This will be a long one but... not much else I can do.
Not sure what's been the perception for this specific portion of the game yet, since I've avoided reading entire reviews to allow myself to make up my own mind about the game on my own. But now that I'm about 35 hours in, and after doing a lot of quests (of all types) and been to I believe 4 Districts and basically finishing the entire Watson quests, side quests and gigs content (with the exception of the 'ongoing operations' icons) there's definitely that one aspect, that 'branch' of the game that is absolutely showing its limitations.
There would be a novel to type on this, and I know I could but... I'll try to make it as concise and short as I can (but yeah, I can't simply do that).
The Crowd / Pedestrian / General Population System of this game, is what this is about.
Sort of a 'preface' first. This is Cyberpunk, and the way that Night City was basically described to us from all those interviews, previews, demonstrations and other media coverage of the game during development was basically telling the story of a very harsh place to live in (or even just visit). That Night City in this Cyberpunk universe (especially that Night City of the year 2077), despite its gargantuan size of a city - and in part actually 'due' to that fact - is inhabited by a very materialistic, individualistic population obsessed with augmentations, cyberware and their own visions of what being a human means (or does not mean) at this point.
And beyond this vision of a "Digital Society 3.0" there's the inevitable disconnection that ensues from said inhabitants from their very base human "nature" and soul, the core values taking a deep dive in a landfill somewhere along the process. It's a population that gets easily triggered out of nothing (think today's generation but on an order of magnitude higher, if that can be imagined), that wouldn't hesitate to push you out of their way, or take out a gun to shoot your face simply because they dislike your hairstyle since it doesn't fit with your jacket.
They portrayed us a Night City that would make you tremble in anxiety and apprehension just for going out of your apartment for a walk or to do basic errands. In fact, that in-game TV show with the Ziggy Q guy I believe, there's one episode where he interviews an NCPD Spokesperson (the woman officer) and if I recall correctly it was in that episode where Ziggy asks about when would it be finally 'safe' in Night City just to go to the mall and not having to carry a gun just to do that and have a chance to survive the trip.
Basically, in Night City, there's supposed to be aggressiveness and violence within the population either very clear-as-day or at the very least waiting to jump at you (or anyone else) from the various nooks, crannies and dark alleys of this incredibly dense metropolis. There should be people randomly going bunkers in plain day time for seemingly no reason, we should be witnessing scenes of decadence and thuggery, of someone's personal problems being displayed with bullet holes on the wall behind him.
And none of this is based off of some magical, out-of-the-blue unrealistic 'expectations' that I would have forged for myself. This is merely how, essentially (but there's more nuance to just saying this) Night City was advertised. That it is a tough place, you either die young and forgotten floating in a pool of mud somewhere in a landfill, or it's forging you in one badass Mothrfker that nobody would dare messing with if you can survive the place for even just 5 years. You either fight for your 'credibility' and notoriety and make your place, or you're a nobody selling hotdogs at a food stand at some Megabuilding entrance for your whole life there.
I could keep going with this and I did say it'd be tough to just describe all this with a small post. But I assure you I'm still trying to condense all this as I type, and I just can't, really.
So where do I go with all this? Well there's very few other ways for me to put it, other than to say it in either 1 of 2 ways total:
1) Where IS Night City, in Night City?
2) Where IS the 'Night City Population' that we've been told of all those years?
In other words...
The Night City populace is some of the most ORDERLY, calm and nonchalant I've seen in any other open world and remotely similar game setting out there.
Most of the things I've observed that basically do NOT happen in Night City:
- Where are the random shootouts? (I'll elaborate on this one).
- Where are the Cyberpsychos attacking Peds and/or Police officers and/or Gang members?
- Where are the common low-level thieves and thugs on the streets?
- No one is ever trying to try and 'steal a woman's purse' to use a typical example (it this case, it could be some gizmo or device, or some Braindance headset, just use your imagination)
- Not one Pedestrian is ever getting hit by accident by a car, ever.
- No cars on the road ever zig zag around (to mimmic a drunk or drugged driver) causing problems, accidents or traffic jams.
- No one ever tries to just cross the street on a red light.
- All drivers have the utmost respect and care for the Pedestrians (repetition but, no car accidents, drivers always horn and never rush ahead if a Ped is in the way).
- No one ever seemingly grabs something at a vendor stall and runs away (where you'd for instance then hear the vendor yell something like "Hey! You didn't pay!!").
- No one ever have the slightest signs of interest towards each others in any possible way, be it positive, neutral or negative; even when they 'bump' into each others (and they do that all the time).
- No one crossing the street, running at someone with a sword out for unknown reasons (just an example of people losing their mind for the smallest possible reasons you can imagine, IF there's a reason).
- No random fires, be it a car fire, a random Gang-made roadblock with tire fires, barrel fires, whatever you can think of. And you know why? I suppose the population is aware that there's no actual firefighting force in Night City so they're very mindful and careful about that, doing their best to ensure that there's never any fire erupting anywhere. Can you imagine what they'd have to do if a fire ever popped up? The actual neighborhood would probably have to pay some Mega corporation to send drones to drop water bombs on location; otherwise suck it, let the fire burn whatever it's burning.
- No "ambulances" around, ever. So, if a pedestrian in that game world was to get injured in some way (ironically they really cannot get injured anyway as it is) then what do they do? Crawl in pain to the nearest Ripperdoc? Let me guess, _everyone_ in Night City are on their own unless they have insurance with Trauma Team?
- No NCPD patrol cars on the roads. I'm not inventing this, in my 35+ hours of gameplay I haven't seen a SINGLE one actually circulating in the traffic. The only ones I see are the stationary, scripted / fixed ones at specific street corners or other locations.
- In fact, regarding the NCPD, where ARE the police car chases, or the on-foot police officers pursuits on the streets? There's none. Let that sink in. There's no random police interventions in Night City. IN NIGHT CITY.
- No clear signs of actual Public Transportation happening in this City. Where are the "Taxis" / Cabs for the general population? There's no Bus system in this game, no Subway system on surface level (by that I mean outside of looking up and occasionally seeing a tramway on the tracks above going between the buildings). So in this City, how do they travel in general? No wonder why there's so many on the streets just walking and seemingly just doing that all day long. And, side note, yes I know about the 'Cab' service, Delamain (or whatever the name is), but that is appearant for US, the players. The actual Pedestrian system isn't using that "service" nor does the game want to make it sound to the player that the population is even aware of it (outside of the Delamain-related quests, on the streets in general).
I could keep on going on this one just in regards to this completely butchered and wasted vision of Night City they gave us.
In general, what we have, is a very orderly and exemplary metropolis population behavior. And this is 500% contradictory and opposite to what, and HOW Night City was 'supposed to be and feel' like. The city's "soul" and character, so to speak, is entirely missing.
If I want to be very generous (and I'll be) I'll say what the inhabitants actually CAN do in this game, and generally indeed do happen to do and never miss on the opportunity to execute it:
- They walk around, a lot. This is the main activity in Night City for the majority of the population.
- They bump against each others every couple meters, after all, it's a super dense population and the walkways are so small; gotta have to bump into people.
- They respect the red light and never cross the street. When it says "Don't Walk... Don't Walk... Don't Walk..." guess what they do? They certainly OBEY THE F_ OUT of that. It's very mindful population.
- They sometimes stop in their track and stop by a bench to sit on it (that's probably what took them an extra year to work on; must have been tough to come up with that one).
- They sometimes stop at a vendor stand and seemingly peruse items.
And... hummm... did I miss something? I think that's about it? When you step outside of your apartment in this game, that's about as much you'll get out of the Peds.
Now before I continue, main points having been delivered, I want to be very clear here:
The actual stuff they worked on for the crowd system DOES make it VERY impressive to look at. I mean this purely on a technical level. With the crowd density setting at 'High', going at a very busy street intersection and seeing that many pedestrians flowing about their 'routine' IS, genuinely, a remarkable thing to watch. That's because even at that 'crude', basic level of pedestrian behavior, I cannot think of another similar game where THAT part of the other game would have been equally good. I can give credits where due for that part of their crowd system. I am aware, it must have been difficult to create in the first place.
BUT, with that being said, here's the thing...
This isn't Grand Theft Auto, it's Cyberpunk, set in Night City. And we have, basically, NO RANDOM EVENTS to witness.
I did mention above at near the beginning that I would elaborate on at least the 'random shootouts' part. Because I know, some people will point at the ones that they came across, but I hope that if you came across some of those, that you realize what they truly are. And I'll explain right here, and right now. The seemingly "random shootouts" that do occasionally occur, are in fact quite simply scripted events. They are set to happen at specific, pre-designated locations, and when you happen to pass close to one such location, there's a chance that a shootout will 'spawn' there (and I believe if you intervene and kill all the enemies there, the same "event" will re-spawn with the same enemies the next in-game day; I do believe from my experience that it is a once-per-day-per-location type of thing). And here I'm specifically referring to the 'events' that appear exclusively on the Mini Map when you're close enough. The icon on the Mini Map looks similar to a blue star, and there's a circular 'ping' effect coming out of that icon on the map.
Well, those specific shootouts only involve one out of two possible scenarios:
1) Gang members Vs rival Gang members.
2) Gang members and/or 'random thugs / scavengers' Vs NCPD forces.
And that. Is. It.
So in my list of things above that basically 'don't happen' in this game, when I said that there's no shootouts, it was in reference specifically to the CROWD doing that sort of thing, just in the general population.
Now let's just imagine the type of scenario one could at least very feasibly imagine would happen in the actual 'real' as-advertised Night City.
- You come out of your apartment, and you hear what seems like 1 or 2 gunshots coming from either the floor above, or below; but you're a Merc and have things to do, you move on.
- As you walk down the stairs and move towards the elevator, you hear a few people behind somewhere screaming in fear and calling for help "My GOD someone just got shot here!!"
- That's fine, just another afternoon in Night City. You go down the main floor and move on your way out of your lovely Megabuilding H10; on your way out, there's a heated dispute between a vendor and a consumer, it's random, comes out of nowhere for you but you keep moving on.
- You get out of your building and so far, "so good", as "so far so good" as that can be and mean in Night City. Other than the Peds moving about and the probable attempts-to-steal something in the making in someone's mind nearby you don't sense any immediate danger and call your car.
- You get in your car and set to Lizzie's Bar.
- On your way there about 2 or 3 streets later you suddenly hear police sirens and gunshots, you go 3rd person view to see what's going on and notice there's a random shootout and a car chase between NCPD and some thugs shooting in all directions, Peds included. But you decide not to intervene and just go on as much as you can just avoiding the other panicked drivers around who probably squish some more Peds in their own attempt to save their skin outta there.
- You finally arrive, get out of your car in the parking and get to your destination.
The next day (be it real life, or in-game), if you were to repeat that same thing, going to the same place and taking the same path on the same streets, you'd experience something completely different. Maybe that time 'random events' would have been more spaced out in frequency and/or space, making it seem more rare and one of those "Lucky Night City Days" where for some reason people seem to behave maybe one or two extra hours more than the usual. But it's also possible that you'd have encountered maybe the same number of events, but they would have been different ones altogether.
You know what's sort of funny but also painful to think of as I type this? At the beginning of the game after I first got out of my apartment, I turned left (on the same floor) and just walked toward that corridor. As I did, an 'event' (but scripted, as a tutorial) appeared as a pop-up window, "warning" me that Night City sees all sorts of things going on and that me as a player I'd get to choose to intervene or not intervene. When the pop-up closed I witnessed what was used as the example in the form of just a random girl, on her knees, seemingly being intimidated and then clearly beaten by some guy standing in front of her (who slapped her just before I got close to them both), shouting at her about how he's the boss and she's supposed to do this and that. I broke the guy's neck and that was it. Then I thought "Ah nice, I can't wait to see that sort of stuff happening around!".
It never happened again.
It makes me wonder, as they were making the game - obviously so - they were even supervised by the man himself, Mike Pondsmith. Was he shown that one tutorial-style random event example one day and he walked out satisfied of the devs' representation of his beloved Night City vision? I genuinely cannot understand what happened during development for that very specific branch of the game. Because, truly, outside of the fact that their crowd system IS - on a technical level - very impressive; it is just as equally lifeless, boring, and the best imaginable contradiction to Night City as one could have thought of.