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Cyberpunk 2077 Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

Grotesque

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“Night City was like a deranged experiment in social Darwinism, designed by a bored researcher who kept one thumb permanently on the fast-forward button. Stop hustling and you sank without a trace, but move a little too swiftly and you’d break the fragile surface tension of the black market;” - Neuromancer
 
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CDPR: Success of The Witcher 3 Gave Us Confidence; Cyberpunk 2077 Has New Animations, We’re Pushing our Engine

Gamers are still reeling after watching the stunning 48-minute long Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo shortly after Gamescom last month. The hype for the game managed to get to new heights, and it was already strong to begin with. It’s hardly a surprise, then, that EDGE magazine chose to feature Cyberpunk 2077 on their November 2018 magazine cover.

In the article, CD Projekt RED’s Producer Richard Borzymowski explained that the success enjoyed by The Witcher 3 – far greater than the previous two installments – breathed additional confidence into the development team as they moved on to the new challenge of Cyberpunk 2077.

"It gave us a sense of safety in our own skills. Right now our environment artists are populating a level with the assets, and they are not afraid of testing out new things. This is exactly what we need to stay open to, because personally I believe that The Witcher turned out that good – and why Cyberpunk will turn out really good – because we are not afraid of change.

It takes a degree of determination, for sure. From the very beginning we were saying ‘Alright, this is huge, but this is what we want to aim for.’ As producers, we’re responsible for taking this vision and verifying the capability of the team and deciding if we have to change it structure-wise, or if we have to somehow change the content of the game to make it more flexible.

The Witcher III wasn’t less complex, but it was complex in a different way. When we were world-building you had those big open spaces, which still had to be filled out. It’s not like it was easier or cheaper to build all those beautiful forests and meadows, but it is more forgiving. If one tree is a bit more off to the right, this is exactly how forests look. But if you put a building too far apart from a different one in the middle of a city, then this can’t really work, right? You have to fill this gap in between doing other things already. And you have to push everything."

On the technical side of development, Lead Cinematics Animator Maciej Pietras explained that the animation and facial animation systems were completely remade and the engine is being pushed forward while taking care that Cyberpunk 2077 runs on current-generation consoles, too.

"We have a completely new animation system, and we completely changed the approach to handling animations. We have a better mocap studio, we have a completely new facial animation system based on muscles. We have a new way of generating lip sync animation when people are talking. We have a completely new approach to creating environments, so instead of working on a huge world at once we are creating prefabs which are then adjusted and placed differently, so everything is scalable. Another thing is simply our engine, which we decided to push far while still working hard on optimisation to make sure the game will run on current-gen consoles. It’s a completely new way – I would say almost every single department went through this kind of evolution."

Cyberpunk 2077 doesn’t have a release date. However, based on the developer comments on the game definitely making it on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, we’d estimate a launch window between late 2019 and early 2020, since Sony and Microsoft’s next-generation consoles are currently believed to be targeting a Fall 2020 debut.

https://wccftech.com/cyberpunk-2077-new-animations-engine/
 

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I never had time to post here after the gameplay demo. I think it's seriously underwhelming, compared to the quality of Witcher 3's 2014 demo. And I don't mean visually, because we know of the Witcher 3 downgrade (whatever CDPR choose to call it is irrelevant).

I mean in terms of writing and story direction, how seriously the writers treat the world and the characters. I didn't get the same impression of the world and the characters being "real" as I got it in Witcher 3's demo.
 
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Edge magazine:

  • "What we’ve seen of Cyberpunk 2077 so far suggests a sandbox city that easily outstrips the detail and quality of GTA V;"

  • the studio refuses to use procedural elements in any of Cyberpunk 2077’s environment or quests. This time it’s not just talk – everything really is hand-crafted.

  • “So Pacifica, it’s this super-dangerous territory where you’ve got people who are basically gangsters, and the Psychogangs rule this district. So violence is more predominant there. But you’ve also got these superrich districts like Heybrook, and we vary animations in a way that are connected to the districts.”

  • Any stories, characters or themes that aren’t explored in depth in the main story are taken to be fully fleshed out in sidequests

  • “We want to make sure that all of them are up to the standards of the main quest – that there’s nothing that feels like filler, just something to do while waiting for the next quest, or to get more money to buy the next thing. We don’t really like to do that. We want to make sure that every quest feels like a complete story in and of itself.”

  • ' V pulls out a katana – which vibrates uproariously as it deflects enemy bullets – then slides along the floor on his knees like a six year old at a wedding to lop off a Maelstrom goon’s legs, our fingers tingle in response. '

  • Your chosen backstory unlocks specific sidequests from the off, while accumulated attribute points and biostats allow for a fluid class system

  • There’s more choice to what we’ve just seen than is usually available in videogame quests: for instance, you could take DeShawn’s money and run at the very beginning, eschewing his mission but having to deal with the consequences later. You could make off with Stout’s eddies, too, although we presume you’d have to get the virus on the chip scrubbed off somewhere. “We don’t artificially limit ourselves,” Mills says. “Our philosophy for quest design is, ‘If the player can logically do it, then they can’. And if they can’t, then we have to come up with a damn good reason why.”

  • "Right now our environment artists are populating a level with the assets, and they are not afraid of testing out new things. This is exactly what we need to stay open to, because personally I believe that The Witcher turned out that good – and why Cyberpunk will turn out really good – because we are not afraid of change.”

  • Cyberpunk 2077’s quests have been designed to be kicked off at almost any point; you’ll be able to go to places and find items in Night City that are part of quests and pick up the trail of what’s going on here in a logical manner, without having to trigger the whole event sequence from a predetermined starting point.

  • Cyberpunk 2020’s ‘cyberpsychosis’ mechanic, in which players who overly augment themselves with cyberware start to see a negative effect on their mental health, will form part of the game – though CD Projekt won’t go into details. As a quest designer, the Faustian bargain behind transhumanism is fascinating to Patrick Mills. “All the travails of the flesh fade away, and you become a perfect machine of chrome. But you had to buy those body parts from someone, and now you’re in debt to them; if you need parts, you’ve got to go to their store. You have this very utopian idea of being liberated by technology. And it’s like, not so fast – you haven’t solved the problems. The problems are still there, and technology actually makes them worse. ‘High tech, low life’ is one of Mike’s mottos.
 

Prime Junta

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Edge magazine:

  • “We want to make sure that all of them are up to the standards of the main quest – that there’s nothing that feels like filler, just something to do while waiting for the next quest, or to get more money to buy the next thing. We don’t really like to do that. We want to make sure that every quest feels like a complete story in and of itself.”

This would be major incline after TW3's treasure hunts, nest clearings, and various other filler. I'm not holding my breath though.
 

Grotesque

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So, how do you make a good first person RPG where guns are the weapons of choice and how you depict character combat progression if you want to eliminate player's shooting skill and reflexes from the equation?
 

Latelistener

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Oh I'm sure they'll run at 4k... But with "cinematic experience" 30 fps performance.
GTX 1080 is about 300% faster than 1050Ti, the GPU very close by specifications and performance to the one used in PS4 Pro.

And it cannot achieve 60 fps in Witcher 3 in 4k, released in 2015.
 

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New consoles won't be out until 2020 or 2021. New consoles probably won't have a hard time running 4k or 1440p though, due to new GPUs and 7nm processes coming out soon.

Oh I'm sure they'll run at 4k... But with "cinematic experience" 30 fps performance. :lol:

I guess I am weird but I hardly notice a difference past 30 fps if at all. :negative:
 

imweasel

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Floating-point operations of the PS5 GPU should double over the PS4 Pro GPU (due to architectural improvements and an improved fabrication node (7nm+)), so the PS5 should easily be able to render any older games, including ported PS4 games, at 2160p/60FPS.

Sony is probably aiming for 2160p/30 FPS or 2160p/checkerboard for PS5 games, which will also have higher graphical fidelity.

That all said, Cyberpunk 2077 looks very current gen, so it will probably run at 2160p/60 FPS on the PS5.

/end discussion
 

Prime Junta

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So, how do you make a good first person RPG where guns are the weapons of choice

(1) Don't make guns the centrepiece of everything.

(2) Your gun skills would make you stronger of course -- faster reload, faster recovery between shots, better handling of recoil, when sniping less wobble in the crosshairs and so on, perhaps even a subtle damage boost as long as it doesn't feel too gamey. Plus, cyberware-enabled things like "bullet time," auto-aiming, smart bullets etc.

(3) The other areas in which your character improves would be at least as important, if not more: hacking, intrusion, stealth, silent melee takedowns, social aptitudes, damage resistance through cyberware, and so on and so forth.

and how you depict character combat progression if you want to eliminate player's shooting skill and reflexes from the equation?

You don't. In a first-person RPG, the player's shooting skills and reflexes should be a part of the equation, otherwise it'll feel clunky and jarring (see V.A.T.S.) If you want to remove them from the equation, don't make a first-person RPG.
 
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Abhay

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Can anyone explain this part -- "the studio refuses to use procedural elements in any of Cyberpunk 2077’s environment or quests. This time it’s not just talk – everything really is hand-crafted"

What does that exactly mean? How is this going to make the game better for the player?
Also, what's the difference between hand crafted and procedural elements?
 

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It's all marketing talk. If everything is hand crafted, there is no element of surprise once you clear out a gang neighborhood. There will have to be some respawning enemies. I guess they mean there won't be "radiant" mmo-style quests.
 

Prime Junta

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Can anyone explain this part -- "the studio refuses to use procedural elements in any of Cyberpunk 2077’s environment or quests. This time it’s not just talk – everything really is hand-crafted"

What does that exactly mean? How is this going to make the game better for the player?
Also, what's the difference between hand crafted and procedural elements?

In a cyberpunk game, procedural content would be machine-generated generic quests along the lines of "Extract [operative name] from [location] for [client]. Pay is [reward] eddies plus [gadget].

I think that answers all of your questions really.
 

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So, how do you make a good first person RPG where guns are the weapons of choice and how you depict character combat progression if you want to eliminate player's shooting skill and reflexes from the equation?
Like Prime Junta said, trying to eliminate player skill is a futile and pointless endeavor. As for character progression, the first thing you'll need to do is to ignore what most (A)RPGs are doing. It's ludicrous that the only two things that usually come into play with guns are damage and accuracy (nowadays often not even that), with barely a noticeable gameplay difference between a weapons expert and a novice that's never held a gun in his life.

Let's ignore all the possibilities that a cyberpunk setting gives you and just focus on what anyone who's ever fired a gun probably knows. For one, even a newbie can hit a target the size of a human pretty easily from quite a distance away — that is, as long as he's given enough time to take the shot, the target doesn't move, and he's firing the weapon from an optimal position (e.g. laying prone if the weapon in question is an assault rifle). Things get quite a bit trickier if the target is on the move or only visible for a short time, if you need to take several shots in quick succession, or if you have to fire from a non-optimal stance like you usually do in an actual firefight. Deus Ex got some flak for its targeting system, but it's actually one of the few games to get this aspect somewhat right, even though they could've gone a bit further with it. If you're untrained with weapons, you're better of taking your time with each shot and making every one of them count, whereas an expert can take accurate shots quickly and retain his accuracy even when on the move, potentially taking out large groups of enemies by himself in a matter of seconds. This can completely change the way you play the game and open up a whole bunch of different tactics for each situation.

Of course, weapon handling goes way beyond just shooting the gun. Aside from accuracy, differences between a novice and an expert become instantly apparent in for example these things:
- the speed of drawing your weapon and readying it for firing
- the speed with which you're able to take a well-aimed shot after moving, turning, reloading etc.
- managing recoil thanks to knowing how to hold the gun properly
- the speed with which you're able to change a magazine, especially when moving or in the middle of combat
- fixing a jam
- preventing a jam from happening
- cleaning and maintaining your weapon
- adjusting your sights and making modifications to your weapon

Even in a real-time, first-person game you could spice things up with critical failures as a result of low weapon skills: dropping a magazine on the ground, accidentally going full auto when trying to use burst mode, trying to fire with the safety on...

Let's be realistic here, though: CP2077 probably won't be doing any of that. Instead it'll probably do something retarded like make your bullets hurt more the more skilled you are, and leave it at that.
 
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Zer0wing

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In a cyberpunk game, procedural content would be machine-generated generic quests along the lines of "Extract [operative name] from [location] for [client]. Pay is [reward] eddies plus [gadget].
Quest design in 16-bit Shadowrun was varied enough and there are plenty of jobs to do in there so it doesn't feel too jarring (at least for the first couple of hours) so this marketing talk actually backfires. If every quest is handcrafted, if story takes the priority here then gameplay and balance (especially economy balance) is thrown out of the window. Again.
 

Prime Junta

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Quest design in 16-bit Shadowrun was varied enough and there are plenty of jobs to do in there so it doesn't feel too jarring (at least for the first couple of hours) so this marketing talk actually backfires.

Eh, marketing talk is marketing talk. You can churn out boring assembly-line quests by hand just as well too.

Still, different games are different. Proc content is brilliant in brilliant roguelikes. In most RPGs it stinks.

If every quest is handcrafted, if story takes the priority here then gameplay and balance (especially economy balance) is thrown out of the window. Again.

(1) That's a non sequitur. I.e. the one does not follow from the other. There are hand-crafted games with great gameplay. There might be a grain of truth in that games that rely on proc generated content are /all/ gameplay, so if they're to succeed at all, there has to be at least /something/ appealing about it -- whereas if a game has tremendously good story, it's easier to forgive deficiencies in gameplay (see Planescape: Torment).
(2) Name one RPG where the economy is /not/ wildly out of balance.
 

Zer0wing

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Eh, marketing talk is marketing talk. You can churn out boring assembly-line quests by hand just as well too.

Still, different games are different. Proc content is brilliant in brilliant roguelikes. In most RPGs it stinks.
Yeah, STALKER exists. Tthere are fuckton+ handcrafted retrieve/kill shit and go back kind of quests with barebones writing. So?

Shadowrun and (to an extend) Daggerfall are not most RPGs, though.
(1) That's a non sequitur. I.e. the one does not follow from the other. There are hand-crafted games with great gameplay. There might be a grain of truth in that games that rely on proc generated content are /all/ gameplay, so if they're to succeed at all, there has to be at least /something/ appealing about it -- whereas if a game has tremendously good story, it's easier to forgive deficiencies in gameplay (see Planescape: Torment).
Every open world rpg can somewhat benefit from elaborate in writing but procedural in nature quests, to gain some easy buck or level some combat or tech related skills.
I don't think that Planescape: Torment had particurally bad gameplay. For an RPG, it's pretty solid.
Yes you can forgive a game being boring or having serious missteps in gamedesign if it's a 20-40 hours piece or gameplay loops are fun or easy enough to not be bothered with. It's not the case for Witcher 3 where in between good writing, quests and actual witcher jobs CDPR thought "nothing" and trash mobs would be enough for a veeeeery long time until they come up with question marks and seems like with CP2077 they haven't shifted their priorities much.
(2) Name one RPG where the economy is /not/ wildly out of balance.
VtM:B and mentioned Shadowrun '94?
mystery.png
Games are pretty stingy on money until it's lategame, in latter - good hardware costs like a bitch, better programs on top of that can easily be wiped out by unfortunate Black ICE encounter. To the point it feels like a real job when running errands in redmond barrens, though.

Yes, you can not rely on buying stuff in Vampires but that's not conventional way of playing it either.
 
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Prime Junta

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Every open world rpg can somewhat benefit from elaborate in writing but procedural in nature quests, to gain some easy buck or level some combat or tech related skills.

No, that's just mindless grind which has been ruining games since 1978 at least.
VtM:B and mentioned Shadowrun '94?
mystery.png
Games are pretty stingy on money until it's lategame, in latter - good hardware costs like a bitch, better programs on top of that can easily be wiped out by unfortunate Black ICE encounter. To the point it feels like a real job when running errands in redmond barrens, though.

Yes, you can not rely on buying stuff in Vampires but that's not conventional way of playing it either.

I haven't played SR94.

VtM:B, of course, has no procedurally generated content. So how does it strengthen your argument that no proc gen content ---> out of balance economy?

I don't recall ever hurting for money in VtM:B either, and I usually buy the best guns as soon as they're available. But that's a digression
 

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