Gaming
From video gaming to card games and stuff in between, if it's gaming you can probably discuss it here!
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I don’t play Bethesda RPGs for the set pieces.
I don’t care that Cyberpunk’s NPCs are programmed to walk to a specific place, stand in a specific way and say a specific thing at a specific time.
Cyberpunk’s main quest claims you have a few weeks to live just when the game really opens up to you, so thematically you are discouraged from pursuing side content, but it doesn’t really matter since except for a few quests most are very generic and most of their “story” is delivered through a call anyway. Great storytelling right there.
The NPCs in Cyberpunk are braindead, and when the game came out the set pieces didn’t work half the time.
I really rather Bethesda spend their time improving the parts of the games people who like their games want them to improve, instead of focusing on stuff their competitors are doing.
In other words, you've got maybe a couple hours in Cyberpunk.
36 according to Steam. Sorry I don’t have more than a full day and a half to give a game before I give up on it to play something I enjoy.
What? Dude the best part of the game is the opening 5hrs. It's all downhill after that.
It's too bad you didn't like the narrative structure with the calls in CP2077. That one ending uses them (or I guess you could call them voicemails, considering) to devastating effect. One of the most harrowing sequences I've seen in a game. It might have even saved a couple of lives.
for me, Horizon Zero Dawn was the real "wow, open-world storytelling can be that good and not classic Bethesda nonsense" moment
Idk, maybe it's just that I'm comparing too much of the Witcher 3, but the story and importantly sidequests in Horizon Zero Dawn are mediocore at best for where I'm at atm. I'd concur it's better than Bethesda though.
The Witcher 3, to me, made Bethesda games feel dated. The structure of the game is nearly identical, but when you arrive at your quest, it never plays out entirely straight forward, much like the Witcher source material. Cyberpunk does follow along those same lines, even if it never quite hit the highs that Witcher 3 did.
HZD is very Ubisofty, but done right, as in it's not littered to the brink with pointless collectibles and can actually be completed. It's way more action than role-play or story focussed but that's not a bad thing in itself. I think of it more like Tomb Raider, and for that kind of game HZD has plenty and very good storytelling.
I would be satisfied if Bethesda did stick to their "ancient ways". Focusing more on environments and immersion rather than character-driven storytelling like any other RPG. Of course they did neither for Starfield unfortunately.
I don't remember who said it, but in some youtube video they said something along the lines that fallout 76 could have been the ultimate bethesda game if it was actually finished on release and didn't have that stupid "no human NPCs" gimmick, as it REALLY embraced that environmental design that they're actually good at.
They can clearly make fun games, look at skyrim and fallout 4 which tons of people love to just run around doing quests and fighting stuff in, but then they always bollocks it up by forcing in a story that barely makes sense upon closer scrutiny and they never capitalize of the potential of really truly interacting with the world.
I think bethesda could actually make the best VR game so far, the format plays perfectly into what they're good at since as valve realized people just want to rummage around drawers for hours on end and explore the environments.
Hell even as is skyrim VR seems pretty sweet, imagine if they actually designed the game for VR from scratch!
Fallout 4 VR was a cool experience. I don't know about a good game though. It doesn't help they didn't even seem to test if it worked. For example, red dot sights don't really work by default (though there's a mod to fix it). By default it's just a texture on the center of the sight, which isn't how that works. The mod just makes the dot display (near) infinity forward. That's just one minor issue that's obvious. I don't think any of the DLC works with it and most mods don't either, so it's pretty limited.
Skyrim VR modded to hell is nuts and incredibly fun.
Unless things change drastically for their RPG division, I'll repeat what I've said since oblivion. Bethesda makes great modding platforms, the content within the game is a loose theme that modders can play with.
Yes the new Fallouts are just TES in the Apocalypse.
Yes starfield is little more than TES in space.
I buy Bethesda games for mod potential.
If they said no mods to all future games I wouldn't buy another one. I don't play ESO and I have never touched fallout 76 for this reason.
I mean ESO isn't a bethesda game, it's made by zenimax.
And from what i remember it's actually pretty decent for what it is, it definitely looks nice and iirc while it has microtransactions to catch the whales, it isn't an absolute twat about it and there at least was a membership system that was/is quite reasonable.
The only thing I don't like about Cyberpunk's writing is that everyone seems to be deathly allergic to pronouns, even when it would clearly make the dialogue flow better.
That's to help you remember the names.
Never realized that but you're probably right! It never irked me, I just assumed it was a stylistic decision. I actually like it tbh
Yea! It always seems to help me remember them.
I'm talking more about the dialogue between V and other characters where they just adamantly refuse to begin sentences with the words I/me/my/etc. It begins to wear after a while.
I think it is just a new modern game so therefore hyperbole demands it much be either the best thing ever or trash. A lot of people said RDR2 was "dated" design as well. I think they both have strengths, same with Cyberpunk. I think only BG3 is a step forward for RPG storytelling, Cyberpunk, Starfield, Red Dead all have issues, but they allow the player to get immersived in their worlds and at the end of the day that's all that matters.
Oh man this discourse has been absolutely typical Gamer garbage on the various subreddits. Every day a new thread with thousands of posts not reading the article but rushing in to say the same thing. It's weird because they are very different games and it also feels like Im taking crazy pills because while I have not played cyberpunk(Im waiting for it go get super cheap on sale before I bother with it) I remember the launch being an absolute shitshow and the general consensus on the story being "meh".
Suddenly starfireld comes out and now Cyberpunk is heralded as the greatest at everything. Like you dont have to pick a team you can just like what you like. I get bethesda sold out to microsoft and is now under scrutiny, and I get that the same vocal posters let themselves get wrapped up in hype, but this is excessive.
It seems weird that you are judging Cyberpunk without ever having played it. Saying that the general consensus is "meh" is not accurate at all. The game had bugs and it had some technical and gameplay issues that made its much more mature brethren seem better or more well thought through. That's true.
There's a huge BUT here though. The storytelling and main questlike through Cyberpunk, at launch, was pretty freaking spectacular. I say this as someone who readily acknowledges the issues with the game at launch. Yes, they have addressed most of those issues, and the game feels better now, but the same story from launch-day is still there and is a rather compelling and great experience. I'm on my second playthrough of it now with the PL expansion and so far it's been so much better.
And this is all to say nothing of the truly jaw-dropping level design and aesthetics, AT launch, that the game is still sporting. I remember saying when I first played this at launch that I really hope they release some more expansions for this game because the environment is so richly detailed, it feels like I'm running around in a dystopian nightmare.
Like I said I'm basing my assessment on both games by the response the community gave and reviews Ive read and seen. I tend to do the patient gamer thing and wait for big steam sales before buying a game(unless its something I really want and sometimes I know indy games are already cheap and grab it at a lesser sale). Cyberpunk had a similarly criticized launch with the multiple daily 1001 posts on reddit and much like starfield has people who defend it you had people defending cyberpunk as well.
But from the outside looking in it was literally the same. You had the people who let themselves get spunup by the hypemachine absolutely let down when the game didnt live up to the hype.
You had the people who were chastising the bugs and "dated mechanics" how the game "didnt feel alive" and the "driving physics suck"
You had the hardcore CRPG fans for whom the only true RPG is: Baldurs gate 2, Morowind, Fallout 2, and special mentions to fallout new vegas. They'd come in and criticize lack of options and choice and blablabla.
You had the youtubers clowning on the game like Dunky showcasing a bug-fest.
And among people who actually reviewed the game the community consensus I saw was polarizing. Some did love it but a lot of people expressed it not living up to potential.
Again I cant say for sure(maybe next winter sale will be my time to shine) but it's feels like this outrage cycle was targeting cyberpunk for a while and then one day it just stopped. And now that its time for the community to throw their poo at something again cyberpunk is the hero of the story.
So sorry for the rambling but in short my post is less a personal judgment of cyberpunk and more a "the community hated this game and had little good to say about it, and now it's their precious baby and starfield is the bad one". I know its not happening here but I figure rather than spitting into the wind on reddit I'd complain about this weird online discourse here.
I think the reason you saw the response you saw is that a lot of the players who bought Cyberpunk on the PC early on were too busy PLAYING the game to talk about it online. If you were a console user though you had little choice though, the console versions of Cyberpunk were awful at launch and deserved much of the scorn they received, I am not certain on stats, but I'm positive that most of the game-breaking bugs were on the console. Yes, I noticed some bugs on my first playthrough on the PC, but it wasn't as dramatic as what I saw people posting regarding console Cyberpunk.
Beat the game within the first week of release (on PC). There were no serious gamebreaking bugs, and you are correct, the story is essentially unchanged between release and now. The story was always great.
Yeah I don't get it. Cyberpunk is getting serious rose-tinted glasses. I hear PL has greatly enhanced it but it just dropped and CDPR has been fixing the game for what? 3 years? That was a rough initial 18mo in particular.
Part of me almost wonders if it's been elevated because it's frequently featured on those benchmark videos that have gotten so popular lately. Heavy use of ray tracing, frequently updated to get new features, very tweakable, and thousands of videos using Cyberpunk as the standard for hardware to be measured by just puts a bug in your head.
CP was shit and unplayable on consoles at release and more-or-less buggy depending on hardware but fully playable on PC. It did not live up to the grandiose marketing promises but it is a wonderful game for what it is. Interesting world, varied quests/gigs/jobs with interesting decisions to make, super fun weapons, and now a fun skill build mechanics.
Phantom Liberty is peak Cyberpunk, but the game itself is great - at release and now even more. Does not excuse the pathetic release though and deceiving marketing. At least they did something with it.
The criticism of Red Dead had little to do with the impressive systems that they built for the world and a whole lot to do with how they took that freedom away from you in missions. There was very much a way they could have kept the linear story that plays out the same way every time without cutting to a hard fail state for using your brain. That's the part that felt dated, especially contrasted against the actual cool, innovative stuff that exists in the same video game.
i feel red dead is amazing to look at but playing it is so boring id rather watch paint dry. the last time i played red dead was to just do the drunk saloon mission again, which is also where i stopped playing the first time
Starfield made Starfield feel ancient by being entirely unoptimised.
No, it’s Bethesda that makes Starfield seem ancient.