I jumped so I could get the preorder items. What can I say, I was a sucker. It said there were 2 hours left before it ended.
I knew I would buy it anyway.
I’m not worried about bugs. None of the ones that I ever experienced were that bad (I didn’t buy the original game until it had been out for a while and had a number of patches, and yes it was on a big sale too). I don’t think the DLC is going to make it unstable. It seems to most be new content, not new systems.
So is this the full game they hoped to deliver originally?
I don’t remember there being any controversy about missing parts of the game, just some nasty bugs and serious performance issues on some platforms.
You might be thinking of No Man’s Sky which took years after release to have everything they said would be at release. (And it is a fantastic game now.)
Instead of “full game”, I’d ask if this is the polished game they’d hoped to release. And my understanding is that the answer is yes.
Good question and yeah. It’s pretty smoothed out.
Lots of quality of life improvements too. For one, they’ve separated stats and clothes. You no longer have to run around in a neon purple trash bag because it gives a huge bonus to pistol reloading. Perk system is also more straightforward.
This is pretty much what I meant. I can tell the release date made them release a game that was not quite what they had envisioned.
It was a craptastic mess in a lot of ways at release, yeah.
To be clear, I wasn’t (much) worried about code stability, but more along the lines of multiple hotfixes as they rebalance the rules changes and talent trees. Some of those (such as vehicle combat) look cool, but probably have comparatively minimal practical use in terms of hours played.
Which brings me to @Mahaloth’s point - the game was IMHO fully functional about a year in, but little things, like vehicular combat were hinted of as semi-major elements (it happens during the end of the prologue and in an involved death-race style side quest) and would appear to have been planned for several other quests, but … well, that’s how it is. Alternately, vehicular combat could have been a focus of one of the other hypothetical DLC - but getting the game to it’s workable status ate at least one and probably two likely DLC worth of person-hours.
Weelllllllll okay then.
Just got through the “interlude” and in back in my apartment.
That was something. I don’t think I’ve experienced such a long scripted sequence (or series of sequences) in a game before. The way it was crafted, I didn’t feel like it was on rails as much as it must have been. I know I made some decisions during it, and now I wonder if anything actually would have played out differently had I made other choices?
I’m considering starting over now that I sort of kind of know what I’m doing.
I’m still in the initial ‘lockdown’ area, and the police are noticeably better - there are also a pleasing number of gang activities (fighting police, burning roadblocks, etc.) which really help with the illusion of a a working (if dysfunctional) city.
To be vague so as not to spoil anything… Nothing substantial. The key things are going to play out no matter what. The game has an extremely long “intro” of sorts until the real meat of the plot begins. They make a good illusion of choice early on but everything is going to turn out how it turns out because all of that background serves to drive the rest of the game forward. You’ll know when the “real” game begins when you see the “Cyberpunk 2077” title screen appear during play. If you’re not focusing exclusively on the main mission then it might be hours into your gameplay before you get that far.
The game really does a fantastic job of blending that cinematic stuff with real gameplay. It’s telling a cohesive story but giving you enough agency that it doesn’t feel like you’re on rails. And you do make some very significant decisions that affect the rest of the game. There are multiple endings that vary a lot. And that’s the base game, I haven’t done the Liberty City stuff yet (I mean, it just came out).
Just to clarify, do you mean there are more of these than in the base game? I think you can find both of those things in the version I played a year ago.
Which is funny, because in all my later playthroughs, I put off doing the Act 1 block of stories for -hours-. I figure (head cannon) that we’re (the team) not ready for this, after looking down on my gimp gear, skills, and 'ware. So I run around Watson doing just about ever scanner, fixer, and other quest I can manage before setting off for the Tower.
I mean, if you played realistically, after the events of the extended prologue you would be insanely driven to ignore all of the above to complete your own goals and would ignore 90% of the game. It’s a huge (IMHO) weakness in the main story of the game. It would be better if they hadn’t told you explicitly how short the timeframe you have, or if ‘other’ events in the game gave you partial fixes, or slowed the pace (a missed opportunity in the Voodoo boys quest, or in saving Hellman). But if you want to enjoy the world of CP2077, you just ignore it, and largely it ignores you back.
As I said, IMHO a weakness of the main storyline, but it’s hardly unique to this title.
(of course, I’ve kept this vague to limit spoilers, but I think anyone reading this thread at this point understand what I’m talking about)
Agreed, I suspect that fake urgency was put in to give a sense of tension, but it can be misleading and might spur someone to skip content so that they don’t “lose” the game. BG3 has a similar issue. Meanwhile, there are games like Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous where there is a deadline for a lot of quests and if you take too long you fail them and impact the whole direction of the game.
Spoilers for both games:
BG3 and Cyberpunk really have very similar stories. You get a bit of tech implanted in your brain; this tech is designed to change you into something else, destroying who you are in the process; in both games you can try to fight it or lean into it, potentially getting abilities you did not have before. And in both cases, the supposedly intended use of the technology has been hijacked to accomplish something else.
Skyrim is the same way - spoilers for a 12 year old game, heads up - Alduin is here to eat the world; I’m the only one who can stop him; but I want to find 50 nirnroots and all the unique gemstones first.
Yup, I almost said they had eerily similar issues with their plots.
Both games came out originally in 2020 (BG3 in early access) - I wonder if their plots were conceived at similar times. I’ve noticed that sometimes concepts like this seem to enter the zeitgeist and we suddenly get a bunch of works at once that deal with similar themes.
I’ve just noticed more random events cropping up at the side of the road in the base game - I’ve barely got past Keanu’s appearance either before or after the update/DLC.
I may be just imagining things though, having returned to the game after self-imposed exile, waiting for the update.
On another matter; I’ve just bought a monowire, expecting a garotte, but it seems more like a whip - does it count as a ‘blade’ does anyone know? Or is it in a category of its own?
It’s its own thing - its skills are either in the hacking or stealth tree.
ETA: looks like it has just one skill in the hacking tree, but it’s a doozy.
Actually, it comes into its own in the Relic tree.
As I said before, this playthrough I’m doing a Netrunner and I plan to go with a monowire as it ties into quickhacks beautifully. Basically, you can install certain quickhacks onto it and when you hit someone in melee it uploads the quickhack with no RAM cost. It’s a beast. (It only works for Control quickhacks though, no setting people on fire or anything, but still, it’s insanely good.)
It’s worth noting that you can only do this stuff as part of the Phantom Liberty DLC, it’s not part of the base game.