Cyberpunk 2077

I'm all about gameplay (I guess I have old school way of thinking "gameplay first, everything second") but this is more important and it would be nice to address it, like they'd address transgender options and customization.

Tho commenting on gunplay... yeah they said it lacks impact.

"On a very different note, the shooting looks limp. Bullets pile into people as their healthbars tick down, each shot lacking impact despite goon after goon tumbling to the floor."

That is boring, if there was no health bar, you'd be wondering if you did enough damage or not because Cyberpunk, I think, lacks Shows Damage? Or Subsystem Damage

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jun 14th 2019 at 1:16:40 PM

Eh its just shooting, that could easily be fixed in the coming times.

Well making a lot of varied animations based on where you hit a mook is solvable within 10 months and even a "crippled state" animation if you shoot them in the coconuts for example

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jun 14th 2019 at 1:33:38 PM

Making the core game mechanics feel fun is kinda vital. Yes, it can be fixed in post (apparently this happened to Hollow Knight according to the Twitch Shitgoblin Angriest Pat) but having the game's mechanics feel weak is a problem.

Edited by GoldenKaos on Jun 14th 2019 at 12:35:51 PM

I'm gonna be honest here, I am like fucking out of my mind right now.

Been playing the Forsaken campaign of Destiny 2 the entire night & I think I'm exhausted or something.

I think I was trying to troll Dhiruxide cause I know they really like gunplay.

Oh ya cheeky bastard XD

That there's second playthrough where I'm gonna be the ultra-violent murder machine on legs. First playthrough is gonna be 100% non-violent. Diplomatic skills, charisma and lots of talking! And some drone shenanigans because I want to control drones.

My very own drone army! <insert evil laugh here>

I will be disappointed if drone possibilities are really limited and not meaningful enough.

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jun 14th 2019 at 2:16:50 PM

I'm still not sure how it could be done, but I'd really love for a speech/charisma option in a game to be it's own kind of challenge, and not just a skill check to skip combat or enter a room or something.

I always loved the idea behind the more recent Deus Ex's argument system. But it still could use some more fleshing out. I've weirdly been avoiding Cyberpunk 2077's gameplay footage, even though I'm really looking forward to it. I'm not sure what the non violence options look like for it.

Opening up whole new dialogue options, paths and even sidequests with high speech skill and expert manipulation.

Who knows what you could dig if you got on some big wig's good side and subtly manipulated them to tell you almost everything.

Or threatening someone so convincingly they completely give up against you and let you use their shit.

Some examples but I want that kind of stuff. Lore or incredibly rare and unique loot.

I wonder if you could be an Arms Dealer and sell weapons to gangs, I could get rich quickly! After all, I don't have to be violent but they all can kill each other for all I care

Being a con artist and successfully ripping everyone off would be great but the retaliation would be scary if you scammed a high ranking corporate executive. They'd stop at nothing till you are dead

Edited by Dhiruxide on Jun 14th 2019 at 2:33:52 PM

When it comes to gun fights in video games, there are ways to make it a challenge. The enemy AI, the situation, their weaponry and placement. You can construct a challenge that engages the player.

I find in my experience that this is hard to do with speech systems. Because it tends to be very binary. Either you have a high enough speech skill to do what you want, or you don't.

Ah, re-reading your posts, in full agreement. How do you work around that? Even slightly.

The closest I've seen would be either Deus Ex or The Council. Though they both also have their limits

Deus Ex tends to have targets with specific psych profiles, and when you talk to them you have a bunch of different argument options that will help you control the conversation. But, say, if you're up against a master public speaker and you're trying to get the crowd on your side, using an argument that appeals mainly to emotion is risky, because he can tear that apart and use it right back at you. In the Council the other characters have strengths and weaknesses to certain subjects that you have to discover through researching them. So, say, don't try to talk military strategy around Napoleon, because you'll lose.

Didn't the original Fallout games do this? It requires your dev team to have a writer who is actually good but IIRC the final boss of Fallout 1 was this super mutant AI mind or something as a final boss, and the way to defeat it is to convince it that its worldview is fundamentally flawed and that all its efforts are for naught.

Just making a dialogue tree where the right choices make sense and take a little bit of thinking to work out can work, it's just high-quality stuff that not every writer can do. And of course, having extra options (or knowing to choose existing options) by exploring the world and finding shit out is always a tried and tested way of doing this, although that's arguably a test for investigation rather than charisma.

Yeah, Fallout, Planescape, I think Baldur's gate... if you'd done the right things, found out the right details, you had options you could present in dialogue to Talk The Monster To Death.

Fallout 3 doesn't let you - except with President Eden; New Vegas does let you do it. Deus Ex Mankind Divided ALMOST lets you.... but the antagonist is so hostile it makes sense you can't just change his mind; but you can get a golden ending.

The Witcher lets you do some quests using dialogue alone too. But it ends the game with a big fight; but importantly the actual ENDINGS are entirely dependent on your social interactions with key characters.

I remember not being a fan of the ending of New Vegas. Because the final confronation with Legate Lanius is just a sequence of binary skill checks. The thing I don't want speech systems to be. If you have 100 speech, you can talk him down with two checks. If you have I think 80 barter, you can talk him down a different way. Just pick the option of your choosing and you win.

Edited by GNinja on Jun 14th 2019 at 1:45:00 PM

I loved Oblivion's dialogue system.

That pie chart was obviously how real conversation works - basically insult, compliment, charm and small talk and BAM people immediately change their opinion of you.

That's how it works, yeah?

That's how I approach all conversations in daily life.

I rather liked the "Confrontation" system in The Council; it's essentially the "boss-fight" of their social-interaction mechanics.

The player is required to successfully argue in a sequence of steps, with a limited number of "blunders".

At each step, one selects a dialogue option in response to one's opponent. The choice comes down to a combination of thought ("what response seems likely to work here?"), the opponents strengths and weaknesses, and also the player-character's levelled skills.

Fail ("blunder") too many times, and the Confrontation is lost.

Overall, I thought that The Council made for a pretty neat approach to a largely non-combat RPG.

It's why I'd like something like that if you ever fiddled with corporate if using non-lethal approach.

Corporate are scary in this setting as far as I know.

They're including a trans option for V

I still wanna know if being part of the Psycho Squad is viable.

If not, I'll settle for Corporate. If I go that route, would I be an Anti-Villain at best?

Max Tac will deffo show up - they were in the first trailer after all. I can see us either going with them on a mission or interacting with them. Or, if there's a GTA-like "wanted level" (Or enemy alert like in Witcher 3) then I can see them rocking up as the game's version of Reality Ensues.

Probably end up being a sort of meta challenge for gamers - can YOU beat Max Tac? I think in the TT if they turn up, your ass is grass, even if you're a full body converted badass.

My other query is if we'll run into a Dragoon - which are stated to be essentially a One-Man Army and nigh permanently in Cyber Psychosis.

They've said you can become a Corporate as a later class, ditto Rocker Boy, and journalist.

Basically like Arcane Warrior in Dragon Age or Rift Mage.

Hopefulyl - they mentioned that those were certainly things you could "ape" but you won't be holding concerts as a Rockerboy I imagine - this isn't a Cyberpunk Sandbox (Which I would love to see one day) but appears to be shifting to a more linear story.

They've also removed the "childhood hero" selection from character creation (Likely due to Keanu Reeves now being the sole "mentor") - but they've kept the backstory side. I've got mixed feelings on that, mainly as we have no idea how the hero element would've worked, beyond perhaps setting your initial alignment and maybe influencing whether you have different attitude / convo options towards certain NP Cs. That, or the hero element is just folded into the backstories.

Of course the original plan may have been to have the "mental image" on the chip BE one of those heroes, or at least a sort of representation of them (An AI taking the form of your beloved childhood idol to influence you....?)

But as I said, with Keanu, that probably sidelined the other two in favour of a tighter narrative AND to reduce the amount of work.