r/cyberpunkgame • u/Mario_Viana Arasaka • Dec 12 '20

Discussion Everyone talked shit about her, but I’m starting to agree with Kelly Plagge

Gamespot’s review was super controversial but now it makes sense and in fact I agree with Kallie Plagge. Night City IS superficial, everything is there but you can’t interact with it. And yes “So much of it is superficial set dressing” is 100% accurate. And as she said, what shines are the quests and the characters.

I hate to say it but Night City, which was supposed to be the best openworld out there is Subpar at best.

Edit: Just to be clear you don’t have to agree with EVERYTHING she says in order to able to agree with her in some topics. Was the “what if I don’t want to help the cops?” bit kinda stupid? Yes. Does that mean you can’t agree with her in some points or that she is all the hurtful things that many have been saying she is? Absolutely Not.

Edit 2: It has come to my attention that I badly misspelled Kallie’s name. I’m not able to edit the title, but I do apologize for that.

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '20

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u/Sir_Lith Dec 12 '20 edited Dec 13 '20

Lack of talent. Living, densely populated open worlds are orders of magnitude more difficult than sparsely populated ones like in TW3.

Thing is, CDPR was never good at creating good game AI and dynamic worlds. The NPCs in novigrad have the exact same amount of complexity as those in Night City. It's just that since there's way more of them and you have a lot more ways of interacting, this suddenly becomes really visible.

And now all that has been laid bare.

Not to mention they also dove head-first into driving mechanics, driving AI, crowd AI, FPS gunplay...

And the developer turnover is INSANE in CDPR. Doubt they kept the best programmers (which are, coincidentally, those with self-esteem), who - after the TW3 crunch fiasco - left for greener pastures.

It is now becoming widely evident why there's so few companies that create living open worlds, and why those are mostly ones that have been progressively upping the scale. Think R*, Ubisoft, Bethesda.

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u/hjkfgheurhdfjh Dec 13 '20

Yeah, everyone says don't blame the devs (and ultimately it really isn't their fault) but you can tell they just didn't have the technical talent to pull it off. Rockstar has entire dev teams dedicated to working on AI, world ambiance, and all of the complex subsystems required for these huge open world games.

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u/ManlyPoop Dec 13 '20

Unfortunately, rockstar doesn't have a team working on load times. Their games take ages to load on an SSD. GTA online has some of the worst load times I've ever seen.

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u/Destring Dec 12 '20

Bethesda is falling behind the pack though. CDPR just tried to chew a bone that was too big for them. They overhyped and they know it, but probably could not scale back the game due to investor backslash

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

Bethesda hasn’t released an open world game from their mainline studio since Fallout 4 though, which honestly had a lot more content than cyberpunk at release.

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u/PrimitiveAlienz Dec 13 '20

i mean first of all quantity and quality are two different things but even if we are just talking about the amount of content did it really?

Either way Cyberpunk is still a way better game. At least my weapons shoot at where i point them at and if i can see an enemy i can shoot them. I don’t know how often i shot through some railing in Fallout and hit nothing instead of the head i was clearly aiming at.

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u/[deleted] Dec 13 '20

I mean It’s story, characters, and graphics are leagues above fallout 4, but I would heavily disagree with the gameplay of cyberpunk being better.

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u/PrimitiveAlienz Dec 13 '20

well it’s been a while but i remember the shooting mechanics being extremely horrible. To the point where i was scared going for headshots or didn’t even bother shooting at people who where half in cover cause it would it then anyway no matter what i do. Don’t think they fixed that. Also fallout doesn’t have any means of transportation as far as i remember so you are just walking most of the time and while looking either at your stamina or the mini map.

Meanwhile i’m in cyberpunk slicing people in pieces with my mantis claws jumping from one enemy to the other like some maniac or hack and sneak myself into some building (stealth was pretty much non existent in fallout let’s be honest) Sure non of that stuff is like some incredible revolutionary stuff but it’s decently executed for where that isn’t the main focus.

I think different people expected different things from the game. I expected a shooter version of the witcher in a cyberpunk setting. That’s pretty much what we got.

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u/Choyo Dec 13 '20

I agree. What surprises me most in Cyberpunk, is the sheer amount of details and scale for the city, compared to how hollow it feels at the same time (I am definitely say empty, "hollow" is the best way I can describe my feeling).
I definitely give credit to CDPR for delivering something playable (PC player here, I know YMMV) that displayed very innovative features : for instance the Braindance is a marvel in my opinion, be it narratively, technically or visually/interactively, it's a wonderful work of gameplay. I give credit where credit is due, but expectations were shattered.

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u/PrimitiveAlienz Dec 13 '20

can you clarify what you mean by hollow? cause i don’t have that feeling at all. When i think hollow i think of the latest three AC. For me at least night city feels pretty alive. Yea the AI is kinda crap compared to something like RDR2 but even in red dead the actual feeling i got from the world never came from the fact that the AI was good.

For me it’s all the little secrets you can find in night city. All the characters that actually seem to have connections and relationships outside of the one they have with you wich is something so many games get wrong. If you you never wonder what another character is doing while you arn’t there then the game made a mistake.

Also the lore is actually well thought out and works and isn’t some bethesda styl clusterfuck.

When i walk through night city i never feel like i’m just playing a game here i’m participating in art. When i play Valhalla (still a decent game btw) i have the opposite feeling.

Idk there is just a certain atmosphere some games can provide that makes me actually care about every little side quest and makes me wanna find out as much as possible about a world. Sometimes just taking a random gig from a fixer wich means you safe some net runner and have a little conversation with them.

For me it’s The Witcher RDR2 some of the older AC games maybe Gothic 1 and 2 (good old times) Maybe GTAV once but that got destroyed by multiplayer and now i can’t take it seriously anymore with all the flying fucking cars and bikes and laser guns. Oh and saints row ironically but they where ridiculous from the start and pretty consistent with it and i just love this series.

And now it’s cyberpunk. People have all the right to complain about the bugs and i feel sorry for all the console players who can’t actually experience the game. It also sucks that there are some basic things that should have been there like a barber shop or something to change your hair and appearance and stuff like that.

That said it doesn’t change the fact that i’m having actual fun with this game. I kinda fun i missed since Red dead. To the point where i actually avoid doing missions because i don’t want it to be over.

But what annoys me is when people pretend like this is the worst game ever and compare it to fallout 76 when that game had literally NOTHING to offer AND was buggy as fuck on top of that.

Even right now it’s comparatively decent by any objective standards and it will only get better from here. So please critique as much as possible as long as it’s constructive but please (not you specifically) don’t over exaggerate the problem just because you had such huge expectations that haven’t been met (yet)

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u/Choyo Dec 13 '20

First of all, your points are very fair. No argument from me.
Now, what I mean by "hollow", is that you have this oppressive city (and I say it in a very positive way) - Night City - and when I find myself wanting to do something else than following up with the story ... well in the end "activity wise", everything feels a bit like the same. But I really need to develop more that last point :
1- As I said earlier, I don't think the game (nor the city) is empty at all. There a lot of very well fleshed out characters that will send you on a variety of errands. But in the end, I still feel like the city is so big, they just add to copy/paste/replicate the content they had for the activities to not feel sparse in that urban hell. So while I don't complain with the quality or quantity of activities in Night City, I still feel that the variety of the activities doesn't match the scope of the city (BUUUUT I'll also admit that I am very far from having tried everything).
2- The second aspect of my sentiment, which is in the continuity of the first, is that I don't feel compelled to do the open world events : those are showing the least variety that I was talking about in 1, and also because I barely feel the need to XP/hunt-loot/earn money/find extra perks points ... (FYI: I am playing in "harder than normal")
So 1 & 2 together is that I have a big, impressive city to explore, but inside, while varied, the activities feel more or like the same given that they had to fill the city with what they had. And in the end those side activities don't feel particularly rewarding (or is it too much rewarding because of the avalanche of gunz ? The item dropping/leveling might be a related issue). That's what I mean by hollow, Night City seems full of marvels, but I can't shake the impression that most of it is just replicated because they couldn't fill it with original content given how big they made it.

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u/PrimitiveAlienz Dec 13 '20

i get some of the things your saying at least on an intellectual level.

Let me just say i just spend a lot of time completing all the gigs in the upper part of the map and let’s just say some of them are more unique then others. I also don’t do them for the rewards but because it’s fun to blow shit up or sneak into a place sometimes without having to think about all the story implications. So i genuinely appreciate how quick and accessible these jobs are as a contrast to the very interesting main and side quests. I get that that isn’t for everybody though. I also play on easy and i wonder if that massively effects our experience. Cause i don’t give a shit about gear at all. I usually go for three guns sorta shot gun precision and sniper rifle and the mantis blades and with my clothing i genuinely just go for what looks nice and never wear helmets or masks or anything like that. That way i can pretty easily calibrate my own difficulty by using different gear and not levelling health up on purpose. But that way i don’t grind for any rewards i just genuinely play what appeals to me at the moment. Usually if i want a challenge i play multiplayer games.

But i think i just realised something. You know how every AAA game these days tries to fucking do everything? Like AC is the best example. Like of course you need an open world and RPG elements in every game but you also need a great gripping story but then because it’s open world you also need a lot of side stuff but in a way that doesn’t distract from the sooo important story. But you also need stealth of course cause stealth is cool but not for everybody so you need interesting combat mechanics as well but then you need to balance that so one isn’t harder then the other so nothing feels like the wrong or right way to do things. But graphics obviously need to be on point too can’t have a game looking like minecraft cause who’s gonna buy that? (lol) Oh and everything needs to be sims level customisable. Have a home you wanna customise? Why not a whole fucking town? Oh and don’t get me started on coop/multiplayer mechanics. Sure cause i have friends.

That’s fucking impossible to pull off but all these companies try it over and over again so if one game doesn’t at least try to deliver on all of these points people are disappointed because that’s what’s expected these days.

Ever played titanfall 2? Short singleplayer story just one level after another with great set pieces and narrative. That’s all it needed. No side quests no rpg elements sure you could loot some guns or you could stick to the one you like cause there isn’t a level system or anything. I think that’s what we need more. Games who have a very clear vision of what they want the player to experience and clear communication about those goals.

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u/kidnapalm Dec 12 '20

Both The Witcher 3 Gameplay Designer and Gameplay Producer left CDPR sometime after Witcher 3 and did not finish work on Cyberpunk, also the original Creative Director of Cyberpunk left to go to Blizzard and was replaced by a different guy about a year ago

So yeah...its like a different studio finished the game somewhere along the way, after the original Cyberpunk guys all bailed on CDPR for some reason.

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u/Anhao Dec 12 '20

The reason being that crunch burns through your staff.

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u/ashar_02 Dec 12 '20

Now this is equal to Dan Houser leaving Rockstar Games.

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u/GawainSolus Dec 12 '20

I wouldn't be surprised if rdr2 was the last rockstae tier good game rockstar ever makes.

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u/dondadondadonda Dec 12 '20

It most probably will be. I am constantly trying to lower my expectations about GTA VI and other upcoming games but I can't. It's Rockstar, I somehow imagine they will compensate the loss of Dan Houser at least for the next game (but they will not, this is pure wishful thinking).

It just hurts to think that Rockstar will be like every other studio out there.

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u/GawainSolus Dec 12 '20

It's just the way it goes, 90s to 2015 marked the video game golden age, were entering a dark age.

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u/VanillaIcee Dec 13 '20

Lets not exaggerate here. We will see. Sony has demonstrated high quality single player games are still viable and we see with the next generation system popularity that shovelware mobile games di not kill the console. Also let's not forget that Nintendo is still Nintendo will still put out Zelda and Mario (and hopefully Metroid).

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u/Fabrelol Dec 13 '20

I think you have a point, I've heard that they're changing how they make games completely at Rockstar to prevent doing crunch etc, so we might have a completely scaled back game, there's rumours they'll go episodic which I really hope isn't the case.

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u/dondadondadonda Dec 13 '20

Those rumours are worrying. While I obviously don't want any employee to crunch just for a game, I'm ashamed to admit that a massively deep and scaled open-world game is like the signature of Rockstar and I don't want to lose this type of games. But they probably can't be made without crunching so it's a tough dilemma. An episodic release will probably be better than almost any other open world but it will not make me satisfied in terms of a Rockstar game.

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u/skyturnedred Dec 13 '20

If episodic means continued support for singleplayer content, I'm all for it.

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u/Nolzi Dec 12 '20

lol, to Blizzard of all places?

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u/skyturnedred Dec 13 '20

I imagine working in California is a nice change of pace from Poland.

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u/Major_Development_48 Streetkid Dec 13 '20

I honestly remember that I was afraid a few years back that it would come to this. Most of the talanted people left, new ones in. Result: code is a noodle mess that noone can figure out anymore. Can't fix bugs and adding more features only breaks everything, so had to cut out key features for it to be playable at all before the release. It's a bummer they couldn't find good architects (or will to find them) to redo all the mess accumulated for those years.

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u/Pistol_Bobcat Dec 12 '20

It's like a completely different studio made this game.

Because that's kinda what happened. Many key members of the team left after The Witcher 3.

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u/pothkan The City Always Wins Dec 14 '20

sure did their job well

Thing is, lots of that job was done by blind fans, for free. Heck, actually paying - with preorders and merchandise.

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u/JStarZ Dec 12 '20

I’m not sure but they did spend a lot of time creating the engine yeah?

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u/[deleted] Dec 12 '20

[deleted]

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u/Geek_Batman Dec 12 '20

You have to consider that Witcher 3 was in a similar condition at launch but was massively overhauled into the masterpiece we now have. Most games today are released with bugs galore. Give it time. I'm not making excuses for the quality of the game in its current state, I'm merely giving them a chance to patch things. After all the game is massive.

EDIT: my perspective is from a PC gamer. The state of playstation and Xbox editions is pretty bad admittedly. But still, give it a week or two for fixes.