Why You Missed Cyberpunk's Sidequests - Extra Credits Gaming

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🏙️ Join us as we dissect the intricacies faced by game designers in crafting expansive urban environments, from the sweeping vistas of Skyrim to the intricate cityscape of Cyberpunk. You'll uncover the crucial role of landmarks in guiding players through open-world experiences and how they can transform exploration into a captivating journey. 🎮✨
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[@danielsantiagourtado3430]

Love your content guys 😊😊😊❤❤❤

[@maxmustermann-zx9yq]

you missed the real reason a new player may have missed 1/3 of the game: bugged quest triggers I recently replayed from start and oh boy ... I cleared the entire map and only had the "point of no return left" guess what didn't show up? - anything with Kerry + Uscracks past their first mission - anything Peralez past their first mission - Claires questline - Sinnerman questline and probably a whole lot more that I don't even know about

[@TheHeston83]

How could you leave both Horizon Zero Dawn/Forbidden West off of here

[@noahjohnson935]

this is me just sharing my opinion, but as someone who's never lived in a large city IRL Night City made me explore because it was just entirely alien to me. It allowed small town farm boy like me to experience a truely massive city in a safe medium.

[@lukeh2556]

I mean there's also a lot of cities where you could do that

[@GigalassII]

"Safe" in a game where the cops will shoot you for looking at them It's literally the exact same as real life

[@noahjohnson935]

@@GigalassII safe because it's through a TV screen.

[@collin4555]

@@GigalassII my real life body can only die once

[@GigalassII]

@@collin4555 I assure you that is incorrect. A man lives three lives. The first ends with the loss of naivete, the second ends with the loss of innocence, and the third, the loss of life itself. Then there's shell shock, which is just living hell.

[@RomLoneWolf23]

One angle I'm disappointed they didn't try with Cyberpunk was using Augmented Reality overlays to enhance the world. You just know that in a real cyberpunk world with A.R. being commonplace, every business would have A.R. signage. You could even get the "spot a far-off vista in the distance" effect with an A.R, pop-up showing where big landmarks are in relation to your character, even if it's otherwise hidden by buildings.

[@The_Revanchist]

I think that's a great idea. They just barely dip a toe into it (many signs will have additional text if you scan them), but I agree that a much heavier integration would have been a huge help.

[@amdreallyfast]

From a technical standpoint, I'm looking forward to this being possible with newer game engines, but for most open world games, the limited sight distance is due to developers playing clever games to hide the asset loading. There are limited things that the expected competing hardware could handle at once. In the past, open-world games like Morrowind didn't do this and just had a "view distance" setting to handle that for us, but then asset pop-in was visible. To make things feel more natural with less pop-in, the devs started handling it themselves, and that meant limiting the number of things being loaded. An AR overlay could be cool, but if the limitation is how many things can be loaded, then the overlay would be little more than a lightweight waypoint display, which doesn't really add much. With newer engines like Unreal's Nanite engine though, this could become possible. I look forward to it!

[@Demmrir]

An example of this is the game Scarlet Nexus. I'm not endorsing it, it's pretty mid game, but the city environments are PLASTERED with digital signage everywhere which you can't turn off because all humans have AR chips embedded in their brains so AR is just reality, effectively. So everyone freaks out the one time an attack takes off the AR system which is how street directions, police markers, storefronts, etc. were displayed.

[@HungryHungryB]

They did that in once in Dogtown and another time in River's questline. In Dogtown you can view an AR model of yourself posing in clothing. In one of River's quests you play an AR game.

[@RicochetForce]

@@Demmrir Yeah, Scarlet Nexus is a perfect example of AR in the world.

[@Campanellaa]

I loved Night city more than other more "open" world (like AC Odyssee for example) because, sometimes Landmarks feels like attraction park. The size and scale of it, and the rapidity you can reach it feels fake. In Night city, I had to search for the land mark, navigate my way there without seeing it, but feeling getting closer through the strong identity of the districts, and then reach it.

[@joshuaschluter6802]

I'd recommend checking out the book "The Image of the City" which discusses how we remember cities. There are of course landmarks, but also Paths (the routes people travel), Edges (the boundaries that "split" parts of a city), Districts (Areas that have some commonalities), and Nodes (Focal Points? IDK how to describe this exactly).

[@Goatbeez]

I'd relate nodes to hubs- places people (often of varying backgrounds) frequent, but aren't visually "distinct". That could be a coffee shop, a park, or a subway station. Less visible, highly used, common spaces. I could be wrong, perhaps it's only related to transportation between zones- I haven't read the book. Thanks for the recommendation though.!

[@Ramontique]

This was totally not an issue for me while playing Cyberpunk. I don't navigate based on landmarks in real life either. I use maps/navigation systems/memory. Navigating in Cyberpunk felt very natural to me.

[@Cyryvy]

This right here. By the end I was like "Is this a joke?"

[@Micolino9878]

They're not talking about navigation being difficult. They're talking about it being boring.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

Natural sure, but not particularly conducive to exploration. I don't live in a city, and whenever I have to drive to the city, one of the things I hate the most about it is how, if you don't already know how to get somewhere, getting there is really frustrating. GPS can tell you which roads to take, but theres always the chance that the next turn is going to require you to change lanes without enough time to do it. One way streets are everywhere, as are points of no return where missing a turn adds 40 minutes to your trip as theres no way to go back. And once you get to the location, better hope the nearest parking is in front of you, clearly visible, and in the right location for you to turn into it, otherwise you can add five to fifteen more minutes to the trip as you have to find somewhere to re-apply the destination in the GPS and hope you find the parking on the second pass. This is less of an issue in games because you can just ignore the rules of the road, but some of the same frustrations apply. If you don't already know how to get to a location, getting there can be a massive pain in the ass in a way that just doesn't happen with non city maps.

[@user-jp7tw3sd3x]

@@Micolino9878 If they've really meant that, they failed to make that (valid) point.

[@CeliriaRose]

@@user-jp7tw3sd3x they made that point very clear. At no point did the video did they talk about the issue being difficulty of getting around. The whole clearly stated premise was making exploration interesting. If you missed that then that’s on you not the video. Literally one of the early points the video makes are about good landmarking controlling the pace of the experience and giving the feeling of exploration. Neither of those have anything to do with the difficulty of navigation they are both about keeping it interesting.

[@storyspren]

This explains so well why Cyberpunk felt much more open-world when I switched up my build. First I was a meticulous stealth netrunner, with the hold-for-big-jump legs because it felt like I could get a good controlled high jump for accessing vantage points, and I mostly used vertical movement in situ during missions because you can't be fully spontaneous with leaps using that, you have to predict them a little bit. Then I tried a high body, high reflex build (with some cool for stealth because I couldn't resist it), with the double jump legs, and wow. Different game entirely. Getting on those rooftops made navigation by landmarks actually possible. The movement speed and stamina from those stats made running and leaping a viable movement option, the ability to shrug off most fall damage with insane health regen allowed me to do dangerous spontaneous jumps without needing to quicksave, because if I fell I could just readjust my route rather than sit through a loading screen. Traffic was no longer just an obstacle to weave around while driving, but an opportunity to switch up my traversal; I could catch up to cars with the Sandevistan and either do a highway-speed carjacking or just get on top of it and let it take me wherever. With a build that made climbing a meticulous, heavily considered mode of movement, it felt like first-person scifi GTA with a massive city and slightly more verticality, where I bring a block-wide miasma of death with me. With a build that encouraged spontaneous climbing, the city shrunk down and sunk below me, I could see everything and actually had a sense of direction when navigating, and I didn't need that miasma to reach my enemies because I could go wherever I wanted on a whim. The netrunner could also go wherever I wanted, but doing so required planning and the rooftops weren't as inviting.

[@Fredtalica]

Yeah ive had this issue in many open world games. I used to play exclusively as a stealth build in every game that allowed for one and I always wondered why I wasn’t having a good time. I think it’s because going in blind and picking a stealth build severely limits your options and doesn’t allow for experimentation because experimentation may lead to being detected. I always suggest stealth playthroughs as a second or even third build option

[@thekamikaze789]

that explains why i never had the navigation problem. double jump, airdash and you can leap 100+ metes from building to building. i had so much fun eleminating enemys from towers or rooftps xD

[@Fuckalope-cm5dk]

Using the power jump legs was great for me and i can reach literally anything i want.

[@ItsMe-fs4df]

My major bugbear with "MASSIVE OPEN WORLD" games is that they actually feel empty. Flat non-accessible buildings, empty space and planets, huge walking distance in between POI... I mean, yeah, I am the type of person to spend hours fishing on my way to saving the world 😅 But like you say, a lot of the time is spent looking at a map and beelining it to the next POI, kinda takes the attachment out of the city. I guess for reference, when I do travel IRL for a holiday, I usually don't have plans, and will hit a city, look up and take photos of buildings, nip down every little alley way and find random shops 😂 Once upon a time I used to have everything all planned out, pre-booking all the major attractions with transport (quick travel hahaha) directly to it

[@Tuss36]

I think traversal is the biggest thing for an open world game to get right. If you don't make getting from place to place fun, then you might as well just make a mission menu and cut out the middle man.

[@naldormight6420]

I think you are on to something. Paris felt kinda stressfull when we decided to rush from attraction to attraction and that whole "bus photo mass tourism" was convenient but also very rushed.

[@helghast_7203]

That is why I like the Yakuza/Like a Dragon games, the map is much smaller, which means it feels a lot fuller than other maps.

[@jordanparker1287]

I found that when I started treating Night City like you do your holidays, I had a lot more fun exploring. Started finding weird NPC conversations and interesting little nooks. Not necessarily anything gameplay related but it just made the world feel more cool and interesting.

[@Drraagh]

There's a design bit Warren Spector wanted to make a game that was like one city block and then you have all rooms in that block accessable. tHe idea was instead of a "Mile Wide, Inch Deep" open area that you can't explore much in, he wanted "Inch Wide, Mile Deep" that you could do a lot of exploring in. There's some discussion on Deus Ex: Mankid Divided being a good example of that as to how there's stories everywhere, some aren't event quests just rooms you can stumble into or things you can see.

[@mattkuhn6634]

I haven’t played CP2077 since it’s major updates, but I played it for well over a hundred hours after launch, and one of the things that helped me was avoiding fast travel. I just did it because driving around a cyberpunk city in a fancy car is a big setting point for me, but it ended up grounding me in the world. I learned major roads like I would in real life, and for at least a few locations like V’s building I learned street-level landmarks to get there.

[@Duos222]

You wanted to listen to the radio ,didn’t you?

[@tyrongkojy]

People didn't explore Cyberpunk? Dude, I literally got lost once, found out just how much you can climb (no parkour? Oh, honey, no, it's far more than you think) and got DOUBLE lost. I also found several side quests, AND accidentally wandered into a future main quest (the parade) this way. it made the actual parade level easy, because all the mines and security were already bypassed.

[@fakjbf3129]

Before watching the episode, I would assume the shorter sight lines make it difficult to get a quick sense of where you are in a city. So the designers need to try and make different parts of the city feel distinct in their architecture but still cohesive as a whole and that’s just a hard thing to balance.

[@anlumo1]

Cyberpunk 2077 totally nailed the different looks for different parts of the city though. I can tell where I roughly am just by looking at the buildings (or lack thereof) nearby.

[@mandisaw]

Real world cities usually do have decent sight lines and ways to orient yourself. Most of these cyberpunk cities are based on a mashup of New York & Tokyo, both of which are famous for their urban planning & distinctive neighborhoods. It's just that most Western game devs are not actually from either of those places 🤷

[@ASpaceOstrich]

I will say playing Spider-Man I definitely appreciated the city more than I usually do in games, but I did have a *very* hard time telling which district I was in from sight. Pretty much the only one I could consistently pick out was Harlem, and that was entirely due to the fact that central park was just south of it, nothing about Harlem itself stood out to me.@@mandisaw

[@Trekiros]

I've had the opposite experience with Night City. I've played hundreds of hours of Skyrim, but I'm pretty sure I've still only seen like 20% of it. Whenever I open an online map of the country, I can point at any part of the map and there will be 10 locations within close proximity of that point, that I've never heard of or visited. However, I've had multiple Cyberpunk characters where I completed every single job and every single side mission. I've got a video about it on my channel, and the tl;dw of it is, I think it's because Skyrim uses "location markers", while Cyberpunk uses "quest markers". A typical Skyrim map marker would be something like "cave": the game doesn't tell you whether you'll be fighting vampires, draugrs, hags or bandits, only that there's a location over there and that adventures can be had there. But in Cyberpunk, the markers don't tell you "this is an abandonned microchip factory", it tells you "the NCPD is offering a bounty for any merc who can clear this area of its maelstrom squatters". The marker tells you what to expect. I think it goes back all the way to bartle's taxonomy: Skyrim focuses on teasing your curiosity, if you're an explorer. Cyberpunk focuses on challenging you to clear all of the content it has to offer, if you're an achiever. In Skyrim, the more you explore, the more markers will be on your map. As soon as you wander close to an abandonned tower or a druidic grove, pop, something new on your map. A level 1 character's map looks empty, but a level 40 character's map looks messy and confusing. But in Cyberpunk, the quest markers *disappear* after you finish the mission. A level 1 character's map is full of danger and confusing, but a level 60 character's map is neat, empty, peaceful. Plus, it fits the narrative of that game. You start as a young upstart merc, who wants to become a legend and own the entire city. By the end of the game, you have succeeded - V is a legend, they can take on Arasaka Tower by themselves and come out alive. Really, I don't think Cyberpunk's map design was worse than Skyrim's - they just tried to accomplish different goals. You still get some amount of exploration, it's just not the point of the game. And it's not like the game is fun or a good open world "despite" not being about exploration - it's just a great open world game that happens not to be about exploration. Because apparently, those exist, and they're a whole load of fun!

[@SovekOnivris]

As someone who is on their second character that's trying to hit all the content they can in one go (specifically before doing PL to see how that might change dialogue and quest outcomes compared to rushing into it like I did the first time round) this is exactly the feeling. This time around I even avoided my usual rush of just hitting all the main quests out of the way as early as possible and just did each chain one by one as deep as the game would let me, then all accompanying side content that unlocked, before even starting the next chain. The result was surprising. Many sidequests and missions are locked behind progress flags through the three main branches of the main questline (Rogue/Panam, Judy, Goro) and to level and rep so this caused a naturally slower run of the game that left more time to sit back and drink in the city itself. Which at my most active (5 playthroughs deep its more of a side game now) I could actually navigate the city fairly well off memory while just running or driving between quests. And seeing the map become less cluttered as my knowledge of it grew was satisfying, like taking away training wheels on your bike and riding without them for the first time. And whenever anything NEW appeared it stuck out, it was something that had to be addressed and looked at because it was very clearly not there before.

[@MrScholar]

I just realized why I love European towns. They usually have the biggest building in the middle of the town, which you can follow if you look up to the sky and end up literally in the central square of the whole town where they have open spaces, cafes and statutes

[@rusticcloud3325]

Agree

[@theprofessionalfence-sitter]

Another problem with games like cyberpunk is that you mainly explore the cities there by car, so your gaze is already more drawn to what is happening on the road than the environment, and further you are also more incentivised to just stick to the main roads rather than taking a detour to something that looks interesting nearby (that also happens in non-city-based open world games, to a lesser degree, if they put hard to traverse mountains or forests everywhere).

[@stevenrhodes3462]

Modern urban areas are more often than not designed around cars more than they are people. It is consequently part of why buildings are rarely designed to be aesthetic or beautiful anymore. Whatever attention drivers can spare is reserved for roadside signage, not for admiring architecture. Many cities in Japan are still designed to be people-centric by being highly walkable and investing in public transportation that is both affordable and reliable. Personal cars are more of a luxury there. The Yakuza games mentioned are decent examples of urban environments that are more people-centric by design.

[@cynicalmemester1694]

Night City is surprisingly walkable, you can traverse through the map pretty quickly if you have the right reflex perks.

[@Daemonworks]

An added complication in '77 is how much content exists conditionally. You have to be in the right area to get a call to tell you to go do a thing, but also meet other requirements: rep, level and/or other flags having been set. You can see a building that is a major tiger stronghold, but it's completely empty until it's quest has been activated. And then there's the ones that are just intentionally very subtle and easy to miss, requiring you to notice an object in a back alley or whatever to start. Though most such things are generally placed between other things. One interesting thing '77 does is clue you into content via environmental sound. You're walking down the street and hear gunfire and screams that you didn't cause. Or you overhear an unusual conversation between some NPCs, etc. Nobody phones in a gig, you don't get a marker, and notable, there's no neon sign saying "quest here". The city is a visually busy place, making visuals harder to use, but it's audioscape is still very usable, and they do use it.

[@uhohhotdog]

+

[@MinervaMayhem07]

That’s why Cyberpunk is one of the few games I play without KZbin playing on a second monitor

[@simple-commentator-not-rea7345]

In Cyberpunk's defense, this is a game that tries to adhere to the whole concept of us being irrelevant in the grand scheme of things. Night City looks beautiful but is restrictive because that's exactly what we are; a restricted citizen; we're poor, unimportant, and oppressed. Makes sense why Skyrim or Fallout would have you feel empowered to explore; they're games where you're the hero (and also, subtlety is an alien concept to Bethesda). Cyberpunk is a world that doesn't care about you, and it's entirely by design.

[@AynenMakino]

I was recently in Tokyo for a while and I approached exploring it much the same way as I would explore an open-world game. I noticed that it actually 'works' in real life. At least in Tokyo it does. There really is a high density of stuff to 'encounter', both in the street and indoors. And you can use the same 'mechanics' to find these things that you would use in a hud-less open world rpg. However, in Tokyo many interesting indoor places aren't at street level. You have to take an elevator or stairs up to the so-manieth floor to find most of them. And for me as a European that's a weird thing to do. Where I live, you usually have no business going up the so-manieth floor of any building. All public places you're intended to explore are at ground level most of the time. So there's a social hurdle to take. And if you ARE meant to go up floors, the design of the building will make this apparent. So there's an architectual 'language' that tells the local culture "it's ok for you to go here" or the opposite. I imagine that for games there's also such an architectual 'language' but perhaps this language is under-developed for city-scapes in games.

[@Verchiel_]

I think that's somewhat a non issue in games because well if you aren't supposed to go somewhere in a game, well. Unless you use mods or glitches, you simply can't. So as a player you often do look at a place, go towards it, and the path isn't just blocked by a door or some bags of trash, well then you're free to explore clearly. But yea tokyo in particular is well a city made for a high population of people and there's quite a huge social element to the culture, a lot of small bars and restaurants etc. The density of the city wouldn't work if the upwards range was limited as much as it is in most other large cities. And that's kind of a huge part of what makes exploring really most japanese cities and towns so fun. Because almost any street you turn at the very least looks really aesthetic to walk through, or often times has a handful of bars/restaurants/shops to stop by.

[@Sathornetfire]

Yea I been to a lot of place in the world been to almost all continents except Africa But what strike me as amazing in Japan is just how interactive it is if it is compare to Europe,USA and SEA especially Europe it feels like a gameplay demo city for a tourist lots to see barely anything to interact in Europe lack of stores and restaurants in SEA and USA everything so far you feel like those big open world where exploration needs a car But Tokyo just built different everything is walking or train away and everything segmented into sections but not line up in 1 street but spread out in that area so it rewards exploring around that specialize areas, combine with lots of store that don’t have door, putting their ware in the front directly making you able to see the content directly without restriction while inviting you inside and added the safety of the place is really have everything set for you to just get lost in it This can also be apply to Seoul hongkong or Taipei but I haven’t been there in a decade so idk

[@BrazenBard]

It occurs to me that for a modern or later urban environment, relying on the 80s staple exposition tool "the TV shop with news channels in the store window" would be a pretty good way to seed sidequests and points of interest - the player walks past a shop, and a news report plays about "Zero Ethics Corporation unveiling its latest cybernetic enforcer drone later today", or an ad for "Honest Zeke's Reliable Cyberware", accompanied with an address to head for...

[@TidalShadow]

Cyberpunk 2077 is an interesting case because Night City feels like a city in ways that other games don't. At ground level, layouts are distinct enough that I can reasonably navigate on foot. I can often recognize individual streets and districts while driving too, which is not an experience I've had before in a video game. Also, the newly implemented subway is legitimately amazing as a partial fast travel system and I would love to see more urban games try it. That said, there is still a lot of room for improvement, and the Yakuza series is a great place to start. Night City should be able to feel that unique on a map the size of 2077 from a lore perspective. It's just a matter of the hardware, the engine, and the dev time allowing it to happen.

[@theprofessionalfence-sitter]

Possibly unpopular opinion: especially for a second playthrough, games should just give you the option to get map markers showing the starting points for all side missions.

[@timbus2]

I think all the Ubisoft games already do this, at least once you climb the towers… 😂

[@DrogenShomuro]

I think everything said in this video is true, but I think it works for CyberPunk because that fits exactly what a dystopian city feels like to me. Having lived in a big city for most of my life myself, I pretty much never explore, even though I've probably been to less than 5% of all the places around me. Generally I just plug something into my GPS (even though I already know where it is) to find the most efficient route there through the traffic and chaos. I do have a few favorite places I go to, which exactly fits having stand-out memorable places like the Afterlife.

[@sidzero]

The reason why cities in games feel so same-y is because cities in real life feel same-y. No, seriously, go explore your local metropolis on foot sometime. The only parts that aren't same-y are the areas for tourists.

[@leetri]

Maybe in America, but cities that have been around for many hundreds or even thousands of years feel very different because they weren't designed.

[@gamewatch6861]

That’s a big reason why I don’t like cities. I navigate by landmarks, which is hard to do when everything looks the same.

[@fionafiona1146]

That's how Frankfurt sucks this much

[@mandisaw]

Only the ones built post-WWII. Older cities, incl Boston, Chicago, Detroit, Philly, and of course, NYC, have incredibly distinctive neighborhoods and architecture, and everything is built to be navigable on-foot. The reason these games suck at cities is because most of the devs now aren't walkable cities, and they grew up in the era of GPS and car-dependency.

[@mandisaw]

​@@gamewatch6861Cities only "look the same" to people who weren't born there, or in very newly-built (or rebuilt) cities lacking any architectural style or taste. Every few blocks looks totally different in Midtown Manhattan, and every half-mile or so is literally a different neighborhood, with its own character.

[@TheGerudan]

Funny enough the part of Night City that was added with Phantom Liberty has a lot more of a "landmarkish design". It is over all smaller, it is more vertical, "stacking" the buildings above each other from the lower center to the higher areas at the rim. Giving you a better overview about what is around you. Also a lot of the buildings have very unique shapes and look very diverse from the outside, so it is a lot easier to keep them apart and to navigate the area even without following the mini-map.

[@Radhaun]

My hypothesis that one reason city scapes are hard to design for is that most of us who grew up in cities have learned *not* to explore. When I was young you looked up a business in the yellow pages or heard about it from a friend, now you look it up online or hear about it from a friend. Cities aren't safe because our infrastructure is so terrible. Sidewalks vanish between blocks making you walk in the road and most businesses focus on their online presence and word of mouth, so it's pretty rare to have someone just wander in. So we've been trained to basically go from one point on the map to the next with "fast travel" (cars). There are some isolated cities that don't adhere to that, but where most people live, you drive everywhere because walking really isn't a safe option.

[@NiceB4dge]

Huh, that's interesting. To me Cyberpunk 2077 is precisely one of the few urban open world games where I enjoyed actually exploring (btw an interesting fact is that it is also one of the only 4 recent games where I *NEVER* want to use fast-travel, along with Skyrim, The Witcher 3, and Hogwarts Legacy). I think the thing is urban open-worlds are very different from "nature" open-worlds when it comes to exploration and guidance, and because of the DENSITY of cities, landmarks have to be visible at smaller scale only (like an interesting statue in a square, a dark alley, a big crime scene, a construction site, etc), leaving the "broader scale" give a sense of maze and "hive of countless human souls" that we cannot see directly ; we have to feel "lost surrounded by people", as opposed to "lost surrounded by nature". And we can't see those people, unlike the natural environment / wildlife. Our perspective is very different since we aren't looking far away, at landmarks, but on the contrary extremely close, at humans. In Cyberpunk 2077, I *want* to become literally lost (without any recurring landmark) then find my way back after walking past many places where I know people live and do stuff regardless of my presence, and encountering quest givers at complete random.

[@vividdaydream1516]

Jak 2 (one of the earliest open world games) had a very interesting way of designing their open world that I wish more games did. Instead of designing around landsmarks, Jak 2's map is designed around it's quest progression. Haven City is broken up into several different districts (e.g. slums, industrial, port), each with their own distinct architecture and "headquarters" for a quest-giving NPC. Each of these areas is walled off until the player reaches a certain point in the story's progression. In order to progress the story, the player has to keep returning to certain locations (e.g. rebel headquarters) to receive their next mission. Missions often consisted of either A) a high-speed car chases through the city, or B) being sent to complete a small, purpose-built level set outside of the city proper... which gives you unlimited time to explore Haven City while on your way to (or on your way back from) a mission location. Exploration was rewarded with finding collectibles that could be used to unlock Easter eggs and cheat codes from the main menu. IMO, Jak 2 has the best of both worlds when it comes to linear storytelling vs open world design.

[@tonysladky8925]

I think another landmarking problem in cities is that you can't usually go into or otherwise interact with the landmarks. Which, I suppose is realistic; whenever I go downtown IRL, there's a handful of really neat-looking buildings (and a whole bunch of boring-looking ones), but they're either not open to the public or open to the public in a very limited way. In a good open-world game, the landmarks you see in the distance are either dungeons themselves, or places where you can find a handful of dungeons. In a city game, that landmark is often just a visual that's going to help you get close to the next street or parking lot where the action will take place.

[@brockmckelvey7327]

Playing through Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth right now is showing me how much I use the map to find POIs instead of organically going to interesting spots. After watching this, I'm considering seeing if I can turn off the minimap and just exploring Hawaii that way.

[@briankelly1240]

I actually really enjoyed exploring night city. The hard lart is just ignoreing the glowing blue dot.

[@CyberiusT]

What dot? If you mean the mission marker, you can just stop tracking the mission Or do you mean the 'centre of screen' mark? That's there to reduce.motion sixkmess for some people. You can turn it off in tne options menu (accesibility?). In 2.12 it's off by default.

[@OhkokuKishi]

As someone who grew up in suburbs and is pretty comfortable walking in cities themselves, the issue with Night City I personally had is that, as a player controlling a character living in the city, I didn't have a routine or familiar routes that I trudged each day. I've ostensibly been living in Night City for a while, and in Megabuilding H10 for enough time to be familiar with other residents, but as a player this is all new, unfamiliar, and unexperienced. I know there's Barry downstairs, Wilson's 2nd Amendment is just a quick skip across the building, and there's loads of food stalls at the bottom, but after all the missions I've done, as soon as I'm out into the sunlight, I'm unfamiliar with common streets and common landmarks. I might be able to find my way to Tom's Diner, but if you told me to take the freeway to Kabuki and meet up with Wakako to get my reward without a map, I'd have trouble where to start and where to end. I as a player have never been to Kabuki before, but V the character and the NC devs/designers do, and it's a bit of a disconnect there. So I just use a map and end up bypassing the entire learning and acclimatization experience in being in a new world/city.

[@ASpaceOstrich]

Mm. And in my case using GPS does something with my brain that impairs committing those routes to memory. So its sort of a catch 22. I need to use the map to find where I'm going, but if I do so I don't learn the map. The best open world game map I've ever played on in terms of distinct locations and it sticking in my memory is Red Dead Redemption and its sequel. When I hopped on the online multiplayer for Red Dead 2 and I found myself spawned in the western states from Red Dead 1, I hadn't played that game in over a decade. I hadn't seen anything from that area in all that time. But I knew exactly where I was. I didn't play Red Dead 1 for an unusually long amount of time. Prior to that moment in Red Dead 2 I couldn't have recalled much about its map. But the moment I spawned in it all came flooding back. If there was some kind of Red Dead geoguessr I think I'd absolutely dominate at it. I learn areas in that game very quickly, and where they are in relation to other areas just intuitively sticks in my head. I don't know my IRL area half as well as I know Red Dead 2's map. I have no idea how Rockstar did it. But its cemented in my brains navigation memory.

[@GigalassII]

I did absolutely nothing but exploring while playing Cyberpunk

[@kailomonkey]

Then how does Grand Theft Auto do it so well? I'm asking rhetorically just you didn't mention it. San Andreas and IV inparticular use missions and characters to have you feel a sense of place early on and throughout. Not perfectly. Las Ventures lacked connection and the further you move from the first island of Liberty City the more you have to make your own landmarks, but they're still done incredibly well.

[@MildTomfoolery1]

Two things: 1: this was a great video, helps a lot when making open world games! 2: I think it would be interesting to look into puzzle design, just going to put it here

[@giovannicristellon3853]

a cool thing about cyberpunk was when i actually started exploring and suddenly noticed places i had never seen despite 100 of ingame hours

[@SpottedHares]

I think my favorite quote about open world design problems "Open World game forget that human do in fact like making their world easier to navigate so they can find all they stuff easier"

[@hansbrown8055]

AAA Game Developers actually put a lot of time and effort into leading the player towards the "fun" content, not just with site lines, but also with lighting and effects. There are whole GDC convention videos about using lighting to direct a player's attention to lead them through levels or to induce certain feelings, like foreboding, uncertainty, or happiness, when they're looking at or walking into areas.

[@Wookiee925]

In Cyberpunk’s defence it's the only open world game I've never fast travelled in. I often just walk around exploring alleyways and taking in the sights. Meanwhile in an Elder Scrolls or Fallout game I'll see something in the distance and just fast travel to the closest waypoint and go from there.

[@NeovanGoth]

Feeling completely different about Cyberpunk. It was one of the few open world games in which I rarely used fast travel and even strolled around on foot just for fun. Not only does Night City feel like an actual place instead of a heavily compressed Disney Land; it also is full of memorable places, impressive vistas, and interesting lines of sight.

[@orange_turtle3412]

I honestly think the lack of recognizability and ease of navigation in cyberpunk is actually a strength in some ways. While it is annoying from a gameplay perspective, it helps convey the idea that this is a massive overcrowded brutalist city where sensory stimulation is constantly thrown at you from every direction. It makes sense that a city like that would be difficult to find your way around.

[@adamvancleave9200]

Would be nice if a game gave us a rumor board instead of map markers. Preferably one we could access on a "phone" instead of having to go back to a base. Also, I wish there was more open worlds with a pin bowl (markers with different little pictures that you MANUALLY stick in the map).

[@tipulsar85]

For Cyberpunk 2077, it does make sense that you would miss a few. Night City is such a complex environment, that you can't be everywhere all at once. No matter how hard you try. This is why in 2020 and Red, screamsheets are as much plot hooks as they are flavor text.

[@ronanmates7812]

For yakuza it's less that they design the map layout and more that they slightly modify an existing map layout, the real key is what area they choose to set the game

[@Tekkaman1994]

I absolutely like exploring Night City in Cyberpunk 2077. I never lived in a big city in my youth. My parents, I and my brother lived in the suburbs. I moved out my parents house, and got an apartment with my first real job, I lived in mid sized city. Only in the last two years, I moved into a condo in a bigger city. Night City is so bigger than any city I have even seen in movies and tv shows; mainly L.A. and New York. Also Night City is still incredibly cool! I like the fact the there are huge buildings and skyscrapers. I have had my V go exploring somewhat between main jobs and side jobs. It's quite fun to have him or her drive around and go to different districts, but I still get what you said in the video.

[@docholiday4129]

Now that you guys are mentioning it, i’ve started to notice how hard it actually is to navigate in Night City without those pins. I was trying to get the El Coyote bar after Jackie’s funeral so i can get his pistols. I was driving around for like an hour until i finally found the damn bar.

[@Tenshiwing]

Fantastically coherent points, never thought about it but as you were explaining everything started making sense. I know landmarks in Night City because I played the game for 200 hrs, but first playthrough was just hopping from map marker to map marker. Awesome video dude

[@kromeboy]

The Nomad introduction let you see the city from afar, and you immediately spot corporate plaza towering billboards. Also the first missions took you to the waterfront, and to the rooftops of Kabuki from where you can see all the different building. The major problem for exploration in Cyberpunk is that driving was bad and the city isn't designed for walking.

[@badfoody]

That is the charm. Understanding and learning cities

[@arjunkaycee2517]

If there is one I thing I want to add to Cyberpunk 2077 and games similar to it, it would have a handful of locations that the player visits a lot. Games could then build dense areas with things to do around these very important locations. I like to think of it as a compromise between Yakuza and Cyberpunk because it is hard to build denses area that is as big as Cyberpunk 2077.

[@chrisahearn789]

Fallout 4 kinda did this to an extent. Everything was very dense and packed together compared to FO3 and NV.

[@kuzirareo]

I thought similar things too. In the game, after V becomes able to go outside Watson, players are encouraged to go to Jackie’s mom’s bar in the Glen. It’s one of the memorable moments for the main storyline. So I thought oh this place would be the base for exploration around this area. But the bar doesn’t directly link to any nearby locations (except an obscure building for the sub quest of the infidelity investigation asked by the bartender). There are a several other sub quests or quest lines in the area, so if they want to, they could make more geographical connections between them with relatively small effort. It would help a better understanding of the map and more depth to the area, I think

[@AxeMan808]

I actually DO a lot of parkour exploring in Cyberpunk. High or Double Jump Legs plus the Advanced Parkour stuff and I was a rooftop wanderer / assassin of convenience for a good little while there.

[@christophervincent77]

I do agree that Cyberpunk quest navigation should not have been driven primarily by markers on the map, but I don't agree that Cyberpunk needed to feel like other RPGs for exploring. Quests and exploration really should have been driven by the people that you meet, and to some degree it was, but the fixers and other companions were very underutilized. Instead of going to the mark on the map and then the fixer calls you, they should be calling you, or you have to meet with them in person, and they tell you "this is what I need". That's how cities and working with people actually function...

[@isaacthek]

Another way to address the interest curve in an open world to prevent people from sticking to a cul-de-sac is to combine disparate elements in proximity. You go fishing? After a certain amount of time at the lake a hungry bear wanders by and forces you to combat. Or some sort of random magical event. Or an NPC cover swimming over to you. Very rarely do we experience activities completely in isolation without deliberately making that conscious choice to avoid all other interaction.

[@cu2983]

I would also say the same about starfield-there were no references point when exploring, just points on a star map (and loading screens between them).

[@beeaggro2593]

honestly what worked for me in cyberpunk is the enclaving. it had the landmarks but it was defined mostly by that enclaving. different places FELT different and it helped me orient

[@MrBerniemcgovern]

I feel all this, but I would add that I turning off most of the HUD helps so much. Wandering mapless is so fun~

[@DMSBrian24]

In ER I explored like every inch of the map because I wanted to make sure I saw everything and didn't miss anything. It was an amazing experience in Limgrave but by Liurnia I was slowly burning out and I was really sick of it in Altus and REALLY sick of it in the snow area (I still enjoyed most of the game, but exploration became very tedious because I felt forced to explore not to miss things). In cyberpunk I enjoyed exploration more because for me, it was paradoxically more organic, I could always go towards map markers if I really wanted and at some points I definitely did, but this made feel like I don't need to explore the whole map as I go, so I ended up exploring through gameplay, my V already knew night city so he didn't walk through every single alley to explore it, he went through them on the way to specific places in the side quests and the story, this way I still randomly stumbled onto a lot of new side quests and events but could still use the map as a fallback. I did all side quests and eventually explored pretty much everything without ever feeling burned out and forced to explore. So for me, the cyberpunk game design actually worked better and was much less tedious to deal with than ER, especially on 1st playthrough.

[@Josh_Quillan]

I found CP'77 had probably the most rewarding and consistently entertaining exploration experience I've had in gaming for maybe ten years. It all depends what counts as a landmark, though, doesn't it? Personally I found the street layout itself worked as a landmark more often than not, just like reality. This was mostly because I almost never fast travelled anywhere and spent a long time just driving around, because the environment and vehicles (albeit with handling mods) are a big part of what what I'm there for; I don't get why anyone fast travels in as vibrant and detailed environment as this (Fallout and Skyrim I get it, those were mostly tedious worlds). Most times when I saw an alley, a noteworthy person or a tall, clearly accessible structure I either went to investigate or made a mental note to have a look when convenient.

[@PracticeNine]

first time I limited myself to no fast travel, so I drove criss cross the city all the time, was an amazing experience. 2nd playthrough though it felt more like a chore to get places, so I started to use the fast travel terminals

[@anthonylundgaard6575]

Ive been watching this channel for like over 10 years now

[@sizor3ds]

4:55, he makes a good point about main streets and streetscapes. Idk if anyone has written much theory on streets in open world video games, but I'd imagine you'd follow the same principles as designing a town's main street rather than copying disney world

[@AnonymousAnarchist2]

I think map markers activly work against exploration in enviroments that are either more natural or more realistic like Cyberpunk. When I first visited a big city, I met someone on the street and asked them where to get a cuppa joe, ran into the strangest cafe imaginable, met the owner, went off to my school turned out the owner knew the dean, met the leadership of a historical preservation society, got a paying dream job with far less then ideal pay Then learned where the first landmark "i have to visit" was a week latter

[@locomotivefaox]

You gotta assume your player isn't going to take the time to go from A to B in a Car or by walking if they can fast travel, that they won't look for side quests on the map, and that they won't try to explore every nook and crany. I did all that in cyberpunk and was blown away by how much I would've missed had I not been so meticulous. I think they try to solve this with proximity quest activation and the final quest being separate from the rest of the game. Though you still can miss so much fun stuff if you aren't trying to 100%.

[@austinsmith1421]

I feel like land marks are more important for navigation then exploration. I definitely felt lost in night city a lot but that often added to the experience. I discovered a lot of cool places that felt almost hiden. Sure not many land marks caught my eye and drew me in. But the world was divers and full enough that i still usually got distracted exploring things on my way to quest markers.

[@StompinPaul]

I think one could definitely make a city that fits these sorts of requirements. Like, you could have visually distinct buildings that tower above the ones around them, different architecture and lighting for different zones depending on their purpose, or the aesthetic or technology of the dominant faction of each one. If you can't give the player access to something like super powers or a grappling hook, maybe make the fast travel like a sky rail or giant bird aviaries, or something else naturally high up so that moving around the map ties to elevation. I think one of the bigger problems some of these run into, is that many of the modern or near-future ones are based on something pre-existing, either a real city or an established setting with it's own aesthetic or setup. The best way I think to address these issues requires building the city the game takes place in to include helpful elements, and maybe limits or manages some of the ones that would otherwise get in the way.

[@viken3368]

I'd honestly say that Cyberpunk gives you actual free exploration, yeah the quests you wont really run into but when running to or from a quest I have found a lot of neat little things hidden in alleyways, on top of buildings or in a small underpass. Cyberpunk is filled with stuff, and also whilst there are no obvious landmarks that a new player would realize the world is not flat and boring. I can easily navigate night city based of buildings and road design, each junction is unique. Even in the same district, buildings are unique and they do use more colour than modern cities.

[@0NoName9]

The GPS feature in modern open world games set in cities makes the world all blur together for me while I follow the line. I used to know Vice City and Liberty City like the back of my hand instead, and I'm pretty sure I could still find my way around them today.

[@grandsome1]

The main problem with city open world is that street names are not focused enough, and you can barely read them while driving. Also, since I used the delay car call mod in Cyberpunk 2077 I've been exploring the city more by foot waiting for the car. And the use of mods that force the player to go back to apartments mixed with in-world navigation makes the player create a memory map of the city naturally. Also, I recommend the night city gems mod to explore the game map more.

[@normal6969]

Nicely layed out topic. Thanks! Strange that in Night City I'm doing the same when I move to a new real living place: going around on foot in widening circles to explore and know the area better. I mostly go with my character around on foot, sometimes running, or walking and taking sights in. When I know where I'm going and it's far, I sometimes take the fast-travel metro (not the simulated), and it's far and few between when I actually use the combat car I've found in the derelict factories and trash-heaps area. And it is still a thing when I drive and see something interesting, I park, get out, and leave on foot. Might it be the difference between people concentrating on the waypoint for the next mission, and people who actually look at the world, and miss some turns in the shortest path because of that? Have a good daycycle!

[@Wonzling0815]

I've played a lot of Cyberpunk and if I were part of the design process of a similar game, I'd extend the hacking view with an AR mode. A digital representation of the city grid and blocks that reduces all buildings to symbols of their function. Take the scene in Cyberpunk when you first leave the megabuilding. The AR mode would remove the buildings blocking your view, mark the closest shops in a way that don't block it either, and it would show landmarks like Konpeki Plaza, the hospital and Afterlife on the "horizon". Speaking of that, I've always been frustrated that you are carrying around a map with shops on it but you can't use a similar map on your computer from home to check store inventories online, a thing you can already do in the present :P

[@dwanpol-lovesdonuts]

One of the best things about being a terrible driver in Cyberpunk was that my V hoofed it around on foot, and I got to see so much of the game world.

[@Beodude123]

I was recently playing CP and the subject to this very video went through my head. Absolutely beautiful city, that you don't get to see much of when you're in it. I almost never fast travel in the game because nothing is all that far with a fast car, and it's just too pretty to skip!

[@lorenzmaut3708]

Big cities are like that, but i think it can be fixed if the compass collaborates . Like those small dots on the map of fallout 4 that show places. Even in the middle of the city, you know that going there is going to be a location that is worth seeing. I always remember some of the churches that have supermutants, because they are located in strategic points and you are forced to move around and carefully explore them.

[@allensinclair5637]

I would run from point to point in cyperpunk to try and explore every nock and I still find new stuff 😊

[@billionai4871]

One thing you didn't really touch on and it may be because no game ever did it but it's a real shame is: A city can also have the same verticality as the wildlands, in the form of hills. The city I was born in (called Blumenau, in Santa Catarina, Brazil) has some single story houses taller than some 10 story buildings because the area is just THAT hilly, and if you're someone who's stuck to the ground, going up those streets and looking back you can see a decent part of the city and a couple landmarks. The city I'll be living in (and will not doxx myself) has a similar pattern, and most of my life used to be around the middle part of that hill on the side that doesn't have many buildings (cause it was a university campus), but on both sides you get sweeping sights of same-y buildings with a spot here or there where you go "oh, that's the cathedral" or "hey, that's the shopping mall" or bridge or whatever. Flat cities make for a more boring experience, but cities don't have to be in flat ground, and that already covers a lot of ground for you.

[@Roccondil]

Another issue with open world games is that there's limited resources to work with. Basically, the developers can model only so many different buildings and signs and other decor, before the game goes from a manageable 150gb to taking up an entire terabyte drive or more. Needing to save space means that assets get reused, and the larger the open-world, the more it has to be reused. For countryside settings, it's no big deal, trees and bushes tend to blend in together so 5 variations of 5 tree types can be randomly mixed and things look okay, as long as there are at least one or two unique landmarks to signpost the player around the map. But head into the city, and now you are seeing the same shop around every corner. Things start looking same-y and there isn't really any good way to highlight a landmark. If developers had unlimited storage space to store models in, then they would probably be able to do a better job at making each neighborhood and district visually discernable from each other, so that the player can navigate just by everything looking unique to the intersection, just like we can navigate in real life.

[@MalzraAirwynn]

Maybe it was just me but I didn't really have trouble finding a wide variety of side quests. I never really learned to navigate the city as a whole, relying on markers to tell me what direction to go, but I found a ton of side content just driving around. It might help that I rarely used the fast travel system, since driving was fun and the city isn't TOO big compared to other open world games so it doesn't take all that long to get from point A to point B.

[@Dreamfox-df6bg]

Fallout New Vegas makes it impossible to play all the main quests, because at some point you have to make decisions. However, if you play the game like it looks like it is intended to, you can also lock off side quests. In the first questline in Goodsprings ends with you defending the town from the Powerder Gangers, which makes them your enemy. But what if you ignore this quest at first? You can simply walk into the prison where the Powder Gangers come from and have several side quests available. Later you can still finish the quests in Godsprings and defend the town.. You can also still go with the NCR Rangers and take out the Powder Gangers in the prison.

[@alexpage4355]

Historically, this is something Rockstar has tended to excel at, too. I could probably draw a serviceable map of Vice City from memory, if I had to. Yes, part of that is due to putting an unhealthy number of hours into the game, back in the day (80's rock FTW), but I've completed Sleeping Dogs multiple times, too, and I couldn't navigate my way anywhere around their version of Hong Kong without consulting the map every few blocks... or, more likely, just following the compass markers after picking a destination. Rockstar is good at breaking a city into smaller district, giving each one a distinct feeling, and populating them with enough iconic landmarks that, after you've driven through the place a couple dozen times. Even if most of those trips are at 100 MPH while evading the cops, you start to connect how all the pieces fit together. Each district has at least one, landmark that's either at a central hub you're passing by regularly or on the main drag that's big enough and distinct enough from the surrounding buildings to help you keep track of where you are in the city. After a while, you start to cobble together an understanding of the city. Oh, that place is along the beach, or that's the part of town with all of the shacks and claustrophobic streets. Combine that with a mission structure designed to keep you coming back to some of those landmarks over and over again, reinforcing their placement in your mind, and odds are you're going to be finding your way around the city on your own pretty soon. (The fact that the maps tend to unlock gradually, over time, so you're not overwhelmed trying to make sense of everything all at once helps a lot, too.)

[@christopherg2347]

A new trend seems to be Apocalypse Survival (often Zombies), where the map is generated from real-life city data and sattelite images. If one of them would use 3D models, it might be a good basis to understand which cities work better for exploration then others.

[@ThisValiantAdventure]

Just started playing Cyberpunk 2077 a month or so ago and I do feel overwhelmed with where everything is supposed to be and how everything works. Enjoying the game very much, but feel like I’m missing a solid chunk of the game, especially since you can’t just keep leveling up forever.

[@jabadahut50]

maybe i'm just a little different but I found exploring night city to be 90% of the fun for me. I loved finding little nooks and crannies that the homeless of night city had turned into a little hidey hole to live in.

[@Dragonite43]

One place you could have a city game take place in is Washington DC, as the buildings can't be too tall and you have important buildings close by.

[@jarooe9658]

There are plenty of pois in the distance in cyberpunk, the difference is that these landmarks are more intimate, more within reach. Problem is that most players will fly past them all in cars. This is probably why V’s car gets damaged in the first act.

[@RevRaptor898]

Night City is amazing, I've explored every last centimeter of it. Each district has a very distinct feel and different gangs controlling them so it's pretty hard to get lost and if you want a rooftop view then get up to the rooftops it's not that hard to get up there. That said I've spent a lot of time wandering the city and I don't use fast travel so I got to know the city pretty well, if you overuse fast travel you might not figure out how the city works.

[@Oxidys]

My Short Answer: Mini Maps remove the intrinsic reason to explore, and turns it into an extrinsic reason to explore. (This is bad) -Intrinsic is doing something because doing it is fun -Extrinsic is doing something because you want the reward at the end. But the actual doing is, in most cases, not fun or padded to waste your time. Elden Ring made me realize something that has, for the most part, solved one of my biggest issues with open world games feeling like there isn't a reason to explore organically (I'm just connecting dots on the mini map to progress the game). I modded the mini map to only turn on when I'm in the car in my Phantom Liberty play-through and the game actually feels alive and organic. I'm actually LOOKING at my environment for information instead of looking to make sure I'm following the mini map line as efficiently as possible. In a perfect world, there would be a Skyrim style compass mod as that so far has been the most motivating open world system I've encountered for exploration.

[@DrakenStark]

I do have to say that I've been playing cyberpunk in first person and have not used fast travel at all. While my playtime will be inflated, it helps with escapism, which is why I enjoy the game to begin with. Each time I pass through an area of the city, they do feel more like landmarks to travel through rather than see in the distance. I'm not going to say that the game is worse for having fast travel, but given that games these days last so long, players are accustomed to trying to experience everything that can very quickly. The more I play Cyberpunk, the more I realize its themes actually play together better when I get to see more of the city by traveling through it. Even had some rare events happen that surprised me by doing it that I may never have seen by fast traveling or, at the very least, left a better impression by surprising me.

[@fredbyoutubing]

Night City is immersive, designed like a real city and the horizon is hidden to make it feel larger than it actually is. I'd be using google map in a city like that.

[@chriswilkins4389]

It didn't get a direct shout out, so I would like to mention Jak 2. This is a mainly urban environment which is pretty big, but each zone has such a different aesthetic that they are memorable. Granted, the game instances just about all activities, but I was still reminiscing while this was playing 😊

[@klaxxon__]

This misses one important point. When you see a castle in Skyrim, you know you can go there and explore it full (and will likely get rewarded). When you see a cool skyscraper in Cyberpunk, it is reather unlikely you can meaningfully explore it, and even if you can, you will get three floors where the elevator happens to stop and that's it. if i knew that the ledge on a building over there is a place I can reach, I would love to go poking around the interior, trying to find which is used to access that ledge I have seen. In practice, most of the exploration happens int he gaps between the landmarks in such a city, which sucks.

[@lobete]

I feel like this problem is one that is very personal. Like the aspects of a gameworld that draw attention are so subjective that many people will just not have this problem.

[@Mandrake42]

Yakuza also uses a lot of the same locations over and over, I mean you really get to know Kamurucho pretty well.

[@miguelmelo1814]

I can only speak from my experience with the amazing cyberpunk 2077 game, but the way the city was crafted made me not use a single fast travel point while playing, and I'm now on my third playthrough. I do wish that exploration would be better rewarded aside from some really good side quests, however by using the phone as a way of getting new opportunities to immerse yourself in an interesting new side quest is a good mechanic to circumvent the issues you so eloquently spoke about. This game has completely taken over my free time while fulfilling my all things cyberpunk itch. It has become my 2nd favorite rpg of all time right after Witcher 3. Add to that the shockingly different builds you can create to enjoy the game and it's pure Bliss. Big Blade Runner fan right here, and I dare say that every Blade Runner fan simply adores this game.

[@quedtion_marks_kirby_modding]

I wonder how baseing an openworld game on a city that has existed for milenia such as istanbul where different places of the city has different architecture could make each region feel more memorable.

[@morganmedrano920]

The thing that saves/kills open world games... fast travel. Cyberpunk has vehicles, and I feel like the games are best played without using fast travel. It's how you find all the cool stuff and it didn't need it. It should have just had it work more like World of Warcraft did with flight paths. Just use busses and rail cars(just being generic, locally for me it's called "light rail"... lol). That way, you can walk off but not feel like that loss of immersion. I challenge anyone playing a game like this to go back and play WY walking waaaay more and driving almost only when crossing rivers or driving out in the bad lands. Don't even use more than the basic jog (i.e., not jumping/air dashing) unless it's to get higher up. Get out of feeling like you need to speed run through everything. I personally love to walk because I run into more of the Scavs that I am working to eradicate for NC... lol

[@MrKimop182]

I just paused to answer the question in the beginning. Imho it's the fact that a city is made of buildings and you can't program all of those buildings inside so you can't go into most of them making most of the city window dressing

[@xislomega242]

It would be interesting to see a sci-fi game set in a mega-city, where the world is layered like in Legend of Zelda:BOTW/TOTK. The streets are the bottom layer. Above them are valleys of rooftops surrounded by skyscrapers with skybridges stretching across the valleys. And above that are even taller buildings where you either travel by flight, or have to go through one of the lower layers to come back up elsewhere.

[@dustybunny6716]

I once played Skyrim and maxed out my abilities just by mining and crafting in the first city.

[@mr.pavone9719]

I look back on the Crackdown and Just Cause series as having done a pretty good job with providing a world that was fun to explore and play in.

[@the.virtual.samurai]

I feel like night city has plenty of edgy stand out buildings and not so much landmarks but very outstanding features that define some of the areas of the city.

[@jenniferhanses]

Hmm. This makes me wonder what you think of LA Noir. I thought that game, which used a real city map for a lot of things, did a good job of making it interesting to drive around and check things out. But on the other hand, I don't remember it having too many skyscrapers. It also makes me think of Pittsburgh. I don't know if you've ever been there, but my friend is an artist, so I got to help her at a convention there, and then we got to walk around the area, and there were a lot of very interesting buildings in the downtown area we were in simply because it was a melding of all these extremely weird architectural styles. The city also had a lot of statutes and nature items (Pittsburgh is apparently big on green design, or at least was for the years I worked this convention). And that led to seeing lots of things that looked interesting when we were just tooling around, looking for an interesting new place to eat.

[@chekhov-and-his-gun]

Found nearly every quest in cyberpunk. Missed a few because of previous choices.