The most fun to be had is definitely in the early stages, after you've accepted the awkward combat, animations, character models, writing, etc. A powerful video game hero brought low by using their detective powers to help local townsfolk in oddball mysteries: fine. Fun, even. But the game gradually discourages this by assigning levels to quests, keeping you on the rails of the main plot. And Jesus Christ, what a slog. No wonder most don't even finish it.
It's not like the pursuit of the MacGuffin-y missing person is an uncommon plot device. But this is hardly The Searchers - it's a wild goose chase. I haven't played the previous two games, so it's possible there's an emotional element I'm missing - although as far as I'm aware, Ciri and Yennifer don't even appear in those, as Geralt suffers from amnesia. Perhaps the point is that our main character has finally pieced together his life, and needs that illusive final piece to feel whole again.
But where is that in the writing? There's so much of it here, so much stuff, and almost none of it amounts to anything. Sure, you can get a different cutscene here, a romance there, but the nature of the game is that it wants to flatter you at every turn, give you a chance to try everything. That is, unless you don't play catch enough with your boring daughter - a moral choice that doesn't announce itself as such, which could be bold if there was any attempt at complex human psychology. But no: getting the "bad" ending is a "gotcha!", a conservative scolding that punishes you for supposedly thinking of yourself as the hero, even though the game encourages that line of thinking with Geralt's increasingly cop-like domination over quests with very limited outcomes.
The characters move like mannequins - they repeat themselves, they phase through each other, they whine and curse but seldom feel particularly real. They're all part of the game's arrogance, which uses constant cutscenes and a sat-nav of a minimap to make sure the player does everything they're supposed to. And even if they do, the game might crash or bug out. I'm not surprised that Cyberpunk is bad - this seems to be the accepted state of the open world by this point, something that tells the player to stand in awe of its grand design while resolutely underwhelming on a moment-by-moment basis; until the sloppiness becomes accepted, even routine.
One final thought: what is going on with all the female character designs? It's so blatantly misogynistic that I'm almost surprised there wasn't more uproar. The female soldier who gets told off for continually wearing her blouse open - what is this, the 1960s? Rancid.
It's not like the pursuit of the MacGuffin-y missing person is an uncommon plot device. But this is hardly The Searchers - it's a wild goose chase. I haven't played the previous two games, so it's possible there's an emotional element I'm missing - although as far as I'm aware, Ciri and Yennifer don't even appear in those, as Geralt suffers from amnesia. Perhaps the point is that our main character has finally pieced together his life, and needs that illusive final piece to feel whole again.
But where is that in the writing? There's so much of it here, so much stuff, and almost none of it amounts to anything. Sure, you can get a different cutscene here, a romance there, but the nature of the game is that it wants to flatter you at every turn, give you a chance to try everything. That is, unless you don't play catch enough with your boring daughter - a moral choice that doesn't announce itself as such, which could be bold if there was any attempt at complex human psychology. But no: getting the "bad" ending is a "gotcha!", a conservative scolding that punishes you for supposedly thinking of yourself as the hero, even though the game encourages that line of thinking with Geralt's increasingly cop-like domination over quests with very limited outcomes.
The characters move like mannequins - they repeat themselves, they phase through each other, they whine and curse but seldom feel particularly real. They're all part of the game's arrogance, which uses constant cutscenes and a sat-nav of a minimap to make sure the player does everything they're supposed to. And even if they do, the game might crash or bug out. I'm not surprised that Cyberpunk is bad - this seems to be the accepted state of the open world by this point, something that tells the player to stand in awe of its grand design while resolutely underwhelming on a moment-by-moment basis; until the sloppiness becomes accepted, even routine.
One final thought: what is going on with all the female character designs? It's so blatantly misogynistic that I'm almost surprised there wasn't more uproar. The female soldier who gets told off for continually wearing her blouse open - what is this, the 1960s? Rancid.
2 Comments
Yes, I liked the detective aspect too - I emphasised the negative because the game wore down my patience so much as it went on, but the continued involvement of interactivity with the environment works. The side quests utilised the mechanic very well at times, but the issue I had was that the levelling mechanic and sheer wealth of main quest content meant I was seldom motivated to pursue this extra stuff, as I was already overwhelmed by what I had to do to progress the game. If it was more of a pure sandbox then I'm sure I'd like the game more, but there was an urgency to the main quest which simultaneously compelled me to finish it and disappointed me with its outcomes, its inability to make me really care about any core characters. This is my larger issue with open-world games, to be honest - that they feel the need to have a "main" quest, which makes every else feel somewhat superfluous. Maybe that's a "me" thing though.
mkowzun
3 years ago