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

[Justicar]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

https://www.gamebyte.com/cyberpunk-2077-wants-your-feedback-on-its-quests/

Cyberpunk 2077 Wants Your Feedback On Its Quests

Paweł Sasko, the lead designer for quests on Cyberpunk 2077, is asking for players’ feedback to help improve the game. It may even influence future CDPR projects.

Cyberpunk 2077 was extremely controversial when it came out. CD Projekt Red issued a public apology for the way the game was released, after bugs and crashes plaguing the launch. The game particularly struggled on the PS4 and Xbox One. It was even pulled from the PlayStation Store and Sony offered refunds to anyone who wanted one. Not only that, but DLC and updates have been hit with continual delays.

Lol it's simple and I dont know what the fuck are they asking about this.

Real quests aka side jobs like Panam storyline, River storyline, Judy storyline or Peralez quest were generally good and there should be much more of these types of quests. Gigs were pretty boring and samey but there were some good ones that had more effort put into them like the gig with cop investigating smuggling operation or the one where you had to infiltrate corpo hotel to kill one of biotechnicas managers. Copy and pasted gigs were shit. Conclusion make more side jobs you niggers and put more effort and story into gigs.

 

[Wesp5]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

https://www.gamebyte.com/cyberpunk-2077-wants-your-feedback-on-its-quests/

In my opinion the main quest and the real side quests were fine, but there were much too many filler quests from fixers and police. Is there already a mod to make the difference more clear on the map or do I need to make one myself?

 

[markec]

The easiest thing they could do and should do is to make visual changes to the city itself as majority of it just doesnt feel like a cyberpunk world. I would like to see city darker, foggier, to give impression of heavy pollution. More npcs as beggars, junkies, make more areas feel dangerous with little police presence and civilians leisurely walking.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

They're probably asking for the expansions/DLC. They're still on the roadmap and the game has sold enough to justify making them.

 

[markec]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

They're probably asking for the expansions/DLC. They're still on the roadmap and the game has sold enough to justify making them.

That roadmap is the laziest excuse for a roadmap in history of gaming. Its basically one year worth of patches that only fixes bugs and dont put in anything of value in the game, plus few cosmetic dlc for first person game.

If those patches actually put back in the game things like parts of character creation that we saw in promotional material then fine, but this is just laziness.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

Yeah but my point is that Sasko's question about the players favorite quests wouldn't help with changes needed for the vanilla game, so it's probably for the expansions they're openly planning to release.

 

[racofer]

Lol it's simple and I dont know what the fuck are they asking about this.

Real quests aka side jobs like Panam storyline, River storyline, Judy storyline or Peralez quest were generally good and there should be much more of these types of quests. Gigs were pretty boring and samey but there were some good ones that had more effort put into them like the gig with cop investigating smuggling operation or the one where you had to infiltrate corpo hotel to kill one of biotechnicas managers. Copy and pasted gigs were shit. Conclusion make more side jobs you African Americans and put more effort and story into gigs.

Which means: the should have put more The Witcher 3 into it.

The main quests of TW3 are similar to Cyberpunk in that they feel somewhat connected to the main plot, and this is fine. However, their approach of less is more to shorten Cyberpunk because wah normies thought TW3 was too long despite selling trillions of copies is the main issue. Instead, CDPR tried to artificially stretch the game with a bucketload of mostly terrible gigs that feel exactly the same, which is the laziest approach possible.

Side quests in TW3 always had some dialogue and interaction with the interested party. You either know about the quest through one of the many notice boards or by talking to people spread around the game world. You then proceed through the quest, which, unlike CP2077, doesn't necessarily mean having to engage in combat all the time. You do whatever you have to do, and then return to the quest giver and get your reward. Many of the quests are simple, yet they managed to make all side quests somewhat related to the game world and plot. I don't remember a single quest from TW3 that felt like a chore, and there were dozens upon dozens of them.

CP2077 replaces all that game world immersion with half a dozen fixers that will call you whenever you approach a yellow marker at the map. You then receive a call telling you there is a quest, get an SMS with the quest details (which you don't even have to read, just follow the quest compass instead), and proceed to complete the objective, which always ends in combat. Right after you are done, you are told to leave the quest area and you get another call from the fixer to complete the gig, and you get your reward. Rinse and repeat ad infinitum. Nearly every gig feels disconnected from the main plot, and there must be like ten variations they loop through for every gig in the game (kill gang members, kill cyberpsycho, rescue NPC#2122, steal datashard, etc). And that's it, this is the extent of your interaction with the entire Night City: through phonecalls and SMS messages. You don't meet a single NPC asking for help, you don't interact with anyone but fixers, and you don't get to explore places to receive new quests.

It's extremely unlikely that CDPR will change any of that, condemning CP2007 to be forever lacking no matter how many patches they drop, because the base game is built upon poor design choices from its core.

 

[T.Ashpool]

Yeah but my point is that Sasko's question about the players favorite quests wouldn't help with changes needed for the vanilla game, so it's probably for the expansions they're openly planning to release.

does this retard not play his own game? just play the fucking game it's not hard to figure out what's wrong with it and what needs to be better

 

[Justicar]

does this retard not play his own game? just play the fucking game it's not hard to figure out what's wrong with it and what needs to be better

 

[ferratilis]

He does play his own game, quite often actually, on his Twitch stream, but the problem is that his head is so high up his ass that he can't take any form of criticism. When someone provides constructive criticism, they are either: a) banned by his fanboys b) completely ignored c) provided some asinine explanation of how they are wrong and don't understand how to design an immersive quest. The guy is a complete tool, so you can't expect him to know what's wrong with the game.

This is just one example from a few days ago, you can go through the clip archive and find many more. He always has these "whataboutism" explanations to deal with any form of criticism.
https://www.twitch.tv/pawesasko/clip/SmallVainChoughBudStar-GxbaG2ykE72JWlVK

 

[Perkel]

Seems like some modders overhauled gameplay.

FGR - Full Gameplay Rebalance

List:

• Removed scaling (not for immersion, this enables me to fix many bugs)
• Lowered crit chances
• Removed immunities (mostly) and replaced them with resistances
• AI Improvements and Enemy Balancing
• Armor and Armor Mods
• Cyberware
• Explosives
• Food Drink and Alcohol
• Gameplay Mechanics
• Healing and Drugs
• Melee
• Perks
• Loot
• Upgrading
• Player Stats
• Ranged Weapons
• Quickhacks
• Skillbooks
• Vendors and Pricing
• Weapon Mods
• XP and Gigs

For example one of those:

Removed Scaling

In the base game, both you and the enemies gain stats as you level up. Here's the base stats for V and enemies at level 1 and level 50 on Very Hard:

Level 1 V: 100 hp, 65-100 dps
Level 1 enemy: ~200 hp, 50 dps

Level 50 V: 345 hp, >5k dps
Level 50 enemy: >10k hp, 850 dps

As you can see, without any upgrades, V is much weaker than enemies at level 50 than they are at level 1.

This causes a number of issues, so I have removed this entirely. This is by far the largest change, and required a fair bit of reduction in perks, items, etc. that just flat out increased stats like damage, health, crit chance, etc.

But before that puts you off, here's the list of things I can fix when scaling is removed:

• NPC to NPC damage. Enemies do the same damage to V as they do to each other. But by the end of the game, the enemies have 30x health as V, so they don't do much damage to each other. This is the reason why your sidekick was always useless in fights, or why the cyberpsychosis quickhack was losing effectiveness, and a few other things.
• Explosive damage to V. The explosive barrels are designed to do damage to enemies, which, as stated above, have 30x hp as V. Hence why you would always get one shot by these things.
• V's damage to self. V's grenades did the same damage to enemies as they did to V, which is much more than V's health.
• Allows items and effects with constant stats to be useful: Despite much of the game being based around this scaling, many things weren't. Berserk's superhero landing damage for instance is a constant value. In the base game, it's ~500, which is nothing to an enemy with 10k hp. So were some iconic weapon effects, perks, and more than a few other things.
• More consistent gameplay. The game can't account for whether you know you can get a full set of legendary armor and armor mods before your first gig, or whether you're still running around with Yorinobu's clothing and pistol at level 20. The reason why there's so many big damage bonuses in the game like +100% melee damage here, +25% ranged damage there, is because these upgrades are all supposed to get washed out as you level up and the enemies just get more hp and damage. Hence the reason why these big bonuses had to be brought down. The end result is that the immediate bonus of a stat-increasing effect won't feel as powerful, but by the end of the game it'll feel the same.
• Fixes random non-scaled items and enemies. There's a bunch of enemies and items scattered around Night City that didn't have scaling applied to them. Now, it doesn't matter, and these won't feel any different than regular enemies and items.
• Allows me to implement enemy armor. Enemies don't really have armor. The only armor I could find in game was 10 for the exo-suits. Only 2-3 enemies in the game are in exo-suits. Armor reduction is by a constant value, so there's really no way to implement armor in a scaling-based game. Now, enemies have armor, and armor-related perks and effects should actually be useful.
• Consistent damages. Grenades, status effects, weakspots, enemy dps, quickhack damage, etc. These damage values were all over the place, and could change pretty drastically as you levelled up.
• Fix xp scaling. The level xp you get increases with the amount of health the enemy has. In the beginning of the game this was fine, but by the end, throwing some grenades at a group of Valentinos would get you 3x as much xp as a whole gig!

 

[Justicar]

He does play his own game, quite often actually, on his Twitch stream, but the problem is that his head is so high up his ass that he can't take any form of criticism. When someone provides constructive criticism, they are either: a) banned by his fanboys b) completely ignored c) provided some asinine explanation of how they are wrong and don't understand how to design an immersive quest. The guy is a complete tool, so you can't expect him to know what's wrong with the game.

This is just one example from a few days ago, you can go through the clip archive and find many more. He always has these "whataboutism" explanations to deal with any form of criticism.
https://www.twitch.tv/pawesasko/clip/SmallVainChoughBudStar-GxbaG2ykE72JWlVK

Quests he did are good because he was responsible for making the side jobs and main quests, gigs were made by different team. He also designed the pickup quest which was the best one in the game in terms of short term and long term consequences if the game had at least 3 or 4 more elaborate quest like the pickup one it would be much better.

 

[Gargaune]

You don't meet a single NPC asking for help, you don't interact with anyone but fixers, and you don't get to explore places to receive new quests.

Absolutely, this is something that often gets overlooked when we whine about CBP's quest design, but it's also a significant factor. At an abstract level, both TW3 and CBP 2077 play out the same routine - go to place, receive quest, do quest, get reward. But that TW3 dispenses said quest through a unique, on-site NPC, written to have their own stake in the affair, is a massive difference to CBP's cold-calling fixers. It makes the world feel more alive, populated by characters with their own affairs, rather than an automatron-ridden themepark. Sure, some of the NPCs in CBP's quests have their own stuff to say, but you can't escape the formulaic pattern that's been branded into your mind. And the kicker, all those logorrheic fixers clam up all of a sudden if you pay 'em a visit.

Side quests in TW3 always had some dialogue and interaction with the interested party. You either know about the quest through one of the many notice boards or by talking to people spread around the game world. You then proceed through the quest, which, unlike CP2077, doesn't necessarily mean having to engage in combat all the time.

Gotta disagree with you on this bit, though, there's a fair few quests in CBP that involve either no or very little combat, both gigs and sidejobs. Examples just of the top of my head, Kerry's sidejob to confront Us Cracks or the Coyote bartender's gig to play with his wife's privates play private eye with his wife. Or, hell, I'm still gobsmacked at what the Corpo "lifepath" follow-up quest turned out to be. And they actually paid Keanu Reeves to record lines for that thirty-second encounter.

Bottom line, that's actually a pervasive problem with CBP's quest structure, that so many of them are so barren in gameplay - most gigs are micromissions that you can only stretch past five minutes if you wanna ghost 'em, and then you've got so many other quests that boil down to "roleplaying" a sequence of canned dramatic scenes with little-to-no agency or involvement, not even pew-pew.

I'm all the more peeved to be thinking through this right now because I just completed Thief 2's final mission half an hour ago. Okay, it's not a fair comparison, I know they're altogether different beasts, but you can imagine my frustration at contrasting the gameplay-to-chatter ratio between these two.

 

[gurugeorge]

Seems like some modders overhauled gameplay.

FGR - Full Gameplay Rebalance

List:

• Removed scaling (not for immersion, this enables me to fix many bugs)
• Lowered crit chances
• Removed immunities (mostly) and replaced them with resistances
• AI Improvements and Enemy Balancing
• Armor and Armor Mods
• Cyberware
• Explosives
• Food Drink and Alcohol
• Gameplay Mechanics
• Healing and Drugs
• Melee
• Perks
• Loot
• Upgrading
• Player Stats
• Ranged Weapons
• Quickhacks
• Skillbooks
• Vendors and Pricing
• Weapon Mods
• XP and Gigs

For example one of those:

Removed Scaling

In the base game, both you and the enemies gain stats as you level up. Here's the base stats for V and enemies at level 1 and level 50 on Very Hard:

Level 1 V: 100 hp, 65-100 dps
Level 1 enemy: ~200 hp, 50 dps

Level 50 V: 345 hp, >5k dps
Level 50 enemy: >10k hp, 850 dps

As you can see, without any upgrades, V is much weaker than enemies at level 50 than they are at level 1.

This causes a number of issues, so I have removed this entirely. This is by far the largest change, and required a fair bit of reduction in perks, items, etc. that just flat out increased stats like damage, health, crit chance, etc.

But before that puts you off, here's the list of things I can fix when scaling is removed:

• NPC to NPC damage. Enemies do the same damage to V as they do to each other. But by the end of the game, the enemies have 30x health as V, so they don't do much damage to each other. This is the reason why your sidekick was always useless in fights, or why the cyberpsychosis quickhack was losing effectiveness, and a few other things.
• Explosive damage to V. The explosive barrels are designed to do damage to enemies, which, as stated above, have 30x hp as V. Hence why you would always get one shot by these things.
• V's damage to self. V's grenades did the same damage to enemies as they did to V, which is much more than V's health.
• Allows items and effects with constant stats to be useful: Despite much of the game being based around this scaling, many things weren't. Berserk's superhero landing damage for instance is a constant value. In the base game, it's ~500, which is nothing to an enemy with 10k hp. So were some iconic weapon effects, perks, and more than a few other things.
• More consistent gameplay. The game can't account for whether you know you can get a full set of legendary armor and armor mods before your first gig, or whether you're still running around with Yorinobu's clothing and pistol at level 20. The reason why there's so many big damage bonuses in the game like +100% melee damage here, +25% ranged damage there, is because these upgrades are all supposed to get washed out as you level up and the enemies just get more hp and damage. Hence the reason why these big bonuses had to be brought down. The end result is that the immediate bonus of a stat-increasing effect won't feel as powerful, but by the end of the game it'll feel the same.
• Fixes random non-scaled items and enemies. There's a bunch of enemies and items scattered around Night City that didn't have scaling applied to them. Now, it doesn't matter, and these won't feel any different than regular enemies and items.
• Allows me to implement enemy armor. Enemies don't really have armor. The only armor I could find in game was 10 for the exo-suits. Only 2-3 enemies in the game are in exo-suits. Armor reduction is by a constant value, so there's really no way to implement armor in a scaling-based game. Now, enemies have armor, and armor-related perks and effects should actually be useful.
• Consistent damages. Grenades, status effects, weakspots, enemy dps, quickhack damage, etc. These damage values were all over the place, and could change pretty drastically as you levelled up.
• Fix xp scaling. The level xp you get increases with the amount of health the enemy has. In the beginning of the game this was fine, but by the end, throwing some grenades at a group of Valentinos would get you 3x as much xp as a whole gig!

Goddammit that's the second time today that I've been pipped to the post by someone else posting about something I was going to post about.

I've been using this mod in my current playthrough and I think it's actually quite good. It's consistently as hard as you set it (which preset you choose) now, all sorts of things like armor make more sense and make a difference. Just generally less crappy and slapdash, more "proper." Married with the impactful fx, which were already great, it makes the combat quite a bit more enjoyable, and tweaks a lot of things throughout the game in a pretty sensible way (and if you don't think some particular change is sensible you can tweak it yourself). Even the itemization is less irritating.

Definitely recommend it. If the game had played like this on launch, there would have been less bellyaching about it.

I'm using it along with AI Netrunners Enhanced, which makes enemy netrunners actually function and be something you have to worry about (not to the point of irritation, but just enough to keep you on your toes), which in turn makes the game feel more "cyberpunky."

 

[AwesomeButton]

He does play his own game, quite often actually, on his Twitch stream, but the problem is that his head is so high up his ass that he can't take any form of criticism. When someone provides constructive criticism, they are either: a) banned by his fanboys b) completely ignored c) provided some asinine explanation of how they are wrong and don't understand how to design an immersive quest. The guy is a complete tool, so you can't expect him to know what's wrong with the game.

This is just one example from a few days ago, you can go through the clip archive and find many more. He always has these "whataboutism" explanations to deal with any form of criticism.
https://www.twitch.tv/pawesasko/clip/SmallVainChoughBudStar-GxbaG2ykE72JWlVK

Absolutely, this is something that often gets overlooked when we whine about CBP's quest design, but it's also a significant factor. At an abstract level, both TW3 and CBP 2077 play out the same routine - go to place, receive quest, do quest, get reward. But that TW3 dispenses said quest through a unique, on-site NPC, written to have their own stake in the affair, is a massive difference to CBP's cold-calling fixers. It makes the world feel more alive, populated by characters with their own affairs, rather than an automatron-ridden themepark. Sure, some of the NPCs in CBP's quests have their own stuff to say, but you can't escape the formulaic pattern that's been branded into your mind. And the kicker, all those logorrheic fixers clam up all of a sudden if you pay 'em a visit.

Bottom line, that's actually a pervasive problem with CBP's quest structure, that so many of them are so barren in gameplay - most gigs are micromissions that you can only stretch past five minutes if you wanna ghost 'em, and then you've got so many other quests that boil down to "roleplaying" a sequence of canned dramatic scenes with little-to-no agency or involvement, not even pew-pew.

I've written about these things but it was months ago.

The Witcher 3 sidequests (monster hunts, secondary quests) work the following way, and I think this has even been openly explained by developers at some point - the designer knows what systems are implemented in the game. Those are, let's see, combat, signs, dialogue, witcher senses, swimming, boxing, crafting, riding, riding-racing mode, etc. These systems are his toolset. He has to come up with a story from start to finish, which has to be finish-able in say 30 minutes, has to tie in with the setting and bigger story - whether it's happening in Novigrad, Beauclaire, or No Man's Land - and utilizes as many of these systems as would make sense. This is how Witcher 3 - The RPG Interactive Movie works.

The quest starts with some dialogue, then you ride somewhere, follow a scent, fight something, examine something, go somewhere else, have more dialogue, the NPC gets mad, you do boxing, more dialogue, more riding, final fight. The quest "A princess in distress" is a prime example.

It's a roller coaster or a theme park design, where the designer switches between various distractions on regular basis, so the player is always curios about the next thing, without getting him bored. There never is a real threat gameplay-wise, in the sense that you would die or fail the quest - at least on Normal difficulty.

CP77 is sorely missing this kind of design, which, retarded as it sounds when you analyze it, provided for hundreds of hours of casual fun. Combined with the writing and acting of characters, it is what made Witcher 3 everyone's favorite western-made Japanese-style popamole.

In CP77 you either have completely lifeless gigs which you described. They may incoprporate combat and hacking or lockpicking, but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4. On the other hand you have the multiple-stages secondary quests like "I fought the Law" or "Sinnerman", which feel frustraitingly on rails. In fact playing through these felt like playing an earlier game than Witcher 3, where the Witcher 3 approach was still experimented with and was in the early stages of perfecting. So that's what they need to bring back to breathe some life into Cyberpunk 77. I doubt it's possible, but we'll see I guess.

 

[Gargaune]

In CP77 you either have completely lifeless gigs which you described. They may incoprporate combat and hacking or lockpicking, but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4. On the other hand you have the multiple-stages secondary quests like "I fought the Law" or "Sinnerman", which feel frustraitingly on rails. In fact playing through these felt like playing an earlier game than Witcher 3, where the Witcher 3 approach was still experimented with and was in the early stages of perfecting. So that's what they need to bring back to breathe some life into Cyberpunk 77. I doubt it's possible, but we'll see I guess.

Agreed, and this is why I've argued that the only way to "save" Cyberpunk 2077 is with a quality expansion, preferably a self-contained one which can appropriately tackle mission and level design from the ground up in a very different manner from the base game. Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

 

[racofer]

but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4

Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

Only LoversLab has the perseverance, manpower, expertise, and the creativity to transform Cyberpunk 2077 into a game that will stand the test of time and transcend its limitations.

I do not believe they are willing to do it, though.

 

[blessed king of longing]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

https://www.gamebyte.com/cyberpunk-2077-wants-your-feedback-on-its-quests/

All the feedback already exists, all they have to do is go through this thread or any other thread where people discussed what pissed them off and what they liked. Asking people 1 year after they played the game is kind of retarded.
If I was a dev I would be pouring over it every single day and see what I could have done better

 

[Trans-Financial-Man]

It's now confirmed, they have no idea what they're doing with this game. At least they admit it, so something can still be salvaged, maybe.

https://www.gamebyte.com/cyberpunk-2077-wants-your-feedback-on-its-quests/

All the feedback already exists, all they have to do is go through this thread or any other thread where people discussed what pissed them off and what they liked. Asking people 1 year after they played the game is kind of retarded.
If I was a dev I would be pouring over it every single day and see what I could have done better

Having had personal dealings with former CDPR devs I think the main issue was they kept hiring amateurs who didn't know what they were doing and thus couldn't even understand any criticism. Which is why Pawel here is so clueless. He doesn't have the experience to actually deal with criticism properly. In a well run dev that man wouldn't be in charge of anything due to his clear lack of experience but after the first few great migrations of CDPR staff they were left with shit and decided to raise up whoever was left. Then hire the diversity hires.

 

[AwesomeButton]

Agreed, and this is why I've argued that the only way to "save" Cyberpunk 2077 is with a quality expansion, preferably a self-contained one which can appropriately tackle mission and level design from the ground up in a very different manner from the base game. Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

Witcher 3 was after all the functional assassin's creed formula, with the important addition of well developed characters that grew on the player after a while. CDPR removed this part with CP77 and expected the attachment to the main character to somehow still happen.

 

[racofer]

Agreed, and this is why I've argued that the only way to "save" Cyberpunk 2077 is with a quality expansion, preferably a self-contained one which can appropriately tackle mission and level design from the ground up in a very different manner from the base game. Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

Witcher 3 was after all the functional assassin's creed formula, with the important addition of well developed characters that grew on the player after a while. CDPR removed this part with CP77 and expected the attachment to the main character to somehow still happen.

And don't forget: the first batch of DLC is bunch of cosmetics for a strictly first person game.

 

[gurugeorge]

but everything else feels like attacking a raider outpost in Fallout 3/4

Patches can improve some features and fix interfaces, but they won't fundamentally change the disappointing nature of the core experience.

Only LoversLab has the perseverance, manpower, expertise, and the creativity to transform Cyberpunk 2077 into a game that will stand the test of time and transcend its limitations.

I do not believe they are willing to do it, though.

lol, last I checked in, they were sitting around polishing their nails re. CP2077, because it doesn't yet have the necessary tools. That looks like it's changing slowly, but it will probably take some time yet. The closest you can get to anything, ahem, interesting, is using the still-janky (but always slowly improving) third person mod and this decent but fiddly to install (unless you're using MO2, which now supports the game, plus the mod's FOMOD) body mod. There are also mods that restore the uncensored versions of the ads and the NPC clothing (not really all that different). Spawn0 also has a mod that makes the kinkier clothing some of the NPCs have available to the player.

I offer the fruit of my forensic investigations purely in the interests of science, of course

 

[Gargaune]

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

I don't believe that's the main thing here, I think there's a subtler but more serious conflict. Sure, the cinematic presentation of third-person can help in some respects, and you've got Deus Ex as a good example of striking a balance, but then you've also got titles like Thief, exclusively first-person with no plot agency, and yet Garret's still a more engaging protagonist. The rub, I think, is in the writing...

Consider this - what do Geralt of Rivia, JC Denton, Adam Jensen and even Garret all have in common? No, really, take a moment to think about it before you read on. Okay? Right, well if you answered "they're all stoic types", you're right on the money. The way these characters speak, what they say and how they say it, presents them as reserved, calculated, even-tempered individuals, which creates a fictional space between what they're saying and why they're saying it, a space for the player to insert themselves into. So even as Geralt has far more backstory and established relationships, his measured, often laconic mannerisms allow the player to put their own spin on interpreting the character's inner processes, on "what he's actually thinking."

This is not the case with Cyberpunk's protagonist, who is consistently impulsive and extroverted. While lacking much of a personal history, V's character is right there on the page - Stupid Asshole™. And if you can't relate to that, well, tough luck, there's no room for you to read things differently. And while I can understand that this sort of scumbag archetype goes well with a cyberpunk story in general, it can be a really bad fit for a videogame promising character agency. So even though V's role is well performed, plenty of players will have trouble investing themselves into that role.

To sum up, if you're gonna have a fully-acted protagonist in the context of an RPG, you're best off making them the strong, silent type, because with a stoic PC, less is literally more. Have I already made this argument? I forget. It's a big thread. I'll probably make it again at some point.

 

[gurugeorge]

There is another fundamental disadvantage that CP77 suffers from, and that can't be compesanted. The player can't ever develop the same kind of attachment to V as he could to Geralt, because the game is first-person and the character himself is a blank slate. This is so huge that I can't understand how CDPR have overlooked it when they decided to make Cyberpunk first person.

I don't believe that's the main thing here, I think there's a subtler but more serious conflict. Sure, the cinematic presentation of third-person can help in some respects, and you've got Deus Ex as a good example of striking a balance, but then you've also got titles like Thief, exclusively first-person with no plot agency, and yet Garret's still a more engaging protagonist. The rub, I think, is in the writing...

Consider this - what do Geralt of Rivia, JC Denton, Adam Jensen and even Garret all have in common? No, really, take a moment to think about it before you read on. Okay? Right, well if you answered "they're all stoic types", you're right on the money. The way these characters speak, what they say and how they say it, presents them as reserved, calculated, even-tempered individuals, which creates a fictional space between what they're saying and why they're saying it, a space for the player to insert themselves into. So even as Geralt has far more backstory and established relationships, his measured, often laconic mannerisms allow the player to put their own spin on interpreting the character's inner processes, on "what he's actually thinking."

This is not the case with Cyberpunk's protagonist, who is consistently impulsive and extroverted. While lacking much of a personal history, V's character is right there on the page - Stupid Asshole™. And if you can't relate to that, well, tough luck, there's no room for you to read things differently. And while I can understand that this sort of scumbag archetype goes well with a cyberpunk story in general, it can be a really bad fit for a videogame promising character agency. So even though V's role is well performed, plenty of players will have trouble investing themselves into that role.

To sum up, if you're gonna have a fully-acted protagonist in the context of an RPG, you're best off making them the strong, silent type, because with a stoic PC, less is literally more. Have I already made this argument? I forget. It's a big thread. I'll probably make it again at some point.

Excellent observation.

The problem with V is that the character is far too defined by the voice actors' interpretation of some very detailed and specific dialogue text, so you basically can really only create 2 Vs, male and female, each in a slightly more bolshy or less bolshy flavour (depending on whether you pick mild-mannered or bolshy responses - but often the response you think is going to be mild-mannered is also pretty bolshy ).

As a player, one feels quite railroaded into being a pretty specific V in only those 4 flavours, whereas, as you say, with laconic/stoic character writing and voice acting, it's much more open to interpretation and subtlety.

 

[ADL]

You can see the Full Game Rebalance in this video and I highly suggest his mod list. Mods like FGR and Immersive Roleplay show that there is absolutely something worth salvaging here.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LSlbfonhlGqt0tCg9O5ieuzTw_HHVVOs8gEJ1Q4T6mk/edit?usp=sharing