The sex "scenes" aren't any different from Witcher 3 except the graphics have more fidelity. The scenes in the Witcher are more "romantic" IMO.
Like Witcher 3, there's at least one short "hook up" quest, plus the ability to just go pay for sex, but those are entirely optional.
The world itself is certainly very sexualized in some ways (advertisements and sex stores mainly), but it's not as in-your-face as I was expecting. Sex and sexuality doesn't play any real role in the story at all. Nudity can be turned off in the options and it's possible to play through the game with very little sexual content.
I agree with Jaybird that the sex acts aren't particularly sexy or titillating, but I haven't seen them all yet.
*possible spoiler alert*
It's probably obvious that there are a limited number of NPC story arcs that can lead to a romance (I won't say how many, but it's not as many as I'd like). These romanceable NPC's have preferences that depend on whether you pick a male/female body type and male/female voice for your character. If you don't have the body and voice type that the NPC likes, then you can't romance them no matter what you do.
You can fully complete all these story arcs (and I'd encourage anyone playing to do so because they are all very) without any romance at all. The only difference these NPC preferences make is who you could end up being able to have sex with at the end of the questline. As far as I can tell, choosing (or failing) to romance anyone doesn't have any significant effect on the game.
One positive thing I forgot to mention is the level design is very good IMO and supports a variety of playstyles - quite unlike the Witcher for example. Having an open world that really does support stealth, melee, and - in theory - tanky or glass-cannon play is actually pretty remarkable and difficult to do well.
It's too bad the power imbalance distorts that so much and negates the need to make playstyle choices and tradeoffs. Why bother carefully stealthing or hacking through a mission when I can kill everyone in the complex in 30 seconds at no risk? Why choose to be a tank or glass cannon when I can do both and still hack decently?
In the heist mission at the beginning, it felt like the opposite. My stealth didn't work, I couldn't tank, my firepower was too weak to glass cannon. Hacking was too weak to do much. I got through the long battle through the hotel via the liberal use of cover and by exploiting the terrible AI. I probably should have done more side content and leveled more before starting that one.
I'm really enjoying it too and agree with most of your comments.
What I really enjoy is how the game breaks the traditional split between main and side quests and content. While technically optional, not doing the side quests will dramatically affect how the main storyline proceeds and ends. And how you do those "side" quests has a similarly large effect. It's great going into that largely blind because you don't know what decisions you make will have on the course of the main story, so it encourages players who have the willpower not to google for the optimal or completionist playthrough to really consider their choices and what kind of V they want to be. And that's another great thing about the game is that you have a wider variety of options for how to play your V than is the case with most games.
The quests and story are really the highlights of this game though. I've played the disturbing ones you mentioned and can confirm they are really disturbing! And some of the short one-off side quests that you think are one-and-done may not be or may influence a choice later on.
There is also at least one secret quest that doesn't appear on the map and doesn't tell you where to go. You find what appears to be a typical garage with stuff to loot but there's a picture there and a databank with more info. This is actually a quest but it doesn't appear in your quest log or on the map. If you are familiar enough with night city, you can look at the picture, figure out where it was taken, go to that spot, and initiate a chain of events and an actual quest. I would think there is more than one of these, but I only know about this particular one.
I also agree about the filler quests - some are great for loot, but most are just the usual filler typical of RPG's.
Here are some specific criticisms I have of the game that are in addition to the ones discussed in your earlier posts (like character creation and bugs):
The game systems and mechanics are deep and interesting but completely unbalanced, especially if you invest heavily into the technical tree for crafting. This makes the power/difficulty curve in the game rather absurd. In the early game, even on normal difficulty, you're super weak and you get excited for a weapon upgrade from an enemy you might have killed.
But by level 20, or even earlier if you know what you're doing, you can become god-like. My level 45 character is basically unkillable except by mines, which are strangely insta-kill, or fall damage. Some of the boss fights require a bit of finesse but don't pose much of a challenge, even on harder difficulties. I have a tech pistol, for example, that will one-shot any non-boss enemy in the game and can shoot through walls. My silenced pistol for stealth will similarly drop any regular mob with a headshot. Even though I've put zero points into melee weapons, I can 1-3 shot any regular enemy with my iconic legendary upgraded baseball bat. Meanwhile, my armor and cyberware make most weapons in the game feel like mosquito bites.
All that power is fun for a while and makes plowing through filler content easy, but it's another sign that this game wasn't properly tested and is horribly unbalanced.
The loot is mostly uninteresting and pointless. There's tons of different kinds of food and drinks in the game, but they serve zero useful purposes and just end up taking inventory space. Fortunately, they don't weigh anything, but they are also a PITA to sell because the shop interface is poorly designed and slow. Bulk selling of items in a game where you pick up a ton of bulk items is an annoying oversight.
Maybe it's different for characters who don't spec into crafting, but I stopped caring about all the weapon drops by about level 15. They just turned into a source of parts to upgrade my existing weapons, which are all iconics.
Mods and stats for gear and weapons appear to be very buggy. Some do not appear to work at all and for others like items don't appear to stack effects, but the items and UI don't tell you this.
I think I've only bought 2 or 3 cars. One was accidental, I happened to click on it and instinctively hit the "f" key. The time and effort put into the cars in pretty amazing - especially the interiors. But the sad reality is that it's impossible to competently drive in this game in the first-person view that would allow you to see all the beautiful detail. Plust there are a ton of free vehicles - I think have six or 7 free ones now.
And with the exception of one bit of dialog in one quest, vehicles don't have any other effect on the game or interactions. I still prefer Jackie's Arch motorcycle for road driving because it's so much easier to drive in traffic. For off-road, there's a nomad motorcycle that is perfect off-road. I don't really need or care about the other vehicles.
Confirming my earlier suspicions, the life-paths don't have any meaningful effect on the game except in one instance that I've found. Playing as a nomad, I'm pretty sure that picking one of the nomad options with a major side-quest character can ruin your chance to romance them. But it's at least nice to know that picking the life-path dialog option is not always the best choice.
Speaking of romances, the actual quests for that are great. What is disappointing is that once the questline is complete there's basically no significant further interaction with that character until late in the main story. They stay in the same spot have the same three blue dialog options and answers. Adding even a tiny bit more depth to this would keep these characters alive and interesting. As it stands, I have no reason to go see the woman I supposedly love because there's no way to interact with her.
This game has had a pretty rough start, but I think the bones and foundations are solid enough to make it a truly great game. I was an early fan of the cyberpunk genre and the environments and storytelling in this game hit that nostalgia button pretty hard. That probably biases me to look past some of the game's flaws and there are, no doubt, some big ones. But the technical and balance problems are fixable and the incredible and vibrant world they created will make for practically endless DLC possibilities.
Thanks! I opted to get the bundle with all the DLC for $14 and some change, so it's good to know that a newbie like me should not use those two. And I'm not interested in PvP either.
I saw some YouTube videos of the game when it first came out and I've had it on my Steam watch-list ever since. Still haven't pulled the trigger though. I'm one of those people who has a hard time justifying buying any new games until I've finished the ones I currently have. So it's still on the watch-list. But you may have bumped the priority up a bit.
That's the great and terrible thing about gaming: so much choice. Games are like books to me. There isn't enough time for them all, so the most difficult part is prioritization. I have several games I got for "free" from Steam and GoG I haven't even installed yet.
Right now, I don't see myself playing any other games until I finish Cyberpunk. I've decided to go for a mostly completionist playthrough on my first go, which means lots of time. I'm clearing the map of side jobs before continuing the main mission (skipping the boxing/brawling missions though - hate them!). But I'm also pleasantly surprised to find that CDPR has some hidden missions that never appear as "?" on your map, and others that only appear when you're right next to them. Hidden content is great IMO.
But I'm also seeing a lot more holes in these missions, storyline, and the world generally. It's pretty clear that CDPR had a lot planned that was cut from development. Like any new game, there are compromises. More than I would like and expected in this case, but I'm still having lots of fun. Hoping for great DLC!
Overall, this has been an interesting debate to watch as a newbie here.
My view is this:
Political realignments happen and we may be in the midst of one now.
I think the notion that certain groups are essentially unitary and therefore unreachable politically is not an iron law, particularly at the margins. Democrats shouldn't expect to turn the 35-65 rural split into 65-35 or even 55-45, but there is room to make inroads in rural areas.
But getting back to realignments for a minute, the Democratic party used to be the party of the working class, African Americans, unions, etc. while the GoP was the party of the educated, the wealthy, business, and suburbia.
That isn't true today. Democrats are now the party of the educated and wealthy white people, ethnic minorities, and public sector unions. Much of the working class has switched to the GoP and Trump actually got some private-sector union endorsements. Meanwhile, Trump's lack of character and other flaws have cost the GoP suburbia, particularly with women. He's alienated and chased away many of the old core constituencies of the Republican party and has essentially abandoned the center.
In my view, this should be a tremendous opportunity for Democrats to decisively expand their tent. There are groups in play for the Democrats that have never been in play before. But doing that would require political and ideological flexibility, which many are not willing to cede. In the age-old balance between ideological purity and factional compromise, the side for purity seems to be winning.
Anyway, I tend to think the arguments which essentially state that Democrats can't pick up additional votes among voters who haven't been traditional Democrats is not supported by the recent historical evidence and rely on the questionable assumptions about the unitary character of voting blocks. For example, that "evangelicals" are all the same and only care about abortion.
Even though this thread is about rural areas, I think the decisive contests will actually be in the suburbs. Were I in charge of Democratic strategy I wouldn't neglect rural areas, but I'd spend the bulk of my effort in the suburbs.
I'm a Colorado native too - born and raised in the Denver area and recently returned after a 25-year absence.
I don't know if you feel the same way, but our state government is quite a contrast (in a positive way) from most other states and especially the feds.
My current job has been remote from the beginning, so I could really work and live anywhere. We live where we do (right next to Monument) primarily for the schools (3 school-age kids) and due to the fact I need to be here to care for my sister, who suffers from dementia.
I think one of the silver linings of Covid may be that remote work becomes more normalized which opens up possibilities for people to diversify where they live. Absent kids, the calculus would likely boil down to amenities and cost-of-living. I wouldn't expect to see people flee the front range necessarily, but more growth in rural areas near urban cores seems possible.
Yes, D pols rarely directly insult rural voters and those that do tend to be in safe, dark-blue, non-rural areas. But neither do most pols push back against these characterizations.
I don't think the problem is just messaging, there are real policy differences.
But on messaging the first thing I would recommend is to not insult potential voters. A non-trivial number of Democrats really do seem to believe that rural white voters are dumb, evil, racist misogynists who don't understand their own interests and these Democrats are not afraid to say so out loud.
As a practical matter, it's just difficult to get people to vote for you or your side when a vocal and active part of your party says stuff like this or doesn't challenge it when others say it.
I do think there is a big problem with how we categorize groups of people and "rural" is certainly an overbroad category that misses many important differences - and not just in regards to "white."
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Democrats didn't receive any votes from rural voters. Certainly, they did, overall Biden got something like 1/3 of the rural vote. But by the same token, Trump got around 1/3 of the urban vote.
"It isn’t that there is some political agenda of the rural population that is different than the urban population; Its just that those who vote Republican form the majority of the rural population."
The relevant question is why most rural voters vote Republican, and I don't think it's a tautology. Having lived in urban, suburban, and rural areas I do think there are real differences in political preferences that aren't merely about tribalism.
I've been reading here a while but recently just started commenting, so my apologies if I'm digging up old terrain.
I don't really subscribe to either side of that binary.
Ultimately appealing to any voting group requires understanding what issues are actually salient to those voters (not the issues that one imagines are salient) and then being willing to make the policy and messaging compromises necessary to at least become the less-bad alternative since we have binary-choice elections.
I don't think that Democrats as a whole have done a good job on either count when it comes to rural voters, but they are doing quite well with other groups.
A big part of the problem is that we have extremely weak parties here in the US and politics is nationalized. There's no central control of the agenda or of messaging, nor does the party leadership have much authority to enforce compliance among members to a specific agenda. Parties can't even prevent non-party members from competing for office. Parties today are more like brands than coherent political entities.
That makes actual prioritization and follow-through hard and long-term planning just about impossible. It also doesn't promote the inter-party compromises that are necessary to make a political tent bigger and there's no party authority to force such compromise to or make the various ideological factions within a party play nice.
So I don't really see what the party can do with rural voters because parties don't have any actual power. So it's up to individual candidates to make appeals during an election, but those candidates have to contend with a nationalized politics. And then there is the primary system and the cohorts of primary voters.
I agree, but I haven't found a better term to use to describe the small number of powerful and influential people who are the dominant players in determining the political agenda and preferences for a party.
Maybe the social-media term "influencers" is better? I don't know, but I'm open to alternatives.
Listening is part of it for sure, but I think the bigger issue is more fundamental - the movement of the party toward cosmopolitan attitudes and policies and the general sorting of voters that's been going on for the past couple of decades.
There are simply few elites left in the party with any direct experience or understanding of the needs of rural voters and, like all people, the elites tend to prioritize what they know and understand. There's also an attitude that Democrats don't need these votes anymore.
That granting statehood to DC, Puerto Rico, and others has become the go-to solution to better Democratic representation in the Senate (along with wishful thinking about "reforming" the Senate generally and the complaints about how much more powerful Wyoming supposedly is compared to California) illustrates how low a priority competing for rural votes has actually become.
All of this has been exacerbated by the culture war and the values of many rural people simply don't line up well with where the Democratic party is going. Dumb messaging about deplorables and bitter clingers hasn't exactly helped either. It's hard to compete for votes while simultaneously telling those voters they are dumb, don't understand their own interests, and are morally compromised and provincial.
Listening is definitely very important, but before that can happen, the party (or at least the elites) need to understand the problem and that listening is part of the solution. It doesn't appear to me that they are there yet, and I don't see much changing with the Biden administration. With the exception of Tom Vilsack, Biden's cabinet is heavily skewed toward urban interests.
I understand the need for that from a gameplay perspective, but it still an annoying incongruence in most games (not just this one).
How is the game going for you?
For me I'm still enjoying myself. I think the quests, particularly the developed side-quests for major characters (Judy, Panam, River etc.) are very well done. Panam's was a lot of fun, the ones for Judy and River were emotionally engaging. In between those I've been doing Witcher 3 style clearing the map of "?" to earn money and experience. Pretty soon I'll need to get back to the main questline.
Oh, and there is a series of side-quests that involve a trans character. I'm not quite done with them yet, but so far it's interesting. The portrayal is not sexualized at all and the character's motivations are familiar themes in this universe - loss, and vengeance.
Great write-up. Mandalorian is single-handedly saving the Star Wars universe IMO and also introducing a new generation to the kind of film-making that make Kurasawa and Sergio Leone great.
I would add there is a sort of generational fan-service going on as well and Mandalorian hits all the right notes for Gen-Xers while still appealing to the younger generations.
I love the game too despite its flaws, and I think it has a lot of potential for future growth.
CDPR is getting a much-deserved smackdown for their stupid dishonesty, but I'm hoping they learn the right lessons from this and the DLC will be at the standard that people expect from them.
There are still some multilingual convos that do get translated in the subtitles. It's a nice touch but yeah, a translator mod would have been very cool.
To tag onto your comments, I think this game is very good, but it is still filled with a ton of missed opportunities, a failure to meet expectations (which are not entirely CDPR's fault - many people overhyped this game) and most important, technical problems that make the entire game unplayable for many people.
In an alternate world where the game was stable, actually worked on all the platforms it was designed for, and had all the content promised (it's increasingly clear a lot of stuff was cut from development or shortened), I think the criticism that they failed to live up to promises about trans representation is perfectly reasonable. But we're currently in a different world where the game is failing on a more fundamental level. It doesn't live up to that promise and the unfortunate reality is that it doesn't live up to a host of promises including fundamental promises about the ability to run and be playable on platforms that millions of players use. It seems pretty clear that trans representation wasn't dropped or fully implemented because of some kind of hatred or bias against trans people, but because that concern was trumped by other, bigger problems with the game.
So it's hard for me to argue that more development time should have been put better trans representation in the game as opposed to making the game function correctly on consoles, making the life-paths more meaningful, technical glitches, better AI, or any number of other issues that are affecting millions of players and/or the core elements of the game.
Additionally, after almost 40 hours of playtime, I've found that identity just isn't an important factor in the game generally. The only place where gender matters at all are for romances, which are entirely optional and, as I've discovered, are extremely limited in terms of choice anyway. I think a lot of people won't be happy with the romance options. Won't go into details because, spoilers.
But other than that, no one in the game world cares about your character's identity. Even the life-paths have turned out to be really only about an occasional dialog option and don't matter for anything else that I've seen as of yet.
So a lot of it is like old-school roleplaying where I have to use my imagination and determine for myself what my (nomad) character is like and choose options and actions that make sense for the character from whatever limited choices the game gives me.
It definitely could have used more time in the oven, even for the PC version, but I'm not unhappy with the state of the game currently. Would I like more features AND fewer bugs? Sure. But 7 years is already a long time to develop a game. I suspect they would have delayed further but ran into contractual and legal issues if they didn't ship this calendar year. Not that I have much sympathy for CDPR.
It was pretty clear last year that they had to make development compromises when they said it would be first-person only. Of course, their stated reason was not true - that the first-person perspective was more immersive - the reality is that a third-person game with thousands of gear and character combinations would be a huge hog of development resources. It's telling that even looking at yourself in the mirror is basically a cutscene.
But I don't really miss third-person mode. It was good and necessary in the witcher but is not nearly as critical for a gun-play based game IMO.
They've now apologized and come out with a plan for a major patch in January and February. That's a long time to wait for console players. Yet another reason I'm glad to be part of the PCMR. But I think this game is only going to get better over time. The anger and unmet expectations will eventually adjust. Frankly, I think expectations were too high to begin with.
I'm sure I spent too much of this past weekend playing (my wife was very tolerant, but she knew what was coming), but so far I've still found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable game but with some pretty big rough edges.
I completed a series of romance quests and they were very much felt like romances in the Witcher 3 - success or failure depends on doing the person's side quests and answering dialog choices the "correct" way. For me playing a male character romancing a female character it was pretty straightforward but I did have to reload a couple of times. Now that the romance is complete I don't have much opportunity to interact with her - presumably, she will come in later along in the main story similar to the Witcher 3 and help out in some way. Right now it's an occasional text message.
The combat has become a lot less punishing now that I have some levels, perks, and gear. I think the game is poorly tuned in this regard, at least at normal difficulty. There are some weapons that are quite overpowered even without having perks that support them - with perks you can be pretty much unstoppable unless you get too careless. The beginning of the game was quite different and much more difficult in terms of combat. Only the high-level enemies present any sort of challenge now. But some of the "cyberpsycho" mini moss fights are interesting and challenging with better AI and mechanics you have to actually work around or think about.
After about 30 hours of play (yes, I know), I am just now starting to use fast-travel in some instances, though I still prefer to drive. It's still fun to walk and explore and find new things. One example is that I found Dexter Deshawn at the last location we saw him at the end of act 1 - he's still there (hope that's not too spoilerly).
I'm currently on a very dark and unsettling series of quests involving a child serial killer. They are disturbing enough I'm not actually sure I want to finish them since I get the sense that it won't end well given there seem to be few happy endings in this world. Violence against children is something that triggers me more than anything and it bothers me a lot even in fiction.
But overall to enjoy the game I think one has to look past a lot of the current technical defects and compromises which I'd sum up thusly:
- Poor character creator
- Various graphics glitches, issues
- A few gameplay issues that require quitting and reloading. For me, some keyboard commands like sprint and crouch stop working and I have to quit the game to fix them.
- The poor AI for NPC's generally
- The police/warrant system where if you accidentally or intentionally kill a civilian, police start spawn right next to you and don't stop until you run away or are dead. Another annoyance is that there are police occasionally in various areas that act gang members in terms of mechanics - if you get too close to them they will warn you to get away and if you don't they'll just start shooting.
- The player power curve and balance
- A big oversight, IMO is the lack of a tutorial on the interface and game mechanics. As an RPG vet, I was able to figure them all out eventually, but the systems are not simple. New players are likely to struggle to understand how to make the character they envision. Also, it appears that attribute points are permanent - it's possible to reset perks with a huge amount of money but not attribute points.
One thing about MacGuffins. Not too far (no spoilers here) into Act 2 there is a situation where you need to get information from someone. There are a lot of dialog options with the key person who has the information. The dialog options you get depend on a bunch of factors - information you found previously, what skills you have, your life-path, etc. I played through this sequence multiple times to see what (immediate) effects they would have. If you were thorough and spent time searching the location, you'd find key information to use as leverage. There were options where you could avoid violence but, for me at least, most paths led to violence, which turned out to be fine with me as this character had some great loot if you killed him. But after escaping the building following the fight, my Act 2 "companion" informed me that I'd burned a bridge and likely made some enemies.
And I loved that - having at least the potential for real choice and consequence. I don't know what the effect of killing this guy will be, but I'm looking forward to finding out.
I'm sure there will soon be guides that explain the optimal sequence of events for these interactions, but it's really nice not knowing.
I mentioned before that I was having terrible input lag. It turns out it was actually a terrible framerate. The game looked fine with a low framerate oddly so I didn't think it was framerate, but the combat was impossible. I ended up having to change to the lowest settings and bumping the resolution down to about 720p. I'm running on a two-year-old budget gaming laptop (was about $800 new)- one that has a decent (for its time) dedicated GPU. This is the first game that's really choked like this for me. But with the smaller laptop screen, the lower resolution is fine and now it runs pretty well. Related to that I was annoyed there's no option to show FPS in the game, so you have to use a third-party solution.
As far as the life path, I chose Nomad because I wanted to be an outsider to night city and the nomad background seemed more like me than the other two options. Won't spoil it for you (though if you've watched pre-release footage over the last year, you've seen a lot of it already) but the intro is definitely short and involves you getting into night city, after which you get the cutscene. The intro felt longer than 30 minutes but I didn't time it and there were some mini-tutorials on driving (you start with a car), shooting, and car-passenger shooting.
Dialog options for Nomads were as you described for Corpo. I'm a bit further into the game than you and it seems they are significant enough to open up other paths to completing a quest on occasion.
I agree with you regarding the character-creator. But it doesn't really bother me too much since I never see him. I tend to prefer driving on a motorcycle to a car (easier to get through traffic and handles better IMO), so I just see his backside with no real detail.
I have not experienced many bugs and have had zero crashes. All the bugs were weird graphics glitches that were distracting and annoying, but not game-breaking. The new 1.04 patch seems to have fixed some of that and I've got slightly better framerates from it.
I haven't tested this, but it seems like the Act 1 sequence is largely set in stone and it doesn't appear that your dialog and other choices have a long-term effect - at least not yet - nor can they significantly alter the path. Which is fine I guess since so much of it functions as a tutorial in a sense.
Now that I'm out in the open world I'm really enjoying myself. The city is amazing even with the annoying vehicle AI and civilians apparating in front of you. After watching some non-spoilery tips videos I'm not burning through the main questline since a big difference between this and the Witcher, for example, is that "side jobs" have a major effect on the possible endings and are tied into the main story. The game doesn't make that clear at all and I'm sure many have assumed they are like side-quests in other games. This is something I quite like since it rewards non-linear play.
Overall I'm really impressed with the game and am really enjoying it, although it is certainly far from perfect. I do feel really bad for console players though, and they are rightly angry that CDPR shipped the game on console in its current state and also purposely hid the problems from console players and reviewers. Part of that blame belongs to Xbox and PS4 though, for forcing CDPR to make the game available on the older consoles. Given how my relatively new laptop performs (my middling hardware blows away the original Xbox and PS4), I'm not sure how the game will ever perform well on the original consoles.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Cyberpunk 2077’s Full Review”
The sex "scenes" aren't any different from Witcher 3 except the graphics have more fidelity. The scenes in the Witcher are more "romantic" IMO.
Like Witcher 3, there's at least one short "hook up" quest, plus the ability to just go pay for sex, but those are entirely optional.
The world itself is certainly very sexualized in some ways (advertisements and sex stores mainly), but it's not as in-your-face as I was expecting. Sex and sexuality doesn't play any real role in the story at all. Nudity can be turned off in the options and it's possible to play through the game with very little sexual content.
I agree with Jaybird that the sex acts aren't particularly sexy or titillating, but I haven't seen them all yet.
*possible spoiler alert*
It's probably obvious that there are a limited number of NPC story arcs that can lead to a romance (I won't say how many, but it's not as many as I'd like). These romanceable NPC's have preferences that depend on whether you pick a male/female body type and male/female voice for your character. If you don't have the body and voice type that the NPC likes, then you can't romance them no matter what you do.
You can fully complete all these story arcs (and I'd encourage anyone playing to do so because they are all very) without any romance at all. The only difference these NPC preferences make is who you could end up being able to have sex with at the end of the questline. As far as I can tell, choosing (or failing) to romance anyone doesn't have any significant effect on the game.
"
That's a good way to put it.
One positive thing I forgot to mention is the level design is very good IMO and supports a variety of playstyles - quite unlike the Witcher for example. Having an open world that really does support stealth, melee, and - in theory - tanky or glass-cannon play is actually pretty remarkable and difficult to do well.
It's too bad the power imbalance distorts that so much and negates the need to make playstyle choices and tradeoffs. Why bother carefully stealthing or hacking through a mission when I can kill everyone in the complex in 30 seconds at no risk? Why choose to be a tank or glass cannon when I can do both and still hack decently?
In the heist mission at the beginning, it felt like the opposite. My stealth didn't work, I couldn't tank, my firepower was too weak to glass cannon. Hacking was too weak to do much. I got through the long battle through the hotel via the liberal use of cover and by exploiting the terrible AI. I probably should have done more side content and leveled more before starting that one.
"
I was typing my main reply and didn't see this comment, but you identified the same issues here that I did.
"
I'm really enjoying it too and agree with most of your comments.
What I really enjoy is how the game breaks the traditional split between main and side quests and content. While technically optional, not doing the side quests will dramatically affect how the main storyline proceeds and ends. And how you do those "side" quests has a similarly large effect. It's great going into that largely blind because you don't know what decisions you make will have on the course of the main story, so it encourages players who have the willpower not to google for the optimal or completionist playthrough to really consider their choices and what kind of V they want to be. And that's another great thing about the game is that you have a wider variety of options for how to play your V than is the case with most games.
The quests and story are really the highlights of this game though. I've played the disturbing ones you mentioned and can confirm they are really disturbing! And some of the short one-off side quests that you think are one-and-done may not be or may influence a choice later on.
There is also at least one secret quest that doesn't appear on the map and doesn't tell you where to go. You find what appears to be a typical garage with stuff to loot but there's a picture there and a databank with more info. This is actually a quest but it doesn't appear in your quest log or on the map. If you are familiar enough with night city, you can look at the picture, figure out where it was taken, go to that spot, and initiate a chain of events and an actual quest. I would think there is more than one of these, but I only know about this particular one.
I also agree about the filler quests - some are great for loot, but most are just the usual filler typical of RPG's.
Here are some specific criticisms I have of the game that are in addition to the ones discussed in your earlier posts (like character creation and bugs):
The game systems and mechanics are deep and interesting but completely unbalanced, especially if you invest heavily into the technical tree for crafting. This makes the power/difficulty curve in the game rather absurd. In the early game, even on normal difficulty, you're super weak and you get excited for a weapon upgrade from an enemy you might have killed.
But by level 20, or even earlier if you know what you're doing, you can become god-like. My level 45 character is basically unkillable except by mines, which are strangely insta-kill, or fall damage. Some of the boss fights require a bit of finesse but don't pose much of a challenge, even on harder difficulties. I have a tech pistol, for example, that will one-shot any non-boss enemy in the game and can shoot through walls. My silenced pistol for stealth will similarly drop any regular mob with a headshot. Even though I've put zero points into melee weapons, I can 1-3 shot any regular enemy with my iconic legendary upgraded baseball bat. Meanwhile, my armor and cyberware make most weapons in the game feel like mosquito bites.
All that power is fun for a while and makes plowing through filler content easy, but it's another sign that this game wasn't properly tested and is horribly unbalanced.
The loot is mostly uninteresting and pointless. There's tons of different kinds of food and drinks in the game, but they serve zero useful purposes and just end up taking inventory space. Fortunately, they don't weigh anything, but they are also a PITA to sell because the shop interface is poorly designed and slow. Bulk selling of items in a game where you pick up a ton of bulk items is an annoying oversight.
Maybe it's different for characters who don't spec into crafting, but I stopped caring about all the weapon drops by about level 15. They just turned into a source of parts to upgrade my existing weapons, which are all iconics.
Mods and stats for gear and weapons appear to be very buggy. Some do not appear to work at all and for others like items don't appear to stack effects, but the items and UI don't tell you this.
I think I've only bought 2 or 3 cars. One was accidental, I happened to click on it and instinctively hit the "f" key. The time and effort put into the cars in pretty amazing - especially the interiors. But the sad reality is that it's impossible to competently drive in this game in the first-person view that would allow you to see all the beautiful detail. Plust there are a ton of free vehicles - I think have six or 7 free ones now.
And with the exception of one bit of dialog in one quest, vehicles don't have any other effect on the game or interactions. I still prefer Jackie's Arch motorcycle for road driving because it's so much easier to drive in traffic. For off-road, there's a nomad motorcycle that is perfect off-road. I don't really need or care about the other vehicles.
Confirming my earlier suspicions, the life-paths don't have any meaningful effect on the game except in one instance that I've found. Playing as a nomad, I'm pretty sure that picking one of the nomad options with a major side-quest character can ruin your chance to romance them. But it's at least nice to know that picking the life-path dialog option is not always the best choice.
Speaking of romances, the actual quests for that are great. What is disappointing is that once the questline is complete there's basically no significant further interaction with that character until late in the main story. They stay in the same spot have the same three blue dialog options and answers. Adding even a tiny bit more depth to this would keep these characters alive and interesting. As it stands, I have no reason to go see the woman I supposedly love because there's no way to interact with her.
This game has had a pretty rough start, but I think the bones and foundations are solid enough to make it a truly great game. I was an early fan of the cyberpunk genre and the environments and storytelling in this game hit that nostalgia button pretty hard. That probably biases me to look past some of the game's flaws and there are, no doubt, some big ones. But the technical and balance problems are fixable and the incredible and vibrant world they created will make for practically endless DLC possibilities.
On “The Political Cyberpunk 2077 Thread”
Yeah, that was a strange, disturbing quest. I also wanted to punch Rachel in the face.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Darkest Dungeon”
Thanks! I opted to get the bundle with all the DLC for $14 and some change, so it's good to know that a newbie like me should not use those two. And I'm not interested in PvP either.
"
Missed that on the Steam sale - Thanks! Purchased!
"
Great write-up.
I saw some YouTube videos of the game when it first came out and I've had it on my Steam watch-list ever since. Still haven't pulled the trigger though. I'm one of those people who has a hard time justifying buying any new games until I've finished the ones I currently have. So it's still on the watch-list. But you may have bumped the priority up a bit.
That's the great and terrible thing about gaming: so much choice. Games are like books to me. There isn't enough time for them all, so the most difficult part is prioritization. I have several games I got for "free" from Steam and GoG I haven't even installed yet.
Right now, I don't see myself playing any other games until I finish Cyberpunk. I've decided to go for a mostly completionist playthrough on my first go, which means lots of time. I'm clearing the map of side jobs before continuing the main mission (skipping the boxing/brawling missions though - hate them!). But I'm also pleasantly surprised to find that CDPR has some hidden missions that never appear as "?" on your map, and others that only appear when you're right next to them. Hidden content is great IMO.
But I'm also seeing a lot more holes in these missions, storyline, and the world generally. It's pretty clear that CDPR had a lot planned that was cut from development. Like any new game, there are compromises. More than I would like and expected in this case, but I'm still having lots of fun. Hoping for great DLC!
On “Democrats: Imagine Winning Urban, Suburban, and Rural voters”
Overall, this has been an interesting debate to watch as a newbie here.
My view is this:
Political realignments happen and we may be in the midst of one now.
I think the notion that certain groups are essentially unitary and therefore unreachable politically is not an iron law, particularly at the margins. Democrats shouldn't expect to turn the 35-65 rural split into 65-35 or even 55-45, but there is room to make inroads in rural areas.
But getting back to realignments for a minute, the Democratic party used to be the party of the working class, African Americans, unions, etc. while the GoP was the party of the educated, the wealthy, business, and suburbia.
That isn't true today. Democrats are now the party of the educated and wealthy white people, ethnic minorities, and public sector unions. Much of the working class has switched to the GoP and Trump actually got some private-sector union endorsements. Meanwhile, Trump's lack of character and other flaws have cost the GoP suburbia, particularly with women. He's alienated and chased away many of the old core constituencies of the Republican party and has essentially abandoned the center.
In my view, this should be a tremendous opportunity for Democrats to decisively expand their tent. There are groups in play for the Democrats that have never been in play before. But doing that would require political and ideological flexibility, which many are not willing to cede. In the age-old balance between ideological purity and factional compromise, the side for purity seems to be winning.
Anyway, I tend to think the arguments which essentially state that Democrats can't pick up additional votes among voters who haven't been traditional Democrats is not supported by the recent historical evidence and rely on the questionable assumptions about the unitary character of voting blocks. For example, that "evangelicals" are all the same and only care about abortion.
Even though this thread is about rural areas, I think the decisive contests will actually be in the suburbs. Were I in charge of Democratic strategy I wouldn't neglect rural areas, but I'd spend the bulk of my effort in the suburbs.
"
I'm a Colorado native too - born and raised in the Denver area and recently returned after a 25-year absence.
I don't know if you feel the same way, but our state government is quite a contrast (in a positive way) from most other states and especially the feds.
My current job has been remote from the beginning, so I could really work and live anywhere. We live where we do (right next to Monument) primarily for the schools (3 school-age kids) and due to the fact I need to be here to care for my sister, who suffers from dementia.
I think one of the silver linings of Covid may be that remote work becomes more normalized which opens up possibilities for people to diversify where they live. Absent kids, the calculus would likely boil down to amenities and cost-of-living. I wouldn't expect to see people flee the front range necessarily, but more growth in rural areas near urban cores seems possible.
"
Yes, D pols rarely directly insult rural voters and those that do tend to be in safe, dark-blue, non-rural areas. But neither do most pols push back against these characterizations.
John Tester has some good advice on this I think:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/16/us/politics/jon-tester-democrats.html
"
I don't think the problem is just messaging, there are real policy differences.
But on messaging the first thing I would recommend is to not insult potential voters. A non-trivial number of Democrats really do seem to believe that rural white voters are dumb, evil, racist misogynists who don't understand their own interests and these Democrats are not afraid to say so out loud.
As a practical matter, it's just difficult to get people to vote for you or your side when a vocal and active part of your party says stuff like this or doesn't challenge it when others say it.
"
I do think there is a big problem with how we categorize groups of people and "rural" is certainly an overbroad category that misses many important differences - and not just in regards to "white."
I don't think anyone is suggesting that Democrats didn't receive any votes from rural voters. Certainly, they did, overall Biden got something like 1/3 of the rural vote. But by the same token, Trump got around 1/3 of the urban vote.
"It isn’t that there is some political agenda of the rural population that is different than the urban population; Its just that those who vote Republican form the majority of the rural population."
The relevant question is why most rural voters vote Republican, and I don't think it's a tautology. Having lived in urban, suburban, and rural areas I do think there are real differences in political preferences that aren't merely about tribalism.
"
I've been reading here a while but recently just started commenting, so my apologies if I'm digging up old terrain.
I don't really subscribe to either side of that binary.
Ultimately appealing to any voting group requires understanding what issues are actually salient to those voters (not the issues that one imagines are salient) and then being willing to make the policy and messaging compromises necessary to at least become the less-bad alternative since we have binary-choice elections.
I don't think that Democrats as a whole have done a good job on either count when it comes to rural voters, but they are doing quite well with other groups.
A big part of the problem is that we have extremely weak parties here in the US and politics is nationalized. There's no central control of the agenda or of messaging, nor does the party leadership have much authority to enforce compliance among members to a specific agenda. Parties can't even prevent non-party members from competing for office. Parties today are more like brands than coherent political entities.
That makes actual prioritization and follow-through hard and long-term planning just about impossible. It also doesn't promote the inter-party compromises that are necessary to make a political tent bigger and there's no party authority to force such compromise to or make the various ideological factions within a party play nice.
So I don't really see what the party can do with rural voters because parties don't have any actual power. So it's up to individual candidates to make appeals during an election, but those candidates have to contend with a nationalized politics. And then there is the primary system and the cohorts of primary voters.
The problem may ultimately be unsolvable.
"
I agree, but I haven't found a better term to use to describe the small number of powerful and influential people who are the dominant players in determining the political agenda and preferences for a party.
Maybe the social-media term "influencers" is better? I don't know, but I'm open to alternatives.
"
Listening is part of it for sure, but I think the bigger issue is more fundamental - the movement of the party toward cosmopolitan attitudes and policies and the general sorting of voters that's been going on for the past couple of decades.
There are simply few elites left in the party with any direct experience or understanding of the needs of rural voters and, like all people, the elites tend to prioritize what they know and understand. There's also an attitude that Democrats don't need these votes anymore.
That granting statehood to DC, Puerto Rico, and others has become the go-to solution to better Democratic representation in the Senate (along with wishful thinking about "reforming" the Senate generally and the complaints about how much more powerful Wyoming supposedly is compared to California) illustrates how low a priority competing for rural votes has actually become.
All of this has been exacerbated by the culture war and the values of many rural people simply don't line up well with where the Democratic party is going. Dumb messaging about deplorables and bitter clingers hasn't exactly helped either. It's hard to compete for votes while simultaneously telling those voters they are dumb, don't understand their own interests, and are morally compromised and provincial.
Listening is definitely very important, but before that can happen, the party (or at least the elites) need to understand the problem and that listening is part of the solution. It doesn't appear to me that they are there yet, and I don't see much changing with the Biden administration. With the exception of Tom Vilsack, Biden's cabinet is heavily skewed toward urban interests.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Cyberpunk 2077 First Impressions”
I understand the need for that from a gameplay perspective, but it still an annoying incongruence in most games (not just this one).
How is the game going for you?
For me I'm still enjoying myself. I think the quests, particularly the developed side-quests for major characters (Judy, Panam, River etc.) are very well done. Panam's was a lot of fun, the ones for Judy and River were emotionally engaging. In between those I've been doing Witcher 3 style clearing the map of "?" to earn money and experience. Pretty soon I'll need to get back to the main questline.
Oh, and there is a series of side-quests that involve a trans character. I'm not quite done with them yet, but so far it's interesting. The portrayal is not sexualized at all and the character's motivations are familiar themes in this universe - loss, and vengeance.
On “Mandalorian II: The Mandalorianing (Spoilers)”
Great write-up. Mandalorian is single-handedly saving the Star Wars universe IMO and also introducing a new generation to the kind of film-making that make Kurasawa and Sergio Leone great.
I would add there is a sort of generational fan-service going on as well and Mandalorian hits all the right notes for Gen-Xers while still appealing to the younger generations.
On “The Political Cyberpunk 2077 Thread”
I love the game too despite its flaws, and I think it has a lot of potential for future growth.
CDPR is getting a much-deserved smackdown for their stupid dishonesty, but I'm hoping they learn the right lessons from this and the DLC will be at the standard that people expect from them.
"
There are still some multilingual convos that do get translated in the subtitles. It's a nice touch but yeah, a translator mod would have been very cool.
To tag onto your comments, I think this game is very good, but it is still filled with a ton of missed opportunities, a failure to meet expectations (which are not entirely CDPR's fault - many people overhyped this game) and most important, technical problems that make the entire game unplayable for many people.
In an alternate world where the game was stable, actually worked on all the platforms it was designed for, and had all the content promised (it's increasingly clear a lot of stuff was cut from development or shortened), I think the criticism that they failed to live up to promises about trans representation is perfectly reasonable. But we're currently in a different world where the game is failing on a more fundamental level. It doesn't live up to that promise and the unfortunate reality is that it doesn't live up to a host of promises including fundamental promises about the ability to run and be playable on platforms that millions of players use. It seems pretty clear that trans representation wasn't dropped or fully implemented because of some kind of hatred or bias against trans people, but because that concern was trumped by other, bigger problems with the game.
So it's hard for me to argue that more development time should have been put better trans representation in the game as opposed to making the game function correctly on consoles, making the life-paths more meaningful, technical glitches, better AI, or any number of other issues that are affecting millions of players and/or the core elements of the game.
Additionally, after almost 40 hours of playtime, I've found that identity just isn't an important factor in the game generally. The only place where gender matters at all are for romances, which are entirely optional and, as I've discovered, are extremely limited in terms of choice anyway. I think a lot of people won't be happy with the romance options. Won't go into details because, spoilers.
But other than that, no one in the game world cares about your character's identity. Even the life-paths have turned out to be really only about an occasional dialog option and don't matter for anything else that I've seen as of yet.
So a lot of it is like old-school roleplaying where I have to use my imagination and determine for myself what my (nomad) character is like and choose options and actions that make sense for the character from whatever limited choices the game gives me.
On “Saturday Morning Gaming: Cyberpunk 2077 First Impressions”
Skippy is super fun and hilarious. And also a bit OP with some handgun perks
"
It definitely could have used more time in the oven, even for the PC version, but I'm not unhappy with the state of the game currently. Would I like more features AND fewer bugs? Sure. But 7 years is already a long time to develop a game. I suspect they would have delayed further but ran into contractual and legal issues if they didn't ship this calendar year. Not that I have much sympathy for CDPR.
It was pretty clear last year that they had to make development compromises when they said it would be first-person only. Of course, their stated reason was not true - that the first-person perspective was more immersive - the reality is that a third-person game with thousands of gear and character combinations would be a huge hog of development resources. It's telling that even looking at yourself in the mirror is basically a cutscene.
But I don't really miss third-person mode. It was good and necessary in the witcher but is not nearly as critical for a gun-play based game IMO.
They've now apologized and come out with a plan for a major patch in January and February. That's a long time to wait for console players. Yet another reason I'm glad to be part of the PCMR. But I think this game is only going to get better over time. The anger and unmet expectations will eventually adjust. Frankly, I think expectations were too high to begin with.
"
I'm sure I spent too much of this past weekend playing (my wife was very tolerant, but she knew what was coming), but so far I've still found it to be a thoroughly enjoyable game but with some pretty big rough edges.
I completed a series of romance quests and they were very much felt like romances in the Witcher 3 - success or failure depends on doing the person's side quests and answering dialog choices the "correct" way. For me playing a male character romancing a female character it was pretty straightforward but I did have to reload a couple of times. Now that the romance is complete I don't have much opportunity to interact with her - presumably, she will come in later along in the main story similar to the Witcher 3 and help out in some way. Right now it's an occasional text message.
The combat has become a lot less punishing now that I have some levels, perks, and gear. I think the game is poorly tuned in this regard, at least at normal difficulty. There are some weapons that are quite overpowered even without having perks that support them - with perks you can be pretty much unstoppable unless you get too careless. The beginning of the game was quite different and much more difficult in terms of combat. Only the high-level enemies present any sort of challenge now. But some of the "cyberpsycho" mini moss fights are interesting and challenging with better AI and mechanics you have to actually work around or think about.
After about 30 hours of play (yes, I know), I am just now starting to use fast-travel in some instances, though I still prefer to drive. It's still fun to walk and explore and find new things. One example is that I found Dexter Deshawn at the last location we saw him at the end of act 1 - he's still there (hope that's not too spoilerly).
I'm currently on a very dark and unsettling series of quests involving a child serial killer. They are disturbing enough I'm not actually sure I want to finish them since I get the sense that it won't end well given there seem to be few happy endings in this world. Violence against children is something that triggers me more than anything and it bothers me a lot even in fiction.
But overall to enjoy the game I think one has to look past a lot of the current technical defects and compromises which I'd sum up thusly:
- Poor character creator
- Various graphics glitches, issues
- A few gameplay issues that require quitting and reloading. For me, some keyboard commands like sprint and crouch stop working and I have to quit the game to fix them.
- The poor AI for NPC's generally
- The police/warrant system where if you accidentally or intentionally kill a civilian, police start spawn right next to you and don't stop until you run away or are dead. Another annoyance is that there are police occasionally in various areas that act gang members in terms of mechanics - if you get too close to them they will warn you to get away and if you don't they'll just start shooting.
- The player power curve and balance
- A big oversight, IMO is the lack of a tutorial on the interface and game mechanics. As an RPG vet, I was able to figure them all out eventually, but the systems are not simple. New players are likely to struggle to understand how to make the character they envision. Also, it appears that attribute points are permanent - it's possible to reset perks with a huge amount of money but not attribute points.
"
One thing about MacGuffins. Not too far (no spoilers here) into Act 2 there is a situation where you need to get information from someone. There are a lot of dialog options with the key person who has the information. The dialog options you get depend on a bunch of factors - information you found previously, what skills you have, your life-path, etc. I played through this sequence multiple times to see what (immediate) effects they would have. If you were thorough and spent time searching the location, you'd find key information to use as leverage. There were options where you could avoid violence but, for me at least, most paths led to violence, which turned out to be fine with me as this character had some great loot if you killed him. But after escaping the building following the fight, my Act 2 "companion" informed me that I'd burned a bridge and likely made some enemies.
And I loved that - having at least the potential for real choice and consequence. I don't know what the effect of killing this guy will be, but I'm looking forward to finding out.
I'm sure there will soon be guides that explain the optimal sequence of events for these interactions, but it's really nice not knowing.
"
Good write-up, a few thoughts,
I mentioned before that I was having terrible input lag. It turns out it was actually a terrible framerate. The game looked fine with a low framerate oddly so I didn't think it was framerate, but the combat was impossible. I ended up having to change to the lowest settings and bumping the resolution down to about 720p. I'm running on a two-year-old budget gaming laptop (was about $800 new)- one that has a decent (for its time) dedicated GPU. This is the first game that's really choked like this for me. But with the smaller laptop screen, the lower resolution is fine and now it runs pretty well. Related to that I was annoyed there's no option to show FPS in the game, so you have to use a third-party solution.
As far as the life path, I chose Nomad because I wanted to be an outsider to night city and the nomad background seemed more like me than the other two options. Won't spoil it for you (though if you've watched pre-release footage over the last year, you've seen a lot of it already) but the intro is definitely short and involves you getting into night city, after which you get the cutscene. The intro felt longer than 30 minutes but I didn't time it and there were some mini-tutorials on driving (you start with a car), shooting, and car-passenger shooting.
Dialog options for Nomads were as you described for Corpo. I'm a bit further into the game than you and it seems they are significant enough to open up other paths to completing a quest on occasion.
I agree with you regarding the character-creator. But it doesn't really bother me too much since I never see him. I tend to prefer driving on a motorcycle to a car (easier to get through traffic and handles better IMO), so I just see his backside with no real detail.
I have not experienced many bugs and have had zero crashes. All the bugs were weird graphics glitches that were distracting and annoying, but not game-breaking. The new 1.04 patch seems to have fixed some of that and I've got slightly better framerates from it.
I haven't tested this, but it seems like the Act 1 sequence is largely set in stone and it doesn't appear that your dialog and other choices have a long-term effect - at least not yet - nor can they significantly alter the path. Which is fine I guess since so much of it functions as a tutorial in a sense.
Now that I'm out in the open world I'm really enjoying myself. The city is amazing even with the annoying vehicle AI and civilians apparating in front of you. After watching some non-spoilery tips videos I'm not burning through the main questline since a big difference between this and the Witcher, for example, is that "side jobs" have a major effect on the possible endings and are tied into the main story. The game doesn't make that clear at all and I'm sure many have assumed they are like side-quests in other games. This is something I quite like since it rewards non-linear play.
Overall I'm really impressed with the game and am really enjoying it, although it is certainly far from perfect. I do feel really bad for console players though, and they are rightly angry that CDPR shipped the game on console in its current state and also purposely hid the problems from console players and reviewers. Part of that blame belongs to Xbox and PS4 though, for forcing CDPR to make the game available on the older consoles. Given how my relatively new laptop performs (my middling hardware blows away the original Xbox and PS4), I'm not sure how the game will ever perform well on the original consoles.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.