General gaming discussion

At least the thing with Cyberpunk 2077's launch was that although at launch it was a comically buggy mess with an overly-complex upgrade system and didn't live up to the promises of a full, thriving city... there was still a great game underneath. It took a whole bunch of upgrades and work to get the game where it needed to get to, but CDPR had the time and resources to do it.

Even if they fixed the bugs and enemy AI in Mindseye, by most accounts it still seems to be a pretty bland game underneath, and serves as more of a vehicle for the online "Everywhere" mode than anything else.

Oh CDPR absolutely deserve to be dragged over the coals for how they launched CP2077, and even then I don't even know if it can be claimed they ever managed to get the game to the same quality they were hyping it up to be (especially like you say in the open world, which is still pretty bland and lifeless in most areas). And I'd hazard a guess that a big part of why they went so hard at trying to get the game to a decent state was probably because they had so much of the Phantom Liberty stuff already in motion (probably including Idris Elba's performance) that they had little other choice.

But there was still a decent game underneath with great gameplay (well, the fast-paced combat and traversal rather than the hacking), story, characters, choices that mattered, and looked and played fantastically (again, eventually).

Mindseye like you say, the studio sadly may not be able to survive the effects of the launch long enough to try and make something decent out of what's there.

Yeah I never actually finished it back in the day. Got about halfway through the game but just moved on to something else. Picked it back up a few years ago and played through it again and had a decent enough time with it. It's old and outdated, and some of the controls/camera suck, but it's a fun time. I think it's the kind of game you have to appreciate it for what it is. Back in the day I probably thought of it as GTA but in a school, but really there are so many more restrictions on your gameplay (sleeping, classes etc) that you just can't think of it along the lines of the freedom of a GTA, but rather playing with and working within the restrictions the game imposes on you.

I'd been planning on playing through again before DS2 but just wouldn't have had the time. I think I got to about Chapter 6 last time. I know most of the chapters after that are pretty short and you can mainline them a bit, but my interest in the game was just waning at the time, and I was particularly bored of trying to go through BT areas. Probably spent too long doing side stuff for resources, but at the same it feels so important to do that to build all the roads and ziplines etc.

It wasn't even that it was difficult to get through them, it just always felt like a bit of a moodkiller. It just felt like it stops you dead in your tracks, but also the gameplay of getting through a BT area wasn't interesting or fun enough to warrant it. It was used sparingly enough in fairness, mostly just one area during each of the main missions (as you tended to be herded towards having to go through a BT area in a main mission due to not having bridges or roads etc).

Sometimes you just want to enjoy taking a long peaceful walk.

I can definitely see why it may not appeal to a lot of people. I enjoy fast combat, ridiculous action and challenging gameplay as much as the next guy, but I do also find a lot of enjoyment in the more easy and relaxing and chill games too. Most of the gameplay in DS… well it's a fine line between boring and tranquil, and which one of those you experience will always be subjective (even down to the same individual, where it can be tranquil at first but you start finding it boring after a while or in particular areas etc).