Cyberpunk 2077

All of the DLC items have that function now, apparently. So, like, the Gog Shirt has it too.

Not really, the Wolf School jacket and Black Unicorn still upgrade through blueprints. Which is what struck me as odd.

But, at least now I can craft the Black Unicorn from scratch after selling it early in the game.

Edited by NotSoBadassLongcoat on Feb 22nd 2022 at 9:11:59 PM

Oh, are the cool-looking clothes finally upgradeable?

Neat, I might replay this... I dunno, summer or something? I have a lot of games to get through.

Well, you could upgrade the clothing to keep up with your level before, now they just added new rarity tiers to the pre-order bonus clothes.

Helpful, as now mods have to be the same or lower tier than the gear you put them on, so it pays to stock up on Epic and Legendary clothes.

Well, so long as they've worked on the "don't use the legendary clothing like the band t-shirt because of clothing level defence, just keep getting new shit" part. :T

Well, I have Rare or Epic Subdermal Armor that grants me 300 armor no questions asked, and I randomly got it early in the game. That's quite a start.

The problem is, when they ditched all water-related mods and perks, the Legendary facemask I had became useless. That and, I can't find a reasonable hat to put mods into.

x5

I believe it's both; probably out of need since some people already upgraded them normally before the patch. But I swear I saw that "Upgrades after 5 levels" thing on the Black Unicorn.

Which, btw, is also super badass. The runs one it glow now.

Also, the Iconic Byakko sword you get as of 1.5 Patch has a cool unique animation for when you first equip it.

So does the dildo bat now

I hope they beefed up the 3516's damage, because at max upgrade level Kerry's Archangel does more damage and that's a goddamn travesty.

I encountered two lewd Stealth Puns regarding Panam yesterday. The first one is obvious to you, but gets lost in the Polish version: when you're stranded on the abandoned farm after rescuing Saul, the toast you can raise is "To haboobs", which, in male V's accent, sounds very close to "To her boobs".

The other one requires knowledge of Polish slang. In a text message conversation with Panam, you mention Judy. Panam replies that she'd like to meet her and get some pierogi together. The funny and lewd part is, "pieróg" is a slang term for pussy in Poland.

There's a ton of those.

Kerry, in his romance, says he's writing a song about his and V's adventure on the 'Sea-murai' and sinking (and fucking while it was on fire and sinking too). In Enlish, he calls it "Seamuari in Smoke".

In Polish, It's "Seamurai Going Down". The implications are pretty obvious.

We don't have a "Going Down" idiom for sexual stuff in Polish.

Also, I'm mad as hell. I can't just blast the guy's face off in the "Sinnerman" quest, because his cop bodyguard one-shots me no matter what (quite a feat considering that I have ungodly amounts of armor, including a legendary subdermal armor and about 500 from my outfit). And if there's something I don't approve, it's certainly bible-thumpers, snuff BD producers and showbiz washouts trying to make bank on religion-based torture porn.

Why can't Mr Overture tell that dumb fuck he's no Jim Caviezel?

Huh. Interesting. Is "Going Down" a common phrasing?

Sinnerman is consistently the quest I hate the most in this game.

And I cannot fathom why so many love it and call it "deep".

I find it extremely shallow and has all the trappings of "faux deep writing". "It makes you think" and I never get a clear answer as to "About what???"

Joshua is a blatant psychopath, he only gives a shit about his repentance because of the acclaim it gives him and then shock value controversy of his execution, and he starts shitting himself when he actually has to do it.

He's clearly just a lamb for slaughter for corpo pocketbooks, he doesn't believe the religion he's supposedly replicating, he isn't a martyr Jesus figure despite the aesthetics...

And the biggest insult to this is Johnny claiming "He's the real rebel"? I'm sorry. The unrepentant mass murderer psychopath is "the real rebel"?

Edited by InkDagger on Mar 5th 2022 at 5:34:11 AM

Clearly not kept up if you think not being Jim Caviezel is an insult, considering the man turned into a hardcore QANON conspiracy bullshit spewing machine :-P

Yeah, but no way in hell I would let another asshole get a shot at fame by playing Jesus.

Man, throwing knives + Qiant Sandevistan is fun as hell. Flatline a gonk with a knife to the head, grab it and sent it at another.

Been replaying the game.

Man hacking has been buffed so much by the redoing of the skill tree. Sure you lose hacking through walls but Overheat and Static Shock both basically have a <1sec cooldown? And the new breach perks are insane damage buffs (Stacks to a +60% dmg for vulnerability daemon with all perks).

The hacking UI is still hot garbage though, really finicky about if it wants to select someone or not. Sometimes you select a dude but the quickhack menu wont appear.

The new apartments are really meh. Kinda wish they'd spent effort fixing all the stuff that's still broken (NPC Driving AI, Civilian AI) rather than add places I visited once and never returned to because there's no incentive to since you can access your stash from your car. It's kinda funny to see the shit that's still broken. Stuff like calling your car and it just running away from you. The fact that NPC cars still just stop for no goddamn reason on the highway. People on the sidewalk still panic if you drive by and jump ONTO your car to their deaths.

They talk about the improved combat AI, and honestly, I barely see it. The main change is the AI seems to no longer be confused if you're on a roof top or higher than them the way it used to. It makes a bit more of an effort to flank you. In the sense that it barely tries.

I also notice that now you no longer get all the gigs, they unlock in waves. I think that's a mixed blessing tbh. Some of the pacing on those gigs feel off, with really easy gig gated fairly late. It also makes the map feel a lot emptier.

Small thing about game development; those are different teams and different resources. The development of the apartments wouldn't come at the expense of resources to correcting AI or bug squashing. I realize that the perception is one way, but if not the apartments, than some other content would have been created by the asset/content creation teams.

I realize that doesn't change what does or doesn't need to be fixed, but one doesn't exist at expense of the other.

Putting aside that this isn't entirely correct, shit is budgeted per project, so that money could actually go to other things (like meaningful DLC or yes, fixes, even if it's done by another team - budgets move around). The appartments really are a nothing burger. Only reason to visit them is for a minor xp buff from sleeping (Which you can get at the default appartment). The game doesn't even really aknowledge them? Whenever V has to be home for a story thing, it'll dump you to Watson anyway.

Some of them also don't make sense. Like the Westbrook one has a big shrine with incense, and like, why would V have that?

Also none of them have parking space! Only Watson does!

Heck your pets don't change apartments either.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 29th 2022 at 4:28:16 AM

Yes, things are budgeted to different teams, but they aren't going to have employees just not doing anything either. Those people need to have jobs to do to be paid and developer =/= someone-who-can-just-go-squash-bugs when not modeling assets; those are different jobs.

That's also the entire reason why DLC is a good thing for development teams. Game goes through development but DLC gives people work to do once the base-game content is complete and will keep the team together until the higher ups give a decision on if they want to do a sequel or not.

That was a big problem for a lot of 90s to early 00s games; development would hit gold, crew would be transferred to a dozen different projects at different stages of development. After all, what's the writer supposed to really be doing if the only thing left is bug-squash? Or the concept artist if we don't have any assets to be made? The sound editor if there's no audio to be mixing? They gotta work. Then suddenly the game is a success and everyone wants a sequel ASAP but... everyone who worked on it isn't together anymore.

It's why so many sequels would kinda be a bit strange and not understand the original; the original team didn't exist anymore so it got passed to whatever team was available to make it.

Now DLC can help keep everyone together until we can green light or pass on the sequel and act accordingly.

I mean, I ultimately agree that the apartments are kinda nothing to me. I think it's that case of a strong core narrative running up against "PLAYER WANTS POWER FANTASY BIG MONEY SHIT". So, in narrative, V is poor, barely making ends-meet, and has a single shitty apartment.

But post-release; HERE'S A BIG FANCY APARTMENT FOR BIG RICH CORPOS that... V should never ever be able to afford let alone even walk into the building for. They would not let them anywhere near a lease for that kind of apartment.

And I ultimately liked that because the player's desire to live somewhere better and inability to do so was part of the point. You can't. Just like V can't. Because we're in a capitalist hellhole of a Cyberpunk future.

But... people wanted Apartment customization and sexy apartments and... so they got them.

I don't mind the shitty motel room or the Chinatown ones. I have a softspot for the Heywood one because it's just really nice and I like it. But I think the Corpo one should never have been an option and it actively misses the point of The Star ending. The Star doesn't mean anything if V can live like that before hand.

But this content wasn't for me really I guess. It was to generate interest in the game again, draw people in who wanted that shit in the first place, and... really just to kinda give you something before a major DLC can drop.

But point is, if not 'Apartments', it would have been something else that they created. The Apartments just happened to be what the social media fandom was bitching about so they gave it to them.

As for not using it in story, I don't think you can access any of them until Act 2 anyway. I think "Misty brings you home" and "Johnny Meets V" are the last scenes there. And the opening of Act 2 is the last time V has any scenes in his apartment. Ergo, the game never has any apartment scenes to be played in the new ones.

What's wrong with the Chinatown Alter anyway??? I don't understand that point.

That would carry so much weight if the game already didn't let V own 30 cars, including a copy of a car so rare there's only 4 of them in Night City and not one but two copies of that Car's manufacturer's next best model. And shop for clothes in corpo plaza's fanciest stores. Just saying the game skipped the ludonarrative speedbump on V's Wealth long before the apartments came out.

To be honest, I don't think it's feasible to do that in this game since the dev want to make a fun open-world cyberpunk game, and not pain simulator Pathologic. That kind of narrative kinda go against the whole power-fantasy adjacent and (sort of) one-person army nature of open-world game.

Deus Ex manages to pull it off.

I mean, they are making the rich super high paying jobs for Rogue and other top tier Fixers. The joke is that it's meaningless because they're dying and Jackie, their only friend, is dead.

I don't see actual poverty as adding to the story. Being rich and having a few weeks to live is just as appropriate.

heck it's something the tabletop game itself does. Upping the power fantasy while keeping the player firmly at the bottom rung of the social ladder.

The videogame's main difference is that V has no day to day expenses - no rent, no car repair cost, no lifestyle expenses, etc... A lot of their gear is also just free. So V just accumulates money. V also isn't forced to take breaks between jobs for potential heat to go down and recover from injuries. V literally can do a dozen jobs a day, each one paying thousands.

Should also be pointed out the corpo plaza appartment in no way compares to the appartment in the sun ending. The corpo plaza one is still on the lower levels of a tower. Seriously look out the window. The sun one is at the top of one. It has a patio and a fucking AV landing pad.

Edited by Ghilz on Mar 30th 2022 at 6:26:25 AM

I mean, that's generally a problem I've criticized 2077 about before; the narrative isn't a power fantasy. And that clashes against... "Western RPG Power Fantasy". Power Fantasies are all about "Do anything, feel great" and the narrative is "You're literally dying and this won't end well".

I also don't like that V can own 5 dozen cars. I too think it's kinda dumb. I like the player being able to choose, but owning all of them at once is much. I also think this was probably also something added only because people were complaining about it; pre-release the devs talked about Car customization and etc not being something they're interested in. And it would explain the relatively cheap way they're implemented; text messages, pictures, little interaction. Its screams "late development" to me.

I don't think the game should have been... like, Pathologic (because also fuck Pathologic), but I really think it should have leaned harder into the narrative RPG aspects. I do think they could have toned down the power fantasy and I think, with some tweaks to item drops and shops, they should have leaned into "This is a capitalist shitshow". I think it's kinda lame that, for an anti-capitalist work, I can just never ever enter a shop if I don't want to and money isn't ever a concern. 2077 could have been a far more compelling RPG had they done so.

Yes, there's a difference between the Corpo Apartment and the Sun Mansion. But one that doesn't signify or does so pretty insignificantly. Which are you going to feel more of a change in? A character that goes from a 2 story 4-bedroom house with 3-car garage to a massive mansion? Or a character who goes from a shitty 1-room apartment to the same massive million dollar mansion? There's a difference in that first one, sure, but not much of one.

I do agree with the other point; It's meaningless because V is dying. I think I bought that up when people bitched about apartments on release anyway. V is dying; they shouldn't really give a shit about moving to Corpo Plaza. Worry about that when you're not dying.

But noooooooo everyone wants the power fantasy and the rich corpo lifestyle; nevermind that the game is a condemnation of those corpo elites anyway.

Edited by InkDagger on Mar 30th 2022 at 2:46:51 AM