I used to be a diehard “no pre-order” person. I used to pre-order, got burned one too many times and never pre-ordered again.
These days I am less religious about it since now most (or all?) of the game sellers out there have a refund policy. Usually 2-hours or two-weeks after the purchase (if pre-order then two weeks after release). While not pre-ordered I have bought games I was unsure of, set a timer for 110 minutes and played until my alarm wen off. Then stopped and decided if I wanted to keep the game. I do not do that for all (or even most) but when in doubt it works.
So, given that escape hatch and if you are careful to abide by its limits I don’t see pre-orders being so terrible anymore. If it’s a game you are almost certain to buy and if the seller offers some worthwhile perks for the pre-order I don’t see why not.
My strategy is, if I pre-order for a discount, I do it on release day (unless the deal I was going for ends earlier). That’s what I did with Cyberpunk - I was on the fence, get it now or wait; pre-ordered on release day, and I’m very happy I did!
Others responded to the cop issue, but as far as this goes: yes, that’s true, and I can tell you, it hasn’t impacted my game play at all. Other cars are there to dress the set. There are literally thousands of them. I’m not interested in detailed interaction with all of them, they’re either in the background or I drive pass. Yeah, sometimes I leave my car in the middle of the street to run into a store and do a mission, and when I come back there’s a small line of cars behind me. Then I drive away to my next mission and forget all about that line of cars.
Are we talking about MY car’s autodrive AI or the NPC cars? I don’t know if my car even has an autodrive feature since I always just drive myself. If I’m not feeling into enjoying the experience of cruising through Night City then I might as well use the fast travel points instead. As for the other cars, who cares about them? Their purpose is to make the city look like a city and potentially give me something to jack in a pinch. They pull that off well enough.
As others noted, police chases aren’t really my thing. Also, a ton of games have terrible police chase AI: Saints Row, Mafia, Watch Dogs, etc. It’s never bothered me because getting into police chases are a “I have five minutes left and want to keep playing but don’t want to start anything for real” activity.
I didn’t follow the game’s hype so I don’t have any remorse over missing features that were promised and never implemented because I never read the promises or got excited about them. I, frankly, got bored Witcher 3 between the 2deep4u quest choices of “Murder the Puppy – or – Save the Puppy and Find Out A Week Later the Puppy Was Really Hitler” and the terrible city design in Novigrad that had me running back and forth repeatedly through some of the worst urban planning ever until the wheels had totally fallen off the game pacing and I just moved on. So I guess my levels of fan worship for the developers wasn’t quite there but I DID figure they knew what they were doing and maybe the stuff that was a barrier to me enjoying W3 wouldn’t be here.
And… it’s not. Of course, some would say that’s to the game’s detriment because it plays more like an open world Ubisoft world with a story-driven campaign on top but that’s just fine with me. I actually like those games so a Ubi-esque world with a top dressing of RPG mechanics is right in my wheelhouse. Maybe I just got lucky that way. I get that a lot of people are disappointed with core game mechanics. I get that a LOT of people are getting poor performance and the game needs a lot of additional optimization. Those are legitimate gripes. I’m just fortunate enough to have a system that can power through the poor optimization and a lack of hyper fever to enjoy the game for what it turned out to be.
Other cars on the road, your car doesn’t have autopilot. I’d love it if we did - the missions where a buddy drives you somewhere while you get to enjoy the view are a lot of fun, and if you’re bored they let you skip past with 1 click.
This I don’t get. I’ve seen a lot of people complaining that this is “not an RPG” and I have no idea what they’re on. V is a lot more customizable (in terms of build) the Geralt ever was, sorry - and I LOVED the Witcher.
The story feels very railroady sometimes and I think most of your dialogue choices make no difference. But I suppose that’s not different than a number of recent RPGs where your responses boil down to “Yes”, “Yes, sarcastically” and “I’ll say Yes later”. Heck, Witcher felt like that sometimes.
But I wasn’t following every scrap of news for five years and building up an image in my head of what the game would be. Maybe if I had, I’d feel equally disappointed.
I agree that the main plot is a little railroady, though the side missions have all been very open so far.
And had interesting impacts to decisions. For example, I needed to find out where some criminals who were making an illegal product are holed up. I could have asked my fixer (who had ties to them), I could have done some hacking, or I could have done what they did - buy the product and ask questions. But when I invaded their hideout I found an email from the dealer I’d met warning them someone was asking around!
That’s about as deep as The Witcher ever got, which is plenty for me. I’ve found the game very immersive and enjoyable so far.
I mean, I’m still excited about the whole “no load screens at all” thing. Aside from taking elevators up to megabuildings (which i don’t think is a real loadscreen because I could jump off the building and land on the sidewalk) the world is completely open, from underground tunnels to buildings to roads. Everything is on one giant map. Do people just take that for granted now? To me that’s pretty insane.
I have not finished the game yet (faaar from it) but I have read that, depending on your choices throughout the game, there seem to be a fair amount of very distinct endings. No Mass Effect 3: “here are three different colors depending on your choices” endings (I know, it was a little more than that but it was a total ripoff for fans).
I don’t think you needed to follow the news for it.
My point of comparison is Witcher 3. CP77 is falling way short of that in terms of immersion into the world and having a feeling that your choices make a difference and have an impact on the game world. Maybe if you look really closely they are closer they seem but Witcher just sold its world a lot better to the player.
To be fair Witcher 3 is a highwater mark and a tough act to follow but that is why expectations were high for CP77.
Does anyone have suggestions for how to not kill people with a baseball bat? It says non-lethal but too many chooms still end up dead. And now that I have Sir John Phallustiff I want to use it.
How much does it affect what jobs I am offered and how people treat me if I am a stealthy hacker versus get through missions by shooting everybody in the face?
Exactly, I saw those complaints about car pathing and thought immediately about Watch Dogs 2 (which is one of my favorite games of all time), it sounds almost identical. And it wasn’t a problem, I don’t play games expecting realistic traffic simulators.
How do you know this? I haven’t seen any marker that distinguishes dead vs. unconscious. Occasionally I see what looks like a dead body (pool of blood) even when I’m solely using non-lethal quickhacks, but I’m not sure if the game actually considers them dead or not.
I’m really sad that this game is going to be remembered as a massive debacle, because I’m playing it on the PC, with very few bugs, and I’m enjoying it immensely. Is it the best game ever? No, that would be Witcher 3. Is it as good an RPG as any game that’s not Witcher 3? I’d say it is.
One thing I respect about it is how completely it commits to the old-school 80s cyberpunk aesthetic, as if the intervening 30-40 years haven’t passed at all. It’s like being in a William Gibson or Bruce Sterling book. I love it.
It can still recover from this. Rome 2: Total War was a mess on launch, and awesome with Emperor Edition a couple years later. No Man’s Sky is the classic example of a recovery from a mess (although I guess NMS is remembered as a mess, so maybe I proved your point)
