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Cyberpunk 2077 preload now available
For worldwide launch times, see:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EoVEcJCW8AIXqLR?format=jpg&name=large
7PM on the 9th for me. Can't wait!
Also, heads up, there is supposedly a 43GB day 1 patch coming, at least for consoles but possibly PC too.
Disappointing but not entirely unexpected that the reviews are suggesting a notable lack of social and philosophical commentary from a game titled Cyberpunk.
With how highly this may rate in public consciousness, it feels like we’re well on the way to Cyberpunk the genre being replaced by Cyberpunk the aesthetic.
In the Giant Bomb video I watched the reviewer mentioned how juvenile the game felt in trying to be edgy. Dildos everywhere, teenage use of expletives in the in-game advertisements, etc.
Pretty much tells you exactly what market they are after so judge accordingly.
You and @tindall are being pretty condescending to everyone who is looking forward to this game. It's one thing to critique a game, that's totally fair game, but the way you are both making judgments about those of us excited to play it is rather obnoxious... especially since the game isn't even out yet so you're basing all this on pre-release reviews, which are more often than not incredibly shallow dives into the games due to being so rushed.
I really don’t think what I said was directed at anyone wanting to play the game.
Am I disappointed that it seems like CDPR has massively missed the mark of cyberpunk to pursue the horny adolescent market? Yea, absolutely I am. I am not however saying people who play or want to play this game are part of that market or that people who enjoy those things are wrong.
For what it's worth, I agree that poster was in pretty poor taste (if that's what you're referring to). However worth keeping in mind is that it's just a single art asset in a game that likely features tens of thousands of them, hundreds of hours of gameplay, and also supposedly supports non-binary character creation. Not only that but the in-universe explanation for the poster isn't totally out of line either IMO; Exploitative sexualization in advertisement definitely isn't going to go away by 2077, especially if we start sliding further and further towards corporate dystopia.
I do agree that CDPR's labor practices have been rather abhorrent of late, and that is a fair enough reason to boycott them and be upset. But TBH, I think you're looking at the genre of Cyberpunk with some rather narrow-scoped, rose-tinted glasses. It's by far my favorite fictional genre, and I have read, watched, and played (TTG included) pretty much everything available in the genre out there. Not everything in the genre is focused on deep socioeconomic/politics commentary. Much of it is just as shallow and action focused as Cyberpunk 2077 looks to be. E.g. All the Shadowrun videogames are similarly focused, and even Snow Crash and Neuromancer (while both incredibly prescient) weren't particularly deep either, and yet they're both considered foundational books of the genre.
Shadowrun, both the TTG and videogames, have almost the exact same mechanic and lore too, where there are severe drawback for prosthesis, and when your "Essence" is bottomed out due to too many augmentations it can also lead to "cyberpsychosis" and sociopathy. And it too is considered foundational to the genre. So perhaps your gripe is less with CDPR/Cyberpunk 2077 specifically, and instead that particular Cyberpunk trope (which isn't that uncommon in the genre)?
p.s. If you want to play a Cyberpunk-ish TTG game without any drawbacks from augmentation, you should check out Eclipse Phase.
Why would you expect them to do that? I never saw anything to suggest that CDPR belongs to "games as art" niche. They've been serving the pop crowd since their start.
The fact that they're making a difficult subject palatable to their demographic should be a point in their favour, not a reason to label them with "anti" and "hate" epithets because they're unable to do it perfectly. I haven't seen anyone trying to be constructive and offer suggestions instead of piling on with this type of rhetoric, which by the way, reminds me of the "games make people more violent" fallacy by denying gamers the agency to understand a deeper subject when presented with a faulty interpretation.
I am convinced that a mainstream game company bringing more attention to trans problems is a good thing even if they're going about it the wrong way.
I haven't paid enough attention, that is indeed true. The only things that I saw were the mainstream articles condemning them in quite unkind words. Which is fair, they see what they see. However I think that it's worth considering that today's games are being worked on (sometimes in quite radical ways) a long time after they've been released. I am hopeful that the CDPR team wants to make the best game they can, and if they can overcome the limits of the original material and those of their engine they'll tackle the ethical issues also.
Regarding the second part of your comment, I'm sorry I didn't make myself better understood, I was making the comparison only from the point of view that both statements are made based on the immediate content of games (or art in general) and not necessarily on their interpretation in the larger context of their audience.
I'm sure you agree (and sorry if I'm being trite) that presenting a concept in a piece of art, does not mean said art condones it. So, let's allow for the fact that some of the people being exposed to a immature bad take on these issues will have edgy responses to them and some will be curious and empathetic. What I'm saying is that I'm optimistic that the later category will be more numerous.
Thank you for the detailed point of view. I still don't fully agree with some of your smaller points, but I surely hope they'll have a "gender equity patch" at some point. I reserve the right to also be annoyed by its hamfistedness after I see some of the gameplay.
I don't think this has to be a niche thing, which is perhaps why it's disappointing to hear that the cyberpunk game is more game and less cyberpunk.
I think the best comparison to draw on is RDR2 -- the last game to reach a similar level of hype. This is the most successful mainstream game to date, and its simultaneously a work of art people will be talking about in thirty years. RDR2 is a western first, game second and it is better for it. It is not a stretch for someone to say RDR2 is the best Western in any medium, ever. Every design decision reflects a choice to fully embrace and explore this medium and the result was breathtaking. It wasn't perfect and there are parts of the game that frustrate me but I was blown away by the bold decision to aggressively pursue a vision that was more than what someone would expect for a AAA title.
Of course, what RDR2 had to say was confined thematically to the western genre. The cyberpunk genre is, IMO, a much more interesting backdrop because there are so many incongruities built into the human experience that are highlighted when one explores what it means to be human and the breakdown of the social contract. To have a title not engage seriously with that is such a huge missed opportunity IMO.
Of course, some people are totally fine with a fun game with a cool aesthetic and don't need anything deeper. But as RDR2 proves it's not impossible to do both and as the medium matures I think it's totally fine to demand more from the product.
I am sorry but personally I wouldn't call Read Dead Redemption 2 art. It might be because I haven't seen enough of it and missed some of the deeper meanings of the game, or maybe because Americanism doesn't resonate with me. However I feel like a game as art set in that geographical and time period could have tackled some bigger ethical themes than gang morality in the Wild West. For example the displacement of indigenous population by the new founded American nation, which seems like a chapter that's often overlooked.
This is tackled in the game in the third chapter. The game in general does a great deal to peel off the romanticized paint of westerns and reveal the darker aspects of frontier life: the echoes of slavery, modernization, frontier life as a women etc.
A significant portion of the final chapters of RDR2 was dedicated to exactly that, in all its heartbreaking, gory details. See: https://reddead.fandom.com/wiki/Wapiti_Indians
Shit, thank you for setting me straight. I probably quit watching the game play at the wrong time. :(
NP. And to be fair to you, the Wapiti storyline doesn't really take center stage until the final chapter of the game (the one before the epilogue)... which took me ~100 hours to get to. :P So it's not really surprising you never watched that far into someone's Let's Play of the game.
So, yesterday I watched a couple of hours from the first act of the game. It's so far from being transgressive that it's laughable. It's a childish mess that looks indeed targeted, as you observed in another comment, at edgy 13 year olds. I still find it kind of fun, interspersed with moments of "heavy sigh".
Mostly the way in which the environment is hypersexualized. I can understand that it comes from the source material, but most of the sex stuff is not sexy, most of it is campy and cringe-worthy. Dildos in every dumpster alley? Milf-guard? etc.
It’s not at all what people are expecting from what I’ve seen. It’s sci-fi GTA in first person mode with fairly Borderlands-esque humor. If you’re into that, enjoy.
It’s not at all the Witcher 3 x Ghost in the Shell of brilliant dystopian sci-fi narratives that people were probably hoping for.
*I’m not saying it’s trash for anyone who sees this and gets mad, I’m just curbing expectations.
I haven’t played it yet as I’m waiting to pick up a Series X but it’s just what I’ve not only seen myself of the game on YouTube, but reviewers I trust saying so. So there’s your grain of salt and YMMV.
That's easy. Their previous game was one of the finest RPGs ever made and nothing remotely comparable has been released since. That was what, a decade ago?
People are expecting the exact same thing here, just with science instead of sorcery. I'd bet nearly all the people buying this game know and care nothing at all about the cyberpunk paint job. They just want another TW3-class RPG experience.
Since TW3 was a bugfest on launch too, so far we're on the same trajectory. :P
TW3 was released in 2015, but to be fair 2020 has felt like the better part of a decade
That must be it. 2020's true superpower has been time dilation.
I think the fact this is a moderately popular opinion must be testament to a generational gap or something. I thought TW3 was ok-to-good but it didn't stand out or stick with me at all.
Yea that's the jist of it. To be clear my comment wasn't directly addressed to him and it's certainly a valid opinion regardless of age. I just think everyone, myself included, looks back fondly on their own coming-of-age experience in video games. Which, in my opinion, is the exact sort of rose-coloured-tint necessary to cast TW3 into a "greatest-of-all-time" type category.
Give me a list of RPGs that play like a movie, have excellent writing and voice acting, compelling characters and story, buck fantasy tropes with different mythology, and provide a bonus game as the final DLC. That game was a breath of fresh air for me in a genre that was getting quite tired and repetitive.
I had issues with the controls and balance, but it was nothing a simple overhaul mod couldn't fix. After that it was more of a Dark Souls experience. Ghost Mode is the 'fix' for TW3's systems to keep you on your toes. Timing, rather than spamming attack keys.
The first RPG I ever played was Adventure, on my Atari 2600. The games on my list with the rose colored glasses would be Dragon Warrior, Phantasy Star, and Final Fantasy (the originals, not the sequels). Those were peak RPG for me back when I was getting issues of EGM in the mail. Best ever? I'd have to give it to Everquest, but they only won by accident, it was a glorious mess.
Most movies are boring and predictable, not to mention linear and one-dimensional. I prefer games which play like games, so I'm not sure of the benefit of viewing them through the lens of a non-interactive medium. Also offering loads of DLC doesn't make a game good. It can add extra good bits to an already good game, but a bad game with lots of DLC is just more of a bad game.
So with that in mind, I would suggest Demon's Souls, Dark Souls and Dark Souls 3, maybe the Divinity games, even Dragon's Dogma is pretty good on that front. Possible mention for Fallout NV, a couple of the Borderlands games and maybe The Outer Worlds but I haven't put a great deal of time into that yet. All are well written with excellent voice acting and compelling characters doing fairly interesting and varied stuff in well built worlds with deep lore to back them up.
TW3 was one of the most disappointing games I've ever played. The combat was immersion-breakingly bad, the characters flat (Gerald appears to just be a mobile chin with a haircut on top, which to be fair, the TV adaptation absolutely nailed) and the storytelling was trying really hard but just came off weak. I spent so long standing around in cutscenes while other people explained the plot to me. Then it was off on yet another fetch and carry mission. It was just... boring. Gwent was the only reason I kept playing it so long but even that didn't keep my interest past maybe five hours. I hope CDPR have upped their game for Cyberpunk because it looks incredibly pretty - but I'm not holding my breath.
In terms of hours played my number one RPG is probably Ultima Online. Gameplay wise it's got to be Dark Souls.
Some people like when games feel cinematic. That's all it really boils down to.
The Souls games, Divinity, and Dragon's Dogma cater to a completely different type of audience entirely because they're overweight in mechanical and atmospheric qualities but lack quite a lot when it comes to cinematic-style appeal. Some people like having movie-style cutscenes instead of environmental storytelling, linear storytelling, and simpler styles of quests where the story is told at the ends than the actual act of the quest.
But also I can't imagine how the Souls games, or especially Dragon's Dogma, would be considered to have things like excellent voice acting and compelling characters across the board. As much as I like all those games, these are not qualities I would say the games excel at. There are maybe a handful over the course of all of those games but I felt the performances and characterization of more Witcher 3 characters in sum total than those of all those games put together. If it's the cinematic quality that makes this distinguishment, then that makes all the difference I suppose.
Morrowind wasn't even close to my first RPG and I still judge a game like this against it too. Mostly the replayability, variability, and mod capabilities, which imo nothing has really yet managed to top Morrowind on having all three at once. TW3 had mods but they were largely cosmetic and number/art/formula replacements. The core mechanics weren't up for grabs like in Skyrim and older Bethesda games. Tweaks, not real mods. I'm hoping CDPR opens up 2077 like that at some point, they won't regret it. I wouldn't expect mod tools until after the bugs are crushed and the team gets some R&R to recover a slice of their sanity.
Everything in that game was hand-placed with OCD-levels of care and it showed. I love New Vegas, but even when I had that game modded out to the max it still felt smaller than Morrowind. Travel speed in that game was really slow and it just had a different... pacing.
It was built to make you think, draw you into the world, and there was so much content you'd still be finding new things you'd missed after several plays. There were many playstyles and ways to solve every problem. You could play the game over and over without having a sense of repetition, and still keep a sense of discovery. That was before mods, they only made it better.
A game that hasn't got that is a game you play once and then toss for the next. Even TW3 is worth what, maybe 3 plays at best? Mass Effect, same deal. Morrowind was a game that you could spend time with. Hundreds of hours in my case. If you want to try it for yourself, it's just a little effort to get a modernized version going.
I'd expect most kids who have played modern games to run from that screaming. No map markers? I have to read every quest and puzzle them out like a riddle just to guess the location, or follow verbal descriptions? Yeah. There are mods for that but then you'd be missing out, just like when you use fast travel.
If you know the game, you can have a Daedric Sword (best weapon) in your hand before you get past level one. There's one hidden out there, if you have the wit to find it. I think of Morrowind as the literal opposite of procedural generation. If your procedures can crank out something that detailed and non-repetitive, you've arrived.
Well, not all kids, but I do hear that complaint a lot.
CoD I think serves a fundamentally different audience than CP77, so it's hard to make comparisons between the two. Besides, CP77 has been the internet's darling for nearly 8 years now, so it only makes sense that Tildes would be discussing it.
For me personally, I like being a part of widespread cultural events. I missed out on the Witcher series (early games are too long for me to have tried to get back in), and haven't had the time to play during releases of other big games like MGS5 or earlier GTAV. CP77 represents the biggest and hypest launch of a game in a long time, so I'm excited to jump in and connect with people about it!
I originally posted this higher up, but this actually seems like a more relevant place to put my $0.02 in, so I moved my comment to address this directly.
I'd unironically be happy with Skyrim: Cyberpunk edition in terms of gameplay. I just want a good, open world RPG with lots of things to do and different ways to do them, which doesn't restrict my character to a predefined persona.
The talk of the game being juvenile and lacking self-awareness regarding it's own dang genre is giving me pause for concern though. All they have to do in terms of writing, is a half-decent plot that either stands on its own or is at least cool enough to make me suspend disbelief. Then, throw in some boiler plate cyberpunk messages and tone down the horny to not be a central theme and I'll be happy. If they've failed at even that much, I'll pick it up for 30% off on Steams 2021 Christmas sale or something.
I've run out of games that I really want to play in my back catalog and I'm bored is basically the extent of my reasoning. I really liked TW2 and I thought TW3 was good too. The reviews are high across the board.
Initial reviews are saying that the game is very buggy (Eurogamer, GameSpot, PC Gamer).
If you're waiting on graphics cards stock to play the game, like I am, then hopefully it'll be fixed by then.
I'm expecting the gaming community to have quite the meltdown when they see the game on first release.
The expectations are so high. With all the hype, it won't be pretty.
Waiting and then playing the game on its own merits seems like a great idea. The pressure to be out before holiday purchases was just too much, it seems.
I cancelled my pre-order just in time then. It was going to charge yesterday (or at least put a hold on my card), I cancelled the day before. I'm willing to wait for bugs to be ironed out. Still heavily looking forward to it, but I realized I wasn't even going to be able to play this week. Just have to not get anything spoiled before I do eventually get it.
From the GameSpot review:
Having played Deus Ex: Human Revolution a few months back, "forced into more traditional boss fights" gives me some not-so-pleasant flashbacks
The bugs should be expected if anyone's played a CDPR game on release day. They get patched. It's not a deal breaker for me, but others should probably wait a couple months.
The good news for me is that it's a ~30 hour game, not 100+.
It's a ~30 hour game if you just go through the main campaign, but reviewers are saying there is easily another 100-150 hours of optional side content. Which side content you do has a profound impact on how the campaign plays out and ends.
I wasn't citing CD Projekt Red's marketing, this was something I learned from IGN's review that dropped this morning.
I've been skimming reviews all morning. Looks like the majority of the reviewers played half their time with a virgin copy, then the rest with some kind of massive day 1 patch. The new release day patch is the same as the day 1 patch plus a couple more days of furious debugging baked in. I doubt they've managed to patch it all in a couple of days.
Literally no one has reviewed the final release build that people will be playing yet far as I can tell - the reviewers are a bit behind where day one players will be on patches. Still, it's pretty clear it's going to be a glitchy first couple of weeks, and some of those glitches are pretty serious. People planning for a hacking/stealth playthrough look to be in for the worst of it.
No reviewer has answered my burning question.... where be the mod tools? If the game will support modding better than TW3 did, we might get closer to a Skyrim scenario, where the community can fix things and add content to fill out this massive world a bit more.
When I buy this thing eventually, I do hope there's DLC in the wind that's the size and quality of Blood & Wine. The city being a bit empty-ish isn't a problem if you're going to drop 3x more content to populate it with over time and let the players get their mod-crazy on. That'll populate it until it crashes your rig just like Skyrim. :)
So it's another one of those games where 25% of the score is bugs that are likely fixed 3 months after release. Honestly, I think bugs should be judged on both the ambition of the game around them and the likeliness to be fixed, both of which seem high for a title like this. If I'm playing this game outside the launch window, I likely couldn't care less whether the reviewer was annoyed that some elevator got stuck. I respect the view that a game that's released in an unfinished state should be judged as unfinished but it still seems odd how much the bugginess is a story, here: This is one of the most ambitious entertainment product in the history of mankind. Elevators will get stuck.
If CDPR are selling a product in this state then that's what people should rightly review them on. There's no guarantee that the majority of these issues will be fixed but, even if they are, this is what gamers will be buying and playing in 2 days.
Is anyone here considering grabbing this on Stadia? I'm interested in the idea that I can play the game with no fan spin and at high framerate/high settings and on mobile/chromecast, though recently someone mentioned that Stadia might get Google'd and shut down which scared me away from it. I would hate to not be able to my copy of the game (especially losing my save files!) in 10 years if I found I wanted to.
Otherwise, 7PM!!! I'm pumped!
A similar option is buying the game through Steam (or possibly some other stores) and then playing it through Nvidia's streaming service GeForce Now. That way you still own the game and can choose to play it outside of the streaming system as well (whether it shuts down or not). Personally, I'd definitely choose that over Stadia.
Nvidia have confirmed that both the Steam and GOG versions will be playable using GeoForce Now.
Ah, this prompted some more research into GeForce Now. I have a Shadow subscription that I have been disappointed by, and I thought that GFN had a similar setup. It seems like it's much closer to Stadia than Shadow, and it doesn't even require Chrome!! At 5$ a month and with native Steam support (in both directions?) this is the clear winner for me. Seems like I can spend 5$ to skip the 100GB download and play the game with raytracing for launch month, and see where it takes me from there!
I believe Stadia is compatible with Google Takeout for save files.
I looked around and it seems like there's no guarantees that Takeout save files are compatible with PC versions of the game. This would be a compelling option if true, given that Stadia is the strongest of the streaming platforms by some margin. If I were willing to gamble my 60$ away I'd bet that a converter for Cyberpunk will have been written for Stadia saves if necessary by at least 3 years from now.
Wouldn't it be cheaper and more reliable to just buy the game on Steam and stream it with GeForce Now?
If I wasn't lucky enough to already have my 3080, I'd probably be waiting until next year regardless, as I don't like how games with mouselook feel over streaming.
Jealous!! 3080s are gaming's M1 right now I swear.
Yeah, after some other discussion here I've decided that GFN/Steam is the best way forward. I have a Zephyrus G14 laptop with a 2060 so I think that being able to play it natively as a fallback to streaming issues would be great, and that's just not possible with Stadia. As to whether my laptop will be able to play this game without setting my apartment on fire, that's a separate question...
Seems like by the time I stop wanting to pay for GFN pro the game might be more optimized to be able to run on my hardware, so I'm actually pretty excited by GFN's business model!
It's $60 on Steam, but I was talking specifically about the scenario where you buy it on Stadia to play it today, then buy it on Steam or GOG when you can finally get a new GPU sometime next year.
Yup, decided to take the risk and pre-order it, and take advantage of the deal where you get a Chromecast Ultra and a Stadia controller for free. A £90 set costs £50, plus there's a game that I've been pretty hyped about included for the price. Felt like a no-brainer for me.
I think if you can get value out of the bundle then, yeah it's absolutely a no brainer! I didn't know about this deal, but I would definitely have considered it if Google didn't already send me a free chromecast and stadia controller.
I'm going to purchase it on Stadia. I'm going to wait a little while for the bugs to be fixed though.
And yes, as @moocow1452 said, you are able to download your saves (I can confirm).
Ooh! Have you imported your saves into non-Stadia platforms?
I haven't personally, but I have downloaded them with Google Takeout. I also know someone that transferred their FFVX save to PC.