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In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

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Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#51

Post by Razengan »

rubycon22 wrote: post #14
Razengan wrote: post #2

Is anyone else weary of dystopian sci-fi? I'd love to see a setting where technology has made the world a practical utopia, and people generally don't have to be wary of each other. It would be tricky to introduce interesting conflict and challenges into such a setting, yes. There are some anime/manga like that, for example Aria [0], which is basically Venice on Mars and the main characters are aspiring gondoliers, w…

It's plausible to believe that we'll make all kinds of technological advancements, solve world hunger and such kinds of scarcity, go to Mars, or whatever. However, it's unlikely that humans will ever overcome their greatest enemy, themselves. Such a utopian fantasy is still hard to take in for most people, while it's much easier to imagine things going to shit and degenerating to a cyberpunk dystopia. Humans make the…

> However, it's unlikely that humans will ever overcome their greatest enemy, themselves.

I believe in nurture > nature, and I see it in the differences between different human settlements (cultures, nations) and in attitudes over time.

In some places you're more likely to get robbed, in others you're more likely to get help. In some cities you're more likely to see casual litter, in other places more people cleaning up after themselves.

For every decade you go back in time there will be more and more classes of people who had a much harder time of fitting into society, along with the lack of many other freedoms that we take for granted now.

Once nobody has to constantly struggle for basic comforts, I think humanity will be able to chill the fuck out.

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#52

Post by 2pEXgD0fZ5cF »

I keep reading an often repeated defense of the game: That there is a diamond hidden under all the bugs and rough edges.

I played through the whole game and got probably lucky when it came to bugs because I did not experience that many game breaking ones (though DID encounter them which taught me to save very very frequently) and I am lucky to have a high end PC so while performance was really terrible I still managed to get ~60fps on highest settings, most of the time.

It is not, it is not amazing even without the bugs. I have a strong suspicion that the people who praise or defend it so tenaciously played only the longer prologue, which lasts a few hours depending on your speed, maybe a few hours further. The quality of that part is way better than the rest and from that point on the quality will continue to drop the closer one gets to the finale.

The game has massive problems that are just not related to bugs, it just tries so many things and does all of them mediocre. Many redundant and useless game mechanics. UI navigation is terrible, there are game design problems. The open world is hollow and lifeless and the behaviour of random NPCs does not even reach GTA 3 level in some ways, to put that into perspective. There is nothing to discover or explore in the open world part (except pretty screenshots sometimes) and every interaction in it (that is: outside of story missions) with characters works through audio calls and text messages.

I am not saying that it is absolutely terrible without the bugs, there is some fun to be had when everything works, but removing the bugs would lift it up to "pretty ok" at best, and I do regret the time investment and purchase. Seeing the opinions split into these two extreme opinions "amazing" and "absolutely terrible" just feels weird.

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#53

Post by wyufro »

malwarebytess wrote: post #41
keiferski wrote: post #19

The sheer amount of hatred being thrown at this game is really something odd. It feels artificial, especially when practically every media outlet has the same vitriolic tone. I don’t play games much anymore, but I did pick Cyberpunk 2077 up (via Stadia) and I’ve found it to be a blast. Certainly not perfect, but absolutely a world worth exploring. My favorite part are the details; there are tons of little stories and…

Someone with a conspiracy bent might make something of the fact that the game is deeply anti-capitalist.

Dystopian Sci-Fi being anti-capitalist? Wow, what a crazy idea.

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#54

Post by rusk »

Barrin92 wrote: post #6

The game tries so hard to be cool — to come off as crass and edgy, to talk tough and play like some kind of anti-capitalist anarchy generator. But you lean too hard into that act and it will always come off more like a desperate pose than anything honest It's so true honestly. The game has the intellectual depth of a Che-shirt or that Kendall Jenner Pepsi commercial. What the game reminds me of is Mark Fisher's point…

> The game has the intellectual depth of a Che-shirt

It’s a GAME ...

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#55

Post by jayd16 »

bigbubba wrote: post #18
eric_b wrote: post #7

Is this what passes for "gaming press" these days? Cyberpunk is not supposed to be some watershed philosophical masterwork. It's a game, bro. And from everyone I've talked to it sounds like it's really fun if you have the hardware to run it, bugs and all.

The way I see it, the game purports to be cyberpunk so it seems fair to judge the game as cyberpunk.

I'm not sure I follow the author's complaints though. Its not cyberpunk because the young protagonist has a glib jacket? Its not cyberpunk because the plot impact is high? Lots of cyberpunk works have high impact plots. Ghost in the shell and Neuromancer had some global military AI. Snow Crash had a villain with a nuclear bomb. A lot of the characters in these books were not deep at all. In fact I think accepting the dystopia as normal and living inside it's rules is almost a hallmark of the genre.

I don't really understand the plot complaints other then they just didn't like it that more or that it didn't fit their idea of what the game should be.

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#56

Post by dkersten »

keiferski wrote: post #19

The sheer amount of hatred being thrown at this game is really something odd. It feels artificial, especially when practically every media outlet has the same vitriolic tone. I don’t play games much anymore, but I did pick Cyberpunk 2077 up (via Stadia) and I’ve found it to be a blast. Certainly not perfect, but absolutely a world worth exploring. My favorite part are the details; there are tons of little stories and…

> It feels artificial, especially when practically every media outlet has the same vitriolic tone.

I can tell you why I'm annoyed: I was a big CDPR fan, I loved all three of the (core) Witcher games, so I was hoping something to a similar level of quality. The fact that it wasn't isn't the problem though (especially bugs, which can be fixed), the problem is the CEO's lied, not just to us the customers, but also to their shareholders. They said a year ago that the game could be played from start to finish, but its now come out that devs are saying that was a downright lie. Shortly before release, they said that the game "performs better than expected" on base PS4/Xbox, which was also an outright lie.

I'm angry at the lies.

The game itself has problems: the AI is nonexistent (GTA 3 from 2001 had better car driving AI!), its buggy with regular crashes, physics glitches, audio glitches, quest-breaking bugs. The shooting is not terrible, but its nothing special. The hacking is just a menu with zero depth. Many missions are just "go kill the people" mundane affairs (sad compared to how great The Witcher 3's side quests were). There are characters that get built up and then you never hear from them again. Some characters quest lines feel very short. Few decisions have a lasting impact and the endings are almost all chosen through a selection in the last mission segment (very few prior decisions have any impact on it).

But with that said, the game isn't bad (bugs aside). The music is amazing, the voice acting is great, I found the characters likable, the attention to detail in some areas is fantastic (visiting peoples graves for example) and overall the main quests, especially the ones that were more talking to people than shooting, were really good. I legit felt heart broken at certain phone messages towards the end, they hit me right in the feels.

So its a flawed game with some great ideas and some good content. I feel that if they'd had another year of development time, it would have been an amazing game, but management rushed it out instead.

If I ignore the technical issues and judge the game purely on story, content, gameplay, then I'd give it a 7 to 7.5/10 (with technical problems I'd give it 3/10)

I've played it through once (and reloaded right before the end to see a second ending) and I don't regret buying it, I got my moneys worth. However, its nowhere near the hype their marketing promised and its nowhere near the quality that The Witcher 3 was.

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#57

Post by eric_b »

keiferski wrote: post #19

The sheer amount of hatred being thrown at this game is really something odd. It feels artificial, especially when practically every media outlet has the same vitriolic tone. I don’t play games much anymore, but I did pick Cyberpunk 2077 up (via Stadia) and I’ve found it to be a blast. Certainly not perfect, but absolutely a world worth exploring. My favorite part are the details; there are tons of little stories and…

I agree - this has been a theme of 2020. It's like the entire media gets its talking points from a single place.

More surprisingly to me is that people still give modern media any credibility whatsoever. I turned on NPR the other day and had to turn it off after 15 minutes. I can't imagine why anyone would listen anymore.

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#59

Post by dkersten »

gonehome wrote: post #8

The game is a little more nuanced than this write up would have you believe. You can tell the Silverhand character that he's a whiny narcissist with over-simplified views that blames everyone for his own problems. I'd argue Silverhand and Yorinobu are not the heroes, but it ultimately depends on how you play and what decisions you make. You can also make fairly pragmatic decisions to do what makes the most sense in c…

The Silverhand character does grow somewhat towards the end. I actually started liking him before I got to the credits.

Re: In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' the Only Truly Punk Move Is Not to Play

#60

Post by dkersten »

Red29 wrote: post #16

Honestly, I found Cyberpunk really underwhelming and basically stopped playing. Apart from 1 or 2 moments (spider bot is cool,hotel theft job alright.) It's just very run and gun. And uniteresting. I'm sure I'm in the minority, but I'd love it to be a mix of syndicate (if you know that game), Detroit, and something like a point and click game. Something with a ton of interaction and only a bit of fighting.

The best quests in the game are the ones that are mostly dialog with characters. Many of those were quite fantastic, in my opinion. The shooting missions were definitely the dominant ones and underwhelming, but the dialogue-centric ones are what made me play to the end and ultimately I was not disappointed.

> I'm sure I'm in the minority

Nah, that sounds pretty cool. I'd play something like that. Especially since as I said above, the interaction-heavy quests were the best ones.

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