Cyberpunk 2077 Pre-Re-Announcement Thread [GO TO NEW THREAD]

[The Wall]

Once upon the time...

Jonric: To begin with, how would you summarize Morrowind for fans of past Elder Scrolls games? And how would you introduce it to newer CRPG fans who aren't familiar with the others?

Todd Howard: Morrowind is the third installment of The Elder Scrolls, following Arena and Daggerfall. It's huge, open ended, pure RPG goodness. The classic TES game is single-player, first person, has some elements of action; you get to run around and swing the sword yourself. The goal of every TES game is to create something that resembles a pen and paper RPG on the computer. Our main goal has always been to make the world as real as possible and let the player do what they want, when they want. There is a main quest, but you really don't have to follow it. The whole point of the game is to role-play the character you want, and do the things you want.

Jonric: What do you consider the core, untouchable design elements of the earlier Elder Scrolls titles that set them apart from other games?

Todd Howard: Free-form experience. Even Redguard, which was an adventure game, was big and non-linear. Every TES game has to let you create the kind of character you want, and then do the things you want. We would never have a TES RPG force you to be a certain character or go down a certain path. Daggerfall's character system is awesome. We love it. There have been some changes to it for Morrowind, but the essence remains intact. Big game world is another. The world has to be big enough to allow lots of side-adventures and player exploration. Guilds became a big part of Daggerfall, and that's something we're looking to make even better.

Things can change slightly over years, it seems. Let's see if CD Projekt Red is an exception to the rule...

 

[Iznaliu]

Studios that grow large and enjoy commercial success tend to become complacent.

However, when they grow truely massive, things get even worse. They milk their players until they bleed, however, despite the fact that the players keep hurting, they always come back. It's like an abusive relationship.

 

[Paul_cz]

Once upon the time...

Jonric: To begin with, how would you summarize Morrowind for fans of past Elder Scrolls games? And how would you introduce it to newer CRPG fans who aren't familiar with the others?

Todd Howard: Morrowind is the third installment of The Elder Scrolls, following Arena and Daggerfall. It's huge, open ended, pure RPG goodness. The classic TES game is single-player, first person, has some elements of action; you get to run around and swing the sword yourself. The goal of every TES game is to create something that resembles a pen and paper RPG on the computer. Our main goal has always been to make the world as real as possible and let the player do what they want, when they want. There is a main quest, but you really don't have to follow it. The whole point of the game is to role-play the character you want, and do the things you want.

Jonric: What do you consider the core, untouchable design elements of the earlier Elder Scrolls titles that set them apart from other games?

Todd Howard: Free-form experience. Even Redguard, which was an adventure game, was big and non-linear. Every TES game has to let you create the kind of character you want, and then do the things you want. We would never have a TES RPG force you to be a certain character or go down a certain path. Daggerfall's character system is awesome. We love it. There have been some changes to it for Morrowind, but the essence remains intact. Big game world is another. The world has to be big enough to allow lots of side-adventures and player exploration. Guilds became a big part of Daggerfall, and that's something we're looking to make even better.

Things can change slightly over years, it seems. Let's see if CD Projekt Red is an exception to the rule...

What a dumb ass post equating Toddler with CDP.

 

[Falksi]

especially now when even biggest Bethesda fans have dumped them and are in search of new company

[citation needed]

Lower sales of Fallout 4 after the release than expected, backlash against their season pass, backlash against their Creation Club which is basically microtransactions, overall zeitgeist of youtubers, fans everywhere from forums, facebook, twitter to comments even reviewers who all now agree that Bethesda needs to step up their game and when you have half decent alternatives you can't get away with releasing broken games made in 2 decade old engine over and over again. Those are just some of the things which have led to Bethesda no longer having unanimous praise it used to have only few years ago wherever you went and which used to piss me off so much.

It's very apparent and you can see it everywhere from steam reviews to even bloody IGN game 'jurnulists'.

Every investor worth his salt can tell you that if he can choose between shares of EA or CD Projekt he'll rather go with EA

I am not sure. Being big doesn't mean earning lots of money. More often it means burning lots of money. That is why they may need these practices - when you hit 100 million budget for your game, perhaps selling it for just 60$ may just not cut it anymore. But if you don't, you're getting eaten by competition. Like, EA sports games - they sorta have a monopoly on those because they invest into all these graphics, animations, big names, voices and whatever.

Why do you need lotsa money? Aside from having a private jet and drinking pina coladas on your private island. From my small and pointless knowledge of business, it's like a hamster wheel. You really can't stop. If you don't take a place (like a place for your shop), someone else would take it and you're out of luck forever. So you mindlessly buy places (like IPs) just to stay in the game.

The problem is not that they want profit. Or bigger profit than the last time. Problem is that they want impossible. They want infinity. They want every time to be more profitable then the last one by a margin of 10x. Every. Single. Time. They want to sell their product to E V E R Y O N E. Of course that's not attainable and that's why they fail. That's why EA is necromancer. Because they drive every single company they acquire to death sooner or later. And then they get fresh corpse. That's why they rely so much on IPs. Cause that's LITERALLY all they've got. Brand recognition. Not EA's. But other's. NO ONE buys game cause they have EA logo on them. NO ONE. They always bite their tongue and buy it anyway cause it's their favourite franchise. Or cause no one else is allowed to make such games.

I'd never want to own or work for such company or for CD Projekt to become like that. Or any other company to turn into something similar. Still it's important for EA and other similar companies to be what they are. Bad guys. Darkness. Without darkness there is no light. Light could be defined as lack of darkness. CD Projekt and others who share similar values need to understand that and I think for the most part CD Projekt does. For now...

That's a brilliant post, but I personally think CD Projekt have already shown signs of warping in to typical AAA scum by some of their Assasin's Creed like design choices in The Witcher 3 such as POI's, meaningless loot everywhere & copy-paste villages etc.

Folk can argue over whether that worked or not, but what it shows is their definite desire to include casual gaming tropes to appeal to casual gamers.

 

[Kev Inkline]

I think I have mentioned it before ITT, but if the game spans out to be like GTA V with Deus Ex type character development mechanisms or something similar, I'm happy.
Now that's an AAA game with open world and online components.

Anyways, having played the pnp for the past 25 years, this is a for me, no matter what happens.

 

[The Wall]

That's a brilliant post, but I personally think CD Projekt have already shown signs of warping in to typical AAA scum by some of their Assasin's Creed like design choices in The Witcher 3 such as POI's, meaningless loot everywhere & copy-paste villages etc.

Folk can argue over whether that worked or not, but what it shows is their definite desire to include casual gaming tropes to appeal to casual gamers.

Had I had an ability to rate posts I would have simply given you agree but since I don't let me say it loud and clear here: Agreed! Witcher 3 could have been much better RPG or at least could have had many better RPG mechanics like Witcher 1 already had. Alchemy, Witcher senses (promising and hyped system which ended up being glorified clairvoyance spell from Skyrim), preparation before monster hunts etc. were all dumbed down. Still it was quite enjoyable for what it was. Could have been so much better though. No one praises Witcher 3 mechanics only story. If you told that to some CD Projekt dev he'd probably agree and think that solution to that is even more dumbing down. It's practically deja vu by now...

What a dumb ass post equating Toddler with CDP.

You misunderstood me. I was not equating Toddler Hoeward with CD Projekt but merely demonstrating that even Bughtesda and Toddler once used to speak tongue and words of incline. Have you noticed how lately them and Bioware are less and less even merely calling their games (namely latest Mass Effect and Fallout 4) RPGs? You'd struggle to find anywhere that Mass Effect is an rpg and on Fallout 4's steam page NOWHERE in its descrpition do they use explicitely word RPG. Only in tags (most given by community). It's fascinating. Go back to as far as Oblibilion and in one of their very own first sentences they explicitely call it RPG. That doesn't mean it's good one but it does speak volumes about their focus and target groups. In Oblivion they went after new crowd but didn't want to entirely lose RPG players at all. Fast forward to Fallout 4 and they couldn't give less of a crap about RPG players. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us many of those casuals (whose first 'RPG' was Oblivion, cough me cough) thanks to New Vegas and other titles grew to like and want more and more RPG mechanics.

Bottom line is that this isn't something that only happened to Bethesda. It happened to every single company which once used to make certain games, then went big, then more and more stopped making such games and then became unrecognizable to old customers. I just hope that CD Projekt won't completly fall prey to that.

I think I have mentioned it before ITT, but if the game spans out to be like GTA V with Deus Ex type character development mechanisms or something similar, I'm happy.
Now that's an AAA game with open world and online component.

Anyways, having played the pnp for the past 25 years, this is a for me, no matter what happens.

Agreed for the most part. GTA V with RPG mechanics is probably what they're going after, what we will probably receive in the end and all things considered is the most we can expect from them at this point.

 

[Zer0wing]

That's a brilliant post, but I personally think CD Projekt have already shown signs of warping in to typical AAA scum by some of their Assasin's Creed like design choices in The Witcher 3 such as POI's, meaningless loot everywhere & copy-paste villages etc.

Folk can argue over whether that worked or not, but what it shows is their definite desire to include casual gaming tropes to appeal to casual gamers.

It didn't work out but they did it (and admitted later) as a cop out, since due to post-soviet gamedev™ management, the ran out of time to fill the blanks between story and side quests, unlike Assassin's Creed, where it was intentionally done in laziest way possible.

Can't say I'd rate the post other than "Agree" since The Witcher 3 could've been even better RPG than previous two games in better hands. (gameplay-wise)

 

[Paul_cz]

You misunderstood me. I was not equating Toddler Hoeward with CD Projekt but merely demonstrating that even Bughtesda and Toddler once used to speak tongue and words of incline. Have you noticed how lately them and Bioware are less and less even merely calling their games (namely latest Mass Effect and Fallout 4) RPGs? You'd struggle to find anywhere that Mass Effect is an rpg and on Fallout 4's steam page NOWHERE in its descrpition do they use explicitely word RPG. Only in tags (most given by community). It's fascinating. Go back to as far as Oblibilion and in one of their very own first sentences they explicitely call it RPG. That doesn't mean it's good one but it does speak volumes about their focus and target groups. In Oblivion they went after new crowd but didn't want to entirely lose RPG players at all. Fast forward to Fallout 4 and they couldn't give less of a crap about RPG players. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us many of those casuals (whose first 'RPG' was Oblivion, cough me cough) thanks to New Vegas and other titles grew to like and want more and more RPG mechanics.

Bottom line is that this isn't something that only happened to Bethesda. It happened to every single company which once used to make certain games, then went big, then more and more stopped making such games and then became unrecognizable to old customers. I just hope that CD Projekt won't completly fall prey to that.

I understand you, but the difference is, Toddler's decline started right after Morrowind. CDP have been at it for 15 years and no sign of decline, and no reason to think there will be one. It is possible, like meteor destroying Earth tomorrow, is, but not probable.

 

[Trodat]

TW3 was a very shallow game in terms of character development, itemization, combat, abilities and so on. Like when you play the game there is no point to even think about any of that stuff for 99 % of the time. When you got a level just put a point on something. When you find new gear upgrade it if you get higher dps and so on. People just want to think it is somehow "deep" because it is opposed to the Bioware style pandering. Great writing, world, atmosphere, voice acting, graphics, interesting characters, story. Anything related to RPG mechanics are on about same level as in DA:I.

 

[Ezeekiel]

TW3 mechanics and itemization were crap, yeah. The open world copy-pasta stuff (in spite of having a lot of original quests etc anyway) didn't add anything positive either, esp. with the crap itemization making exploring rather meh.
Weird that they went in that direction imo, but then again mechanics/combat and such were never their strength.

 

[Falksi]

What bugs me isn't just how dull & shit TW3 was, that's largely just my experience of it & I can appriciate how others enjoyed it, but how it gets praised for doing stuff which it didn't actually do.

No end of folk have said "THIS is how to do an RPG" and "TW3 has taken RPGs back to their roots". No it's not.Tthe evolution from TW1 to TW2 to TW3 shows a clear dumbing down of elements with each successive entry, and an inclusion of far more rank AAA tropes along the way.

In fact it's not the series I have an issue with, it's CD Projekt being hailed as some type of "saviours of the old school", when they're doing just like Boiware & other such companies, but without EA putting a gun to their head.

How dumb do folk have to be to not see that the massive amount of AAA tropes added between Witcher 2 & 3?

CP2077 will be very interesting. Assasins Creed: Bladerunner edition?

 

[The Wall]

What bugs me isn't just how dull & shit TW3 was, that's largely just my experience of it & I can appriciate how others enjoyed it, but how it gets praised for doing stuff which it didn't actually do.

No end of folk have said "THIS is how to do an RPG" and "TW3 has taken RPGs back to their roots". No it's not.Tthe evolution from TW1 to TW2 to TW3 shows a clear dumbing down of elements with each successive entry, and an inclusion of far more rank AAA tropes along the way.

In fact it's not the series I have an issue with, it's CD Projekt being hailed as some type of "saviours of the old school", when they're doing just like Boiware & other such companies, but without EA putting a gun to their head.

How dumb do folk have to be to not see that the massive amount of AAA tropes added between Witcher 2 & 3?

CP2077 will be very interesting. Assasins Creed: Bladerunner edition?

CD Projekt Red - saviour of gamers in terms of giving them good single player experience, no microtransactions, good DLC policy, being consumer friendly etc.?

Sure. For now. Also it seems they will remain so for the foreseeable future.

CD Projekt Red - saviour of old school mechanics, role playing, innovative mechanics and responsive, interactive Deus Ex/Gothic/Daggerfall/Ultima Underworld like worlds?

No. Not really. At least the trend is quite opposite to that. Maybe CP 2077 will mark the change of their approach. We'll see...

 

[Paul_cz]

TW3 was a very shallow game in terms of character development, itemization, combat, abilities and so on. Like when you play the game there is no point to even think about any of that stuff for 99 % of the time. When you got a level just put a point on something. When you find new gear upgrade it if you get higher dps and so on. People just want to think it is somehow "deep" because it is opposed to the Bioware style pandering. Great writing, world, atmosphere, voice acting, graphics, interesting characters, story. Anything related to RPG mechanics are on about same level as in DA:I.

I don't disagree, but the first two games were just as "shallow", it is simply what CDP went for with these games. They are storydriven RPGs first and foremost, not mechanical. They tell Geralt's story and that limits the amount of depth when it comes to itemization and skills and all that.

 

[Gerrard]

Ha ha, whoops.

180 turnaround in 5 days.

Nope. Still hasn't even gained half of that loss back.

 

[Iznaliu]

Maybe CP 2077 will mark the change of their approach. We'll see...

Given the immense success of TW3, they will most likely double down on that game's formula and avoid doing anything substantial to it that could jeopardise their success. What you want to start looking at is the game that comes after CP2077, which IMHO will likely have CDPR reconsidering stuff as people get bored of the TW3 formula and the people at CDPR lose their creative mojo.

 

[Junmarko]

So the "Pseudo MMO" rumors were false, but the "people quitting en-masse" and "starting development completely from scratch" were not?

 

[Gerrard]

Buy CDR guys, it will be 200zł before the end of the year!

 

[Zer0wing]

Not related to anything, just bringing this topic to discussion - a man with no time to play games now tells others what to play. Riiight.

 

[Kev Inkline]

Buy CDR guys, it will be 200zł before the end of the year!

ANALIZA TECHNICZNA

 

[Grotesque]

"since the game's release on Play Station 4"

so this guy beside being a egotistical master developer of Cyberpunk 2077, is also a consoletard.

The future looks brighter and brighter!

 

[Paul_cz]

These are PR articles beneficial both to Sony and the developers, judging that he is consoletard because he mentions PS4 in article written on Sony blog is one of the more retarded things I read today

 

[Tom Selleck]

dude looks like a real life beavis

 

[Grotesque]

So the "Pseudo MMO" rumors were false, but the "people quitting en-masse" and "starting development completely from scratch" were not?

This shit is depressing

 

[Iznaliu]

This shit is depressing

What else did you expect with a studio bound to unrealistic expectations because they released a breakout hit?

 

[Junmarko]

This shit is depressing

What else did you expect with a studio bound to unrealistic expectations because they released a breakout hit?

Team clearly split into 3 minds on how they should handle Cyberpunk's systems - probably shock after a narrow character arch like The Witcher's "One class, one dude" and making a trilogy from that.

2012...
Team A."Ok, we cover as many character classes/skills from Cyberpunk V3 as possible, to create the ultimate single player CRPG - this is going to be bigger than anything we've ever done. We will be setting a new standard with the replayability here."
Team B. "What?! That will take too long, we do a single-character arch like Geralt's, you just play as a Cop, but you can specialize...like we did with Witcher..."
Team C."That game exists, it's called Deus Ex. No. This is Cyberpunk. The only way to do it justice is to have your friends there as well, playing many different roles, just like the tabletop! Cyberpunk Online!"

Now...

Spoiler

WE'RE NOT E.A! PROMISE! EVERYTHING IS FINE! WANNA WORK FOR US?!