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

Wesp5

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I don't remember the Johnny problem being so urgent.
Maybe because you spent enough time with the side content that the details of V's situation and its emotional impact got a bit... hazy?

Vic talks about a few weeks which is what I thought. How long does the whole game take in game time? In the Panam ending you even leave Night City with time to spare, also Vic isn't correct anyway, as we can see in some DLC endings.
 

Gargaune

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Vic talks about a few weeks which is what I thought. How long does the whole game take in game time? In the Panam ending you even leave Night City with time to spare, also Vic isn't correct anyway, as we can see in some DLC endings.
We're talking about character motivation, not the diegetic duration of the game's content. V gets told that their situation is urgent, facing imminent death (or complete brainwashing, to be precise), and the events of the main plot show them to be desperate to find a "cure" thereafter. The significance of Viktor's prognosis isn't to restrict the game time (like with Fallout's water chip), but to emphasise the urgency of V's situation at a narrative level, to underline what's driving the character.

But, whereas the main quest is consistent with its treatment of this topic, the overwhelming bulk of the side content does not offer an obvious and logical tie-in to advancing that goal (again, salvation, not legacy, V is explicitly shown not having accepted their fate). This introduces a major conflict with regard to the protagonist's motivations and presents a recurring impediment to the player's suspension of disbelief whenever engaging with said side content.
 

lukaszek

the determinator
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This introduces a major conflict with regard to the protagonist's motivations and presents a recurring impediment to the player's suspension of disbelief whenever engaging with said side content.
everything is already there. in bg2 you have money collection gateway. newbie would need 2 major quests to reach it, while veteran can get it quickly anyway.

And cp77 got same thing with rogue questline. And she even asks for same amount 15k! Problem is that its too low. 100k would probably be more like it, although with dlc money is weird so i dont know anymore. In vanilla scrapping 100k would mean reaching decent level
 

Gargaune

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everything is already there. in bg2 you have money collection gateway. newbie would need 2 major quests to reach it, while veteran can get it quickly anyway.

And cp77 got same thing with rogue questline. And she even asks for same amount 15k! Problem is that its too low. 100k would probably be more like it, although with dlc money is weird so i dont know anymore. In vanilla scrapping 100k would mean reaching decent level
I've already referenced BG2 myself and what the difference is in handling the onset of urgency.
 

ind33d

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the heists were probably intended as multiplayer destiny raids. stealing the chip was probably meant as a tutorial for co-op. they probably intended for a whole party of real players to do the arasaka raid and fight smasher at the end, but once the MP was cut, the narrative got all fucked up
 

gurugeorge

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Heck-a-bloomin' crikey, someone's gone and done it, they've made a conversational AI mod for the NPCs.

Haven't tried fiddling around with it yet, but the video clip is quite impressive (I mean it's janky, but still impressive). Definitely the future of NPCs in these types of games.

 

AwesomeButton

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Yeah, I wrote about one of those mods here while it was still in development.

He could have asked Claire what's she packing under the coverall.
 

Gargaune

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Heck-a-bloomin' crikey, someone's gone and done it, they've made a conversational AI mod for the NPCs.

Haven't tried fiddling around with it yet, but the video clip is quite impressive (I mean it's janky, but still impressive). Definitely the future of NPCs in these types of games.
You see these tech demo mods in stuff like Skyrim or Cyberpunk and they're not that interesting in and of themselves, but the promise for the future is fascinating. This is the real, massive potential of generative AI chat and voice models, truly dynamic informational interactions between player and game - dialogue went from keyword prompts for preset responses to preset lines and responses and now it'll move again to freeform queries and dynamic responses. It's not gonna happen tomorrow or next Friday, but we'll probably see mature models in the later part of the next ten years and the advent of genuine detective gameplay for the first time since the medium's inception. And then you'll have your Fallout remake where you actually ask Aradesh about a water chip and he'll formulate a bespoke answer based on what he's been configured to know from the game's info library.

On the downside, it also pretty much seals the fate of singleplayer games requiring cloud connectivity at all times. The always-online holy grail of grubby publishers, and it'll work because, also for the first time since the medium's inception, it'll present genuine added value for the player.
 

AwesomeButton

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Maybe not for us, but for the kids. For me it's still just a chatbot. In the best of cases, conversations would look like those with the robots in Westworld.
 

AwesomeButton

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The first thing I would say to Johnny if I'm being in-character would be to ask whatnchance do we have against Arasaka, and won't it save us all a lot of inconvenience if I just blow my brains out right now ih the bathroom.
 

Gargaune

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Maybe not for us, but for the kids. For me it's still just a chatbot.
Like I said, it's nowhere close yet, but I suspect we'll see some worthwhile progress over the next decade. I envisage future gamedev positions responsible for compiling encyclopedic diegetic databanks as well as behavioural and informational AI models for NPCs - i.e. a "bible" for the AI to pull from, and individual configurations defining what an actor might know, what they can learn, how willing they are to share or accept information etc. There's tons to figure out, nevermind execute.

In the best of cases, conversations would look like those with the robots in Westworld.
Sorry, can't comment, ain't seen it.

The first thing I would say to Johnny if I'm being in-character would be to ask whatnchance do we have against Arasaka, and won't it save us all a lot of inconvenience if I just blow my brains out right now ih the bathroom.
Metagaming may present hilarious results...
 

gurugeorge

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The first thing I would say to Johnny if I'm being in-character would be to ask whatnchance do we have against Arasaka, and won't it save us all a lot of inconvenience if I just blow my brains out right now ih the bathroom.

Come to think of it, it might be incongruous if you're having lively conversations with random NPCs and yet the main quest characters and companions are still on rails, meticulously voice acted with a few responses, and otherwise mute.

But I think they'd have to be like that, because whereas NPC chatters making random errors doesn't matter, and would even be amusing, if a MQ character goes off on some AI tangent or internal curlicue of misunderstanding and makes some irrelevant, incongruous response, and/or doesn't mention some crucial fact related to the MQ, that would be your game borked, and they couldn't afford to do that.

I suppose you could have the important characters doing inconsequential chatter too, but it would have to be demarcated from the main, informative, deliberately voice-acted conversations somehow.
 

AwesomeButton

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Chatbot conversations iwth NPCs are the bethesda goofball approach to design. CDPR's approach is the interactive movie.

The real barrier to improved roleplaying on PC, compared to PnP is having mechanics that make the player actually care about what he says to the chatbot, and actually care about dying in game.
 

Dwarvophile

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Fun game, story is ok (for a game, that is), shooty part is good enough for a casual like me. There was even one sidequest that almost made me care (although I don't remember what it was about). Hey but Nightcity is really gorgeous, nice to wander around. But why the hell isn't there a baroque/renaissance music radio station, what were they thinking at CDPR ?
 

Konjad

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Strap Yourselves In Codex Year of the Donut Codex+ Now Streaming! Enjoy the Revolution! Another revolution around the sun that is. Torment: Tides of Numenera Wasteland 2 Steve gets a Kidney but I don't even get a tag.
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Perkel

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Mar 28, 2014
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This introduces a major conflict with regard to the protagonist's motivations and presents a recurring impediment to the player's suspension of disbelief whenever engaging with said side content.
everything is already there. in bg2 you have money collection gateway. newbie would need 2 major quests to reach it, while veteran can get it quickly anyway.

And cp77 got same thing with rogue questline. And she even asks for same amount 15k! Problem is that its too low. 100k would probably be more like it, although with dlc money is weird so i dont know anymore. In vanilla scrapping 100k would mean reaching decent level

15k in vanilla was a lot if you didn't do sidecontent. Not anymore in 2.0 though as guns sell for ton of money often beating a lot reward money.
 

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