Cyberpunk 2077 - Shouldn't be an Open World Game

relating to your character is essential to a person with a strong sense of self, with a clear value system, clear aesthetic sense.
its like telling a philosopher or a poet to listen to music and ignore the dumb lyrics. thats just impossible.
yes, the people who are ignorant of lyrics are blessed to enjoy those songs.. but that just makes them part of the problem. the people supporting low quality work
 
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Link - https://medium.com/@SA_Liberty/what-are-role-playing-games-even-how-are-they-that-50071c5552e2
Facing the Facts: There’s No Such Thing as Video Game RPGs

We tried, and we couldn’t reconcile it. Final Fantasy is not an RPG, according to our very simple definition. Therefore it follows that most, perhaps all, video game RPGs are not really role-playing games at all, but something else. Some might be open world games, others fantasy-themed action adventure, or story-rich, turn-based tactical games. I believe some of the confusion comes from the emulation of aspects of classic tabletop games like D&D, borrowing some mechanical ideas or aping the milieu of sword and sorcery. But none of these are sufficient.

Some modern RPGs may come close. The Elder Scrolls series, for example, gives the player a lot of freedom to make choices in-character, but in the end these choices are essentially problem-solving choices in an open world action adventure game with a rich story and strong elements of narrative control. These may all be common features of RPGs, but they are not core elements, and thus not enough to satisfy the definition.
 
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I like open world, so long as its well done. Some games have extreme open world with minimal narrative content, such as Day Z or Mount & Blade but there is an Ego and so I would argue these are a type of RPG. Of course this is just an opinion. For me Geralt in Witcher 3 was a kind of medieval Clint Eastwood type of character, player dialogue choices allowed them to create a flavour of Geralt and the contract game mechanic wasn't just a fetch quest, each contract has a particular theme and narrative, albeit of varying quality. The previous games had characters and narrative that are introduced, it should be like meeting a previous Bioware NPC that you ended up spending x hours with but it isn't. That said, the protagonist allied NPC characters in Witcher 3 are more developed, with personality flaws and so forth, so they are more interesting. Many antagonist characters seem to have valid motivations and can be interacted with via the contract game mechanic. Currently hit the "Hearts of Stone" DLC for the first time and aside from introducing new contracts (narrative), they seem to have introduced a new game mechanic and built up certain areas of the Novigrad map. Hmm, to conclude I quite hope Cyberpunk 2077 is open world but will take it as it comes. At this point after five years of development and its web site touting it as a "Beautiful and Sprawling RPG" I am quite sure that it is what it is and the article being discussed will be one of many different voices in a cacophony of opinion.
 
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Of course it is a bit harder to identify with a character that looks different / has a different gender / age / views / whatever. But it's not just a question of sense of self, it's also about empathy and imagination. And those are not mutually exclusive characteristics.

All I know is that I certainly do not want to be stuck with books / games / videos where the main character is essentially a copy of myself. That would be boring.

This is looking true for Cyberpunk too. What I've seen of V doesn't make me want to play that role and I'm pretty sure it's the only role in the whole game.

Aside from the issues I mentioned above, I do not think this is necessarily correct. What we have seen of V are the specific choices made for presentations / trailers. V is much less of a preset character than Geralt. You probably can't change her/his name, and ultimately not her/his complete background… but in any games where you can do the latter, this is mostly only a superficial illusion. And the name? Who cares.

Unless you want a sandbox without a real story. Certainly not the right game in that case.
 
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This.
And that's why I mentioned Ultima and Zelda:BoW as the two great examples of true open-world gaming.
AFAIK, these are the only open-world games where you cannot really sequence-break.

In U7, sequence breaking is simply knowing stuff well before you are supposed to, hence it is primarily a narrative cheat. If you know what to do, you can beat this 100+ hour epic in 30 minutes. Well done, Origin.

In Zelda: BoW, sequence breaking is actually designed into the game. You may skip all the preparations, and go after the Main Goal right after the closed tutorial segment, thus you can 1-hour speedrun a potentially 100+ hour game. You have to be a Freakin' Superhuman Gamer to pull off this feat, but the game won't stop you trying. Well done, Nintendo.

Moreover, these are the two open-world games where side activities are actually fun and unpredictable, thus these games are very much encouraging experimentation.
All of the other big name open-world games are just simply fill the maps with minor variations of 10-20 tightly designed/scripted activities, and …. that's it, folks. Kinda sad.

Interesting opinion, but I don't think too many people share it.

I'm glad that sequence breaking is of such importance to you, but the rest of us value other things as well. Writing, characters, music, presentation, combat, etc. etc.

Ultima 7 and Zelda BotW are both very good games (At least BotW seems like it from the little I've played), but they're most definitely not the only two great open-world games out there.
 
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Link - https://medium.com/@SA_Liberty/what-are-role-playing-games-even-how-are-they-that-50071c5552e2
most, perhaps all, video game RPGs are not really role-playing games at all, but something else.
That need to go into bullshit of the week thread.
I mean seriously?

None of digital RPGs is Pencil and Paper. Not a single digital RPG uses actual, physical, dice. And there is no human DM.
Yet all are still RPGs. Well except The Division and other falsely advertised crap of course.
Because it's not paper, it's not pen and it's not human DM who defines someone's role. It's the player who "lives" it.
 
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Easily enough solved for the person who wrote this, don't play the game. Tons of games i wish were done a different way, I just don't play them. Though I guess everyone is a complainer now of days, that is what people like to read. BTW no i didn't read it..though I did read most peoples comments.

There are lots of great open world games out there for different reasons.
Risen comes to mine, the leveling keep you in check and didn't let you get to far ahead in the game while you could still make the story your own while exploring.

Sure Skyrim had one of the most boring stories ever, but the freedom to just explore made the game worth playing to me. Just hopping around mountains looking for a new cave to explore could kill hours.

The witcher 3, what can I say it had so many choices it it, when i replayed it there was hours apon hours of the game I never saw before.
 
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A genuine open world setting is the ultimate rpg dream...it hasn't been done yet, but the dream may be fulfilled one day. When the technology gets to a certain level, especially AI, and enough time is invested in the making of the game, it could be something like a landmark game.
 
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No, open world games is everything best about gaming's evolution, if done right. I enjoy from RPGs to GTA games, carefully crafted worlds are always a pleasure to enjoy. Even some good old adventure games were tiny open worlds in a sense, Quest for Glory 1 had many things to check out. And all that in 10 360kb disks :D
 
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Well, the problem is not having an open world but having uninspired, boring, repetitve open worlds. Cause you have AC, but then you got Piranha Bytes for instance. Linear worlds break big part of the immersion for me.

The open world in ELEX for the first 75% of the game was very nice, but once I got to the snow levels I started losing interest pretty fast. Maybe the real problem was I was overpowered by that point, but I felt let down. The game was not making me think tactically.
 
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Yeah, the balancing was a problem in ELEX. Much to easy at the end. Balance is certainly a frequent problem in open world games.

Apart from that, the late parts of the story were not really that great. I always felt like there's some stuff not adding up to the conclusion of the story, but never really cared enough to define what it is.
 
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Agreed. Once you hit a certain point in Elex, there were only two or three opponents that even gave me pause. Up to that point though, it was a fun and challenging game, one I look forward to replaying.
 
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Elex was particularly bad in that way, because it had a very binary balance curve.

It was way too easy to get killed before you broke the power curve, and it was way too easy to not get killed afterwards. The difficulty setting decided how soon the break happened, and I don't think any of them felt right - or even close to it.

It did have a brief period that represented the sweet spot - where the game was appropriately challenging.

Definitely one of the worst examples I've seen in terms of open world balance.
 
Again no quote?
Luckily couch already made it in hi CP thread.
 
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Balancing is definitely a major problem in open-world games.

All of Bethesda's games since Daggerfall are usually broken by the mid-way point unless you alleviate the issue with mods. Two Worlds is the same way and so is The Witcher 3 if you use the stronger gear sets. I won't even talk about Kingdoms of Amular.

I assume there will be some form of level-scaling for the enemies in Cyberpunk. I just hope it's not too blatantly obvious.
 
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I can relate to Elex suffering from balance issues. It felt too punishing early on, but not difficult enough later in the game.

I do think there's a stigma around linearity though. In truth, I actually prefer linear games, and I don't find open world all that compelling anymore. There are recent exceptions of course, The Witcher 3 being one of them. Having said that, games with linear fragments are crucially important to pace properly, and I think that's a major issue a lot of them suffer from.

Looking at you, Deep Roads.
 
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I can relate to Elex suffering from balance issues. It felt too punishing early on, but not difficult enough later in the game.

I do think there's a stigma around linearity though. In truth, I actually prefer linear games, and I don't find open world all that compelling anymore. There are recent exceptions of course, The Witcher 3 being one of them. Having said that, games with linear fragments are crucially important to pace properly, and I think that's a major issue a lot of them suffer from.

Looking at you, Deep Roads.

Well, I like both - but only when they're done in specific ways.

I think it's strange to talk about linear games and open world games as if they were a genre in and of themselves. Also, as if they were mutually exclusive.

To me, open world or not is just one aspect of a game - and you can have both in countless genres.

There's no recipe for "open world" anymore than there's a recipe for linearity. Also, you can have both in one or the other - which is really the case with most games, I find.

I mean, even in open world games - you will find a lot of linear sequences, and that's only natural - because how can you make sense of things if nothing happens in a linear sequence?

Also, if I take some of my favorite games, like System Shock and Prey - they're actually a reasonably even-handed mixture of open world, linear and the non-linear. What does that mean in terms of the topic at hand?

I don't know.

I guess some people think "GTA" when open world is mentioned - and others might be thinking "Skyrim". To me, those games are extremely different - and I'd say GTA is far, far more linear than it's non-linear.

Anyway, just wanted to touch upon the nuances of the implementations.
 
Agree. It should be a the best amazing human body porn simulator! Proposed dialogue options:
1. Let's hack this device!
2. Ah, no, just barge in with guns and kill everybody!
3. Silly man! I can see you have been eyeing me, since the beginning of the mission! How about we take some rest and have great fun in the next room? I saw an amazing water-bed there!
 
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I was interested in this game until they decided to cut a lot of the pen and paper stuff that was supposed to be in the game. It's down to 3 classes and they apparently moved completely away from the pen and paper implementation that I was so very interested in. Combined with the fact it will probably have 6 hours of cutscenes means this gets a hard pass from me.
 
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