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

[yes plz]

i can't believe dana carvey is reviewing games now

 

[Wesp5]

I doubt a dev kit is going to do anything substantial. The issues and limitations of Cyberpunk are baked in, because they had to rush a large portion of the development and that means hacking.

Don't underestimate the modders! In case of Cyberpunk it could even be beneficial, as once CDPR stops patching it, the modders can do what they want without fear the next update will break everthing again. Like it happens in GTA5 all the time...

 

[ADL]

Quoting myself from the other thread about whether or not CDPR still has a good game left in them.

I think they have a much better shot at one after making the move to Unreal now that they're not being bottlenecked by developing a proprietary engine. This will be an unpopular position but I think a good portion if not the majority of 2077's issues were a result of technical issues creating a huge backlog. Even without danger hairs, you were never going to get 2077 as envisioned.

Cyberpunk 2077 is mostly positive at 430,000 reviews on Steam right now. It'll only go up from here as modders continue to learn the tools and do their thing on top of the expansion's release and deeper discounts. Any apprehension towards a new CDPR game will go out the window the moment they show Witcher 4 running on Unreal Engine 5 with multiplayer. Cyberpunk 2 will coast on the goodwill earned from Witcher 4, not that it needed it. The IP is only slightly damaged.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Cyberpunk 2077 is mostly positive at 430,000 reviews on Steam right now. It'll only go up from here as modders continue to learn the tools and do their thing on top of the expansion's release and deeper discounts. Any apprehension towards a new CDPR game will go out the window the moment they show Witcher 4 running on Unreal Engine 5 with multiplayer. Cyberpunk 2 will coast on the goodwill earned from Witcher 4, not that it needed it. The IP is only slightly damaged.

I'm more in the same boat as Kjaska. I didn't follow the game before launch and I often don't because so much is always bullshit, so I didn't really have any hype for it until right before release and it ran well on my reasonably decent gaming PC. It gave me more or less what I expected: a pretty but somewhat vapid cyberpunk shooting story and the let downs were irritating but largely negligible when looking at the whole picture (disappearing NPCs, everything to do with the police, etc.).

All in all, it gave me nearly 100 hours where I enjoyed myself, which is far better than most of the shit out there. I'd pick up a sequel, but CDPR should really have an eye to either properly scope out their system requirements / console limitations, or make stripped down ports for the last gen like companies used to since I would've been PISSED if I would've picked up the PS4 version instead.

 

[Perkel]

I doubt a dev kit is going to do anything substantial. The issues and limitations of Cyberpunk are baked in, because they had to rush a large portion of the development and that means hacking.

You mean like what ? Game was sure buggy at launch yes but aside from that i can't really see the issues you are talking about. Design wise it is completely fine. Most of criticism i saw was mostly coming from people expecting GTA game not an RPG. Like often mentioned "police system".

My own issues with game mostly are connected to game balancing. And this is where modders can do much good like they did with TW3EE. I would love to see overhaul of C77 which would make it much harder game. Even playing at very hard game is easy for me. And you can see how good it can be when you go out of your way to attack much higher level characters and game then transforms from action game into something closer to MGS5 and action is not rewarded but stealth and thinking is.

On other hand thanks to structure of game it is way easier to add new content to C77 than to something like TW3. For one you don't need to create new land as there are bajilions of buildings you could make interior for and just connect it to "locked door" you see often in city. GIGs are now received as sms same as resolve of it so you don't need to record any voice for them.

C77 should be great way to mod stuff. IT just need some developer made toolkit for harder stuff like making edits in game world, creating interiors etc. Hopefully they will release it as they hired people who were working already on mod tools for community.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

The IP is only slightly damaged.

I wouldn't even call it damaged, since people want more of it.

 

[markec]

If they make a sequel I really hope that they do a simple main quest.

One thing I really hate about storytelling in a sandbox open world game is main story with a sense of urgency.

"I need to find my father!", "I need to find my child!", "I need to find a solution for my consciousness being taken over!"

When you have a game that its all about exploring having a main quest with a sense of urgency creates a disconnect between the player and the game.

Only time this actually worked was in Fallout 1.

Just make something like in Saints Row, a rise to power from a lowly gang member to a crime lord or something like that.

 

[Yosharian]

If they make a sequel I really hope that they do a simple main quest.

One thing I really hate about storytelling in a sandbox open world game is main story with a sense of urgency.

"I need to find my father!", "I need to find my child!", "I need to find a solution for my consciousness being taken over!"

When you have a game that its all about exploring having a main quest with a sense of urgency creates a disconnect between the player and the game.

Only time this actually worked was in Fallout 1.

Just make something like in Saints Row, a rise to power from a lowly gang member to a crime lord or something like that.

The problem is not with the type of story being told, but the quality of the writing

 

[markec]

If they make a sequel I really hope that they do a simple main quest.

One thing I really hate about storytelling in a sandbox open world game is main story with a sense of urgency.

"I need to find my father!", "I need to find my child!", "I need to find a solution for my consciousness being taken over!"

When you have a game that its all about exploring having a main quest with a sense of urgency creates a disconnect between the player and the game.

Only time this actually worked was in Fallout 1.

Just make something like in Saints Row, a rise to power from a lowly gang member to a crime lord or something like that.

The problem is not with the type of story being told, but the quality of the writing

Sure a good writers could have made those plotlines work, any poor idea can be made interesting by a competent writer.

Problem is that creating a sense of urgency of a main quest in a sandbox world is putting a writer in a unnecessary bind and making his job more difficult.

This is especially relevant if your writing staff lack talent, in which case you are better off making a simple story.

 

[typical user]

The whole dying part in the storyline is so out of whack. They just drop this bomb halfway through and expect people will go explore rest of the - now unlocked - city. Like couldn't Victor just pull-out burned chip, say all is dandy and then V would get Johnny's hallucinations, only for 'Meet Hanako at Embers' to get the terminal diagnosis? Like this doesn't take a genius to rewrite the story, V would still have motivation to remove virus from his head but wouldn't be in constant rush.

 

[Xelocix]

The only time I ever remember Cyberpunk 2077 even exists is when this thread gets bumped. The suicidal disappointment and extreme denial from normies when this "game" dropped was divine though. Almost made me nut.

 

[Fedora Master]

The only time I ever remember Cyberpunk 2077 even exists is when this thread gets bumped. The suicidal disappointment and extreme denial from normies when this "game" dropped was divine though. Almost made me nut.

Who do you think keeps this thread alive if not normies in denial.

 

[Perkel]

Idk why people argue this is an issue.

- You get shot in brain and you should be dead.
- Chip revives you preparing you to be engram host, giving you second life effectively after you failed first.
- You get diagnozed with curious case of being dead in unknown amount of time "maybe weeks, days who knows"
- You are not given straight answer how to fix it.
- You are at loss of what to do only having some vague "maybe arasaka knows how to fix it".
- After short exploration of options you get a whiff of what could help you but that requires either connections of money.
- Ergo V have to earn that money thus doing shit outside. You desperately race with time to do a lot of stuff that normally you wouldn't do because it is too risky etc.
- You scourge NightCity trying to find fix.

I mean it perfectly follows trope of "short live = live twice as bright"

I would agree if path to cure was straight and easy to understand. But in this case even when game ends basically there is no straight answer.

And it is RP thing. If you care for RP then go straight doing what V would do in your place. Which is what i did in first playthrough. I didn't explore whole game first time. IT felt logical all the way through it. It is not logical when you stop RPing and start to powergame.

The only time I ever remember Cyberpunk 2077 even exists is when this thread gets bumped. The suicidal disappointment and extreme denial from normies when this "game" dropped was divine though. Almost made me nut.

Game is older than your account. If nor for you reminder that you exist i might have thought you never existed in first place.

 

[gurugeorge]

The whole dying part in the storyline is so out of whack. They just drop this bomb halfway through and expect people will go explore rest of the - now unlocked - city. Like couldn't Victor just pull-out burned chip, say all is dandy and then V would get Johnny's hallucinations, only for 'Meet Hanako at Embers' to get the terminal diagnosis? Like this doesn't take a genius to rewrite the story, V would still have motivation to remove virus from his head but wouldn't be in constant rush.

Another way I've always thought - just don't have Viktor say "two weeks, tops," have it more indeterminate ("could be a few weeks, a few months, maybe even a year, impossible to say with tech like this, you might be able to fight it off some with these pills, but I can't say how long for") and don't have Goro contacting V in the cafe till a much later trigger, with the hallucinations starting to intrude more to the extent that you're feeling the crisis looming closer. You could even have the staving-off effect of the pills you're taking be more prominent, like part of the gameplay (They're hard to get and you have to source them from underground criminals or something). (In fact, the pills should have served that staving-off purpose, they're introduced like that when Misty gives them to you, but the theme doesn't appear again.)

Bingo, you have a much more immersive and suspension-of-disbelief-continuing excuse to explore the city after the heist, look for some of the other clues and build up rep for a while (even though the exploring and rep-building should have been the bulk of the early to mid game, and the whole heist/chip thing the beginning of the endgame, but that would require too much re-jigging).

It's the same as the Bethesda shit - a supposedly urgent MQ that's inexplicably not actually urgent, just so you can have an excuse to explore the world. It's silly that they have to have atemporal workarounds like the fact that you can agree to meet Goro at the waterfront and leave him hanging there for as long as you like - it's just ridiculous. By that stage there should be more urgency and momentum to the thing.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

I mean it perfectly follows trope of "short live = live twice as bright"

The script certainly tells you this is the theme but the mechanics of the game do nothing to reinforce it and instead are contradictory to it. You cannot do a well-done ticking clock plot in an open world game when there is no actual ticking clock! (And if there was, it would run into the same problems as Fallout where time running out is just a "Fuck you, game over." state, they wrote themselves into a corner.)

I would agree if path to cure was straight and easy to understand.

The game clearly marks critical path quests in the journal and there's nothing to stop you from just shotgunning all of them and ignoring sidegigs. Just headcanoning away the disjointedness between gameplay and narrative is a tired Bethesdrone-tier cope.

 

[Perkel]

The game clearly marks critical path quests in the journal and there's nothing to stop you from just shotgunning all of them and ignoring sidegigs. Just headcanoning away the disjointedness between gameplay and narrative is a tired Bethesdrone-tier cope.

Sorry but what ? You know what RPG stands for ? ROLEPLAYING game you fucking dumbnut. You are now arguing that because developers gave you out of game hint how to proceed further somehow this makes logical sense that there is a fix if you follow that path for in game character. And like i said even by the end of the game it is not clear if you can be cured so your argument fails completely.

What is next ? Arguing that there is no point in playing FPS if there is crosshair that tells you where bullets will fly ?

Either you are RPing or powergaming. In both cases whole argument is invalid in first place.

IF you RP then you just do logically what V should do.

If you are powergaming then inside logic of game doesn't really matter in first place because you care only about some stats and you will do everything regardless of logic.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

You are now arguing that because developers gave you out of game hint how to proceed further somehow this makes logical sense that there is a fix if you follow that path for in game character. And like i said even by the end of the game it is not clear if you can be cured so your argument fails completely.

Whether there is a cure at the end or not is irrelevant to this, you handwaved the dissonance with the lousy "Just ignore it, it's called roleplaying!!" excuse.

IF you RP then you just do logically what V should do.

There is no logic in playing mercenary for $$$ when you're dying and you could instead follow leads on how to hopefully fix it, you can only engage with the sidegigs purely from a "powergaming" stance (haha EXP bar go up!) since the narrative fails to give you one.

 

[Perkel]

Whether there is a cure at the end or not is irrelevant to this, you handwaved the dissonance with the lousy "Just ignore it, it's called roleplaying!!" excuse.

It was your argument not mine, idiot. So you are saying that what you said earlier is irrelevant.

Like i said there is no dissonance because it is perfectly logical in context of in-game world and RP. It is not logical when you start to powergame and want to do absolutely everything but if you start to powergame then i don't see why you should care about story or logic in first place. It is like killing good dragon as good character for its scales so that you can get that nice white dragon scale armor and complaining that game didn't excuse your actions.

There is no logic in playing mercenary for $$$ when you're dying and you could instead follow leads on how to hopefully fix it, you can only engage with the sidegigs purely from a "powergaming" stance (haha EXP bar go up!) since the narrative fails to give you one.

Did you even play game ? One of the major leads to finding cure is getting money for Rogue and it happens very earily. 21k if i remember correctly. That alone means you have to work as mercenary. Besides even if you ignore money for Rogue it is pretty clear that you will be facing enemies much higher in food chain than you and you need to upgrade or you will die before you even can find so called cure.

Now that i think about it. This plot makes logical why suddenly out of nowhere there is some dude who does ridicolous jobs like crazy in short timeframe. Speaking of 4th wall breaking usually in game there is 0 logical explenation why suddenly so many events happen over course of few days, in case of C77 this is normal according to logic of plot.

 

[SpaceWizardz]

idiot

rude

Did you even play game ? One of the major leads to finding cure is getting money for Rogue and it happens very earily. 21k if i remember correctly.

I played at launch and haven't touched it since, if there are moneygates I don't remember them.
Let me just clarify what I'm saying to end this back and forth:
The NARRATIVE wants urgency so it declares time is of the essence (Two weeks, tops) but the GAME wants the player to dick around and do side quests so the GAME puts the NARRATIVE's urgency on pause and this is BAD for the player's suspension of disbelief as the NARRATIVE's passage of time isn't cohesive with the GAME's passage of time.

 

[Perkel]

I played at launch and haven't touched it since, if there are moneygates I don't remember them.
Let me just clarify what I'm saying to end this back and forth:
The NARRATIVE wants urgency so it declares time is of the essence (Two weeks, tops) but the GAME wants the player to dick around and do side quests so the GAME puts the NARRATIVE's urgency on pause and this is BAD for the player's suspension of disbelief as the NARRATIVE's passage of time isn't cohesive with the GAME's passage of time.

Vic says FEW(not two) weeks tops but he is just guessing. Vic outright says he doesn't know shit about it. He just judges based on his limited ability.

If you actually play game and even power game it takes few weeks in game to do everything. Which is pretty much in ballpark of what Vic said, If you roleplay then it takes like maybe 2 weeks top.

GAME doesn't say anything. You as player decide what is more important. If you want to RP you have all tools in your hand to RP. If you want to ignore story and just powergame voila they left window open for you.

And like i said. Fucking around in Night City is perfectly logical considering goals of V. HE doesn't know what to fucking do. He needs money and power to "pay" for a chance to get some answer what to do.

I mean me being rude is least of your problems. Being brainlet is one of them. I guess you just don't like clock hanging above your neck which is understandable but don't try to explain it with arguments that run counter to game logic.

TW3 also had something like that and people also complained about it. And yet game also was perfectly logical about it. You didn't know where CIRI was you were just scouring lands searching for any clue. It was less logical than in C77 but it was there and game had open ending where you could muck around after you finished main quest in the world.

 

[Gargaune]

Another way I've always thought - just don't have Viktor say "two weeks, tops," have it more indeterminate ("could be a few weeks, a few months, maybe even a year, impossible to say with tech like this, you might be able to fight it off some with these pills, but I can't say how long for") and don't have Goro contacting V in the cafe till a much later trigger, with the hallucinations starting to intrude more to the extent that you're feeling the crisis looming closer.

Yes, something like this could've worked with minimal development effort off of what CDPR actually shipped. You could've still kept all of the Silverhand commentary - which I suspect is why the devs rushed things to begin with - and just skipped on the "you're dying bit" at the outset. Just tell the player that Vic needs to study it some more and then let them decide when to go in for the big followup after a certain threshold. Though I still argue the proper narrative solution would've been to structure Act I around V and Jackie working their Street Cred up to Dex's notice before getting tapped for the Heist. Either way, BG2 managed this, CBP2077 didn't.

Did you even play game ? One of the major leads to finding cure is getting money for Rogue and it happens very earily. 21k if i remember correctly. That alone means you have to work as mercenary. Besides even if you ignore money for Rogue it is pretty clear that you will be facing enemies much higher in food chain than you and you need to upgrade or you will die before you even can find so called cure.

Nah, come on, you're inventing interpretations on the dev's behalf now. Even if you wanna roll with the idea that Rogue's 15K fee is the narrative milestone for the player to engage with the open world (and it really didn't feel that way to me, but I played through it a long time ago by now), you gotta remember that the game keeps unlocking tons of major side content well after that point. Consider the BG2 comparison, you've got Chapter 2 to engage with the open world as much or little as you want with minimal abstraction, then Chapter 3 funnels you in and you've got the Asylum and the Underdark progressing linearly towards the climax. This is not the case with CBP, V's taking gigs and socialising and buying pretty cars (and now, by popular demand, apartments), all the while having been told that their demise is a matter of "weeks", their banter with Silverhand's constantly referencing this situation, they've got blood pouring from their nose every morning etc. etc.

Look, I thought that the plot in CBP2077 was well written, but the narrative design is a clusterfuck across the board, from the prevalence of cosmetic agency to the staggering conflict between the critical and side content. At least in Fo4, you can reason the Sole Survivor's just a bad parent when they're building mud huts instead of chasing after their baby. But V's literally too stupid to live.

 

[Perkel]

But how does that point makes sense when finishing all of side content literally takes weeks ? Not months or years. Moreover like i said Vic is guessing. He literally says weeks tops.

Also my point with Rogue is exactly what you said. It forces you to take part in side content. Yes there is stuff well after that point but narratively wise you are the one that chooses to do those sidejobs and motivation could be varied.

And like i said before. No one forces you to do anything. It is your choice to do everything if you wish so.

I mean if you don't like clock hanging around your neck that is fine. But it has place in narrative and it is perfectly reasonable for V to pursue other things than cure at times. Especially later on depending on your relationship with Johny which kind of teaches you that there are things in life more important than life itself.

 

[lukaszek]

roguey requested sum is too low actually. If you clear most police content in starting area, you will have enough money to buy expensive cyber piece, pay of vik debt AND immediatelly hand cash to roguey once you come back from heist.
And its just starting area low reputation content. Im not even talking about gigs nor quests nor selling drops you find. All done while you are just testing random weaponry. It should be 100k but then you would be over leveled?

 

[gurugeorge]

Though I still argue the proper narrative solution would've been to structure Act I around V and Jackie working their Street Cred up to Dex's notice before getting tapped for the Heist.

Yep, that would have been the ideal, and I'm sure that probably was the original intention.

 

[mediocrepoet]

Though I still argue the proper narrative solution would've been to structure Act I around V and Jackie working their Street Cred up to Dex's notice before getting tapped for the Heist.

Yep, that would have been the ideal, and I'm sure that probably was the original intention.

That would make a lot of sense and fit the story that they rejiggered the game at last minute to expand Keanu Reeves' part because he was into it and the execs were star struck / saw dollar signs.