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Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

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Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#31

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…

Yeah, it's honestly an amazing ride assuming you ignore the main conceit that you're facing a ticking clock. If you take your time and experience all those side stories then you can feel an emotional connection, but if you listen to the plot the game REALLY wants you to rush through. You miss out on a ton of great characters and moments that way.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#32
post #21
post #14

This 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…

I think it's more about Mike Pondsmith's vision than CDPR's vision. It's not the kind of setting where you tell stories about competent and successful characters. The main characters are supposed to be losers and misfits who often turn to crime because they don't have other options. They are good at some things and bad at others, and they have far more ambition than common sense. The expected outcome is a failure, and there are no happy endings.

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.

As a huge fan of From Software games, I don’t bother with the character quests. They are incredibly obtuse. You can ignore them entirely and still enjoy the main experience. Exploration and combat is what really counts for me.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#35
post #23

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…

The game warns you before the final quest though no?

This sort of pacing is one of the problems with many open world games. The narrative pushes you towards saving the world and the final epic battle, while filling the world with tasks and sub plots that are trivial and non-urgent. And then the general will wait under heavy enemy fire for years as her troops are massacred and city after city burned while the character back tracks to kill rats and plow fields as part of their romantic interest's subplot. But if the narrative provides a lull in the action, you can encourage players to pursue subplots and even make that easier and more in character than to pursue the main plot. And you would have less of a problem dealing with under leveled characters who have rushed through the game in keeping with the main narrative, and over leveled characters who have dawdled through countless sub quests and DLCs oblivious to the urgency you were trying to convey in the story.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#36

To 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…

Calling Bethesda games "simulation" is a bizarre exaggeration. You mean the games where NPCs will let you rob them if only you place a bucket on their heads? That's a no from me. I don't think any games I've ever played did world-scale simulation well. I've heard good things about Dwarf Fortress, though. I'd rather have tightly constrained but well executed experience than an unconstrained experience where everything is dumb.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#37
post #19

Earlier 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.

Idk about Disco Elysium since I haven't played it, but I think there's some cool opportunities for generative text with carefully crafted prompts. Imagine a game like LA Noire where you can interrogate suspects about anything, instead of having to choose between 3 options.

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#38
post #19

Earlier 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.

[deleted]

Re: Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3

#39
post #7

Earlier 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…

The Cyberpunk anime got the fact that the environment was a character while the video game didn't.

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

#40
imho since gamasutra became "gamedeveloper", the quality of its content went way down, to the point of becoming a soulless mouthpiece for the industry on one hand and the now standard for a for-profit online publication an engagement and metrics driven words sweatshop on the other.

the 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.

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