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Cyberpunk 2077 was “better than it was received,” CDPR dev says
(www.pcgamesn.com)
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this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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Yeah, I actually can get behind this. They got a lot of crap for the technical performance of the last-gen console version, partly because there was no current-gen native version. Having played it on PC day one my impression was that it was rough-to-normal (still better than day one Skyrim). Design-wise, the combat parts and open world design are the least interesting parts of it to this day, but even at the time I thought the narrative elements and obviously the visuals were great.
Just to sanity check this, even with the torubled launch the PC version reviewed with an average of 86 on Metacritic and sold very well. It was a technically rough launch and they should have delayed the console ports at the very least, but it's not a bad game.
"(still better than day one Skyrim.)"
I'm glad you mentioned this because I almost never see anyone make the comparison, and skyrim didn't get nearly as much hate despite that fact. I remember if you were playing on PS3, walking into water would crash your game, and it was like this for the entire first year of the game on PS3. It also had a problem where save files that were too big would guarantee save file corruption. It was the definition of unplayable for lots of people.
Not saying cyberpunk is better than skyrim, just explaining how dire the launch for skyrim was, many people have forgotten just how rough around the edges skyrim was.
People tend to forget how broken games were at launch once they're no longer broken, which is why these days you only get broken games.
I think studios need to reassess what is a showstopping bug these days, because restricting it to hard blockers is no longer enough, but that may require people having a different perspective on these things.
But yeah "the game will eventually get into an endless crash loop if you play too much of it" is a pretty high bar to meet in terms of launching a broken game, and since I did play Skyrim on PS3 first, I may have a bettter memory of it than others.
New Vegas and Fallout 3 were borderline unplayable on PS3 when they launched too.
Old timers keep warning people not to buy on launch. But every time a 'big' game comes along, there are a lot of people who ignore the warnings and do it anyway.
Witcher 3 was the same. Roach(horse) on a roof was a meme at one point. But CDPR wasn't as famous then, so far less people played that on launch.
Oh, and while we're at it, Witcher 3 isn't a true RPG either. Cyberpunk is quite a lot like Witcher 3 IMHO.
How quickly we forget that the Witcher superfans were absolutely livid about CDPR having dumbed down the potion system. I mean, I disagreed then and I disagree now, but "they dumbed it down for consoles" was a bit of a talking point at the time.
Now, the atrocious input lag and having to shimmy for five minutes to pick up a thing werre always bad, and they aren't even great after their passive-aggressive option to make it slightly better under objection.
Still, I do think Witcher 3 is the better game, I was just suprised to find out how many of its strong points do carry over to CP after hearing all the online rage at launch.
You did get screwed if you tried to play Skyrim on the PS3. The hardware limitations on the console caused obvious instability in the game that I don't think they ever fully resolved.
But I don't think most people played Skyrim on PS3 so they aren't going to have that same experience. I know I didn't.
Except they released the game, in "enhanced" version, on the Switch, which is just old android phone hardware from several years back. The PS3 was totally capable of running it. The port simply failed - time constraint, investor pressures...doesn't matter. They chose to not make it better in the end when the hardware was perfectly capable of running the game.
The number of people that play a game on console is vastly underestimated by pc-primary gamers when previous titles by a developer were PC only. Skyrim on console was big. Big enough that they decided to port it to everything they could. You don't waste that kind of developer time and not expect a return...
I missed your comment before mine, but this tracks with my experience. Thinking about it I did a stealth fists playthrough, with stealth being all about avoiding combat where possible... I thought I was just bad at the game, but maybe it was my inner reviewer telling me combat is not a fun way to play the game 😂
I'm old enough now that I accept it's fine to switch difficulty to be trivial in games where combat is not the point.
To be clear, combat in CP is still better than Witcher 3 combat, especially at launch of that game, but it's also not why I'm there. I'm there for the exquisitely rendered Keanu and the extremely granular, detailed story beats with unexpectedly affecting writing.