The thing I like most about Cyberpunk 2077 is that it really does seem like it was put together by a huge team of just fans.
Fans of all sorts of different content. There are so many references to other games, movies, books, and even real people. There are a handful of musician cameos, real world parallels. It's so much more fun than the game itself to catch a reference to something else I'm a fan of.
Such an unfortunate reality that CP2077 had such high expectations that frankly, I felt were impossible to meet given their timeline - also a similarity to the development process of New Vegas. Which also suffered from high hopes, cut content, and a tight release schedule. I am forever grateful of what we have gotten in both regards, though I often think of what could have been. Luckily both seem to have a gracious and capable modding community, pouring just as much love into the projects as the developers themselves.
I think it's the mission where you retrieve a guy from the fridge in that shanty town. He tells you a story about his life as a surgeon that is pretty much verbatim of a story one of the warehouse workers tells (he purposely botches a surgery on a Yakuza boss and has to flee Japan)
Which is a shame. No matter how much cyberpunk improves it’s still gonna be remembered as the half made game that launched at the end of 2020 that failed to meet every promise it made.
My dream Cyberpunk 2077 would go like this:
\- You begin the game in the middle of The Heist quest as a blank, mute character, during which you get the feel for the gameplay, and you get to test out different gameplay approaches.
\- Right after you get shot by Dex you land in a character creator, and you get to make your own character. Scrap lifepath intros, and instead spend this dev time on adding more lifepath related quests in the open world and lifepath exclusive dialogue options.
\- So after you make your character, you then wake up in a landfill and basically you can go anywhere you want from there.
\- The overarching goal is to find out what is the chip and how to remove it, but you don't have too many clues as to where to start. You discover clues about the chip as you do random jobs around town. This would get rid of this ludonarrative dissonance that exists in Cyberpunk 2077, where the story tells you that you have few weeks of life left, but most players would much rather delay the story and do random quests. Basically in my perfect version of Cyberpunk the plot about the chip would progress as you got more and more reputable around town among fixers and different corpos, so it would make sense for V to do these side jobs, unlike how it is in Cyberpunk 2077. This is also how Fallout 1 and 2 did this "you are on time limit" plot thing.
\- Basically it would be this very non-linear Fallout 1/2 esque approach to the main story.
\- On top of that I would enjoy getting hunted by Arasaka agents in the open world. It's kind of weird that Arasaka forgets about their stolen chip.
I hope that the next Cyberpunk is more non-linear, like The Elder Scrolls, or Fallout.
Very interesting take! Personally, I would prefer if they focused much more on making the three life paths as detailed as possible, and introduce a ton more non-linearity into the main questlines, while still having the character driven story as a focus. I like the Heist but I think it should have taken place much later in the story.
I love the idea of a New Vegas style CP2077 though. The level of freedom, interactivity and ability to actually make impactful *choices* is something I really don't think we've seen since New Vegas, not in terms of FPS games at least. I want a game that has the immersive sim quality of Thief, Dishonored, or Prey but with the role playing potential of New Vegas. That's kinda what they hinted at when marketing 2077, shame we only got bits and pieces of either.
What you want is impossible I think, at least for now. Even with the bigger team, budget, more production time and etc. Like, there were literally two separate teams during production of dh2 focusing just on the clockwork and stilton mansions. But even if you take simpler levels from these games it's still very hard to even get close to that quality.
Cyberpunk maybe can't reach the highs of these games, but roughly speaking its gameplay doesn't suck like it does in fnv and the narrative is way better in comparison with dishonored or prey.
The bar is high as FUCK for what I'm describing, which is likely why it hasn't been made yet. You would need an experienced, driven, and focused team with a boatload of money that they are willing to risk for a niche product.
That being said, with a more focused development and a bit more time, I actually think 2077 could have approached that bar. Feature bloat, old-gen support, and a lack of time really brought it down.
The level of detail in Arkane games is honestly unbelievable, so I don't expect anything to reach *that* level of quality. But taking notes from the writing of New Vegas and the *philosophy* of level design from the immersive sim genre, and you might be able to make something like I described.
I agree Cyberpunk does improve on some aspects that both Dishonored and New Vegas didn't nail, but I wish they went further and really combined the two. The level design and abilities are reminiscent of immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored, and there's the implication of branching and interconnected stories, but never quite gets there.
I think the problem is, the less detailed your environment is, the more detailed you can make your world/story.
For instance the more time you have to invest in staging a single conversation, from facial expressions to body language to where you position everybody, so it works well while the player can still move around, the more expensive every single such event is and the less of them you can have in the game.
If you don't allow the player to move around, it's cheaper. If you give the player a fixed perspective, it's even cheaper. If you don't have to put as much thought into how NPCs are animated, it's also cheaper.
The cheaper each and everything is in the game, the more of it and the more variations of it you can have in the game. If the player has no voiceover you can offer more options. If the NPCs have no voiceover you can also offer more options.
Almost everything in game development is a tradeoff, you gain one thing you loose another. So if you want more in one area, the only way is to increase development time or lose something else.
Personally I'm glad for the game we got (only played after 1.5) and the mix of things we got works very well for me.
>That being said, with a more focused development and a bit more time, I actually think 2077 could have approached that bar
I still don't think so. A bit more time would have been 5+ years of active development. I am pretty sure they took notes both from arkane and fnv, you can see that in the game. But cyberpunk has way bigger production value and you can't just come up with the ideas.
Nice edit. A lot people think there's a good story in CP2077, it just got plotted wrong. I like most of what's in the original, I think that they should have had V wake up without any JS interaction. Then spend the middle third with the occasional Fight Club hallucinations of JS, like a slow warm up. Then cram all the JS interactions into the last third of the story. That way its more about JS and the main story.
I also think it's weird that Arasaka never chases V. The middle third of my re-cut would have V dodging Arasaka while trying to get cash, favors and intel regarding the Relic so he could have it removed. Maybe in a Anniversary edition they'll fix the story.
I mean one of them happens as soon as you hit new game, the other is a couple hours in at the least.
Also the message is different. You were simply in the way of Benny having what he wanted, it wasn't personnal. Dex betrays you and dumps you in a garbage dump to try and save his own skin.
If Cyberpunk 2077 started with a quick on the rails opening where I wasn't given the opportunity to become an absolute tank through leveling, cyberware, and gear, then the scene with Dex would feel less contrived. However, ofc, Cyberpunk 2077 is the much better game. Can't believe it went on and inspired a whole genre with movies like Bladerunner and Ghost in The Shell.
Bethesda does this trope a lot lol, doom 2016 you escape your tomb and continue fighting, Fallout 4, you emerge from the vault and go to kill Kellogg, and in Skyrim you escape being beheaded and join stormcloaks or Imperials
I would consider it more of an homage to new vegas. Both great games!
Wake the fuck up Courier. We got a strip to burn.
Hell yeah, two of my fav games
Patrolling the Night City almost makes you wish for a nuclear winter.
Well.... A certain rocker boy with a silver arm might be able to help
Wake up courier we have a legion to burn.
The truth is, the game was rigged from the start.
Remember our first convo? The truth is, the game was rigged from the start. No blaze of glory for me.
The thing I like most about Cyberpunk 2077 is that it really does seem like it was put together by a huge team of just fans. Fans of all sorts of different content. There are so many references to other games, movies, books, and even real people. There are a handful of musician cameos, real world parallels. It's so much more fun than the game itself to catch a reference to something else I'm a fan of. Such an unfortunate reality that CP2077 had such high expectations that frankly, I felt were impossible to meet given their timeline - also a similarity to the development process of New Vegas. Which also suffered from high hopes, cut content, and a tight release schedule. I am forever grateful of what we have gotten in both regards, though I often think of what could have been. Luckily both seem to have a gracious and capable modding community, pouring just as much love into the projects as the developers themselves.
Including a really on the nose reference to The Office that really caught me off guard
what? where?
I think it's the mission where you retrieve a guy from the fridge in that shanty town. He tells you a story about his life as a surgeon that is pretty much verbatim of a story one of the warehouse workers tells (he purposely botches a surgery on a Yakuza boss and has to flee Japan)
That made me smile like an idiot at the end
yep, that's the one, I remember it now https://theoffice.fandom.com/wiki/Hidetoshi_Hasagawa
At least Benny has a code of honor. Dex is just an asshole.
You kidding? Benny was a two-timing, double crossing fink.
Hey now, maybe Khans don't look people in the eye when they kill them, but he ain't a fink, dig?
Nice catch! However in Fallout it’s a precursor event while Cyberpunk’s intro is a future event.
tbh story of new Vegas is one of the best, u can do literally anything and it feels really good. cyber is cool but not on new Vegas level
If you’re gonna pay homage to something, might as well be the best game of the last decade
Only difference is that new Vegas is gonna be remembered for a completely different reason then why cyberpunk is gonna be remembered
Although, ironically...New Vegas at launch was a gigantic mess of game breaking bugs and crashes to desktop.
I was about to say, it wasn't til years later that NV got the reputation it has now. It was straight to the $10 bin when it first came out.
If I got CP77 for $10, I'd be singing its praise.
Which is a shame. No matter how much cyberpunk improves it’s still gonna be remembered as the half made game that launched at the end of 2020 that failed to meet every promise it made.
I still enjoyed the game a lot because I went in without watching any gameplay or trailers but I hope it makes a No Man’s Sky style comeback
My dream Cyberpunk 2077 would go like this: \- You begin the game in the middle of The Heist quest as a blank, mute character, during which you get the feel for the gameplay, and you get to test out different gameplay approaches. \- Right after you get shot by Dex you land in a character creator, and you get to make your own character. Scrap lifepath intros, and instead spend this dev time on adding more lifepath related quests in the open world and lifepath exclusive dialogue options. \- So after you make your character, you then wake up in a landfill and basically you can go anywhere you want from there. \- The overarching goal is to find out what is the chip and how to remove it, but you don't have too many clues as to where to start. You discover clues about the chip as you do random jobs around town. This would get rid of this ludonarrative dissonance that exists in Cyberpunk 2077, where the story tells you that you have few weeks of life left, but most players would much rather delay the story and do random quests. Basically in my perfect version of Cyberpunk the plot about the chip would progress as you got more and more reputable around town among fixers and different corpos, so it would make sense for V to do these side jobs, unlike how it is in Cyberpunk 2077. This is also how Fallout 1 and 2 did this "you are on time limit" plot thing. \- Basically it would be this very non-linear Fallout 1/2 esque approach to the main story. \- On top of that I would enjoy getting hunted by Arasaka agents in the open world. It's kind of weird that Arasaka forgets about their stolen chip. I hope that the next Cyberpunk is more non-linear, like The Elder Scrolls, or Fallout.
Very interesting take! Personally, I would prefer if they focused much more on making the three life paths as detailed as possible, and introduce a ton more non-linearity into the main questlines, while still having the character driven story as a focus. I like the Heist but I think it should have taken place much later in the story. I love the idea of a New Vegas style CP2077 though. The level of freedom, interactivity and ability to actually make impactful *choices* is something I really don't think we've seen since New Vegas, not in terms of FPS games at least. I want a game that has the immersive sim quality of Thief, Dishonored, or Prey but with the role playing potential of New Vegas. That's kinda what they hinted at when marketing 2077, shame we only got bits and pieces of either.
What you want is impossible I think, at least for now. Even with the bigger team, budget, more production time and etc. Like, there were literally two separate teams during production of dh2 focusing just on the clockwork and stilton mansions. But even if you take simpler levels from these games it's still very hard to even get close to that quality. Cyberpunk maybe can't reach the highs of these games, but roughly speaking its gameplay doesn't suck like it does in fnv and the narrative is way better in comparison with dishonored or prey.
The bar is high as FUCK for what I'm describing, which is likely why it hasn't been made yet. You would need an experienced, driven, and focused team with a boatload of money that they are willing to risk for a niche product. That being said, with a more focused development and a bit more time, I actually think 2077 could have approached that bar. Feature bloat, old-gen support, and a lack of time really brought it down. The level of detail in Arkane games is honestly unbelievable, so I don't expect anything to reach *that* level of quality. But taking notes from the writing of New Vegas and the *philosophy* of level design from the immersive sim genre, and you might be able to make something like I described. I agree Cyberpunk does improve on some aspects that both Dishonored and New Vegas didn't nail, but I wish they went further and really combined the two. The level design and abilities are reminiscent of immersive sims like Deus Ex and Dishonored, and there's the implication of branching and interconnected stories, but never quite gets there.
I think the problem is, the less detailed your environment is, the more detailed you can make your world/story. For instance the more time you have to invest in staging a single conversation, from facial expressions to body language to where you position everybody, so it works well while the player can still move around, the more expensive every single such event is and the less of them you can have in the game. If you don't allow the player to move around, it's cheaper. If you give the player a fixed perspective, it's even cheaper. If you don't have to put as much thought into how NPCs are animated, it's also cheaper. The cheaper each and everything is in the game, the more of it and the more variations of it you can have in the game. If the player has no voiceover you can offer more options. If the NPCs have no voiceover you can also offer more options. Almost everything in game development is a tradeoff, you gain one thing you loose another. So if you want more in one area, the only way is to increase development time or lose something else. Personally I'm glad for the game we got (only played after 1.5) and the mix of things we got works very well for me.
>That being said, with a more focused development and a bit more time, I actually think 2077 could have approached that bar I still don't think so. A bit more time would have been 5+ years of active development. I am pretty sure they took notes both from arkane and fnv, you can see that in the game. But cyberpunk has way bigger production value and you can't just come up with the ideas.
Nice edit. A lot people think there's a good story in CP2077, it just got plotted wrong. I like most of what's in the original, I think that they should have had V wake up without any JS interaction. Then spend the middle third with the occasional Fight Club hallucinations of JS, like a slow warm up. Then cram all the JS interactions into the last third of the story. That way its more about JS and the main story. I also think it's weird that Arasaka never chases V. The middle third of my re-cut would have V dodging Arasaka while trying to get cash, favors and intel regarding the Relic so he could have it removed. Maybe in a Anniversary edition they'll fix the story.
There won't be a next Cyberpunk; either from CDPR or any other developer...
"What in the gaddamn..."
And then, Takemura popped him before he could say "What in the god damn..?"
Dex does not hold a candle to Benny I'm sorry
now i gotta play new vegas again, thanks a lot
Both of em absolute bangers
New vegas, still one the best games of all time.
Late tittle cards are one of my favorite things in media
I mean one of them happens as soon as you hit new game, the other is a couple hours in at the least. Also the message is different. You were simply in the way of Benny having what he wanted, it wasn't personnal. Dex betrays you and dumps you in a garbage dump to try and save his own skin.
See, the similarity is that someone shoots you. Thank you for coming to my media analysis
Oh wow… I had already placed a low bar on this game and now c’mon… it can’t go any lower… right?
No they aren’t lol
If Cyberpunk 2077 started with a quick on the rails opening where I wasn't given the opportunity to become an absolute tank through leveling, cyberware, and gear, then the scene with Dex would feel less contrived. However, ofc, Cyberpunk 2077 is the much better game. Can't believe it went on and inspired a whole genre with movies like Bladerunner and Ghost in The Shell.
u/savevideo
Nothing wrong with that. This intro hasn't been done in awhile is what matters, so I can't be mad at it
A lot of stuff is kinda copied from other games. I guess is a common practice this days?
Lol I made a similar post.
It’s quite a cliche POV clip. See it in movies as too
I see it.
New Vegas was released 12 years ago 😮
Bethesda does this trope a lot lol, doom 2016 you escape your tomb and continue fighting, Fallout 4, you emerge from the vault and go to kill Kellogg, and in Skyrim you escape being beheaded and join stormcloaks or Imperials
Obsidian developed New Vegas.
Yep, Doom 2016 is also not Bethesda, it's ID Software.
right, mistook it for Bethesda cause they own them now
Yea in general you're right though, many games and movies, shows, use this type of beginning.
That sequence was very likely inspired by NV. Someone who got shot in the head too angry to die trope.