Giant Bombcast 664: Kevlar Booty Shorts

Ah, good to hear ol' Vinny "Inverted Cyber" Caravella on the Bombcast.

Gonna go out on a limb here and say if Vinny has to keep asking himself if he’s having any fun playing Cyberpunk.. he’s probably not.

If anyone else like me wants to avoid the Cyberpunk chat until after they've had a chance to play it they stop talking about it at about the 1:14 mark.

@hayt: Thank You!

They really should rename Cyberpunk 2077 to Cyberpunk 2020. Just to really cement what a bummer this year has been and continues to be.

That thumbnail is hilarious.

As somebody who was browsing Giant Bomb Dot Com and saw a glimpse of this thumbnail as I was downloading Destiny 2 on PS5, when you select options you can see the Game Version. You can then select and download either the PS5 version or the PS4 one.

Yeah, I saw the option for "Game" or "Game" and thought "What the hell is this", but Options > Game Version is how you can double check that.

Sincerely,

A person who almost downloaded both versions of Destiny

@meierthered: maybe I'm missing the joke but the property Cyberpunk 2077 is based on _is_ called Cyberpunk 2020. It's from 1990 when that seemed more like future times.

Inverted camera totally makes sense if you played too much flight sim, but I don't buy the camera mount pan handle explanation at all - because if that were the case, you'd invert horizontally too, not just vertical.

ben's cam is on point

Thanks for the thoughtful criticism y'all. Genuinely appreciate hearing you guys give an in depth critique on what works for you and what doesn't. Also let me come down on the side that I don't really care to play it any time soon.

Is this the longest the spent on a game in the podcast? It's nearly half the show. Not complaining just interesting. Going to revisit once I made some progress in it.

Jeff's Cyberpunk-man voice is oddly similar to his "Tobias from Ted's Auto calling in to request a classic rock song on the radio" voice.

Cyberpunk sounds like a game they had a lofty ambitions, but during development, they figured they couldn't hit those aspiration and then just designed the rest of the game to match other existing open world games.

Jason looks so sad the entire time they are talking about Cyberpunk D:

Call me when the theme song is up.

Ben's overlay is great. That is all.

Pro hype tip. Stop announcing games so early! Hype naturally dies down, regardless the product.

The lofty hype for Cyberpunk from all over the place (marketing team, press, fans) spun the game and its expectations so out of control. I'm glad it is out and not delayed yet again actually, just so that phase can be over with.

It sounds like a game I'll have a good time with, but for this entire run up since they've shown it (a few years or so) I've felt sorta out of it looking at the hype when I come across it. I recall the first big E3 demo from a couple years back that the press got and later was released on youtube. I recall Waypoint gushing over it and how brilliant and interesting the game was, and GB's preview was positive but not superlative. Then when it finally came out and I watched it it...looked like a video game. A cool one that I would likely have a good time with, but not so close to the revelation some of the impressions were letting on. If the otherwise same exact game that launches out on Dec. 10th came to the expectation of something closer to... Alpha Protocol? may have been more apt. Hopefully the game pans out in the long run.

Can we all agree that the EULA is not the place to put a potentially life saving seizure warning?

I'm here for the Android: Netrunner jokes

@dan_citi: I mean, I liked Alpha Protocol. If Cyberpunk starts where that game ended, and they take a year or two to correct, update and really fix it? I'd totally take "Cyberpunk is what Alpha Protocol could have been if it had lots of post-launch stuff added and built up." Sounds good to me!

Feel like they were overly harsh on Cyberpunk. But coming from people who disliked Withcer 3 as a whole its not a surprise. W3 is legit one of the best games this gen and 5 years ago most of the staff Dismissed it completely and barely made Top 10.

Not yet all the way through but in the first 30 minutes, man... letting Vinny talk a little more would have been great? Right now every time he says something he gets interrupted it’s really annoying...

I don't know, the game seem really thin and childish. Maybe it is fun, but it sounds underbaked.

Couple more Days.

There definitely needs to be most disappointing goty. Cause this seems like a contender.

Other disappointments being Star Wars: Squadrons, Resident Evil 3, Marvel's Avengers, Super Mario 3D All-Stars, Predator: Hunting Grounds, SUPERHOT: MIND CONTROL DELETE, Torchlight 3, Warcraft III: Reforged.

What a year!!

Couldn't agree more.

Maybe... maybe wait til you try it yourself before judging a game ahead of its release?

And I don't get most disappointing off this conversation. It sounds like a cool game with some flaws, which is the impression Jeff gave yesterday when he discussed having mixed feelings. Maybe disappointing if you hyped yourself to some generation-defining masterpiece. We'll all know soon!

Ben as the doomguy face is good. Ben is good.

@goosemunch said:

I actually don't think it does. My dad is a Cessna private pilot in real life, I've been messing around with flight sims since I was old enough to use a computer, I remember screwing around with Flight Sim 3.0 or 4.0 on our old Acer 286 when I was five years old. I have NEVER used inverted camera and actively hate it. In flight sims, you aren't controlling the camera, you're controlling the plane. I just don't buy "flight sims" as an explanation for preferring inverted controls since I've played them as much as anybody and they were probably my first gaming (if you consider flight sims games, which some hardcore flight simmers don't) experience.

Maybe if you were into console flight sims back in the day it makes more since, I've been a PC gaming guy pretty much my whole life, I don't know if Star Fox on SNES or whatever had inverted controls maybe it makes more since if you're considering that a "flight sim" or if you played Microsoft Flight Sim with a Gravis GamePad or something like a crazy person (and yes I see the irony in that last statement since FS2020 has pretty decent Xbox controller support).

@haz_kaj: Where did you get the idea they disliked W3 as a whole? Brad even went out of his way to mention how much of a good time he had sith the game until he fell off. It was low on the top 10 because nobody got through it.

@csl316: Listening to Jeff, Jeff, and Vinny there hasn't been really any good things said about the game. Bugs can get fixed, but they bring up multiple design and story choices that will not be changed. Also how can one not get hyped for a CD Projekt Red game? Especially a cyberpunk one. Cyberpunk is a rare theme for an action game.

I dont think people should blindly follow what they say about Cyberpunk. Make up your own opinion about the game. Dont think Jeff, atleast, likes these kind of games. Just look at Witcher 3 or RDR2.

While I agree that people definitely should make up their own minds about this game, preferably after having played it, this is nothing like Witcher 3 or RDR2. This is a first person shooter with RPG elements and a strong cyberpunk aesthetic - all things that Jeff has liked in the past. The man has been quoting Neuromancer for 30 years if any open world RPG would ever speak to him it was going to be this game.

I don't think Jeff and main staff are intentionally dumping on the game. It been established that they just don't like how CDPR make their games, and a FPS game with RPG elements didn't change their minds. The Witcher 3 is a classic, but this staff was very jaded about the game during the GOTY discussions after it came out. The metacritic scores seem to show this is another example of the game being loved by most people, except GB and apparently Gamespot.

Its clear that the game is buggy, but I have no doubt that CDPR will clear all this up in time. I also, given their track record, believe they have plenty of additional content they will add to further flush out the world, and for free which is a good deal. And as far as gameplay goes? Gameplay was never CDPR strong suit. I love The Witcher 2 and 3 for its engaging characters, beautiful world, and great story telling, but the combat in both games were mediocre if we are being honest, so this shouldn't surprise anyone in terms of the gameplay lacking.

I will likely wait for it to go on sale before I get it, and I have to wait for the PS5 version before I can get it. I have gaming PC, but not powerful enough to run the game like it should.

@hayt: Thanks! Haven’t listened to this yet, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess this is another game they’re ‘lukewarm’ on as a group. And that’s totally fine, not saying that’s wrong or anything. But personally I’d rather play the game myself first before listening to those impressions. So thanks for the time stamp.

@x4n: in a year with warcraft reforged no other game is a contender for most dissapointing. That game wasn't just dissapointing itself, it made the old version of the game worse! That's like double the dissapointment for the price of 1!

Man, Cyberpunk still seems interesting, but gonna wait for a couple of months and check again if these bugs/annoyances have been fixed. Don't wanna spoil this game to myself by playing it underbaked.

@av_gamer: You say "well they don't like Witcher 3 so they won't like this" but both Jeffs and Vinny have talked about how this game isn't anything like the Witcher and is more GTA with RPG elements.

I'm not sure what I was expecting from Cyberpunk, but it ending up as 'just another' middle of the road open world game is pretty disappointing. Fortunately I still have plenty of other top tier open world games for this gen I'm yet to finish.

@haz_kaj: This game isn't like Witcher 3 according to them. You sound like a conspiracy nut. As if GB has something against CDPR and that they couldn't possibly like their games. It looks embarrassing on your part.

Honestly sounds like Deus Ex: HR is the better game. It's stable, it has good writing, it isn't overstuffed, the specing is meaningful. Maybe just replay that instead!

You know, Henry Cavil for Liquid Snake wouldn't be the worst choice, or Tom Hiddleston???

I will just say, if The Rock isn't Vulcan Raven I will be very disappointed, he is both Giant and Shaman and already has been shown carrying around a mini gun in the fast and furious movies.

Not much of a joke, but 2020 equals a shitshow. Cyberpunk 2077 sound like a mediocre bummer. So remove the 77 replace it with 20 and we arrive at 2020, a continuous bummer from start to i assume finish by the looks of things.

@av_gamer: Seems kind of ambitious to trust metacritic scores over open discussion about the game imo. Track records lean far more heavily toward general critic scores overblowing a games quality in my opinion. And it's not like CDPR is on that much of a winning streak. They released the Witcher 3, but if time has told us anything it's that no developer in infallible. Witcher 2 was a good game within the genre but nowhere near as defining of a game and it took an overhaul to fix in the enhanced edition. Witcher 1 was good but again not that amazing. Fans seem to act like one game sets a track record of outstanding success for CDPR when in general they typically make decent to good rpgs that require a lot of fixes to be in it's best state. Which is lining up with what the guys here are describing.

From the sounds of it, the team does understand what people enjoy about the Witcher despite it not being as impactful for them. And they've pretty clearly said that so far they haven't found those same things people look for in the Witcher in this game. The "there's no bloody baron here" is pretty much the most telling sentence I've heard about the game so far. Seems best to temper our expectations at cyberpunk being the on the same level as the Witcher. Especially with all the talk of how generic and interchangeable the side mission interactions are sounding by the guys' descriptions. We'll see I suppose though.

Also correct me if I'm wrong didn't Vinny play the Witcher the following year after it's release and mention it during their games of the previous year that didn't get enough talk the year before award? Not sure where this story of "oh they hate the Witcher" comes from. Brad and Vinny liked it. Brad didn't finish it but pretty sure Vinny did. The team almost fully agreed that the bloody baron was one of the best story moments of the release year. Jeff is really the main one that couldn't get past the gameplay issues he had with it, but he typically holds gameplay annoyances more strictly in deciding to play a game.

Feels like people are remembering that nobody finished it for the goty awards and didn't make it number one and are assuming everyone on the team dislikes it.

I just want to point out that episode 666 will be the same week as Christmas.