Going to be pretty blunt with you here: holding them to a nebulous promise from 8 years ago, when the game wasn't even out of pre-production, is childish. The actual promise of the game has been updated and communicated over time. If you closed your eyes and ears to all the marketing material up till now and blindly focused on what amounts to a powerpoint slide from 2012, you deserve whatever disappointment you got.

There's statements from interviews from June this year that were completely false: https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/kbk4ap/the_a...

Those promises were continuously repeated and even ballooned even more and more. At some point, they even removed the "RPG" description of the game, in favor of "open world action", which makes it even more ridiculous, because it fails at everything that that entails.

I feel like there's going to be a lot of personal opinions going on here. I personally think they delivered on all the points, and I'm very happy with it - 20 hours in the worst bug I've seen was my character T-Posing through the roof of my car. But the storytelling is just fantastic, love it.

And....barren city? Are we even playing the same game?

I don’t mean empty of objects. I mean barren in the sense that it fee lifeless, due to nonexistent AI. It’s just pointless exploring. Even GTA3 had better crowd AI, better police AI, etc.

>>I mean barren in the sense that it fee lifeless, due to nonexistent AI

I just don't understand that point. Many times so far I've just been walking around and admiring the place, it feels like the most realistic city I've ever been in in a video game. There's just so much stuff happening everywhere, I could probably forget the story and walk around and admire it all.

It's all set dressing, smoke and mirrors. Compare the following two clips for AI:

Cyberpunk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1coBF2_0--k

Red Dead Redemption 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cj7KnllcYzE

So you mean "realistic" in the sense that it looks nice, which is fine, but it doesn't mean "realistic" in the sense of feeling real, ie the NPCs actually react to your actions, cops don't spawn behind you, etc.

You are right, but what people are complaining about is that they can't interact with that world. You can't poke at it. If we had short loops of the game scenes displayed in a museum we would praise it, but people want videogames mostly to play and interact with things.

I'm just trying to think how much you could interact with the world in Witcher 3, which is obviously considered a masterpiece by many, and nearly all of its villages and houses were just set pieces. Villagers never actually changed their behaviours in reaction to anything, and played the same audio clip over and over again if you stood close to them.

I just don't know how much interactivity is required for it to be...good? What part of the AI is missing?

NPC's were much better placed in the Witcher 3 because you had way less NPCs, they were on more distinctive locations and they gave good side quests more often. So, each one was more meaningful. Sure, they weren't much more interactive. But the Witcher is mostly about going around clearing up the dangers of each place. Monsters were the focus, and they were far more distinctive than Cyberpunk NPC's shooting at you. So, it's not like the Witcher 3 was far more interactive or anything, but NPCs had their place and gave the world life. Cyberpunk doesn't manage to strike that balance. And you can't strike that balance by writing more for each NPC in such a densely populated world, so you need to cover for it with better AI, responses to events, emerging events, randomness... cover with more diverse content... or innovate. GTA V, to mention an example (although I'm not particularly interested in GTA games), has better NPC AI, better responses to events and decent diversity. In Cyberpunk, as a watcher it might look really beautiful, but as a participant it doesn't have as much life. I still think the writing is great and many side quests are great and there's a lot of great content, but hopefully this helps you see a bit better what people feel is off in the game (besides the bugs, of course). Like, don't compare by looking at single factors one by one, look at the world as a whole.

Stop a car in the middle of the street. There is no honking, no reaction. Turn the camera 180 degrees, then another 180 degrees. All the vehicles from the road have disappeared.

So realistic and cyberpunk, right?

> And....barren city? Are we even playing the same game?

there's a slider to adjust how many random NPCs spawn, so maybe not?

in any case, it's hard to argue that they delivered "a varied selection of different character classes". there are no character classes, just five attributes with related perks.

>> there are no character classes, just five attributes with related perks.

Well, that's just not true, it's just that your "class" depends heavily on your playstyle. In the same sense Skyrim didn't have classes, but your "build" depended on how you played the game. You can play almost entirely stealthily, put all of your points into intelligence and stealth with some hacking added in. You can play as a brute with tonnes of raw strength, punch everything with gorilla arms. Or maybe you want a typical soldier character, with proficiency in ranged weapons. Or a samurai-like character who uses katanas, or maybe mantis blades. All of these playstyles have their distinct perks and yes, you can absolutely role play as any of them.

Yes, you don't pick "wizzard/thief/rogue" at the beginning. But that doesn't mean there aren't classes.

it's fair to say the game enables many different play styles, but it doesn't have classes, unless you think a class is nothing more than some starting attribute bonuses and whatever grab-bag of skills you choose. I expect a class system to affect game mechanics in a deeper way (eg, in KOTOR you get different allowances for attributes, feats, and skills depending on your class).

FWIW, I actually prefer the progression system in cyberpunk. rigid class systems make more sense in party-based rpgs. I just don't think it's accurate to say the game has a class system; it's more like it intentionally has the absence of classes.

Studios fall into the habit of making the same game with a different skin.

Witcher 3, despite being a great game, had a lot of the problems Cyberpunk is getting blasted for. Boring, repetitive combat, "loot everything" inventory management - lots of useless garbage available to collect, very unsatisfying and boring MMO-like crafting system.

But the difference is - W3 could always fall back on its incredible setting, story, music, and memorable characters that we met in previous games. And the main quest + DLC stories were quite good as well.

Plus it had an open world where most of it could be realistically lifeless other than wildlife and monsters.

#1 is not at all objective. I would say a world that revolves around deception, fraud, sex work, black market body modification is definitely in the realm of "Mature RPG".

#2 was mostly a lie

#3 Meh. You level up, you customize your character based on perks and skills. You get items that you can customize. This one seems fine.

#4 Is fair I think. Stealth + hacking + fighting + talking. You can build your character to be your exact playstyle. You can do several playthroughs and have totally different styles.

#5 I think is fair, although I might not call it "gigantic". There are a bunch of weapon types, a lot of upgrades, and then a whole world of body modification and quickhack tools to play around with.

#6 is obviously a lie, given the launch.

Having nudity and dildos hardly makes a world “mature”. More like a juvenile frat boy’s version of mature. If you want mature storytelling, look at the Red Dead series.

Incidentally, I saw this today: https://www.nme.com/news/gaming-news/cd-projekt-red-to-tone-...

If your perception of this game's story is "nudity and dildos", you just haven't played the game at all.

There are story missions dealing with sex workers and their validity as humans. There are story missions addressing rape and misconduct towards sex workers. There are story missions dealing with human trafficking. There are story missions dealing with corporate espionage. The list goes on. None of these things are "juvenile", I would say, nor can they be watered down to "nudity and dildos." This game is not Saints Row, it is not cartoony or silly.

You can dislike the story, but you should not mischaracterize the subject matter to downplay certain parts of its validity. The story is absolutely "mature". There is no question.

Even if I was to "get a grip", do you believe this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SmDUHekjMc

is acceptable game?

Similar problems were in GTA V PC version, people hated it for it until they fixed them 6 months later.

But xbox/ps crowd were happy because they got that game over a year earlier and with not such big bugs.

Here it is different PC gamers got a better game and mostly console players are complaining.

I have played GTA 5 on PS3, PC and Xbox One. I haven’t experienced any such issues on the slightest, nor remember any widespread reports. GTA4 has optimization issues, which were never solved, but not GTA5.

They've reiterated the same promises for years and years. Stop fanboying, mate.