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

[Rahdulan]

In general the article feels WAY more bombastic and sensational and dogpily than Schreiers previous analyses for Kotak, especially for Andromeda and Anthem.

What he's saying could be 100% true for all we random people on the internet know, but what's obvious is that he IS blatantly chasing the clicks he got from those two earlier exposes down to signature "developer magic" phrase. Something he didn't necessarily count on, that you can see in like/dislike ratio on Iwinski's apology video, is people are still holding out hope CDPR will deliver and generally haven't forsaken them outright like they did with Bioware's two disasters.

 

[Justicar]

So what's up with that Crucifixion quest? It was, by far, the strangest quest I've ever played in an RPG. I mean, lots of RPG's have "lol, so random" quests, but this wasn't random. It totally fit with the tone of the world and the universe, showing how degraded everyone is to feel something and find meaning, and how that perverse drive has been reflected, perversely, in man's need for faith in a higher power. However, I cannot, for the life of me, get what the writers were trying to say about God and faith through it, other than, perhaps, that man's drive for faith in this universe has been perverted.

Still, it was really interesting. I suspect it might be shit and that I might be giving it too much credit, but it'd definitely brought some of the game's themes into focus that I wasn't paying attention to and will now look out for a bit more.

This guy explains it pretty good, timestamped the section about religion.

 

[MasPingon]

badowski should step down because he is a shit game director. there are people with lots of skill at cdpr (especially in the art and writing department) and he wasted their talents making the game a eurojank ubisoft game. them rebooting the game in 2016 and making it first person was a huge mistake. everyone should have seen the trainwreck coming especially the game director who gets paid lots of money to anticipate these things but no he wanted to compete with rockstar in half the time with half the people

Exactly, everything Badowski touch turns into shit. He was the Witcher 2 game director and he pushed the series into bad direction - his vision back then was to make The Witcher as interactive movie, choose your own adventure type of game. Thankfully he didn't have much power over The Witcher 3 creative decisions and you can tell it while playing the game.

 

[Twiglard]

Honestly, from that perspective, I kind of respect it, as it might be a comment on televangelists and the commodification of religion, but those things aren't a problem in Poland. [...]

The game world commodifies everything, including trannies. So it's not a stretch to extend this to religion. See also Lizzy Wheezy Wizzy. Suicide as a public spectacle meant to generate sales is apparent non-controversial high art, in a world so starved of authenticity.

CDPR tanking could actually be a blessing for Poland. They sold their souls to the West already, while at the same time sucking all the developers from around Poland to their company, and Polish companies making good games (like Vendetta) have no developers causing their games to be technically broken on release

There aren't enough good Polish AAA devs, that's going to make games worse. CDPR now has the half-finished tech for making modern world sandboxes so expect the next game to have less buggy or unimplemented systems. Anyway they did most of what Rockstar did from GTA 3 -> GTA 5, which is 7 games (minus shitty console exclusives).

The regulatory body was talking about broken marketing promises. Know which ones they mentioned exactly? I'd expect these to be features CDPR implements out of necessity.

 

[Gargaune]

Depends. Will their next game be called The Witcher 4? If yes, they'll get that money.

Very likely, after CBP multiplayer. It'll be called The Witcher 4: Ciri Does Redania and everyone will buy it. rusty_shackleford will buy it twice.

Wasn't this article made very shortly after the release? And before the announcement about refunding the game (after the issues with the game became apparent on all platforms)? If so, then that's not the full picture. Unless people really didn't feel like refunding.

If I recall correctly, the later 13 million total figure was after the refund policy was instated but before Sony rolled their Sneak Attack on CDPR. I don't believe the refunds hurt their sales that much, it's being pulled from PlayStation store that has everyone scrambling for cover.

Like I said, they are not out of the woods until they put the game back on the PS store:

I agree, but I also see CBP's return to the PS4 to be near certain and, after that, both sales figures and stock price will recover to within more manageable margins. It's Cyberpunk: Popamole With Friends Edition which I think will be their biggest hurdle on the new IP, both due to the PR fallout from this botched release and due to the lack of credentials CDPR had in the multiplayer sphere to begin with. Ironically, all this tech scandal's obscuring CBP's biggest problem - that it's mechanically mediocre. Then again, I've never played GTA Online and I have no idea what that demographic expects from a game.

 

[cvv]

Exactly, everything Badowski touch turns into shit. He was the Witcher 2 game director and he pushed the series into bad direction - his vision back then was to make The Witcher as interactive movie, choose your own adventure type of game. Thankfully he didn't have much power over The Witcher 3 creative decisions and you can tell it while playing the game.

How did he not have any power over the TW3 development? He was the CEO of the studio.

 

[Frozen]

Potatos still crying "give as another chance pleeease, throw money at us again we will do better next time ok?"

 

[MasPingon]

Exactly, everything Badowski touch turns into shit. He was the Witcher 2 game director and he pushed the series into bad direction - his vision back then was to make The Witcher as interactive movie, choose your own adventure type of game. Thankfully he didn't have much power over The Witcher 3 creative decisions and you can tell it while playing the game.

How did he not have any power over the TW3 development? He was the CEO of the studio.

Ok, he got some, but he wasn't creative director and CEO, like with CP2077.

 

[Mefi]

So what's up with that Crucifixion quest, Sinnerman? It was, by far, the strangest quest I've ever played in an RPG. I mean, lots of RPG's have "lol, so random" quests, but this wasn't the sort of strange that was "lol random." It totally fit with the tone of the world and the universe, showing how degraded humanity has become in the universe, yet, despite this, it still has a drive to find meaning in faith and God. Or something. I honestly cannot, for the life of me, get what the writers were trying to say about God and faith through it, other than, perhaps, that man's drive for faith has been corrupted and commodified by the universe's glorification of violence and corporate culture.

Honestly, from that perspective, I kind of respect it, as it might be a comment on televangelists and the commodification of religion, but those things aren't a problem in Poland. So maybe it's about the glorification of martyrdom and violence among Catholics? It's possible I'm reading too much into it and giving it too much credit. I suspect it might be shit, but it'd definitely brought some of the game's themes into focus that I wasn't paying attention to and will now look out for a bit more.

Will catch Justicar's video share in a bit but I thought it was very clever in how it got the player complicit in it too. Especially when contrasted with how it plays your interactions with the snuff film makers of the underworld. Another thing to it was how well the ingame fluff feeds into it - posters advertising it, the death penalty as entertainment, and how Christianity manifests in the city with violence at its core. Although to me, the religion wasn't so important as the reinforcement of the idea that it's a city of the damned where any kind of spirituality is scorned and those are themes picked up in other side missions.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Tried polish language.. lol. Incomparable to english version. Feels like watching some soap drama. Definitely do not recommend anyone playing like that.

Ah, that's true. Polish in TW3 was worse even than English.

 

[AwesomeButton]

So what's up with that Crucifixion quest, Sinnerman? It was, by far, the strangest quest I've ever played in an RPG.

It's not a quest at all. It's a videopresentation where you press the F key to progress to the next scene.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I've never played GTA Online and I have no idea what that demographic expects from a game.

It's a lot of minigames to waste time on - races in NFS camera perspective, races in GTA 1 camera perspective, 3rd person shooter deathmatch, run and gun other players around town, and even (which is supposedly the main event) heists, which hardly anyone plays because you are always paired with some retard who will be a retard, die constantly or his connection will lag.

 

[Twiglard]

Tried polish language.. lol. Incomparable to english version. Feels like watching some soap drama. Definitely do not recommend anyone playing like that.

Ah, that's true. Polish in TW3 was worse even than English.

English in TW3 is flat and boring. I'm sick and tired of Britcuck accents in period TV shows.

 

[Duralux for Durabux]

English in TW3 is flat and boring. I'm sick and tired of Britcuck accents in period TV shows.

It is the best language of the game when it comes to voice acting...

 

[Duralux for Durabux]

 

[ekrolo2]

Besides some of the kids I can't name a bad VA performance in Witcher 3. Even Geralt is vastly better with his memories and personality restored.

 

[moon knight]

Besides some of the kids I can't name a bad VA performance in Witcher 3. Even Geralt is vastly better with his memories and personality restored.

I prefer The Witcher 2 Geralt. More chill, more natural voice, less forced grumpiness.

 

[Yosharian]

It's just sad, at this point.

 

[passerby]

All higher up creatives at CDPR are artists, it's run by wannabe movie directors, who had no chance to break into movie industry as nerdy potatoes.

They don't understand, or even like games and they will never even acknowledge, that the biggest problem with CP2077 are not the bugs.
Gameplay systems design and programming make like 5% of the budget of CDPR games and they are so set up in their ways, that their games are destined forever to have great art and subpar gameplay.

Cyberpunk Online ( if it won't get cancelled that is ) will fail miserably at replicating GTA5 Online success, just like they failed to replicate Hearthstone success with Gwent, where they've overspent on art and gameplay was becomming a bigger mess with each update.
This company fundamentally lacks a culture necessary to create a polished, gameplay driven game.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Crazy Isabella unleashes the Cyber-Counter-Reformation with her own sources from CDPR:
(beware she is a massive fangirl)

 

[Xeon]

Huh, IIRC this girl hated the first person only gameplay and said she'll not play the game or something so I kinda thought she will hate the game, not become a fangirl.

 

[highly functioning autist]

Even being a fangirl didn't stop her to piss on Badowski's head. Colour me fucking surprised but at least I had some giggles after he clashed on twitter with another tumor of this shitty 'industry' Jason "Star of David" Shrier.

 

[Zer0wing]

I prefer The Witcher 2 Geralt. More chill, more natural voice, less forced grumpiness.

This default wolf school medalion health bar always gets me. TW2 may be jank beyond TW1 and Demon Souls could only imagine to be and sometimes an actual turd but it sure has its moments. Fuck, this is the most wrong time an place to be nostalgic about The Janker 2 since Cyberpunk, despite being made by same people, nullifies everything these people had achieved with 2nd Witcher game.

 

[passerby]

I think this may be the beginning of the downfall of this company

It's run by artists that don't understand, or respect the technical work behind the product, so while artists were treated relatively well, programmers where paid about 25% of a western dev wage and crunched all the time.
I wouldn't be surprised if most of technical team after fixing worst bugs will just fuck off and there will be no one left to code missing pedestrian / driving ai and wanted system ( if studio leads would ever acknowledge it as an issue ).

For 10 years they relied on cheap local labor, paid potato wages and gave their emplyees potato treatment, so most talented people after getting 1-2 years of experience at CDPR emigrated for senior positions on the west.
If they were less griddy and paid at least 50% of western wages, these people would most likely stay, at this point probably only people with no experience are willing to take CDPR gig.

After this whole mess and controversy with working conditions, I can't imagine many people from outside of patatoland willing to work there.
They'll experience great difficulty finding experienced talent willing to work for them now, even some less passionate about their projects artists may start jumping the ship.

 

[Zeriel]

The project was rebooted in 2018 and a lot of the old staff left. Same old story with CDPR, they had that happen on Witcher 1 -> 2, again from 2 -> 3, and again after 3's launch. Only this time they ran out of luck.