Gothfather: There are major narrative problems with Cyberpunk 2077, that should have been glaringly obvious to the development team. Lets take Regina Jones' cyberpsycho quests, here we have a fixer with a contract to obtain cyberpsychos alive and she feels gamey and fake because she will only want cyberpsychos part of that side quest chain already prescripted but she gives you a rescue mission called Occupational Hazard to save a friend, Hal from a cyberpsycho and if you save the friend without killing the cyberpsycho magically Regina doesn't give a shit and has no desire to take the cyberpsycho to be studied. WTF? Seriously how does this past any kind of narrative scrutiny? How could a narrative director not get this? Also everyone acted like I killed the cyberpsycho when I didn't. Again WTF? How can this of gotten approved? And we are not talking about a different fixer this is the same bloody fixer who can't even be written consistently. I get her not making it a priority when she gives you the gig on saving the psycho because now it is her friend on the line but the fact she doesn't give a shit post mission and you can't tell her tells me just how badly CP2077 is written.

Another example of bad writing is the Monk quest, Losing My Religion. I went in and did non lethal stealth takedowns for every member of the gang. I did dump a couple of bodies so they were not detected but every takedown was non lethal and the monk got upset over all the killing for his sake! Again WTF? How the fuck did this get past the writing stage. I only did the non lethal takedowns because that is what I was HIRED to do, so I did the contract as instructed and the game assumes I just went in guns blazing. Again shitty writing and there is no excuse for it.

This game is so poorly written post the heist. Pre-heist we have character development, we have a companion, we get missions we can do on the side. I am part of a team, like I would be in a tabletop game RPG of cyberpunk. I met characters they react to me based on the situation the game feels alive and I have the freedom to take on side missions and gigs in between main missions. I have to set up missions meet with the client all of this feels alive. The game truly delivers on its promise then as the heist turns to shit so does the game. Characters and side missions turn stale most don't react to you at all. "Apartments" with your friends and/or lovers you can't sleep at. Judy loves me but we once fuck and now she doesn't have anything to say and doesn't react to anything I do. I have a 90% reputation with a lvl 50 street cred but I might as well be a nobody at afterlife no one knows who I am. I was told to fuck off more than once by patrons. So yeah that again tells me the game's reputation mechanic means sweet fuck all in terms of narrative. It is a meaningless percentile that has no mechanical importance to characters in the game. The fucking relic doesn't even have any mechanical impact on the game. When I die mechanically it is a game over but narratively I can die multiple times it seems but ONLY when it is a super special death. Fucking lazy. Why wasn't death and resurrection a game mechanic? Every time I die mechanically i gain a percept or 1/2 a percent on the last % metre in the character sheet, the first being your reputation and the second your situation with Johnny and the third being what I think is how close the chip is to killing you. I think who the actual fuck knows what they really mean they appear meaningless in terms of actual game mechanics. Fluff, window dressing. Just another perfect example how CP2077 is meh vs good let alone great.

If the devs thought Johnny was a companion well they really don't understand RPG companions. Jackie and T-Bug were companions and felt part of a team. And because they were well written you notice their absence utterly and completely. Post heist however no one fills the void and it really hurts the storytelling. Having characters you work with consistently gives opportunities to have the game react to your choices so far nothing i have done seems to have an actual consequence everything seems preordained in the main quests and the character based side quests. The most freedom I have is in a gig on how to complete the mission but if its a Judy, Ward or Panam quest it pretty much a paint by numbers event with me there only as an afterthought in terms of outcome. Gigs/fixer side missions allow me choice in execution of a quest but zero fucking story and the game can't even respond correctly or consistently to my actual actions. This is really bad for an RPG. If the client says "No disintegrations," and you don't disintegrate anyone and the game acts like you did disintegrate people that makes the game feel and play like a pile of shit, this is especially true for an RPG.

The balance seems way out of touch with builds. There are some boss fights that are impossible, like Oda, without the correct build. And once you start the mission unlike the TW3, you are stuck with what your build is no swapping out spells. Really shitty design there. The game has a really bad keyboard and mouse integration dodge is a complete cluster fuck. I swear the person in charge of the layout for PC never played the game on PC. Anyone in charge of keyboard layout for PC should be REQUIRED to NEVER play the game with a controller. Don't misunderstand I have a headshot build that can do over 1 million crit damage to head shots sometimes so this isn't a complaint about boo hoo this is too hard. Odo didn't survive a few blasts to the head. I just needed the time dilation and deamons to "slow" him down to aim then it went from unwinnable to a joke. That is poor balance.

This game starts so strong narratively then takes a complete nose dive. The character quests are short chains of a few quests and then the characters become wooden dolls with no life to them. They can't even react to your accomplishments because they don't work with you and don't have any dialogue options to tell them. So your love interests feel exactly like a one night stand because that is all they are one night and nothing more. Why? because again the writing. At least with Judy and Meredith one sex scene. Ward seem to be another one night scene but I shot him down. Panam may have had more, more to the relationship but I had the wrong plumbing for my first playthrough. I mean Ward and Judy feel not like a lover but some weird obsessive psycho, sleep with them once and they want you to move in. WTF? That is your definition of a "love interest," fuck once and live together. Year that sure sounds like a mature adult relationship. Sounds more like an adolescent understanding of relationships. Any why the fuck do all of them have "missions" Misty was the only real relationship I saw in the game. She didn't send fucking Jackie on a set of missions to form a friendship and then bonds of love but nope in Night city I've got to either save a fucking clan, take over a whore house or find a serial kidnapper before i get a one night stand. What the actual fuck? who writes this shit? Meredith was perhaps the most realistic love interest. Sent a text, we meet at a cheap motel, bang once and she never talks to me again. Far more realistic than save the fucking club, clan, family then i will gameify things by fucking you. What these characters know no emotion unless you save the fucking day? Well not even then because they go dead and lifeless right after fucking you once. V worse shag in night city. Fuck 'em once and they go silent. Then realize their mistake so sure you can visit their "apartment" but you can't sleep over. Maybe V will take teh hint and not come over again if I don't talk to them and don't let them spend the night and don't sleep with them again. Woot CD Projekt writes great romances. lol. utter crap.

I had plan to play the game three times once for each life path but to be honest i am struggling to finish things once. I have done all the main quests till the meet at Embers and I got a warning about the point of no return. So I stopped and did a bunch of side quests/gigs police scanners incidents. I did all the Delamain car quests and again you finish the quest line and Delamain goes dead no life. Your reward is a car but it isn't self driving and doesn't respond to anything you do in the car, so... so much for an AI run car. Did all the Tarot card quests and that was a big nothing burger. 10 out of 17 cyberpsycho quests but no real drive to do those as the fucking quest line is so poorly written. Boss fights that can be cheesed with the correct build.

You can't mark the map with custom markers so you can't revisit locations easily. If you live in a city you should be encouraged to return to locations because the characters at the location respond to you. Night city doesn't feel alive, sure there are a lot of dolls, lifeless automatons that walk about, but Oblivion and skyrim do a lot more to make their settlements feel alive than Night city. You can actually hear conversations about what you have done in the game, not so Night city. Skyrim and oblivion actually have characters that inhabit the city and have schedules, Night city doesn't no one lives in the city, no one actually has a life they live. They just spawn in and out based on the player's location.

Fucking hell. I can't post a second post as doing so just edits the first and adding my thoughts for part II make the post too long So part II to follow

Gothfather: Bethesda games are glitch theme parks with shallow writing, that requires hundreds of mods to become a full game. Cyberpunk 2077 is an arcade, everything is about consume tasks fast and fast, I hate the phone calling all the time.

I am not in favour of quantity over quality, but so far, one life path and I am done till major updates.

Gothfather: Part II

I have nothing but praise for the beginning of this game it was incredible but have pretty much nothing but disappointment for everything post the Heist mission. I haven't finished the game but have made one character with 77+ hours invested and 39% of achievements unlocked and I am pretty much done. I have little motivation to finish the main questline.

To me the lack of a partner, a team of edgerunners you work with on the regular hurts the narrative of the game. The world seems less alive when you are this lone isolated solo. This was the intent but it was a bad choice because you need an anchor to the city you don't have. Not an anchor to stay an anchor to allow the city to be expressed to you. Jackie was perfect for that. In the game I have no base of operations, there is absolutely zero reason to go to your apartment. Zero reason to even visit a fixer or go to the afterlife to get jobs. Fuck what a shit design fixers where when you just get generic calls. Meeting Dex and planning the heist all worked because if felt alive. A fucking call over and over again? Lifeless. You "can't" visit anyone more than once because they don't have anything to say to you. You can't become a regular at a bar because no one fucking remembers you not a single patron acknowledges you. You for a brief second have a group of friends but it is clear once Jackie is out of the picture you are dropped. I now get why people said the game is soulless or lacks heart because it does. At first I couldn't understand as I really felt the loss of Jackie, T-Bug and the betrayal of Dex but after that everything was lifeless and pretty boring narratively. I kept hoping the game would get back to that rich storytelling but it never does. And you can see this in little ways Like Regina not knowing her motivations from one mission to the next. Not being able to takedown non-lethally other cyberpsycho's from other missions and call Regina because why the fuck would she be interested in that right? How the fuck could the developers miss this? How can the game not even know difference from a lethal and non lethal takedown?

This game got a lot of unfair criticism pre release and I, for this post, gave it a pass on every bug or performance controversy post launch as that isn't why cp2077 is mediocre. But the truth is the game isn't that good after Jackie leaves the picture and you are left alone. Here are some highlights, Johnny is a complete asshole but that is his character and well written and the voodoo boys constant betrayals were the only post heist writing that I thought were great and both of these are very negative interactions, but brilliant for their negative encounters. I worried the voodoo boys would be shit because they would be too friendly to an outsider, too open. But they were not, they pissed me off so much with constant betrayals that I just went postal on their ass. Thank god for my headshot build otherwise I would have died. Yet two examples of good writing doesn't cut it because the first part of the game was so well written you FEEL the stark contrast. I felt part of Night city pre Heist and felt absolutely nothing post heist. CD Projekt red fails to deliver a narratively driven RPG what we get is a series of utterly unconnected quests that aren't even anchored to the character giving them nor could the devs be bothered to actually go through with all the trouble of meeting the fixers to get the details, or meetings to get paid, Nope just a phone call. There should have been two maybe three locations for fixers and you went to the pre and post job. Become regulars to these locations and people know you. I am TOLD people come up to me in the afterlife and know my name and I have respect but i am never shown that, the city never breaths or is alive. Claire knows i exist and that is it. What is the saying? Show don't tell. CP2077 tells but doesn't show too often.

This game just isn't that good from a narrative standpoint. Jackie helped anchor the character to night city, helped give the city life and expose you to the harsh realities by being a CONTRAST to the city. His loss is well written but we needed a replacement to anchor us again to the city, our love interests and fixers don't fill the role and they are so fleeting story wise that they just become lifeless dolls soon after you meet them.

I hope to finish the game at some point but I am not sure it is worth it. I don't feel ripped off (partly because i have a decent system Ryzen 7 5800X with RTX 3070) but I feel disappointed that the game just isn't good, all in all it is meh. I know some people really defend the game like it is a masterpiece but I wonder how many of them are pre heist or just post heist mission in their playthroughs? Because my attitude towards the game did a complete 180. It feels like two completely different games. It almost feels that the person in charge of the writing and narrative directions of the game was different pre heist vs post heist. Like someone lost a power struggle and the idiots won.

I don't believe this game can be saved with bug fixes and DLC because I don't think bugs are its problems and DLC isn't going to completely change the game and how it approaches narrative.

I hope Cyberpunk 2077 II will be better but... I don't think it will, the game has had too many issues about performance and bugs that I don't think CDProjekt Red realizes that even if performance was flawless on last gen consoles and bugs were not worth mentioning the reviews and user scores would be mediocre at best because the game isn't all that great. When you live in a FIXED location in a game you better invest in making the city feel like you are part of it. People better know who I am not because I am a superhero but because I LIVE beside them. My local bar should know me, where I buy my food should know me. I should have friends and acquaintances that don't go lifeless after one conversation. If I am a legend in Night city now (character sheet says so, why don't people in my apartment building know me? Night city will never be alive until there are hundreds of lines of dialogue acknowledging the character's existence in the city. When I am Geralt traveling from one village to the next rarely returning or staying for any length of time people not responding to me makes sense. In my apartment building every neighbor and shopkeep should have their own apartment in the city if not the building and they should travel to and from work and i should be able to meet them in the city because they should have a schedule to eat, sleep, work and play depending on the day and time. But they don't they just stay in the one stop all the time. OR they are a random spawn and not even an actual resident of the building. Sure have most of the populace in the city be random spawns but the bars, clubs and shops should have multiple employees all with their own residences and schedules so you can encounter then in the city living their lives. Right now none of them have any lives so a game as old as oblivion released in march of 2006 almost 15 years ago has a city the feels most alive than night city.

You failed CDProjekt Red.Gothfather: You miss my point. You saw oblivion/skyrim and ignored the substance of the comparison.
[edit] that sounded harsher in the reread than I intended. Sorry. Was just trying to point out how oblivion and Skyrim made their cities more alive not comparing these two games in general with CP2077. more about what I mean..[/edit]

Every character in Oblivion and skyrim, has a bed/home. They have a "job" even if they are a beggar. They have a schedule that takes them to work, tells them when to eat and when to visit locations outside work and when to return to sleep. EVERY Character. This creates an alive feeling because people you know move around a settlement depending on the time of day and their schedule.

Night city has none of this. NPCs are stuck in place and never leave. They don't have a schedule to eat, play or work. They even don't have a fucking place to stay in most cases. Night city has no population they are all lifeless random spawns or stuck forever at their locations of work. It sucks, dead and makes the city hollow regardless of how high you crank up the crowd slider in the settings menu.

Gothfather: (...)

ASnakeNeverDies: While I agree that it is disappointing that the NPCs don't acknowledge your progress at all, having persistent schedules for them at these densities doesn't seem viable to me. However, I do not believe that's a big problem considering the circumstances. The lack of faction dynamics, and pedestrian and driver AI are the main problems, I would say.

Considering what they so obviously were going for, they should've pulled their resources into a framework that would support emergent gameplay possibilities with Rockstar Games simulations as their baseline. As things currently are they are not even at the level of Grand Theft Auto (1997). When you (or any other actor) can dynamically spawn a Trauma Team unit by accidentally (or intentionally) running over Premium insured corpo caste NPC spawns, then maybe they can start worrying about buttering up the player.

Gothfather: Disagree. You are think all or nothing which isn't what i said.

If you do V's neighbours, and all shopkeeps and barkeeps. Some key patrons at bars as well would help. You have enough people with LIVES. You'd need 2 shopkeeps per shop to keep them open 24/7 but not all shops need to be open 24/7. In fact having some shops that close would add Life to the game. You can have the majority of bodies be lifeless dolls but having a core set of NPCs that are alive and have schedules means you WILL see them from time to time outside their current locations and they will feel like they have lives.

What makes this "real" is that is how it is for us in real life. We know some people and see them regularly enough to recognize them outside of their context for us. Example seeing the corner store owner at the mall. Bar patrons would help in making the game alive if SOME of them where regulars that you could meet if you frequent the bar at the same time more than once. Most people we see in a city we ignore but that only works for people we don't encounter daily. It makes teh city dead when EVERY fucking person is either random or a static shopkeep.

If Bethesda's shitty creation engine can do this for all of the NPCs in their last 4 games (excluding 76) then red engine can do the same for night city. again key NPCs not every NPC. This is 15 year old technology and CD Projekt fails to use it for anyone and so no one feels alive. Why doesn't Judy have a job? Why doesn't Ward every leave this home? Why is Panam always at the nomad camp headoffice tent? Like all the fucking time? They are lifeless dead dolls and these were suppose to be the characters we loved? sloppy shitty game design.

rbialo: I agree on some points: pre- and post heist feels like two different games; "Johnny Silver douche bag" as a companion being bad idea. Generally I can agree that main story part of CP2077 had great potential but it is executed well. Definitely you can tell that they must have made some huge changes to the core concept of what this game will be. As if they switched from full voice-over with animated cut-scene story driven game-play to more open world, sand-box like free roaming experience approach.

I also like your concept of rep having some more effect on NPC that are close to V although I can see it being in direct conflict with the expectation of having more interactive relation.
As I understand you do not like how fixers are implemented. But the way they did it is clearly with the idea of having something simple yet flexible for use - they record a few voice one-liners and put all the detailed reaction in text. It is not how they used it now but it is there for future. Anyway, if you do not like that then all those different reactions to your character progress would have to be recorded as meaningful conversations and animated dialogs. With so many different ways you can act it generate hundreds of different conversion paths. I'm afraid that would be a very complex and still prone to errors and dumb-like dialogs (when prerecorded voice sequences are connected together but were not recorded as one, they often sound artificial, not like humans talk when they go from one subject to another).

I also noticed you attribute to poor writing something that is either bad mechanics designee or a bug.
I actually had the same issue with monk mission first time. But second time I went different way, stun those inside in right order so I did not had to put them in containers and guess what - it counted as non-lethal. I'm not sure but i read somewhere that even if you use stun/incapacitate you can still kill enemies after by something as simple as hitting them again with non-lethal weapon or picking from the floor and drooping them again. And I'm pretty sure that hiding in container is what makes them killed. I hope it is a bug, otherwise it will complicate stealth non-lethal play.

The chip and dying part is interesting one. Definitely there was a potential in terms of how they could use it. I remember when I first heard about "immortality chip" I imagined that this would be the excuse they will use to let you re-spawn after death. But recently I also read somewhere that there is a more complex logic in how the chip interact with the brain. I'm not 100% sure but what got from that discussion is that it is actually intentional that only special way to die cause chip to kick in. In the sense that you are not actually immortal and will auto-rez like a zombie, but rather in some special circumstances or in controlled conditions you can be reconstructed.

Difficulty balance vs character progression that is the pain point I also share with you. Very rarely something is way too hard but even if it is at the beginning then very quickly it become total walk in the park. As for boss fights requiring some special approach - perhaps it is personal preference but for me that is how boss fights should be. It actually should be common to postpone some fights until your character gets better or find special way to fight. I'm much more concerned that after certain point in character progression every boss fight is a one-click action. I hope they can somehow alleviate that with better NPC AI and not by altering character progression system, but I'm not sure that is possible.

And finally the Oblivion reference. I like it most of all ES series (well, Morrowind was cool back then but that is aged now). I have replayed it few months back again and yes, day and night cycle and npc schedules are really good. Something to watch and learn for all devs for sure. There is however one small yet critical difference I can't ignore between ES:O and CP2077. I do not have exact numbers but just from my memory and observation - all NPCs from whole Cyrodil would not fill single district in NightCity.
There is this popular argument that CDPR promised 1000 NPC with schedule or life-like simulation. And sure, I have yet to see at least one of those. But even if they did it - what is a thousand people in a multi-million people city? When they would just do street merchants opening and closing they business in night day cycle (or work in shifts 24h/day) that still would mean hundreds of zombie-pedestrians on every street.
Do not get me wrong - I would love to see a game with CP2077 scale and ES:O NPC AI but I'm not sure if modern PCs would be able to handle that (and lets just skip last gen consoles). I do not think it is realist to expect this in next few years.

wayke: No RPG has ever done that you're just trying to make this into a Fable..

On a Celeron with 64mb of ram and limited HDD Limited CPU..

Gothfather: lol. No RPG but oblivion, Fallout 3, Skyrim and Fallout 4. All NPCs had schedules, a bed, a work place and a recreation area, a place to eat. Some NPCs even moved from one settlement to the next. So yeah been done, it is 15 year old technology. Also everyone of these games had scripts that acknowledge PC accomplishments in the world through NPC dialogue. Never played any of these games? Fuck even Bioware in Mass effect had people acknowledge accomplishments in conversations so not sure why you think I am asking for the impossible.I even specifically stated two games with "large" cities that feel more alive than night city. If oblivion and skyrim can do it with EVERY NPC then CP2077 can do it with every shopkeep in the city and neighbor in your apartment building. There are only what? two floors anyway with a dozen apartments you can walk to? Not asking for the whole tower. Not requiring a super computer here.

Gothfather: Characters and side missions turn stale most don't react to you at all.

Gothfather: There are major narrative problems with Cyberpunk 2077, that should have been glaringly obvious to the development team. Lets take Regina Jones' cyberpsycho quests, here we have a fixer with a contract to obtain cyberpsychos alive and she feels gamey and fake because she will only want cyberpsychos part of that side quest chain already prescripted but she gives you a rescue mission called Occupational Hazard to save a friend, Hal from a cyberpsycho and if you save the friend without killing the cyberpsycho magically Regina doesn't give a shit and has no desire to take the cyberpsycho to be studied. WTF? Seriously how does this past any kind of narrative scrutiny? How could a narrative director not get this? Also everyone acted like I killed the cyberpsycho when I didn't. Again WTF? How can this of gotten approved? And we are not talking about a different fixer this is the same bloody fixer who can't even be written consistently. I get her not making it a priority when she gives you the gig on saving the psycho because now it is her friend on the line but the fact she doesn't give a shit post mission and you can't tell her tells me just how badly CP2077 is written.

Another example of bad writing is the Monk quest, Losing My Religion. I went in and did non lethal stealth takedowns for every member of the gang. I did dump a couple of bodies so they were not detected but every takedown was non lethal and the monk got upset over all the killing for his sake! Again WTF? How the fuck did this get past the writing stage. I only did the non lethal takedowns because that is what I was HIRED to do, so I did the contract as instructed and the game assumes I just went in guns blazing. Again shitty writing and there is no excuse for it.

This game is so poorly written post the heist. Pre-heist we have character development, we have a companion, we get missions we can do on the side. I am part of a team, like I would be in a tabletop game RPG of cyberpunk. I met characters they react to me based on the situation the game feels alive and I have the freedom to take on side missions and gigs in between main missions. I have to set up missions meet with the client all of this feels alive. The game truly delivers on its promise then as the heist turns to shit so does the game. Characters and side missions turn stale most don't react to you at all. "Apartments" with your friends and/or lovers you can't sleep at. Judy loves me but we once fuck and now she doesn't have anything to say and doesn't react to anything I do. I have a 90% reputation with a lvl 50 street cred but I might as well be a nobody at afterlife no one knows who I am. I was told to fuck off more than once by patrons. So yeah that again tells me the game's reputation mechanic means sweet fuck all in terms of narrative. It is a meaningless percentile that has no mechanical importance to characters in the game. The fucking relic doesn't even have any mechanical impact on the game. When I die mechanically it is a game over but narratively I can die multiple times it seems but ONLY when it is a super special death. Fucking lazy. Why wasn't death and resurrection a game mechanic? Every time I die mechanically i gain a percept or 1/2 a percent on the last % metre in the character sheet, the first being your reputation and the second your situation with Johnny and the third being what I think is how close the chip is to killing you. I think who the actual fuck knows what they really mean they appear meaningless in terms of actual game mechanics. Fluff, window dressing. Just another perfect example how CP2077 is meh vs good let alone great.

If the devs thought Johnny was a companion well they really don't understand RPG companions. Jackie and T-Bug were companions and felt part of a team. And because they were well written you notice their absence utterly and completely. Post heist however no one fills the void and it really hurts the storytelling. Having characters you work with consistently gives opportunities to have the game react to your choices so far nothing i have done seems to have an actual consequence everything seems preordained in the main quests and the character based side quests. The most freedom I have is in a gig on how to complete the mission but if its a Judy, Ward or Panam quest it pretty much a paint by numbers event with me there only as an afterthought in terms of outcome. Gigs/fixer side missions allow me choice in execution of a quest but zero fucking story and the game can't even respond correctly or consistently to my actual actions. This is really bad for an RPG. If the client says "No disintegrations," and you don't disintegrate anyone and the game acts like you did disintegrate people that makes the game feel and play like a pile of shit, this is especially true for an RPG.

The balance seems way out of touch with builds. There are some boss fights that are impossible, like Oda, without the correct build. And once you start the mission unlike the TW3, you are stuck with what your build is no swapping out spells. Really shitty design there. The game has a really bad keyboard and mouse integration dodge is a complete cluster fuck. I swear the person in charge of the layout for PC never played the game on PC. Anyone in charge of keyboard layout for PC should be REQUIRED to NEVER play the game with a controller. Don't misunderstand I have a headshot build that can do over 1 million crit damage to head shots sometimes so this isn't a complaint about boo hoo this is too hard. Odo didn't survive a few blasts to the head. I just needed the time dilation and deamons to "slow" him down to aim then it went from unwinnable to a joke. That is poor balance.

This game starts so strong narratively then takes a complete nose dive. The character quests are short chains of a few quests and then the characters become wooden dolls with no life to them. They can't even react to your accomplishments because they don't work with you and don't have any dialogue options to tell them. So your love interests feel exactly like a one night stand because that is all they are one night and nothing more. Why? because again the writing. At least with Judy and Meredith one sex scene. Ward seem to be another one night scene but I shot him down. Panam may have had more, more to the relationship but I had the wrong plumbing for my first playthrough. I mean Ward and Judy feel not like a lover but some weird obsessive psycho, sleep with them once and they want you to move in. WTF? That is your definition of a "love interest," fuck once and live together. Year that sure sounds like a mature adult relationship. Sounds more like an adolescent understanding of relationships. Any why the fuck do all of them have "missions" Misty was the only real relationship I saw in the game. She didn't send fucking Jackie on a set of missions to form a friendship and then bonds of love but nope in Night city I've got to either save a fucking clan, take over a whore house or find a serial kidnapper before i get a one night stand. What the actual fuck? who writes this shit? Meredith was perhaps the most realistic love interest. Sent a text, we meet at a cheap motel, bang once and she never talks to me again. Far more realistic than save the fucking club, clan, family then i will gameify things by fucking you. What these characters know no emotion unless you save the fucking day? Well not even then because they go dead and lifeless right after fucking you once. V worse shag in night city. Fuck 'em once and they go silent. Then realize their mistake so sure you can visit their "apartment" but you can't sleep over. Maybe V will take teh hint and not come over again if I don't talk to them and don't let them spend the night and don't sleep with them again. Woot CD Projekt writes great romances. lol. utter crap.

I had plan to play the game three times once for each life path but to be honest i am struggling to finish things once. I have done all the main quests till the meet at Embers and I got a warning about the point of no return. So I stopped and did a bunch of side quests/gigs police scanners incidents. I did all the Delamain car quests and again you finish the quest line and Delamain goes dead no life. Your reward is a car but it isn't self driving and doesn't respond to anything you do in the car, so... so much for an AI run car. Did all the Tarot card quests and that was a big nothing burger. 10 out of 17 cyberpsycho quests but no real drive to do those as the fucking quest line is so poorly written. Boss fights that can be cheesed with the correct build.

You can't mark the map with custom markers so you can't revisit locations easily. If you live in a city you should be encouraged to return to locations because the characters at the location respond to you. Night city doesn't feel alive, sure there are a lot of dolls, lifeless automatons that walk about, but Oblivion and skyrim do a lot more to make their settlements feel alive than Night city. You can actually hear conversations about what you have done in the game, not so Night city. Skyrim and oblivion actually have characters that inhabit the city and have schedules, Night city doesn't no one lives in the city, no one actually has a life they live. They just spawn in and out based on the player's location.

Fucking hell. I can't post a second post as doing so just edits the first and adding my thoughts for part II make the post too long So part II to follow