The game has such awesome visuals and detailing, and the story has so many great characters and moments, but the overall plot in the end fails to establish any kind of hope or stakes to get behind. The whole world is fucked, the protagonist is doomed, there are no good endings and everything is depressing. If only they could’ve dialled down on the nihilism and made the CP2077 universe a bit more fun, its story could have gone down as among the most iconic ones in the industry. Video games are meant to be an escape and nobody wants to be the loser at the end. It’s a medium where bad endings just don’t work.
Hmm I get where you’re coming from but if told well enough, I think “bad” or “sad” endings can absolutely work in video games. CP2077 is essentially a futuristic noir. The moral of the story is fame and infamy is bright but short and at the cost of ones life. And it’s the connections you make with people that may outlast you. The story was what carried me through finishing it during it’s initial launch. I think if they had more content and interactions in the city to make it more “alive”, then it would’ve been even more, even after all the updates and dlc, imo.
Cyberpunk is a subgenre of science fiction in a dystopian futuristic setting that tends to focus on a “combination of lowlife and high tech”,[1] featuring futuristic technological and scientific achievements, such as artificial intelligence and cyberware, juxtaposed with societal collapse, dystopia or decay.[2]
Maybe you can have good endings in cyberpunk, but it’s not usually upbeat and cheery.
So is the Witcher but they still gave us a nice farewell. Besides, most of the endings in cyberpunk felt unnecessarily bad, railroaded into a negative outcome. I really thought we'd get a merged ending at least, they even teased it with the delamain story, but nah.
You’re more than welcome to be disappointed with the ending and the depressingness of it all, but these don’t exist in a vacuum.
The Witcher was based off a series of books. People expect books to not consistently end in a depressing way.
2077 is based off a tabletop game, with a very outspoken creator, Michael Pomdsmith.
Mike has been surprisingly active in the subreddits related to 2077, Edgerunners, and the original tabletop game. If you like the setting there’s some really neat “word of god” stuff he’s shared if you care to look it up. Anyway, the point is that he’s been extremely clear that happy endings don’t happen in Night City. The only way is out.
Unreal engine 5 always kind of had that trademark 'crawl through here to load the new area' annoyance and the current engine was made to be open world but yeah it felt really really strained so... we will see if the 2nd game ever really happens and if it's anything like they wanted in their own head this time either.
I don’t know why you attribute this to UE5 as there are like only a couple games on the market used UE5, cyberpunk is not one of them. They mentioned that their next game will be using UE5 not this update/dlc.
Actually UE5 will have much better open world and loading efficiency compare to UE4 era tech.
I waited to buy it until just before 2.0 came out. I finished the main campaign and just started over to try a different build and play through Phantom Liberty. There is still some jank, but I love the game play and I find the combat surprisingly engaging.
I honestly don’t want to replay the main story up to a certain point to access the DLC…I kinda wish it was like Blood & Wine where I can start the DLC directly.
As the other person said, you can directly start there. I was skeptical and started fresh but once I made it through the DLC I realized I wouldn’t have missed anything if I had used the option to start right from the DLC.
For what it’s worth, it’s almost never worth it to give any company “the benefit of the doubt”. For single player games, there’s pretty much no reason to play it right when it releases unless you’re impatient. I choose to think of the games release date as a beta release. If I’m super excited, I may choose to play a game in beta but usually I’ll wait for the final release. Then when all the initial issues (which all games have, just some way more than others) have been fixed, I’ll consider the game actually released and buy it for a fraction of the initial cost.
I don’t know that I’ve played a single game that’s released this year yet. And those games will still be just as good next year (likely better) for less cost.
Only if you played less than 2 hours (or if you’re lucky and managed to convince steam support) which isn’t really enough to test a bigger game. Hell in some games, that’s pretty much only cutscenes and tutorials.
The game is so much better now but it still falls short IMO, and it’ll never live up to its original promise. Plus, the game was soooo bad on release that they decided to kill all future DLC except for this one. Which means the game is never getting another major update, no more fixes and no more work towards delivering on the original vision.
I think it’s probably already too late. They’ve laid off staff and winded down development already. Usually DLCs are developed in tandem the game and other DLCs. They’d have to make a big change to make a new DLC now, and it would take a long time for it to come out.
Plus, the game was soooo bad on release that they decided to kill all future DLC except for this one.
The reason they scrapped plans for further DLC is largely to do with the fact that CDPR is dropping RED Engine and using Unreal going forward, and they don't want to spend all the time and resources building new content for an engine that they're not going to continue supporting for much longer.
I am sorry but with PL and 2.0 it’s beyond great imo. Loving every second of it, they fixed and improved so much it feels like an entirely different game to me.
Pretty much, they’ve had one great game, one game they fucked up and few relatively unknown games. And, as the article says, Geralt’s story is over, so they have to start from scratch there as well. I wish them luck because I still quite like them, but it’s definitely gonna be a tough road.
They also did the closest thing to a Steam competitor and brought a lot of popular-but-unavailable games back to the light of day via doing legwork to track rights down and pick up the right to re-release them.
That may not be game development, other than in putting together compatibility software and some client software, but it was successful. Probably had a bigger impact than The Witcher 3.
Frankly I think whether or not V survives is largely a headcanon thing. Maybe you head off into the sunset with the Caldos and find help. Maybe you knock over the space casino and buy yourself something like the Relic with all of your stupid new wealth. Maybe you turn into an AI and become a ghost in the machine.
Or maybe you develop natural charisma and an impressive cock, who knows.
Point is they left it vague and uncertain on purpose in several of the good (ish) endings. I get why, but it always felt kinda cheap to me. But it IS a noir story and those aren't known for fairy tale endings.
Yes, if you side against Songbird, NUSA honors the agreement to get you treatment. It leaves V with neural degradation and unable to ever use cyberware again, and in a coma for 2 years but gives you the only ending with a confirmation that V survives
Not really. The best outlook V has in the original endings is that they have 6 months left to live, but the ending cuts off just before starting what is likely to be V's final mission.
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