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

gurugeorge

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Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Which is objectively not a good film, but I somehow have a soft spot for it.

Yeah shame about that movie. It had bandes dessineés style and pizzazz to spare, but so much was hanging on the miscast leads that it really failed at its job (it's even doubly a shame, as they're both pretty good actors in other things, so it's definitely a case of crucial miscasting).

It needed young unknown alpha-ish male and female leads with something to prove, wanting to make a big splash, not emo weenies. It's even more odd in that sense, because the French are obviously very fond of the square-jawed alpha male style of character, as well as the "powerful sex kitten" female lead type, and that's what was in the comic:-

Valerian_and_Laureline.jpg
 

RobotSquirrel

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It needed young unknown alpha-ish male and female leads with something to prove, wanting to make a big splash, not emo weenies. It's even more odd in that sense, because the French are obviously very fond of the square-jawed alpha male style of character, as well as the "powerful sex kitten" female lead type, and that's what was in the comic:-

They went with those actors because its what Hollywood recommended. Problem was they didn't even bother to see if they had chemistry. To add further insult to injury it was later revealed the girls not even into guys lol. So yeah massive miscast.
And really both of them should've been French it would've made it work a bit better. It was also a huge missed opportunity to not show at least some hint of Medieval France given that is basically how the entire story began but I mean that could easily be a movie in itself.
 

Correct_Carlo

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I still threat still in General RPG Discussion? Is the moderation sleeping or something?

However disappointed you are with the game, it's definitely an ARPG. I've played it a bit longer now, and while the perks are very, very, dull in that most just make things you can already do slightly better/faster, on very hard the game eventually does get difficult enough that you will need to specialize in something.

This didn't happen to me in my first playthrough. I face stomped everything 25 hours into the game. In retrospect, I think it was because I had crafting maxed out that playthrough and upgrading weapons is super unbalanced and OP if you max crafting. You can just keep upgrading your favorite weapon for cheap, not have to invest a single skill point in anything else, and destroy everything you encounter.

This run, I am doing a strict Ghost/Intelligence/Reflexes run, with zero points in any of the other trees (save for a single point in body for carry weight) and the game seems more balanced and is much more of a challenge. I actually have to think about skill points and stuff.

At least for the time being, anyway. I feel like Hacking is very quickly going to become an instant win button if I further invest the perk points that increase quickhack damage.
 

DeepOcean

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Ping + that perk that removes cooldowns once you kill someone that is affected by a quickhack + that legendary system that allows ultimate hacks to jump

Ping + that perk that removes cooldowns once you kill someone that is affected by a quickhack + contagion + more damage for quickhacks for enemies that are unaware + perks with debuffs for enemies affected by poison

You are pratically playing a walking simulator by level 15 to 20 even on very hard.
 

RobotSquirrel

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This run, I am doing a strict Ghost/Intelligence/Reflexes run, with zero points in any of the other trees (save for a single point in body for carry weight) and the game seems more balanced and is much more of a challenge. I actually have to think about skill points and stuff.
Yeah my impression was that the more you spread out your points the more fun the system was. Point dumping was absolutely pointless as the high level perks don't seem worth it you just pick what you think is useful and see if you can combine any of them rather than take everything. You can tell they didn't test all of the options as some like human shield just outright don't even work. From my experience there's nothing stopping you from maxing out all the good stuff by the level cap so to me its not a good system. You have to place limitations on the player to encourage multiple playthroughs letting them do everything is just going to make your game throwaway.
 

Correct_Carlo

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Ping + that perk that removes cooldowns once you kill someone that is affected by a quickhack + that legendary system that allows ultimate hacks to jump

Ping + that perk that removes cooldowns once you kill someone that is affected by a quickhack + contagion + more damage for quickhacks for enemies that are unaware + perks with debuffs for enemies affected by poison

You are pratically playing a walking simulator by level 15 to 20 even on very hard.

The biggest problem with hacking is that it's no fun to use because it's a literal win button. Even if you have a super strong weapon, you still have to contend with things like recoil and aiming, so there's still some skill involved. With hacking, you just hold down one button (which literally makes time stop) and aim and push another button once. It's dull as shit.

Making it fun would require a ground up redesign, but they could make it slightly better by:

1. Removing the fact that time stops when you hold the tab button to pull up the hack menu. People should still be able to shoot at you while you are hacking them. In the least, they should have made this a high level perk.
2. Same with Breach Protocol. You should only be able to do it from a safe space. They should make the world go on around you while you play the mini-game.
3. Make it so you have to have line of site to hack. No quickhacking with cameras or ping. If they insist on both then, at least, make these features, like, level 20 unlockable perks.

They could have also done neither and made hacking purely a debuffing skill. It'd be interesting if there were no damage hacks, just things like blinding, weakening, stunning, and etc.
 

gurugeorge

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It needed young unknown alpha-ish male and female leads with something to prove, wanting to make a big splash, not emo weenies. It's even more odd in that sense, because the French are obviously very fond of the square-jawed alpha male style of character, as well as the "powerful sex kitten" female lead type, and that's what was in the comic:-

They went with those actors because its what Hollywood recommended. Problem was they didn't even bother to see if they had chemistry. To add further insult to injury it was later revealed the girls not even into guys lol. So yeah massive miscast.
And really both of them should've been French it would've made it work a bit better. It was also a huge missed opportunity to not show at least some hint of Medieval France given that is basically how the entire story began but I mean that could easily be a movie in itself.

Yeah, if you watch much of the French tv thrillers and stuff, there are a shit-ton of handsome young men and ultra-cute women in them who are also good actors that they could have used.
 

gurugeorge

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This run, I am doing a strict Ghost/Intelligence/Reflexes run, with zero points in any of the other trees (save for a single point in body for carry weight) and the game seems more balanced and is much more of a challenge. I actually have to think about skill points and stuff.
Yeah my impression was that the more you spread out your points the more fun the system was. Point dumping was absolutely pointless as the high level perks don't seem worth it you just pick what you think is useful and see if you can combine any of them rather than take everything. You can tell they didn't test all of the options as some like human shield just outright don't even work. From my experience there's nothing stopping you from maxing out all the good stuff by the level cap so to me its not a good system. You have to place limitations on the player to encourage multiple playthroughs letting them do everything is just going to make your game throwaway.

I think it would be a good system if it was tidied up a bit and polished, and actually had a purpose - i.e. if there was actually a use for some of the OP perks, some difficulty to the game that meant you needed them more as the game progressed. It's definitely the best system CDPR have ever made, that's for sure.
 

Semiurge

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I finally finished the six standard endings. I guess I shouldn't have chosen the "Johnny Silverhand is cancer" dialog option that often, so I didn't get the special ending. I have already said enough about the gameplay itself in this thread, so no need to repeat this. I see that it's objectively not a very good game, but somehow, it resonates with me on a certain level, which is why I spent about 240 hours on it and enjoyed it well enough. Maybe, it's the blatant nostalgia I feel for the genre. It basically breathes the 80's, and given I moved to my own "Night City" during that time, without knowing a single soul there, it's a homerun on that level. That was a great time, anyway, of course with much less slaughtering of your fellow citizens. I sometimes just like the less than perfect works, which is also true for the film the male voice actor of V is known for, Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. Which is objectively not a good film, but I somehow have a soft spot for it.

But this is about the endings, which means the story. As an interactive movie, the game works quite well, even if the story doesn't really gel with the open world gameplay. I guess everyone knows what the story is about, and there's just one mission where most endings are decided, given you played at least the Panam side quests and those of Rogue. You even decide your main love interest by a phone call you do during that mission, provided you have done both possible "romances". This makes it easy to just play through all endings in sequence. Also, I guess those endings are the main reason why you have character creation in this game. It's one of the few places where the third person look is used to convey the message effectively.
The rest concerns ending spoilers, so spoilers it is from here on.
Suicide
The quickest way to end the game, you can just use the gun you are given by Vic. It's the only ending, except the secret one, where nobody else dies. This is also the subject of the conversation between V and Johnny, where Johnny - surprisingly - has no issues with agreeing to the plan.
x45EQCo.jpg

I guess this scene is one of the main reasons why we got the underpants patch. Most of the scene is a full frontal view of the sitting, stripped V. As usual, I didn't notice he was naked until the scene had started.
Of course, the game drives it home in the epilog that suicide is always a shitty option for the friends who get left behind. The reactions cover the spectrum from deeply sad to outright vicious. This doesn't make much sense in the case of Vic and Misty, given they provided the gun for exactly this purpose. It's understandable when it comes to the romantic interests, as they weren't involved in the decision at all. It's a touching, well done scene, nevertheless. And no, this option didn't really win the trophy for most soul-crushingly depressing ending for me.

The Devil
The game isn't really very subtle in its warnings, so I guess it becomes clear at some point that you made a mistake. At the latest, this would be during Yorinobu's final words, which is also a very well done scene. You got abused to settle a family power struggle. I guess Takemura is there to somehow soften the impact of Johnny's or Misty's warnings, but I guess he is a good example that personal sympathy isn't always the best base for decisions. If the "becoming personal property of the company" part didn't deter you, the "Press F to surrender" is also a bit overdone. V's amulet, his promise to himself, is used in all endings to express his feelings, and here it is defiance. He puts the amulet on to tell himself that he will get to that one day in the future. Still, there's the terror in his look when he slowly gets erased.
IyHfhGA.jpg

I think this straight look into the camera is a good way to get the player on a guilt trip. The epilog makes it clear that V just disappears. There doesn't seem to be a way to contact his copy in any form.
You can also reject the contract, which means you wil take a shuttle home to Earth. After a short triumph and a middle finger toward that obnoxious physician, V realizes that he completely betrayed his dreams.
DlWxf6o.jpg

This is the only ending where V gets a message from Hanako Arasaka. Totally biz, of course.

Temperance
Here it comes, the most depressing ending. Here, V leaves his body to Johnny. I tried it from both quests, Panam's and Rogue's. In Panam's quest, it's V in the driver seat, in Rogue's , it's Johnny. The dialog uptions in cyberspace differ in both cases, as V is obviously much more concerned than Johnny. If Johnny doesn't cross the bridge in cyberspace, he basically destroys all bridges he has in Night City. Johnny already said it earlier in the game that, after all that time, he really has only two people who are actually willing to interact with him left in town, which are Rogue and Kerry, and while he knows V's friends, they see him as the construct that destroys V. He's left in Night City without anyone in the end. If you do Panam's quest, Rogue despises him and makes it clear that he should never return to Night City. Panam vows she will hunt him down. He avoids contacting Kerry or anyone else who knew V. If you do Rogue's quest, Rogue is also dead, so he is completely alone. Furthermore, V was Kerry's boyfriend in that version of my game, so contacting Kerry was even less of a good idea here (hey< I took your bf's body, but it's not available for you anymore, ha ha).

Johnny here rather literally buries V's dreams by giving his amulet a space in the Columbarium, subtly labeled "V, Dreamer", in case you didn't get what that means. If Rogue is dead, he also gets her a space. I guess the story with the talented kid whom he buys a guitar is meant to soften the blow somewhat. There will be at least one person in Night City who has a positive memory of him. Yay.
QyZkpqe.jpg

You may see a changed Johnny Silverhand as a good thing, but in the end, he came over as a broken man. Well, I guess he has many years in front of him to get over it, but it's a start from zero in a different town.

The Sun
I really like this one. Johnny does his quest with Rogue, who doesn't survive. V decides to go back into his body to live out his last days. Rogue's quest was pretty epic, the interlude in Night City (I had Kerry as romantic interest for V here) was a nice change of pace (their last exchange was well done, with Kerry having his own "There, I finally said it" moment), and the end in space is of course also epic, even if the end isn't completely clear. Except that V will die in some spectacular manner or succeed and die shortly after. Which is very "Cyberpunky".
ZQHnjCx.jpg

Very nice.

The Star
Panam's quest, where Saul conveniently dies. Plus some extras. Not sure how it plays in other constellations, but I had Panam as V's romantic interest here. Missions are okay, although the end wins the medal for most pointless driving scene. You can also see here when symbolism wins over setting considerations. No idea why the tunnel they used to flee in the end even exists when the corpos already know about it. Anyway, instead of the bridge to the light, we have the tunnel as a symbol of rebirth here. The amulet, as a symbol of V's old dreams, gets blown away by the wind in favor of his new life, which isn't alone. I guess that, even without Panam, he has lots of friends in this ending, so the imagery ends in a very positive light. Star light, of course, given the title.
Y07l6nW.jpg

Of course, even here, the last you hear is V having pain when the screen fades to black. So far for "happy ending".
I guess I need a bit of a break from the game now. The story is emotionally quite engaging, at least I think so. And no, I won't forget the game in two weeks. I don't really replay games often, but let's see if anything happens to the game that will make me do this in a few months from now. As CDPR games don't really tend to be very moddable, I don't see this becoming any mainstay like many Bethesda games, at least as far as the single player game is concerned. Anyway, I enjoyed the game for the most part.

So that's CP77 in potato mode. Sure looks like it...
 

Correct_Carlo

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t and polished, and actually had a purpose - i.e. if there was actually a use for some of the OP perks, some difficulty to the game that meant you needed them more as the game progressed. It's definitely the best system CDPR have ever made, that's for sure.

Nah, Witcher 1 was wicked hard on its most difficult setting and you had to actually strategize. People rightly hate the weird "not quite RTWP, not quite ARP" combat, but its stats, skills, potion system, and difficulty were perfectly balanced.

Witcher 2's and Witcher 3's stat/skills systems were shit, though.
 

Tacgnol

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t and polished, and actually had a purpose - i.e. if there was actually a use for some of the OP perks, some difficulty to the game that meant you needed them more as the game progressed. It's definitely the best system CDPR have ever made, that's for sure.

Nah, Witcher 1 was wicked hard on its most difficult setting and you had to actually strategize. People rightly hate the weird "not quite RTWP, not quite ARP" combat, but its stats, skills, potion system, and difficulty were perfectly balanced.

Witcher 2's and Witcher 3's stat/skills systems were shit, though.

It has admittedly been a few years since I've played The Witcher 1, but my memory of the hard mode was the only difficult part of the game was the first chapter.

Once you hit the second chapter you get the silver sword and can start unlocking silver talents, both of which make things pretty easy.
 

Turjan

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So that's CP77 in potato mode. Sure looks like it...
Yes, everything on low. PC is nine years old and was a mid-range system then. However, the screenshots are of quite low quality in addition to that. I used the Steam Overlay in order to be able to catch the right moments without having to repeat anything.
 
Last edited:

Naraya

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I guess this scene is one of the main reasons
why we got the underpants patch. Most of the scene is a full frontal view of the sitting, stripped V. As usual, I didn't notice he was naked until the scene had started.

Uh, I'm pretty sure it bugged for you.
In my case, my V was fully clothed... Come to think of it, WHY would V be naked?!
 

Turjan

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I guess this scene is one of the main reasons
why we got the underpants patch. Most of the scene is a full frontal view of the sitting, stripped V. As usual, I didn't notice he was naked until the scene had started.

Uh, I'm pretty sure it bugged for you.
In my case, my V was fully clothed... Come to think of it, WHY would V be naked?!
Underpants were introduced with patch 1.05, release version was 1.03.
For me, V is naked after his medical incidents, like
when he woke up in the nomad camp or, in this particular scene, in Vic's clinic, both times without recollection of how he got there.
Much of the scene was like this:
rmWqSRA.jpg
Now imagine that without underpants. In the other case I mentioned, you could have noticed when looking into the mirror, but I was at that point just happy that it was V's face that looked back from there.

Is anything bugged here? Who the heck knows.
 
Last edited:

Correct_Carlo

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It has admittedly been a few years since I've played The Witcher 1, but my memory of the hard mode was the only difficult part of the game was the first chapter.

Once you hit the second chapter you get the silver sword and can start unlocking silver talents, both of which make things pretty easy.

I've played it 3 times on the hardest difficulty. The second chapter is the hardest, especially in the swamp. However, beyond that, there are many battles in the game that are incredibly hard without potions.
 
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The Cyberpunk sub went from "OMG this will the the best game ever" to "This is the worst game I ever played" in 1 day after release.
Case in point:

whenwordsarenotenough.pcx


About that reddit post, tho:

I don't want to hate on Keanu, but f***ing hell, our original Johnny was way cooler and sounded like a maniac. Think Foltest on crack.

:hmmm:

Our original Johnny was heavily inspired by David Hayter's Solid Snake from the first MGS

"Arasaka? Cyberdeck? Jackie? Shards? Mantis blades? You're that edgerunner! You were killed in Konpeki Plaza... Engrams? It can't be...?!"

and believe it or not, Cillian Murphy

:hmmm:

I hope it's all false indeed.
 

DeepOcean

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1. Removing the fact that time stops when you hold the tab button to pull up the hack menu. People should still be able to shoot at you while you are hacking them. In the least, they should have made this a high level perk.
2. Same with Breach Protocol. You should only be able to do it from a safe space. They should make the world go on around you while you play the mini-game.
3. Make it so you have to have line of site to hack. No quickhacking with cameras or ping. If they insist on both then, at least, make these features, like, level 20 unlockable perks.

They could have also done neither and made hacking purely a debuffing skill. It'd be interesting if there were no damage hacks, just things like blinding, weakening, stunning, and etc.
They also shouldnt have cut that previous design where to actually access enemies, you should hack the local network first. Those places where you hack for money, they were supposedly to be breach points that you needed to physically hack before you could use quickhacks on people.

I dunno why they cut it, there was even a Deus Ex Human Revolution style minigame that they shown off on one of the earlier gameplay trailers. Did they thought this made hacking too cumbersome to pull it off and people would just ignore it? Because they just did an 180 and removed all the restrictions on hacking going on the complete opposite direction and that wasnt a good idea, the problem is, as you said, hacking is too straightfoward, press button "enemy dies", you are actually forced to ignore hacking and mix it up with guns anyway to not die of boredom.

Also it is strange how enemy hackers dont try to stop your quickhacks forcing you to deal with them first. As with most things on Cyberbug, the hacking system looks really unfinished.
 

typical user

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The game gets piss-easy once you get Armodillo crafting blueprints. When I was stripped from my armor in scav hideout the game became competent enough for me to locate my gear. After getting it enemies were dealing 3% of health damage at most.

First thing that CDPR could do to balance difficulties:
-simplify journal (no mandatory or optional objectives, more vague quest markers)
-no health bars, hit markers, directional player hit markers, no grenade or mortar radius icons, no camera or turret vision beams
-no highlighting of quest items in scanner, bigger areas marked as searchable, less info on enemies in scanner (weaknesses, class)
-replace minimap with compass, no enemies on radar just general direction of your objective or places of interest (shops, fixers, car)
-no alerts about body discovery, detection or NCPD warrants for commiting crimes
-increased weight for medpacks, ammo, grenades, unused weapons and clothing gear
-reduced carrying capacity, street-cred and monetary rewards from fixer gigs and NCPD distress calls
-reduced drop-rates for higher quality loot or gear mods in general
-increased enemy numbers

No need for higher/lower damage dealt/received modifiers. That's Skyrim level of banal. Balancing weapons, armor, drop-rates, perks, hacking, time-slow, enemy archetypes and ai in general is something different. Seriously I've expected the game would be packed with detailed gameplay mechanics considering the time/budget they had.
 

AwesomeButton

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1. Removing the fact that time stops when you hold the tab button to pull up the hack menu. People should still be able to shoot at you while you are hacking them. In the least, they should have made this a high level perk.
2. Same with Breach Protocol. You should only be able to do it from a safe space. They should make the world go on around you while you play the mini-game.
3. Make it so you have to have line of site to hack. No quickhacking with cameras or ping. If they insist on both then, at least, make these features, like, level 20 unlockable perks.

They could have also done neither and made hacking purely a debuffing skill. It'd be interesting if there were no damage hacks, just things like blinding, weakening, stunning, and etc.
They also shouldnt have cut that previous design where to actually access enemies, you should hack the local network first. Those places where you hack for money, they were supposedly to be breach points that you needed to physically hack before you could use quickhacks on people.

I dunno why they cut it, there was even a Deus Ex Human Revolution style minigame that they shown off on one of the earlier gameplay trailers. Did they thought this made hacking too cumbersome to pull it off and people would just ignore it? Because they just did an 180 and removed all the restrictions on hacking going on the complete opposite direction and that wasnt a good idea, the problem is, as you said, hacking is too straightfoward, press button "enemy dies", you are actually forced to ignore hacking and mix it up with guns anyway to not die of boredom.

Also it is strange how enemy hackers dont try to stop your quickhacks forcing you to deal with them first. As with most things on Cyberbug, the hacking system looks really unfinished.
It's heavenly ironic how we are left to guess if this or that system was unfinished or "they actually meant it this way" given the fact that half the main story was spoiled one year prior to release (although with unplanned delays into 2020).

I mean it's telling that they weren't so forthcoming about "spoiling" us with the state of the systems as they were with spoiling the story. If they had shown this power progression, this reactivity of NPCs, this hacking, maybe the game would have looked different. Turns out they knew really well what to spoil and what to hide. And now after having hid it they will maintain that "yes, these things were intended so"... but then why did you shy away from showing them, while you didn't shy away from revealing so much else?
 

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