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

[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.

 

[IThinkTheWorldShouldBurn.]

I should have known to keep popcorn in the house, it's all just getting more farcical.

Badowski has now decided to reply.

 

[AwesomeButton]

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, C++ programmers where paid a wage of potato front end JS dev and about 25% of a western dev wage.
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.

Wouldn't surprise me if badmouthing CDPR over crunch was part of an orchestrated strategy to cut the flow of western devs and undermine CDPR's future projects. The big western companies would really want to kill CDPR because CDPR works cheap, produces good stuff with its own inimitable style (until CP77), and serves as an example that MTX isn't a necessity to produce big open world games. With the level of influence big publishers have over mainstream gaming UK/US-based shitholes, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the average commie fervor against exploiting the workers is being encouraged.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I decided to wrap up my play through last night, having completed most of the side quests and activities. There are some left over to either pick off later or do on a subsequent playthrough / if I feel like trying to 100% this thing. I've seen two of the available endings so far and they were both appropriate and pretty hard hitting. Not many games move me, but this one did. The narrative is very well done.

I've said this before, but I'll reiterate. This isn't really an RPG. If you think Borderlands with more story elements or Deus Ex with more shooting is an RPG, then fine, it's an RPG (but you're wrong).

That being said, I didn't really care that it wasn't an RPG. I didn't follow the marketing much other than the news that they changed the RPG description to be an open world action adventure or something during development, and to see some of the videos where it looked like a GTA mod. As a result, I didn't have sky high expectations for the game, so it managed to exceed my expectations in pretty much every way. There are some bugs that would be good to work out, but they were fairly minor (graphical glitches, etc.) with the only major bug that actually irritated me being the behaviour of police. The police, as noted around don't really chase much and are ridiculously easy to evade, but also they sometimes just disappear. One time I grenaded a group of Netwatch officers because I felt like it and got into this major shoot out with the police. I took cover around a corner and... they all disappeared like I was in the Twilight Zone. I LARPed that V's brain glitched out again and moved on, but it still sucked.

I get why this isn't everyone's cup of tea, but I thought it was awesome due to its presentation. It's probably the best looking game I've played to date, although I mostly play RPGs and strategy games, so this isn't necessarily a high bar to clear. The game presents all sorts of stuff I imagined as a kid reading cyberpunk novels or playing Shadowrun tabletop (which is similar in a lot of ways to Cyberpunk 2020, if CP2020 was crossed with D&D elements like orcs, dragons, and magic). The glow of the neon lights at night, the rain, smart bullets whizzing around and changing direction in flight due to their microprocessors, wired reflexes that you can kick in and wipe out a room of guys before they know you're there, etc., etc. while still being screwed over by megacorps because it doesn't matter how badass you are when the entire system is rigged against you. Normally I'm against most nudity and sex in games because I think it's gratuitous and out of place. Here, I found the sex scenes fairly cringey, but the nudity and presentation of sexuality and objectification fit with the setting very well. So whether the game has Ultima VII level NPC schedules and created a "living world" or whatever the fuck doesn't matter to me. They have presented the world, setting, and genre in a way that hit all the right points for me as a fan of the cyberpunk genre and made me geek out in a way that few games do.

All in all, with a PC that can run it at a reasonable frame rate* I'd have to say this is my GOTY overall. It's the best game I played across all systems. It is NOT the best RPG I've played and I would not classify it as an RPG at all except maybe in some RPG-lite subcategory full of shooters with skill customization and dialog like Borderlands, Deus Ex, or Mass Effect.

Final verdict: I rate the game at out of

Tech note:
I ran the game at 2560 x 1440 at mostly a mixture of high and ultra settings, with ray tracing generally turned off and not using DLSS. At times I turned ray tracing on and also turned on DLSS, but overall, I found not using DLSS or ray tracing to be the better option.

* say 40+, depending on your preferences - there's a chart on GOG that gives benchmarks to hit around 40+ FPS at given settings if you're not sure if your potato will run it.

 

[IThinkTheWorldShouldBurn.]

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.

2016, after 3 years work had already been put in... Doesn't matter how long they've 'been working' on it, they told us about it 2012 and we've been expecting it since then.. So yes, they have taken 8 years to give it to us, it's irrelevant how much of that time they spent pissing around.

 

[Zer0wing]

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.

But not twice! Cyberpunk 2077 was rebooted in 2016, not started developing. And in 2018, even thought it was more of a soft-reboot, from the original rags to rich legends story to what was presented to us in their final build, it still counts since the whole beginning of the game was scrapped.

 

[Zeriel]

The more important thing there is the people who were in charge of and championing the original design left the company. That's the point I was making, not that that excuses what they released. I want CDPR to fucking go down in flames.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

Never trust Poles.

 

[J_C]

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

I just can't listen to this, her voice makes me physically uncomfortable.

 

[Tyrr]

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

I just can't listen to this, her voice makes me physically uncomfortable.

She looks and sounds like someone who wants to talk with the manager.

 

[racofer]

It's out:


Crowbcat

 

[Myobi]

fml, took me 3 fuckin playthroughs to figure out you can save

Spoiler

Goro

=_=; now I'm still missin one fucking achiv.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

It's out:


Crowbcat

Dude came back just to cover this game. Lmao.

 

[passerby]

Wouldn't surprise me if badmouthing CDPR over crunch was part of an orchestrated strategy to cut the flow of western devs and undermine CDPR's future projects. The big western companies would really want to kill CDPR because CDPR works cheap, produces good stuff with its own inimitable style (until CP77), and serves as an example that MTX isn't a necessity to produce big open world games. With the level of influence big publishers have over mainstream gaming UK/US-based shitholes, it wouldn't surprise me at all if the average commie fervor against exploiting the workers is being encouraged.

There was no stream of western devs willing to work on these wages, most western devs in the credits are freelancers and a few ones dumb enough to fall for it quickly run away.
There was some influx of third worlders misled about purchasing power of potato wages and "super cheap" living costs in Warsaw, which in reality are on the level of a provincial western town.
So while the media onslaught was most likely inspired by the competition, it was just kicking them while they were down, but a word of mouth was enough to bring them down in the first place.

Paying 50% of western wage would be imo enough to make all local and 2nd/3rd world talent stay. While it wouldn't be still the same in a raw purchasing power, it would be close enough in a standard of living.
And 50% western wage would give some asian nerd way more betabux power among nice Polish girls, than 100% wage would give him among western hambeasts.
And given legal environment ( wealth separation and only 5 years of minimum wage alimony ), there would be no contest, if it comes to successfully starting a family on betabux power compared to the west, if someone was seeking for a place to plant roots.

 

[Ibn Sina]

CDPR pays no mind to the wailing and moaning of trannies and consoleplebs. The dogs bark but the caravan moves on!