I thought the Cyberpunk story was pretty good, but the game mechanics pushed you toward the next quest in the main storyline all the time. This resulted in me burning through the main story quickly, then being presented with "touching" messages from all the characters during the credits. Except I barely knew who any of these characters were, since I'd hardly done any of the side missions where you get to know them. S…
Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
31–40 of 65 posts
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#32This is right on the money for games which are impactful for me, and I noticed the writing being on-point in CP2077's decisions entirely: there were plenty of moment in my playthrough where I didn't have to stop and think about what a dialogue option was, it felt entirely natural to hit one of the prompts the moment I saw it because the way I was playing my character, that's what they would've done. That felt great ,…
Interesting, I felt the opposite - consistent mismatches between the expectation and reality of Cyberpunk’s dialogue choices. A lot of optional dialogue was just cues to make the NPC roll their eyes and explain obvious “subtext” to the biggest dork in Night City, instead of a cue to play out two inhabitants of this world just naturally discussing and elaborating on a point of shared understanding. V’s lines in mandat…
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#33I thought Witcher 3 had a good story until I played Disco Elysium.
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#34>" Be sure to make your consequences clear and visible. When consequences are too subtle, players won’t see them. Bring back stuff from earlier in the game at the least expected time. Design for the visibility of consequences; investing in something not telegraphed well is mostly not worth it. Figure out how to the player visibly see what the consequences will be." Disagree with this and I think interestingly enough…
Yeah count me as someone who thought Elden Ring’s quests sucked hard. It’s only up to you to miss 80% of the game in the sense that you absolutely will miss 80% of the game unless you look it up on a wiki. And then when you do them it has basically no impact on anything. Like… you could have been able to do something really light touch like ask the merchants if they’ve heard any rumors on where characters are.
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#35I thought the Cyberpunk story was pretty good, but the game mechanics pushed you toward the next quest in the main storyline all the time. This resulted in me burning through the main story quickly, then being presented with "touching" messages from all the characters during the credits. Except I barely knew who any of these characters were, since I'd hardly done any of the side missions where you get to know them. S…
The game warns you before the final quest though no?
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#36To tell you the truth, playing these games taught me that I really don't care for quest-dependent games. I feel like CDPR games have no way to interact with their pretty worlds outside of the heavily scripted quests. You can generally just go anywhere you want, take anything, even loot the entire office of the captain of the army, and nobody even reacts. Contrast this to Bethesda games, where the entire game is an el…
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can imagine Disco Elysium with ChatGPT instances per skill/object (for those who didn’t play DE - every thing, including skills according to their points, speaks with you and this gameplay mechanic is amazing)
It was already written and voiced by humans? I’m not sure what you want out of it. A curated experience is more valuable than a generated one.
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
I can imagine Disco Elysium with ChatGPT instances per skill/object (for those who didn’t play DE - every thing, including skills according to their points, speaks with you and this gameplay mechanic is amazing)
It was already written and voiced by humans? I’m not sure what you want out of it. A curated experience is more valuable than a generated one.
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#39Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hard disagree, cyberpunk had a fantastic story, compared to the witcher 3 that I've tried to finish about 4 separate times and failed every time - the side quests are fantastic, the main quest is just unbelievably dragged out and boring. Everyone mentions the blood baron quest - and yes, it was great, outstanding even. I've never seen anyone mention anything after that point - it's just a mess of narrative that gets…
I played the Witcher 3 twice trough leaving a small bit of the second expansion unfinished just because I don't want this game to end. I lost interest in Cyberpunk quite early. To me Cyberpunk is too American with overdone themes. Although the Cyberpunk anime is great. Simple story, but has really well put together characters and delivers emotional punch. I will have to try to get back to the game. Maybe on second tr…
A tremendously important point in the Cyberpunk anime was the fact that their world was really horrific to live in. You could live semi-miserably and go out in an untimely fashion--possibly even in a blaze of glory--or you live completely miserably and could go out in an untimely fashion with a whimper. Living well and pleasantly was really never on the table.
Whereas, Cyberpunk the video game is the standard, kinda-generic power fantasy. You never really feel "oppressed" by the overall system as you're kind of outside it.
Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3
#40the article is a chatgpt summary of Paweł Sasko's cd projekt red lead quest designer's presentation on lead quest design. "lessons learned" are in the form of "we did a thing, and by virtue of doing the thing the way we did it, we have an experience doing this thing our way." there's not a single element of self-reflection. it says quest director, but Pavel wasn't one until, the actual Cyberpunk 2077 quest director, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, quit in 2021, a year after the game was released.
In my experience these days talks like that are heavily filtered by the PR (or some informal equivalent of), and having sat through my fare share of them they seem to make up the dull corporate background noise of GDC and co. Pavel is a cool dude though, he was responsible for the Red Barron in Witcher 3 that people keep bringing up in the comments.
I think real cyberpunk 2077 design retrospective would've been interesting to read. If somebody knows an in-depth one I'd appreciate a link. The game is very very uneven. There's a first rate B-grade Hollywood blockbuster hiding there, staring Keanu Reeves, Goro's subplot, etc. which suffers from very basic design issues ("show don't tell" "show don't tell" "jeez that tell is the opposite of the show" "show.. oh fuck it"). Tell us how to awkwardly wrap up your story lines under crunch, Pavel.