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Which lifepath will you take?
NOMAD (I like freedom)
STREET KID (I like the city)
CORPO (I like money)
I don't like labels
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wyoak
Feb 14, 2005

a glass case of emotion

Fallen Rib
Now that I'm thinking about phone calls, Regina is apparently permanently broke in my game, any time I approach one of her missions she calls me, I pick up, she says nothing on the line for 10-15 seconds, then the text comes in

Not a huge deal since those aren't exactly riveting phone calls and the text message has most of the 'story' anyway, but still

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Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

Hammerstein posted:

All these distractions simply do not fit the trope of the Hero with a ticking Bomb and the development hours might have been better used, if they had brought the rest of the campaign to the level of The Pickup. With more choices, 1-2 additional endings and more consequences for the player's decisions.

In it's best moments the game is a ray traced jewel, offering us arcs like the Panam and River stories and missions like The Pickup or Transmission. While accompanied by one of the best soundtracks in any game.

Oh wow, I thought River was the worst part of the game.

I wonder, with all the sidegigs and the talk of buying apartments, if the Relic mission was meant to come later in the game? Like perhaps you were originally going to work yourself up to mid-high level 'runner and then your "big break" goes terribly wrong instead of getting it as a small-timer and doing all your crimes while dying?

Also, I avoided the hype for this and only watched the 2019 e3 trailer recently, after I had passed that point, but I am astounded they spoiled Jackie's death and Dex's betrayal in it. That seems nuts.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Almost the entirety of Act 1 was shown before release

Hammerstein
May 6, 2005

YOU DON'T KNOW A DAMN THING ABOUT RACING !

Darkrenown posted:

Oh wow, I thought River was the worst part of the game.

I wonder, with all the sidegigs and the talk of buying apartments, if the Relic mission was meant to come later in the game? Like perhaps you were originally going to work yourself up to mid-high level 'runner and then your "big break" goes terribly wrong instead of getting it as a small-timer and doing all your crimes while dying?

Also, I avoided the hype for this and only watched the 2019 e3 trailer recently, after I had passed that point, but I am astounded they spoiled Jackie's death and Dex's betrayal in it. That seems nuts.

River himself is a well written character imho, one of the few good cops in a department of corrupt assholes, a trope that has withstood the test of time.

The problem is ofc the second half of his story, cause at this point we have met so many garishly exaggerated bad guys that nothing fazes us anymore. Maybe if most gangers and side antagonists were not snuff porn producing, human trafficking, organ harvesting, torture loving, child murdering killer-rapists, then sub-quests like River's might have more gravitas.

When it comes to the Relic I would like to quote another goon from Discord:

quote:

Dex said himself that the death of the emperor would make Arasaka turn over every singular grain of salt in the city in the quest for the murderers.

With what the game tells us about Arasaka and the world in general, the idea that two hustlers from the streets that has spent the last few months stealing from drugged up danceclub patrons can just waltz in to this super secure complex (I would IMAGINE) and successfully steal the biggest most secret treasure around is just laughable

It’s the equivalent of...I dunno...a group of Dickensian pickpockets trying to break into Fort Knox

Not to mention the escape from a total lockdown is made in a jazzed up taxi? Are you kidding me?

Regarding Jackie, considering that the game's marketing emphasized Cyberpunk as a choice-heavy rpg, a lot of people expected the events in the trailer to be only one of several possible outcomes. And maybe that was planned, until they ran out of time.

Solice Kirsk
Jun 1, 2004

.
Demo Dude V looks cool, wish that was one of the presets. Looks kinda like Anthony Starr in Banshee.

Darkrenown
Jul 18, 2012
please give me anything to talk about besides the fact that democrats are allowing millions of americans to be evicted from their homes

Hammerstein posted:

River himself is a well written character imho, one of the few good cops in a department of corrupt assholes, a trope that has withstood the test of time.

The problem is ofc the second half of his story, cause at this point we have met so many garishly exaggerated bad guys that nothing fazes us anymore. Maybe if most gangers and side antagonists were not snuff porn producing, human trafficking, organ harvesting, torture loving, child murdering killer-rapists, then sub-quests like River's might have more gravitas.

Oh, yeah, I agree with this. It felt almost like it was made for a different game.

Blastedhellscape
Jan 1, 2008
I've probably said this before but I think River would have been much better if we'd gotten one more quest with him. Would have been really cool if we helped him solve a case as a private investigator instead of leaving him as is, forever sitting on his sister's porch in a trailer park and apparently unemployed.

Also, normally in these build-your-own-character games I always find myself liking the female voice actor over the male one, and female V really kills it, but in a replay I found the male VA grew on me. He's playing a very specific character (sarcastic wannabe-cool guy from an 80's movie that never existed), while the female VA is a bit broader, but male V really nails that specific thing. If I was trying to play a character who was actually a tough action hero it might not have worked, but since my male V was a dorky hacker in a trench coat and sunglasses just trying to get by and not embarrass himself, while never actually killing anyone, it worked out perfectly.

Blastedhellscape fucked around with this message at 03:35 on Feb 23, 2021

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

Blastedhellscape posted:

I've probably said this before but I think River would have been much better if we'd gotten one more quest with him. Would have been really cool if we helped him solve a case as a private investigator instead of leaving him as is, forever sitting on his sister's porch in a trailer park and apparently unemployed.

Also, normally in these build-your-own-character games I always find myself liking the female voice actor over the male one, and female V really kills it, but in a replay I found the male VA grew on me. He's playing a very specific character (sarcastic wannabe-cool guy from an 80's movie that never existed), while the female VA is a bit broader, but male V really nails that specific thing. If I was trying to play a character who was actually a tough action hero it not have worked, but since my male V was a dorky hacker in a trench coat and sunglasses just trying to get by and not embarrass himself, while never actually killing anyone, it worked out perfectly.

River is just peacing out and enjoying some quiet time with his family outside the manic grind of Night City. I definitely got the impression that he only wants to be a PI because it's a relatively low-pressure job that uses his existing skillset, and he's in no rush to get back to work. You leave him sitting back and smelling the roses (well, cactus flowers) because that's where he wants to be.

As for V, he also works as a slightly-out-of-his-depth punk with way too much to prove, and that fits pretty well with a bruiser build (especially since you're never a huge, hulking guy like Jackie or one of the Animals, just a twentysomething member of the murder gig economy who's done nightmarish things to his body to keep himself employable).

The Gadfly
Sep 23, 2012

Hammerstein posted:

Speaking of apartments, even in Oct 2020 they still teased us with the idea of a "big house" in this trailer. https://youtu.be/6a8f1TbYb2w

At that time it had already been announced that there would be no additional safe houses.

You actually do get a big house at the end of the game if you choose to live out the rest of your life in Night City. The annoying part is, at the time it's unlocked, we've already past the point of no return and can no longer access the open world, so it almost doesn't even count.

I thought having a second house with your romantic interest is cool. They need to fix the bug that prevents you from accessing your stash from there though, because without that, there's zero point in ever going there.

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012
For the record, Peter Pan felt memorably distinct and horrific because of how incredibly loving weird what he was doing was. Most of the other monsters in the game are engaging in 'ordinary' human depravity - rape, torture, murder, corporate manslaughter and so on - taken to that extra level by the march of technology. Tony Harris, meanwhile, wants to turn teenage boys into literal factory-farmed livestock - not for some warped utilitarian purpose, but simply because it's the only way he truly enjoys interacting with another living being.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001
I finally got around to the endgame after clearing the map trying to get through Kerry's line. I got sick of waiting after Off The Leash / Dark Matter and just went for it.

I chose Don't Fear The Reaper because given the option why would you do anything else? Sure was an awkward segue though. At level 50 it was an appropriate challenge thanks to 11 Body and the gimped health. My electric shock and health boost cyberware kicked in during the Smasher fight. Walking through the metal detector in the lobby was a nice nod to Keanu, and so was using the monowire for essentially the only time before I dropped the business attire for armor, an AR and Satori.
Said goodbye to Johnny. I like that he tries to stop you if you head toward the light, but isn't happy to go either. That was a tough choice.
Judy left me. I can't say I didn't see it coming at the espresso machine in the palatial condo, but it sucks that you can't choose to leave the city with her if you spare the Aldecaldos a bloodbath.

If art is supposed to make you feel things and revaluate the way you look at life / a conflict / a question / whatever, Cyberpunk certainly succeeded. This game owns; I can't wait to come back to it in a year or two like a favourite 120-hour movie.

I also watched The Devil ending on youtube earlier in the week because I couldn't contain my curiosity. Some game choices make me cringe like the really evil stuff in Fallout or Bioware games but that ending would have made me want to blow my brains out.

The Gadfly posted:

You actually do get a big house at the end of the game if you choose to live out the rest of your life in Night City. The annoying part is, at the time it's unlocked, we've already past the point of no return and can no longer access the open world, so it almost doesn't even count.

I thought having a second house with your romantic interest is cool. They need to fix the bug that prevents you from accessing your stash from there though, because without that, there's zero point in ever going there.
It would also be nice if your love interest was even half as present as Heather in Bloodlines.

Shumagorath fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Feb 23, 2021

Dapper_Swindler
Feb 14, 2012

Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

Hammerstein posted:

Nah, the game is too much of a mixed bag for that, with a good amount of bad stuff. GTA 3, a game from 2008, had better physics, way better cop/pedestrian/car AI and ran on a PS3 with 256MB Ram.

Games like Dragon Age Origins, the Fallout series, ME2 and Witcher 3 are often better when it comes to rpg decisions and branching story lines. Just cause a studio is capable of writing a decent fantasy story, does not automatically mean that they would get Pondsmith's Cyberpunk "right".

The highlight of the game's missions is The Pickup, and I find it weird that they made a shorter campaign, cause some people found the Witcher 3 campaign "too long", while at the same time stuffing 100+ hours worth of pointless side missions and gigs into the world.

All these distractions simply do not fit the trope of the Hero with a ticking Bomb and the development hours might have been better used, if they had brought the rest of the campaign to the level of The Pickup. With more choices, 1-2 additional endings and more consequences for the player's decisions.

In it's best moments the game is a ray traced jewel, offering us arcs like the Panam and River stories and missions like The Pickup or Transmission. While accompanied by one of the best soundtracks in any game.

In it's worst moments the game is a buggy, unimmersive mess, where we follow a string of cookie cutter missions that fail to form a coherent rpg experience and lead to an unsatisfying ending.

the issue i have is less terminal hero fucks up the narrative and more that the quests never feel more deep that a standard mission in an ubisoft open world game but with less polish and mechanical depth. all those RPGS work because they had lots of little branches on quests that gave them a feeling of depth and the games weren't afraid to make something mostly dialogue driven. there isnt enough quest mechanic variety. its mostly just waste dudes or be stealthy. sure most other rpgs are combat heavy too but idk. i still like it over all.

Hammerstein posted:

River himself is a well written character imho, one of the few good cops in a department of corrupt assholes, a trope that has withstood the test of time.

The problem is ofc the second half of his story, cause at this point we have met so many garishly exaggerated bad guys that nothing fazes us anymore. Maybe if most gangers and side antagonists were not snuff porn producing, human trafficking, organ harvesting, torture loving, child murdering killer-rapists, then sub-quests like River's might have more gravitas.

When it comes to the Relic I would like to quote another goon from Discord:


Regarding Jackie, considering that the game's marketing emphasized Cyberpunk as a choice-heavy rpg, a lot of people expected the events in the trailer to be only one of several possible outcomes. And maybe that was planned, until they ran out of time.

yeah, my issue is the game kinda just meanders in the middle until it says "ok time to finish" and half the big long quests just tie into romance options. thats it. idk.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001

Dapper_Swindler posted:

yeah, my issue is the game kinda just meanders in the middle until it says "ok time to finish" and half the big long quests just tie into romance options. thats it. idk.
Pacing is definitely not its strong suit. You can power through the main quests incredibly quickly, then have to busy yourself while timers tick down. I put off the Voodoo Boys until the low 30's, rationalizing that establishing contact could take a while, and it still felt like a crawl to 50 and the end of Kerry's quests.

Dapper_Swindler
Feb 14, 2012

Im glad my instant dislike in you has been validated again and again.

Shumagorath posted:

Pacing is definitely not its strong suit. You can power through the main quests incredibly quickly, then have to busy yourself while timers tick down. I put off the Voodoo Boys until the low 30's, rationalizing that establishing contact could take a while, and it still felt like a crawl to 50 and the end of Kerry's quests.

well what sucks is most of the big side quests start activating only after you get to the "end point". as i said. i hope the addons and dlc add more quests and poo poo someday. witcher 3 has weirdish pacing sometimes but heart of stone helps smooth poo poo out a bit in my opinion. if you do a bunch of the main quest and than do heart of stone, you basicaly kick the poo poo out of anything in the end game and then have an easier start in blood and wine.

2house2fly
Nov 14, 2012

You did a super job wrapping things up! And I'm not just saying that because I have to!

Shumagorath posted:


I also watched The Devil ending on youtube earlier in the week because I couldn't contain my curiosity. Some game choices make me cringe like the really evil stuff in Fallout or Bioware games but that ending would have made me want to blow my brains out.


I did that ending for a laff and was absolutely horrified, they struck a good balance of really rubbing it in how horrible everything is but not going so far that I roll my eyes and think "ok I get it". I've got one ending I'm waiting on doing until they do DLC or something as I suspect it'll be the best ending, siding with Panam. Don't Fear The Reaper had a great bittersweet ending where you're a Night City Legend but at the cost of any love in your final days. The ending image was really perfect, V about to have a legendary escapade but alone in space, literally as alone as it's possible for a person to be.

I was actually going to go into cyberspace when I saw that option was available- it seemed fitting for a corpo hacker guy. But then Johnny started freaking out! I don't know why he wants to go to cyberspace so much when he could have a whole human body all to himself for as long as he wants

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Re: Johnny’s ending

I kind of got the feeling that he realized he wasn’t the *actual* Johnny when he found out about what happened to Alt. I also felt like over the course of the game he kind of moves past the selfishness that he ended life with, so to me it makes more sense to have him go to Cyberspace and whatever awaits him beyond the Blackwall.

And I think I mentioned it the other day but the Panam finale feels the most correct ending considering the other choices.

Farm Frenzy
Jan 3, 2007

corpo v/panam ending feels like a full 80s action movie story arch

fennesz
Dec 29, 2008

Blastedhellscape posted:

Also, normally in these build-your-own-character games I always find myself liking the female voice actor over the male one, and female V really kills it, but in a replay I found the male VA grew on me. He's playing a very specific character (sarcastic wannabe-cool guy from an 80's movie that never existed), while the female VA is a bit broader, but male V really nails that specific thing. If I was trying to play a character who was actually a tough action hero it might not have worked, but since my male V was a dorky hacker in a trench coat and sunglasses just trying to get by and not embarrass himself, while never actually killing anyone, it worked out perfectly.

I had the same experience. I think I've mentioned it here once, but I really dig that male V sounds like he raised himself on lovely action movies as a kid. And, considering he has zero living family in all of the character origin stories, that seems to track pretty well. What it comes down to, for me, is that male V seems to nail the tension/emotion of each scene more frequently than female V. She seems to wander in seriousness from one phrase to the next and I can only remember a handful of times male V does it.

Eau de MacGowan
May 12, 2009

BRASIL HEXA
2026 tá logo aí

Farm Frenzy posted:

corpo v/panam ending feels like a full 80s action movie story arch

i mean its basically johnny mnemonic only with the aldecaldos instead of the kangaroo men

wynott dunn
Aug 9, 2006

What is to be done?

Who or what can challenge, and stand a chance at beating, the corporate juggernauts dominating the world?

Darkrenown posted:

I kept going back to check on my pet cat!

to check on your pet what :gonk:

Urban Sorcerer
Oct 16, 2005

FlamingLiberal posted:

Re: Johnny’s ending

I kind of got the feeling that he realized he wasn’t the *actual* Johnny when he found out about what happened to Alt. I also felt like over the course of the game he kind of moves past the selfishness that he ended life with, so to me it makes more sense to have him go to Cyberspace and whatever awaits him beyond the Blackwall.

And I think I mentioned it the other day but the Panam finale feels the most correct ending considering the other choices.


If you do the random quest to rescue a monk from maelstrom near the docks they have a conversation about if an engram has a soul or is just a copy and Johnny says if the "real" johnny silverhand died, then thats his problem, not mine, which i feel is a good enough explanation for the Johnny in your head having a character arc

Goa Tse-tung
Feb 11, 2008

;3

Yams Fan

yr new gurlfrand! posted:

to check on your pet what :gonk:

there is a hidden quest to get your own bakeneko!

wynott dunn
Aug 9, 2006

What is to be done?

Who or what can challenge, and stand a chance at beating, the corporate juggernauts dominating the world?

Goa Tse-tung posted:

there is a hidden quest to get your own bakeneko!

:catdrugs: I didn’t realize this was a possibility, I was sad my V may have killed the bakeneko he didn’t realize he had

Hammerstein
May 6, 2005

YOU DON'T KNOW A DAMN THING ABOUT RACING !

Darkrenown posted:

Oh, yeah, I agree with this. It felt almost like it was made for a different game.

I often get the same impression, because to me it seems that the story's 3 main branches of Judy, Panam and Takemura might have been much more intertwined in the original vision of the game, with more synergies and consequences.Then the suits said "Release in 2020" and the devs packed up what they had and added the balcony scene as final hub.

Blastedhellscape posted:

I've probably said this before but I think River would have been much better if we'd gotten one more quest with him. Would have been really cool if we helped him solve a case as a private investigator instead of leaving him as is, forever sitting on his sister's porch in a trailer park and apparently unemployed.

Also, normally in these build-your-own-character games I always find myself liking the female voice actor over the male one, and female V really kills it, but in a replay I found the male VA grew on me. He's playing a very specific character (sarcastic wannabe-cool guy from an 80's movie that never existed), while the female VA is a bit broader, but male V really nails that specific thing. If I was trying to play a character who was actually a tough action hero it might not have worked, but since my male V was a dorky hacker in a trench coat and sunglasses just trying to get by and not embarrass himself, while never actually killing anyone, it worked out perfectly.

Also feel like that about River. On the other hand: He's one of the few characters in the game who get out relatively unscathed, he only loses his job. But he also improves the relation with his sister, saves his nephew and seems rather content at the end of his arc. Still several avenues end up unresolved, especially the Holt story, which could have been mixed up with the relation to River's former partner. We could also have offered to "take care" of Peter Pan for River, so that he does not have to get his hands bloody, while it does not really matter to V, who is already standing knee deep in blood.

But the game leaves a lot possible leads unexplored. It's ok if this happens a couple of times, to indicate that V is not out to change all of Night City. But it becomes silly when this happens in the majority of the bigger side missions and when CDPR's senior quest designer Patrick K. Mills says on Twitter that he "loves to frustrate players with ambiguity".

For example: the Peralez arc also ends rather abruptly with V telling Peralez that there is nothing we can do, when we actually could go after the corp that he hired to provide security. Or after the person who recommended said corp to him. V messes with the world's biggest megacorps like Militech and Arasaka all the time and kills their agents in droves. And suddenly V is scared about going after a lesser security firm? That made no sense and what makes it worse is that Peralez actually seems kinda ok for a politician from NC and that I really would have liked to help him.

About the voice acting. I also prefer female V a lot, especially because the female voice talent really nailed the parts where V was under stress. The male voice talent was hit/miss a couple of times. One second V laments their fate, the next second it's back into "Too cool for school" mode, although there are also good parts. However, I wanted to do a playthrough as Nomad/Street Kid V, where I build V as a max body bruiser. Think like Marv from Sin City, or Jack Reacher (Reacher as in the books, not 1m70 Tom Cruise), a bear of a man with hands of stone. And the male voice just does not fit such a character.

Shumagorath posted:

I also watched The Devil ending on youtube earlier in the week because I couldn't contain my curiosity. Some game choices make me cringe like the really evil stuff in Fallout or Bioware games but that ending would have made me want to blow my brains out.

I think the problem with that ending is that the game actively punishes you for not liking Johnny and trying your best to get rid of him. The writers play moral judge at this point and say:"No, you picked wrong, here's a poo poo sandwich as your reward for not being nice to Johnny".

Except for the suicide ending the Arasaka ending is the worst one possible. Hanako breaks her word and it turns out they could not save you after all. Johnny leaves and depending on your choices one of his parting comments is a sick burn about having betrayed Jackie's last wish ("Hold onto it for me"). The Arasaka offer to become an engram is a cruel twist of the "long life as a nobody" choice. Your friends are disappointed about you selling out. And you are a half lobotomized shadow of yourself, who cannot last 2 seconds on a treadmill and suffers from nightmares.

And your only options are to get zapped with Soulkiller, meaning you die and your copy ends up in Mikoshi as Arasaka property. Or you go back to Earth to die within 6 months, already being badly disabled.


My own head canon for this ending is:

You sell out to Arasaka and help Hanako to regain control of the corp. The chip is removed and the neural damage is healed up thanks to cutting edge Arasaka tech. They tell you that they shredded the chip (which should ofc be a lie, they would be fools to shred a valueable prototype with unique data). You are offered a corner office and Adam Smasher's job, well knowing that you cannot go back to the merc life after selling out to Arasaka. You are now in Takemura's shoes, a honorable person, but duty-bound to an awful corporation. In the background the "rebirth" of Saburo Arasaka is mentioned on tv (it would be even better if you could be there when they feed Yorinobu to Saburo).

Credits roll, while you look at the city from your office window, your friends call and tell you how disappointed they are and that this is not what Jackie would have wanted. You saved your own life, but you betrayed yourself and those around you.


Basically it should be a valid play style to treat Johnny as digital malware made from the memories of a terrorist who died in 2023, instead of getting punished for such a decision.

Hammerstein fucked around with this message at 14:44 on Feb 23, 2021

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



I was definitely disappointed in the abrupt ending of the Peralez arc.

_____!
May 2, 2004


FlamingLiberal posted:

I was definitely disappointed in the abrupt ending of the Peralez arc.

Especially with Mr. Blue Eyes watching. I do like that at least one thing in the game ends with an it is out of your control type deal, though.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001

FlamingLiberal posted:

I was definitely disappointed in the abrupt ending of the Peralez arc.
His post-credits call was remarkably chill. Homelessness program? RAISING TAXES??

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Shumagorath posted:

His post-credits call was remarkably chill. Homelessness program? RAISING TAXES??
There are two different versions of that call apparently

If you don’t tell him about what really happened, you get that call

If you do, he is way more paranoid on the final call

v1ld
Apr 16, 2012

The full-on hacking build had gotten op before I took a break from the game so I've now switched to a Sandevistan build and it's a lot of fun. There's some initial misgivings about cameras, access point loot and all the other stealthy stuff I was used to, but it's very fun to be loud all the time. It's also a lot quicker to get through a mission if shoot it in slo-mo is the default answer to all questions.

Game's got fun gun combat and that extends to slo-mo life: there's been a lot of work put into the presentation of slo-mo gun fights and it feels fluid and punchy at the same time. For all of the game's flaws, lack of fun gun combat is not one of them. Better AI and more gun variety would be nice, but combat is fun as is.

Not a fan of the weapon progression and crafting in this game. Randomized weapons with rarity levels mean that I only sort through weapon pickups as I sell them and the most excitement there is ensuring I don't sell my preferred weapons by mistake. Crafting being a tree you have to invest in is just a bad design IMO. I can't improve the weapons I do like without building around it, ugh.

Went right back to what I was doing pre-break: cleaning out all of the side missions before taking up the main quest again which I abandoned on entering Act 2. May start clearing up the NCPD locations to enjoy the sandevistan combat for a bit.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Yeah everything involving crafting in the game is bad

‘Oh look, I got a legendary blueprint! Too bad I can never use it because it’s locked behind a skill tree.’

Darth Walrus
Feb 13, 2012

FlamingLiberal posted:

There are two different versions of that call apparently

If you don’t tell him about what really happened, you get that call

If you do, he is way more paranoid on the final call

And the conspiracy behind him takes way more active measures against you. When the quest ends, they block you as a phone contact halfway through a panicky text conversation with you. They also make it clear before your final face-to-face meeting with him that they can simply remotely shut you down if you push any further. Whoever they are - NightCorp, rogue AIs, techno-necromancers from Alpha Centauri - you're way out of your league.

Shumagorath
Jun 6, 2001

FlamingLiberal posted:

Yeah everything involving crafting in the game is bad

‘Oh look, I got a legendary blueprint! Too bad I can never use it because it’s locked behind a skill tree.’
Or the clothing stores never, ever stocking legendary items (not that you can fill the mod slots with much besides armor once you get one of every crit mod), or showing you the legendary blueprints on your first visit only, so that you will definitely be too poor to buy them.

Boost yourself to 18 Tech, a few perk points and thousands of mats in Act 1 with a save editor and you STILL have to grind out 18 levels to get a few more blueprints. It's trash.

v1ld posted:

Sandevistan build
Legendary Kerenzikov and Synaptic Accelerator will basically get you this for free AND you can keep the Netwatch deck. The cooldown for SA seems to reset as long as you're not fully detected.

FlamingLiberal
Jan 18, 2009

Would you like to play a game?



Darth Walrus posted:

And the conspiracy behind him takes way more active measures against you. When the quest ends, they block you as a phone contact halfway through a panicky text conversation with you. They also make it clear before your final face-to-face meeting with him that they can simply remotely shut you down if you push any further. Whoever they are - NightCorp, rogue AIs, techno-necromancers from Alpha Centauri - you're way out of your league.
Yeah it’s just disappointing that it never goes any further than that last scene with him and the park

v1ld
Apr 16, 2012

Comparing W3's side quests to this game's side missions.

W3 notice boards send you to people who describe their problems and start a chain of events. You get to talk to the people in the world, see and hear their take on what's going on and so get rooted in the people and the places. Side quests usually takes you to a few locations in a town or village and you get a sense of the place doing this. There's stuff to do before you get to the combat sequence at the end of the quest, and finishing the combat feels like the culmination of effort put in earlier. You meet some memorable characters along the way.

CP2077's fixers give you missions with textual context that talks about characters you never get to meet, at best the fixer adds some flavor in the call(and this is usually done very well). You don't get sent around the various areas by a side quest, you drive to the marker and are given a message once you're already there. You rarely get to interact with anyone on side missions. The unique chat log shards are pretty weak substitutes for being able to interact with folks - you don't know any of these people so it's just a name talking to another name and no real character comes through, it's banal chat.

Side missions feel very much like the last part of W3 side quests with all of the preceding interactivity removed. It's a valid design choice if they were trying to provide more gameplay while still addressing criticisms of the game being too long. But I preferred the W3's style of side quest with its memorable characters - there

I'm very glad to have all of these side missions and even blue NCPD combat locations to have fun with the combat gameplay, no question of that. But I wish there were more W3-style quests interspersed with the fixer requests to root you in the people, places and that magnificient world they've built.

Devil by the Well in W3 for eg is such a memorable quest in showing you both the tragedy of the past as well as the present misery of the family that sets you on the quest. In CP 2077, there would have been a marker by the well, a call from a fixer with a short background about the daughter being ill from, and combat that followed soon after you got there. While that would do justice the tragedy in the past, you would miss out on the simple interactions with the family at the start and end of the quest, which would be a big loss.

pnumoman
Sep 26, 2008

I never get the last word, and it makes me very sad.
Friday's pretty much the last day for the patch, right? Would they work on a Sunday just to release a patch?

v1ld
Apr 16, 2012

Shumagorath posted:

Legendary Kerenzikov and Synaptic Accelerator will basically get you this for free AND you can keep the Netwatch deck. The cooldown for SA seems to reset as long as you're not fully detected.

Need another level in Reflexes (at 17) to fully unlock 5.5 seconds of Kerenzikov, but that's coming.

Sandevistan is more flexible than Kerenzikov though: you get to move at full speed in Sandevistan even if firing guns is slowed down a bit, though less of a slowdown than Kerenzikov I think. In Kerenzikov everything seems to slow down equally, including you. Still a fantastic mod, but Sandevistan is more fluid in my testing.

Synaptic Accelerator is neat! Added that cheat console mod just to add myself the Epic version of it because the game seems to have not included one anywhere from what I could read. Only item I've cheated in so far, but it's an annoying oversight.

One annoyance is that the other forms of slo-mo can override Sandevistan if both are active, which then resets the Sandevistan timer to the shorter timer of SynAcc for eg.

Hammerstein
May 6, 2005

YOU DON'T KNOW A DAMN THING ABOUT RACING !

pnumoman posted:

Friday's pretty much the last day for the patch, right? Would they work on a Sunday just to release a patch?

I wouldn't expect a February release, considering that they got hacked a few weeks ago and had their whole infrastructure encrypted.

It's gonna take time to get everything back to normal after investigators have finished their forensics and then rebuilding and hardening everything against another attack.

I would prefer that they take their time and then release a patch that actually has some meat on it's bones, like fixing the awful cop AI. Instead of another patch with only a couple of minor fixes.

Hammerstein fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Feb 23, 2021

MonsieurChoc
Oct 12, 2013

Every species can smell its own extinction.
Why care about the weapon drops when a common boring revolver is the best weapon in the game because it has a 2 headshot multiplier.

Toxic Fart Syndrome
Jul 2, 2006

*hits A-THREAD-5*

Only 3.6 Roentgoons per hour ... not great, not terrible.




...the meter only goes to 3.6...

Pork Pro
I don’t think I’ve needed to fire a weapon in the last 30 hours of play...

Everyone’s brain’s melt and catch on fire as soon as V walks up.
:ssj:

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v1ld
Apr 16, 2012

5.5s of Kerenzikov + 4s of Synaptic Acceleration is a really nice way to add slo-mo gunlife to netrunner for sure. I decided to flip over wholesale just to play the game differently.

Sandevistan is quite nice. Not being able to hack cameras or ping targets seems like a major shortcoming at first, but it's kinda nice having to stay alert as you go through a facility not knowing how many more enemies there are.

Not being able to hack access points is arguably a major feature. I was doing them through muscle memory even though I'm well past the need for all that money (who needs cars?) or quickhack mats.

On the Sandevistan side, the Qiant Mk.4 has 12 seconds of slo-mo, which bumps to 14 with the same +2s mod that bumps Kerenzikov to 5.5, and an incredibly short 15s cooldown. 3 Uncommon Heatsinks will drop that to 7.5s of cooldown.

With 5.5s of Kerenzikov you can practically stay in slo-mo permanently, which was my original plan. But Sandevistan + Synaptic Acceleration and a 7.5s cooldown is nice enough I may stick with it instead of Sandevistan + Kerenzikov + mod that grants +2s to each.

v1ld fucked around with this message at 17:24 on Feb 23, 2021

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