Cyberpunk 2077 Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[AwesomeButton]

My experience with custom characters is that 9 times out of 10, they're bland as hell. They have absolutely no personality

Well, they are your custom characters, so you made them and perceived them that way.

 

[Zer0wing]

My experience with custom characters is that 9 times out of 10, they're bland as hell. They have absolutely no personality and feel more like I was controlling some emotionless robot rather than an actual character, so I don't mind premade ones.

I don't know, man. Fallout games and VTMB has some real good player character dialogue lines.

 

[Doktor Best]

There was minimum C&C in Witcher 3, mostly in the form of BIG DECISIONS that ended up not mattering save for a couple lines of text at the ending slides. The only thing that had any lasting impact was shit with Ciri, since that at least affected the epilogue, but even that was mostly lacklustre. I'm kinda hoping for a return to Witcher 2 in this regard, since for all the flaws that game did, it did try to make C&C meaningful.

https://witcher.fandom.com/wiki/The_Witcher_3_decision_checklist

Seems like a fine amount of C&C to me. And thats only the main questlines. Witcher 3 also has tons of smaller C&C in sidequests that affect characters/the gameworld. They may not be "significant" but theyre there nontheless and lots of players appreciate them as they flesh out the gameworld.

 

[thesecret1]

Um, what’s your experience with custom characters? Have you played Fallout 1/2/New Vegas? Bloodlines? Mask of the Betrayer? If they’re coming off bland as hell with no personality in those games, it’s because you’re playing them as blandly as possible.

I played all of them. Rarely do they present any semblance of proper roleplay. Just one choice for "agree to do X" and one choice for "disagree to do X". They don't give me options how to say it – maybe I want to roleplay someone greedy and want the dialogue to reflect that, maybe I want to play someone with anger issues, maybe I want to play someone else entirely. If you played PnP and said the exact same shit that's presented in the dialogue options of those games, you'd get kicked from the table mighty quick for abhorrent roleplay, since you'd be boring everyone else there to tears. Premade characters give you the exact same options, but at least have a personality of their own – PC in Gothic doesn't go around saying 5 word sentences of generic shit, he goes on to say things his way, with personality and flavour. I wonder whether people who shill for character creation actually ever played a PnP game, because claiming that the shit that's presented to you in dialogue in Fallout games somehow has personality is blatant bullshit.

 

[undecaf]

Some dev could explore (and go through all the trouble of implementing it comprehensively) the idea for a custom character having a toggle for "tone" in the dialog window. Let's say "passionate", "neutral", "indifferent". With NPC's reacting appropriately to the line and tone according to situation at hand. Could be interesting... especially when the tone might contradict with the response-line and the reaction to it would reflect that.

 

[Carrion]

Some dev could explore (and go through all the trouble of implementing it comprehensively) the idea for a custom character having a toggle for "tone" in the dialog window. Let's say "passionate", "neutral", "indifferent". With NPC's reacting appropriately to the line and tone according to situation at hand. Could be interesting... especially when the tone might contradict with the response-line and the reaction to it would reflect that.

It's been done in a few games. Daggerfall and Football Manager come to mind.

Would be an awful amount of work with full voice acting, though.

 

[AwesomeButton]

I have fond memories of my foul-mouthed dwarven grenade craftsman from Arcanum to this day.

 

[undecaf]

It's been done in a few games. Daggerfall and Football Manager come to mind.

I thought I had seen it somewhere... Just couldn't remember where. But that's what I mean, yeah.

Would be an awful amount of work with full voice acting, though.

No loss in leaving voiceacting out altogether.

 

[Zer0wing]

Would be an awful amount of work with full voice acting, though.

No need to pay for voice acting for player character.

 

[Alienman]

Tone in FM. Somehow I managed to always pick wrong. God forbid you give an enthusiastic speech during half time break if it's going well. The whole team just collapse and gets 5 goals in the ass in the first 20 minutes

 

[AwesomeButton]

No need to pay for voice acting for player character.

According to "Josh Sawyer's owners", the key demographics you need to design your game for are 1. streamers, 2. retarded D:OS2 fanboys (which play mainly 3d action games, but also D:OS on the side), as opposed to, maybe, your own audience. The first two groups hate games with no full VO. According to the mentioned owners, as quoted by Josh, your game will flop if it doesn't have full VO. Apparently it can also flop with full VO, but that's life, full of uncertainty.

 

[undecaf]

Such is the state of the industry. The only good things to come out of it, are accidents.

 

[Zer0wing]

According to "Josh Sawyer's owners", the key demographics you need to design your game for are 1. streamers, 2. retarded D:OS2 fanboys (which play mainly 3d action games, but also D:OS on the side), as opposed to, maybe, your own audience. The first two groups hate games with no full VO. According to the mentioned owners, as quoted by Josh, your game will flop if it doesn't have full VO. Apparently it can also flop with full VO, but that's life, full of uncertainty.

Why do they, tho? In D:OS2, every single dialogue line is written as it is. They've already read the player characters dialogue line before clicking on it. Why spending time on hearing it for the second time?

 

[AwesomeButton]

It's a genuine mystery for me. In my view a voiced predefined character like JC or Geralt has an obvious benefit to being voiced. You could say that in D:OS2 you have de facto predefined characters to choose from as your character - parts of their character were already defined.

 

[Van-d-all]

It's been done in a few games. Daggerfall and Football Manager come to mind.

Blade Runner (adventure game) also had something like this, where you could pick personality (or have it unrestricted) and have your dialogue options filtered, but the game was fairly reactive with multiple endings.

 

[Carrion]

Tone in FM. Somehow I managed to always pick wrong. God forbid you give an enthusiastic speech during half time break if it's going well. The whole team just collapse and gets 5 goals in the ass in the first 20 minutes

It's hard to not AGGRESSIVELY crush their self-confidence after that happens, too.

 

[Infinitron]

I don't think mechanical solutions like choosing a tone are the solution to blank slate character blandness. The writers of these games just need to try harder to give more context to your actions in the game. In many of these games you play as a kind of "man from nowhere", floating around the world solving other people's problems. I think the issue is not blank slateness per se, but rather the combination of the blank slate with open world design conventions which require a kind of tonal "non-commitedness". See that mountain? You can climb it. But if you're the kind of dude who goes off and climbs mountains on a whim, you're probably not a character in a very gripping story.

In other news: https://news.game.co.uk/cyberpunk-2077-meryl-streep/

THE CREATORS OF CYBERPUNK 2077 WANT A MERYL STREEP CAMEO

A Cyberpunk 2077 developer has suggested a surprise celebrity addition to the game – Meryl Streep.

Cyberpunk 2077 has already snagged one major Hollywood player in Keanu Reeves, but when we caught up with quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, we couldn’t resist asking which star he would add to the game if he could pick anyone.

After a moment of deliberation, he landed on the multiple Oscar winner and shouting meme queen, “Oh my god, this is difficult. Ah, there’s so many great actors I love… Like, I love Meryl Streep, for example. I love Devil Wears Prada, and it would be great to have her as one of the characters in the game.”

Without missing a beat, Tomaszkiewicz started to come up with a solid idea of what role she could play in the game. He said “She could be totally one of the big corporate characters in the game. I can picture this.” We understand where Tomaszkiewicz is coming from. We’d love to carry out missions for a robo-version of Miranda Priestly, her cold-as-ice character in The Devil Wears Prada.

While Keanu Reeves might not be new to the world of video games, Meryl Streep is yet to appear in one herself, and we couldn’t think of a better game to make her debut in, even if that’s just wishful thinking on our part.

We won’t have to wait too long to see if Tomaszkiewicz’s suggestion can be sneaked into the hyped roleplaying game, as it’s due to launch on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on 16 April. If you’re already plotting what mischief you can cause in Night City, then you should also check out our UK retail exclusive Collector’s Edition.

Maybe we should send one to Meryl to help sweeten the deal…

 

[Ramnozack]

She can star in a human trafficking quest chain, I guess.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

The problem arises not from a lack of choices but from the lack of responsiveness to your choices.
A good example was the first time I played Skyrim and killed a dragon but nobody(outside of a handful of plot-related NPCs) acknowledged it and kept talking about how they were going to all be killed by dragons.

 

[Efe]

isnt first time you kill a dragon part of main quest and everyone starts calling you dragonborn (or talking about dragonborn) afterwards?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

isnt first time you kill a dragon part of main quest and everyone starts calling you dragonborn (or talking about dragonborn) afterwards?

random NPCs kept talking about how they were all doomed by the dragons

 

[thesecret1]

Meryl Streep

Stop spending what's probably the better part of the budget on bribing celebs, holy shit. I'd gladly do without Keanu or Meryl if it meant having a lengthy questchain or a new location or something.

 

[Zed Duke of Banville]

Meryl Streep

Stop spending what's probably the better part of the budget on bribing celebs, holy shit. I'd gladly do without Keanu or Meryl if it meant having a lengthy questchain or a new location or something.

Yes, it's always a mistake for RPG developers to waste scarce resources, that could have been used for fundamental gameplay, on celebrity voice-actors, like Patrick Stewart and Sheena Easton.

 

[Lambach]

Stop spending what's probably the better part of the budget on bribing celebs, holy shit. I'd gladly do without Keanu or Meryl if it meant having a lengthy questchain or a new location or something.

Judging by the amount of hype Keanu generated, it was a wise investment from a business perspective.

CDPR moved up to the big leagues now, they gotta play by the same rules.

 

[Van-d-all]

Judging by the amount of hype Keanu generated, it was a wise investment from a business perspective.

As sad as it is, you are right.