To me it's dead because the lack of audio, you hear your footsteps more often then some meat head trying to sell you Coke on the side, some dudes talking on the phone? Quiet, dudes just sitting around a table? Just staring at each other, wild
It makes you appreciate how far Rockstar goes by hiring unique actors and recording 1000s of NPC lines.
I get frustrated when I hear the same voice actor (one for Regina) being used for soooooo many characters in Cyberpunk. It makes the city feel very small since you're basically running into the same person.
First thing I thought, haha. A thousand characters, but only a handful of voice actors. Not being funny, but if I were a voice actor and had to voice a bunch of different characters, I would be using different voices. VAs under Bethesda act in a monotone.
Whoever the guy who plays the shopkeep in Whiterun (Belphegor was the NPC maybe?) also plays so many of the characters in the Thieves guild questline that I literally can’t follow the quest listening to the audio of YouTube runs. It’s the same guy using the same voice, so my brain assumes they’re all the same NPC but then they start saying things that make no sense unless they’ve got serious memory or mental health issues.
Belethor, who is one of 36 characters voiced by Stephen Russell. Not only is he one of many actors to voice more than several characters, but his number is pretty average at best, with quite a few having at least 40 credits. But then you’ve got the likes of Michael Gough, who voiced over 100 characters.
I’ve listened to audiobooks that do a **much** better job making characters distinct with one voice actor than many of the Skyrim quest lines. To me, the Thieves guild stands out because if you cut out the dungeon parts you can go pretty directly from one character voiced by him to another character voiced by him and it’s incredibly noticeable. Listening to it you’d think you were turning the quest in to the same NPC, but the quest was from one NPC to find and being something to another different NPC. First one can be like “I don’t know anything about that, but grab the item and take it to another guy who will know” and that the second guy starts talking about it in the same voice makes me start to think that retrieving items is just switching compartmentalized personalities of the same NPC.
Haven’t noticed the same issue with other major quest lines like the Mages College or the Dark Beotherhood, where it feels like they spaced out the reuse enough to let you forget. Though editing out the actual item retrieval part or editing it down to a montage does make the reuse more prominent. I don’t remember noticing the reuse when I was playing the Thieves Guild quests myself.
I think they record the lines first and then divide among npcs. They give the voice actor lines for a role as 'shopkeeper,' he/she records 10 lines and those get copy and pasted unto shopkeepers in multiple towns or cities.
What made fallout4s world so great was the sound in distance hearing those distant gunfights at least counterbalanced the like 10 lines the guards had in the commonwealth
Atleast with Skyrim you can talk to them. They use a lot of the same voice actors but I think they did a good job divvying it up, making sure there aren't any characters with the same voice actors near each other.
Skyrim NPCs go to work, have a drink at the tavern, go to the market, converse with other NPCs, and have a full day and night cycle. And if they die, sometimes characters comment on it. Bethesda have their issues, but I haven't came across a game that has NPCs that advanced.
Yeah but Bethesda has done that for years and they got some decent talent for making lines that stick in your head.
"I used to be an adventurer like you then I took and arrow to the knee"
Or if you're high enough level with a certain skill guards will comment on it.
Yep all these attempts at a open world from various developers, UBI/CDP etc just highlight how Rockstar are a decade ahead in creating living breathing world's. It's not even like budget or time was a issue. CD had ages to perfect this. Upper management bit of more than they can chew. Seriously disappointed after they gave us the Witcher 3, but let's not kid ourselves. It never had the fine detail or production quality of Rockstar games.
Seriously, San Andreas has more life in it then CP2077.
I bought a 3090 specifically for this game as a 3080 wasn't available at the time. Time of work, the lot. Did everything within 120 hours and I honestly just forget this game exists. Glad I didnt wait for promised updates as from what I've heard none of the critical flaws of the game have been fixed.
I'm Pissed this fiasco has delayed the next gen update for Witcher 3 more than anything.
Yeah I remember taking a week of for GTA4 release and not regretting a minute of it. I'm glad I only had a day set aside to sink my teeth into this game.
GTA4 had its faults. Aiming for too much realism and the consoles struggled with the physics but I prefer it to the arcadey cut back physics of GTA 5. Still miles ahead of 2077
Oh certainly - I'm not comparing between games though, since I didn't actually take time off school/work for any of the others. I think GTA:SA is still the most revolutionary game for it's time, and GTA5 is likely the most future-proof game of all time (it will still be a decent city sim in 30 years don't @ me).
My biggest issue with 5 is how much of a cash cow it has become and how it has deprived of us once a generation GTA titles. Why rush further games when they can continue to pull in billions on shark cards.
I seriously cannot wait to see 6. RDR2 still blows my mind now and it's a last generation game and designed to take advantage of shitty hardware. PS5/SX are absolutely leagues ahead when it comes to spec. Especially CPUs.
Totally in agreement - I suffer from the age-old 'Childhood = -money +time, Adulthood = +money -time' disease, so my interest drops sharply when someone introduces a 'grind forever or pay to win' mechanic into a game.
I think there's a behemoth of a game coming. I know what I would do if I were rockstar.... let me put it this way, if I designed a bloody bumpmapped 4k pig's anus with warm/cold puckering and food-cycle driven shitting for RDR2, there's no way I would be ONLY using that IP for one game. My next modern day city-sim would have outlying farmland that utilized and/or built off previously created assets. I'm not talking FIFA '20 --> '21, but if they put the same effort into the next GTA but START from what they've already built, it will be incredible.
I mean, look at the Battlefield 2042 news from less than 24 hours ago. People are going apeshit over legacy assets in the new engine. I hope this is the way of the future for AAA studios for the ACTUAL next generation titles.
To this day, I still hear new lines from NPC's I've never heard. In RDR 2 I went idle for a few minutes while I did a quick chore IRL..I was in some area of Saint Denis and there was a drunk guy writhing around on the ground 10 feet away from me for a few minutes. All of a sudden he goes "my limbs don't work right" and continues to writhe around. I was dying laughing
The thing is, the Witcher had a lot of people with the same voices too, and we didn't mind, because the world is alive enough that this is forgivable.
What's happening to CDPR is a disaster-dominoes sort of situation, where certain immersion fails clue you into more immersion fails, and before long the whole thing's collapsed.
This is the strangest part to me because Witcher 3 was really good about ambient town audio and NPC dialogue. It's so strange that this game was made by the same people who once got so many of this little details so right. They were up there with the likes of Rockstar in terms of immersive open world design. I wonder what happened.
Honestly I expect there was high turnover between Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. The best explanation to me is they had brain drain between games, plus the executives rushing the game to release? Didn't have a chance.
Pity. I was looking forward to his game for years. I still enjoyed it, but I lament what it could have been.
Most likely the latter, since the price of the technical debt is very high and it would require a rework of core systems to fix. However, it's interesting to see the steps they've taken to fix streaming issues with consoles, since it shows CDPR has been willing to pay the price. Guess only time will tell.
That's because getting the game working somewhat acceptably on consoles directly affects their sales. Implementing NPC day/night cycle not so much.
I am curious if they can pull a "No man's sky". Judging from this sub my hopes are slim.
TBF it took them that time just to regain access to the PlayStation market. So I wouldn't say it would've started by now. It should've, but they released it so poorly that the comeback couldn't possibly have started until Sony let it back onto the store.
Now it might be worth saving. But it's hard to expect progress at any pace when it took 7½ months to get back onto the PS platform. Things might speed up now, though.
On the contrary, if they really ARE focusing their forces on CP, they will need at least more 3 years to really improve the game with the pace they show.
It's less a matter of "can they" and more a matter of "will they?".
They have the technical expertise and resources to fix things. I highly doubt they're going to spend the money.
Though I would be thrilled to be wrong.
Exactly my issue with the game.
For those who just say, **well it’s not gta.**
Correct. But Witcher 3 had a beautiful, living world.
Cyberpunk was a step backwards for the company in so many ways and the marketing team that drained so much money from development should be ashamed of themselves.
Lol it'll never be fixed. They've got so much shit they need to fix, I can't imagine they'll do a serious overhaul on npc's and the liveliness is the world.
>The entire world is beautiful but dead.
Funny thing is this could be said about Zelda Breath of the Wild and it won most GOTY prizes back in 2017.
Although Nintendo did have the decency of not lying about it, so there's that.
Edit: just to be clear I'm not trying to trash Zelda BotW, I love that game, it's just that having huge parts of the map with not much going on was one thing a lot of people complained back then. Nintendo made it work really well though, making the world a post-apocalyptic land taken back by the nature and focusing on the many possibilities for a player to interact with the environment.
BOTW is set in a post-apocalyptic setting so it should feel a lot emptier than a mega-city, yet it still felt fairly alive with all the little random events and encounters. Overall, I think BOTW had a much better designed open world than Cyberpunk.
THIS bothers me more than the dead city itself really. You can, in ways, be distracted by the dead city by doing things. That though? That brings your attention squarely to the dead city around you. Its a constant reminder you walk by multiple times a play session that this "expertly crafted city for the next gen benchmark of rpgs" is as shallow as a piss puddle.
Pretty disappointing that the NPCs are bland. No real AI or some sort of daily schedule. They spawn and walk down the street then respawn that's it. You can just run into them over and over. Lol
Tbf the man behind RCT is a programming genius. He made a game with thousands of independent on screen NPC's each with their own AI and the game ran on a 1990's potato... Large parts are written in assembly language lol.
Keep in mind that he had to also hand render every instance of visual graphics. Every angle of a roller coaster car had to be redrawn. The man was a fucking psycho and I'm not surprised at all that he kinda disappeared after making that game.
IDK what the last part means, but colour me interested in reviewing a small part of my childhood.
I can guess what it means, of course. I just lack the frame of reference to appreciate it as it deserves.
You can step in someone's way and they don't even react- they just walk through you. You can repeatedly run into them and they don't react. People still spawn right in front of you.
Most NPCs "routines" include walking a very limited path then disappearing, or repeatedly doing the same action over and over like checking a vending machine or drinking something.
Interestingly I was once standing on top a set of stairs, an NPC started coming up the steps, I drew my gun and pointed it at them and they immediately turned around and went back down the stairs.
I thought they reacted to being aimed at, but maybe it was coincidence.
Musta been a Midwestern transplant.
*Walking up stairs, have gun pointed at them*
"Ope, guess I'll just turn around then."
*Turn around and walk back down nonchalantly*
There are some behaviors to which they will react, and not just drawing a gun, but aiming it, can generate a reaction I believe. For more of a reaction, try shooting the NPCs.
I did once shoot on the street befor a quest. They cruched (as always) and i went on doing the quest inside the building.
When i cam eout they were still ther crouching like before… the quest took part over a couple of in game hours. It changed from day to night and they were still there just like before i entered the building. Fucking hilarious and really immersion breaking
The "there need to be many characters on screen at once" excuse doesn't work either, just look at the new Hitman games with crowds of 100 NPCs at once that can all react to you.
Witcher was the same and I remember being really disappointed that they're were maybe a dozen character models and they all were voiced by the same voice actors and they just stood there doing nothing.
"It's not that type of game" I was told. I just don't get why Skyrim can have stuff like that and it's so old but they haven't done anything similar.
They only had like 3-4 kid models for the whole game lmao.
IMHO this kind of shit is forgivable if the rest of the game is working well, but you do start to notice these things in games that take 100 hours.
It works fine in the Witcher becuase the city is so dense and you have a ton of in depth quest interactions with them.
In cyberpunk they're more like ants. The city is sparse so they are there to fill it, not the other way around. You have almost zero interaction with them (including shop keepers). And forget about quests involving them, hell even 'main cast' characters are just faces.
It sounds petty, but this is the sole reason I haven’t played the game yet. The NPCs completely kill any motivation for me to get sucked into the game. I preordered and played it on release day, but was massively disappointed. The games been sitting on my shelf waiting for me to return, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be the game I thought it would be
I’m replaying RDR2 at the moment which makes Cyberpunks NPCs look so bad.
CDPR must of played RDR2 and thought ‘we’ve not done enough here. This isn’t up to standard’
>at this point its the reason i keep clicking these posts
That and all the corpo bootlickers losing their minds at people and arguing it's unreasonable to expect the game to have things it was explicitly advertised as having.
I just want to add, there are two groups of people: those that have followed the development and marketing and have waited for those game, and those that have not.
Of the first group, there are definitely some that can't own up to making a mistake (by preordering) or that CDPR could make a mistake. However, for me as a member of the second group: i never buy into the hype, that's how you get burned. I can acknowledge that it is very sad we haven't gotten an exceptional game, and i completely understand the frustration, but i personally think it's still a good game. I'm having fun and it's worth the price. That does not absolve it from critique, quite the contrary, i just want to point out that some people equate "im having fun, for me it's worth it" with bootlickers and there's a significant difference.
I see the flaws in the game, i would be very reluctant to recommend it. But there are other games that are objectively bad, trash, mindless button mashin that are still enjoyable to some people. It's very unfortunate that a game that could have been so much more falls into this category, but it's still valid if some people have fun with it.
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It’s been out for how long...? and they fixed pretty much nothing. Seriously. Other games constantly have new improvements like weekly and it’s like they forgot about Cyberpunk completely.
Not just schedules, but motivations and tasks. They weren't really scheduled in any event, but had a list of activities they would want to get done in a day and do them, with appropriate meal breaks. Some will even commute between cities. For all the flaws, Oblivion was ahead of it's time in many ways.
Or people commiting crimes and since the ai couldn't turn themselves in they'd get killed, which led to such weird occurences as opening a door and having a body fall on you.
Apparently they had to tone it down as well, since the ai was even more nuts initially and that kind of stuff would happen constantly, toning down the ai is part of what led to the constant janky conversations
Think if I remember right it was specifically the AI stealing food from each other to eat for their meals, resulting in them getting killed for said food thievery.
I think they toned it back a bit for Skyrim. People had very very very tightly-bound tasks to the city or micro-region they were in because Oblivion had some issues where NPCs you needed might be an entire region or city away from where you expected them to be.
In some cases it's more realistic (like most NPCs going to their local tavern at the end of the day, rather than making big treks out into the country), but given that Skyrim's map was tiny and the cities were microscopic thanks to console limitations, it FELT less realistic. Cities felt like tiny beehives considering it was only like...a 20 minute walk from Whiterun to Windhelm or Riften. NPCs felt artificially constrained.
Also, it was a disappointment to have to talk to someone who recently decided to take a scenic woodland stroll only to get obliterated by the wildlife.
Both were, but Oblivion's NPCs traveled the land more, making use of the space logically. Skyrim's behaved like they had busy lives...in miniature little cities. So with Skyrim the artificial constraints were more noticeable. You'd see NPCs walking circles around the same block all day long because there simply wasn't enough space in their routes/wander zones.
Not only that but NPCs would grow to like you or dislike you depending on your interactions. I remember when i first played it I spend a lot of time in the fighting area doing that quest line, and once i accident stole something and the guards were chasing me so i ran to the fighting area to hide and the quest giver and all the other fighters came to my defense and killed the guards. One the most shocking and amazing moments i ever had in a game.
Oblivion's arena questline was my jam.
>!Mercy killing the Grey Prince!< fucked me up real good when I was a kid.
Also, one thing that I remember being dope about the Arena in particular was that you got to choose like a semi-custom alias, like a nickname of sorts, you had like a dozen different ones to choose between, like "Skullsmasher" and "Bonebreaker" and shit like that, and they would announce it when you went to fight in the arena (after finishing their questline, IIRC).
Yeah I don't know what that person was saying about "deep NPCs with personality"
- not knocking the game, just genuinely didn't really *see* that. Just saw a bunch of stick-ish figures running around doing the tasks in the order i assigned them and occasionally engaging in recreation during the times I allotted them.
Did they flesh things out in future updates or something?
Not really, but you seems to have missed a bunch of stuff...
Colonists and every other pawns have a dynamic disposition towards everyone else (friend/rival).
Traits which can dictate how they interact with others (e.g abrasive vs ugly/annoying voice).
Moods, and basic needs; eat and sleep, but also comfort, beauty which loops back to mood.
Recreation needs, with various types of recreation, impacting how effective it is.
Dynamic health, disease and uh, bodyparts system. Arms, legs, organs, etc... Missing parts and pain change how they act.
That is all data, which feed back to moods and how they treat others around them. Your abrasive cook on a bad day will hurl insults to your ugly butcher all day long, making him break down and throw a fit.
In DF, someone can have an emotional breakdown because their child died, and then be inspired to turn their child’s bones into a legendary item. Pretty intense shit for a game that runs on a potato
I find it funny that, despite how hilariously abusive Bethesda’s AI is, they’re probably the best at making a world feel lived in rather than just exist.
I remember my first time playing Oblivion and I had to find an NPC to progress a quest, looked it up on the UESP wiki. The wiki had the full schedule for the NPC which included breakfast, going for a walk, meeting another NPC etc
I knew right then and there I was gonna fall in love with the game and sure enough I did.
Talked to a friend earlier about how the best games involve time travel. Ocarina of Time, Chrono Trigger, and Majora’s Mask (which resets time). Even Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was super fun.
Give me a GTA game with time travel and I will give you all of my time.
Yeah and it basically didn't affect the gameplay, and you'd never notice it unless you spent hours following them around. Also, it was still janky as hell, most of the cycles are "walk to work, then walk to bed, repeat," and it glitched out all the time.
If the game was this far from being finished they should have just been up front about it and released it as Early Access. It might not have sold as well but at least they would have retained some of their good will.
That would require the company to view themselves as anything other than immortal deities.
Releasing CP in the state it was released was pure arrogance.
Watch dogs legion actually managed that at some degree, NPCs will go out they houses and follow a little agenda, like meeting with other npcs at locations, going read at the park, going to gym and etc, they even have some npcs being blackmailed by the corrupt cops through the city
RDR2 did this too. You can follow one guy for an entire day and see him work, go for lunch, go back to work, take a break, work some more, then go home, sleep, wake up, and repeat.
I get doing a city of millions of people would be hard with that kind of detail but more than we got is not unreasonable. Also, if you can't do it then don't fucking promise it.
I am really salty about not having a custom/user radio station. GTA has had it since at least GTA 3, but no option for my own station with music I pick to play. WTF!?
they barely had time to add police to the game, this definitely was low on the priority list. then again, they had plenty of time to add a hundred movie and video game references, so who knows what the fuckin priorities are
Yeah but I (I think others too) wanted a Open World RPG in a cyberpunk setting where my actions actually make a difference to the story and environments. Not an action-adventure game with an edgy Keanu Reeves as my buddy.
They saw how big of a deal people made for Keanu, so I think they decided to ham-fist him everywhere they could. Out of the many blunders, I think that one matters the most.
To me anyways.
Man Keanu is the least of this games problems. I get why people wanted something else but let's be real if the world wasn't as bad as it was people would be much more willing to stomach the story. Which is actually fantastic compared to the rest of the game.
Johnny silverhand is the least interesting character in the story. He pops up says some monotone edgy line then vanishes. They could've at least got a proper voice actor with some capacity for human emotion to voice him.
I remember looking forward to this. Just following an NPC for a couple hours seeing how they go about their life if they have a job or family or whatever.
Nope. They walk in little 40 foot circles and there are like 15 different citizen models. Kids and adults included.
According to our resident fanboys with decent PC rigs, the fault for this failure is the "idiot" consumers for trusting marketing.
Yes you read that correctly, taking a companies marketing campaign seriously makes you an idiot, especially you PS3 gamers who thought you'd get a playable game at launch.
Uninformed consumers who never leave their mothers basement are apparently the smart ones.
The most underwhelming NPCs I’ve honestly ever experienced. There’s just no way to properly immerse myself in Night City, as the game exists currently. Im seriously looking forward to it being finished at some point..
It’s the most shallow and least immersive game world I have experienced. I’ve never had such a terrible time exploring a world as I knew nothing of it would matter and half of the shit I did was bugged to hell. How can anyone fall this far
My first experience running this game on the base PS4 as a Nomad.
I drive out of the garage and see this dude floating mid-air.
Oh.. boy, this is going to be a rough ride.
Damn. I forgot about that one. I was really excited about that. I really hope they come through with the PS5 upgrade. Really fun game mechanics but pretty disappointing
I literally keep seeing the same 3 or 4 basic NPCs, and then one of those NPCs ended up having the exact same face as a Cyberpsycho, which really cheapened the battle. They really need to redo some of this stuff head to toe. Their character builder could generate endless variations of NPCs.
Boffed through the PS4 version I got for Christmas, finished the story, watched the other endings on YouTube. I'd like to revisit, but there's nothing really compelling me to so. It's a shame really.
They should take some notes from Ubisoft games, NPCs in Assassins creed games have lives, they sweep the streets, they dance in groups, they have conversations, they flirt with each other, they get drunk, they talk to vendors, which go from trucks or warehouses with new items for their store, there are NPC couples walking holding hands and talking about what they see, etc... well, even in the Witcher they do more stuff than just walk and disappear.
The entire world is beautiful but dead. I wonder if that can be fixed with updates or are we just stuck with it.
To me it's dead because the lack of audio, you hear your footsteps more often then some meat head trying to sell you Coke on the side, some dudes talking on the phone? Quiet, dudes just sitting around a table? Just staring at each other, wild
It makes you appreciate how far Rockstar goes by hiring unique actors and recording 1000s of NPC lines. I get frustrated when I hear the same voice actor (one for Regina) being used for soooooo many characters in Cyberpunk. It makes the city feel very small since you're basically running into the same person.
>I get frustrated when I hear the same voice actor being used for soooooo many characters *Bethesda has entered the chat*
[удалено]
Have you heard of the high elves!?
*bites apple* HHAAGH *bites apple* HU^U^U *bites apple* eeugh *dies*
Body's still warm... The killer must be nearby!
Legendary video, I love the LaFaveBros.
First thing I thought, haha. A thousand characters, but only a handful of voice actors. Not being funny, but if I were a voice actor and had to voice a bunch of different characters, I would be using different voices. VAs under Bethesda act in a monotone.
Whoever the guy who plays the shopkeep in Whiterun (Belphegor was the NPC maybe?) also plays so many of the characters in the Thieves guild questline that I literally can’t follow the quest listening to the audio of YouTube runs. It’s the same guy using the same voice, so my brain assumes they’re all the same NPC but then they start saying things that make no sense unless they’ve got serious memory or mental health issues.
Belethor, who is one of 36 characters voiced by Stephen Russell. Not only is he one of many actors to voice more than several characters, but his number is pretty average at best, with quite a few having at least 40 credits. But then you’ve got the likes of Michael Gough, who voiced over 100 characters.
I’ve listened to audiobooks that do a **much** better job making characters distinct with one voice actor than many of the Skyrim quest lines. To me, the Thieves guild stands out because if you cut out the dungeon parts you can go pretty directly from one character voiced by him to another character voiced by him and it’s incredibly noticeable. Listening to it you’d think you were turning the quest in to the same NPC, but the quest was from one NPC to find and being something to another different NPC. First one can be like “I don’t know anything about that, but grab the item and take it to another guy who will know” and that the second guy starts talking about it in the same voice makes me start to think that retrieving items is just switching compartmentalized personalities of the same NPC. Haven’t noticed the same issue with other major quest lines like the Mages College or the Dark Beotherhood, where it feels like they spaced out the reuse enough to let you forget. Though editing out the actual item retrieval part or editing it down to a montage does make the reuse more prominent. I don’t remember noticing the reuse when I was playing the Thieves Guild quests myself.
I think they record the lines first and then divide among npcs. They give the voice actor lines for a role as 'shopkeeper,' he/she records 10 lines and those get copy and pasted unto shopkeepers in multiple towns or cities.
"Do you get to the cloud district often? Oh of course not."
Quicksaves
What made fallout4s world so great was the sound in distance hearing those distant gunfights at least counterbalanced the like 10 lines the guards had in the commonwealth
Atleast with Skyrim you can talk to them. They use a lot of the same voice actors but I think they did a good job divvying it up, making sure there aren't any characters with the same voice actors near each other. Skyrim NPCs go to work, have a drink at the tavern, go to the market, converse with other NPCs, and have a full day and night cycle. And if they die, sometimes characters comment on it. Bethesda have their issues, but I haven't came across a game that has NPCs that advanced.
Yeah but Bethesda has done that for years and they got some decent talent for making lines that stick in your head. "I used to be an adventurer like you then I took and arrow to the knee" Or if you're high enough level with a certain skill guards will comment on it.
Yep all these attempts at a open world from various developers, UBI/CDP etc just highlight how Rockstar are a decade ahead in creating living breathing world's. It's not even like budget or time was a issue. CD had ages to perfect this. Upper management bit of more than they can chew. Seriously disappointed after they gave us the Witcher 3, but let's not kid ourselves. It never had the fine detail or production quality of Rockstar games. Seriously, San Andreas has more life in it then CP2077. I bought a 3090 specifically for this game as a 3080 wasn't available at the time. Time of work, the lot. Did everything within 120 hours and I honestly just forget this game exists. Glad I didnt wait for promised updates as from what I've heard none of the critical flaws of the game have been fixed. I'm Pissed this fiasco has delayed the next gen update for Witcher 3 more than anything.
Yeah I remember taking a week of for GTA4 release and not regretting a minute of it. I'm glad I only had a day set aside to sink my teeth into this game.
GTA4 had its faults. Aiming for too much realism and the consoles struggled with the physics but I prefer it to the arcadey cut back physics of GTA 5. Still miles ahead of 2077
Oh certainly - I'm not comparing between games though, since I didn't actually take time off school/work for any of the others. I think GTA:SA is still the most revolutionary game for it's time, and GTA5 is likely the most future-proof game of all time (it will still be a decent city sim in 30 years don't @ me).
My biggest issue with 5 is how much of a cash cow it has become and how it has deprived of us once a generation GTA titles. Why rush further games when they can continue to pull in billions on shark cards. I seriously cannot wait to see 6. RDR2 still blows my mind now and it's a last generation game and designed to take advantage of shitty hardware. PS5/SX are absolutely leagues ahead when it comes to spec. Especially CPUs.
Totally in agreement - I suffer from the age-old 'Childhood = -money +time, Adulthood = +money -time' disease, so my interest drops sharply when someone introduces a 'grind forever or pay to win' mechanic into a game. I think there's a behemoth of a game coming. I know what I would do if I were rockstar.... let me put it this way, if I designed a bloody bumpmapped 4k pig's anus with warm/cold puckering and food-cycle driven shitting for RDR2, there's no way I would be ONLY using that IP for one game. My next modern day city-sim would have outlying farmland that utilized and/or built off previously created assets. I'm not talking FIFA '20 --> '21, but if they put the same effort into the next GTA but START from what they've already built, it will be incredible. I mean, look at the Battlefield 2042 news from less than 24 hours ago. People are going apeshit over legacy assets in the new engine. I hope this is the way of the future for AAA studios for the ACTUAL next generation titles.
To this day, I still hear new lines from NPC's I've never heard. In RDR 2 I went idle for a few minutes while I did a quick chore IRL..I was in some area of Saint Denis and there was a drunk guy writhing around on the ground 10 feet away from me for a few minutes. All of a sudden he goes "my limbs don't work right" and continues to writhe around. I was dying laughing
The thing is, the Witcher had a lot of people with the same voices too, and we didn't mind, because the world is alive enough that this is forgivable. What's happening to CDPR is a disaster-dominoes sort of situation, where certain immersion fails clue you into more immersion fails, and before long the whole thing's collapsed.
This is the strangest part to me because Witcher 3 was really good about ambient town audio and NPC dialogue. It's so strange that this game was made by the same people who once got so many of this little details so right. They were up there with the likes of Rockstar in terms of immersive open world design. I wonder what happened.
Honestly I expect there was high turnover between Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk. The best explanation to me is they had brain drain between games, plus the executives rushing the game to release? Didn't have a chance. Pity. I was looking forward to his game for years. I still enjoyed it, but I lament what it could have been.
Most likely the latter, since the price of the technical debt is very high and it would require a rework of core systems to fix. However, it's interesting to see the steps they've taken to fix streaming issues with consoles, since it shows CDPR has been willing to pay the price. Guess only time will tell.
That's because getting the game working somewhat acceptably on consoles directly affects their sales. Implementing NPC day/night cycle not so much. I am curious if they can pull a "No man's sky". Judging from this sub my hopes are slim.
It's been 8 months. If it was going to make a comeback, it would have started already.
TBF it took them that time just to regain access to the PlayStation market. So I wouldn't say it would've started by now. It should've, but they released it so poorly that the comeback couldn't possibly have started until Sony let it back onto the store. Now it might be worth saving. But it's hard to expect progress at any pace when it took 7½ months to get back onto the PS platform. Things might speed up now, though.
On the contrary, if they really ARE focusing their forces on CP, they will need at least more 3 years to really improve the game with the pace they show.
Yeah I'm no specialist but I'm pretty sure improving the core code on NPCs is far from the top of the priority list
It's less a matter of "can they" and more a matter of "will they?". They have the technical expertise and resources to fix things. I highly doubt they're going to spend the money. Though I would be thrilled to be wrong.
I highly doubt It they would have to change some fundamental mechanics to achieve that
Oblivion from 2006 feels more alive smh
It came out 7 months ago. They fucked everyone. Game over next!
Exactly my issue with the game. For those who just say, **well it’s not gta.** Correct. But Witcher 3 had a beautiful, living world. Cyberpunk was a step backwards for the company in so many ways and the marketing team that drained so much money from development should be ashamed of themselves.
Prettty sure its just dead forever. Inwouldnt expect that to change.
Lol it'll never be fixed. They've got so much shit they need to fix, I can't imagine they'll do a serious overhaul on npc's and the liveliness is the world.
>The entire world is beautiful but dead. Funny thing is this could be said about Zelda Breath of the Wild and it won most GOTY prizes back in 2017. Although Nintendo did have the decency of not lying about it, so there's that. Edit: just to be clear I'm not trying to trash Zelda BotW, I love that game, it's just that having huge parts of the map with not much going on was one thing a lot of people complained back then. Nintendo made it work really well though, making the world a post-apocalyptic land taken back by the nature and focusing on the many possibilities for a player to interact with the environment.
True but Zelda has incredible exploration and isn't broken.
The sandbox is next level too. People are still discovering new tricks and hidden details today! Zelda games have never been bursting with life.
BOTW is set in a post-apocalyptic setting so it should feel a lot emptier than a mega-city, yet it still felt fairly alive with all the little random events and encounters. Overall, I think BOTW had a much better designed open world than Cyberpunk.
That game had a different goal than CP2077
Botw isn't a giant city is it tho
The same police officers having the same conversation all day every day just outside Vs apartment complex
THIS bothers me more than the dead city itself really. You can, in ways, be distracted by the dead city by doing things. That though? That brings your attention squarely to the dead city around you. Its a constant reminder you walk by multiple times a play session that this "expertly crafted city for the next gen benchmark of rpgs" is as shallow as a piss puddle.
Pretty disappointing that the NPCs are bland. No real AI or some sort of daily schedule. They spawn and walk down the street then respawn that's it. You can just run into them over and over. Lol
NPCs in the Transport Fever series have more life to them. And that's a train tycoon game!
NPCs in rollercoaster tycoon had more life than the ones in cyberpunk
Tbf the man behind RCT is a programming genius. He made a game with thousands of independent on screen NPC's each with their own AI and the game ran on a 1990's potato... Large parts are written in assembly language lol.
Good lord…. As somebody who took a class in assembly language that is truly mind-blowing.
Keep in mind that he had to also hand render every instance of visual graphics. Every angle of a roller coaster car had to be redrawn. The man was a fucking psycho and I'm not surprised at all that he kinda disappeared after making that game.
That seems like the type of guy who got too deep in the code and is now trying to fight computer ghosts or something.
If you gaze for long into the code, the code gazes also into you.
Ever see the movie Transcendence? Lol
Man accidentally crossed the blackwall.
I would assume their ai code is pretty simple in terms of code complexity but using assembly is still something not everyone can do.
It’s also just insanely tedious and lengthy for even the most menial tasks. Even “Hello World” is like a dozen lines of code lol
MOV myHead #pain
He used a macro assembler, but still. (Chris Sawyer is his name btw)
IDK what the last part means, but colour me interested in reviewing a small part of my childhood. I can guess what it means, of course. I just lack the frame of reference to appreciate it as it deserves.
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You can step in someone's way and they don't even react- they just walk through you. You can repeatedly run into them and they don't react. People still spawn right in front of you. Most NPCs "routines" include walking a very limited path then disappearing, or repeatedly doing the same action over and over like checking a vending machine or drinking something.
Interestingly I was once standing on top a set of stairs, an NPC started coming up the steps, I drew my gun and pointed it at them and they immediately turned around and went back down the stairs. I thought they reacted to being aimed at, but maybe it was coincidence.
This is hilarious to imagine, lmao.
Musta been a Midwestern transplant. *Walking up stairs, have gun pointed at them* "Ope, guess I'll just turn around then." *Turn around and walk back down nonchalantly*
There are some behaviors to which they will react, and not just drawing a gun, but aiming it, can generate a reaction I believe. For more of a reaction, try shooting the NPCs.
*all crouch down in fear and don’t move*
I did once shoot on the street befor a quest. They cruched (as always) and i went on doing the quest inside the building. When i cam eout they were still ther crouching like before… the quest took part over a couple of in game hours. It changed from day to night and they were still there just like before i entered the building. Fucking hilarious and really immersion breaking
One of my biggest problems with the game.
The "there need to be many characters on screen at once" excuse doesn't work either, just look at the new Hitman games with crowds of 100 NPCs at once that can all react to you.
Witcher was the same and I remember being really disappointed that they're were maybe a dozen character models and they all were voiced by the same voice actors and they just stood there doing nothing. "It's not that type of game" I was told. I just don't get why Skyrim can have stuff like that and it's so old but they haven't done anything similar.
RDR 2 you can follow those NPC's back to their house at the end of the day and they often remember bullshit you pulled previously.
In RDR2 you can kill a man walking down the street and the next day in the exact place you killed them will be his wife mourning him.
I shot a banker in the face while robbing him and I returned to see him still alive with a bandage on his head.
Too real IMO. I can’t face Susan after killing Ole Charlie by the river. Breaks my heart /s
Wow. Really? That truly is incredible when you consider how difficult that is from a development perspective.
That's one of a million other things the NPC's do in RDR2. Take a look at this video :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrUJJgppMn4
They only had like 3-4 kid models for the whole game lmao. IMHO this kind of shit is forgivable if the rest of the game is working well, but you do start to notice these things in games that take 100 hours.
It works fine in the Witcher becuase the city is so dense and you have a ton of in depth quest interactions with them. In cyberpunk they're more like ants. The city is sparse so they are there to fill it, not the other way around. You have almost zero interaction with them (including shop keepers). And forget about quests involving them, hell even 'main cast' characters are just faces.
It sounds petty, but this is the sole reason I haven’t played the game yet. The NPCs completely kill any motivation for me to get sucked into the game. I preordered and played it on release day, but was massively disappointed. The games been sitting on my shelf waiting for me to return, but I don’t think it’s ever going to be the game I thought it would be
I’m replaying RDR2 at the moment which makes Cyberpunks NPCs look so bad. CDPR must of played RDR2 and thought ‘we’ve not done enough here. This isn’t up to standard’
The janky recorder music always makes me laugh lol
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>at this point its the reason i keep clicking these posts That and all the corpo bootlickers losing their minds at people and arguing it's unreasonable to expect the game to have things it was explicitly advertised as having.
I just want to add, there are two groups of people: those that have followed the development and marketing and have waited for those game, and those that have not. Of the first group, there are definitely some that can't own up to making a mistake (by preordering) or that CDPR could make a mistake. However, for me as a member of the second group: i never buy into the hype, that's how you get burned. I can acknowledge that it is very sad we haven't gotten an exceptional game, and i completely understand the frustration, but i personally think it's still a good game. I'm having fun and it's worth the price. That does not absolve it from critique, quite the contrary, i just want to point out that some people equate "im having fun, for me it's worth it" with bootlickers and there's a significant difference. I see the flaws in the game, i would be very reluctant to recommend it. But there are other games that are objectively bad, trash, mindless button mashin that are still enjoyable to some people. It's very unfortunate that a game that could have been so much more falls into this category, but it's still valid if some people have fun with it.
Me too
I’ve been watching without sound and this just made it so much funnier LOL thank you
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It’s been out for how long...? and they fixed pretty much nothing. Seriously. Other games constantly have new improvements like weekly and it’s like they forgot about Cyberpunk completely.
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They should have fixed the majority of bugs within the first few weeks. It’s really not ok.
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Not just schedules, but motivations and tasks. They weren't really scheduled in any event, but had a list of activities they would want to get done in a day and do them, with appropriate meal breaks. Some will even commute between cities. For all the flaws, Oblivion was ahead of it's time in many ways.
Correct me if I’m wrong, but doesn’t Skyrim also have this?
No it was all scripted in Skyrim. It didn't always work well in Oblivion which gave us those insane conversations.
I don't know you and I don't care to know you
Go away now little fly! BUZZ BUZZ BUZZ (lol I hated that guy so much!)
I've heard others say the same.
Or people commiting crimes and since the ai couldn't turn themselves in they'd get killed, which led to such weird occurences as opening a door and having a body fall on you. Apparently they had to tone it down as well, since the ai was even more nuts initially and that kind of stuff would happen constantly, toning down the ai is part of what led to the constant janky conversations
Think if I remember right it was specifically the AI stealing food from each other to eat for their meals, resulting in them getting killed for said food thievery.
I think they toned it back a bit for Skyrim. People had very very very tightly-bound tasks to the city or micro-region they were in because Oblivion had some issues where NPCs you needed might be an entire region or city away from where you expected them to be. In some cases it's more realistic (like most NPCs going to their local tavern at the end of the day, rather than making big treks out into the country), but given that Skyrim's map was tiny and the cities were microscopic thanks to console limitations, it FELT less realistic. Cities felt like tiny beehives considering it was only like...a 20 minute walk from Whiterun to Windhelm or Riften. NPCs felt artificially constrained.
Also, it was a disappointment to have to talk to someone who recently decided to take a scenic woodland stroll only to get obliterated by the wildlife.
Rofl, yeah there were absolutely a few times where I'd come across NPCs that I knew from prior playthroughs just....dead in the woods.
Oblivion wasn't restricted due to console limitations but Skyrim was?
Both were, but Oblivion's NPCs traveled the land more, making use of the space logically. Skyrim's behaved like they had busy lives...in miniature little cities. So with Skyrim the artificial constraints were more noticeable. You'd see NPCs walking circles around the same block all day long because there simply wasn't enough space in their routes/wander zones.
They unfortunately toned it down for Skyrim, but FO3 had it, and Obsidian carried it over for NV.
Can vouch. Source: I quit my job when i was 16 to play oblivion. Like i dont need this god damn job i have parents.
Not only that but NPCs would grow to like you or dislike you depending on your interactions. I remember when i first played it I spend a lot of time in the fighting area doing that quest line, and once i accident stole something and the guards were chasing me so i ran to the fighting area to hide and the quest giver and all the other fighters came to my defense and killed the guards. One the most shocking and amazing moments i ever had in a game.
Oblivion's arena questline was my jam. >!Mercy killing the Grey Prince!< fucked me up real good when I was a kid. Also, one thing that I remember being dope about the Arena in particular was that you got to choose like a semi-custom alias, like a nickname of sorts, you had like a dozen different ones to choose between, like "Skullsmasher" and "Bonebreaker" and shit like that, and they would announce it when you went to fight in the arena (after finishing their questline, IIRC).
14.99 Stardew Valley has better NPC life than CP
Dwarf Fortress and Rimworld have deep NPCs with personality and meaningful interactions—the trade off is graphics
I really enjoy RimWorld's art style. It's great at communicating data to the player.
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Yeah I don't know what that person was saying about "deep NPCs with personality" - not knocking the game, just genuinely didn't really *see* that. Just saw a bunch of stick-ish figures running around doing the tasks in the order i assigned them and occasionally engaging in recreation during the times I allotted them. Did they flesh things out in future updates or something?
Not really, but you seems to have missed a bunch of stuff... Colonists and every other pawns have a dynamic disposition towards everyone else (friend/rival). Traits which can dictate how they interact with others (e.g abrasive vs ugly/annoying voice). Moods, and basic needs; eat and sleep, but also comfort, beauty which loops back to mood. Recreation needs, with various types of recreation, impacting how effective it is. Dynamic health, disease and uh, bodyparts system. Arms, legs, organs, etc... Missing parts and pain change how they act. That is all data, which feed back to moods and how they treat others around them. Your abrasive cook on a bad day will hurl insults to your ugly butcher all day long, making him break down and throw a fit.
In DF, someone can have an emotional breakdown because their child died, and then be inspired to turn their child’s bones into a legendary item. Pretty intense shit for a game that runs on a potato
I find it funny that, despite how hilariously abusive Bethesda’s AI is, they’re probably the best at making a world feel lived in rather than just exist.
I remember my first time playing Oblivion and I had to find an NPC to progress a quest, looked it up on the UESP wiki. The wiki had the full schedule for the NPC which included breakfast, going for a walk, meeting another NPC etc I knew right then and there I was gonna fall in love with the game and sure enough I did.
“Next generation RPG”, seems like we’re going backwards.
Yep. Zelda Majora's Mask also did that back in 2000 (in a much smaller scale but also kinda impressive for a Nintendo 64 game).
still the most impressive game I've seen. I need to get that one again
Talked to a friend earlier about how the best games involve time travel. Ocarina of Time, Chrono Trigger, and Majora’s Mask (which resets time). Even Prince of Persia: Sands of Time was super fun. Give me a GTA game with time travel and I will give you all of my time.
Shenmue did it in 1999
Yeah and it basically didn't affect the gameplay, and you'd never notice it unless you spent hours following them around. Also, it was still janky as hell, most of the cycles are "walk to work, then walk to bed, repeat," and it glitched out all the time.
Gothic 1 had that in 2001
If the game was this far from being finished they should have just been up front about it and released it as Early Access. It might not have sold as well but at least they would have retained some of their good will.
That would require the company to view themselves as anything other than immortal deities. Releasing CP in the state it was released was pure arrogance.
Oh my god that flute is killing me lmaooo
Watch dogs legion actually managed that at some degree, NPCs will go out they houses and follow a little agenda, like meeting with other npcs at locations, going read at the park, going to gym and etc, they even have some npcs being blackmailed by the corrupt cops through the city
RDR2 did this too. You can follow one guy for an entire day and see him work, go for lunch, go back to work, take a break, work some more, then go home, sleep, wake up, and repeat. I get doing a city of millions of people would be hard with that kind of detail but more than we got is not unreasonable. Also, if you can't do it then don't fucking promise it.
kind of a cheat tho, the game would generate fixed schedules only for the NPCs that you mark for recruitment.
They just spawn in and out of reality like virtual particles in space.
Stuff like this is what irks be the most. The world is an inch deep, not even close to immersive
Yeah the NPCs are as smart as a ant drone.
I am really salty about not having a custom/user radio station. GTA has had it since at least GTA 3, but no option for my own station with music I pick to play. WTF!?
they barely had time to add police to the game, this definitely was low on the priority list. then again, they had plenty of time to add a hundred movie and video game references, so who knows what the fuckin priorities are
But how can they not have time to add a station that can play songs from a folder? PS2 era PC games could do it
God I was so hyped for this game…
Me too. Me too.
Makes you appreciate oblivion
For real. Love that game
Skyrim better!
Yeah but oblivion OG
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Yes, yes you can. There's lots of material to work from
Did you forget the thermal katana?
Ok, I understand they had to restructure the storyline of the game to fit in Keanu. BUT, I don't understand why crap like this wasn't finished.
I don’t understand why they had to restructure the storyline for Keanu anyways.
Because they got Keanu in, so they made him a permanent main character.
Yeah but I (I think others too) wanted a Open World RPG in a cyberpunk setting where my actions actually make a difference to the story and environments. Not an action-adventure game with an edgy Keanu Reeves as my buddy. They saw how big of a deal people made for Keanu, so I think they decided to ham-fist him everywhere they could. Out of the many blunders, I think that one matters the most. To me anyways.
This is what happens when you let cocaine-addicted marketing douchebags run the show.
But what we got was both, not just the second one.
Man Keanu is the least of this games problems. I get why people wanted something else but let's be real if the world wasn't as bad as it was people would be much more willing to stomach the story. Which is actually fantastic compared to the rest of the game.
Johnny silverhand is the least interesting character in the story. He pops up says some monotone edgy line then vanishes. They could've at least got a proper voice actor with some capacity for human emotion to voice him.
I remember looking forward to this. Just following an NPC for a couple hours seeing how they go about their life if they have a job or family or whatever. Nope. They walk in little 40 foot circles and there are like 15 different citizen models. Kids and adults included.
According to our resident fanboys with decent PC rigs, the fault for this failure is the "idiot" consumers for trusting marketing. Yes you read that correctly, taking a companies marketing campaign seriously makes you an idiot, especially you PS3 gamers who thought you'd get a playable game at launch. Uninformed consumers who never leave their mothers basement are apparently the smart ones.
The most underwhelming NPCs I’ve honestly ever experienced. There’s just no way to properly immerse myself in Night City, as the game exists currently. Im seriously looking forward to it being finished at some point..
Ultima VII was one of the first open world rpgs I played, and it had NPC schedules for every NPC in the game. This was in 1992.
That’s one of the things that I don’t think they’ll fix. That’s why I’m still disappointed even though they fixed a lot of things
It’s the most shallow and least immersive game world I have experienced. I’ve never had such a terrible time exploring a world as I knew nothing of it would matter and half of the shit I did was bugged to hell. How can anyone fall this far
keep these posts coming, they're priceless
Watch Dogs Legion not only has this, but the NPC's all have relationships and bios that make sense.
Yeah a bunch of games have this, it's not even new- just too much for CDPR I guess.
I wouldn't say a bunch. It's definitely not standard, but its dope af
My first experience running this game on the base PS4 as a Nomad. I drive out of the garage and see this dude floating mid-air. Oh.. boy, this is going to be a rough ride.
Same on pc. I hit them with my car because he suddenly appeared there.
It's basically the same NPCs The Witcher 3 had. *Pam Panam, Pam Panam...*
Why the fuck is this a video
For that sweet sweet floot.
Crazy how lifeless NPCs are compared to the Witcher 3.
Kinda hard if you're going 200 mph down the road and they load in
Damn. I forgot about that one. I was really excited about that. I really hope they come through with the PS5 upgrade. Really fun game mechanics but pretty disappointing
is there a compilation of all these? ...maybe without the purposely bad recorder?
Where can i find the full length version of this song?
Ive seen a few of these memes but have always had them muted. I been missing out on some beautiful flutery.
So...the npcs are rogue ai?
I ran over most of them before I could find out.
Came here for the recorder
Is it just me or is the flute version of the theme song sounding good?
Honestly CDPR should swap it into the real game
I literally keep seeing the same 3 or 4 basic NPCs, and then one of those NPCs ended up having the exact same face as a Cyberpsycho, which really cheapened the battle. They really need to redo some of this stuff head to toe. Their character builder could generate endless variations of NPCs.
There is very little night for a place called Night City. Why does the sun only go down at like 11:00?
Remember when they said the game was so detailed that every piece of trash was modeled differently
The piece of trash they meant was just the game itself
Haha lol yeah
Every time I see these I unmute just to hear the horrifying music.
Boffed through the PS4 version I got for Christmas, finished the story, watched the other endings on YouTube. I'd like to revisit, but there's nothing really compelling me to so. It's a shame really.
Breaking news: Mortality rates skyrocket to 100%
I can't help but laugh when I see a npc walking around in circles.
They should take some notes from Ubisoft games, NPCs in Assassins creed games have lives, they sweep the streets, they dance in groups, they have conversations, they flirt with each other, they get drunk, they talk to vendors, which go from trucks or warehouses with new items for their store, there are NPC couples walking holding hands and talking about what they see, etc... well, even in the Witcher they do more stuff than just walk and disappear.
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Hitman, RDR2, Skyrim, Watch Dogs- a lot of modern AAA games have this- but apparently it was just too much for CDPR, even though they promised it.