Cyberpunk is open-world for the same reason every other open-world is, to let players choose from a variety of activities beyond the main campaign.

Rockstar's games have a ton of detail put into their worlds but they do come at a cost not only are they very expensive to make, but the missions within are often very tighly scripted with very little player expression.

The Rockstar comparison just seems odd considering Night City is built with a much different goal in mind.

@colourful_hippie: I am genuinely curious as to how you would make a Cyberpunk game in 2020 and not have it be open world. Like...what would that game even be? Maybe something like the 360 Syndicate game? The game is in an open world because that's how Bethesda RPGs always are. That's how almost all RPGs are at this point, with a few JRPGs as rare counterexamples (and even they almost all have open world elements.)

Both Cyberpunk and L.A. Noire use the open world for atmosphere much more than gameplay and I don't think that's a bad thing. Games have been doing that for a long time. Even the old Tex Murphy adventure games (which conveniently split the genre difference) had open world elements back in 1994 for this reason.

It's not just a matter of ogling at the cool futuristic city it's enabling you to actually role play a merc in Night City. How would you even design a game remotely like this without that element?

Note that the game does have some sequences that are more or less non-open world corridor shooter stuff and...they're kind of empowering and not terrible by any means but man do I not wish the whole game was like that.

I wish the open world was better but even as limited as it is there's no better option for a game like this.

@bigsocrates: I would love for them to make a followup to the Syndicate reboot they made. Not only was it a really fun action ride that hit all the fun "cyberpunk" notes it also had a surprisingly fun co-op multiplayer component that I spent a ton of time playing. Talking about quirky multiplayer.. I also wish they brought back Assassins Creed multiplayer as well which was not only incredibly unique but also a ton of fun.

@humanity: The Syndicate game was good, but it sold badly and if they tried that in 2020...man I can imagine how that would go. Plus it's not the kind of game CDPR makes so it would be a tough sell with the fanbase, and I think it's not a great use of the Cyberpunk 2077 license. It would be like making a linear action D&D game. They've tried that in the past but those are not the D&D games that people want or remember for the most part. And making a linear action game without making an RPG first would seem odd.

@bigsocrates: The two recent Deus Ex games should be pretty obvious comparisons of another route to go that isn't just open world.

Also I'm not arguing for Cyberpunk to not be an open world. I'm just coming to the realization that this game's open world is fairly shallow and not at all what I would have expected to be like from the people who made Witcher 3

@bigsocrates: No, no I'm not saying CDPR make the sequel.. God no.. Preferrably Starbreeze give it another go. I don't think CDPR would be very good at making an action game. The gunplay in Cyberpunk is good enough but of all their talents I think gameplay is actually their weakest link. I liked Witcher 3 but I don't think the combat or world interactions were particularly good in that game. People will say "but like.. you had to play it on the higher difficulties to like fully make use of the potions etc.." but in reality the simple act of swinging your sword and dodging always felt really stiff. Cyberpunk is a fairly competant first person shooter, and for whats it's worth I think the gunplay here is a lot more up to modern standards than Witchers third person melee ever got to, but it's also nothing to write home about.

@colourful_hippie: I'll be honest I'm not sure I see what Witcher 3 had that would make you think so. It was a very pretty world to look at but it was the same style of interaction as in this game except Geralt could never afford a cell phone.

@efesell: At risk of repeating myself I found the open world of Witcher 3 more compelling because of the kind of side stuff I would stumble upon just by exploring the environment. I'm 20 hours into Cyberpunk and I haven't gotten that impression at all. Maybe I'll find something more compelling in hour 30 that wasn't just handed to me at random just from driving on a highway. I guess bigsocrates point of the maybe the side stuff just isn't that good will be how I eventually feel too.

And I get that, just like RDR2, you can also water down the open world experience in Witcher 3 by going to straight to a town, scooping up all the notice board contracts, and go straight to each icon on the map. That's just not how I played.

I'm clearly looking for something else in an open world game than some people in here. That said this isn't deterring me from playing the game at all. Like with Jeff, the main story will more than likely be the carrot on the stick to keep me going. Also the shooting has been more compelling than initially expected after getting some new guns. I put in some more hours and just completed the Disasterpiece mission after the recent hotfix dropped so I'll see how long this goes before a weird bug crops up.

Hm, fair enough.

Very different approaches I guess. I don't think I found anything in The Witcher 3 organically I found it because I was following another ? mark on a map, and then another one after.

@colourful_hippie: A Deus Ex pseudo open world thing could work I guess but...I don't know.

I agree with all your criticisms about the side missions and everything. I'm totally on board with the various problems the game has in terms of both what the content is and how it's presented.

But for me the open world itself adds just a ton of atmosphere to the game. It's not that there's a ton to do in it, it's that zipping around on a motorcycle in between missions helps the pacing, and I like just listening to the soundtrack and cruising around taking in the sights. I like going up into some anonymous building and seeing there's a whole internal area, or going to the roofs in pursuit of tarot cards. Or going to a ripperdoc after I collect a fat stack of cash to see what new cyberware I can get with my improved street cred and having to go down some weird side alley to visit them.

I just think the open world adds a ton to the feel and pacing of the game, even though yeah, in terms of side stuff it's pretty boring and repetitive and presented in the worst possible way (it would be much better if there were like a total of 4 fixers who gave you contracts and you got to know them, though you do get to know Wakako a little bit and you can visit her and chat.)

I think that the L.A. Noire open world was much less interesting both because there was literally nothing to do in it (at least Cyberpunk makes an attempt at side content and there are a few good, if brief, missions) and because it was just blocks and blocks of realistic city instead of Cyberpunk's much more aesthetically interesting city.

I've put the game on hold for a few weeks. No doubt it will be much better in the coming months

This would make me do a 180 on how I would feel about the game's open world if they had this kind of thing. It would also make me even more engaged with the story if this was how Act 1 played out. I want to know more about Wakako and what she is like. Maybe she's fleshed out more later in the game versus being a convenient source of information you quickly talk to and leave. V and Wakako also act like they have a bunch of history between each other which feels foreign to me because all of those introductions were sped through in the montage but I feel like the choice CDPR made in how Act 1 turned out to be was a result of meeting a deadline. I wanted to meet these other fixers that crop up while driving around the city some other way than being cold called on my phone.

Oh well. I really hope CDPR makes it through the other side of this mess in a position to build on what they accomplished with this game or maybe that kind of thing could be put in the world through future expansions? That would be a big surprise for me though.

@colourful_hippie: I totally agree that the game would be better if they fleshed this stuff out. I will say that there are a fair number of side quests that you get directly from characters you meet during the main story and not through a fixer, and they tend to be more elaborate chains of quests and can be pretty interesting, but they are not the kinds of quests you stumble on in the open world, they all come in through phone calls or texts (there's a real lack of imagination in the way that phone calls, texts, and freaking EMAILS are the main form of communication in 60 years, and nobody uses emoji or anything, but whatever).

There are a ton of locked doors in Night City so my hope is that when CD Projekt Red does its Blood & Wine for Cyberpunk it does it within the same city (with maybe some discrete locations you can visit) and really focuses on fleshing stuff out rather than moving us to another location that will be even more sparsely populated due to lack of time. There's a ton of unused space in the city and if they focused on both storytelling and making the city feel more lively they could create something really special.

I really like this game and am enjoying it. I have put in a little over 100 hours and I am in the middle of act 2. It reminds me of Deus Ex (2000) in that there are multiple ways to accomplish missions and is narrative intensive at the same time. I love the gameplay loop of completing side content and improving your character with new perks, cybernetics, and loot. I usually don’t like loot based shooting ( e.g. borderlands), but I like this because it is tied to an interesting narrative. Otherwise it would feel aimless. Although, I wish you had more choices that affect how the story branches, and more meaningful side quests that tied into the main story more, as well as being able to get some quests through quest givers out in the world.

Disturbing content warning below (minor spoilers)

I am experiencing a bug where sometimes when driving V will appear T posing above her vehicle and is fully naked from the waist down. Is anyone else getting this bug? It is pretty far out. I am playing on the pc.

Finally got back to playing the game instead of just talking about it...and I'd like to lead with some positive thoughts!

For one, the game is clearly gorgeous even if I'm looking at it through a vomit filter. I did finally take the oft-suggested path of disabling all the graphical filters, though I've left HDR on as I think I prefer the softer look even if I can't totally tell what's different other than the image just being a bit more dull. As I've started taking bridges to different islands and getting out of the starting area's comfort zone, I agree with @bigsocrates - the scope and depth of the world is its point, I just wish the traversal of this world weren't so shallow.

Secondly, something I said early on in this thread has rung true - there are some truly stupid, Outer Worlds-style weapons in this game like the Lizzie pistol and Cottonmouth club that pop some really silly effects, tear through enemies and have really helped balance out the unintentional comedy of the game's performance with some clearly intentional comedy in its combat.

Lastly, the performances on both ends vary but I'm generally enjoying the "Fight Club, But Narrator Knows He's Tyler" aspect of the main story and I'm starting to agree more with people who think there's a little more to V in private than he projects through most of the game. It's a tonal whiplash, sure, but there's a deeply insecure side to V that's at least interesting...

All that aside, couldn't we just have called him Vincent this entire time?! If the reason for "V" is never explained and I have to assume it's just to let the gender of the character be fluid, add it to the list of weird things it seems like the developers could have spent just a little more time on and found a more satisfying solution...like calling the character "Vic" for either "Victor" or "Victoria" as just one example...

Also, this game breaks profoundly in some really inspired ways. Enemies lost in walls, cutscenes completely changing settings mid-scene, false walls giving way to open spaces and open spaces giving way to true walls. I've had corpses suddenly becoming solid rock a van can't surpass, I've lost my ability to crouch completely for several minutes, I've had the graphical flourish when Johnny pops into the world linger long after he's gone, warping the minimap and HUD permanently until I make a hard save and reload, I had a moment in an elevator with Johnny that was so sudden and jarring in its load that it crashed the PS4 two times in a row...

And all that is on top of more fundamental problems I'm still having with the game. I hate that the difficulty/surmountability of a given side quest is completely obscured and there's no way to tell if you can handle it or not. I stumbled onto a rooftop murder scene in a part of town that I'd done other combat stuff nearby without issue, but these guys were taking me out in two or three hits. Likewise, it's stealth system is beyond frustrating - I was having a lot of fun being clever and uncovering clues sneakily on my first visit to a certain joytoy club...until I was lured into a single hallway by the promise of some blue loot and immediately trespassed/alerted the guards/had to kill everyone. I suppose seasoned PC gamers would argue that's what reloading a quick save is for, but I've always been an Abby - my save is my save and that's all that it is! ™ Popeye

But, yea, finishing up the side gigs and odd jobs I could do and getting back to the main story has me remembering, performance issues aside, how generally into this game I was on my first night with it. I don't expect it to fully redeem or excuse itself, but combine the silly weapons with my first time experiencing a game this level of broken and I'd say CP2077 is a novel experience I'm glad to be having at the end of the day and probably won't take Sony up on their refund, even if morally speaking I feel like that'd be the correct thing to do.

That's...an RPG. You've described a western style RPG. That's the same loop we've been seeing for decades with these kinds of games. Not that there's anything wrong with it, but I find it odd how people are acting like "looter shooters" or even Diablo invented the idea of killing enemies to get loot. Certainly the color scheme stuff and the amount and random variety of loot was innovated on by Diablo, but I also have to say that I think the game mostly does that poorly. There are some interesting and unique weapons, as @nodima says, but the vast majority of guns are just "this is like literally hundreds of other rifles you've picked up except it does 3 less damage" and the game needs a better junk system to handle all that. Encumbrance hasn't been a problem because I specced to be able to carry a lot, but after every big combat mission I need to spend like five minutes just breaking down stuff into crafting components, and so many games have done this better in the past. At least the inventory system has some decent sorting options so you can just break down all your low DPS weapons immediately, but I'd honestly rather have less differentiation in guns and just find a better gun every few hours or whatever instead of this shower of multicolored crafting trash.

The mission you mentioned is...a lot. This game has a lot of very edgy material and I'm kind of shocked it didn't get an AO, especially given that you can get multiple graphic first person sex scenes. Remember the scandal that was "Hot Coffee"? Yeah, we're very much past that point with the ESRB right now. But the game's treatment of women in general is not good.

@nodima: The V. thing is 100% absolutely so they didn't have to record different versions of each line. They could have gone with a gender neutral name like "Vic" or "Sam" or whatever, but I think they also wanted to depersonalize the character a little to let the player project more onto them. I think it was probably a decision made back when they wanted to give you more control over your character's personality and actions, but it's clear this game was made more linear during development, probably because the scope was wildly out of control regarding what could be delivered.

I'm starting to feel like Edgy is a term losing all meaning for me.

@bigsocrates: There is a good quote by Warren Spector about Deus Ex that goes something like ‘If they judge us purely on stealth, we’re dead. Thief and Metal Gear do it much better. If they judge us purely on shooting we’re dead. Half life does it much better. If they judge us purely on role playing we are dead. Baldur’s Gate does it so much better. But if they judge us on the whole experience, maybe we stand a chance.’ I couldn’t find the exact quote, but this should be close enough. I think this sentiment applies to Cyberpunk too.

@robertforster: I've had it happen but not the pantless part. It seems to be common.

@nodima:Uhh you might want to reconsider that one save YOLO life you got going, bud. I updated the OP with the information.

I think the stealth, like the gunplay, is incredibly... Fine. It passes my general test on stealth in video games where it gives you appropriate tools to navigate with and plenty of alternatives if you just don't give a shit.

The AI is also way too stupid to catch you most of the time, you don't even need to level Cool. Which it doesn't seem like you should level Cool it seems pretty lame compared to any of the others.

That save bug sounds alarming but I've also read people who have done absurd numbers of things in this game and not even come close to that threshold so I don't know how realistic a threat it really is. Should fix it quickly just in case though.

It's only for subtitles.

I've just past the late title card so i'm not very far in but playing this game is kind of a slog. I love the aesthetic and the vibe, even the lowly last gen console versions look pretty good to me honesly, granted i'm not a graphics snob. I just wish the game was fun to play on any level, i've looked at the skill tree (straining my eyes in the process) and nothing stands out and makes me want to level up or get better gear or anything like that. Even the recent Deus Ex games had some pretty decent stuff you could unlock, maybe i'm missing something?

I'm going to keep playing it here and there, I was tempted to get a refund but I want to see where this game goes even if so far the game has very few redeeming qualities besides the setting and Keanu Reeves is in it.

I now find myself firmly in this camp. I've actually been having pretty smooth, if not solid, performance on my PC. I haven't experienced any game-breaking bugs. Nothing too crazy or distracting either. Mostly just fun visual stuff. Sure, the objectively broken NCPD AI and terrible traffic/crowd AI is such a bummer to witness and immediately takes me out of the world.

But I don't know, playing this game just royally bums me out . As I'm sure has been well established by now, bugs aside, there is just something so fundamentally lacking in this game and particularly its open world. I actually quite like the main story line for now (I'm about 12-15 hours in I think?) and most characters I find compelling enough. I do want to see it through and I suppose I could totally mainline the main story line right now and have a pretty decent experience.

But I simultaneously know deep down that this game could be so, so much better. I want to lose myself in its open world. I want to be incentivized to explore the world, discover things, and have my character grow as a result. I don't want to simply mainline the story and basically just get 20 hours out of this game. That feels like such a bummer given the game's (purported) scope. I feel like in doing so, you'll just miss out on the richer and broader experience.

Even if that "experience" is perhaps not exactly there yet, I do trust that CDPR will start a pretty steady patching campaign early next year. And hopefully by the Spring/Summer or so, there might even be some new content or general improvements that'll make the experience that much more pleasurable. I hope the strong post-launch support of TW3 can provide us with some hope here. Remember when they patched in an "alternative" movement style/control scheme in The Witcher 3? At least, I think that was patched in? And cleaned up the UI some? Anyway, those changes made a world of difference for me. It's simple things like that that could make Cyberpunk worth losing myself in, I think. Even just fixing the damn police AI and ideally NPC AI would be lovely.

But there are so many other special games to play right now, not to mention what's about to come out. I started Disco Elysium shortly before Cyberpunk came out and was immediately hooked. Damn. Now there's an RPG. Guess I can return to it now! And I can't believe I'm even saying this, but as a general fan of open world/checklist-type games once in a while, AC: Valhalla looks to be a way better open world experience this year. Wild to even hear myself say that. A Ubisoft open world game is...more immersive than perhaps Cyberpunk? Guess you can't predict anything anymore in this day and age.

After not feeling really invested in the game during the week because, for me, it feels unsatisfying to sit down for an hour or two to play a game, I spent all weekend playing it again. So many nooks and crannies to talk about with this game. I find it really disappointing that I am unable to get any real discussion about this game outside of this thread because every podcast discussion immediately gets bogged down in the development and socio-political stuff.

Patch 1.05 on PC seemed to help a lot with all the crashes I was having. I think I have about 50 hours on my save and just hit Act 3. Act 2 seems like it blew by? But also didn't.. At some point, I took a break from what I believe were the main story missions and only did side stuff. I feel like I spent *a lot* of time doing this. Just open the map, pick the nearest side job/gig/NCPD thing, then walk there. Excellent way to see the city and immerse myself. Sometimes they're interesting, sometimes I just shoot some people. There is a loooot of stuff. And I feel like I only did maybe four main missions..

So much stuff that I can't remember half of it. Last night, I spent a couple hours just jumping around the map going to various stores to try and find legendary crafting specs or better implants. Kinda trying to "build my character" per say. Go to a nearby NCPD-gig, try a different weapon or combat approach, sell/disassemble the loot, hit another nearby shop, etc etc. Was fun, just wish I had more time. Four day weekend coming up thankfully. Having such a wide variety of gear with different visual appearances makes the gear system slightly frustrating without some sort of a glamour/transmog system, especially since they could've made it part of crafting. I hate having my character look stupid, with all sorts of random hideous gear on.

So many details to talk about. Overall, I'm enjoying my experience with the game. To me, it is essentially a Elder Scrolls/Fallout sort've thing, but since I haven't played one of those since.. Fallout 4's release? I don't mind. I hope the modding community goes nuts with this because, while I'm playing, I'm constantly thinking about how people could take this game to the next level. Ways that I would like to tweak it to build on what I like about it.

Sounds like Act 3 might be the last third of the game from what people talk about? So I'm going to focus even more on just doing side stuff and leveling up (just hit level 30).

@efesell: Edgy in this case means intentionally shocking and provocative without anything deeper to say. This game does have some deeper stuff at times, but it also is happy to just shower a room full of multicolored dildos for no particular reason.

It's just shock for shock's sake and to show that you "can" be shocking. Ironically it makes stuff less shocking because you just kind of get used to it and it loses all impact.

Found this guy on default "crime in progress" mini mission. Problem is, that I blew his head to pieces 8 hours earlier on a story mission... Even the scanner says it is the same guy.

@charlie_victor_bravo: The game doesn't do a great job of tracking who's dead. My favorite bug regarding this is that there's a certain famous person who dies as part of the game's sort of background story (it figures into a chain of side missions so it's not totally background) and I got a news report on that...followed immediately by a news report outlining the dead guy's upcoming public plans. That was amusing.

@nodima: Another reason to reconsider your save procedure beyond the risk of save corruption is just general bugs. I have encountered bugs where short falls can instakill you or where snipers have super vision and can shoot you to death from way outside the effective range of any of your weapons. If you're not careful you can save yourself into a bad spot. I am proudly save scumming through this game and trying to keep multiple saves going per mission just in case. The multiple autosaves do help some with these issues, and are very appreciated, but this is definitely a situation where it's better to be careful given the lack of instability.

@colourful_hippie: CD Projekt Red should announce that the save file corruption bug is an intentional homage to Bethesda, whose game design they're clearly drawing a lot from.

@charlie_victor_bravo: It's fine people get back up from a lot of things.

My Non-Lethal sledgehammer has crushed many a man's skull. Non Lethally.

Shooting and stealth are serviceable. Exploring and moving around the world feels like exactly what Jeff said: GTA3 feeling open world. CDPR did nothing to justify this being an open world, save for the 8 million preorders they banked from marketing said open world.

The more I play of this game the more I am convinced that it puts its absolute worst foot forward. It really does a bad job of introducing itself in every possible way. The storytelling doesn't really get going strongly until you reach Act II (Act I isn't bad but it's not nearly as interesting and is much more linear.) The guns you start with aren't as fun to use as some of the later stuff. The quickhacks make combat and stealth more fun but you don't get interesting ones until later...

But most importantly the game sort of guides you towards its worst content. The fun parts of this game are the story quests. The mainline quests are almost all great but after you finish some of them the game opens up equally great side quests given by meaningful characters and not just anonymous fixers. It really overwhelms you with its worst content up front and I spent a bunch of time doing random events in the world and random fixer quests and not liking it, but 30 hours in I am invested in at least 3 separate side quest lines and they're all deep and involved and interesting.

Meanwhile I'm not even thinking about the random open world stuff anymore. I have so many other kind of interesting side quests to check out beyond the ones that I'm already doing that the idea of like doing a random hit for a fixer doesn't cross my mind. And random crimes or whatever? Totally irrelevant.

The open world is great for providing a context and location for the game. You go back to a lot of places multiple times and get to know the layout and neighborhoods. But as a place to explore to find fun things to do (as opposed to just take in the sights) it's bad. But that's the stuff the game pushes you towards earlier because the good side quests don't open up until later. And it fills your map with all kinds of icons enticing you to engage with its absolute worst content.

I am not a proponent of "it takes 30 hours to get good" or "you have to play it the right way to enjoy it" but once I stopped trying to mess around with the smaller scale content and focused on the main quests and big sidequest lines the game went from something I was lukewarm on to possibly my GOTY and one of my favorite RPGs ever. I have a lot of complaints about it (and they're all in this thread) but it has really gelled for me and has its hooks in me deep now.

Also I am optimistic that they can fix the driving at least a little because the biggest problem is that V. is too short and far back in the seat, making it hard to get a real grasp on the road in first person. That's why the motorcycles feel so much better. They don't handle a ton differently but they make it much easier to see where you are on the road. The third person car driving kind of works but ruins the atmosphere, and the driving model is pretty basic to begin with so driving in third person is boring. If they just moved V. forward in the seat and raised him up for first person driving in cars it would work much better.

Minor spoilers:

The bug is still there with 1.05 patch.

(Side note: capturing half frame rate from variable fresh rate monitor and running RTX results in kind of choppy video...)

@bigsocrates: The game does have somewhat of a HInterlands problem.

It's not an elegant solution at all but maybe they should have just been like... ehh no the fixers aren't working right now the lockdown is in effect maybe you should consider doing the Prologue first Hint Hint Hint.

I mean as mentioned I'm a checklist kinda guy so I like doing those fixer tasks but it shouldn't be the only thing available to you immediately.

@sarcasticmudcrab:That bug got me too when playing at a friend's. Basically, it kept saying on waypoint to pay him...i had no money. Thought i spent too much on a few items at beginning of the game. Ran around trying to do quest for cash etc. Felt like a huge flaw or a way to make it open world do what you want till you get money for arbitary gated section of the game. Always thought those were lame padding and was shocked it was in this game. Turned me off till i saw a youtuber do the mission and the mission didnt glitch. My character, i was suppose to talk to disappeared. So load up a save or go super far away and die in game then come back. It should be ok.

@justin258:

I think picking the woman's voice is akin to why mass effect as a woman is better than as a man. It's the same dialogue but it seems the woman actors are more nuanced in delivery. Most men pick males so they kinda skew to the default but those who picked a female in mass effect know how much better she was than boring gruff generic guy voice Shepard. The same goes for oddessy being more fun as the woman than the male. The male voice is too try-hard without the vulnerability of being a well human real character. The male comes off as a male dream of what manly men sound like, gruff and slightly angry/bad ass. That works for some but I always go for something more middle ground in my heroes journey avatars XD. Take what im saying lightly though, im not that serious in my take.

@efesell: There are lots of ways they could have improved this issue. Lock some side content behind Street Cred (some missions are locked behind it but ironically they seem to be the better ones, while the bad ones you can do at any time.) Just don't put a bunch of exclamation points on your map pointing you towards bad side content and try to funnel you towards the good stuff. Just have LESS random bad missions in the world. It really doesn't need 9000 random crimes and missions where you basically walk into a building, kill 6-8 guys, use a computer terminal, and walk out.

Heck it could actually have you get introductions to the fixers and have them not give you jobs before that happens, whatever.

Or it could have some good side quests open up during Act I. Instead it puts you into the world with a bunch of side missions (which are not good) and the main missions and if you focus on the main missions you'll have a good time but if you go "well I want to explore and maybe level up a little before I really get into the story" you end up asking "is this all there is?"

The answer is no. There's a ton of really good content in the game. It's just withheld until you start finishing main quest mission lines during Act 2 for some reason.

@gargantuan: Have you ever tried jumping on top of the motorcycle in that first few missions. Your partner drives off with you standing on him turns the corner then the AI goes blank. You cant attack him but nothing causes him to move....in comparision to gta5 where you could meet the AI of the other two characters and the'd be about doing their business. Really shows how ahead of time that game was.

I'm near the beginning of Act 2, after about 13-14 hours on the PC. First things first, the recent patch has helped with some of the bugs on PC. The last experience I had with the game, about 45-60 minutes, was the first time I'd ever played the game without it having some sort of a bug. That's good.

The first act, even though it was pretty open ended and maybe a bit directionless, I thought was really good. The story had its moments, the gameplay was pretty solid, Jackie was fun, and it did a good job of introducing the world and the set up for the rest of the story. Also that late title card was great. Keanu was also fun. He's still not the best actor out there, but he has a charisma that carries through into his voice acting, which I liked.

In Act 2, the main story is still interesting enough, so far. I've mostly focused on interacting with Judy. The moments have been solid, the gameplay is still similar to what it was in Act 1 but that's ok, so far (ask me after hour 30 or 40 though and I may not feel the same way). But boy the side missions. So what Jeff mentioned happened to me as well. Suddenly, all of the side characters in the entire world of the game seemed to contact me all at once. V's phone was blowing up for a long ass time with people I'd never met before, introducing themselves, and half the time giving me some mission (usually involving the acquisition of a vehicle, which I don't care to acquire). The side mission involving Jackie's family was touching, if maybe a bit goofy. But then I did the mission with the cabs and I wanted to die. So yeah, really hit or miss both in the writing and in what you are actually doing.

Overall, I'm enjoying the game well enough but it absolutely doesn't live up to the hype. I didn't personally buy into the hype, but I was very curious. But even my curiosity isn't really being met. I think Vinny put it best, the entire experience top to bottom is a mile wide but an inch deep.

I had the same thing when I was first meeting the venders on Jub-Jub Street or whatever it's called. I was mid-conversation and suddenly I had two different conversation trees on screen while V had told another character to hold on a minute out of nowhere, almost like the GTA thing where stories get interrupted for accidents or combat and then pick up where they left off, except I was just having two conversations at once. By the time I was done with this completely casual moment, I had like five new gigs, four new cars to collect and no idea what was going on. All I wanted was a used vinyl record! All it took was two conversations stacked on top of each other followed by yet another new character I have zero context for...

Also, I can tell that the cab jobs seem pretty, uh, rough by default but everytime I sucked it up and attempted to do one last night, I'd try to answer Delamaine's call only to have a minute of awkward silence attempting to connect the call before it was dropped and I was left wondering if I was truly supposed to wander this massiveyellow bubble on my own? I sure hope it's intended to be a bit more guided than that if only the game would get past its simulation of bad cell tower reception.

More than any bugs or performance what I found very unacceptable in my latest sessions is coming across a full on "the cake is a lie" Portal reference with the GLaDOS voice. I mean I know this game was in development for a while but did they somehow travel back in time?

@humanity: That's the cab part that made me want to die. Also, the cab that talked about how therapist don't like cars because they don't have Mothers and V mentioning that the car needs to take like 'one revolution at a time.' Also the car that was freaked out by pink, ornamental yard flamingos and so the goal was to destroy 10 of them in a cul-de-sac that conveniently every single house had like 4 of those flamingos in their yards. I swear, the cab side quest may be the worst side quest I've ever experienced in a game.

@jasonr86: The one where the car was trying to commit suicide by edging towards the river I found kind of funny, because it's a car threatening to "jump" so to speak. But the Portal stuff is just like no, we just don't do that anymore.

@jasonr86: I thought the cab stuff was fine. It was super brief and semi amusing, and the mission chain culminates well in my opinion.

The purpose of the cab missions is clearly to get you to drive out to various places in the city and do some exploring. They make a lot of sense as early missions for that purpose. What doesn't make sense is that they're listed as being relatively high level missions for that part of the game and are marked as "dangerous." Once you've leveled up some, done some exploration and had some other missions then they're pretty pointless.

As I've said elsewhere the game is bad at communicating what you should do and when.

Well, I've enjoyed being a part of this but I've submitted my refund request to Sony and uninstalled the game tonight. The first GIM mission is embarrassingly designed, first of all. The mini-map hints always direct you into a head-on encounter with an enemy, yet the environment is full of explosives that enemies can accidentally hit and kill you (this was an even bigger problem for me when I was still playing on Hard early on) by absolute random. The level is absolutely littered with enemies but considering 2020 featured one of the best mall battles to date, it's a little hard to shrug and just accept that you either figure out you approach the task from a specific route or you kill two floors' worth of enemies.

Anyway, I confusingly died from the explosives twice, then had two encounters in a row where I spent ungodly amounts of time chasing down the last enemy or two in an area while they made no effort to either hide or close ground on me. This A.I. is some of the dumbest I've seen in a long time and it's a shame that difficulty is so reliant on HP bars and random explosions. I enjoy the idea of enemy netrunners hacking my biotics, but I still haven't figured out how or if I make it harder for them to do so which makes the random deaths in this game very aggravating. But that's not the most important part - the most important part is, just like in Brick's lair early on, after two long slogs of combat (that I promise I was enjoying in the moment, despite preferring to do that section stealth) the game crashed as I spoke to my fixer at the target both times.

I've been willing to put up with a lot on the PS4 version, and as I've moved into Pacifica and acquired some righteous guns and gotten in the flow of the main plot, I see a lot of potential for this game. But I can't let it keep throwing away 15-30 minutes of my life at a time in an effort to meet shareholder quotas. It's a real shame because there's a game in here I can tell I'd really like - it's at least as good as The Outer Worlds if you took all the charm out and replaced it with try-hard dick jokes, and disregarding hype and all that that's quite a fine thing to be, I think. But that's at least six hard crashes across four play sessions, all but one of them coming in the middle of wrapping up a section I'm forced to repeat in full as a result.

No thanks. I'm glad I finally got to experience what trying to play such a busted hunk is, but I'm definitely less jealous of the guys that see bugs and glitches all the time while I mostly get steady gameplay. Hopefully by the time CDPR has a PS5 version it'll be in a status that's ready to go. Hopefully the industry learns from this.

Now that I’ve played a few hours, gotten into act 2 and messed around a bit, I’m starting to form my own opinions on the game.

It’s clunky as hell, and that’s frustrating. I’m constantly running to weird small UI bugs where I can’t click on something. The UI is kind of impenetrable to begin with, so every time that happens I end up questioning if I am just clicking on the wrong thing or if it’s broken. So far it’s about 50/50 of it behaving as I expected after closing and reopening the menu vs it just actually not doing some simple thing I want to do. This goes for all Ubisoft games to, but for the love of fuck can we stop doing a fake mouse cursor in menus when I’m using a controller?

Luckily, that’s been the bulk of my bugs, but it hasn’t been all of them. I had one instance of a gun not appearing in a scripted combat sequence, one brief exchange in a cutscene where dialogue wasn’t being played but the subtitles still ran, one hard crash back to the dashboard, and a handful of inexplicable framerate drops (found one patch of a parking lot that consistently drops the game to a slideshow for some reason).

I’m playing on One X, and performance has met my pretty low standards. Which is and isn’t frustrating. It’s nice that I can play the game, but I’m still seeing a whole fucking lot of issues that won’t suddenly disappear with more horsepower.

That all said, content wise, I’m having a pretty good time. The game has a fucking awful pacing for teaching you things, so I felt like I was struggling to wrap my head around all its little mechanics and quirks and side quests. But now that I have my sea legs, I mostly like what I see. I’m still early on, but I’m definitely interested in the story it’s building. I think there is some excellent character work early on, and one of the first side quests in Act 2 (Heroes, I think it was called), was one of the most effective things I’ve experienced in this style of game ever.

I guess my big takeaway here is that the game was obviously unfinished and compromised because of its schedule and production conditions. But I do think there’s a gem buried in there somewhere that I’m hoping I’m not kept from polishing off enough to enjoy.

Yesterday after 30 hours I finally encountered a quest breaking bug, thankfully for a side quest. I was supposed to pick up a package and then a character suddenly attacked me. Watching a YouTube cutscene I wasn't supposed to get attacked and we were supposed to have a conversation first where every dialog choice ultimately led to a confrontation. In my situation after I had knocked him out with a non lethal weapon I started receiving the dialog portion that was supposed to have happened in the first place except I could only hear my part of the conversation while the NPC lay unconscious on the ground. Eventually the quest instructions updated to talk to Johnny but there was no prompt for me to initiate a conversation so.. I guess thats that. Reloading doesn't seem to help so I don't know if it will ever get unstuck but as I said, thankfully not a major quest.

I think I've been pretty lucky to not have encountered too many serious issues. One funny issue was when I beat a "sub boss" in the Voodoo Boys questline and then when I ran past that arena later on the sub-boss was back but completely oblivious to my existence and I was able to just stand there and shoot them dead for a second round of experience. Hey, I'll take it.

There is one mission where you deliver a guy to place (the one who is The Office reference). Quest giver at the end gives usual speech but the final line is clearly not the voice actor's. It is like some place holder line.

Speaking of weird lines. One entire cutscene switched the my characters female voice to male, it was kind of confusing.

After roughly 90 hours, I just saw credits and can now say I really loved Cyberpunk 2077. From skimming this thread, I feel like I'm an outlier because I:

• Liked the male voice actor for V (and nearly all the VA performances)
• Liked the prologue, the "Jackie + V" montage, and all the acts and interludes
• Liked nearly all the main/side/gig quests I experienced
• Liked hacking, the stealth mechanics, and the shooting
• Hardly noticed the poor AI and underused systems (e.g. crafting)
• Hardly ran into any noticeable bugs playing on XsX (started on v1.0.3 and finished on v 1.0.5)

My favorite part was the writing and acting for the non-fixer NPCs you get know through side quests. Every since Mass Effect, I've been a sucker for "loyalty" missions and that was true here. By the end, I felt a strong emotional bond with three of them, and that helped anchor my experience.

My "meh" feelings are reserved for the inconsistent UX. Why is there no voicemail system? Why do important shards show up alllllll the way at the bottom of a giant list, beneath all the lore ones I pick up compulsively and never read?

The worst parts for me were two side quests: a melee tournament and a shooting tournament. For those curious, I'm referring to Beat on the Brat and Stadium Love. Neither were fun, because they felt unfinished or unbalanced for different reasons.

@hatking: As far as the gun not appearing thing, every now and then my V will be holding an invisible assault rifle invisible in her arms. I know it isn't the same thing but it is still SO absurd. I like to imagine the show Spaced when it happens.