Cyberpunk: Edgerunner review

[Crni Vuk]

I'm aware of this stuff and it's hard to take seriously when they list these things and complain about them. Wallrunning was something they couldn't do because of the way the city was done, the monowire hacking was unnecessary because they made hacking wireless, and a bunch of these other features are just....minor nitpicks.

Tell me, though, which feature you think was so vital that is gone.

Then maybe, just maybe and hear me out for a second, maybe the developers shouldn't have hyped that shit up to 11? Crazy thought! I know. Being more honest about your finished product.

Look. I get you. Some of that stuff is meaningless. yes. I am not missing the wall running here, hardcore mode or the brain dance as individual features. The game surely does not hinge on the part that you can't do a "wall-run" or something.

But people being very dissapointed about the pletora of removed features, which have been shown, promised and talked about till the last min (hyped up!). is not a fault of the people getting hyped. It's solely on the developers. The (false) marketing. The management. The company behind it. They make the game. Not the players. That's my point. I don't see what anyone gains from saying, "Duh! People had it all just in their heads!" when you can literaly go to the net, watch those promovideos, trailers, reviews, dev-commentary what ever, where they TALK about those features being in the game. Till. The. Last. Minute.

I mean, I don't know, if somoene is promising you this :

And you're getting this :

The worst cars ever made | Auto Express

Then peoples complains are not just "in their heads". Even those that moan bout the fact that there are no heated seats - which are not necessarily the most important feature here. Both cars shure get you eventually from Point A to Point B. But we both know which car you would prefer, particularly if it was "p-r-o-m-i-s-e-d" to you, above all else.

Saying stuff like, it's just in their head, dude. That's almost like gaslighting. Dude. I like you. Stop defending shitty companies man for shitty and scummy tactics.

The game was flat out unfinished at launch in a way resembling KOTOR 2.

Even though KOTOR 2 was unfinished it was still a full RPG. You can still see where the developers wanted to go with their vision and idea So even if they couldn't fully implement them all in the end they still actually accomplished some of it. People are still talking about Kreya, Darth Nihilus and such. The overall idea was to have a true "RPG" Experience. And for what it's worth, the KOTOR 2 Devs achieved that. Even with all the faults. So I am a bit more lenient here.

Can't say the same about Cybergonk 2077.

 

[Chromevod]

Haven't watched it yet. After some updates and some mods coming out that did a few things I wanted I had already started fucking around in the game again.

Gigs and whatnot are all largely cookie cutter of course. But some of the side quests and main quest set pieces have been alright. As petty as it sounds and while I'm sure I'm of the few who really considered it very important, the fact that some of the new apartments they added have little intractable things is something that helps me just sit back and roleplay in my own way. Even if the systems themselves are lacking, going out to do jobs and to retire to Vs Corpo apartment and drink whiskey is... nice.

I'll watch the anime at some point. The loli is dumb, but if they can do something decent with the show I'll forgive it. If the show is bad I'll blast it especially hard for including her.

 

[Norzan]

Tell me, though, which feature you think was so vital that is gone.

Doesn't matter their importance, they were promised but not put into the game. If you are not gonna put something into the game in the end, then don't claim it will be in the game.

The whole broken promises fiasco with the game is made worse by the fact that we are living in a post-No Man's Sky where a man promised far too much and didn't deliver a lot of it on release. So CDPR had to know that promising too much was a bad thing.

Of course this was made even worse by the fact that the game was completely broken at release and for several months after. Are you honestly surprised that a lot of people are disappointed with the game after a bunch of unfullfilled promises and a broken launch?

 

[Crni Vuk]

What's actually really bad, but that's hardly unique to CDPR is the fact that games can promise you everything, deliver almost nothing and still be a major success. Not always. But way to often. - And definetly more than other industries.

Maybe my memories are bad or I am just getting in this "everything was better in the past!" old fart teritory, no clue. But I never had the feeling like that part was as common or as wide spread as it is today. Probably because marketing campaigns today can cost as much like the development itself. Something which I complained about already 20 years ago when I saw how much Activision and others spend on "advertising" and how much the actuall production costed.
It really is like Walp said. This whole corpothing. Which makes it pretty ironic with CDPR. Making a game where everyone and everything is fucked by big large, greedy corporations that lie to everyone. However the fact how often Gaming companies actually get away with this stuff is sometimes baffling. But hardly a new revelation.

 

[Hassknecht]

I haven't played CP77 yet, but I think what stings a bit is that it's CDPR, the supposed good guys of developer/publisher, with their whole "no DRM, free updates" stuff, being like this.

 

[Crni Vuk]

Yeah, they where meant to destroy the Sith. Not join them.

 

[Hassknecht]

To be fair, I think they just dropped the ball here without any malice. With The Witcher, they already knew what they were doing, they had stories and characters and gameplay elements already developed decently through the iterations of the game. With Cyberpunk I think they did the No Man's Sky mistake and just completely overpromised on absolutely everything. And I think they believed it for the longest time, too. But with development time getting longer and longer, they realized they would never really be able to live up to the hype, and finally had to release it.
Now Hello Games took it on the chin, sat down and delivered on what they promised. They're still updating No Man's Sky and it's almost more than what they promised.
It's been a while now and CDPR has apparently fixed a lot about CP2077, but from what I'm hearing here they did not pull a Hello Games.

 

[Crni Vuk]

I am sure this was the case. But I also can't shake the feeling they at some point changed the direction during development like someone from above said, we want THIS cuz MONEY!. Like going from an "RPG" Experience to well, what ever the fuck they delivered in the end - the game was even sold at some point as "Adventure" game of sorts. Like the idea to give Silvercunt such a big role in the game and having V as such a set character. Maybe their original idea was to have 3 seperate pathways, as Nomad (sort of like a Wild West themed Cyberpunk), as Street Kid and as member of a Corporation. But who knows.

And yeah, most of the fixes are bugs really where as a lot of the promised features are now delivered by mods. Like police chases, flying cars, a metro and a few more things. There are some talks though that patch 1.7 is going to drastically change the game. No clue how much of that is true though. And there will be a DLC with a new story soon Phantom Liberty.

 

[CT Phipps]

I am sure this was the case. But I also can't shake the feeling they at some point changed the direction during development like someone from above said, we want THIS cuz MONEY!. Like going from an "RPG" Experience to well, what ever the fuck they delivered in the end - the game was even sold at some point as "Adventure" game of sorts. Like the idea to give Silvercunt such a big role in the game and having V as such a set character. Maybe their original idea was to have 3 seperate pathways, as Nomad (sort of like a Wild West themed Cyberpunk), as Street Kid and as member of a Corporation. But who knows.

And yeah, most of the fixes are bugs really where as a lot of the promised features are now delivered by mods. Like police chases, flying cars, a metro and a few more things. There are some talks though that patch 1.7 is going to drastically change the game. No clue how much of that is true though. And there will be a DLC with a new story soon Phantom Liberty.

The story that has come out is that technical limitations and outright lies were also the case. The RED engine works fantastic for Medieval fantasy, which it was built for, but wasn't built for throwing huge amounts of cars into things as well as vehicular combat that they turned out to have needed to have completely programmed.

The game engine was not suitable for verticality either nor was the previous generation, which if forced to choose between "delivering" and "actually able to be played on last generation", I absolutely THE LATTER because I'd prefer more gamers to be able to play than some magical dream game.

CDPR also hired contractors who apparently were complete shit and fixed the easiest bugs first because they were paid by the bug over the actual incredibly damaging ones while misreporting their progress.

The "three separate pathways" thing is absolutely made up fan bullshit, though, based on one of the questions early on being "who is your childhood hero?" Which they seem to indicate would somehow effect the engram you'd get. Which is....what a bizarre fucking belief. They ignore that you're also asked "Why are you in Night City?" and "What is a Key Life Event?"

These questions were meant to determine whethere you'd be Corpo, Noamd, or Street Kid when they realized most people would just prefer for you to choose.

 

[Crni Vuk]

One can only speculate anyway since we won't ever really know what happend and it probably was not one single event anyway. There was Covid, forcing people in to home office, they have been hacked at some point, their engine was probably shitty, they kinda overpromised - maybe they have been full of them self from Witcher 3 and all the praise thinking their farts don't stink. Who knows. A perfect storm, as they say. But what ever it was, what really matters is the product they delivered. At least to me. So there is that.

It's just that I am not sure if they really learned their lessons as far as their new games are concerened since the company is growing quite heavily where they anounced like 5(?) Witcher games and already a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and more content in the franchise? They opened up one new studio in the US I think and bought another smaller one or something. I don't know. But it seems a lot like they rather want to go the route of Ubisoft and other "larger" game developers, chucking out mediocre content in the style of Assasins Creed or Call of Duty. Which with the right marketing makes billions. But is really noithing more than just generic content. And that is what Cyberpunk also was for me in the end. Very generic. The game is definetly playable with all the patches and it's not "bad". But for me at least, also hardly memorable really. Outside of the look and design.

What baffles me really though is how their "writing" and "quest presentation" has become worse compared to previous games. Witcher 3 had a lot more role playing elements within the quests and how to deal with situations. Even some smaller quests could lead to a lot of different outcomes. That is kinda lost in Cyberpunk 2077 where most of your decisions end up in either slicing up the enemy with a Katana or shooting them with a machine pistol.
Particularly the Witcher 2 executed the idea of far reaching decisions nearly perfectly with having two different branches for the second act of the game, where if you wanted to experience them you would have to actually replay the game. A lot of that quality and thinking was kinda not present with C77.

 

[CT Phipps]

One can only speculate anyway since we won't ever really know what happend and it probably was not one single event anyway. There was Covid, forcing people in to home office, they have been hacked at some point, their engine was probably shitty, they kinda overpromised - maybe they have been full of them self from Witcher 3 and all the praise thinking their farts don't stink. Who knows. A perfect storm, as they say. But what ever it was, what really matters is the product they delivered. At least to me. So there is that.

It's just that I am not sure if they really learned their lessons as far as their new games are concerened since the company is growing quite heavily where they anounced like 5(?) Witcher games and already a Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and more content in the franchise? They opened up one new studio in the US I think and bought another smaller one or something. I don't know. But it seems a lot like they rather want to go the route of Ubisoft and other "larger" game developers, chucking out mediocre content in the style of Assasins Creed or Call of Duty. Which with the right marketing makes billions. But is really noithing more than just generic content. And that is what Cyberpunk also was for me in the end. Very generic. The game is definetly playable with all the patches and it's not "bad". But for me at least, also hardly memorable really. Outside of the look and design.

Well, they've spent the last two years getting Cyberpunk 2077 up to snuff. I'm not sure what an appropriate time it is to start making new content, especially as a single player game, Cyberpunk 2077 isn't going to be generating new revenue continuously.

What baffles me really though is how their "writing" and "quest presentation" has become worse compared to previous games. Witcher 3 had a lot more role playing elements within the quests and how to deal with situations. Even some smaller quests could lead to a lot of different outcomes. That is kinda lost in Cyberpunk 2077 where most of your decisions end up in either slicing up the enemy with a Katana or shooting them with a machine pistol.

I definitely think its the case of the fact that they didn't have nearly enough time to finish the game. Mind you, we've also found out that Witcher 3's Blood and Wine apparently took up the entirety of Cyberpunk 2077's staff for two years too.

At what point do you declare a game done and move on to other content? Especially since the two Expansions (one of which has been cancelled) should have both been out now.

Particularly the Witcher 2 executed the idea of far reaching decisions nearly perfectly with having two different branches for the second act of the game, where if you wanted to experience them you would have to actually replay the game. A lot of that quality and thinking was kinda not present with C77.

To be fair, that was an unmitigated disaster as essentially a quarter of the game became unplayable unless you played it a second time. It cost a lot of content that could have been enjoyed by gamers if they'd not gatekeeped it off. It also promsied a huge amount of changes for Witcher 3's canon state of the North but they realized they couldn't incorporate any of that so Henselt ends up dead no matter what you chose and the South is conquered.

 

[Morgan_]

I really don't get the upset going from Witcher to Cyberpunk. Witcher games were pretty generic themselves and the gameplay was pretty shallow and easy since 2 (haven't played 1 yet). Seemed par for the course other than the bugs. I'm not a cdpr lore expert either though. Witcher 3 was simply okay and had no replay value. Witcher 2 had QTEs which are always retarded. Simply this alone makes Cyberpunk better for me.

We can just hope they have better footing and will learn from the mistakes going forward. Moving on and not continuing to putz around with the first game is the right move. Just make a better showing with the next title.

 

[Crni Vuk]

I am not saying their games don't have flaws. I just feel there was more overall quality with their previous games when it came to story telling, quest presentation, diversity in quests and so on. And yeah. Gameplay was always "generic". But again. Alone the fact that you had in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings 2 complettely different paths to chose from in act 2 which also changed the ending of the game drastically, sets it appart from Cybergonk. At least for me.

...

Look. We can talk about the "whys" till the end times and the stars fall out of the sky. But I'll be honest. I really don't care too much about that because I am not playing their problems. I am playing their games. That you pay money for.

I am simply not very sympathetic to companies that take 8 years to develope a game, lie to the people, manipulate expectations and deliver a borderline broken game. What ever if the Witcher 3 had "decades" of content behind it or not. They demand money for this stuff. They do it as a living. It's a gaming company. And I don't think it's too much to ask to ge the games as how they are promised.

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[Morgan_]

The original Cyberpunk. athe vhs was orange for some reason. Futuristic maybe.

 

[Crni Vuk]

I remember that I was really disapointed about Dolph Lundgrens character. I don't know what I expected though. Some kind of epic cyborg battle or something. But you could say he was the first prime example of a "Cyberpsychosis".

 

[eissa]

I really don't get the upset going from Witcher to Cyberpunk. Witcher games were pretty generic themselves and the gameplay was pretty shallow and easy since 2 (haven't played 1 yet).

The closest thing to Witcher 1 you can play without having to squeeze yourself through old unpolished UI is Witcher 3 Enhanced Edition.

 

[Morgan_]

That is a bad sign for Witcher 1 then.

I remember that I was really disapointed about Dolph Lundgrens character. I don't know what I expected though. Some kind of epic cyborg battle or something. But you could say he was the first prime example of a "Cyberpsychosis".

I did not even think of this. This would have had to have been an influence on the game.

 

[TorontoReign]

Edgerunner sounds way too much like that thing I used to do with the old lady.

 

[Crni Vuk]

You would be an Edgelord not an Edgerunner.

 

[Walpknut]

Edgerunner sounds way too much like that thing I used to do with the old lady.

Running while holding in cummies?