@haz_kaj: I will preface this thought by noting that I am a huge fuddy duddy who increasingly dislikes AAA video games. I am earnestly more excited for Deadly Premonition 2 than The Last of Us 2, without a single trace of irony. That's the kind of broken person I am, so keep that in mind as I say this.
Cyberpunk looks insanely boring to me. I feel like it's pulling from a school of open-world video game design that other games have long since explored and abandoned. The idea of "you can do this mission however you want, you can shoot people, or you can sneak through a vent!" was revolutionary in 2010, now every game does this. Unless the game allows for some genuinely meaningful gameplay creativity other than just a bunch of thinly veiled skill checks, I will pretty thoroughly be passing.
I'm curious to see if the GB crew enjoys it or not, because as someone who plays a moderate amount of video games, Cyberpunk looks extremely "tried and true, ol' reliable open world game" to me, and I'll be curious if it still manages to hook someone.
Also, boy they are really just ripping off a lot of Gibson verbatim, and I realize that's because R. Talrosian ripped off a lot of Gibson verbatim, but still, come on.
This constant dismissal of the year's biggest and most talked about games really bodes well for the GOTY show.
I don't know if you meant it this way, but I 100% agree with this as an earnest statement. A lot of the big games this year have been pretty bog-standard, and it kinda looks like it's gonna continue go that way. This year's headliners are very "something you've seen before, but done really well", and discussion of those interests me far less than discussion of some of the really cool indie stuff that's hit and will hit this year.
One thing Jan didn't get into with XCOM that I felt was that having a constant, small stable of characters meant all of the available characters were "viable", and I was much more willing (and frequently forced) to experiment with my team comp than in XCOM 2, where I had an A-Team and was terrified to swap in a Squaddie to level them up for fear they'd get themselves or the team killed
asylumrunner's comments