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

[Justicar]

If you invade in Elden Ring, can you summon your horse? And do you have a covenant of dickhead invaders and the not-Blades of the Darkmoon?

Because if both are true, then you will have more of a cop chase in Elden Ring than you will have in Cyberpunk 2077.

Nope. You cannot use your horse when invaded or invading.

So foot chases it is, then. Still beats out Cyberpunk I guess.

Elden trash

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Can you guys rate my post agree or disagree in terms of if you liked the story or not.

No!

 

[ERYFKRAD]

When Cyberpunk was announced, I was hoping to drive one of these:

Instead, we got future versions of VW Golf and Batmobile. Doesn't feel very "cyberpunk," does it? At least they nailed the atmosphere of the city right.

Man maybe you just want to dick around in that cloudpunk game.

 

[Zero Credibility]

Can you guys rate my post agree or disagree in terms of if you liked the story or not.

I did not care for the story either. The biggest reason I think was the fake forced urgency that the game keeps pushing on the player, it really pisses me off. It's the same problem the main story of Witcher 3 has, only made worse here by the player character literally coughing up blood to remind you of it all the damn time, like they got tuberculosis or something. It's really hard to justify all the random crap your character can engage in when there's a time bomb loudly ticking away in their head. What's that, I can pop a pill that will speed up my already imminent demise so that Johnny can go on a date or reconnect with his old band? Sure, why not!

For fuck sake, don't say to the player exactly how little time their character is supposed to have left, leave that shit vague because you have no intention of enforcing it in your open world game anyway.

 

[Anonymous Wife Scholar]

Can you guys rate my post agree or disagree in terms of if you liked the story or not.

I did not care for the story either. The biggest reason I think was the fake forced urgency that the game keeps pushing on the player, it really pisses me off.

It is poop Deadfire fake forced urgency nonsense anon! It is!

 

[welly321]

If I loved the witcher 1, 2 and 3 ....Should I get cyberpunk? I really don't wanna play another GTA game. The main reason I am hesitant is that I heard all the side quests you get are done via Telephone and not actually finding and interacting with an NPC. That was my favorite part in the Witcher...wandering around and interacting with the NPCs.

 

[Cyberarmy]

I really don't wanna play another GTA game.

Don't get this one then, CP2077 can't even clone GTA clone gameplay right.

 

[DeepOcean]

Hated the story, not because it is bad but because, a)if you are doing a cyberpunk 2020 video game adaptation, I expected infiltrating heavily guarded megacorp facilities not to be a groupie for Keanu Reeves, b) If my character is going to die on six months from cyber tuberculosis, why exactly he is wasting time installing virus on dirty gay bars for a few bucks?

Simply speaking, the people who made the main story had absolute no clue of the impact it would have deligitimizing the rest of the content in the game or they didnt care, basically you play an open world game that has little to do with the main story and this makes both experiences worse. If my character is going to die in six months, I would change his behavior completely but on Cyberbug, you are forced to play the game as if the main story didnt exist.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

To be fair, we were shit on hard in Vampire the Masquerade land as well. Any additions or projects in the future are going to have a hell of a time getting off the ground if they half arse it. I just don't see anything else happening with CP2077. I really still can't believe the mass amount of dildo footage and loot reported when the gane came out. It was like literally saying FUCK YOU CP FANS!

 

[passerby]

If I loved the witcher 1, 2 and 3 ....Should I get cyberpunk? I really don't wanna play another GTA game. The main reason I am hesitant is that I heard all the side quests you get are done via Telephone and not actually finding and interacting with an NPC. That was my favorite part in the Witcher...wandering around and interacting with the NPCs.

I haven't played it yet, but my understanding is that it got backslash because it was advertised as futuristic GTA, while in fact it's just a reskinned W3. CP is to W3 what F4 is to Skyrim. It's also much shorter than W3, especially if you ignore generic "gigs".
Cars are Roach basically and there is nothing to do in the open world besides travelling to quest locations and you should avoid making a mess outside missions, since police is disfunctional and immersion breaking, crowd NPCs have AI from W3 with no improvements, etc.

If W3 with guns sounds good to you, it should be good for what it is.

 

[DeepOcean]

I find funny that Sasko had to resort claiming that not all open world had police systems mentioning Elden Ring while an obvious counter point is that there are dozens of open world games made by much poorer companies that had police systems and you know... you are a criminal... on a city... you know, doing criminal stuff on a suposedly dystopic semi police state city where the megacorps rule, so, having a functional corp police isnt even people having wrong expectations about GTA but demanding basic gaming design.

 

[mediocrepoet]

I actually liked the game and the police thing bugged me. My two "favourite" moments are:

1) Picking a fight with a bunch of cops downtown, turning to take cover as they started shooting at me and it all stopped. I turn back around to return fire and... they're all gone! Poof!
2) On one of the story missions with what's his face, the gay band member, you have to get away from the cops. I get in the car and floor it and... poof! Easiest mission ever!

This game could've been phenomenal, but they shit the bed so hard on basic systems.

Edit: It's worth pointing out that I barely remember what I did yesterday, but this pissed me off enough that I remember it fairly clearly a year later.

 

[Frozen]

I think they're fucked as a company.
They could try to make new IP in red engine, story driven third person "action rpg" (something they know how to do) but it would be shit. Don't know do they have any writers left from TW2 that could make a compelling story.
Without Witcher universe they have nothing. TW3 was already gameplay-wise barren game but you have compelling simple story for normies and it looked nice.
You could make Geralt 4 but it would be even worse.
They have no gameplay mechanics they have no knowledge to make anything else.
Next stop is EA acquisition and then its MMO time baby.

 

[Gargaune]

Is there a single choice you can make in this game that actually matters as far as the story goes? I played up until the last mission and it didn't seem like it.

Yeah, but it's mostly concentrated around the main plot. You've got a fair bit of variability between the three finales you can unlock - Johnny, Arasaka, the Aldecaldos - and their respective missions play out differently, plus you've got the option to clock out early with a bullet to the head. So that gets some credit, but outside of the scope of the main plot, player agency is mostly cosmetic and superficial.

If my character is going to die in six months, I would change his behavior completely but on Cyberbug, you are forced to play the game as if the main story didnt exist.

Technically speaking, the plot operates under the idea that you have "a few weeks" to live. The six months extension is your hard-earned reward in the epilogue.

Either way, I liked the writing of the main plot, as in the subject matter, but the way they paced its progression relative to the availability of side content is among the worst I've seen. It actually outedges Fallout 4 and its "my son is missing but let me help you build your mud hut village here" - the Sole Survivor might be a bad parent, but V's literally missing their instinct for self-preservation.

I keep wondering whether they'd originally intended to take the BG2 route, with Act I focusing on the open world and building up Street Cred to get Dex's attention, and then scrambled to restructure once Reeves came back asking for a bigger role. You know, move up the Heist so Johnny could participate in all that open world side content. Though one thing that makes me doubt this is that a BG2 structure would've likely required more active involvement from Jackie, and CBP's clearly not built for companion play. Eh, I guess it's one of those things we'll never know, I doubt any of the devs will spill the beans on it.

1) Picking a fight with a bunch of cops downtown, turning to take cover as they started shooting at me and it all stopped. I turn back around to return fire and... they're all gone! Poof!

 

[somewhatgiggly]

Can you guys rate my post agree or disagree in terms of if you liked the story or not.

I liked the main story overall, it had some dumb shit, plotholes stuff here and there, but for the most part, I enjoyed what I got.

Now the branching story paths was what I was missing.

Remember the first mission for the corpo-lady to get the spider-bot? yeh that mission was fucking awesome, and I had hoped most main missions were gonna be like that. They weren't.
But I engaged with the story I really did.

I liked it, when I adjusted my expectations. From imagining myself as a merc in a cyberpunk world to a merc straddled with being subsumed by a goddamn 50 year old AI chip and getting desperate. Leaving their mark on this shit city or not. There were some hard hitting moments just talking to Johnny out in the badlands or in Pacifica.

It's why the Nomad Ending felt right. Fuck Arasaka, fuck Johnny, leave with Panam, fuck Night City, leave to somewhere else. Or at least with Rogue and co, hit Arasaka so hard they leave the West Coast and keep running for whatever hope there might be afterwords.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

my understanding is that it got backslash because it was advertised as futuristic GTA, while in fact it's just a reskinned W3

holy shit that'd be heaven. instead this is barely a reskinned daikatana.

 

[tritosine2k]

At least you can't blame Cyberpunk for NOT being an easy target to compulsive sulking, ...achieved with flying colors.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

I think they're fucked as a company.
They could try to make new IP in red engine, story driven third person "action rpg" (something they know how to do) but it would be shit. Don't know do they have any writers left from TW2 that could make a compelling story.
Without Witcher universe they have nothing. TW3 was already gameplay-wise barren game but you have compelling simple story for normies and it looked nice.
You could make Geralt 4 but it would be even worse.
They have no gameplay mechanics they have no knowledge to make anything else.
Next stop is EA acquisition and then its MMO time baby.

By pursuing Cyberpunk 2077 rather than a fourth Witcher game, CDPR missed a golden opportunity to beat Bethesda at its own game. They must have assumed that, since Bethesda had released Skyrim in 2011 followed by Fallout 4 in 2015, that the next Bethesda game would be the Elder Scrolls VI and probably release in 2019. Therefore, it seemed a good bet for CDPR to instead shift genres from fantasy to SF-cyberpunk and to shift gameplay style yet again to imitate GTA. However, as we now know, Bethesda bizarrely put their flagship series on the backburner while attempting to develop a new science-fiction IP in a different subgenre than the Fallout series and moreover experiencing substantial development difficulties in doing so, such that it will have taken seven years to create by the time it is finally released in 2022, assuming no further delays. After three Witcher games, Geralt's personal story was played out, but CDPR could have seized the chance to develop a fourth Witcher game with a customizable protagonist similar to the Elder Scrolls series and made it even more Open World than its predecessor. This would have been closer in format to The Witcher III than Cyberpunk 2077, meaning they probably would have experienced fewer problems in development and been able to deliver a game on time (and within budget) in 2019, by which point eight years would have passed since Skyrim and audiences would have been extremely receptive to a CDPR game using the Witcher IP but in the style of the last three Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda would have found Elder Scrolls fans flocking to an Open World The Witcher IV, while it struggled to complete its new SF game and any prospective Elder Scrolls VI would be at least four years in the future past the delivery of a delayed Starfield.

If CDPR leadership had any sense, they would have started development on such an Elder Scrolls-like Witcher IV as soon as the trainwreck of Cyberpunk 2077 was made available to the public, intending to pre-empt The Elder Scrolls VI, which is still entirely possible.

 

[Falksi]

I think they're fucked as a company.
They could try to make new IP in red engine, story driven third person "action rpg" (something they know how to do) but it would be shit. Don't know do they have any writers left from TW2 that could make a compelling story.
Without Witcher universe they have nothing. TW3 was already gameplay-wise barren game but you have compelling simple story for normies and it looked nice.
You could make Geralt 4 but it would be even worse.
They have no gameplay mechanics they have no knowledge to make anything else.
Next stop is EA acquisition and then its MMO time baby.

By pursuing Cyberpunk 2077 rather than a fourth Witcher game, CDPR missed a golden opportunity to beat Bethesda at its own game. They must have assumed that, since Bethesda had released Skyrim in 2011 followed by Fallout 4 in 2015, that the next Bethesda game would be the Elder Scrolls VI and probably release in 2019. Therefore, it seemed a good bet for CDPR to instead shift genres from fantasy to SF-cyberpunk and to shift gameplay style yet again to imitate GTA. However, as we now know, Bethesda bizarrely put their flagship series on the backburner while attempting to develop a new science-fiction IP in a different subgenre than the Fallout series and moreover experiencing substantial development difficulties in doing so, such that it will have taken seven years to create by the time it is finally released in 2022, assuming no further delays. After three Witcher games, Geralt's personal story was played out, but CDPR could have seized the chance to develop a fourth Witcher game with a customizable protagonist similar to the Elder Scrolls series and made it even more Open World than its predecessor. This would have been closer in format to The Witcher III than Cyberpunk 2077, meaning they probably would have experienced fewer problems in development and been able to deliver a game on time (and within budget) in 2019, by which point eight years would have passed since Skyrim and audiences would have been extremely receptive to a CDPR game using the Witcher IP but in the style of the last three Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda would have found Elder Scrolls fans flocking to an Open World The Witcher IV, while it struggled to complete its new SF game and any prospective Elder Scrolls VI would be at least four years in the future past the delivery of a delayed Starfield.

If CDPR leadership had any sense, they would have started development on such an Elder Scrolls-like Witcher IV as soon as the trainwreck of Cyberpunk 2077 was made available to the public, intending to pre-empt The Elder Scrolls VI, which is still entirely possible.

I was fully expecting "The Witchers" customizable protagonist 4th game after the success of TW3. They could have even continued releasing prequel expansions for Geralt for TW3.

 

[lukaszek]

maneater got better police chases, tragic backstory and character development(both protag and antagonist)

 

[Zeriel]

I think they're fucked as a company.
They could try to make new IP in red engine, story driven third person "action rpg" (something they know how to do) but it would be shit. Don't know do they have any writers left from TW2 that could make a compelling story.
Without Witcher universe they have nothing. TW3 was already gameplay-wise barren game but you have compelling simple story for normies and it looked nice.
You could make Geralt 4 but it would be even worse.
They have no gameplay mechanics they have no knowledge to make anything else.
Next stop is EA acquisition and then its MMO time baby.

By pursuing Cyberpunk 2077 rather than a fourth Witcher game, CDPR missed a golden opportunity to beat Bethesda at its own game. They must have assumed that, since Bethesda had released Skyrim in 2011 followed by Fallout 4 in 2015, that the next Bethesda game would be the Elder Scrolls VI and probably release in 2019. Therefore, it seemed a good bet for CDPR to instead shift genres from fantasy to SF-cyberpunk and to shift gameplay style yet again to imitate GTA. However, as we now know, Bethesda bizarrely put their flagship series on the backburner while attempting to develop a new science-fiction IP in a different subgenre than the Fallout series and moreover experiencing substantial development difficulties in doing so, such that it will have taken seven years to create by the time it is finally released in 2022, assuming no further delays. After three Witcher games, Geralt's personal story was played out, but CDPR could have seized the chance to develop a fourth Witcher game with a customizable protagonist similar to the Elder Scrolls series and made it even more Open World than its predecessor. This would have been closer in format to The Witcher III than Cyberpunk 2077, meaning they probably would have experienced fewer problems in development and been able to deliver a game on time (and within budget) in 2019, by which point eight years would have passed since Skyrim and audiences would have been extremely receptive to a CDPR game using the Witcher IP but in the style of the last three Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda would have found Elder Scrolls fans flocking to an Open World The Witcher IV, while it struggled to complete its new SF game and any prospective Elder Scrolls VI would be at least four years in the future past the delivery of a delayed Starfield.

If CDPR leadership had any sense, they would have started development on such an Elder Scrolls-like Witcher IV as soon as the trainwreck of Cyberpunk 2077 was made available to the public, intending to pre-empt The Elder Scrolls VI, which is still entirely possible.

It's a compelling idea, but keep in mind Cyberpunk started in 2012. They didn't go full production until 2016~, but it's not like it was some off the wall idea they opted for instead of W4. It was something they had incubating and had to finish to have something to show for it.

Everything we've heard leaked from inside CDPR makes it clear this was a failure of management--which to be fair goes back years. Management was already driving old developers off in the time of Witcher 1 to Witcher 2, that continued with Witcher 3, and finally reached its apotheosis with them telling the team that originally worked on Cyberpunk and had the idea for the non-linear version of the game to fuck off and die, in favor of the action-heavy, celebrity-baiting reboot version we got. So even if you do some hypothetical alternate scenario where C2077 doesn't exist and they do Witcher 4 instead, the same management team would surely have fucked up the pooch in the same way by getting the last shreds of talent to leave mid-production.

I'm pessimistic about the future of CDPR because it appears they've reached their Bioware moment: where years of mismanagement and "well just crunching the devs works so far, let's trust in our magic" results in the people who make things happen all leaving. So far they got away with it because half the devs leaving were replaced with half new devs who managed to get the work done, no doubt with the support of legacy talent who still remained who were able to whip the new lads into shape. But as Bioware shows us, at some point when you are stripping half the planks with every iteration and replacing it with whatever lumber you find in the junkyard, you are left with not so much a Ship of Theseus as a Trashbarge of Theseus.

This approach to management also results in a bad reputation. When you are riding high and everyone loves your games, prospective employees may ignore complaints and be confident in joining your company. Once it becomes clear it's a mess, no good talent will want to join, and you're left with the scraps--right when you need the best talent possible.

 

[EvilWolf]

I think they're fucked as a company.
They could try to make new IP in red engine, story driven third person "action rpg" (something they know how to do) but it would be shit. Don't know do they have any writers left from TW2 that could make a compelling story.
Without Witcher universe they have nothing. TW3 was already gameplay-wise barren game but you have compelling simple story for normies and it looked nice.
You could make Geralt 4 but it would be even worse.
They have no gameplay mechanics they have no knowledge to make anything else.
Next stop is EA acquisition and then its MMO time baby.

By pursuing Cyberpunk 2077 rather than a fourth Witcher game, CDPR missed a golden opportunity to beat Bethesda at its own game. They must have assumed that, since Bethesda had released Skyrim in 2011 followed by Fallout 4 in 2015, that the next Bethesda game would be the Elder Scrolls VI and probably release in 2019. Therefore, it seemed a good bet for CDPR to instead shift genres from fantasy to SF-cyberpunk and to shift gameplay style yet again to imitate GTA. However, as we now know, Bethesda bizarrely put their flagship series on the backburner while attempting to develop a new science-fiction IP in a different subgenre than the Fallout series and moreover experiencing substantial development difficulties in doing so, such that it will have taken seven years to create by the time it is finally released in 2022, assuming no further delays. After three Witcher games, Geralt's personal story was played out, but CDPR could have seized the chance to develop a fourth Witcher game with a customizable protagonist similar to the Elder Scrolls series and made it even more Open World than its predecessor. This would have been closer in format to The Witcher III than Cyberpunk 2077, meaning they probably would have experienced fewer problems in development and been able to deliver a game on time (and within budget) in 2019, by which point eight years would have passed since Skyrim and audiences would have been extremely receptive to a CDPR game using the Witcher IP but in the style of the last three Elder Scrolls games. Bethesda would have found Elder Scrolls fans flocking to an Open World The Witcher IV, while it struggled to complete its new SF game and any prospective Elder Scrolls VI would be at least four years in the future past the delivery of a delayed Starfield.

If CDPR leadership had any sense, they would have started development on such an Elder Scrolls-like Witcher IV as soon as the trainwreck of Cyberpunk 2077 was made available to the public, intending to pre-empt The Elder Scrolls VI, which is still entirely possible.

I was fully expecting "The Witchers" customizable protagonist 4th game after the success of TW3. They could have even continued releasing prequel expansions for Geralt for TW3.

"Why couldn't they just churn out another sequel like Ubisoft or Bethesda!" We've come full circle I see.

 

[JamesDixon]

Simply speaking, the people who made the main story had absolute no clue of the impact it would have deligitimizing the rest of the content in the game or they didnt care, basically you play an open world game that has little to do with the main story and this makes both experiences worse. If my character is going to die in six months, I would change his behavior completely but on Cyberbug, you are forced to play the game as if the main story didnt exist.

I'm sure the creator of Cyberpunk wouldn't be pleased to hear this since he's the one that wrote the story outline. The entire story wraps up what was began in Cyberpunk 1.0 with Johnny and company. The problem you're having is that the developers failed to properly incorporate the story and fit it with the game.

Personally, I enjoyed CP2077 for what it was.

 

[Non-Edgy Gamer]

I think they're fucked as a company.
They could try to make new IP in red engine, story driven third person "action rpg" (something they know how to do) but it would be shit. Don't know do they have any writers left from TW2 that could make a compelling story.
Without Witcher universe they have nothing. TW3 was already gameplay-wise barren game but you have compelling simple story for normies and it looked nice.
You could make Geralt 4 but it would be even worse.
They have no gameplay mechanics they have no knowledge to make anything else.
Next stop is EA acquisition and then its MMO time baby.

Eh. I think it has more to do with them getting losing most of their TW3 devs iirc. That and having to do a real AAA game for once and not just The Witcher on a moderately improved engine, like they've been doing for nearly 15 years.

Regardless, the game's problem wasn't a lack of story, but bugs. I was fine with the story, as simple and silly as it was at times. It could have worked if they didn't have bugs and had done more to clone GTA properly.

It's a lack of technical skill that ruined them, not a lack of writers.

By pursuing Cyberpunk 2077 rather than a fourth Witcher game, CDPR missed a golden opportunity to beat Bethesda at its own game.

True, but it's not an uncommon error. And besides, I doubt any sequel to TW3 would have either the same gameplay or the same autistic casual audience that Skyrim had.

Company after company has failed to recreate the simple formula Todd stumbled into (and was too untalented and unambitious to accidentally overcomplicate and ruin for his entire career).

Open world game, first person, fantasy setting, be who you want, do what you want, simple gameplay anyone can pick up, easy to mod. How many games have there really been that replicated this formula exactly? Can you name even one that did all this and shipped with a construction set that was as easy to use as Skyrim's or Morrowind's?

That said, yes, filling the void where ES6 should have been would have netted them a lot more than this did.

 

[JamesDixon]

I think they're fucked as a company.
They could try to make new IP in red engine, story driven third person "action rpg" (something they know how to do) but it would be shit. Don't know do they have any writers left from TW2 that could make a compelling story.
Without Witcher universe they have nothing. TW3 was already gameplay-wise barren game but you have compelling simple story for normies and it looked nice.
You could make Geralt 4 but it would be even worse.
They have no gameplay mechanics they have no knowledge to make anything else.
Next stop is EA acquisition and then its MMO time baby.

Eh. I think it has more to do with them getting losing most of their TW3 devs iirc. That and having to do a real AAA game for once and not just The Witcher on a moderately improved engine, like they've been doing for nearly 15 years.

Regardless, the game's problem wasn't a lack of story, but bugs. I was fine with the story, as simple and silly as it was at times. It could have worked if they didn't have bugs and had done more to clone GTA properly.

It's a lack of technical skill that ruined them, not a lack of writers.

By pursuing Cyberpunk 2077 rather than a fourth Witcher game, CDPR missed a golden opportunity to beat Bethesda at its own game.

True, but it's not an uncommon error. And besides, I doubt any sequel to TW3 would have either the same gameplay or the same autistic casual audience that Skyrim had.

Company after company has failed to recreate the simple formula Todd stumbled into (and was too untalented and unambitious to accidentally overcomplicate and ruin for his entire career).

Open world game, first person, fantasy setting, be who you want, do what you want, simple gameplay anyone can pick up, easy to mod. How many games have there really been that replicated this formula exactly? Can you name even one that did all this and shipped with a construction set that was as easy to use as Skyrim's or Morrowind's?

Todd Howard's secret to success is making bland theme park rides that are immediately forgettable once you leave the park.