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

[gurugeorge]

lol, the "call in" function in the vehicle combat mod makes for some fun emergent gameplay. I was engaged with some gangoons and one of them called his mates. There's an icon that fills up above their heads, and you have a little time to kill them before they finish the call. I just missed it, and some seconds after I'd dealt with the last goon, his friends finally came roaring in all guns blazing in a car. I had to duck under cover because they immediately started tearing chunks out of me, but my drones opened fire. Now the cheapest drones, the "Bombus" fire lasers, which looks incredibly cool in and of itself, but they're quite weak, and when they get damaged enough, they "suicide" into the enemy. One of them suicided into the goon in the car who'd been firing at him, and in combination with my fully-charged mighty Satara unloading into it, the car exploded, to much screaming and death from the guys in the car. Good times

Later edit: for the curious, here's a vid by someone of an earlier version of the Drone Companion mod, showing how to install it and a bit of gameplay. It has even more features now. I can't recommend it highly enough, it's a riot and a half.

The same mod author, Scissors123454321 is the author of both the vehicle combat and the drone mod, and one of the main difficulty mods, as well as another mod that converts sticky mines to proximity mines, and several other fun or useful mods. The guy really has a sense of what makes for good gameplay. I think if anything, he set the "tone" for quality CP2077 modding with the FGR, and he's probably a big reason why the modding scene for the game is coherent.

 

[gurugeorge]

Dayum, I'm having fun with the game this third time round (2nd time a year ago I didn't complete, but I did have fun for a week or so). It's true what someone said above, that the story isn't such a big draw once you've experienced it, but the core exploration/combat gameplay just wandering around is very moreish with all the mods. And there still seems to be tons of little things in the virtual world that I didn't discover the other times I played. My body is ready for DLC with new story. Maybe those who say the game's never going to ever really be what it should have been are right, but what it is can certainly be enjoyable for a while with all the relevant mods (my setup is pretty much like AwesomeButton's up-thread, but I have a few more combat-related mods and QOL mods).

Even something as trivial as the third person mod is getting quite workable. I've got it set up with a another mod that fixes the weirdly wide shoulders, and I have an autorun set up with autohotkey, so I can basically walk around relaxedly and steer most of the time without having to keep W pressed down, and enjoy the atmosphere and incredible sense of presence the game has at times, occasionally spinning around to admire my character, as God intended. The "Talk to Me" mod is also quite immursive - though you have to have it toned down to about 06.00 or so in the relevant option, otherwise the "nice day"s are so frequent and annoying as to break immersion rather than foster it. But it's surprising how much bang for the buck you can get in terms of immersion just from the occasional passerby addressing you. It does go some way to fixing the "Potemkin NPCs" problem the game had to start with. (I also get the impression that there's more NPC idle scripting going on - for example, in that basketball court where there's a police alert early on, passing it by later, I noticed that it had a few people hanging around the in sports gear looking as if they were discussing playing. But that might have always been there, I don't know. As a general point, I think the game works really well if you do walk around and just observe the virtual world, like notice the city as a city, really get the sense of "being there" like you would in a real city - it sets up a nice alternating rhythm between goofing off imagining you're in this cyberpunk dystopia, and having intense bouts of action.)

The main problem is the workaround 3rd person mod uses the sketchy 1st person animations that were just in for when you look down in first person, which aren't really tuned for 3rd person viewing - and the model is a bit distorted (it has a sort of caved-in chest, so it lopes along a bit like the hippy from Scooby Doo), unlike the near-perfect models in character creator and the photobooth - and it's still not suitable for combat in 3rd person, but at the moment the mod auto-switches you to 1st person in combat anyway - which, come to think of it, is actually a neat feature in and of itself. It makes a virtue out of a necessity, and I think all games with 1st/3rd person ranged combat should have the option to toggle that functionality). But it's pretty usable for just general exploration (you can F interact with interactable things like ladders, though that's sometimes a bit fiddly and could do with tuning - although loot interaction has always been a bit fiddly in the game for some reason, even in 1st person).

As far as I'm aware, CDPR did start development with the intention of the game being 1st/3rd switchable like TW3, but obviously they ran into time constraints, and although they did a good job with the interaction in 1st person, I do wish they'd fix 3rd person now. Apparently what mostly needs to be done is proper animations (and probably a proper rig, so the body isn't distorted) - surely not that difficult a job for a big company (just copy most of the animations from 3rd person NPC action, which all looks great, and tweak?)

I mean they say they aren't going to develop 3rd person, but I'm sure that's just lingering PR from the time when they were forced to go into 1st. Get on with it!

 

[compvet24]

As far as I'm aware, CDPR did start development with the intention of the game being 1st/3rd switchable like TW3, but obviously they ran into time constraints, and although they did a good job with the interaction in 1st person, I do wish they'd fix 3rd person now. Apparently what mostly needs to be done is proper animations (and probably a proper rig, so the body isn't distorted) - surely not that difficult a job for a big company (just copy most of the animations from 3rd person NPC action, which all looks great, and tweak?)

I mean they say they aren't going to develop 3rd person, but I'm sure that's just lingering PR from the time when they were forced to go into 1st. Get on with it!

Ya I had heard this was the case, but thought they scrapped it altogether. Was surprised with JB - TPP MOD WIP you can see some (not a lot) your anims being fully performed in a few scenes using the whole body instead of just hands in front of a camera.

 

[just]

it's 2023
still no game
poles did it again

 

[NecroLord]

it's 2023
still no game
poles did it again

The potato based economy is having a tough year.
Either that or they will blame it on the war in Ukraine.

 

[Justicar]

I'm replaying Witcher 3 again, this time with EE with tuned enemy damage. Thinking about how much I have ahead of me, I was discussing with her recently, that CDPR have admitted in interviews that even with the amount of game they cut, they still made it too big, as judged by the steam and gog completion rate.

Witcher 3 is currently sitting at 23.5% completion rate, which is extremely good. They just use it as an excuse to further cut their games.

And cyberbug has 35% completion rate nigga.

 

[Antigoon]

I'm replaying Witcher 3 again, this time with EE with tuned enemy damage. Thinking about how much I have ahead of me, I was discussing with her recently, that CDPR have admitted in interviews that even with the amount of game they cut, they still made it too big, as judged by the steam and gog completion rate.

Witcher 3 is currently sitting at 23.5% completion rate, which is extremely good. They just use it as an excuse to further cut their games.

And cyberbug has 35% completion rate nigga.

Pillars 14.6%, DOS2 11.5%, KCD 12%, faggot
23.5% completion rate is well above average for games these days.

 

[Justicar]

I'm replaying Witcher 3 again, this time with EE with tuned enemy damage. Thinking about how much I have ahead of me, I was discussing with her recently, that CDPR have admitted in interviews that even with the amount of game they cut, they still made it too big, as judged by the steam and gog completion rate.

Witcher 3 is currently sitting at 23.5% completion rate, which is extremely good. They just use it as an excuse to further cut their games.

And cyberbug has 35% completion rate nigga.

Pillars 14.6%, DOS2 11.5%, KCD 12%, faggot
23.5% completion rate is well above average for games these days.

35% > 23.5% NIGGER.

Also glitcher 3 is worshiped by gaymers while cyberbug is a meme and still it has much higher completion rate....

 

[gurugeorge]

In terms of visuals, by far the best looks overhaul I've found is "R19 - Acccurate E3 2019 Visual Restoration," which aims to give the look of the hype videos from then. It's soooo much better than the somewhat garish, cartoony look. It really feels like Bladerunner in the California sunshine rather than Idiocracy - the heat haze, the plumes of smoke, etc., the bleached (rather than garish) pastel colours, make it just as cyberpunky during the day as during the night, with a brooding air of decay and desperation. (The redmod version doesn't work, use the archive version). It has to be experienced in movement to get the feel of it. It's not a Reshade but a rework of the lighting in the game engine itself. Unfortunately it still has a few areas unfinished, and interiors can be lamentable sometimes. But it's well worth experiencing - again, as with the other mods I've been talking about, this is more what the game should have been like, but on the visuals side rather than gameplay. Took a couple of quick snaps:-

 

[cvv]

So I finally got around to this. It's prolly the longest I've waited for an RPG sitting on my shelf.

TLDR, I'm having fun but ultimately it's all a letdown.

Not even sure why. Maybe it's the city, the environment. It's just not charismatic, it doesn't interest me, draw me in, make me to explore it. Just an interchangeable jumble of grey-black streets and buildings, angular shapes and neon lights. Or maybe it's too big. Some time ago I played Deus Ex: Mankind Divided and Prague was way more charismatic and explorable, even tho I'm Czech so I could spot the laughable, half-assed Kwan/Canadian attempts at portraying a Czech city, people, habits and language, albeit in the future. It was way more interesting because it was way smaller, intimate and chock-full of detail. And you simply can't create a detailed city that takes ages to drive from end to end. CDPR clearly poured tons of work into NC but even that was woefully inadequate.

Or maybe it's the gameplay. Started the game on Very Hard but having to pump entire magazines into a single mook and meanwhile being two-shotted all the time quickly stopped being fun. I went with an shotgun/assault gun/sniper build, maybe it'd be more fun with a hacking build? Disabling and frying the bullet-spongy mobs instead of trying to shoot them? Dunno.

Or maybe it's the PC. I just don't give a shit about V. There's nothing interesting or charismatic about this guy. In fact I don't give much fuck about any "good" NPC in this game. Jackie is just a regular, boring small-time footpad, just like V. Panam is a stunningbrave gung ho desert hippie. Judy is a lesbian. Takemura is too goofy to pass as a modern-day samurai.

But I'm having fun. At least the villains are interesting. Silverhand drives my willingness to go on. Wanna see the fight with Smasher. Also wanna get to the end, apparently there a couple of them.

But this is definitely not gonna be the kind of unforgettable experience my first TW3 run was. It's just...fine. A perfectly rounded 8/10. For any other studio it'd be a stunning achievement. For someone responsible for the three Witcher games it's a disappointment.

 

[Perkel]

V kind of grows on you as game goes. At start he/she feels incredibly dudebro but as game progresses and stuff happens more and more V becomes its own character much like Geralt was. Especially in that scene with patio chairs after certain boss fight.

 

[GhostCow]

V kind of grows on you as game goes. At start he/she feels incredibly dudebro but as game progresses and stuff happens more and more V becomes its own character much like Geralt was. Especially in that scene with patio chairs after certain boss fight.

I think whoever voiced male V did a fantastic job. Just the way he delivers a lot of his lines really makes me like him. He makes V sound like a fun guy to joke around with.

 

[gurugeorge]

As far as I'm aware, CDPR did start development with the intention of the game being 1st/3rd switchable like TW3, but obviously they ran into time constraints, and although they did a good job with the interaction in 1st person, I do wish they'd fix 3rd person now. Apparently what mostly needs to be done is proper animations (and probably a proper rig, so the body isn't distorted) - surely not that difficult a job for a big company (just copy most of the animations from 3rd person NPC action, which all looks great, and tweak?)

I mean they say they aren't going to develop 3rd person, but I'm sure that's just lingering PR from the time when they were forced to go into 1st. Get on with it!

Ya I had heard this was the case, but thought they scrapped it altogether. Was surprised with JB - TPP MOD WIP you can see some (not a lot) your anims being fully performed in a few scenes using the whole body instead of just hands in front of a camera.

Yeah basically the 3rd person animations the mod uses are the animations the body has when you're in 1st person so that if you catch a glimpse of your hands legs, feet or torso while doing something, like walking, climbing ladders or objects, there's something there for you to catch a glimpse of. So the rig isn't as good as the NPCs have - it has some distortion to accommodate its function, like the slightly caved in chest - and while the basic anims like walking are okay even from behind (presumably they just took some kind of standard walking animation there, so it already had a behind view, e.g. hip movement), some of the others are sketchy - for example, when you plug in to hack something, the body is completely still and stiff while only the hands move.

As I said, what has to happen is for either the NPCs animations to be somehow exported back into the 3rd person view and tweaked for 3rd person use, or the animations already there have to be refined and a shit-ton more animations have to be built from scratch - too much work for the modder doing the mod, he's basically been focused on functionality so that you can actually use and play in 3rd person view most of the time (except in combat).

 

[DeepOcean]

TLDR, I'm having fun but ultimately it's all a letdown.

Yes, the reason probably why you feel the city feels like a letdown is because CDPR got at light speed through the zones without bothering to give a context for anything that was hapenning on the city.

On Witcher 3, you are killing Ubisoft drowners on some Ubisoft monster camp but you are doing it on creepy swamp where bro baron got fucked by hags from hell and the people are so desperate and hungry that they treat such hags as minor dieties and offer children as sacrifice because they are terrorized by them, also, you can see the two main armies involved on the coming showdown for the north and how ominous that promises to be and its effects on the common folk that are desperate. After that, killing drowners over and over dont feel so bad because the place where you are doing it feels cool.

In contrast, you need to get some drone from some gang which only attribute is that they look cyberpunk cool with some pandejo which main attribute by that time is that he has a cool samurai hair cut and comes from nondescript stock hispanic gang, there is some bullshit involving militech but that is short and dont lead anywhere, after that you get straight to the heist that has nothing to do with that area and are dumped back on some vague industrial looking part of the town to mostly do cleaning Ubisoft gang camps or seek the main quest that already moved from there. Now, after that, doing Ubisoft nonsense is already annoying but doing it with zero context makes you feel you are doing it on Ubisoft stock cyberpunk city too what is even worse.

It isnt that a proper work on adding context is impossible to do on an open world or even that Night City doesnt have potential, they even had a few half assed attempts by having the propaganda try to give a sense of a "real" city but that wasnt enough for me, they squandered the potential of the city, cleary CDPR fucked up hard on that department probably because of mismanagement and running out of time. The city looks nice to take some screenshots but feels much more like a game prop than a "real" place.

 

[Daedalos]

The main story and the overall johnny silverhands narrative was always great. I enjoyed my first playthrough alot in 2020.
The open world and C&C aspect of the game was bad, but there were several good side missions and the main quest.

I had hoped that each main mission would feature C&C like the one with the spiderbot, it didnt, sadly.
The combat was serviceable, fun enough, didn't really bother me at all.

Storyfags got their moneys worth from the game, combat and explorofags, eh.

 

[Comrade Goby]

Idris is a bad sign but the expansion will tell us if any anyone there has a tiny bit of a clue.

 

[Peachcurl]

Wait, they still going on with inserting popular actors into the game? Fucking hell...

 

[just]

Wait, they still going on with inserting popular actors into the game? Fucking hell...

it worked the first time
for them at least

 

[Justicar]

 

[Zeriel]

Dayum, I'm having fun with the game this third time round (2nd time a year ago I didn't complete, but I did have fun for a week or so). It's true what someone said above, that the story isn't such a big draw once you've experienced it, but the core exploration/combat gameplay just wandering around is very moreish with all the mods. And there still seems to be tons of little things in the virtual world that I didn't discover the other times I played. My body is ready for DLC with new story. Maybe those who say the game's never going to ever really be what it should have been are right, but what it is can certainly be enjoyable for a while with all the relevant mods (my setup is pretty much like AwesomeButton's up-thread, but I have a few more combat-related mods and QOL mods).

Even something as trivial as the third person mod is getting quite workable. I've got it set up with a another mod that fixes the weirdly wide shoulders, and I have an autorun set up with autohotkey, so I can basically walk around relaxedly and steer most of the time without having to keep W pressed down, and enjoy the atmosphere and incredible sense of presence the game has at times, occasionally spinning around to admire my character, as God intended. The "Talk to Me" mod is also quite immursive - though you have to have it toned down to about 06.00 or so in the relevant option, otherwise the "nice day"s are so frequent and annoying as to break immersion rather than foster it. But it's surprising how much bang for the buck you can get in terms of immersion just from the occasional passerby addressing you. It does go some way to fixing the "Potemkin NPCs" problem the game had to start with. (I also get the impression that there's more NPC idle scripting going on - for example, in that basketball court where there's a police alert early on, passing it by later, I noticed that it had a few people hanging around the in sports gear looking as if they were discussing playing. But that might have always been there, I don't know. As a general point, I think the game works really well if you do walk around and just observe the virtual world, like notice the city as a city, really get the sense of "being there" like you would in a real city - it sets up a nice alternating rhythm between goofing off imagining you're in this cyberpunk dystopia, and having intense bouts of action.)

The main problem is the workaround 3rd person mod uses the sketchy 1st person animations that were just in for when you look down in first person, which aren't really tuned for 3rd person viewing - and the model is a bit distorted (it has a sort of caved-in chest, so it lopes along a bit like the hippy from Scooby Doo), unlike the near-perfect models in character creator and the photobooth - and it's still not suitable for combat in 3rd person, but at the moment the mod auto-switches you to 1st person in combat anyway - which, come to think of it, is actually a neat feature in and of itself. It makes a virtue out of a necessity, and I think all games with 1st/3rd person ranged combat should have the option to toggle that functionality). But it's pretty usable for just general exploration (you can F interact with interactable things like ladders, though that's sometimes a bit fiddly and could do with tuning - although loot interaction has always been a bit fiddly in the game for some reason, even in 1st person).

As far as I'm aware, CDPR did start development with the intention of the game being 1st/3rd switchable like TW3, but obviously they ran into time constraints, and although they did a good job with the interaction in 1st person, I do wish they'd fix 3rd person now. Apparently what mostly needs to be done is proper animations (and probably a proper rig, so the body isn't distorted) - surely not that difficult a job for a big company (just copy most of the animations from 3rd person NPC action, which all looks great, and tweak?)

I mean they say they aren't going to develop 3rd person, but I'm sure that's just lingering PR from the time when they were forced to go into 1st. Get on with it!

Bro you know they are abandoning the game right? What is this nonsense? You are acting like it's December of 2020.

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's just not charismatic

maybe it's too big

That's what she said.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

inserting popular actors

Nah man they just got some black dude

 

[Zariusz]

Stockholm syndrome? I guess buttfucking really is a way to someone's heart.

 

[gurugeorge]

Dayum, I'm having fun with the game this third time round (2nd time a year ago I didn't complete, but I did have fun for a week or so). It's true what someone said above, that the story isn't such a big draw once you've experienced it, but the core exploration/combat gameplay just wandering around is very moreish with all the mods. And there still seems to be tons of little things in the virtual world that I didn't discover the other times I played. My body is ready for DLC with new story. Maybe those who say the game's never going to ever really be what it should have been are right, but what it is can certainly be enjoyable for a while with all the relevant mods (my setup is pretty much like AwesomeButton's up-thread, but I have a few more combat-related mods and QOL mods).

Even something as trivial as the third person mod is getting quite workable. I've got it set up with a another mod that fixes the weirdly wide shoulders, and I have an autorun set up with autohotkey, so I can basically walk around relaxedly and steer most of the time without having to keep W pressed down, and enjoy the atmosphere and incredible sense of presence the game has at times, occasionally spinning around to admire my character, as God intended. The "Talk to Me" mod is also quite immursive - though you have to have it toned down to about 06.00 or so in the relevant option, otherwise the "nice day"s are so frequent and annoying as to break immersion rather than foster it. But it's surprising how much bang for the buck you can get in terms of immersion just from the occasional passerby addressing you. It does go some way to fixing the "Potemkin NPCs" problem the game had to start with. (I also get the impression that there's more NPC idle scripting going on - for example, in that basketball court where there's a police alert early on, passing it by later, I noticed that it had a few people hanging around the in sports gear looking as if they were discussing playing. But that might have always been there, I don't know. As a general point, I think the game works really well if you do walk around and just observe the virtual world, like notice the city as a city, really get the sense of "being there" like you would in a real city - it sets up a nice alternating rhythm between goofing off imagining you're in this cyberpunk dystopia, and having intense bouts of action.)

The main problem is the workaround 3rd person mod uses the sketchy 1st person animations that were just in for when you look down in first person, which aren't really tuned for 3rd person viewing - and the model is a bit distorted (it has a sort of caved-in chest, so it lopes along a bit like the hippy from Scooby Doo), unlike the near-perfect models in character creator and the photobooth - and it's still not suitable for combat in 3rd person, but at the moment the mod auto-switches you to 1st person in combat anyway - which, come to think of it, is actually a neat feature in and of itself. It makes a virtue out of a necessity, and I think all games with 1st/3rd person ranged combat should have the option to toggle that functionality). But it's pretty usable for just general exploration (you can F interact with interactable things like ladders, though that's sometimes a bit fiddly and could do with tuning - although loot interaction has always been a bit fiddly in the game for some reason, even in 1st person).

As far as I'm aware, CDPR did start development with the intention of the game being 1st/3rd switchable like TW3, but obviously they ran into time constraints, and although they did a good job with the interaction in 1st person, I do wish they'd fix 3rd person now. Apparently what mostly needs to be done is proper animations (and probably a proper rig, so the body isn't distorted) - surely not that difficult a job for a big company (just copy most of the animations from 3rd person NPC action, which all looks great, and tweak?)

I mean they say they aren't going to develop 3rd person, but I'm sure that's just lingering PR from the time when they were forced to go into 1st. Get on with it!

Bro you know they are abandoning the game right? What is this nonsense? You are acting like it's December of 2020.

Did they abandon the game after 2020? I always thought they'd try to keep milking it, and they have been doing so far, although it's hard to tell what degree of commitment they have to the game, as opposed to the Cyberpunk 2077 cash cow. I'm not confident that they'll do 3rd person, but I don't see it as out of the question either (I mean despite their PR about it).

But aside from that, I'm just sayin' that the modding scene for the game is very lively (it was even before Edgerunners), and it looks like it's going to keep on being lively, and you can still get fun out of the game if you are a fan of the genre.

As I've always said about this game, you can't get the same atmospheric (and at least visually) immersive context for the basic combat loop in any other game, so people will keep coming back to it, CDPR will keep working on it and modders will keep modding it for many years to come. Doomsayers have already been confounded, as the doom bandwagon was that the game would fade into obscurity, but it hasn't. Yes you can complain that it's not as richly responsive in RPG terms, or as richly immersively-simmish as we'd all hoped, but it's not a shit game either, and it seems to be always incrementally improving, both by CDPR and by modders. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's a heartwarming redemption arc, but I always thought the doomsaying was OTT at the time (a few others here did too, despite their reservations about the game).

 

[Zeriel]

They have confirmed the 1st DLC will be the last C2077 content produced. It is not reasonable to expect they will plow lots of money into continuing to add patched features after that point--rather you should take the open announcement as their curtain call on the product overall.

It is possible (likely?) there will be a C2077 sequel at some point when they feel the franchise is not completely bombed in the public eye... but that is years down the road, after Witcher 4, and requires Witcher 4 to not be a failure, which I personally would not consider a guarantee considering how much core technical staff they have lost, the abandoning of their own engine being another sign of that.

I'm also not sure what you mean by "not falling into obscurity". The only people I know of who still give a shit about it are the people who never played it originally and to whom it is fresh and new. Yeah, sure, maybe it is a "normie crowd" game at this point, but it lost all the core gamers, CDPR is dead to them. I would be really cautious about ascribing a lack of hate articles/hate posts surrounding it now to mean that it is suddenly beloved by most people. Rather, it is in that place a lot of mediocre/shit games get to where the people who hated it are over it, it's not even an entity to them anymore. Any sequel announced before many, many years have past would get lots of negative feedback though, because that would be a new, major development.

Regarding the gameplay loop: it is a bogstandard Far Cry clone. There is nothing unique about it. Is it fun in some sense? Yes. I'd argue this is the one good part of the game, it is more "immediately" fun than Witcher, which had shit gameplay backed up by good content, but to claim it is "unique" or this is some special draw to the game is hilarious and I have to wonder how you came to that conclusion. Are you new to FPSes? Never played a Ubisoft shooter? What the actual fuck, etc.