Development Info Microsoft Extended Showcase 2023: Avowed and Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty

[whydoibother]

New CP2077 dlc gonna be lit

Are you a bad enough dude to save the president?

 

[Zeriel]

Reposting from the four leaf clover website:

New interview dropped:

>You have an established role as the imperial envoy, but your "personality, appearance, and philosophy and vibe you bring to that role is up to you as a player to decide"

Sounds mostly cosmetic. Also, "vibe"?

>You can play as a human

Good.

or an elf, but not other races

Bad.

>It's purely singleplayer—no co-op

Good.

>The world is lightly systemic: think water and lightning interactions, but not the ol' bucket-on-the-head trick

First-person D:OS.

>You'll have two companions with you at a time, with their own combat specialties and, of course, personalities

At least it's not multiplayer, but this sounds annoying.

>There are several ability trees to progress through, and you won't be locked to a particular class or playstyle
>You will level up, but the focus is on unlocking abilities rather than putting points into stats to grow stronger

Again, sounds cosmetic. DMoMM kind of.

This sounds the most interesting:
>"In most of our games companions have been optional, which I think offers a wonderful degree of choice to players, but it means there's a limit to how deeply you can tie them into the core story. With Avowed we decided companions are going to be core. They're going to be part of the experience. And that means we can invest so much more in them and tie them much more closely, and personally, to the events and the parts of the world the player is encountering."

Translation: We're only giving you two or three companions max because it's all we have the budget for.

If the companions in The Outer Worlds were anything to go by, being forced to drag them around could wreck any enjoyment I might get out of the game.

Yeah. In DMoMM's days a companion foisted on you meant a sexy succubus flirting with you for the game time. In 2023, it means the most annoying retards the developers could come up (which is saying a lot, since they will be self-inserts of said developers, whose retardation is unlimited) with to lecture and drain any potential ounce of enjoyment out of the experience. There is no way this doesn't end up being awful. It's epistemologically impossible.

 

[Zeriel]

New CP2077 dlc gonna be lit

Are you a bad enough dude to save the president?

Hopefully they actually let you decide how your character reacts this time. Instead of event happens:

"I am very sad and relate to you, NPC I just met 2 minutes ago" worded 3 different ways as dialogue options. I don't know what led CDPR down this vile path, but they have one chance to show redemption before I put them on my forever shitlist.

 

[AscendedFlames]

I hate this pre-screened interviews that have questions clearly designed from marketing, done entirely by the publisher, I know modern "gaming journalists" wouldn't have been any different but I cannot believe they didn't mention anything about the GAMEPLAY. The most fundamental aspect of this medium, and from the looks of it, they haven't innovated in anything, it seems like another Skyrim clone where you hold left mouse for automatic attacks. Imagine making Real Time combat today without it being skill-based. And of course, the Joss Whedon virus lives on, "unique sense of humour", might as well say sissy faggot.

 

[thesecret1]

Sounds like that's basically what they're doing. The DLC itself is just another scripted on rails story mission, but they are using the money spent to patch the game and add in some core systems work (like cops, more open world events, etc). The fact they are ending the franchise for the foreseeable future with this and ALSO abandoning their own engine leaves me really cynical and pessimistic on CDPR's future though. It's not like there is some grand plan to come out with Cyberpunk 2 anytime soon, and they are throwing away literal decades of prestige engineering work because they apparently lost all their competent staff. Sad all around.

Maintaining an engine takes a lot of time and effort, and means that every new hire is going to need to learn how to use the engine, which is further costs. With Unreal and Unity, you can hire people that are already experienced in their use and don't need to develop your own engine (the fee Unreal and Unity take is nothing compared to that). It's a sound bussiness decision, even if it's decline.

CDPR is going to milk Witcher for some time and likely sink in quality lower and lower until it becomes a parody that even normalfags laugh at, and gets bought by Microsoft or THQ or whoever. It's the standard life cycle of such studios. Once the decline sets in once (and it certainly has in CDPR), there's no recovering from it. It'd require replacing too many people, often at the very top of the company, and possibly even scaling down (which nobody likes to do). It's easier to just leave and start a new studio, which is what routinely happens if you check the history of game dev – very often, a new studio gets made when a bunch of disgruntled employees leave and pool their resources (or convince an investor) to start fresh.

 

[Zeriel]

Sounds like that's basically what they're doing. The DLC itself is just another scripted on rails story mission, but they are using the money spent to patch the game and add in some core systems work (like cops, more open world events, etc). The fact they are ending the franchise for the foreseeable future with this and ALSO abandoning their own engine leaves me really cynical and pessimistic on CDPR's future though. It's not like there is some grand plan to come out with Cyberpunk 2 anytime soon, and they are throwing away literal decades of prestige engineering work because they apparently lost all their competent staff. Sad all around.

Maintaining an engine takes a lot of time and effort, and means that every new hire is going to need to learn how to use the engine, which is further costs. With Unreal and Unity, you can hire people that are already experienced in their use and don't need to develop your own engine (the fee Unreal and Unity take is nothing compared to that). It's a sound bussiness decision, even if it's decline.

CDPR is going to milk Witcher for some time and likely sink in quality lower and lower until it becomes a parody that even normalfags laugh at, and gets bought by Microsoft or THQ or whoever. It's the standard life cycle of such studios. Once the decline sets in once (and it certainly has in CDPR), there's no recovering from it. It'd require replacing too many people, often at the very top of the company, and possibly even scaling down (which nobody likes to do). It's easier to just leave and start a new studio, which is what routinely happens if you check the history of game dev – very often, a new studio gets made when a bunch of disgruntled employees leave and pool their resources (or convince an investor) to start fresh.

In a vacuum, I agree. From a purely business perspective. But after you've had a disastrous release and have news of large swathes of your staff leaving, it just sounds like you no longer have the capability to use the engine, not that you are making a decision of choice. It's like when the US government says its Afghanistan withdrawal was great because they succeeded in evacuating so many people in such a short amount of time; just curiously blowing by the reason they HAD to evacuate so many people. It's pure cope.

 

[thesecret1]

In a vacuum, I agree. From a purely business perspective. But after you've had a disastrous release and have news of large swathes of your staff leaving, it just sounds like you no longer have the capability to use the engine, not that you are making a decision of choice. It's like when the US government says its Afghanistan withdrawal was great because they succeeded in evacuating so many people in such a short amount of time; just curiously blowing by the reason they HAD to evacuate so many people. It's pure cope.

It's certainly possible, especially if the engine wasn't documented well (and most engines have SHIT documentation) - a couple key personnel leave and you suddenly find out nobody at your company understands how it works. Might be they considered the switch before and this was just the final push.

In any case, I wouldn't expect much from CDPR in the future.

 

[Kamaz]

While I am cautiously optimistic in general, quite a few points don't land right for me:
1) colour palette - I believe games should have colour and "always-brown" is def not great but this feels too synthetic was not a fan of it in TOW either;
2) combat focus - like pretty much all RPGs these days and everyone else will probably do a better job at it than Obsidian, not their forte;
3) compulsory companions - besides the fact that I subjectively prefer playing solo, forced companions go against the player agency and RPG principles;
4) zombies - yawn...
5) you are special and power fantasy - at this point, Bethesdish player asslicking is outright repulsive; why should the world turn always around the player?

On the other hand, there were some things that got me curious:
1) pistols in fantasy setting - that's hardly the pinnacle of originality but does stand out in the crowd of other bright, colourful action fantasy "RPGs". Besides, reminds me of Arcanum and you can never go wrong with that.

Again, I believe the game will be alright....for the right crowd. Hopefully less compromising on RPG qualities than The Outer Worlds. Current info signals it's not for me, though.