CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[Robber Baron]

Be careful, maggot! I think you'll have an accident soon.

 

[gurugeorge]

This is even worse for CDP which is infamous for its long dev cycle. Up to TW 3 people and investor are willing to wait for the big "payout" namely a good game (and good sales for the investors). Cyberpunk fuck all that confidence into oblivion and it is questionable that this practice will be tolerable in the future.

Yeah I think this is the main thing about the stocks. I mean, if you look at it long-term (look at a 5 year graph), CDPR's stocks have dipped big before, but always climbed back. They may not be the best devs in th world, but they do make popular games with a particular house style of storytelling.

This game is at least a solid financial success so CDPR as a company isn't going going to disappear; I think the difference this time, as you say, will be that investors will be looking for better management. By all accounts, basically CDPR bumbled along for years relying on good-will and burning out eager developers with a crappy management style and a haphazard development style (where they've regularly binned many months of work and restarted). That's what they won't be able to get away with any more in the future (if the investors are sufficiently concerned).

Isn't it the same old story? The kinds of people who are good at starting small companies are not always the kinds of people who are good at running big companies, and they eventually get replaced. Initiating is a different game from sustaining.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

Panam storyline is trash, typical Stronk Female M-Rey Sue bullshit.

-Panam is kicked out of Nomads for being too reckless and not a team player
-Proceeds to get numerous Nomads killed for being reckless and not a team player
-Learns nothing of this, blames everyone but herself, and inexplicably earns loyalty of more Nomads
-Player forced to continually validate her, never call her out or put her in her place
-Gets the Nomads in more trouble with the gangs and pisses off a major corp.
-Never learns any lessons or shows any self-reflection on her behavior
-Saul does complete 180 for no reason, decides she's the best Nomad ever, puts her in charge and literally no one disagrees.
-Universally loved by everyone.

If you liked her character or found her romance engaging you should consider getting your T-levels checked. Srsly.

 

[Robber Baron]

If you liked her character or found her romance engaging you should consider getting your T-levels checked. Srsly.

I agree, at least Judy was cute in a retarded way

 

[ADULF HITLOR FAN KLUB]

Panam storyline is trash, typical Stronk Female M-Rey Sue bullshit. (...) If you liked her character or found her romance engaging you should consider getting your T-levels checked. Srsly.

 

[Yoomazir]

Panam storyline is trash, typical Stronk Female M-Rey Sue bullshit.

-Panam is kicked out of Nomads for being too reckless and not a team player
-Proceeds to get numerous Nomads killed for being reckless and not a team player
-Learns nothing of this, blames everyone but herself, and inexplicably earns loyalty of more Nomads
-Player forced to continually validate her, never call her out or put her in her place
-Gets the Nomads in more trouble with the gangs and pisses off a major corp.
-Never learns any lessons or shows any self-reflection on her behavior
-Saul does complete 180 for no reason, decides she's the best Nomad ever, puts her in charge and literally no one disagrees.
-Universally loved by everyone.

If you liked her character or found her romance engaging you should consider getting your T-levels checked. Srsly.

I meaaan, you're right, but you don't have a lot of options when it comes to mating presses. Granted there's the 2 only available joytoys, but it's pretty much guaranteed that the entire NC straight male population must had a run on them at least twice.
Panaam's pussy is the freshest thing you can find in the entire game and while I'm a firm advocate of "don't dip in crazy" I'd say desperate times require desperate measures.

 

[Robber Baron]

I'd say desperate times require desperate measures.

Amorous Adventures for Cyberpunk when?

 

[Turjan]

Panam storyline is trash, typical Stronk Female M-Rey Sue bullshit.

-Panam is kicked out of Nomads for being too reckless and not a team player
-Proceeds to get numerous Nomads killed for being reckless and not a team player
-Learns nothing of this, blames everyone but herself, and inexplicably earns loyalty of more Nomads
-Player forced to continually validate her, never call her out or put her in her place
-Gets the Nomads in more trouble with the gangs and pisses off a major corp.
-Never learns any lessons or shows any self-reflection on her behavior
-Saul does complete 180 for no reason, decides she's the best Nomad ever, puts her in charge and literally no one disagrees.
-Universally loved by everyone.

If you liked her character or found her romance engaging you should consider getting your T-levels checked. Srsly.

Conveniently forgets that all the veterans are on her side and that Saul wants to sell out the family to a major corporation. If you want to know why Saul makes that complete 180, then because he recognizes the first part and, simply, because her plan succeeded. And frankly, he doesn't have any other choice at that point, given his own plans are now dead in the water. The point that she successfully managed to deflect the responsibility for the attack onto their main adversaries is icing on the cake.

Whether you want to live your life with that woman is a different question. I'd say, in real life, probably no. Not that the game gives you many options.

 

[DalekFlay]

Right now investor confidence in the company is understandably low. After much delays, the game still runs like shit on 2 main consoles (and you don't really expect people to adopt PS 5 or XBONE X fast until late Q2 next year I presume) to the point that digital storefront delisting your product.

I think the delisting is what hurts them the most, along with Xbox extended refunds, and I think the main reason both those things happened was the stupid press release by CDP telling people to return the game if they want. I don't know if that was a fuck up based on not understanding standard refund policies or what, but that's what made Sony and Microsoft shove it up their ass like they did. According to Digital Foundry there were games that ran just as badly as the PS3 and Xbox 360 at the end of their life cycles like Far Cry 3 and Crysis 3, and those companies just stuck their fingers in their ears and weathered the storm. CDP could have probably gotten away with doing the same, especially since the PC version is pretty solid and even after refunds they sold 13 million copies.

 

[OctavianRomulus]

I just finished the game. I got a bit heated but I still think it's overrated. I liked the traversal system, the weapon sounds, the verticality and the endings.

Without taking the bugs into consideration it's a 7/10 for me. Just above average. I would wait for a sale if I were you.

It's not as good as Witcher 3 was at launch and even that had its problems. I hope they will learn from this experience.

 

[Tyrr]

When you start Panam's quest, she is working on her car. The only thing you see is her butt.
Next in her quest you have to follow her, carrying a crate (to make sure you walk behind her).

Well played cdpr.

 

[DalekFlay]

I meaaan, you're right, but you don't have a lot of options when it comes to mating presses. Granted there's the 2 only available joytoys, but it's pretty much guaranteed that the entire NC straight male population must had a run on them at least twice.
Panaam's pussy is the freshest thing you can find in the entire game and while I'm a firm advocate of "don't dip in crazy" I'd say desperate times require desperate measures.

Isn't Panam the only straight dude romance option really, outside of casual shit? So you don't really have much choice, if you want a romance to factor into the story/ending. Same thing with a female V, one gay choice and one straight choice.

This reminds me, am I good to ignore Panam's follow up quests if I want to save them for a male playthrough? Or are they required? Or will skipping them fuck me over somehow?

 

[Turjan]

This reminds me, am I good to ignore Panam's follow up quests if I want to save them for a male playthrough? Or are they required? Or will skipping them fuck me over somehow?

You will have to do her quests to give you the option for one ending

Spoiler

(go live with the nomads)

This doesn't mean you have to necessarily romance her. Just steer the dialog into more neutral waters.

In all cases, the romance options are more or less tacked on. The quests run the same if you go the romance route or not. You can still brush Panam off completely,

Spoiler

side with Saul and get a nice free car

The River quest line was probably the weirdest in that regard. They didn't make two voice recordings of his final quest, and I think the tone is a tad bit too much on the romance side if he just wants to be best bro with you.

 

[lukaszek]

deterministic system > RNG

 

[DalekFlay]

You will have to do her quests to give you the option for one ending

I'm fine losing out on an ending option, gives me another unique option for a second go. So I'll probably ignore her then. Thanks.

 

[RobotSquirrel]

except Theresa in KCD of course

I dunno about that and I think her DLC sales prove it too. lol

 

[typical user]

About romance options, Meredith Stout is an obvious attempt to capitalize on simps. First thing I saw on Reddit back when 2018 demo was released were questions if we can fuck Stout. So probably the writers figured if people are that dumb then they will give us same level shit with Panam and Judy. So far I can tell the only somewhat reasonable option is Misty but she was taken by Jackie and it would feel wrong to make advancements on her after Konpeki fuck-up. Still she has the head on her shoulders and takes care of V when she didn't have too. Panam ass isn't all that unique compared to genuine compassion. But simps will be simps.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Without taking the bugs into consideration it's a 7/10 for me.

I think I get what you mean by saying "7/10" but please all of you take a moment before using this retarded X out of 10 system used by shiteating journos. It isn't even an "X out of 10" more like "X out of 4" because the only ratings they use are 7-10 anyway, except in extreme cases.

 

[TheHeroOfTime]

I give it

 

[Robber Baron]

All these flavours and all us poor coomers get is brown

Spoiler

PLEASE COME WITH ME!

I'VE GOT A NICE FLAT AND STABLE INCOME!!!

 

[Gargaune]

Without taking the bugs into consideration it's a 7/10 for me.

I think I get what you mean by saying "7/10" but please all of you take a moment before using this retarded X out of 10 system used by shiteating journos. It isn't even an "X out of 10" more like "X out of 4" because the only ratings they use are 7-10 anyway, except in extreme cases.

Nah, don't let reviewers give you an allergy to it, X/10 (or, indeed, X/5 stars) is a perfectly reasonable way to express your level of satisfaction with the product, with the caveat that it's only really useful to you if you have some familiarity, directly or indirectly, with the preferences of the person doing the grading.

The reason you don't typically see 3/10 ratings from other gamers is natural selection bias wherein, unlike a teacher getting test papers whether they want to or not, a game that far off a person's taste isn't likely to get picked up by them in the first place. For it to leave that bad an impression, to be lacking any redeeming qualities, it'd have to be both conceptually uninteresting and terribly executed - basically, it'd be like giving me a FIFA game made by Owlcats in two weeks.

 

[Bad Sector]

Watching in the credits the army of people who've been involved in one way or another, one can't help but reflect wistfully on what could have been. So close in many ways, yet so far ...

More people doesn't mean better product, if anything things start to become bland after ~200 people or so. IME the games i liked the most the last few years were made by companies of around 50 people or smaller - the only exception was Arkane's Prey with the company size being 150 people, but Arkane had two teams and working on two different games in two different countries, with different engines, etc so even then it was probably around 60-70 people per team (that is just a guess of course).

 

[DeepOcean]

Man, I'm done, later when I have the patience to play all the endings, I will see all the options.

I cant say I didnt have fun, this is the best Ubisoft game ever made, a very barebones Deus Ex game, an unfinished GTA clone in alpha state, a single player MMO because CDPR wanna be the new Rockstar and wanna Cyberpunk online to print as much money as GTA online does, ironic a game about corporate greed being actually the bedrock for massive corporate greed . Now, all that together, guess what that did to the game? It is a fucking mess, it is a car crash, you know it is fucked up on many ways but it is fascinating at the same time, it is like a Porsche and a Ferrari crashed and are all mangled up but you see over there that once they were good looking cars.

I think Night City is beautiful and most of my playthrough was seeing the sights and wasting time walking around, it is the strongest asset of the game and it is also the source of most of its problems. As I explored the city, it became more and more evident the sacrifices they made to fill that space. If you have to fill a huge city, you will have to cut corners on side content and each side quest must take a limited scope as you are going to need alot of them.

The problem of alot of small sidequests instead of bigger, proper missions that a hub based game would have is that this game also tries to be a Deus Ex game. Most missions occupy a really small area, Night City gives the impression of being a big city but most of it is dead space, only scenery and meaningless gameplay wise. A level like Hell's Kitchen on Deus Ex has each inch of it filled with gameplay goodness, that sort of density is impossible to achieve on an open world game. So, most missions actually fill a really small gameplay bubble space with actual meaningful gameplay interaction, this lead to hilarious situations of you having to enter on a store, a door is gated by technical ability but you only need to turn a corner to find an open window making you scratch your head and ask, what is the point? You cant also populate a whole level with numerous enemy patrols because there isnt enough space for that.

This design fucks with the flow of the game. You begin a mission, you end it in 2 mins, you start a mission, you end it in 2 mins, this start and stop gameplay flow that go nowhere and dont reach a climax make gigs really repetitive and unsatisfying.They took a basic Deus Ex template gameplay, made a few basic changes to it and copy pasted on the whole game. A hub based cyberpunk game (now that would be actually huge incline) was a concept that they never tried because their goal was to ape GTA, an open world city sells alot and it is here where they are being mostly criticized. Normies dont give a fuck of how broken the gameplay is just that their GTA clone isnt working as intended and there arent enough minigames and shit.

While those sorts of criticisms make my eyes roll, they are correct on an area, they sacrificed alot in terms of gameplay to make Night City but they gained very little from it. The game isnt dynamic, it isnt that there arent ganger and police shootouts, they exist, but they are scripted to happen on certain points. The gangs dont react to what you do, the police are even worse and teleport in the spot after you commit a crime but there are no roadblocks, nothing. The only reason CDPR left the bizarre way police teleport to you location in the game was because not having it would be even worse.

The gangs and the police not chasing you on an agressive fashion actually make that start and stop gameplay of the side missions even worse as those little gameplay bubbles where the side missions exist dont communicate at all with the exterior world. GTA sort of disguise its popamole primitive mission design with long and dynamic police chases. Having MaxTac or ganger chromed assassins chasing your ass for half the city would be a hell of an incentive to be stealthy and an excellent opportunity to shoot alot of, high level, and dangerous targets if you actually wanted to shoot shit. I wont even talk of the bugs on their little GTA simulation, they are a meme at this point.

The game itemization and level scaling also makes it a single player MMO and as all MMOs, you are always awesome as default, your build only says how much awesome you are. The perk system is pretty much optional and just an extra bonus for you to have an incentive of doing all those side quests but if you keep doing moderate side jobs, you will do fine without any perk on anything. What the perk system does is to turn a really easy game because of level scaling on a broken easy game, just that.

So, if the game has so many flaws, why I kept playing? Well, because of Night City and because it is a pretty good Ubisoft game, most of the criticism said above is entirely applicable to a regular Ubisoft game or any popamole open world game. I had fun with the jumping and slow time cyberware, doing Parkour, seeing the little stories on the city and shooting enemies through walls or with tracking guns, also hacking cameras to reach an elimination target, hacking him and telling him to suicide, completing a mission without even entering on it is very amusing. They had a few innovations on the basic Ubisoft gameplay template that I really liked, unfortunately, wasnt enough to actually make a game with its own identity, their hacking implementation being an example of wasted potential.

If CDPR advertised this game honestly as an Ubisoft game and an improved version of Far Cry and Watch Doges, we wouldnt be having this 200 pages plus discussion. I dunno why Infinitron insist into keeping this on the RPG tab, this is just a mass market product, nothing more.

I mean, everything above is sort of expected and anyone that expected otherwise was deluded by the hype, what surprised me was how CDPR failed on an spectacular fashion the GTA experience the masses wanted and how they dropped the ball on the main story. Man, it is funny to hear Johnny Silverhand complaining about the corps while his presence on the game was an entirely corporate, marketing decision.

The main problem is, your character dies on the prologue, after that, it is Johnny Silverhand show because CDPR wanted that Keanu Reeves hype, baby. What? Roleplaying on a game that is derived from a PnP rpg? What is this? RPG is for nerds. Lets suck Keanu Reeves balls so he never fades away. Some characters that are interesting and setting relevant are on Johnny's timeline and have a relationship with him and not you and the few that are interesting on your timeline, the game murders them so fast to the point of, man this dude is cool... bam, shock value, sad time, he is dead. Some characters are walking archetypes like the rebelious girl that is right in the end with Panam, the good cop that fights against corruption and save the day with River, the criminal with a heart of gold with Jackie (while Jackie actually get interesting right before he dies as you see hints that he would be able to do everything it took to get out of the slum life and there was a hidden edge in all this comraderie of his)

It isnt that the story makes no sense, it does and it does it job of keeping you curious on a base level and have its high points(even if they spoiled fucking half of it on the gameplay trailers). I was feeling completely disconnected because it was Johnny's show and I was just a schmuck on the wrong place at the wrong time. They would be doing better by coming up with some bullshit, fully reviving Johnny, and you playing with him on his timeline as they did with Geralt. They wanted the cake and eat it too, to have the player have "his" character and also Keanu Reeves as the marketing poster boy, it didnt work so well for me.

 

[Semiurge]

I found something I genuinely like about the game and it's something you don't hear often. The traversal mechanics are great and if it looks like you could climb something you can probably do. I love this. It reminds me of games like Thief. You even get rewarded for it often.

For example, there is this mission where you have to infiltrate an Arasaka warehouse and there are multiple ways to get inside and the game doesn't tell you how and you have to figure it out on your own. There was a construction site nearby, I went up a few floors and then jumped beyond the Arasaka wall. I then sneaked by the guards and got to my objective. I'm sure there are other ways to get in too. It was pretty great and felt a lot like Deus Ex. That is until you see how retarded the AI is. You can just stay in their cone of vision for like 4 seconds unironically and they won't react until it's full. It seems those fancy implants make people dumber instead of smarter.

I'm pretty sure the game would have been great if it was just smaller and more dense.

Great, everyone can be a monkey

and while I'm a firm advocate of "don't dip in crazy" I'd say desperate times require desperate measures.

Desperate measures

About romance options, Meredith Stout is an obvious attempt to capitalize on simps. First thing I saw on Reddit back when 2018 demo was released were questions if we can fuck Stout. So probably the writers figured if people are that dumb then they will give us same level shit with Panam and Judy. So far I can tell the only somewhat reasonable option is Misty but she was taken by Jackie and it would feel wrong to make advancements on her after Konpeki fuck-up. Still she has the head on her shoulders and takes care of V when she didn't have too. Panam ass isn't all that unique compared to genuine compassion. But simps will be simps.

Meredith being a "corporate dominatrix" is the reason for the appeal.

 

[Darkwind]

Panam storyline is trash, typical Stronk Female M-Rey Sue bullshit.

-Panam is kicked out of Nomads for being too reckless and not a team player
-Proceeds to get numerous Nomads killed for being reckless and not a team player
-Learns nothing of this, blames everyone but herself, and inexplicably earns loyalty of more Nomads
-Player forced to continually validate her, never call her out or put her in her place
-Gets the Nomads in more trouble with the gangs and pisses off a major corp.
-Never learns any lessons or shows any self-reflection on her behavior
-Saul does complete 180 for no reason, decides she's the best Nomad ever, puts her in charge and literally no one disagrees.
-Universally loved by everyone.

If you liked her character or found her romance engaging you should consider getting your T-levels checked. Srsly.

How very dare you! According to Semiurge just a few pages back "Treat them with respect, they're not vending machines for sex."

Clearly you are an incel with small dick energy. Always treat m'lady w/ respect no matter how absurd her demands are and how fucking incompetent she is never taking responsibility for a single action. If you do this, you too, may get to sniff those strong musky half nagger panties at some point. White Knights Unite!