't resonate, but you managed to do so well.

[@xake1798]

Your concept of an RPG is the old time pixelated games where you had 10 pages of dialog on a single character, I have news for you. these games are long dead and impossible to be done on AAA games because nobody wants to read all that shit, the vast majority of people want a voice acted experience with some choices, look at dragon age origins and the latest one. the difference is astounding, the role playing experience you wanted from the first one is gone. voice actors cost money and good quality sound is memory intensive, if you want a 500gb game half the size of cyberpunk with real role playing experience you will still bitch because its too small. when you will realize that you will never get the role playing experience that you have in your head maybe you will start enjoying games again

[@TehSlice360]

@@xake1798 See Disco Elysium.

[@ciapatyciapacz5354]

@@TehSlice360 This game doesn't even have combat let alone stealth, driving or most other mechanics not related to character interactions, how is that even remotely comparable?

[@Frank-kq4te]

@@xake1798 i'm basing my definition of rpg on waht cdpr promised times and times in the many trailers and preview, that's all.

[@johnnyzen4282]

I loved the builds in the game. I did a samurai sword playthrough that was ridiculously fun and a charge rifle build that was probably my favorite, blasting fools through walls is great. Too bad that was the only fun I got out the game.

[@j0nnyism]

But the gameplay builds is the main part of the game. It’s what makes it fun

[@karlandersson8652]

Sleeping Dogs did what was described around the 55 minute mark really well. Random street situations that trigger very small questlines or missions, that wasn't marked on the map. Made the city feel quite alive.

[@marcosdheleno]

so did gta 4 and 5. for a more "rpg" comparisson, i would argue that fallout 4 also gave the world more "imersion" even being the least rpg of the main franchise. hell, the equipment system in fallout 4 was miles ahead of cyberpunk so were the skills.

[@yeahrightgetreal]

I litterally said to my friend earlier, sleeping dogs city (HK) and its NPCs felt more alive and immersive than night city.

[@mike16apha16]

i'd say the player choice in conversation and branching choice paths > about anything else for a RPG being good or bad

[@danielschinke6992]

About the shallow RPG complaints, multiple times during the several years of development, it was promised that it would be a deep RPG like the classisc ones but with a scope and budget of a AAA modern game. the game director said its main inspirations were bloodlines an deus ex. Is it an unrealistc claim to do or believe? yes. But the hype was so massive and trust on CD project was so high that it is understandable to at least expect half of what was promissed.

[@Senumunu]

they figured out the hard way that bloodlines doesnt scale. this is why Bethesda RPGs are so huge. they are bad but they at least scale.

[@lattematcha1661]

@@Senumunu Good point. Bloodline style huge open world is clearly the recipe for disaster in a triple A production.

[@strobbedelutz]

I played the latest Deus Ex one month before Cyberpunk and in what way is it supposed to be more RPG? It's really similar from a quest design and gameplay choice.

[@lattematcha1661]

@@strobbedelutz To expect Cyberpunk to be an open world immersive sim, or Deus Ex on steroid is understandable but unrealistic. Immersive sim kills studios because they are so hard and risky to develop, and an open world immersive sim with all the bells and whistles is just crazy. Cyberpunk is not quite Deus Ex but it still manages to have some of the "feel" of an immersive sim.

[@teahousereloaded]

It's a mix of people not understanding development and living only inside hype trains. Granted I play on PC, but I got what I expected and I'm insanely happy with it. - A mass effect 2 style RPG in a beautiful open world with great stories tucked in all the creases. If you followed development you heard how much the developers were fighting with creating and balancing a deep RPG with hacking gameplay. Do I wish they moved past the 'icepick' mini game into something like in the demo? Yes! - but I applaud the Devs for trying and failing and having to go back to the bland solution regardless.

[@lucifer0247]

The difference between the lootsystem in Fallout 4 and Cyberpunk is, that you can or more, even have to use that junk to dismantle it and upgrade ur wepaons or ur base with those raw materials. On the other hand the Clutter and the amount of items in Skyrim and Fallout are also there to give u a feel of a realistic world. Cause those items are part of the interior of a house, of a NPC's home, those items are part of the world They have purpose, a meaning in that world. They make sense! Also those NPCs react allergic if you just pick up their stuff , they call for guards or attack you. All that is missing in Cyberpunk, that junk has no meaning no purpose, besides sitting there for the player to steal it / pick it up. You can sell it, but not use it.

[@oKnuTo]

it definatly has a plance in the world they too make the world feel more real. thats why every enimie drops weapsons because well where sould they go and why is he running around without anything. but npcs not caring about you picking it up is really bad desinge thats for sure.

[@angeloalvarez5520]

Yeah well said

[@Witty_Jackson]

You said the game focuses more on the "punk" than the "cyber". I can only agree in regard to the aesthetic. The game and the story is not very punk. Johnny undoubtedly is, but V rarely if ever gets the opportunity. Spending so much time helping the police on it's own is enough to do a disservice to a realistic punk lifestyle. That, coupled with the inherent need and desire to earn eddies and to generally follow capitalistic norms... Just nope. Clothes and music don't make somebody a punk.

[@amberdixon4200]

Exactly. You cant be punk while giving billionaires your money

[@nicolasjosino1421]

YES! I think that NeverKnowsBest's "no politics" way of analyzing games made him miss that point, and it's just stupid to try and divorce the sociopolitical context on a media that has works like Bioshock and Fallout. If you do look at the game more critically on that aspect, you'll see that a game that claims on its own name the Cyberpunk genre is at the same time rewarding you "Street Cred" by doing the police work and basically being just a cliche mercenary, so yes, More Cyber than Punk, to me.

[@Witty_Jackson]

@@nicolasjosino1421 That was very well put. And I'm glad I'm not the only one who thought that way about that element of the game, it was very frustrating to see such a lack of understanding of a political stance so integral to the story the game was trying to tell.

[@marocat4749]

I heard something from anothe its very cyberpunk, but more revealing and setting out with the company, as a game company and that faults and ... . Which is the companys fault but probably a wakeup call, but at cost of studio red

[@TheMettaur]

Yeah, this just reinforced what I already saw from the game: it's got the cyberpunk visuals and setting, but barely any of the genre's style of storytelling.

[@ReisseT]

Was the first song in the bug montage * where is my mind-Pixies * but in a arcade style? It was really nice ! :)

[@soapmcsoaperson]

Here you go mate kzbin.info/www/bejne/rGGUomNngceKsKs

[@sebastian.victor7461]

I knew i recognized it

[@ReisseT]

@@soapmcsoaperson Cheers!

[@ReisseT]

@@sebastian.victor7461 Its a masterpiece of a song

[@armstrongcanon7833]

@@soapmcsoaperson Thanks soap.

[@blindswordsman27]

43:44 I kinda agree, but I also don't think that the expectations were that unreasonable. I mean you could say the same about the Witcher 3: "It wanted to be everything: an rpg, fighting game, a card game, a detailed world, branching story lines, horse racing, crafting, romancing, etc" Witcher pulled those things off. All people wanted was for CDPR to take what they've learned and expend on the RPG mechanics a bit more as the logical next step. I think that if they hadn't switched genres so radically (i.e. from fantasy 3rd person swordfighting to futuristic 1st person shooting) they could have easily managed to add things like character creation, customisable houses, stealth, etc. to make it an rpg almost everyone would be satified with. The real issue seems to be the fact that they basically had to begin from scratch with this game. Virtually no assets or animations from the witcher could be reused due to the genre switch and they had no experience with shooting or driving. They should've either stayed with the witcher franchise or given themselves time to transition to a new genre. I think that with just a little bit more time, CDPR could have delivered on all of the "unrealistic" promises, because in a lot of ways, they got pretty close of pulling it off.

[@ionutluchian9720]

THIS! I especially agree with your point regarding the drastical switch from 3rd person Medieval Fantasy to 1st person Sci-Fi.

[@infinitedreamer9359]

it is pretty clear that at some point the dev team bit off way more than they could chew.

[@nomorepartiezz]

I agree. It comes across as disingenuous and honestly almost gaslighting to try and convince everybody that its our fault for setting our expectations too high. The part where he listed off all the things we wanted the game to be in an obviously sarcastic and mocking tone was annoying. Yes it sounds dramatic but at the end of the day what he listed is basically the witcher 3 but with some more immersive elements and improvements. I dont think that’s unreasonable to expect from one of the most successful and hyped up developers of the generation six years later. He acts like it’s unreasonable to compare it to GTAV when that game is 8 years and two console generations old.

[@blindswordsman27]

@@nomorepartiezz Couldn't have said it better myself!

[@egressoutofthedark]

Rewatching this on Christmas Day 2022, as Christmas time always reminds me of Cyberpunk. With some time between my last watch (nearly 2 years), what stands out to me is the thing that CDPR did accidentally without meaning to, is create the first video game that feels exactly like the modern day experience. Constant spam calls with jobs you don't want from people you don't know telling you about things that don't matter, the endless accumulation of a never-ending and constantly more abstract avalanche of loot, the daily overwhelm of information that seems very important in the moment but is completely forgotten in the next, the gamification of every aspect of human life. They didn't mean to do it, but in their failure they gave us the perfect mirror of the society we ACTUALLY live in. Because our culture schizophrenically suppresses the reality of our lives, of course it was alienating to see it and experience it in the medium of video games, which is "supposed" to be smooth and frictionless. Of course we got what we asked for (with all the issues and glitches that are features of modern society, not bugs) and freaked the fuck out about it.

[@idnintel]

Hey bro, when I see an intelligent comment I like to point that out and would reply further in depth but this is an insightful and coherent understanding of the times we are in.

[@Yusuke_Denton]

@@kosmique I love the game but "flawless", really? Even without bugs I would consider it a flawed gem.

[@sunbather1576]

There isn't enough choice in the game to be a creative, sandbox-y RPG; and the environment is so illogical and lifeless that you can't speak of an immersive RPG either. (The lack of a believable and living world also inevitably leads to a comparison with GTA V since that game was so much better in hiding its tricks (distant cars are 2D models e.g.) than CP2077. And to remind you: GTA V was released seven years ago...) What we eventually got with CP2077 is a graphically stunning (albeit sometimes unbelievably ugly) and story focused action adventure (it was even advertised as such lately) with RPG elements. However, those "elements" you can find in Borderlands 3 as well.

[@stephendelavega4488]

Not all RPGs have to be sandboxes though, that has always sounded more like a characteristic of an immersive sim. Also, it would be unfair to the systems of 2077 to compare them with borderlands 3. BL has always provided fairly shallow systems, and gameplay wise they only affect how you approach combat, which is still the focus of the game.

[@truedps8]

.....Borderlands is an RPG. Not the most in-depth RPG that is for sure, but it is still most definitely an RPG. More of an RPG than Witcher 3 is in fact.

[@Senumunu]

its not a sandbox

[@sunbather1576]

@@stephendelavega4488 Dude, I didn't say RPGs are that OR that. But in Cyberpunk 2077 you clearly have approaches in both directions but they both don't work out since they were left unfinished..

[@sunbather1576]

@@Senumunu Didn't say that, did I? In fact, I lamented just that fact that it is not a sandbox. Why is reading closely so hard for most people?

[@brucel337]

Concerning the "is it an RPG" question: As any look on a witcher wiki will prove, there is significantly more branching - i.e. player agency - in the story of TW3. CP77 has it in the maelstrom flathead mission - which served excessively for PR purposes - but then simply failed to follow up on it. In fact, this pattern - showing something interesting which then turns out to be the only instance of said highly advertised aspect - seems rather common with CP77, and sours the experience noticeably. It's almost always "just barely good enough", and very seldomly excellent. But just barely good enough is not the stuff memorable games are made out of... Speaking of which: I find it unfathomable how in 5 years, the UI - which was never considered a strong point of TW3 - doesn't seem to have evolved at all. So now we got this cumbersome looter shooter mechanic compounded by this clunky inventory management (fully repopulating upon every transaction while warping positions) to keep us "busy" for hours. Quality gameplay? Don't get me wrong: The artistic assets in this game are golden, I can absolutely see that. It just makes me mad that they're (over)burdened and ultimately buried by this uninspired and second-rate game design.

[@infinitedreamer9359]

Fair point

[@teahousereloaded]

The design team of the Witcher left due to the bad crunch and took the experience with them. CDPR is famous for poor working conditions and the UI is evidence of them loosing know how. I still love the game but have to agree your point. The UI is a step back from the patched Witcher UI back to the early TW3 days.

[@robzs8388]

stopping near the beginning of the vid to say holy hell what an amazing pixies cover as you're getting into it!

[@Sadarak1980]

Just finished this on ps5 and purposefully avoided it since release, was a great experience start to finish and loved the game. If the game came out in its current state on release I think it would have been a solid 8/10 for most critics and people. No it didn't live up to hype, nothing could, it is a very good game though. And thr city itself deserves awards for its design.

[@stinkbanana2522]

Narcotics should have absolutely been in the game. It's such a missed opportunity. They could give various stat and combat buffs.

[@glowerworm]

... You literally huff an inhaler to heal. And Brian dances are an addicting high, like a drug

[@chodori2041]

Fallout was doing it decades before, and it wasn't a seemingly integral part of the wasteland compared to Cyberpunk. There's not much of an excuse for that oversight.

[@lrc4263]

@@glowerworm except that’s to HEAL, and you can’t do Brains Dances unless they are a part of the story. You can’t even use the ones you buy.

[@Digital_Construct]

I think that was removed, they had something like that

[@glowerworm]

@@lrc4263 I don't know what you're expecting, they can't make an infinite world without procedural generation, nor can they make hundreds of little cutscenes just so players can watch snuff films and porn

[@Sailorjeffro]

I agree with a lot of this but before you continue to blame consumers and continue down this thought path of "You should have known" Go back and watch the 2018 48 minute gameplay demo and the things they specifically said the game would be, then you can make a follow up video where you drop this whole "You should have known" Claptrap. To quantify, i enjoyed this game but i want to play the vision of this from 2018 rather than what we got. I do agree a lot of the backlash towards CP2077 has been really hyperbolic but CDPR never rescinded any promises nor did they make any attempt whatsoever to ground people's expectations after multiple delays and obvious goals they were unable to hit based on the version of the game they released.

[@Jules-je6fm]

True, as much as i agree with most of what he says, we can blame a good part of the backlash on CDPR itself. Even though it was written on the wall, they heavily marketed the game in a way that didn't reflect the final product, bloating the expectations and curiosity of millions. Yes some of the critiques are exaggerated and yes we should have lowered our expectations, especially after so many delays, but the lies and false promises of game changing features from the management and PR team did left a sour taste in the mouth of everyone.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

They did rescind several promises (Wall climbing, Apartment customization/multiple apartments). But the promises people really cared about (Choices and Consequences/Quest interactivity) where silently taken out the back and shot

[@void4582]

Fudge muppet made a perfect video on cyberpunk

[@Nyles_FS]

I think people see how much isn't there, that they fail to see how much there actually is. Also, of course the game is going to look a bit different and have cut content after two more years of development, why are we acting like that's a new thing?

[@cyberninjazero5659]

@@Nyles_FS Ignoring the promises the barely implemented features that are in the game and the botched mechanics bring up separate reasons for complaint. People have already mentioned the A.I's non-existent Pathfinding. Even if there wasn't a single trailer or Press release that would've been shit on the exact same way it is now because that's an obviously unfinished feature in the final game. The terrible vehicle handling is another aspect that you can't blame marketing for, if people can drive in a game (and the game is in a large city) they're just going to expect the driving to be fun. The loot system is horrendous all on it's own and there was little in the way of marketing talk about that except for style and fashion I guess which made people want a transmog system but that only applies to armor the weapon systems complaints stand on their own. As for questing again if people just came out of Witcher 3 with no promises they would expect choices and consequences, if we ignore that CD PR was making it then they would still expect not to be forced into combat encounters in missions. For me this isn't about what was promised it's just about what's there and how it effects the experience of the game as it is

[@metaldong6974]

Maybe deep AAA RPGs are dead, but that doesn't mean they should or have to be. When the marketing advertised that your choices would matter greatly and have a large impact on the story, and mentioned branching pathways to progress through the story, I was at least hoping that there would be actual branching pathways and endings that relied on your choices throughout the game rather than just a selection at the very end of the game. The lifepath system doesn't feel meaningful to any real extent, not to mention the other parts of the seemingly scrapped "origin" system they showed off in the E3 demo footage. Perhaps it was too much to hope that a decade's worth of advancement and a (presumably) higher budget than Dragon Age: Origins could allow us to get a game that handled meaningful backgrounds and their impact on the story similarly. But hey, if you give up hope you just cynically expect disappointment with every new release. More than that, I wished that there was a way you could actually save V. Thematically, the endings all work for the setting. But I can't help but ask "where's the meaningful choice, exactly?" when in the end, no matter what, there is no way to save yourself/V. V puts it best in Mikoshi; it all feels like it was for nothing in the end, if you're focused on trying to save V. I still enjoyed the game for what it was, but it was not what we were promised, even if you tempered your expectations and didn't expect to get New Vegas + DA:O + GTA + Deus Ex all in one shiny package. If you *just* hoped the "choices matter" part of the advertising was true - it's hard to say it's the consumers' fault for being disappointed when they didn't receive what was promised. I guess the writing really was on the wall when they changed the description from "RPG" to "Action-Adventure story".

[@aetranm]

Really, all endings do point to "saving V", as they all take you to the Crystal Palace. Even the nomad lifepath heavily implies that you're going there, and mentions that they have an idea about how to save you. That might be related to future expansions.

[@NicholasLongART]

It's interesting. I was hyped for the game since 2018 when they showed off the gameplay. I learned more about CD Projekt Red through Cyberpunk. I began to become familiar with their works on The Witcher series, and their reputation. I wanted Cyberpunk 2077 because of their setting, story, and characters that seems interesting to me. I asked for it on my birthday, it was pre-ordered, and delivered to my house around the release date. When I played it on the PS4, I didn't expect the game crashing, bugs, glitches, and all sort of problems. That game was my first experience with CD Projekt Red. Yet, I tempered my expectation throughout my playthrough. I found that I enjoyed the characters, the story, the gunplay, some part of the RPG element, and the exploration. There are problems, no doubt, but I've realized that my expectation were too high. So, I took a step back and look at the game for what it is. Comparing Cyberpunk 2077 to The Witcher 3 is a smart move. You're comparing two games that are made by the same studio and that gives room to judge Cyberpunk 2077 based on CDPR previous work rather than what has been made by an entirely different game companies. Don't get me wrong, Cyberpunk 2077 is guilty in some part of its downfall, but I think the game were lit on fire on release and people continue to pour gasoline on it without having to be more critical. I think your video have managed to be as objective as you can make it and tried to give a critique that it needs. Nothing too unrealistic, but not too lenient. I very much enjoyed your video and I personally agree with points that you have made in the video, even if some of them had not occurred to me.

[@trybunt]

We are typically not very rational, so it's good to see that you could step back, and judge the game for what it is, rather than judging against your expectations. I think that people's reaction is a perfect example of people jumping to conclusions (like say: the developer tried to scam everyone) then looking for evidence to support that conclusion while ignoring any evidence that would falsify it. Before we know it- there's a conspiracy, and everything is evidence, even the stuff that goes against the conclusion, that's just evidence that the conspiracy was trying to be hidden... Even people who are usually quite skeptical or good critical thinkers, will forget how important it is to falsify their beliefs when they jump to a conclusion like this. I genuinely wish that critical thinking skills were taught at school. We are certainly going to need them going forward. Rant about fallacious reasoning over, lol

[@Zibizabaz]

“Never knew consoles could crash games” Laughs in fallout🤣

[@AGameOdyssey]

Vampyr crashes far more than Cyberpunk 2077, and most new games do. I had frequent crashes on all of Valhalla, Legion, FFVII Remake, Mafia II Definitive Edition. However, I had nowhere near the level of bugs shown here on my PS4.

[@eldersrollsapprentice6306]

Kind of sad how quality standards have gone down.

[@AGameOdyssey]

@@eldersrollsapprentice6306 I don't necessarily think it's a case of quality standards, but the correlation of more widespread use of video games and technological advances that make AI systems and game mechanics more taxing and harder to predict. Indie games get the advantage of early access and betas that allow the public to comment on bugs and for the devs to iron them all out before an official release. This is not the case of AAA games who rely on in-house testers, who will probably not be using overused consoles and computers. I've haven't had many issues on my base PS4, not because I'm lucky, as I'm reading the same code as everyone else, but because my console is barely two years old and well maintained. It stands to reason that old hardware that has a lot of mileage on the clock will struggle to keep up with late-gen games. I'm not saying it's perfect on my PS4, but it's nothing like others have experienced (I didn't see one T pose for example in over 150 hours of gameplay, nor was my progression ever halted, it was mainly minor glitches, bugs and the occasional crash). And again, the game uses the same code, so the issues are hardware related, meaning the hardware is struggling to render the game as intended. In-house testers will not be using old consoles or badly maintained ones, however, people giving feedback on early access and public beta games are using a wide range of hardware that gives the devs a wider perspective of a game's performance across an array of machines. AAA companies would absolutely benefit from the early access cycle afforded to indie games, whether it is feasible or not is another matter.

[@billy6479]

@@AGameOdyssey didnt have the same amount of bugs, but my game crashed more than 50 times after playing for 100 hours. Still loved the game !

[@BoroMirraCz]

@@AGameOdyssey The fact that console scores of the game are so low and that the game was pulled from the stores show that your experience is a rare one. For most people this is the game that crashes the most and for many the ONLY console game that has any crashes.

[@kylerburch3664]

I just finished the game. I have a decent PC and performance wise, I had very few bugs. This game was over hyped, however, the hate is also drastically over exaggerated. I much enjoyed the game, theme, setting, characters, and story. NC was a deep rich world to explore. Characters were for the most part, well written. Great analysis! Off to “the major leagues”!

[@andrewmah2962]

I just got past the part where that one guy died

[@consecrated2718]

I love the lore Bible that’s inside the game.

[@aetherscousin3372]

Explore what deep rich world? Night city felt fake, you couldn’t talk to NPCS, you couldn’t go to restaurants, there was nothing outside of sex shops and ripper docs to interact with. In Skyrim I could go to the tavern, talk to npc get a quest, get to know the bard, leave, go shopping, and talk to every single person on my way out. In night city, I could run and see all the npcs disappear because they took me running as a threat, get automated lines from them if I tried to talk to ANY of them, walk up to fake stores and stare through the window, and hire a prostitute. What deep rich world is that? What could you do? Did you go to a cybernetic zoo, enter a bank? Get a flying car?

[@dannyoh5219]

@@aetherscousin3372 agreed, there is nothing of substance here. Wide as an ocean, deep as a puddle.

[@del46_60]

How do you have "very few" bugs? I had to reload save files a dozen times because of bugs making quests impossible to complete. Every time you drive faster than 150 mph in a crowded area, V starts t posing on the roof of the car. Every vehicle i went to buy was sinking into the ground. There were sections of the street with missing textures showing the empty void beneath the map. I had enemies turn invincible after I used the system shock quickhack several times. If you just jump and land a certain way, you get flung forward by the game's fucked up physics. These are all well documented bugs that you can find by Googling, and we are all playing the latest versions of the game (at least I am). I have an RTX 3080, Ryzen 5600X, and 16 GB of RAM. It has nothing to do with your specs.

[@FoulballProductions]

I do think part of the disappointment in this game is CD project reds marketing. They made it sound like it would be the most interactive, most customizable, most choose your own adventure game in history. At least that was the impression I got, and this game is not that.

[@Flambingo]

I liked the game. It gave me everything I enjoyed from the Witcher, served on a new plate. CDPR fuckin lied tho that's non-negotiable I'm not a fan of the fact that discussion fixates on what the game ISN'T, rather than what it IS, but I see why. And while I don't think the game deserves it, CDPR definitely does.

[@Dante-uj5pc]

Nicely said. I echo the sentiment 100%. The sheer dishonesty and manipulation disgusted me, I’m not giving them one cent, even if the game was perfect.

[@Flambingo]

@@Dante-uj5pc Based

[@arsenii_yavorskyi]

what's also worth keeping in mind is that CD Projekt sold out to China.

[@Flambingo]

@@arsenii_yavorskyi You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become a villain CD Projekt went from a small studio ripe with passion and amateur's wonder to just another Ubisoft

[@arsenii_yavorskyi]

@@Flambingo I don't think they're Ubisoft just yet, but they definitely crossed the metaphorical threshold.

[@aikam007]

Hacking and stealth are absolutely broken. Enemies have literally no counterplay.

[@WillFly4Food23]

I mean the melee builds are the only thing they really are programmed to deal with....... if you play any gun build you will get tech weapons that can fire through entire buildings. Ping is the easiest quickhack to use. Ping all the enemies blast through several walls/servers/vehicles/nuclear weapons/seven inch thick bulletproof glass/random babies napping three houses down, and kill entire bases without stepping foot in them........ that means any build that uses a gun is inherently broken, because you get these guns really quickly. Monowire is really weird because it goes off blunt weapon damage? And isn't used as a garrote finishing move. You could have solely used it as a way to enhance flashy takedowns and silently taking out more than one opponent instead of turning it into a weird melee variant. Gorilla fists do not do anything as advertised except maybe increase melee damage by a bit. Someone told me they give another takedown variant but my game must have been bugged because I never saw it. I also never found the rocket arm variant that allows you to shoot rockets sooo don't know what was up with that.

[@freezerounds]

Legendary ping in particular is broken. I can literally just sit still in some random corner and turn off all of the enemies like a light switch. I barely use any weapons. I also think system reset is overpowered. I was able to take on very hard, high level quests and enemies with just that hack alone when I was under level ten. It's kind of ridiculous how easy the game gets *on very hard difficulty* if you go with a high intelligence character.

[@Digital_Construct]

Fruit Loops like real life! Lol, sorry my bad 😂

[@JohnSmith-ox3gy]

Pretty much any efficient build just melts the NPCs.

[@sasscastle5584]

One thing I think you missed about Gigs when you say they aren't usually narratively relevant is that if you read the mission texts and console messages you'll find many if not most of the side gigs tie together in some way. You'll hear about a local gang in an area you break in and take out. In that area you read a log and see a specific Name as the sender. Later on when you get higher street cred you'll occasionally get missions that lead you to these named characters, or a related mission of an opposite faction only to see that name reappear and seem to be playing both sides. Maybe you end up saving characters for one gig who you might recognize from files in another gig. While not every side gig has this feature of subtle, missable connections enough of them DID that I walked away from gigs being quite shocked at how much detail went into them. You learn about the history of some of the Fixers with seemingly mundane side gigs and their relationships to other characters in the world. One specific example that culminates in all these points I've made is when you save the journalist Max in a side gig; you learn about his connection to Regina and Regina's history as a journalist and Max is mentioned in several other gigs/terminals as a nosy "righteous" journalist in missions relating to both corpos and gangs. Again, while not every gig is as intricate as this most of them have at least one or two of these aspects that are easily missed!

[@ranro7371]

Tasty pc is the only decent review I've seen for this game.

[@jacketofthe80s13]

@@ranro7371 so ya watch one reviewer?

[@jacketofthe80s13]

They need to show not tell. Atleast 10 good gigs the rest copy paste

[@jacketofthe80s13]

@@ranro7371 that's not good to only watch one reviewer that's biased and tip toeing around the situation fucking cancer my god

[@Robert399]

I wasn't aware that people considered The Witcher 2 & 3 RPGs. But I think the reason people enjoy the narrative choice in those (and games like Mass Effect) and complain about the lack of roleplaying in games like Cyberpunk 2077 (and DA Inquisition) is that they promise meaningful expressions of character, which they don't deliver. The Witcher and Mass Effect don't pretend. I agree that "RPG" is the wrong term here but I think what these people are looking for is narrative freedom, not mechanical build variety. You can decouple these things and on the one hand get games like Pyre and The Walking Dead and on the other get linear immersive sims (like Dark Messiah).

[@epilisium]

Ok that is just bullshit lol. If you actually go to Mass Effect's website they say "all of your choices are gonna shape the story" or some shit. Same with Witcher 3 and any other RPG so that is why people don't actually take that phrase seriously.

[@Robert399]

@@epilisium My post clearly said that The Witcher and Mass Effect series offer "narrative choice" without pretending to offer "meaningful expressions of character", i.e. they *don't* pretend you can roleplay as anyone you like. Cyberpunk does and doesn't deliver on that promise.

[@epilisium]

@@Robert399 Yeah but how does Cyberpunk promise that as opposed to both of these titles?

[@Robert399]

@@epilisium I suppose by letting you choose your own character and backstory, and being 1st person. Idk, maybe it's purely a subjective game history thing but Cyberpunk looks to me like it's emulating Elder Scrolls or 3D Fallout games (in terms of game design, not setting or aesthetics obviously), whereas Witcher, Mass Effect or Deus Ex HR feel more like console 3rd person action games with added narrative choice.

[@epilisium]

@@Robert399 You can change your backstory in Mass Effect too

[@Creamouz]

About this whole "Is this an RPG or not"-thing; I think people mostly seem to judge this by dialogue options and their impact rather than differences in your build that affects gameplay, in that sense, witcher 3 seems to be the "deeper rpg", which it doesnt if you mainly think about build variety instead, like you did in this video. I've only watched one playthrough of this game but dialogue options seem to have very limited impact for the larger part of the game, I think that's where this complaint comes from. Other than that I personally can't take it serious as an rpg since nothing reacts in any remotely realistic way to what you do as the player; even if you go in guns blazing and upload the virus to that float in order to get takemura a chance to speak with the arasaka girl, this already on alert super corporation doesn't cancel the parade or do anything that seems like a reaction to the maniac that just took out an entire base on his own. Stuff like this just takes me out of the game completely. I honestly expected you to talk more about this but I suspect that other people are already doing this enough so there seems to be no need to.

[@fjdhaan]

No, I think it's mainly down to the lack of immersion / ease with which you're taken out of it because most of the world cannot be interacted with. It also doesn't help that nearly all of the quest-givers are replaced by phone calls to the same boring fixers, and that the world is too big to connect with 'the problems experienced by people who live in small hamlets' like most quests in the witcher were. Novigrad or Oxenfurt or Kaer Trolde were all manageable, but metropolis NC is just too big and bloodless, though this gets a bit better once you get to know it. Still, the atmosphere is off.

[@MisterTonyG]

The narrative of tagging every game as an RPG is getting old. I understand that most games have 10 thousand tags so they have the ability to appeal to a wide audience, but it would be nice if companies were actually realistic about what their game is about. If Cyberpunk is a deep and engaging RPG then Doom 2016 is an RPG. I've been gaming since the days of DOS before GUI was mainstream and it was around the Xbox 360/ PS3 era when gaming companies began tagging RPG onto everything. It is true that many open world/action adventure games do have some RPG lite elements, but they are a far cry from a traditional RPG. Might as well call Doom 2016 an RPG because you can customize your guns. Oooo so in depth. Oh well, I can't help but laugh at the whole situation. And I don't see the point of replaying Cyberpunk when your choices mean absolutely nothing and the outcome is always the same. Cyberpunk isn't a bad game but it's not a great game either. The epitome of mediocrity.

[@jakobsylvester7449]

@@owlfrog That's what rpg actually stands for. Video games watered it down to "build or stats" which is only half of it. You could say that the witcher series focuses on being an rpg in which you cant change your class but cyberpunk is in no way an rpg and from my experience everyone talking about "builds" is kind of lying to themselves. I pretty much speced a balanced character and pretty much could use nearly everything what changed gameplay. Everything else were just stats boosts for more dmg/more defence which I never needed even on the highest difficulty. I'd even go as far as saying that gameplay changes more in witcher 3 on higher levels since you actually have to use potions, oils and bombs against specific enemies. Never had to do anything of the sort in cyberpunk.

[@jakobsylvester7449]

@@owlfrog Also I think neverknowsbest never played a pen and paper in his life hence he only knows what "video game rpgs" seem to be nowadays.

[@drakeshade3521]

A lot of the reason why people are complaining about cyberpunk 2077 it's because they're comparing it to the type of RPG game got the trailers in the market and reminded them of. Cyberpunk 2077 it's based off a tabletop RPG and there are three games out there pretty old games that this reminds them of. First I will go over the ones people are most familiar with kotor 1 and 2 the marketing reminded people of these games because of 2 reasons first well not based off a tabletop RPG the kind of are as the style they have is very reminiscent of D&D and the Star Wars tabletop RPG secondly these are the granddad's of RPG games and it's basically a gamer's gold standard for what to look forward to second game Gamers we're reminded of when cyber Punk 2077 marketing came out is vampire the masquerade bloodlines this game is one based off of a tabletop RPG as well however it came out 16 years ago it's considered a cult classic nowadays and when people look to find a RPG this is one of the first that many old school gamers will recommend almost no game in recent years has come close to the depths of dialog and story and when cyberpunk came out this was the game that people whether they knew it or not we're comparing it to the final game that people look for comparison when the marketing came out is the gold standard of more recent RPGs Fallout New Vegas and while this game may be newer than the others it's still on par with the story and dialogue of the other games I mention basically setting the standard for modern RPGs. Now when these four gold standard games are compared( Fallout New Vegas Vampire the Masquerade bloodlines kotor 1&2) they all have one thing in common when you play the game you feel like you're the character it's not like The Witcher where you feel like you're watching a different person and these games you feel as if you're the person the stories being told about and cyberpunk 2077 just doesn't have that feeling even though it was marketed towards the people who likes that style of game. This isn't a problem in The Witcher games as the marketing did not remind people of those four gold standard games The Witcher games are different type of RPG then what cyberpunk 2077 was marketed towards so you are going to have different expectations and just based on the way the way The Witcher games were made they were based on a book series which makes a certain type of gameplay while cyberpunk 2077 was based off a tabletop RPG these two things are just fundamentally different thus people have different expectations for them

[@vallraffs]

The conclusion of the comments on the game as a role-playing game seems bizarre and pretty confused imho. It's unclear who the indignation over people hypocritically lauding Witcher 3 but not Cyberpunk is aimed at. Is it the general audience, mainstream gamers, or is it the rpg audience, the people more likely to complain about the game not being a deep and reactive rpg? The comments are especially weird because the decision to weigh the rpg merits solely on a comparison to Witcher 3 is something solely thought up and presented by this video. It doesn't point to any widespread talking point that Cyberpunk is a bad rpg because it's inferior to Witcher 3 in that aspect. The video gets pretty close to making a good point, with it's comparisons to games like Dragon Age Origins and Fallout New Vegas, or the visual examples of Pillars of Eternity 1 and Disco Elysium. But then it seems to discount the idea of talking about those games because they aren't AAA or because they weren't made by CD Projekt. This is frankly a ridiculous notion, since it demands one only treat Cyberpunk in isolation, that it be judged as an rpg in a vacuum. Seemingly deciding that nobody who dislikes the game because of the general state of the gaming mainstream and disappearance of deeper rpg game design is to be taken seriously, and that such people are being unfair to the game they bought wanting a role-playing experience. Like, saying "if you didn't like this direction of AAA games or CD Projekt why didn't you speak out when Witcher 2 came out, huh?" is such a strange complaint to level against audience reception. The gaming playerbase is hugely different in 2020 compared to in 2016, let alone in 2011. Treating the issue as though it were individual people who are not being consistent, when it is millions of people talking at once, most of whom weren't even present to speak when those earlier games came out, is the kind of reaction you'd expect from the developers of Cyberpunk as like a kneejerk defensiveness. It doesn't really work at all at defending the game in a broader context, just if you narrow your view to only look at the CD Projekt catalogue. I think it's also worth bringing up that Cyberpunk is a way bigger product than Witcher 2, which makes it a much better target for this type of criticism than the latter, if you ask me. The whole aim of the type of changes later Witcher games made was to expand the audience away from the rpg niche. If the response of the wider masses now match the kinds of complaints made by rpg purists, I would think that represents a very positive development, one that can actually change the status of role-playing games in the AAA space. This seems like a way better reaction than the kind of defeatist tone shown here, with the part of the video that dismisses deeper AAA rpgs as something that's dead and therefor apparently not worth discussing.

[@heshamshrifa5839]

Agreed completely, that entire section of the video felt bizarre and I wasn't really sure what he was trying to get at, the comparison solely between CP and Witcher 3 doesn't really make sense to me.

[@kellifu112]

@@heshamshrifa5839 Well Witcher 3 is critically acclaimed RPG, some even putting it as the best RPG of all time, even if you search the google for the greatest RPG of all time Witcher 3 is the first on list. Now obviously that does not necessarly mean that Witcher 3 is or is not an RPG, but if masses see it as a good RPG then comparing it with Cyberpunk and showing that in some areas it has deeper RPG elements, should also prove that Cyberpunk is a good RPG?

[@vallraffs]

@@kellifu112 That doesn't have to be an absolute or fixed thing, that Witcher 3 enjoys that status and reputation. Lots of games get reevaluated after the fact, retrospectively receiving praise or criticism that it didn't in the uproar of the original launch. If we are seeing Witcher 3 get downgraded now, after Cyberpunk made masses of people raise their standards and expectations for what a game should have to do to classify as a good rpg, that would be perfectly in line with what other games have gone through. Take Fallout 3 for instance. Should we really try and defend Witcher 3 simply by pointing to it's reputation from before Cyberpunk came out? After all, it may not be reflective of people's views anymore.

[@loremaster6828]

Yea he kinda used the witcher thing as a strawman, and he makes some good points throughout the vid but he brings it all back to "well people had high expectations so"

[@emilpierce4340]

"if you didn't like this direction of AAA games or CD Projekt why didn't you speak out when Witcher 2 came out, huh?" I have never played the Witcher series. why do I have to play the Witcher 2 just so i can criticize cyberpunk for being a weak rpg. if you market a game as an RPG and its rpg mechanics are weak and not very deep, I will criticize for being shit.

[@dustburnwem]

So my reasoning why this feels like a shallow RPG compared to the witcher, even though cyberpunk has more RPG depth is because in the Witcher, you are role playing as Geralt. You make the choices Geralt would make. You don't care about Ciri because of what she means to you, you care about Ciri because of what she means to Geralt. In Cyberpunk, you are roleplaying "you". Its first person, you create your character, you are referred to as V and not by a name. This sets a different RPG perspective and thus, makes the experience feel shallow. Now that we play as ourselves, we want to make more choices. Our choices. Our expectations and meaning of RPG has been shifted by CDPR with these development choices, and now we expect something different.

[@Syastsk]

I feel like this is a classic distortion of language where one takes the phrase "role-playing" too literally and twists it to mean "playing the role of any character that exists". You could use t his same idea to say that in Uncharted, you are "playing the role of Nathan Drake", or in Halo you are "playing the role of Master Chief", or any such thing. But that doesn't really make them RPGs. It's just taking the phrase "role-playing" too literally. What the Witcher 3 did was shift away from RPG mechanics for a more traditional narrative with a set protagonist which can be seen in all manner of non-RPGs, and I don't think it makes sense to say that by doing this it redefined expectations for RPGs. Perhaps you just like traditional narratives more than you like roleplaying.

[@dustburnwem]

@@Syastsk You may be right...I guess Witcher felt like an RPG because you are making choices that shape the world, but there may be a better description than simply RPG.

[@ionutluchian9720]

@@Syastsk Ok, so what makes them an RPG? Personally, after this whole debacle concerning Cyberpunk, I'm personally left with a huge confusion regarding what an RPG is supposed to mean, it feels like everyone has their own personal description over what an RPG is supposed to be. And while we're at this topic, I think it's fair to say that RPG elements like leveling should steer the game to being called an RPG, sure, it might not be the main bulk, but I guess my question really is, what is the main bulk that makes a game deserve this extremely prestigious title of "RPG"?

[@JD-ef1jb]

Its fascinating watching this now that 2.0/PL is out. Proves he was right. Great video.

[@sebi8647]

@@winghong3and the dynamic map, pretty crazy!

[@GhostandChromis]

Overall, this is a good video, but some of the arguments you present are genuinely flawed. The RPG segment is an entirely quantitative argument. You count the number of mechanics without looking at how they work. Fundamentally, what Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk are not the same. As you said, Geralt is a set character. V was purported by the developers themselves to be YOU. V is NOT you. Nor is he an interesting enough character no matter what life path you choose. Geralt being Geralt, a Witcher, informed the way the world reacted to him. The world never reacts to V, no one gives a fuck about him, the world does not react to your decisions either. The consequences to quest largely come from text messages or phone calls, nothing is changed about the observable world. In Witcher 3, you felt like Geralt. In Cyberpunk you feel like a floating camera that gets talked to. The attribute points you put into V largely don't shape who he is, it unlocks more flavor text. Again, this is what CDPR purported. Also to say "people should have just expected Witcher 3" shows complete ignorance because every game in the series is COMPLETELY different from each other. Also no, Keanu did a horrible job as Johnny. Johnny isn't a booked up, out of touch old man. He is an angry, deeply troubled man. He flies off the handle and makes decision without thinking. Keanu is completely flat in any scene that requires emotion. I will admit he's alright in the quieter, more introspective scenes, but largely he is ineffective in the role. It's not a bad game, it's a solid 7/10, but I have never played a game that seems to be so at odds with itself. The biggest lie they told was that the game would only release when it was ready and it wasn't. Stop saying that people shouldn't have expected the game would be GTA. The games open world lacks basic features that have been done by games made by development teams far less numerous and well funded. The only thing people expected was what CDPR showed, they didn't have to show this game in 2018. They didn't have to release it this year. Stop excusing this multi-billion dollar, over 1000 employee company for their failings.

[@lattematcha1661]

"The world never reacts to V, no one gives a fuck about him, the world does not react to your decisions either." If you have played the game and came to this conclusion, you haven't been paying attention. The "quantitative argument" specifies clearly why in cyberpunk's main narrative, the player has more agency than in TW3. Every side quest buddy, including Johnny, gives a fuck about V. Flavor text is also the hallmark of the classics in the silver age of RPG and it's partly the reason why people remember broken games such as Arcanum and VTM so fondly. People are losing their mind expecting this game to be great in almost every (dead) genre and this hype is responsible for the demise of the kitchen sink design approach of cyberpunk, which is exactly the point nailed by the video.

[@Vinicam]

I agree with everything you said. Comparing "RPG elements" like he did makes no sense at all when you can argue that those systems are poorly implemented in Cyberpunk, some of those like a smoke screen to give the impression the game has more meaningful systems than it actually has. The comparison between builds and how it changes your approach to combat is indeed valid, but lays flat when your enemies are so dumb that no mather what approach you choose you always break the game. Enemies have no variety in how they handle V, so most builds breaks the game by level 15-20. In TW3 your choices and preparation for combat made a huge difference and all enemies worked totally different from the other. So what's the point of having a more in depth build system on the surface when looking how it integrates into the game makes it feeling shallow nonetheless? Comparing dialog choices and giving it the same weight as the other elements was really a cheap thing to do only to prove a point. The world in CP2077 don't react to your actions in any meaningful way. In TW3 you could alter the destiny of a number of people and see the consequences instead of receiving a text message about it. Also, they made sure some regions changed or reacted to your choices in a way it looked natural. In CP2077 nothing of what V does matter at all. This by itself should weight a lot when comparing RPG, as immersion should be the priority in a game of the genre.

[@WillFly4Food23]

@@lattematcha1661 No the world does not give a fuck about V, the NPC's give hearstring sentimental video calls at the end of the game depending on your choice of ending but the world barely knows who you are. As one of the most successful solo's out on the streets you should be a legend. At max street cred you walk next to maelstrom people you've annihilated hundreds of times before and they have no clue who you are. NPC's are just coded to attack you on sight if you stray within a certain distance of you. Nobody even acknowledges you, not when you talk to Ahsoka, Takemora straight up called me an asshole despite me saving his life. It's all bullshit, I walked into a quest where they scanned my implants and told me I had shit implants just because someone wasn't expecting me to put that mission off for so long and I eventually got around to it at level 40. Imagine V the merc who at this point should be on every gang's lips as a silent whirlwind of destruction a Fixer's wet dream that can go toe to toe with Arasoka and Miltech, the guy who went toe to toe with a professional modded out titan in a hand to hand frenzy and everyone treats you as just some guy who has second hand implants. It's fucking laughable. The game keeps track of your street cred and does nothing with it.

[@lattematcha1661]

@@WillFly4Food23 What you have described are classic ludonarrative dissonance problem that is rarely tackled in a satisfactory fashion. Your critique is valid but I don't think many great game can survive under such scrutiny. TW3 certainly couldn't, do high level spider give a fuck about the master witcher who bested the wild hunt? Do auto-leveled enemies give a fuck about the chosen one who slayed the big bad Alduin in Oblivion? V is a nobody, a tryhard merc, who is just trying to survive night city ruled by corps, hell even politicians are nobody in this world, that's kind of the point. They should do something to add immersion, I agree, but is this problem really that egregious to you? How many game even has a flashed out ending+phone call+epilogue that recognize the player choice? Isn't Takemura's stubborn loyalty completely within his bushido character, especially when you have betrayed his master?

[@janesdisorder1565]

they showed this game off way before 2018.

[@karlandersson8652]

"I don't recall playing a game where it seems like a city could actually contain a city sized population" Daggerfall did this in the 90's (you can just imagine a smug face right here)

[@trblemayker5157]

There's Prototype

[@absolutew33b]

@@trblemayker5157 Love that game, it was too ahead of its time.

[@idontknowhowtojapa]

Daggerfall did it at the expense of the very core of a well-designed world. Who needs vast landscape with miles of nothing interesting or actually unique in it? Procedural generation, in the way it was done at that time, turned out to be a dead-end. This sort of repetitiveness and lack of distinct features is fine for a flight simulator, not an open-world rpg.

[@MelvLee]

@@idontknowhowtojapa If you consider Daggerfall as an adventurer life simulator rather than classic RPG than it makes perfect sense to have landscape generated. With Daggerfall unity, you can even use a mod to make the landscape way more interesting and traveling from city to city using the tedious travel / airship mod makes it almost like a driving / flight simulator!

[@marcosdheleno]

@@idontknowhowtojapa look back at when did daggerfall came out, even thinking about it is insane. it would be impossible today with all the focus on graphics. your argument about how its repetitiveness and lack of distinct features is not fine for an open world rpg really ignore how many of them was basically the same thing, because the tech just wasnt there yet.

[@kusarihaterumangdur7472]

I disagree with the way you break down what a better RPG is. You mostly seem to quantify the number of build options to determine what is more of an RPG but to me this seems like a shallow way of defining it. An RPG is a role playing game, that is to say you play a role. I think that many people view Witcher 3 as a better RPG is because they feel that it is easier to role play as Geralt more so than V. With Geralt you are given a set character who you can visually modify and see in third person, you can make meaningful decisions as Geralt that have an impact on the world around you. Decisions you make as Geralt frequently have consequences later on in the narrative. The ending of Witcher 3 is heavily dependent on decisions you made previously in the story. In Cyberpunk you are given V, a shallow pseudo-"build your own character". It is difficult to role play as V because no matter which origin story or dialogue choices you make you are still the same predetermined character on the same predetermined path. The presence of pointless dialogue options makes the game feel like its trying to fake a dynamic role playing story. The world does not react to anything you do or change with any of the decisions you make. In conversations you can almost always say whatever you want with little to no impact on the story outside of "yes" and "no" responses. Aside from the romance option, every ending for cyberpunk boils down to a screen where you choose which ending quest you want to play, just like the life path options in the prologue. I think you are placing just a bit too much emphasis on build variety rather than the role you play in the story. For me at least, the role playing elements of the story are what makes this a poorer RPG game than the Witcher 3. It feels like a guided story experience where I get to choose the prologue and ending sequence and a few pieces of audio in between whereas the Witcher felt like a world that I impacted while playing the role of Geralt.

[@peachxcube]

Excellently put

[@infinitedreamer9359]

This is accurate. The multiple build options in an indepth RPG serve to further flesh out whatever 'role' the player want to play. They are only one part of what makes one and it's weird that he seemingly has a blindspot to this. I get wanting to defend the game and say why you like it,but I dislike how he seems to have a very shallow definition of what an RPG is. I doubt people would have a problem with the game if the marketing had been a tad more honest about what this game was going to actually be in the end .But they weren't and they pretty much marketed this as not a Witcher-eqsue RPG,but one that was more in depth than what we ultimately got. The direction of the game clearly changed at some point and the team probably bit off more than they could chew. The people who were looking for that kind of indepth RPG didn't get what they were looking for.

[@rigierish3807]

It's not really accurate because I never felt any real consequences on the main quest (or side quests) when I took any path choice in The Witcher 3 (obviously, except the end of the main story, but it's exactly the same in Cyberpunk 2077, in that case). I saved plenty of people, I chose paths that have the less cassualties possible, I always tried to avoid extorquing money to people as much as possible and not taking the reward when poor people offered me something for what I did, when I could, and no consequence to all of that. I can't complain after all, I know how it is be difficult and long to implement a consequence to all of those tiny actions, but still, it's boring. And when I talk about "real consequences", I'm not talking about : "this person dies if I pick this choice, and he lives if I pick this other one", because, in Cyberpunk, this kind of choices exist too. No, what I'm talking about is picking a precise path in a quest that have consequences outside this same quest that could influence one or more other quests (obviously, I'm excluding quests that are, in fact, a single big quest divided in plenty of tiny quests). Try to pick any save you have and find any quest, look at the different path in that quest dialogues, important or not : at the end, all are connected to the same ending path or almost (there could be 2 path instead of 1, but even if there is 20 different ways to get to the end, the are all linked to the same and unique path at the end) and not outside consequences. So you may think your choices had a real impact when you played the game but it didn't. The most impressive consequence I got later in the game after taking a precise choice was an apparition of a character that wouldn't be there (either dead or somewhere else) if I didn't pick this precise path, but he didn't help me in any way for further quests or combat. And if you compare to Cyberpunk 2077, it's exactly the same. So The Witcher 3 is not better or worse about dialogues. And I think you will never find a deeper game than that because it's really time-consuming to do all kind of different path, like that. Most companies prefer spending time on graphism or the scale of the map and filling it with useless content rather than doing a bunch of different dialogue paths that only a hundredth will be seen by each player.

[@nomorepartiezz]

In this day and age, pretty much every fucking game in existence has skill trees and “builds” that let you tackle combat in various ways. I agree thats such a stupid way to measure how good an RPG a game is. By that standard you could say fallout 4 is an amazing rpg. It was such a stupid and pointless argument for him to get so caught up on. Idk why it was like half the video.

[@bardofhighrenown]

The problem with comparing Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3 in how they execute on being an rpg, is that neither of the games ARE rpgs at all. They are both uni-genre games with rpg elements. It's like comparing whether a triangle or a square is a better circle.

[@AnemoneMeer]

I just want to comment that Hacking feels completely different if you invest into it. Having the ability to trigger the Short Circuit quickhack on bullets leads to incredible room clearing feats with smart weapons. Ping gives you the ability to see through walls and hack through walls at legendary. Stealth is completely changed as enemies lose their vision upon looking at you, giving you a much stronger grace period. You can set up multiple enemies to die right as the fight starts. It affords so many interesting options for how to approach situations. The most fun I've had in the game has come from the Divided We Stand smart assault rifle, a Tactician shotgun, and a hacking/grenades build on the highest difficulty. Letting a storm of homing rounds rip as enemies drop from various hacks, before tossing homing grenades to flush enemies from cover while rushing forward to shotgun them at close range. Absolute chaos as flames and disease take people, grenades are launching enemies around, shotguns are tossing people around, and it ending as I come out the other side having taken no damage.

[@Hennesg]

17:33 I disagree, I dont judge upcoming titles not by games the developer previously released. If its a new installment of a series sure. But this is a new IP. Not only that, but the term "RPG" and phrases like "deep interconnected branching story" and "meaningful choices that have consequences" were heavily marketed and repeated again and again which was not the case in the Witcher 3. So I find that comparison lacking only because a dev might be known to make "games that play like X" does not mean they always make games like that. There are enough devs out there who release a different working and feeling game every few years.

[@TehSlice360]

As much as I respect your work and accept that this is merely your opinion of the game, it really bothered me how you spent a long time comparing the game to The Witcher 3, and using these as arguments as to why the game succeeds in certain aspects, instead of merely explaining why you feel the game succeeded in said elements. To me, Cyberpunk 2077 has the gameplay of Far Cry 3-5 and the RPG elements of Fallout 4. Sure, you can role-play a more player defined character and have plenty of choice, but the depth of said choice both gameplay and story wise is that of a puddle. Do you want to stealth or go loud? Do you want to be good/selfless or bad/selfish? Binary choices that games like Far Cry 3-5 and Fallout 4 suffer from. The Witcher 3 was never supposed to be a wide and open RPG where you had bucketloads of choice. Instead, it lets you play the story of a well-written, well-established and beloved character, allowing you to guide him and view the world through his eyes. In other words, you role-play as Geralt of Rivia. This to me is the far more engaging style of RPG, as opposed to the "as wide as an ocean, as deep as a puddle" style of RPG i.e Fallout 4. Rather than spending time seemingly playing defense and, for some reason (seemingly) spending time arguing why The Witcher 3 isn't a good RPG and Cyberpunk is, it'd be more enjoyable to see you argue the game's merits on its own.

[@TehSlice360]

As a sidenote, if you want another example of the pre-set character not neccessarily meaning "not an RPG!", see Disco Elysium.

[@cyberninjazero5659]

"Do you want Stealth or go loud" you don't even get that choice when missions force you into combat

[@Dante-uj5pc]

Very well said sir! Yes the part that compares Witcher 3 and CP2077 felt like it was just trying to go counter the majority, and show that the outrage around the game was simply the work of frustrated fanboys, and a lie.

[@SilentGhost91548]

@@Dante-uj5pc I mean, the game sold 13 million copies and there is a average count of over 500k players playing the game daily per Steam statistics. The problem with internet outrage is the people who hate something seem like the majority, when in reality people who enjoy something don’t tend to be as vocal about it.

[@Dante-uj5pc]

@@SilentGhost91548 Exactly! Same phenomenon as all the internet outrage around The Last of Us 2, but when you look at the sales numbers, you see this is all a fluke. Cp77 case is quite different though, with all the false advertising and manipulation going on.

[@cls880]

Subbed, because at the time of this review, it was easy to just jump on the hate bandwagon, but you evaluated it very fairly

[@CygnusX-11]

This channel is a gem.. the guy behind it has a special mind

[@mooncrosser]

There's one reoccurring point in the video I can't agree with and it's maybe just me (everything else is sound) - that's it's the hype that ruined the perception of the game. I was, similar to you, skipping the majority of the promotional materials to avoid spoilers. If they did deliver Witcher 3 in cyberpunk setting I'd be more than content. The result is that I was still disappointed - it was nowhere close. If I have to select one single thing that disappointed me the most is the side content of the game. Almost all of it is a variation of the same kill quest to the point where I stopped caring what's behind the question mark on the map. At least in W3 there were different kind of the activities, that did provide some respite of murdering everything under the sun - dialog quests, diagram hunts, basic puzzles, mini bosses and even smuggler caches, all had a place in the game that balanced all the violence. What Cyberpunk currently has is 95% the same as a drowner encounters in W3. It's not good game design to add 200 encounters where you just shoot the same 5 dudes over and over again in different places on the map. There are no *stories* how you found something cool under a bridge, or how you went to a tower to find a griffin occupies it, or how you were sent to find a rusty pan by an old lady. It's all meaningless. People are calling out CDPR not because they failed to deliver everything that was promised (that actually created the initial hype). People are calling them out because they failed to deliver *anything* of value besides a very pretty city. And as we all know - a cool setting itself doesn't make a game. If the game had even 1 redeeming quality where it *excelled* at I'd argue there would have been a lot more people praising it. For W3 I'd say that quality was the story telling - that's why people are willing to overlook issues with the other aspects of the game. It's not the hype that killed the game. There's a lot of valid criticism of the game besides bad marketing, bugs and crappy performance. Even in a world where there was no hype and the game worked perfectly fine on all platforms, I don't think this game would have been considered a great game - a mediocre at best. My 2 cents - PC player, I did a single play through, ~50 hours. I will revisit Night City in a few months, hopefully CDPR actually makes the game better as they promised, but I doubt that will happen - I don't trust them no more.

[@alfred0621]

Doubt they could even fix this game.

[@DanKaschel]

I haven't purchased it, but I plan on revisiting in about a year. I'll bet the game will be awesome then.

[@pixelshaketv]

The problem behind that argument is that it's ignoring one very important thing... Where hype comes from. The reason so many people got hyped in the first place was due to the Witcher 3. If this was a game released by Bethesda, I doubt people would've treated it so poorly from the outset.

[@TheMasterMind144]

@@pixelshaketv The hype came from CDPR's previous games AND all of the marketing trailers, gameplay videos and interviews that turned out to be at best misleading and at worst purposefully deceptive. If this was a game released Bethesda people would have still criticized if it was released in a broken state and marketed on lies. Ever heard of Fallout 76?

[@infinitedreamer9359]

good point

[@Edax_Royeaux]

I can't say I agree with your theory that it's the player's faults for expecting too much. I didn't expect anything and only heard about Cyberpunk when it blew up on release and everyone was talking about it. It was never a blip on my radar and I didn't know much about CD Projekt, having never played any of their games. My first impression of the game was the cavalcade of people I normally listen to talking about all the glitches and bugs in this game along with all the montages of them in the game reviews. I've never played a Witcher game so you keep telling me how terrible the Witcher games are doesn't really make Cyberpunk look any better.

[@sebastian.victor7461]

Yeah hes comparing a game that should in all sense be better

[@S....]

I, on the other hand, expected much - but I only expected what was promissed in the trailers and promotional videos, nothing more. This is not a matter of expectations, those promisses were pure LIES and we should call it like that.

[@tylerh2548]

@@S.... a watch of the Fudge Muppet review of Cyberpunk 2077 does an excellent job of illuminating just how misleading and (dare I say?) dishonest the pre-release material for the game was; it set all sorts of expectations that ended up simply not being part of the game that was released.

[@lethaltoconcrete2194]

I don't get the sense that he was saying the Witcher games are terrible at all. Nor did it sound like he necessarily thinks they're worse games than Cyberpunk. He was just providing evidence for his opinion that the RPG elements in the Witcher 3 were less robust than those in Cyberpunk 2077.

[@bena8966]

first he said that it's not the players fault for expecting too much and it's actually CDPR who tried to do everything and failed and 2nd he did not say anywhere in the video that the witcher games are terrible . are you high bro ?

[@5izzy557]

Is it only me that though the combat of The Witcher 3 was fun? activate Ouen dodge throw a bomb spread ARD, potion dodge another bomb, fire full roll sword flurry quen dodge light attack 3 time one heavy and so on. I really enjoyed my fights.

[@Venched]

i enjoyed it too

[@stevesmith5883]

Yeah, I never understood the hate for Witcher 3's combat, I've done 3 full playthrough's including DLC and never felt bored with the combat. On death march + upscaling a lot of enemies present a challenge, especially certain bosses which can one shot you (at least with the "lore friendly" build I tend to use). On lower difficulties it can be a bit button mashy and there are builds which mean you can steamroll things, but with a normal build on high difficulty it feels very good to me.

[@Venched]

@@stevesmith5883 thing is witcher 3 is so close to being flawless that haters cling on to the weaker point of the game, namely combat which is still pretty good mind you, at least among all western rpgs.

[@foxfire1112]

Obviously not

[@zzxp1]

@@Venched Flawless my ass, that loot and quest system ripped straight from an MMORPG is pure cancer, I always try to come back to the game but just thinking about the amount of loot, junk, crafting, and bizarre quest level placement fills me with dread oh and lets add a repair mechanic because inventory management wasn't annoying enough.

[@ayandas874]

Regarding the character building thing for witcher, there are actually many ways to do it. However, once you are accustomed with one style, it is very difficult to implement a bomb based build, or different forms of hybrid builds, for example. There is variability in armour types which needs to be understood as well, as well as playing with the adrenaline and stamina systems. Also, people don't really use the crossbow that well.

[@ironwolf56]

His comment that he tried different builds in W3 and they all played the same was absolutely absurd.

[@BestintheWest25]

46:00 You get it completely right about the games identity crisis, and yet you are so so wrong to blame the mass audience for the developers lack of a focused vision. Of course they wanted the “perfect” rpg, and it was on CD Projekt to set their own limits on design. You don’t get to blame the audience for their lack of design focus.

[@Valkbg]

Did you even listen? No of course not. He said the exact same thing. Stop being Mr Know-it-all and start listening to people when they speak.

[@BoroMirraCz]

Indeed. CDPR marketed this as an groundbreaking RPG. They promised everything to be better than we've ever seen. And all of that was a lie - even they admitted it by removing the "RPG" label from the promo materials. Remember Bethesda and all those Todd's alleged "lies"? Even if all of those misinterpretations were lies, then CDPR still lied like 100x more than Bethesda ever did. If Todd ended up being a liar because people misinterpret what he said, then CDPR need to have eternal label of greedy liars.

[@zeron851]

Shout out to VA-11 HALL-A that appeared briefly when he searched for cyberpunk on the store, great game if you enjoy VNs.

[@kickmuse]

I just got a audio bug and thus a crash in this video on the intro cinematic and thought it was a joke meant to happen, it's hilarious.

[@poatrykdas]

The saddest thing about Cyberpunk 2077 is that when you play it, you see how HUGE the potential this game had. You can feel how the soul the developers had put into this game is undermined by the modern corporate greed.

[@Lyvein1]

my first character started as a high int hacker with points in pistols. but after about 3 hours in i forgone pistols altogether and went all in on hacking, being able to wipe out entire compounds without ever setting foot inside. hacking into cameras making my quick hacking range near infinite, taking control of turrets make drones explode in groups of enemies all while being safe 100s of feet away just to walk through effortless after everyone is either incapacitated or dead. not balanced but very satisfying. the amount of viable builds in game is nice and fresh

[@rakim5894]

Worst thing about CP2077 isn't even the bugs, it's how average the game actually is.

[@sergnb0]

Painful but true

[@luluthe7401]

i wana agree, but i love average Games! Larian studios *before became a zombie using it skin making original sin* was my favorite company back then. is a tad below average.

[@rakim5894]

@@luluthe7401 thing is larian studios has grown as a developer and have improved each of their releases, CDPR have had 7 years developing this game and the world is less immersive than GTA IV, I just question what all that time was spent on, the world left me really disappointed.

[@sparkyspinz9897]

@@rakim5894 I think the world is totally awesome! What's disappointing to me is that we have no ways to really interact with it. All side activities just involve killing enemies

[@LN.2233]

@@luluthe7401 modern Larian that makes good games > old Larian

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

The fact that you were not aware of all the features showcased in promotional gameplays and talked about in interviews doesn't mean that it doesn't matter that they are missing. If Bethesda shows a gameplay of ESVI, would I be getting too hyped by assuming that was going to be in the final game? Come on, why this free pass about lying as a marketing strategy? Also, who said The Witcher 3 is the standard of RPG? How did you not even mention New Vegas when that was basically what this game was supposed to be? (again, not due to unrealistic expectations, but due to trailers, gameplays, and interviews from CD PR). I agree with a lot of the things said here but overall this was a bad review. The logic in the crucial points is flawed.

[@massterwushu9699]

I kinda agree with you... but he gave context at least. He doesn't mind buggy games because if his early access background. he avoided the promotional material so he didn't go in with all the hype. Look at the review as if it's someone who's never heard of cyberpunk or Cdpr.... but who the game on a whim.

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

@@massterwushu9699 sure but that's his personal opinion, not a fact that should be accounted for in what aims to be an objective review (obviously it's not going to be 100% objectivity, but that's what he's aiming for). The problem I see is that he blames people for expecting things from this game but he doesn't address the fact that those expectations were not pure hype, meaning it wasn't just things people wanted to see in the game, it was things that were in the game, according to what we saw, heard and read. So it's quite unfair to disregard that fact. I mean, he does say that he's not blaming people but CD PR managment, but he really does blame people for expecting too much. He's kinda saying that we should just disregard promotional material because that's getting hyped and being unrealistic, which is not true. Obviously we can expect advertising to bare at least some ressemblance to the final product, there's nothing unreasonable about that.

[@TheSimLord]

Wtf is this terrible take? Have you watched the video? He compares the game to Witcher 3, not because W3 is a standard for RPGs, but because it was well received as an RPG despite its weak RPG-elements. JFC watch the video mate

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

@@TheSimLord ok so you disagree with exactly 1 of my sentences, and yet it's a "terrible take" xD Yeah I agree that W3 was considered the best RPG without being very RPGy. But still, how is there no mention of New Vegas and it's branching story lines, when that was what CD PR promised about CP for years. Oh, that's right, he didn't watch/heard/read any promotional material so it's completely irrelevant what they promised or not... Right... I did watch the video but we can have different opinions mate ;)

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

@@brunettebird57 it did set up some high standards when it comes to the writing and the amount of choices in quests, which is what I was referring to, since that's been one of the most promoted (and later critized) aspects of CP. No need to be perfect to be a good role model for a specific thing. Obviously no one wants bugs, but, also obviously, if people praise a game it's for the things that were well executed, not for the flaws (which every game has).

[@mrmagoo-i2l]

Strange looking at old videos of improved games, I wonder if Starfield will be the same. I'll edit this comment in 3 years.

[@AnDr01d1g8B]

Finally someone who sees the game not all bad. I trusted CD Project would deliver what I expected them to deliver: A Witcher-type game in a cyberpunk setting with depth to be found if you go looking for it a little. I never bought into the hype. I never even cared for all those promised features. I watched hardly any trailers before release and what I saw did give me an adequate preview of what was to come. I got what I wanted. I like the game. For me it is (in its release state) better than many other AAA RPGs of the last years. I don't miss anything in the game, though some parts seem lackluster or unfinished, sure. But for those shortcomings I blame the state of the industry, media and all the hype even before blaming the management of CD Project. Bad decisions were made with good intentions, with love to the source material (and it shows). But because the whole industry began marketing around the release of Cyberpunk 2077 nobody at CD Project could even dare to move the release back another moment. Of course you have to release before Christmas, of course you have to market everything to its death and beyond, of course you have to release on hardware that was dated five years ago with customers still expecting the newest, shiniest graphics and effects, of course... And the bugs in and missing things from the game are far less impactfull for me than in any other game. I don't get taken out of the immersion, if an NPC walks through a car. It's a computer game, collisions ARE hard to code, if you want the scene to continue and not just crash out of the game or freeze the quest progress. What's important for me is that there are no truly gamebreaking bugs in there that stop you from progressing any quest or sidequest that cannot be solved be reloading a previous save. Compare that to Dragon Age Inquisition or Skyrim or Fallout 4. And the game runs quite stable. You can get it to run smoothly if you dare to lower your expectations regarding the fidelity of the graphics. I can run this game with almost constant 60 FPS on an i5-9400F and a GTX 1060ti on highest settings bar raytracing BUT I had to lower the resolution (gasp) to 1366x768. But considering I play on a dated monitor that is barely capable of true HD and am sitting about half a meter away from the screen, who cares? I don't see that much of a diffrence to true HD. And you can even get it to run on older, less powerful systems by lowering the graphics settings and the resolution to a minimum. The textures do have a feeling of VtM: Bloodlines to them at times then, sure, but you can play the game and experience the complete story. I can't say for sure what the problem with the old console generation is but my educated guess is that it has a lot to do with heat and heat management in those undersized boxes without proper ventilation. And as a last bit: You truly feel that the people that made the game understood the source material. Sometimes I wonder if this game may even be Cyberpunk on a meta level. I mean, "style over substance", doesn't that describe the feeling of the whole open world in this game where you think: "Yeah, looks cool." but it's all janky once you follow the AI and look at the details. Maybe that's kind of on purpose - just some food for thought...

[@kyshibe]

SPOILERS AHEAD: The thing with the engrams, at least what I got out of it anyway, was I think it was called "Soulkiller" because it literally kills your soul, but saves a digital copy of it as an engram. It's kind of a SOMA situation if you've played that game. At certain points in the story they do talk about whether or not the Johnny in V's head is actually the real Johnny, or just his ghost or his copy. Then at the end, the implication is, since Alt needs to use Soulkiller to "save" V, she has to kill them in order to make an engram of V. That would technically mean that the V that returns to their body isn't the same V that was born in that body. It's interesting to think about, and I almost like that they don't try to wax poetic on it too much so you can pull as much as you want from it.

[@Sir_Panicaim]

SPOILER: tbh I don't really get my head wrapped around the entire Soulkiller thing. IMO just because your mind gets eradicated doesn't mean that you are dead. Yes, the personality aka the person that loved horses and beer is dead but the body is still alive and kicking ass. You make memories every day, thus changing and growing as a person. I know that this isn't the same as using Soulkiller since it wipes V's personality before playing it into their brain again. According to the Cyberpunk fandom wiki, the soulkiller process is as follows. 1. Copy the mind 2. wipes the original personality away 3. leaving a mindless shell behind. So your body is still alive you just forgot everything you ever knew. IMO The Soulkiller process is more like Transient global amnesia "sudden, temporary episode of memory loss" So it's like 1. Knowing everything you ever knew 2. Short amount of time where you know nothing 3. Knowing everything you ever knew On another note - Soulkiller rewrites your Neural pathways so technically the Engram should repair V's brain in the end just like at the beginning making V's life normal again. I dunno maybe saying "dead" is more like a figure of speech when talking about Soulkiller. Also, I don't think we know enough about how exactly Soulkiller works to make an accurate statement on if you live or die. (saying this after researching a fictive technology for about an hour -.-) Honestly, I don't even know what this post is anymore. TL;DR I don't think you die when using Soulkiller

[@Ellymp4]

@@Sir_Panicaim spoilers I honestly don't think V should die from soul killer, if the chip is corrupting his brain to reconfigure it to be like Johnny's, wouldn't the new data on the chip(being Vs engram) then override Johnny's neural pathways to reshape it? The same chip is inside V so it's the same damage hardware is still inside it but the code it's transferring was just swapped. And since soulkiller effectively removes all "data" would it basically just implant the new data while also removing the corrupted one? Tldr I'm still not 100% sure what happened so eveything I said could be completely wrong. I did the Panama ending as male V cuz it kept me the happiest as well as her.

[@Sir_Panicaim]

@@Ellymp4 That's what I thought too. Technically it's like creating a windows 10 system restore point and instantly resetting to said restore point. No data was lost. therefore nothing of V died.

[@kyshibe]

@@Sir_Panicaim I see what you're saying but I don't think that's how it works. It is a difficult thing to wrap your head around, but think about it like this: sure, the body doesn't die, but the consciousness (aka "soul") is taken from your body and copied. It's a copy of a soul. Then the original soul is deleted and/or killed. Fundamentally, the copy is the same personality, but not the first one that was in that body. The philosophical element then becomes whether or not the V in that body is the real V or not, just as it is with Johnny. The only other thing I can compare it to is the game SOMA, I would suggest looking up that game's story/playing it if you want to understand what my reference point is, or if you just find this kind of subject matter interesting.

[@Ryu-qg8tg]

@@kyshibe its like that theory that in order to make a teletransportation device work it should disarm or destroy all the molecules and atoms, transfer it to some other place and re build your entire body. The original you died and now its a new you in other place

[@nighttimestalker]

When advertised- "ground breaking rpg with densely populated advance AI. And choices that make massive impacts on the world!" Actual game- Basic looter shooter with a few rpg and dialogue choices that makes litter impact to anything. It has some of the worst AI seen in a game recently. And the world is dead with little life.

[@sosa_moody4674]

I’m surprised this game doesn’t get more flak for its empty/dead open world....Ubisoft literally gets crucified for that

[@nighttimestalker]

@@sosa_moody4674 Yeah. And when you do see a big crowd. They're just brain dead zombies with no programming. Npcs from gta 4 are more advanced. And if you simply turn the camera, they all completely vanish

[@KharaChmiel]

@@sosa_moody4674 bet it wins best game of the year. Another brain dead decision for game of the year just like this year.

[@nighttimestalker]

@@KharaChmiel Don't forget fortnite won a game of the year award before

[@polyth0n]

Regarding your question about why some people consider CP2077 a shallow RPG, I think it comes down to expectation. In Witcher you play a predefined character, that lowers the expectations about choices. V is pretty much a blank slate, which you define. But the choices don't really impact the story as much as people expected.

[@submortimer]

I think this is modestly wrong, but it's understandable why people would think that way. V is not a "Blank Slate": V is V, and has very specific viewpoints on a lot of things, depending on your Life path. By contrast, The Dovahkin from skyrim is a true blank slate. You basically never learn about their history in the slightest. There's more freedom for expression in CP2077 than in Witcher, but not FULLY blank slate.

[@grandlancer]

People forget, Star Citizen has been "delayed until it's finished" for closing on a decade now.

[@phant0mdummy]

Star citizen is honest about it.

[@Digital_Construct]

star citizen sounds more and more like a massive scam.

[@Digital_Construct]

Pan Darius Kairos yes yes, I know, it just feels like one to me

[@Digital_Construct]

@Pan Darius Kairos mmm, really sometimes there is no place for logic with feelings. And this is not about logic either really. I can agree with You with the definition, but That's the thing, there are red flags all over, like the fact that it's in dev for more than 10years, with a massive scope, having had multiple tech changes, people investing absurd smounts of money having no results (yet) i mean ok with definitions and all, but those could be flagged as typical "merry-go-round money" scam. Specially it the game never comes out, Won't You agree on that?

[@Digital_Construct]

@Pan Darius Kairos i get your point

[@sacchittoya]

I'm glad this video was made. I paid no attention to the hype and didn't even know this game was coming out until like Dec. 8th. For me, this gave the same kind of feelings I had back in 2006 playing Oblivion for the first time. While there are issues, I've had a blast playing it and felt immersed in the story, characters and philosophy of the game. There is a ton of potential for the future of this IP and expect patches to fix most of the complaints soon enough. I hope CDPR continues with building onto this incredible world because I haven't this engrossed with a game in years and would love to see more of the story.

[@amoonia]

I’ve had nearly the EXACT same experience! I purposefully kept my nose out of all of the PR and hype surrounding the game, and going into it blind made the experience so much better. Have the exact same attachment to Oblivion from when I played it the first time years ago as well, so go figure!

[@jaxtru491]

Even with all the hype I had a blast with this game but I agree with you that this series has a lot of potential and I hope CDPR adds more to world with the dlc

[@astrojeet]

I was excited to play this game because I've enjoyed every CDPR game till date. I did not buy into the hype and went in with reasonable expectations. And I absolutely loved this game. Some of the best gaming experience I've had in years. And yes it was similar experience to when I played Oblivion.

[@Yarblocosifilitico]

Oblivion? Really? The AI there is much better and there's an actual police system. And a faction system. Cyberpunk isn't even an RPG. I enjoyed it too, but as a shooter. The story was good but where the hell did you get the feeling of freedom that Oblivion had? I'd compare Cyberpunk with Borderlands or something like that.

[@arsenii_yavorskyi]

although I was aware of the game since a few years ago, I deliberately avoided all pre-releaase footage and discussions. needless to say, it paid off.

[@Nagram_]

I thought it was gonna be Gothic but this should be pretty juicy too.

[@misterkefir]

dude.. Gothic retrospective would be totally awesome.

[@julz19]

Gothic was released in 2020?

[@peddazz2365]

@@julz19 nah it is just biggest game of every year ;)

[@lordofchaosinc.261]

Maybe the janky gameplay like Gothic (2001)?

[@peddazz2365]

@@misterkefir did you see that new mod coming out for gotic 2? looks epic AF kzbin.info/www/bejne/fYS9ZWZ-erOkZqs

[@armorclasshero2103]

I'll never understand how folks were surprised about how bad the release of 2077 was, since Witcher 3 had exactly the same problems...

[@yerite2521]

As someone who never played Witcher 3 and still thinks CP77 is a shallow RPG or isnt one at all, I tend to compare it to something like Fallout 4. I know its unfair since its a completely different developer and whatnot but Fallout 4 was also considered a shallow RPG what I do think it is. But even still FO4 manages to have way stronger feel that your character is you. Not to even mention the way weapons and armor works in Fallout 4 compared to CP77 which is in my opinion miles better. Tho to be fair armor and weapons is what Fallout 4 did extremely well. I still love Cyberpunk to bits but after I finished it the first time and realized my other playthroughs wouldnt change much since my character is always the same V and only difference being how I choose to level up my character just felt super shallow. Its weird to say but I feel way more interested in playing through Fallout 4 again than Cyberpunk. I think CP77 compares better to immersive sims like Deus Ex, Prey 2017 etc Also the lifepaths are a joke and might aswell not be there. Along with the genitalia customization. I mean cmon if I get to choose my genitals at least let me see them and have them matter :(

[@P-K-P]

It's not unfair to compare games from a different developer. That's like saying you can't compare apples from different trees.

[@stephendelavega4488]

Let's not compare apples with apples

[@yerite2521]

@@P-K-P what I meant is that the intention and design behind the game might be so different that technically they shouldnt be compared. I guess both are meant to be RPGs to at least some extent tho

[@lattematcha1661]

@@yerite2521 Of course they should be compared. Fallout 4 is better than what many people think, and this is coming from a CRPG fan. However, the narrative quality of fallout 4 left something to be desired. Cyberpunk's vision is to blur the line between linear cinematic experience and open world game. Core contents play like a linear cinematic experience without stunning attention to details. This is overly ambitious so of course they don't quite achieve that.

[@5-Volt]

Fallout 4 is a solid comparison. What I don't get is how people compare it to GTA..