Topic: In Defence of Cyberpunk 2077

The escalating furore over the bugs in Cyberpunk 2077 is blinding journalists, bloggers and gamers to a groundbreaking, innovative game. The game ticks all the boxes of the cyberpunk genre and realises them perfectly. Cyberpunk throws you into fully realised world. Night City has it all. It's a deeply complex world encompassing all the the technology, social structures, culture, history and motives you would expect to find in a Cyberpunk novel - and more.
The plots and sub-plots are engaging and immersive.
It is a gross injustice to jump on the CDPR bashing bandwagon and disregard the incredible achievement Cyberpunk 2077 is.

Okey dokey.

I haven't played the game, but regardless of what it does right, it doesn't excuse the state it launched in. Assassin's Creed Unity and Mass Effect Andromeda got this too, so Cyberpunk shouldn't be exempt from criticism. I'm 90% positive that most people want this game fixed because they see the potential in it, but can't play it because it barely functions.

@nathanSF

Glad you seem to be enjoying it bud, I always planned on waiting for the PS5 version so the state of the PS4 release hasn’t done anything to change my POV. Will still be getting the PS5 version when it is eventually released, as long as it runs well that is (which I fully expect it to).

I was gifted a copy for Xmas, but I have no intention of playing it until it receives a few more patches. I'll probably wait until I can get a PS5 to play it on as well, as it's clear the PS4 just can't cope with it at all.

I'm not expecting anything amazing but I will give it a go and make my own judgements.

Ultimately a bad port of a good game is still bad.

Eh. The game isn't bad on PC, but I've seen nothing even remotely groundbreaking.

It's a narrative-heavy open-world shooter with some RPG mechanics and amazing (but ultimately shallow and non-interative) world design. In that sense, it's about on par with what I'd expect from the developer behind The Witcher 3.

@Ralizah My brother said pretty much the same thing - that even the PC version just isn’t particularly interesting. He’s having a nightmare running it on a relatively high-end PC as well.

@nessisonett It runs... well, not amazingly, but not disastrously either on my brother-in-law's lower-mid-range PC. In his 30ish hours with the game to date, all he has seen is a few graphical glitches that didn't affect gameplay, so it's pretty stable as well.

It looks like a decent game. I'm sure it's fun enough on a powerful system.

But, uh... a masterpiece it is not. Granted, neither was TW3, but at least that game had more consistently engaging storytelling in its side-quests and memorable characters.

Also, some of the character models are kind of hideous looking.

@Ralizah He likened it to a mid 2000s PC game like Crysis, the original Far Cry, Oblivion, Gothic 3 etc. That strange period where visuals were improving but depth and immersion were being sacrificed for the sake of accessibility and to be able to focus on the surface level stuff. From the sounds of it, the RPG elements aren’t fantastic but then again, it’s not as if Witcher 3 is Baldur’s Gate. He’s played about 40 hours and says it’s a game that he’d play once and then forget about, which is a shame for full price. Plus the first thing he was greeted with after the character creator was the Cyberschlong bug which lasted quite a while hanging out of his character’s trousers! He did love Witcher 3 though so he was saying at Christmas that he’s bit disappointed as it overall feels a lot more like a game from Spiders or Gearbox than what he expected from CDPR after Witcher 3 being that good. I guess it’s hard to follow something like that though.

@Ralizah I totally agree. I was expecting more explorable skyscrapers and buildings and instead I'm still restricted to around the same amount of explorable floor spaces as GTA V's, but the overall experience is still pretty good. As I game on a PC with the top tier GPU, I of course experienced less issues in the visuals department. However, in terms of glitches they are pretty much hardware-agnostic, and I've observed trees swaying all the way to the other side of the road and NPCs guarding buildings in T-pose, nothing game-breaking however and it can be even hilarious at times, but it does reflect poorly on the studio.

Even without the glitches the game would only be a decent game. It's fine, but the mediocre combat that has been done much better elsewhere, the RPG mechanics, that again have been done better elsewhere, and the shallow exploration make the game feel closer to Far Cry with a Cyberpunk skin, than an innovative, but flawed masterpiece of a game.

The story is pretty good, but even that is tainted by the Molyneux-esque over-promises. The life paths in particular, are a frickin joke, they could have easily been cut out of the game and nothing of value would be lost.

I'm glad I got a refund. The marketing on this game was completely misleading.

Anyone played this on series X? After PC it’s meant to be the best version to play. I received it as a gift but plan on waiting a couple of months before playing.

@Fenbops
I haven’t... but it makes sense that the Series X plays the XBOne version better than the PS5 plays the PS4 version. Microsoft spent a helluva lot of money on the Series X being able to upscale its backwards compatibility. From what I gather though, its CP2077 performance isn’t a huge leap over the PS5’s backwards compat.

Whether you’re an Xbot or Sony-Pony, I would personally suggest you wait for the next gen versions. Not only will all (or at least most) the bugs be sorted but the next gen machines ‘should’ present the game around (if not a tad better) than a 2080ti, which is a world apart from both machines backwards compat versions.

OK, I've seen this so frequently now on streaming services with commercials that I HAVE to speak up.

Keanu Reeves was a terrible choice for Johnny Silverhand, because he's an innately affable and chill dude and trying to make him sound like an edgy badass is pointless. He sounds like a little kid who just watched an old gangster rap video or something. You might as well give a cigar and an assault rifle to a puppy and ask me to believe that it's actually Tony Montana.

@nessisonett My BiL opted not to go for genitalia at all to avoid the bug.

The multiplatform optimization is certainly a throw-back. It's sorta like when big games were still being designed with PC primarily in mind, and the console versions would run terribly as a result. People don't remember, I guess, but last gen had a LOT of really terribly performing console games. Particularly on PS3, from what I've heard (I went 360, lol).

It's interesting how the game was supposed to be designed around 2013 specs, but it's going to end up challenging even new PC hardware. Very Crysis-like in that regard, for sure.

@SweetSummerShunv Man, what IS with all the T-posing? I've seen glitchy games before, but I've never seen so much T-posing in my life.

But yeah, there may be a lot going on in the city at any one time, but it doesn't really translate to the actual gameplay, from what I've seen. The GTA comparison doesn't surprise me, though. I've thought it looked suspiciously like GTA since CDPR started revealing more and more of the game to the world.

Ah well. Maybe that Trigger anime adaptation might still be good, right?

@DerMeister Agreed, criticism is one thing but attacks that neglect what CDPR have delivered sounds like wailing of ignorant, spoilt children who think developers can deliver a 100% flawless real world on two disks. Personally I believe CDPR aimed way too high and got 90% there and should be respected for trying to give us something truly exceptional.

@colonelkilgore it’s not just that. Crowd density is higher on Series X and there are performance and graphics options. I’m still gonna hold off like you say.

@Fenbops

Interesting... but judging from the DF comparisons on actual next gen games thus far, I’d be highly surprised if the actual Series X version is better than the PS5 version.

I think the quality of the game itself is not the point if I'm honest. I haven't played the game - it may well be excellent. The issue is that a lot of people are unable to enjoy that game or the best version of the game based on the system they play with contrary to what was advertised.

Do other game companies beyond CDPR do this? Yes. Have they gotten more flak on it? Possibly yes. I am sure there is some schaudenfreude to such a hyped game and such a 'good guy of the industry' however the game was super hyped. Hence the huge pre-orders that they didn't want to sacrifice.

Ultimately, the game was marketed on PS4/XB1 hardware primarily, it couldn't run at launch and they clearly knew it. The game was released for financial/management reasons after months of crunch. I watched the video released yesterday and apart from throwing their QA team under the bus, they couldn't state the truth for obvious legal reasons. That it is going to take until later in the year to get it optimised is telling of how much they hid.

I do want to play the game and will happily wait until the PS5 relaunch. At that time, I hope I will play the best version of the game and I can make up my own mind. That said, I think if the outcome of this is that firms delay troubled games until working, don't crunch their employees and us consumers get a better end product, I don't mind the focus on the dishonesty rather than the game.

I've put almost 300 hours into the game across one and a third playthroughs on the base PS4. Yes it's been buggy, had stuttering fps and it has crashed a lot but I've wholeheartedly loved every second of it. I think Night City is one of the most impressively built open worlds I've seen in a video game, the scale of everything is just stunning. Not to mention the well written quests and characters, Johnny Silverhand included. Him and (female) V are fantastic together.