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

[Itoh]

My feeling has always been that the "rest of the content" should have been the first part of the game, where you build your character up to be a big cheese in Night City, wander around in the open world, go up through the fixers and deal with factions, etc, and then, by the time you're 2/3 of the way through the game, then the MQ/SQs kick in with urgency leading up to a climactic endgame. And I have a feeling that must have probably the original plan, but because of time/resource limitations and having to grab Keanu in a narrow time-frame, they had to make the MQ the bulk of the game for the new player, and truncate and make the rest of the content asynchronous - effectively changing the game from an RPG proper into an action-adventure game with RPG flavouring.

I think this is correct - if you watch the old trailer, you can see that there were originally more characters involved in the heist, and earlier drafts must've involved V making his rep in a larger game. Jackie isn't in this shot, but he appears earlier, so that's a crew of 5-6 people instead of just him and T-Bug.

The ticking clock of the main plot and draw of the side content definitely make for a weird tension that's the worst part of the story, but I don't want to be overly hard on it. I'd say that while CDPR have good writers, some of the best in the mainstream games industry, it feels like there's a lack of polish in editing - individual quests and storylines hold together pretty well, but often aren't properly contextualized or connected.

For a concrete example I'll point to the aftermath of the heist quest - isn't it a bit weird how Arasaka largely just forgets about you after you were caught stealing some of their most valuable tech. Now, I can read between the lines about what happened - it seems like Yorinobu initially wanted to blame you for assassinating his father, then decided to make Goro the prime suspect instead, probably working for some third party, because Goro knew too much. Yori also used the ambiguity of his father's death as an excuse to violate Arasaka's agreement with Night City and bring in additional security forces, which he would not have been able to get away with if V was blamed for it and the case was closed. So there's a line of reasoning there, but it's at least half speculation on my part and the other half isn't properly communicated to the reader, despite it being very important, as Saburo was the world's most powerful man at the time.

I'd like to be optimistic that the Polacks will improve on this particular front, but Phantom Liberty had this problem too. Still, the game and expansion were pretty damn good in spite of this so it's not like I'm mad about it or anything.

 

[Wesp5]

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.

 

[Quillon]

fake urgency, fake urgency never changes

 

[Gargaune]

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]

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]

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]

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

 

[Infinitron]

 

[gurugeorge]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Jason Liang]

 

[Caim]

Metal Gear Solid 6 looks weird.

Even for Kojima.

 

[gurugeorge]

Ha, cool build where you use the Netwatch Netdriver cyberdeck in combination with the Carhacker perk.

Nobody expects - the bike of doom! :D

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Justicar]

 

[racofer]

Ha, cool build where you use the Netwatch Netdriver cyberdeck in combination with the Carhacker perk.

Nobody expects - the bike of doom! :D

This is the way.

 

[Dwarvophile]

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]

 

[Cyberarmy]

I should replay Gothic 2, probably with a mage this time.