Robotigan
Learned
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2022
- Messages
- 420
...a bunch of teenage edgelords who lack the capacity to evaluate game design beyond its most superficial trappings. Obsessing over "maturity" is ironically a very childish disposition (there's a great C.S. Lewis quote about this). And my god does CDPR indulge the shit out of insecure adolescents. Play this strong silent, tough talking badass. Like basically just the D&D character I made when I was 15.
And man are their games just a plain chore to play. Their UI is a mess. Most of the loot is jpeg junk. Enemy design has virtually no variation. Their leveling system is the thinnest veneer of a stat treadmill. They basically have no creative reason to implement an open world beyond it being the hot new trend. Their entire game design formula is just grinding through animators until they have enough pretty cinematics to fill a 60 hour game. It's painfully obvious they never plan the dev time to 'find the fun', they're rushing right down to the wire with just enough time for basic bugfixing (or not).
And despite how mediocre everything they do is, no one calls them out on it because seemingly all gaming media is capable of is evaluating whether or not a feature is present not if it's good. Oh and girafics, they love their girafics. Even if it's mostly cutscene trickery. If you wanna know why Cyberpunk flopped, it's because CDPR is literally made of gamer hype culture and bought into their own propaganda. Despite average to bad design all over the place, they thought they were top shit and marketed like it.
You may disagree with many AAA studios about the direction and casualization of their game design, but they tend to at least execute on that vision well. They spend a lot of time refining the systems so that they're fun and interesting to engage with instead of just a feature off a list. MGSV, Fallout 4, Bloodborne, and Arkham Knight all came out the same year as The Witcher 3 and while certainly none of them is without their flaws, in terms of intriguing and varied gameplay they're all well superior. But no, fans loved those MATURE storytelling and EPIC cinematics.
And man are their games just a plain chore to play. Their UI is a mess. Most of the loot is jpeg junk. Enemy design has virtually no variation. Their leveling system is the thinnest veneer of a stat treadmill. They basically have no creative reason to implement an open world beyond it being the hot new trend. Their entire game design formula is just grinding through animators until they have enough pretty cinematics to fill a 60 hour game. It's painfully obvious they never plan the dev time to 'find the fun', they're rushing right down to the wire with just enough time for basic bugfixing (or not).
And despite how mediocre everything they do is, no one calls them out on it because seemingly all gaming media is capable of is evaluating whether or not a feature is present not if it's good. Oh and girafics, they love their girafics. Even if it's mostly cutscene trickery. If you wanna know why Cyberpunk flopped, it's because CDPR is literally made of gamer hype culture and bought into their own propaganda. Despite average to bad design all over the place, they thought they were top shit and marketed like it.
You may disagree with many AAA studios about the direction and casualization of their game design, but they tend to at least execute on that vision well. They spend a lot of time refining the systems so that they're fun and interesting to engage with instead of just a feature off a list. MGSV, Fallout 4, Bloodborne, and Arkham Knight all came out the same year as The Witcher 3 and while certainly none of them is without their flaws, in terms of intriguing and varied gameplay they're all well superior. But no, fans loved those MATURE storytelling and EPIC cinematics.