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Cyberpunk 2077 Finds Redemption Years After Calamitous Debut (bloomberg.com) 81

In 2019, CD Projekt Red unexpectedly announced Cyberpunk 2077's 2020 release, surprising some employees. Released in December 2020, it faced bugs and issues, symbolizing industry crunch. However, post-release updates, particularly in 2022, significantly improved the game, leading some to praise its transformation. A Kotaku critic wrote that the game "might finally be complete." But CD Projekt Red wasn't finished just yet. Now, in September 2023, the Cyberpunk 2077 saga is coming to an end with two final, major releases:
1. The 2.0 patch, which came out Sept. 21 and overhauls many of the game's core mechanics.
2. Phantom Liberty, an expansion starring Idris Elba that's out on Sept. 26.

Bloomberg adds: Both appear to be excellent. The expansion adds a new area to the game's dystopian Night City and tells a heist story in which you team up with the president and government spooks. It has received glowing reviews from critics, with IGN declaring that, "Phantom Liberty is Cyberpunk 2077 at its best." New content is great, but it's the 2.0 patch that makes the biggest impact on Cyberpunk 2077, with changes that are made immediately apparent when you open up the game. The menus are cleaner, the loot system is less convoluted and character building feels completely different thanks to a revamped skill system that allows for more distinct playstyles. You can now specialize, transforming your character into a stealthy ninja, a speedy assaulter or a cybernetic hacker.

Cyberpunk 2077's biggest problem, aside from the bugs, was its uncertainty over whether it wanted to be Deus Ex or Grand Theft Auto. It straddled the line between deep role-playing game and systemic open-world sandbox, ultimately feeling like an inferior version of both. Although the new patch doesn't pick a side in this divide, it does bolster them. The new level system allows for the type of build experimentation that RPG fans were hoping to see in Cyberpunk 2077.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Finds Redemption Years After Calamitous Debut

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  • by MindPrison ( 864299 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @03:21AM (#63870881) Journal

    There's both good news and bad news.

    The good news:
    Yes, the menu systems and overall feel of the gameplay has been really skilfully mastered and improved, I had no issues playing this 1 year later. I did the recommended thing and started over, and the story is basically the same, but the graphics looks sharper and improved. There are also more random things happening to citizens on the street, such as them randomly freaking out, being chased or just average stuff happening around, this is always a pleasant surprise.

    The bad news:
    There's no new dialogue with the NPC's, "you have a big dump face, what do you want? I'm busy, I miss my sister, want anything? etc... you don't get the immersive feel of a real city with dialogue you can engage with the citizen, not even an attempt at it, which makes this game short-lived for retaining interest. The 3090 I used for it used to give 57 fps at 4K with DLSS, this seems to be severely handicapped now, I'm down to a sluggish 23-31 fps in the city scenes and overall 30 fps, it's playable but it means I need to tweak the settings, I used the previous settings that gave me 57 fps in the older setup. Still, not totally a dealkiller since it's not multiplayer.

    Conclusion:
    Cyberpunk to me was always a decent 50 hour game, it's still a decent game with improved graphics, you can now engage in police stuff, they're less aggressive and the game seems more balanced overall. But it is far from the promised immersive world where you can lose yourself in adventures, it's the usual main missions with its numerous side-quests, and if you're a first time player - this is a great game nonetheless. For replay value, not so much, more like a tech demo of a beautiful graphical city, but when you're done - you're done, not much more to do.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Your conclusion is a fair assessment, I think. The game is decent, but for immersiveness it does not even come close to, for example, Deus Ex:Human Revolution (after the Boss fixes) or Deus Ex: Mankind Divided.

      • Deus Ex is literally an immersive simulation, Cyperpunk 2077 is an open world RPG - basically cyberpunk skyrim. Hence any iteration of Deus Ex, even invisible war (except Deus Ex: the fail) is more immersive. Unfortunately immersive sims are expensive to create and don't sell well because, unfortunately, only a niche auditory loves them, therefore there were only a handful of immersive sim games ever made - the deus ex series, the system shock series, the bioshock series, the dishonored series, prey and de

        • by gweihir ( 88907 )

          Sure. But that is why they should not have promised what they then did not deliver.

          • What are you three?

          • They always promised an open world RPG close enough to the tabletop game since Cyberpunk 2020 apparently used to be pretty popular in Poland back in the day, similarily to Battletech and Shadowrun in Germany.
            I also hoped it would be more like Deus Ex, to be honest, but never expected it to be.

    • The 3090 I used for it used to give 57 fps at 4K with DLSS, this seems to be severely handicapped now

      Curious how the new settings were adopted? Were they off by default? I haven't tested it myself yet but since the 2.0 update changes the raytracing quite a bit and along with it the visual quality a 1 to 1 comparison is virtually not possible. Did you enable ray reconstruction and frame generation, these are now separate options from DLSS.

      I have heard you absolutely need to tweak settings to match performance, but you can also expect or in some cases improve visuals over the previous game doing so.

      • by RedK ( 112790 )

        > Did you enable ray reconstruction and frame generation

        He has a 3090. Ray reconstruction and Frame generation are 40-series features.

        • No, only FG is locked to 40-series. Both Ray Reconstruction as well as DLSS 3.5 are available on the 30-series as well.

    • by RedK ( 112790 )

      > There's no new dialogue with the NPC's, "you have a big dump face, what do you want? I'm busy, I miss my sister, want anything? etc... you don't get the immersive feel of a real city with dialogue you can engage with the citizen, not even an attempt at it, which makes this game short-lived for retaining interest. The 3090 I used for it used to give 57 fps at 4K with DLSS, this seems to be severely handicapped now, I'm down to a sluggish 23-31 fps in the city scenes and overall 30 fps, it's playable but

      • Yes I have to check the settings for sure, used to get 57fps easily 1 year ago.
        And Yeah I've got a 100+ hours in it, but it kinda lacks variation for me, I think I got my moneys worth - not bashing the game at all.
        Starfield is a bit better when it comes to consequences of your actions, for example when you take on new alliances you'll be judged openly for your efforts before and it affects gameplay, gifts, skills and features. Noone of that in Cyberpunk from what I have observed, but then again I have only

    • by Can'tNot ( 5553824 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @02:08PM (#63871775)

      Cyberpunk to me was always a decent 50 hour game

      Haven't played Cyberpunk, but I had this problem with The Witcher 3. The fifty hour game is better than decent, it's very good, the problem is that it's buried inside of a three hundred hour game. All sandbox games which try to tell a story have this issue, they're unfocused by nature. The Witcher 2 was a tighter experience.

      • I'm playing tW3 right now, couldn't get into tW2 for technical reasons (i.e. it looked and played like trash.) I am wasting a huge amount of time just riding around on the horse because it's fun, but I can shave a huge amount off the playtime by just fast traveling...

        Really looking forward to morroblivion for the same reason

        • Ah, I remember that problem. If you're playing The Witcher 2 on Linux then you can't use the Linux version. They outsourced the port and the company which did it just packaged the game in a WINE wrapper and they did a poor job.

          There are a couple of alternative options depending on your GPU, but if you install the game via Lutris then you can just pick one and let the Lutris script handle it. I had a Radian GPU when I played it and used the Gallium Nine version, that worked very well for me.
      • by mjwx ( 966435 )

        Cyberpunk to me was always a decent 50 hour game

        Haven't played Cyberpunk, but I had this problem with The Witcher 3. The fifty hour game is better than decent, it's very good, the problem is that it's buried inside of a three hundred hour game. All sandbox games which try to tell a story have this issue, they're unfocused by nature. The Witcher 2 was a tighter experience.

        I'm glad I'm not the only one who thinks this.

        CP77 had a disastrous launch and wasn't really good enough until 1.5, yep CDPR did fix it so I give them credit for that and I can forgive them for the bad launch.

        The problem is that there is too much content and too much to do, it ends up being a disjointed mess and if you don't level up you quickly find that the main missions get insanely hard (though I haven't played that many on 2.0 yet). The game should have been a bit shorter. I've logged about 15-2

    • Yo, I'm pretty sure there is new dialogue, either recorded when they were doing Phantom LIberty's voice work, or alternate takes.

      I'm pretty sure the scripted bit where you have your first, ahem, run-in with a Delamain Cab to kick off that quest line is different in 1.6 and 2.0, for example.

  • So I don't know where this reuputation is coming from, maybe from trying to cram it onto the old consoles.

    I played it at release on an Ivy Bridge and GTX 1070 PC and it ran reasonably well considering the ancient hardware and there at most few minor glitches like getting launched when trying to jump through a window [imgur.com] but no gamebreaking bugs.

    • by gweihir ( 88907 )

      You may just have lower standards than average. I do agree that there is some real "complainer" culture today in some parts of the gamer population, but Cyberpunk 2077 was not ready when it got released.

    • Apart from crashing every couple of hours, it actually worked fine on the Playstation 4 Pro with an external SSD.

    • by thegarbz ( 1787294 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @03:56AM (#63870921)

      Stop gaslighting the community. There was nothing "fine on release" about the game even on a high end PC. The game launched with several quests outright incompletable for anyone. The game launched with game breaking bugs in main quest lines for many people. It was glitchy (pathing took cars straight through walls), the AI was non-existent (police offers spawning inside toilets). The loot scaling system was broken. It had problems with save states (resetting cameras making you think you suddenly turned into an NPC when loading saves).

      It made Bethesda games look outright perfect in comparison.

      • by teg ( 97890 )

        Stop gaslighting the community. There was nothing "fine on release" about the game even on a high end PC. The game launched with several quests outright incompletable for anyone. The game launched with game breaking bugs in main quest lines for many people. It was glitchy (pathing took cars straight through walls), the AI was non-existent (police offers spawning inside toilets). The loot scaling system was broken. It had problems with save states (resetting cameras making you think you suddenly turned into an NPC when loading saves).

        It made Bethesda games look outright perfect in comparison.

        It worked pretty well on an Xbox Series X as well. FWIW, I guess the two highend consoles (PS5, XSX) had the best time. They were known, static, high-value (and thus well-tested) quantities which the games were aimed at - rather than tryiing to squeeze it into consoles that weren't powerful enough. PC is also harder, because of the diversity.

        • They had the best time, in the same way that salt is the best condiment on a turd sandwich. Yes, there were varying experiences depending on hardware, but not a single hardware combination has anything to do with the fact that this game was fundamentally broken at the core.

          Hardware doesn't make quests incompletable. Hardware doesn't cause mandatory events not to trigger. Hardware doesn't cause broken AI pathing, or the meme that the police system turned into. The game was not fine on launch, for anyone. Tha

      • by RedK ( 112790 )

        > Stop gaslighting the community. There was nothing "fine on release" about the game even on a high end PC. The game launched with several quests outright incompletable for anyone.

        I completed the game in the first few weeks of release, did all the quests.

        Unless you qualify release the absolute day-0 code, it's you that's gaslighting. They patched out the game breaking bugs within a few days and outside of NPCs glitching, the game was perfectly fine to play on PC after those first few initial patches. I

      • I enjoyed it thoroughly on a mid-range PC. Sorry you or whomever you read about had bad luck. Starfield feels rougher to me right now, but both were worth the money in my opinion. These days you can throw away $70 so much easier on other things that only last for few hours, at best.

        • Who said anything about not enjoying it? I enjoyed it immensely. I think it was a pretty damn great game and I'm a sucker for story. That doesn't mean it was perfect on release. It means I enjoyed it despite having to plough through its actual flaws, and it means I had to wait 8 months to actually complete the bugbear sidequest since that's how long the game was out before that quest was actually completable.

          Try to separate the concept of whether you liked a game and whether that game was actually ready for

    • by Whibla ( 210729 )

      ...but no gamebreaking bugs.

      I thoroughly enjoyed it too, but only after I'd edited the executable with a hex editor to change one 'word'. Without that edit the game crashed upon trying to leave the bar for the first time. Every time! I'd call that pretty game breaking.

      There were numerous other little niggles, a couple of quests that were impossible to complete (some because it was possible to perform some of the quest advancement triggers before reaching that stage of the questline, meaning that if [and based on their positioning, mor

  • If it had been done right. Well, not quite until now, but 2 years more is a pretty good bet. For some reason, too many supposed "experts" still have no clue how to estimate software project cost and time and hence planned time and effort is often far too low, sometimes (fortunately not here) catastrophically low.

    • Working in a development field, I can empathize with estimate and cost overruns. For something as complex as this, and particularly considering it's using the same game engine as the Witcher 3, their initial estimates were always going to be less "we're fairly confident" and more "somewhere within this order of magnitude".

      It absolutely, 100%, completely, and totally, should not have been released when it was. It wasn't ready.

    • If it had been done right.

      Not really. They didn't have the same team with the same focus working on this update. The team doing fixes is significantly smaller as CDPR is working on other projects, additionally the team was working on an expansion in parallel.

      Which is not to say it wouldn't have taken a long time, but there is not 2 years worth of fixes here for a core development team.

    • It's not just software projects. Look at just about any large scale engineering effort and you'll find a trail of missed dates and blown budgets. We can try to plan out how development should progress if everything goes according to plan, but we can't even begin to anticipate a tenth of all of the things that could go wrong during that time and what effects they will have on our schedule and budget.
      • by gweihir ( 88907 )

        Well, yes. Probably a side-effect of general bad decision making, like taking the cheapest offer and the like.

  • by Asteconn ( 2468672 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @03:39AM (#63870893)

    Seriously, 1.6 (the pre-expansion patch) has been one of the best gaming experiences I've ever had; and it was obvious to me that the decision to release the game when they did was driven more by the accounting department.

    IMHO, this game is a must play for anyone who enjoys open-world adventures / questing games; anyone who enjoys Sci-Fi generally; and of course fans of the Cyberpunk genre.

    I've found:
    - the gameplay pretty satisfying, particularly netrunning,
    - the story engaging,
    - Keanu Reeves as Johnny Silverhand endlessly entertaining,
    - Cherami Leigh's (Fem V's voice actor) performance absolutely phenomenal,
    - the cinematography and lighting during important interactions absolutely spot-on,
    - the social commentary and deconstruction of unrestricted capitalism very poignant,
    - the attention to detail really good, particularly for the extremely well thought out designs on the vehicles, the huge breadth of fashion choices, and the realism of the city planning that mirrors the half-finished projects that tend to happen in IRL cities,
    - and, most importantly IMO, how well it handles extremely emotive subjects like suicide, addiction, burnout, depression, murder, bodily-autonomy, PTSD, and a tonne of others.

    I bought the game not long after 1.6 came out on sale; given my experiences *after* all of the patches and bugfixes, I'd have been very disappointed with what I've seen of the state of it at launch.

    • 1.63 was already a good game. It's not like Cyberpunk 2077 needed a redemption arc at this point since it had already happened.

    • by dfm3 ( 830843 )
      My assessment was basically the same as yours. The voice acting was some of the best I've ever seen in a game, which was a great change from the usual practice of having actors read a bunch of disjointed lines off a cue sheet with no nuance. The storytelling and character development was engaging and the parts of the world that involved the main story definitely showed the level of attention to detail that was poured in to them, but the rest of the world (especially the side quests) seemed shallow and unpol
    • IMHO, this game is a must play for anyone who enjoys open-world adventures / questing games

      Yes and no. I absolutely agree if you enjoy questing games, and even more so if you enjoy linear storytelling (since the latter is one of this games greatest features). But that doesn't make it open-world. The game isn't a good open world. You can't achieve anything in the open world. It's a linear story driven game that allows you to run off and do a few side-quests which open up a couple of romance options and change the ending cutscene of the game.

      Story, commentary, and gameplay is all satisfying though.

      • by RedK ( 112790 )

        > But that doesn't make it open-world. The game isn't a good open world.

        You sir are defining what Open world means.

        Cyberpunk 2077 is absolutely an open world game.

        • No I've let other people do that. Open world games are games with non-linear progression systems, not simply games where you can get in a car and go somewhere. If you can't achieve anything while you're somewhere then it's not really open world. If there's a single linear question shuffling you from A to B it's not open world.

      • by dfm3 ( 830843 )

        ...allows you to run off and do a few side-quests which open up a couple of romance options...

        I don't know what bar a game has to meet for you to consider it "open world" but to me that seems to be a good starting point right there. Once you got to a certain point in the first act and the other districts opened up to you, you could ignore the main plot and literally go anywhere that didn't have some obstacle or form of "invisible wall." Maybe you're thinking of what's typically called a "sandbox" game? What's NOT an open world game is something like Knights of the Old Republic or Mass Effect, where

        • A good open world game is where your things elsewhere drive the story. Split main quests are an example. A linear story shuffling you from A to B simply allowing you to go fake on the side is not an open world.

          Open world game which this one is trying to emulate have your running off on the side drive forward the main quest. What do you get from ticking off every checkbox in a district? Nothing. Which is sad for a game that seems to drive itself based on gang warfare and prestige like the actual open world g

  • A game released today is either finished 3 years later or, if it's just the usual cash grab, never. So wait 3 years to see whether it's one or the other. If it's a cash grab, you dodged a bullet, if they eventually finish it, you'll get it 40% cheaper [steampowered.com] than the dupes that bought it on release day.

    Don't worry, you won't miss out, because earlier you probably can't play it properly and without frustration anyway. But hey, if you want to pay premium to be a beta tester so I get a finished game, don't let me sto

    • A game released today is either finished 3 years later or, if it's just the usual cash grab, never.

      Horseshit. Over the past 3 years there have been 1800 games released. Only a tiny handful fall into the two categories you describe. You don't need to wait 3 years for anything. It becomes immediately apparent a couple of days after release if the game is worth playing.

      The only thing you should learn is to not pre-order games, and also play more games, not just the ones you read controversy about in the media like you seem to be doing.

      • Most of the games I have and play were never mentioned in any media. I think I'd have to go pretty far back to find any AAA titles in my library.

        Mostly for exactly this reason. AAA games are notorious for being bananaware. You're literally better off buying some indie Early Access game, the chance of it ending up in a playable state is almost as high and you at least get told that it's unfinished, not to mention that they cost a fraction of the 80 bucks they now charge for that AAA title (and that's not eve

    • A game released today is either finished 3 years later or, if it's just the usual cash grab, never.

      Unless it's one of those games like DuckTales Remastered that gets released and then delisted 2 or 3 years later once the game developer's license to the underlying product identity expires.

  • by a5y ( 938871 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @04:52AM (#63870963)

    > Bloomberg adds:
    [snip]
    Cyberpunk 2077's biggest problem, aside from the bugs, was its uncertainty over whether it wanted to be Deus Ex or Grand Theft Auto. It straddled the line between deep role-playing game and systemic open-world sandbox...
    [snip]

    I read this as an implication that Deus Ex is ( or the game series are) "deep role-playing game" (or games). Those games deserve their success but their success hardly came from the roleplaying within them as much as from the systems and open problem solving.

    Denton is bordering on a prototype shitposter in a world that's like the X Files was adapted as some kind of tonally Very Serious Cartoon.
    I can't even remember DXIW's protagonist's name or what the stakes or story were; so role playing? No. Just no.
    Jenson faced less consequences for doing oh-wow-thats-very-illegal things in a police station than Detective Halligan did for being an unhinged pitza addicted nutcase in Mystery of The Druids and that absolutely broke my will to play further in DXHR.

    Perhaps this sounds like gamer's-rise-up-pettiness, but I'd be disgusted to read some media piece about a book written by someone who clearly never read the book so reading this and struggling to interpret any kind of sincerity or integrity behind it leaves me frustrated. DX (the game, if not the series) isn't great because it's a serious game for serious people or roleplaying focused game of interest for roleplaying focused people but many could read this and be wildly misinformed.

    • by mjwx ( 966435 )

      > Bloomberg adds:
      [snip]
      Cyberpunk 2077's biggest problem, aside from the bugs, was its uncertainty over whether it wanted to be Deus Ex or Grand Theft Auto. It straddled the line between deep role-playing game and systemic open-world sandbox...
      [snip]

      I read this as an implication that Deus Ex is ( or the game series are) "deep role-playing game" (or games). Those games deserve their success but their success hardly came from the roleplaying within them as much as from the systems and open problem solving.

      Denton is bordering on a prototype shitposter in a world that's like the X Files was adapted as some kind of tonally Very Serious Cartoon.
      I can't even remember DXIW's protagonist's name or what the stakes or story were; so role playing? No. Just no.
      Jenson faced less consequences for doing oh-wow-thats-very-illegal things in a police station than Detective Halligan did for being an unhinged pitza addicted nutcase in Mystery of The Druids and that absolutely broke my will to play further in DXHR.

      Alex D (implied: Denton). The story and immersive world of DX:IW was pretty much it's only redeeming quality. The problem with the game was how much it had been dumbed down from the original Deus Ex.

      I don't get the connection between DX and CP77 aside from a single combat mechanic (the silent takedown in DX:HR/MD). The problem with game journalists is they're constantly trying to turn games into the next GTA, DX, et al. CP77 is a good game with it's own identify.

  • by diffract ( 7165501 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @05:19AM (#63870975)
    It's not the bugs that bugged me, I find them fun and hilarious.
    It's the mundane work of leaving the game's good moments to look and find loot at every corner, on every shelf, in every box. I remember playing the Last of Us and missing out on a great scene involving giraffes, because I was busy looking for loot and secret areas.
    Also, crafting is bullshit. Did you like the chores of looting? now you get the chore of looking endlessly into menus and craft 200 items each with its unique abilities that change the gameplay very slightly. We can't give it to you on a silver platter, you have to do the busy work. Also, most items you craft are useless; you have to go online and look for the best items to craft, because you don't wanna waste your hard work of looting to craft useless items.
    Who enjoys this stuff?
    • Don't play Starfield, then. Not that it's any good, looting aside. It was a BIG disappointment.

      • I looked at the price tag and realized that it's yet another "wait 3 years" game. By then, the patches should iron out the problems and there will be a 50% off sale on Steam at some point.

        If people are this eager to pay 80 bucks to be a beta tester, more power to them.

        • I received the game for free, and I am a fan of the genre, but I still played it for, let me check... Steam says 4.7 hours in total, since September 6th.
          Two sessions ended with a crash after about 1h, I played it at the very beginning for a couple hours, and I think I played for less than one hour a couple days ago, just to check something I saw in a video.

      • by dfm3 ( 830843 )
        I know the internet loves to hate on SF, so I'll add to the criticism here - I've got about 18 hours invested so far and I'm still waiting to be wowed by something. Overall it looks and feels like "fallout in space" including graphics that belong in 2016, and most of the worlds just seem empty. Even the "most populous city" in the galaxy feels like it's no more than a few buildings and parks along a cliff, nothing near close to the visual wow factor that Night City had. Space travel feels like a mini game a
        • Agreed, however as long as such a game is rated "mostly positive" on Steam, companies will keep churning them out.
          It's profitable business.

    • Who enjoys this stuff?

      People who played Mass Effect before?

    • by m00sh ( 2538182 )

      It's not the bugs that bugged me, I find them fun and hilarious.

      It's the mundane work of leaving the game's good moments to look and find loot at every corner, on every shelf, in every box. I remember playing the Last of Us and missing out on a great scene involving giraffes, because I was busy looking for loot and secret areas.

      Also, crafting is bullshit. Did you like the chores of looting? now you get the chore of looking endlessly into menus and craft 200 items each with its unique abilities that change the gameplay very slightly. We can't give it to you on a silver platter, you have to do the busy work. Also, most items you craft are useless; you have to go online and look for the best items to craft, because you don't wanna waste your hard work of looting to craft useless items.

      Who enjoys this stuff?

      You're doing it wrong.

      Don't have to open every chest, look in every corner.

      It's just a game.

      It's not like real life where you make sure you hoard resource in case of that big boss fight (layoff) or health issue and have no safety net.

      It's a game. You can reload an older save game or lower difficulty.

      • Some people simply can't just play a game for fun. They feel compelled to "get everything" or do things perfectly, or be able to go around bragging about how they were able to do X thing the first time they played it. The thought of just walking past a loot box, or not searching every drawer and cupboard, causes them to literally break out in a cold sweat.
        • if you play a game for the first time, you never know which items are important. You might miss out on a good ending or an awesome weapon if you pass by and ignore everything.
    • Don't generalise. The overwhelming majority of modern games do not have looting and crafting mechanics, incidentally these are things which have existed since the 90s.

      It sounds like you're playing the wrong games. Don't do that. There's a lot out there, you only have yourself to blame.

    • by RedK ( 112790 )

      > It's the mundane work of leaving the game's good moments to look and find loot at every corner,

      Uh... why are you running around Night City picking up everyone's left over coffee and chips ?

      Cyberpunk is not a "go find loot in every corner" game.

      • Because with these games you never know what items you need out of the literally thousands of stuff you pick up, you also don't want to miss out on anything, god forbid you could get a bad ending
        • by RedK ( 112790 )

          Endings in Cyberpunk are based on choices and doing content, not picking up random coffees laying around.

          • You don't know that when you're playing a game. I don't want to look up the ending to figure out what I need to do to get the good one.
        • by znrt ( 2424692 )

          it's all useless, in cyberpunk you can ignore about 96% of the loot. besides the occasional weapon, ammo and med boosters, everything else is irrelevant for gameplay, cosmetic at best. just pick it up and sell it in bulk.

          it's just artificial complexity, which is a common strategy in modern games. it aims to bring the illusion of "realism" but in essence it's just bloat, or filler. eg there is a plethora of different consumable items in the form of food, drinks, pills etc that boost your stamina/strength/wha

  • by nurd68 ( 235535 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @06:31AM (#63871039) Homepage

    As soon as you wiggle the mouse it thinks you have a controller connected and breaks your keyboard bindings. You literally have screens you can't clear because you don't know what button to press.

    https://support.cdprojektred.c... [cdprojektred.com]

    It's a known issue and hopefully they'll fix it, but it's unplayable for me until they do.

  • I bought a second hand copy of the game this year for my PS4. When I tried to start playing for the first time, it downloaded an update that was much more that 100 GB. It was like I was downloading the whole game!
    Cue to the old-time gamer that remembers when you just put the media in the console and started playing.

    • Cue to the old-time gamer that remembers when you just put the media in the console and started playing.

      And the media appeared by magic in your hand. I remember those days. It really sucked when I forgot the magic make the game appear incantation and had to jump in a car and spend an hour+ driving to the shops to buy the media so I could just "pop it in".

      Take your rose coloured glasses off and you'll realise you'll spend far less time downloading things.

      Also the 2.0 download size is 24GB. If you feel like you're downloading the whole game again, its because you did something wrong and *are* downloading the wh

      • "If you feel like you're downloading the whole game again, its because you did something wrong and *are* downloading the whole game again.... which incidentally is only a 60GB game so are you sure you're even downloading the right one?"

        I did not download the game in the first place. It's a physical copy. I doubt the game will even run without it, even if it is just to spin once and tell the system that I still have it. That update appeared when I inserted the disk in the console and tried to start it. The s

        • Then you clearly missed the fact that they fixed the download issue in 1.1 because a build design forced you to download the entire game again for the first patch.

      • Let me put this in another way: I have the physical media, you insensible slob!

      • by tepples ( 727027 )

        It really sucked when I forgot the magic make the game appear incantation and had to jump in a car and spend an hour+ driving to the shops to buy the media so I could just "pop it in".

        The 30 minute round-trip on a bicycle to and from the nearest GameStop is faster than a lot of home Internet plans can transfer a 60 GB game.

    • Cue to the old-time gamer that remembers when you just put the media in the console and started playing.

      And I'm sure, fellow oldtimer, you also remember games being unbeatable due to issues back them. QFG4 on floppy disks comes to mind. Ultima IX. Ar Tonelico 2. SMB3 or Zelda 2 on NES. The list goes on and on.

  • by iAmWaySmarterThanYou ( 10095012 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @09:18AM (#63871259)

    I bought it on sale before the first patch. It was mildly interesting but not enough to get me to play more than a few hours. I found certain aspects too tedious to get me to keep playing. I haven't deleted it from ssd yet but also haven't played it since then.

    I wanted to like it but have no patience anymore for weak mechanics and time wasting game elements that exist only to extend game time, not add fun.

    • time wasting game elements

      The game has a lot of problems but it doesn't have any time wasting mechanics. You absolutely can just blindly plough through the main story line at whatever pace you wish.

  • by prisoner-of-enigma ( 535770 ) on Saturday September 23, 2023 @11:03AM (#63871465) Homepage

    So the moral of the story is early buyers will pay full price while getting a buggy, unbalanced, unfinished product. Meanwhile, those who wait will generally get discounts, see fewer bugs, and more polished content.

    This is why I almost never buy anything as soon as it's released.

    • by antdude ( 79039 )

      Ditto. I had enough of that. People laugh at me for waiting so long. Like I finally went HD in late 2014.

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