A large part of the backlash is around unfinished systems. Without reeling off an exhaustive list the resulting world feels pretty soulless and shallow, it certainly feels like they released it far from being finished.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25468522 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25471233
But that doesn't mean the terrible AI (in all aspects of the game) or the lackluster attempt at an interactive open world don't bother me.
How is it so hard for people to distinguish the good parts of the game from the bad parts? The biggest offender is the combat AI because that impacts gameplay but issues like "not being able to get a haircut" don't deserve the mountains of hate threads and death threats by the children on r/cyberpunkgame.
On that note, if you haven't already played Horizon: Zero Dawn it's very much worth trying out.
I'd just finished a marathon multi-day session start->finish with that, and it's easily the best I've come across so far.
It's not as huge and sprawling as Cyberpunk 2077, but it's a fairly big open world and the writing is tight. The side quests and story are probably the best I've (personally) yet seen. :)
After all, I don't see any death threats here so maybe keep that commentary on Reddit?
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Now to me there's no distinguishing needed. The story was poorly written. The combat is lack luster. The environment is expansive but hollow. What's left?
Maybe you felt differently, but for me Act 1 was insultingly rushed. The fact that the terrible corny VR tutorial (in the future you can learn to fight in the blink of an eye sitting in a car, not missing a beat... well that's great for V but for the player, you just ruined the pacing of the rising action. I missed the beat. The Brain Dances are similar) is followed by a montage of events that could have taught you game mechanics while actually letting you start to care about your partner instead of having it drilled into you over the next hour that the guy who just robbed you while you stole a car, getting you arrested in the process is your bestie ... truly awful
Act 2 is just as painfully rough. The dialog choices still don't really matter, there are two choices in all those hours that change things meaningfully down the line (save a certain person and get close to a certain person) a lot of the writing is just cringe worthy ("Ghost Off!" and Keanu Reeves referring to his impressive c--- is not something anyone has ever asked for, and he doesn't pull it off)
Act 3 is one of the first places where dialog decisions matter... except the game is already pretty much over. It's like a choose your own ending instead of a choose your own adventure, and there's clearly a canonical choice the game guides you towards, every other ending is half fleshed out, the same way every beginning but Nomad is barely implemented...
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Now all that being said, to me if a game has such uninspiring combat and such a hollow environment, and lets down it's promises of focusing on customization, and has such an awful bloated UI, and has such a bloated corpse of a skill tree...
It's a bad game. Story or no story, it doesn't save that.
I have books I read where I want a great story that's not interactive and well written.
If the story is interactive, the interaction should add something. Having to slog through a poorly made game for a story in a game of this scale is pretty inexcusable...
There are some middling games as far as gameplay depth and smoothness goes that have get carried by their story, but it needs to be a truly exceptional story, and usually there's a good reason why they couldn't do more with the game play. Games like Hellblade where all their budget went into story telling and the team just wasn't big enough to have some incredibly complex gameplay on top of the intricate storytelling and animation and deep lore... they're able to justify it to some degree. But CP2077 was an almost decade long journey with the kind of resources the Hellblade team wouldn't have in their sweetest dreams. And it's all squandered on what was clearly a lack of direction and focus.
Skimming the bad reviews for last gen consoles. Some complaints aren’t about issues relating to weaker machines. It seems like there’s some group think or hive mind stuff going on.
I have seen all this backslash and does not fit my experience with the game in any possible way. But your criticism fits a pattern I have seen, it criticises without knowing and sometimes even lying on easy verifiable facts.
I do not get the campaign against this game in particular, and it seems that neither many people in this forum.