this post was submitted on 06 Oct 2023
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This is how I thought everyone felt about Cyberpunk 2077, but even on launch it was a pretty sweet Bethesda-game by CDPR.
The entire time I was playing Starfield I was thinking "man, Cyberpunk 2077 was a really good open world RPG after all."
Nothing quite like juxtaposition to make something shine.
Cyberpunk is a great open world RPG once you get past the 2-3 hours of mandatory railroaded story missions. Seriously I don't know how they fucked that part up so badly. It's like they saw the platinum chip storyline from New Vegas and said "You know that's cool, but what if instead of letting the player choose we make them watch a feature length movie about this plot?"
They really need a "start me after Konpeki Plaza" mode with a few thousand €$ and a handful of perk points thrown in.
The story is genuinely good but really drags on after you've seen it once or twice. I have the "skip dialogue" button setup to a macro that spams it like 50 times and a quick button on my mouse to trigger it.
It's all pretty baffling when you realize there are multiple genuinely good and well thought out builds in the game that are effectively mutually exclusive without a way to reset your perks, so you really need to restart the game to see them, but this is my third run through and I can't imagine doing this again any time soon.
I'm sure there will be a mod for it eventually. Right now there are save files for each background that have already done Act 1, which is probably what I'll use for future playthroughs.
CDPR releasing Phantom Liberty after Starfield is a genius move. I immediately bought Phantom Liberty after finishing a Starfield run.
They just launched too early, but tried hard to fix everything. I played it some weeks/months after release and had ZERO bugs (not counting some minor texture-issues, who cares). And another run recently. Absolutely gorgeous world, and one of the best story and story-telling and characters of the last many many years.
Though I obviously was lucky, as many had massive problems with the game. But then again, people with much shittier systems than mine could game starfield fine, while I couldn't at all.
Okay, I just want to clear up that bugs were not the only reason people were upset. They literally were hyping things up prerelease that weren't even in the game. That's why they spent so much time being sued in the EU for it.
The writing is also amateurish, and there's a lot of 'cyber' but not a lot of 'punk'. People were right to be upset, and personally I think they still should be. The only reason their PR got turned around was because of an anime that released based in the world, and now suddenly the game's being handed 'labor of love' awards—they hadn't even done much to fix up the game at that point!
So yeah. Not just bugs. I'm sure I'm even missing things.
Okay, but this was more than prerelease hype. This was showing footage to players things they can do, with the explicit intention of driving up pre-orders and day one sales (I think pre-ordering is extremely silly, I don't participate, but that's neither here nor there). Lying about your product to get people to pay $60 for it is extremely unethical, and some EU governments found it to be enough to take them to court over. So this is beyond your personal 'judgments'. Sorry.
Limiting this arbitrary contest to just AAA games is pretty silly, seeing as they have the budget to hire amazing writers, and some of them get blown out of the water by indie titles. That's not the argument you think it is. Gaming is just wider than that, and I would argue the boundaries should be expanded to include all entertainment seeing as all forms of entertainment are making a bid for your limited time/attention, but that's just me. If you must have ONLY AAA games, then Red Dead games, GTA, and Mass Effect games are some from off the top of my head. Granted I don't play that many.
Your bar for labor-of-love must be really really low if a game just working is enough for you. That same year, No Man's Sky was much more deserving of the award as it isn't being made by a corporation with endless resources, and yet it managed to improve itself at least twice as much.
Tbh, you writing out several paragraphs defending yourself for enjoying Cyberpunk kinda smells like fanboy behavior to me. You try to be reductionist and dismissive a lot in what you wrote, which is pretty lame and anti-intellectual. We're here to discuss the facts, not what you enjoy spending your money on. More power to you, spend your money however, but I'm not here to discuss that with you.
Nah man. I'm far from fanboy. I hate the industry nowadays. I don't preorder either. For AAA i download and try first before even thinking of spending a buck. And i didn't hesitate to spend 100 moneyz on pacman and co when they came out.
And again: i don't care for promises, videos and whatever else marketing pukes out. It will never come close. Their job is to sell things that will never exist and the devs can't fulfill. I noticed cyberpunk was to be released some day, it was from cdpr (so it got a positive prejudice) and i had a good experience. Johnny alone was memorable enough of a character. Friends told me how shitty and buggy it was, never noticed. Though i played with many mods as that time, dunno if it had sucked without. Didn't know, didn't care. Had fun. After finishing, i bought it. And months later i did the second playthrough. And in some months i'll gonna get the dlc and play a last time.
Where is a fanboy here? If it had sucked, i would'nt have spent a cent. If i was a fanboy, i would've preordered 😁
Maybe YOU sound like being a victim of confirmation-bias after you felt victim of the hype and lost moneyz. Would be only fair after calling me a fanboy 😊
And no, I'm no AAA-sucker. Many one-man-indies rock over multi-million-titles. AAA mostly just suck ass (nowadays).
And yes. Lying about products suck and should be forbidden. But it ain't and won't. So we can just ignore the silly marketing alltogether. Pirate their shit, evaluate in peace (as demos died), and make solid purchase-decision AFTERWARDS.
The lack of rpg choices makes it less bethesda to me.
The only hoices that mattered were the ones that affected the silverhand percentages, and which ending you ulimately chose.
You mean the games where the dialogue choices are:
The checks on certain traits and skills you may have that bypass thing that could gove shottcuts or prevent a fight, e.g Starfield has a LOT of points where persuation would prevent a fight from breaking out, get you more credits, or offer an alternative solution to a conversation.
And its not like I havent played either game, ive already finished both CP2077 and Starfield effectively (minus the recent 2077 expansion)
There’s also some choices in the relationships V can take, but they don’t change everything much. That said, I think I makes sense that what V does wouldn’t really have much of an effect on Night City.
The choices in relationships basically unlock endings. The game a distinct lack of alternative methods to complete missions via statcheck, which is very bethesda to me.
There are some, but its very few. For instance i went almost full cyberrunner but my cyberrunner abilities didnt give me alternative skips to many missions
That seems to be more choices than any other Bethesda RP game. They got ahold of TES and Fallout and completely stripped out the idea of RPG "choices." Gone are the days in TES and Fallout that one could role play as someone other than "the chosen one." I'll never defend Arena or Daggerfall for their graphics, but no game studio has put out a game since those two that literally allows the player to totally ignore the main quest line, with in game consequences for that. Nope. Time doesn't matter, you're the chosen one, and will "get around to it." As far as I can tell, there is basically only one ending to any of these Bethesda "RPGs," and no matter what choices you make, you'll find that ending if you slog through enough "quests."
Admittedly, I've never played fallout 1 or 2, though I own them, so I don't actually know if the world building was as detailed as it was in Arena and Daggerfall.
Bethesda has always relied on modders to fix their platforms for them. They don't make games. They make platforms that other people can mod to make the games that they wanted to make.
Starfield itself was a step up from FO4, which almost lacked those entirely. Persuation was heavily used, and some of thr character traits you picked at the start led for unique chat dialogues, some just being extra chatter. But others allowing you to bypass an event because you had x trait.
Imo, Starfield isnt goty by any means, but it was virtually a step up from FO4 in almost all fronts except for exploration. Gunplay was better, rpgness was better, factions are better, customization was better. Skill tree imo was better.
Try BG3, literally everything matters, almost everything is a choice with consequences and i don't even know what the main plot is anymore since I am overwhelmed with possible choices
Oh I will. My current game that I'm waiting on is Cities Skylines 2, but I'll probably pick up BG3 around the New Year.
I'm only watching someone play through but it's just poorly written too. Every single person you meet knows you're the main character and begs for your help.
Not really, many many of them are surprised when you offer to help