I don't find the gameplay bland if you take advantage of the quickhacks and technical abilities. Reminds me of dues ex. And I could never get into dues ex but I wanted to. It's not the best gameplay ever but it's pretty standard and like any other open world game. You either try and sneak or you go in blazing.
After so many years of games, everything has been done once already by now. What this game is missing is the interaction with the world around you, better AI, and the fighting could use polish too.
What it also suffers from is overhype to the point they had people expecting something out of this world. It's annoying that what they talked about in their pod cast and what they showed off didn't make it into the game.
I like the story and the side quests but it does need more content.
I still cant understand why development took like 8 years and ended up in this final state. I'm not even one of those people that was extremely hyped about it but just makes me question a lot of things.
I'm finding that the options for completing missions absolutely do open up the further you get, however, there isn't much inference as to if you are going into a mission where, while you may be able to handle mobs from a damagey, sneaky standpoint, a lot of the alternative tasks (hacking, breaking gates, breaking doors), can by way above your level. Basically: if you stick to a plan early on, stick with it and pump points into those specific attributes. ...it's also confusing that "gates" seem to require high technical ability to get past them, whereas doors are usually a body thing. This isn't just for opening up rooms with some junk, but it really cuts off your various paths (not anything new in games). At level 19, I'm finding the need for intelligence and tech, and even body to be at around 12 to access some areas, and that just isn't happening (I thought that keeping my damage up would be the way to go (I'm at about 11 and 12 for reflex and cool) and that I could still access the sneaky/hacking bits with moderate attribute points (6 and 7 for tech and intelligence, basically). I'm starting to become an actual threat to enemies, finally, lol, traiting into reflex and cool like that, but I have quickly become useless with the hacking and technical. If I could switch things now, I would basically trait out reflex and either intelligence or technical (probably intelligence). Cool is fantastic, but it's really more of a late game tree.
Once you start upgrading your cyberdeck and get better quickhacks, things really change with how you can accomplish missions.
The Deus Ex games...I tried the first one several times and just never could get into it (First attempt was maybe 2010 or 2012? I forget). I eventually finished HR (second attempt, after many years), and I liked it quite a bit...but I thought the combat was really...I dunno, empty? There was no real physics with the gunplay (Cyberpunk isn't much better in that department). I started MD earlier this year, and just quit about 15 hours into it...talk about a lifeless environment. I find both of those versions of DX to be very shiny "tidying-up simulators" ...the amount of time you spend moving boxes around the turdy apartments of what is basically cities-full of raging alcoholics is just not what I consider fun.
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To expand upon how I approach "issues" with a game release like this, and I apologize for the
@Zenoth -type novel-in-post-form, but I promise you it is informative: consumers feeling they didn't get "What they were promised" from a final release of a product. ...I just, and not to sound flippant, I feel that such complaints are
patently ridiculous. Perhaps I come from a different world where I have learned that, 1: marketing speak requires a personal translator such as to know that the words comping out of developers mouths don't mean much--they are often vague enough as to be interpreted by individual consumers as to what they assume things to be, and also, that these are aspirational claims by developers.
What do I mean by aspirational, and why is it actually fair to accept that? Well, it's because games, certainly modern games that have become massive, with expensive, long, development times, now like major film productions, pretty much exist along the same timeframe and development reality of what one wants to do, what one can do in the reality of the work that is required to get there, and what actually happens in the end (there are often multiple parties that stand between "final product" and actual "release product")
To film (bear with me here; I know I will lose most of you, but I promise it is quite analogous): from an original spec script, (let's go with the long, traditional model of submitting a spec script for sale, through many bidders, that might be bought up and passed around to a dozen studios, over a dozen years, before it becomes a project). By the time this can be greenlit, it is probably very different from the original script, and now in production, will be fiddled with and cut to a point that the eventual, final cut, will also look quite different from what was, now, the 12th draft of that script. During all this time, you've got the marketing team at work, cutting trailers from dailies and various versions of the production throughout, trade ads that are informing the industry "what this project is about" before anyone sees it. The general public probably, still, remains blithely ignorant of how these projects can go from point A to point Z at the end, where early promises are, in fact, completely non-existent in the actual product
that exists, at point Z. Even the director rarely gets final cut privilege--The studio producers will get their grubby hands in and determine that the story that they financed must end in this way--this character must be thus...so oftentimes, the product that is made by the actual production team, is not the actual product. This is the sausage-making that consumers rarely complain about, because in all these decades of the industry, the products are only ever judged by what exists, in the end.
Literature, books, comics, whatever, all of this is exactly the same. editors, whom can often have far more influence over the final content than the actual author, generally determine the actual published product (famously, it is generally believed that the stories of Raymond Carver were probably 20-30% of Raymond Carver's work, and it was his editor, Gordon Lish, that is fundamentally responsible for "massaging" the generally unintelligible, grammatically repellent ramblings of the perpetually-soused Carver into publishable material).
That's an extreme case from literature, and here is an even more extreme case:
Le Passion de Jean d'Arc, which is widely considered one of the greatest films ever made, and for very good reason. I'm sure that
@DigDog knows where I am going with this...Here is a remarkable fact about this production, that really has nothing to with what is great about this film. The film that exists, that was originally released to the public, is not the actual film that the director, Carl Theodor Dryer directed, edited, and released for final cut. Not a single frame of it is. ....that's because the actual completed film, the only copy at the time, was destroyed in a fire that occurred in the studio where the final print was being held, shortly after it was completed. ...so, what did they do? Dreyer cobbled together another film, entirely from everything that he cut out--literally went to the cutting room floor to make an entire film--and then released that. This is the only version that anyone has ever seen, and yet it is fantastic. Imagine what the actual film was like? I wonder if, knowing this, crowds of fans (let's transfer this example to modern reality), were watching trailers in anticipation for a year, upwards of 3 years, waiting for this thing to be released. ....imagine their anger and disappointment! No, that never happens. Film, like with books, and quite honestly with Video games, really are only their final product.
This is how I grew up with video games, and I have never, in my mind, thought that "being misled by marketing!" is a thing that could possibly ever exist when a game is released. It just...isn't a thing that is possible to this day:
have you played that^ game? It's actually Pong but your paddle looks almost kind like a lightsaber...hinged like a pinball paddle, though, for some reason.
have you played Jaws for Nintendo? yikes...
Anyway, that's a small example--not perfect, of course, because I don't mean to imply that this is wholly representative. Meaning, there are also plenty of examples where NES, and even Atari Box art, actually includes the in-game visuals (Metroid, for example--a lot of the earliest releases). You also "Accept" that these depictions, especially the hand-drawn art that is used on many of them (think of the Dragon Warrior games), are, well, aspirational. Look cover art for Fantasy, Sci Fi, Pulp novels. We pretty much understood that
we are going to have bring our own perceptions, experiences, imagination, into this thing to make the whole product work, as designed. We accepted it.
To all of this end, it is one reason that I pay little-to-no attention to any kind of pre-release content, especially for games with such extremely long development times. I don't care what devs say, because I know that they are using tradespeak: "Interactive, immersive, real-world environment with procedural, independent, AI that determines individual NPC daily lives!" ....that can actually mean both nothing and everything, depending on who hears that phrase, what their brain brings from their own personal experience to interpret their words, and what they actually
want it to mean. My brain tends to just take that as..."OK, neat....basically like what every open world game promises: pretty cool to live in for a bit, but it ends up being as generic as every other game that does this...which, honestly, is more than fine."
Consumers need to learn to judge the actual product that exists, not what is (never actually) "promised" to them, because obviously these folks want their vision to be real, but it just doesn't always work out that way (otherwise, we end up with hilarious trainwrecks like Star Citizen--that's what happens when you take a dev for their word, that all the amazing things! will happen because of COURSE IT CAN! ...so you end up with no product ever being released, because your brain has decided that
the dream of this thing is worth forking over hundreds of thousands of dollars in the hope that it can exist, while the cold hard truth of the real world is that compromises must be made if you are going to make an
actual product. Seriously, let's say that if the "Wounded Cyberpunk Children" got what they wanted from this game, it would actually be in the exact same state of Star Citizen: eternally dreaming of an idea of an expansive, perfect, endlessly brilliant product that will never actually exist, because it simply can not exist. That is how I interpret this reaction right now. (that's
my perspective; I'm not placing judgement on people that are honestly pissed about this, which is absolutely more than fair for anyone, and you should ask for refunds if you want to. My overall thesis here is that when you learn that what you are experiencing, now, as a disappointed consumer, is actually the result of being fished in by sales pitches that are, well, the exact same for everything that anyone is trying to sell you, then maybe you can develop a bit more realistic expectations? I dunno..)
Buy on release. Tell the devs what you think about the actual product
that can exist, by purchasing what is purchasable, not what you hope it to be, years or months from now. (this is why day one purchase is actually quite a different thing from pre-purchases--the latter gives a message to the dev that, if they are going to pull in millions with a product that doesn't exist, then there is demonstrably less incentive to release something with more polish, or with all the functions that they discussed. Purchasing on marketspeak is a fault of the consumer in the end. The way to combat that,
which you can do, is to simply stop pre-purchasing. Devs are going to keep pumping out the aspirational market speak if the distribution wing realizes that is driving consumer belief, and profit. It's a feedback loop, and really both parties are equally to blame. The only way to control it, however, is for the consumer to exercise their power.
....does this game have a lot of problems? Hell YES! It's why I am usually a 2nd year game purchase type of person. However, I will tend to buy a handful of games early on, fully aware that there will be "issues" from the beginning. I bought Skyrim maybe the 2nd week of release, Fallout4 day of, Witcher 3 day of. Were those horrible broken messes that pissed everyone off substantially? Yes, of course. Did consumers feel that, in all of those games, their grand promises were shattered and they felt ripped-off? Yes, absolutely. ....are those 3 games generally considered some of the best overall in modern times? Yes, they are extremely popular and generally quite loved....despite early bugs, despite "shattered promises."
For Cyberpunk, I absolutely agree that things like the living world are just kinda...meh. It initially looks vibrant and populated and complex but yeah, soon enough, you start to get the feeling that it is kind of a...I dunno "late beta" implementation where the world just generates massive blobs of NPCs walking around on the streets with no real purpose, just "to be there." There are also, however, a certain number of fixed NPCs, it seems, that are doing their own sort of activity that you might miss, because they aren't tagged as an event (like the assault, or NCPD activities) that I think reflect that initial "promise" of a "gritty, dangerous city where you could get shanked just for walking down the wrong alley." It seems to me that these parts of the fixed ambience are easily drowned out by the "blob of humanity" dumped onto the streets that makes up the bulk of the Night City living world...I think maybe if they tone down that population and actually fix the physics of those NPCs (can that be done?), it would go a long way to fix that "busy but actually lifeless streets" feeling that you get.
...driver AI. holy crap, this really is bad. drivers need to learn to generate and adjust their own routes so they don't just pile up endlessly behind any kind of vehicle on the road.