Cyberpunk 2077 (2020)

[Michael*]

On 12/7/2020 at 6:14 AM, Cult Icon said:

unpatched game is quite graphically unpolished with lots of little glitches like weapons floating around in the air, faulty animations, and noclip with NPCs.

 

Yeah, given how rough it's apparently been looking for people using last-gen consoles, I'm pretty much set on holding off now until such time as I can acquire a PS5 at retail price, which is probably still several months away.

 

Honestly, I've gotten to the point now where I just assume that all high-profile new games need an assortment of patches in order to run the way they're meant to.

[Cult Icon]

youtube personality Jessie Cox has his own mission too at 24 minutes

 

 

[Enrico_sw]

The game looks fantastic. I don't know if I'll have enough time to play it before New Year... which is cool because the new patches will fix the bugs.

 

I don't understand why some gamers are angry, we all knew there was going to be bugs, it's always the case these days, with all studios. The pressure to release the game early are too high.  As for the AI, can these gamers tell me which game has a perfect AI? AI is very difficult to code, we won't have a super intelligent AI before decades IMHO.

[Michael*]

16 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

As for the AI, can these gamers tell me which game has a perfect AI? AI is very difficult to code, we won't have a super intelligent AI before decades IMHO.

 

Yeah, this will almost certainly be something that players just end up having to like or lump. Enemy AI has seen very little innovation for at least a couple of decades at this point, whenever I play something old from the same genre it's mildly shocking to note how little some things have progressed.

[Michael*]

I've taken most of what we've seen up to now as confirmation that the best time to play a CDPR game is probably about three months after it initially drops. Witcher 3 wasn't at its best until a catalogue of problems had been ironed out.

 

Overall, what counts for me is the first impression that a game gives me. That's much more important than playing on a specific date and nothing ruins that first impression more than a feeling of things still being under construction. It's like arriving at a five star hotel and discovering that the builders are still decorating your room.

[Stromboli1]

Cyberpunk is really fun, but it's very extensive.

[Cult Icon]

This channel is ahead of the 8-ball with identifying the side quests, which is most of the game:

 

https://www.youtube.com/c/Trophygamers/videos

 

I've been scanning COHH's careful and skillful playthrough on very hard.  Up to episode 85 ( at 30 minutes per episode).  I think he is done with about 80% of his playthrough.  Of course he is missing most of the side quests but he is doing them as he randomly encounters them, which is a proxy for the average gamer.

 

So far I feel slightly disappointed with the side quests.  They are highly diverse, well written, and a masterclass in cyberpunk in the way that the Witcher 3 was a masterclass in fantasy however none of the side quests match the best of the Witcher 3 and most of them are quite short.  Almost all of them are mid-scale or small side quests.  The biggest one is a sidequest called the "hunt".  There is another one with the Taxi company A.I. that's a bit longer.   I am still looking around to see if people find better side quests.

 

The side quests have a Fallout feel to them, usually there are bizarre characters involved. Great voice acting, overall better than in Witcher.  I often feel like cyberpunk is a super fallout ie.  Fallout 5.

 

[Cult Icon]

On 12/10/2020 at 6:25 PM, Michael* said:

 

Yeah, given how rough it's apparently been looking for people using last-gen consoles, I'm pretty much set on holding off now until such time as I can acquire a PS5 at retail price, which is probably still several months away.

 

Honestly, I've gotten to the point now where I just assume that all high-profile new games need an assortment of patches in order to run the way they're meant to.

 

From scanning COH's patched playthrough I spotted numerous glitches but nothing game-breaking. However he is using better tech.  It seems like  some of the PS4/Xbox1/outdated GPU people are the ones annoyed with the game.   The cyberpunk reddit has turned into full outrage mode, most of the reddit is about the glitches and game crashes:

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/?utm_content=subreddit&utm_medium=post_embed&utm_name=04a8e300b3fc4debbdb75812b4734264&utm_source=embedly&utm_term=hkmye5

 

This game was designed for a good gaming PC and was downscaled/converted into console versions. This is where the problems come from.   

[Cult Icon]

On 12/11/2020 at 4:11 PM, Enrico_sw said:

  As for the AI, can these gamers tell me which game has a perfect AI? AI is very difficult to code, we won't have a super intelligent AI before decades IMHO.

 

12 hours ago, Michael* said:

 

Yeah, this will almost certainly be something that players just end up having to like or lump. Enemy AI has seen very little innovation for at least a couple of decades at this point, whenever I play something old from the same genre it's mildly shocking to note how little some things have progressed.

 

 

I think they are using the same gaming engine as Witcher 3, which came out 5 years ago.  Perhaps a consequence of being in development for such a long time?  This looks to have posed disappointments as this open world engine is dated and has pedestrian A.I. compared to the Rockstar's products GTA V and Red Dead Redemption 2.  Red Dead Redemption 2 has especially good AI with NPCs performing routines in a day/night cycle.   

 

GTA 3 police had better AI than the police in Cyberpunk and there is no vehicle driving AI in CP.  So cyberpunk lacks the dynamic nature of Rockstar's AI programs.  The Cyberpunk fans were anticipating super AI- which wasn't ever shown in footage- and didn't get it.   They were also anticipating extreme interactivity with the world, like in the old Shenmue and Shenmue 2.  This too was not shown in the footage, and only dangled a bit in the 2018 reveal.

 

The combat AI in this game reminds me of the Max Payne franchise.  Enemies like to fan out, pull back and take cover.  Melee enemies charge at you.

 

I agree I too find the development of AI in games disappointing as a whole.

 

[Cult Icon]

North Oak/upper class aesthetic in the game reminds me a lot of Westworld Season 2 

 

COH's playthrough ends at 102 episodes plus (55 + hours).  I've scanned it all.  He did a fraction of the side missions. The biggest side missions are mid-sized in this game compared to the Witcher.  One of their developers claimed that the game is 140 hours plus including side content.  

 

Night City gives the impression that CD was massively ambitious and made a map too big for the content available. There is so much detail in the city and  however much of it seems superfluous from my viewing because the missions I saw didn't occur there.  There will be DLCs coming out.  That should fill out the city more.  Basically if they continue providing content this game has the potential to really grow into the 200 hour  + game.

 

Supposedly (?) Night City is twice the size of GTA V and has far more detail.

[VS19]

So far, I'm enjoying the game quite a bit, and only find any disappointment from it due to how much it's been hyped.  It's a very good game, yes, but it doesn't hold a candle to what it was being hyped up to be.  

 

The biggest disappointment is the graphics, I must say.  Running it on a PS4 Pro on a 4K TV.  The picture should be much sharper.

[Michael*]

18 hours ago, Cult Icon said:

This game was designed for a good gaming PC and was downscaled/converted into console versions. This is where the problems come from.

 

I guess given the game's protracted gestation period, and presumably having had far more development time for last-gen hardware when it's really a next-gen game, it was probably always likely to end up occupying a slightly weird territory. Somewhere along the line though, CDPR made a mistake, either in failing to establish a reasonable target platform, or realising too late in the day that they'd underestimated the task of retrofitting the results into base consoles.

 

Ultimately, I think they should have been selling it as "early access" because that's almost always what these things end up being.

[Matt!]

3 hours ago, VS19 said:

The biggest disappointment is the graphics, I must say.  Running it on a PS4 Pro on a 4K TV.  The picture should be much sharper.

 

Try these and also turn off DoF and Motion Blur as well! 

 

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/12/how_to_make_cyberpunk_2077_look_better_on_ps5_ps4

[Michael*]

2 hours ago, VS19 said:

So far, I'm enjoying the game quite a bit, and only find any disappointment from it due to how much it's been hyped.  It's a very good game, yes, but it doesn't hold a candle to what it was being hyped up to be.  

 

The biggest disappointment is the graphics, I must say.  Running it on a PS4 Pro on a 4K TV.  The picture should be much sharper.

 

The idea of a GTA/Deus Ex hybrid still sounds great to me, but I do wonder if the game has become so huge and expectations have grown so much, it simply can't be what everyone wants.

 

It's certainly arrived at a strange time, though. Play on current gen, you get a game that struggles to perform. Play on next-gen, you basically get a playable current gen game with few discernable upgrades.

[VS19]

2 minutes ago, Matt! said:

 

Try these and also turn off DoF and Motion Blur as wellwell! 

 

https://www.pushsquare.com/news/2020/12/how_to_make_cyberpunk_2077_look_better_on_ps5_ps4

 

Thanks.

 

I'll give it a try later.

[Cult Icon]

1 hour ago, Michael* said:

 

I guess given the game's protracted gestation period, and presumably having had far more development time for last-gen hardware when it's really a next-gen game, it was probably always likely to end up occupying a slightly weird territory. Somewhere along the line though, CDPR made a mistake, either in failing to establish a reasonable target platform, or realising too late in the day that they'd underestimated the task of retrofitting the results into base consoles.

 

Ultimately, I think they should have been selling it as "early access" because that's almost always what these things end up being.

 

Also management and shareholders trying to pressure them to release a product that lacks polish.

 

A smaller map and higher quality game with less development time and funding could have been possible.  Even as a viewer, I can see that the game has overambition and ego written all over it.  I've never seen a game with more detailed work done for the various districts.     

 

Also the marketing / hype train was the most aggressive I've ever seen for a game.  dozens of trailers and promotional specials, product tie ins, big investment in advertising, Keanu Reeves, etc.  The Cyberpunk twitter had a trollish / wind up vibe to it, constantly fanning the flames of imagination and desire.

 

 

[VS19]

30 minutes ago, Michael* said:

 

The idea of a GTA/Deus Ex hybrid still sounds great to me, but I do wonder if the game has become so huge and expectations have grown so much, it simply can't be what everyone wants.

 

It's certainly arrived at a strange time, though. Play on current gen, you get a game that struggles to perform. Play on next-gen, you basically get a playable current gen game with few discernable upgrades.

 

I get the idea of wanting to do something that shows off the new hardware, but at the end of the day, it might have been a better idea to focus on PS4/Xbox One and then do a remaster for the new consoles sometimes next year, similar to what Rockstar do with GTAV.

[Enrico_sw]

I've started playing it on PC (only for a couple of hours) and so far I love it. Characters are good, the graphics are awesome (I have a pretty good PC, but not a super beast), the storyline is really interesting. I feel the vibes of great role playing games, with lots of choices and consequences. I have to get used to the gameplay and the vehicles are definitely weird to drive (like in Borderlands), but I really like this game.

 

I haven't had bugs yet, but, in any case, I'm sure they'll correct all the bugs in the next weeks/months. They had too much pressure to release the game, so the devs couldn't finish the normal work in time (the Witcher 3 had bugs in its first version too, then they fixed them).

 

CD Projekt is a good company, perfectionist and customer-oriented. Maybe they've been too nice, but they'll finish the job. That's what perfectionists do.

 

As for multiplatforming (PC, consoles, etc.), it does makes things more difficult, but at least everybody can play it.

[Cult Icon]

 

[Cult Icon]

14 hours ago, Enrico_sw said:

I've started playing it on PC (only for a couple of hours) and so far I love it. Characters are good, the graphics are awesome (I have a pretty good PC, but not a super beast), the storyline is really interesting. I feel the vibes of great role playing games, with lots of choices and consequences. I have to get used to the gameplay and the vehicles are definitely weird to drive (like in Borderlands), but I really like this game.

 

There are lots (6 I've heard?) of different endings to the main story and some of the major side missions have 3 different endings.  COH's playthrough is up to 115.  It appears that after the story ends V can continue doing side quests in Night City.

 

The writing for this game is good like in Witcher.  The voice actor and writers for V did a good job.  Keanu Reeves' role comes across as being influenced by the book/film Fight Club.  I really enjoy his role in the game and interactions with V.  Reeves also appears in the side missions.