Cyberpunk 2077 [split from video games]

[sifth]

On 12/31/2020 at 6:52 PM, Werthead said:

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Also, based on CDPR's previous modus operandi, it's not likely that decisions made in this game will be carried forward into sequels. Choices in The Witcher 1 into The Witcher 2 into The Witcher 3 were relatively minor, coming down to whether 3-4 characters show up again or not. CP77 is also not the first game in a trilogy, as Mass Effect very much was.

Very true, and as was the case in The Witcher 3, all of the major choices that did carry over got to be remade in that game. Basically Geralt takes a bath and you're asked by a random guy "what choices from the last came would you like to carry over". That being said, the amount of player choice given to you in The Witcher 3 itself is bigger than Cyberpunk 2077 by far. Screwing up certain story beats can very easily get characters killed, all the while you believing you're doing the right thing. The game really teaches you to pay attention to everything involved in every quest and more often than not, you're forced to choose what you believe is the lessor of two evils.

Wrex isn't the only major character, who's death has a major effect on the plot, if you kill him off early. Mordin is another big one, if you get him killed in the sequel and Legion and Tali as well. The Mass Effect series isn't perfect, because their are certain choices that don't have major effects on the plot, like the one made at the end of the second game, despite the game giving the illusion that it will, but a lot does carry over, which is great for interactive story telling.

As for any DLC for Cypberpunk 2077, I'd be shocked if anything story related happens past the point of the no return. Unlike The Witcher 3, this game does not return you to the open world map after beating the game and the game firmly tells you, that "if you go beyond this point, you're going to end your game". If we ever do see a continuation of V's story beyond one of the 5 endings we got, it will most likely be in a sequel. Even then I'd be shocked if V returned as the main character of Cyberpunk 2078 or whatever the game is called, given the nature of the ending. I honestly doubt the games ending will have any major effects on the sequel either and any ones it does have, will be allowed to be made in the game, like the Witcher 3 did them.

[Ran]

On 1/1/2021 at 12:52 AM, Werthead said:

100%ed Heywood and City Centre. Might as well do all of the districts in the game now, although I'm puzzled why Pacifica is showing as all missions completed but not 100% done.

Noticed that. There's a Reddit thread suggesting you may need to read through some shards you picked up that will trigger the reveal of the last such gig, while others say going to V's apartment and sleeping 16 hours somehow fixes it. Haven't tried either yet, but in fact after clearing out a bunch and switching the map legends to "open world" only, I ended up spotting the gig right around where the big stadium is in Pacifica. Might be worth going to it and circling round to see if you can find it, if you don't see it on a map.

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Has anyone else ridden the roller coaster in Pacifica? It's quite amusing.

Yeah. Got a nice photo of a smiling Johnny Silverhand as a rocket blasts off into orbit.

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I rounded off a few more missions (finally met Brendan the Vending Machine, and the zen master)

I've seen little discussion of the zen master, whose appearances are a really surprising sort of peaceful interlude between everything else you're doing

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The Mass Effect choices are more major than that. Kaiden and Williams are very different characters with different roles later in the trilogy (although they never come back as full-time companion characters, they are both romance options and they both have associated quests in ME3).

Sure, but the point is that in the first game the fan wiki suggests that the choice isn't that important. I checked around on Google and people talked about taking Kaiden just because he was most useful in combat situations (according to them), so... I don't know, great that two games later they made something bigger of it, but, I mean, you can already make choices regarding who lives or dies among NPCs in a way that can have some ramifications to the world, if not necessarily your personal story.

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Also, based on CDPR's previous modus operandi, it's not likely that decisions made in this game will be carried forward into sequels. Choices in The Witcher 1 into The Witcher 2 into The Witcher 3 were relatively minor, coming down to whether 3-4 characters show up again or not.

Assuming V is the lead of a follow-up game, hard to see how the various endings don't give some rather substantial differences regarding the character and his acquaintances. A couple of years ago they spoke of having three separate teams working on CP2077 projects, which an executive suggested included a "sequel", although there was some pushback on that. Regardless, they're definitely working on some sort of follow-up games, and I can't help but imagine an outright sequel is part of their plans.

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CP77 is also not the first game in a trilogy, as Mass Effect very much was.

No, but OTOH, CP2077 is very clearly envisioned as a second major franchise for CDPR, alongside The Witcher, in a way that I suspect The Witcher itself never was when they were a small company with an obscure property that just happened to do well enough to justify developing follow-ups and turning it into a franchise. Cyberpunk 2077 was not developed with the idea of being a one-off, and I assume this includes that the story itself is something that can and probably will be continued at some point.

[Werthead]

2 hours ago, Ran said:

No, but OTOH, CP2077 is very clearly envisioned as a second major franchise for CDPR, alongside The Witcher, in a way that I suspect The Witcher itself never was when they were a small company with an obscure property that just happened to do well enough to justify developing follow-ups and turning it into a franchise. Cyberpunk 2077 was not developed with the idea of being a one-off, and I assume this includes that the story itself is something that can and probably will be continued at some point.

I'm really not sold on that. I think their view is that this is much more like Fallout or The Elder Scrolls where each game takes place in the same world but won't necessarily be a continuation of the story, and the most you'll get is vague background references to the events of the game. "Remember that time Arasaka went crazy for a couple of weeks in 2077 and Samurai reformed for like one show? Weird."

There is a slight difference in that Night City is arguably the most unique location in the CP mythos, so whilst you can go to lots of other places, arguably Night City is the most iconic place in the world and they may feel compelled to revisit it rather than taking the story to Seattle or New York or London.

Even The Witcher is now going to be more of a shared world thing going forwards (The Witcher 4 - which won't be called that - won't have Geralt has the main character, though it's unclear if you'll be creating your own or how they'll address the wildly divergent endings of The Witcher 3).

[sifth]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Even The Witcher is now going to be more of a shared world thing going forwards (The Witcher 4 - which won't be called that - won't have Geralt has the main character, though it's unclear if you'll be creating your own or how they'll address the wildly divergent endings of The Witcher 3).

Was that ever confirmed or just rumor based? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy if it is true, because the Witcher 3 is the perfect ending point for Geralt's story, the Blood and Wine DLC in particular. I'd also love if Ciri got her own game, because she's such a fun and interesting character in the third game.

[Ran]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

Night City is the most iconic place in the world

Indeed. And they spent masses of effort, dev time, and resources in building the most complicated, lived-in, dense city in any similar game. The idea that they'd do anything other than use the same location, especially when most of the focus and lore of the source material was on it, is crazy to me.

I think it'll be pretty clear to them that those who've played the game through are largely hoping to continue through with V (assuming that's how their game ended up) rather than starting fresh with a different character. There's a draw to a continuing story, and I can certainly see ways of them incorporating most of the differing endings into a continuation.

[Fez]

On 12/31/2020 at 9:05 PM, sifth said:

As for any DLC for Cypberpunk 2077, I'd be shocked if anything story related happens past the point of the no return. Unlike The Witcher 3, this game does not return you to the open world map after beating the game and the game firmly tells you, that "if you go beyond this point, you're going to end your game". If we ever do see a continuation of V's story beyond one of the 5 endings we got, it will most likely be in a sequel. Even then I'd be shocked if V returned as the main character of Cyberpunk 2078 or whatever the game is called, given the nature of the ending. I honestly doubt the games ending will have any major effects on the sequel either and any ones it does have, will be allowed to be made in the game, like the Witcher 3 did them.

The Witcher 3 post-game was technically after the ending, but functionally it was the same as CP2077. The world-state was the same as it was before the ending, and if you still have quests to complete they all refer (if they do at all) to the Wild Hunt as something still ongoing. You're in the same world you were before in both games. And the CP2077 isn't a complete rewind either, there is some flag in your save file since you unlock an additional inventory item that you didn't have before the ending. CDPR could definitely use that flag to trigger unlocking an expansion opening quest; and if you went to it on the map there could even be a pop-up saying this quest takes place after the ending.

7 hours ago, Ran said:

Yeah. Got a nice photo of a smiling Johnny Silverhand as a rocket blasts off into orbit.

Assuming V is the lead of a follow-up game, hard to see how the various endings don't give some rather substantial differences regarding the character and his acquaintances. A couple of years ago they spoke of having three separate teams working on CP2077 projects, which an executive suggested included a "sequel", although there was some pushback on that. Regardless, they're definitely working on some sort of follow-up games, and I can't help but imagine an outright sequel is part of their plans.

No, but OTOH, CP2077 is very clearly envisioned as a second major franchise for CDPR, alongside The Witcher, in a way that I suspect The Witcher itself never was when they were a small company with an obscure property that just happened to do well enough to justify developing follow-ups and turning it into a franchise. Cyberpunk 2077 was not developed with the idea of being a one-off, and I assume this includes that the story itself is something that can and probably will be continued at some point.

I apparently hit a bug that prevented the roller coaster mission from unlocking; very annoying. And since I wasn't using a guide I didn't even know the mission existed. But at least it's something new to see on my replay.

As for other CP2077 projects, we know the next big one is the standalone online multiplayer game. Hopefully if it is super successful it doesn't cause CDPR to go the way of Rockstar and functionally stop making single player games. I think The Witcher 4 is probably the next game after that, which would mean any next story-based CP2077 game might be 8+ years away.

 

4 hours ago, Werthead said:

There is a slight difference in that Night City is arguably the most unique location in the CP mythos, so whilst you can go to lots of other places, arguably Night City is the most iconic place in the world and they may feel compelled to revisit it rather than taking the story to Seattle or New York or London.

Seattle seems like it would stepping too much on Shadowrun's turf. I wasn't familiar with the Cyberpunk 2020/2077 universe prior to this game though, so I don't know where else might be interesting. Tokyo maybe? If they wanted  a true sequel and focused more on Arasaka directly.

[Ran]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

I apparently hit a bug that prevented the roller coaster mission from unlocking; very annoying. And since I wasn't using a guide I didn't even know the mission existed. But at least it's something new to see on my replay.

Oh, that's a shame. I had an issue with positioning to get the action to repair it, but managed after some fiddling.

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As for other CP2077 projects, we know the next big one is the standalone online multiplayer game. Hopefully if it is super successful it doesn't cause CDPR to go the way of Rockstar and functionally stop making single player games. I think The Witcher 4 is probably the next game after that, which would mean any next story-based CP2077 game might be 8+ years away.

Yeah, it'll be a wait, I guess. They'll want to try and strike while the iron is hot with The Witcher, thanks to Netflix and all. But I can wait to revisit Night City in a sequel, especially if there's some good DLC.

They really should listen to all the people wanting a DREDD-inspired gauntlet through a megabuilding. Megabuilding H4 is supposedly completely forbidden because of a bioterrorism attack or something. Imagine finding out that in reality a rogue AI sent a virus through the building, turning everyone into cyberpsychotics, and that's why it's locked down... and why they might want a badass like V to get in and sort things out. Having to clear level by level, finding different gangs of cyberpsychos formed by the rogue AI, would be fun for an action-focused DLC. 

A couple of fun links: 

Cyberpunk 404 is basically a fashion catalog of clothing in the game. Presently just female clothing, though I hope they expand it to male clothing.

Shards of Cyberpunk 2077 has tried to collect all the shard texts in an interface similar to the game. Some typos from, I guess, manual entry or dodgy OCRing, but still, a nice way to try and work through stuff, especially the world-building material. It would be nice if they added some tags to explain which missions or assault locations various transcripts relate to. I believe one of the wikis may be doing that.

[sifth]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

The Witcher 3 post-game was technically after the ending, but functionally it was the same as CP2077. The world-state was the same as it was before the ending, and if you still have quests to complete they all refer (if they do at all) to the Wild Hunt as something still ongoing. You're in the same world you were before in both games. And the CP2077 isn't a complete rewind either, there is some flag in your save file since you unlock an additional inventory item that you didn't have before the ending. CDPR could definitely use that flag to trigger unlocking an expansion opening quest; and if you went to it on the map there could even be a pop-up saying this quest takes place after the ending.

 

The world is more or less the same, but both Witcher 3 DLC's can be played before or after the games story, with different outcomes in effect. For example at the end of Blood and Wine.

 

Empress Ciri can visit you, this does not happen if you do Blood and Wine before beating the game. Same with Heart of Stone. You can ask Gaunter O'Dimm to help you find Ciri, if you stay loyal to him and do the DLC before the ending; you can't do this if you do the DLC after beating the game.

 

Simply put though, The Witcher 3 doesn't have a "point of no return"; it's a lot like Red Dead Redeption 2 in that regard. Both games do open world story telling better than this game, IMO

[Werthead]

100%ed Pacific (good tip on the map there), Westbrook and Santa Domingo. Oddly, Watson is now showing as not 100% despite, again, all the icons vanishing. A few Google searches turn up a couple of ideas on how to get the last few missions to trigger.

Think I'm just about ready to do the last mission. The only niggling thing left undone is the cars. I have one vehicle left to buy but I'm 100,000 eddies short and with all other missions, gigs and crimes resolved, the only way to make money now is to randomly wander around wiping out spawned gangmembers or wait for street muggings to auto-generate, and that's going to take a while.

1 hour ago, Ran said:

Indeed. And they spent masses of effort, dev time, and resources in building the most complicated, lived-in, dense city in any similar game. The idea that they'd do anything other than use the same location, especially when most of the focus and lore of the source material was on it, is crazy to me.

Plenty of games have done that though. The world map in Red Dead Redemption 2 is more impressive and it's mind-boggling how much of it (especially the entire south-western third or so, effectively a redo of the Red Dead Redemption 1 map) is barely used for missions or optional activities. That's thousands of hours of development for, as far as I can tell, no particular reason other than atmosphere. GTA5 was the same, though they did get a bit more mileage out of it for the online game. Watch_Dogs 2's map of San Francisco is extremely impressive and again there's vast swathes of it where there aren't any activities or missions, it's just there for people to wander around.

I'd also hesitate to call Night City's map the most complicated/lived-in, dense city map of any game though. I think GTA5 and maybe even GTA4 have it licked on that score. There are a few shortcuts in the city design and map that reminded me way more of the GTA3-era cities in that series. Night City isn't quite as convincing as a modern/futuristic city as Novigrad and Beauclair were as medieval cities in The Witcher 3 (where they were and remain best-in-class) and it's certainly absolutely nowhere near big enough to be convincing for what it's trying to be. It's a great-looking city and cool to travel around, but as a city of 8 million people it's far too small (and there aren't enough megablocks to make up for the fact the city has no suburbs at all).

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Was that ever confirmed or just rumor based? Don't get me wrong, I'm happy if it is true, because the Witcher 3 is the perfect ending point for Geralt's story, the Blood and Wine DLC in particular. I'd also love if Ciri got her own game, because she's such a fun and interesting character in the third game

Yeah, they've been saying it for a while without formally announcing it as such. They've said they're making a new Witcher game but it won't be about Geralt, his story is done. It'll be set in the same world and they won't call it The Witcher 4.

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I apparently hit a bug that prevented the roller coaster mission from unlocking; very annoying. And since I wasn't using a guide I didn't even know the mission existed. But at least it's something new to see on my replay.

I don't think there's a mission related to the roller coaster. I just went there because it looked cool (there's a crime mission that takes place underneath it) and I remember one of the trailers had you riding it. You have to repair it to make it work, which I know some people had trouble with (like Ran above). 

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Simply put though, The Witcher 3 doesn't have a "point of no return"; it's a lot like Red Dead Redeption 2 in that regard. Both games do open world story telling better than this game, IMO

RDR2 does kind of.

Spoiler

Depending on if you want to try to 100% the game as much as possible with Arthur or are willing to wait until the post-epilogue to finish off the optional stuff.

 

[sifth]

9 minutes ago, Werthead said:

RDR2 does kind of.

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Depending on if you want to try to 100% the game as much as possible with Arthur or are willing to wait until the post-epilogue to finish off the optional stuff.

 

 

I mean with RDR2 it's a choice, but

playing as either Arthur or John doesn't lock you out of any side quests. In fact I think there's a handful that can only be completed by John.

I also think RDR2 does a much better job of telling a story about a doomed protagonist  than Cyberpunk 2077. For starters we don't learn about Arthur's condition until  over 2/3's of the way through the game, which didn't make side quests feel silly and a waste of time, like they did for V. Not sure why V would go on silly missions for money, when he/she only has a few days left to live. In RDR2's case, most of the Act 6 side quests are designed around Arthur trying to do some good with his life, knowing that he himself will soon be dead, one of my personal favorites is the one in which he teaches a lady who's husband recently died how to hunt and survive in the wild. Arthur also has 20% less health after he finds out about his condition and his character model looks noticeably more skinny.

[Werthead]

Ah, I figured out the problem with Watson.

Spoiler

The street conspiracy nut has a mission he can give you, you've got to go and listen to him a few times and make dialogue choices to trigger it.

 

[Kalbear]

I emphatically love this game - which likely means I would have loved rdr2 and gta5 - and this game also makes me desperately long for shadowrun set in Seattle with this level of detail and rpg mechanics. 

[Werthead]

2 minutes ago, Kalbear Total Landscaping said:

I emphatically love this game - which likely means I would have loved rdr2 and gta5 - and this game also makes me desperately long for shadowrun set in Seattle with this level of detail and rpg mechanics. 

The Shadowrun Returns trilogy is excellent, but yes, not remotely operating on this scale.

[Fez]

46 minutes ago, sifth said:

Simply put though, The Witcher 3 doesn't have a "point of no return";

I understand that. My point is that wandering around as Geralt or as V after finishing the final mission is functionally the same; the only difference is that V can do the final mission again if you want. But even so, the save file definitely has a flag indicating you beat the final mission.

There is no reason CDPR couldn't do a post-ending expansion if they wanted; the conditions are the same.

[sifth]

58 minutes ago, Fez said:

I understand that. My point is that wandering around as Geralt or as V after finishing the final mission is functionally the same; the only difference is that V can do the final mission again if you want. But even so, the save file definitely has a flag indicating you beat the final mission.

There is no reason CDPR couldn't do a post-ending expansion if they wanted; the conditions are the same.

I just don't see how it's possible, given how vastly different all of the endings are. This game wrote itself into a corner with that point of no returner, basically saying "we might add story driven content in the future, but V's story will never advance beyond this point as far as the ending goes". Mass Effect 3 had a similar issue with it's point of no return and surprise, surprise non of it's story driven DLC took place after the final mission of the game. I mean who knows, maybe I'm wrong and this game will get a FF:XIV level face lift, stranger things have happened.

[Werthead]

5 minutes ago, sifth said:

I just don't see how it's possible, given how vastly different all of the endings are. This game wrote itself into a corner with that point of no returner, basically saying "we might add story driven content in the future, but V's story will never advance beyond this point as far as the ending goes". Mass Effect 3 had a similar issue with it's point of no return and surprise, surprise non of it's story driven DLC took place after the final mission of the game. I mean who knows, maybe I'm wrong and this game will get a FF:XIV level face lift, stranger things have happened.

Possibly a more likely comparison is Fallout 3's expansion Broken Steel which re-set you to the end of the last mission and allowed you to make a new choice that lead into the DLC, effectively retconning the original ending. Although the original ending to Fallout 3 was pure bullshit and Bethesda were sent scrambling to fix it, which isn't really the case (so it seems) with CP77.

This, at least, is a moot point because we'll get the answer within a few months  

[sifth]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Possibly a more likely comparison is Fallout 3's expansion Broken Steel which re-set you to the end of the last mission and allowed you to make a new choice that lead into the DLC, effectively retconning the original ending. Although the original ending to Fallout 3 was pure bullshit and Bethesda were sent scrambling to fix it, which isn't really the case (so it seems) with CP77.

This, at least, is a moot point because we'll get the answer within a few months  

I nearly forgot about Fallout 3's DLC. It's honestly one of the bravest things I've ever seen put in a video game. The fact that a studio 100% addressed the fact that they screwed up the ending to the game and made a DLC that exists mostly just to fix and improve it. It truly remains one of a kind and I fully support any studio willing to do something as brave and innovating like that.

[Fez]

32 minutes ago, sifth said:

I just don't see how it's possible, given how vastly different all of the endings are. This game wrote itself into a corner with that point of no returner, basically saying "we might add story driven content in the future, but V's story will never advance beyond this point as far as the ending goes". Mass Effect 3 had a similar issue with it's point of no return and surprise, surprise non of it's story driven DLC took place after the final mission of the game. I mean who knows, maybe I'm wrong and this game will get a FF:XIV level face lift, stranger things have happened.

As I said much earlier this thread, 

Spoiler

 

Have it be set on the Crystal Palace space station. In the Johnny/Rogue ending, V's headed there already; not too hard to setup an excuse for Nomad ending V and Arasaka ending V to go there as well. The V suicide ending, V an Arasaka engram ending, and Johnny gets Vs body endings would need to get cut off. However, 1) I strongly suspect very few people are going for any of those endings, and 2) There is precedent for CDPR to ignore endings. Geralt could die at the end of TW3 main game, but if you did you didn't get to do the expansions as post-game content.

The expansion would need to have variation at the start, and likely at the end, but most of the content could be the same for everyone. Just Blood & Wine was mostly the same experience for everyone, until the ending.

 

 

[sifth]

41 minutes ago, Fez said:

As I said much earlier this thread, 

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Have it be set on the Crystal Palace space station. In the Johnny/Rogue ending, V's headed there already; not too hard to setup an excuse for Nomad ending V and Arasaka ending V to go there as well. The V suicide ending, V an Arasaka engram ending, and Johnny gets Vs body endings would need to get cut off. However, 1) I strongly suspect very few people are going for any of those endings, and 2) There is precedent for CDPR to ignore endings. Geralt could die at the end of TW3 main game, but if you did you didn't get to do the expansions as post-game content.

The expansion would need to have variation at the start, and likely at the end, but most of the content could be the same for everyone. Just Blood & Wine was mostly the same experience for everyone, until the ending.

 

 

I suppose it could work if you completely change the setting. I still don't see it happening, but I'll admit that it's at least possible if nothing else.

[Werthead]

Yeah,

Spoiler

the space station is a good shout for a DLC. It can be somewhat self-contained and it would fit the original Cyberpunk P&P lore, where the very first expansion after the Night City-focused base book was about the orbital stations. Also, the spaceport is in the game map but you can't reach it, which seems odd.

The other thing I think they're doing is a map expansion to the north. There's a weird bit of the map you can't drive through, between the oil fields north of the city and the north-eastern part of the Badlands (where the Nomads move their camp later in the game). You can't short cut through there, you have to go right around which is rather annoying. If you do try to drive through a message comes up saying, "Turn around, there's nothing out there...yet."