Addition of Johnny Silverhand

[Wolf]

I can't help but wonder if adding in Johnny as part of the main story was a mistake. The initial parts of the story before Johnny was inserted into us were fun and felt like you are a part of an exciting world. Once Johnny was introduced, the game started feeling bland and there was too much focus on Johnny himself.

Does anyone else also think the addition of Johnny Silverhand made for a worse game?

[I-NOCHT]

Honestly I don't get this farce that Johnny Silverhand is some tacked on piece that hindered the game. The character has always existed within the game's established lore from the very first source book for the table top.

Conceptually its no different from Skyrim and the Dohvakin. Its there to give the game's story a back bone because video games need an anchor to direct the flow of gameplay. There will never be an rpg game where its just you being a random jerkoff doing whatever you want while the game makes some narrative for you like a virtual dungeon master.

Frankly its highly unrealistic to expect it as well. There is no company that is willing to script and program every interaction you can have irl into a virtual world, because the amount of time and cost to do so will be astronomical.

Get your head out of the clouds and stop demonizing this game with your conspiracy theories. Johnny Silverhand was always going to be part of the story and they most likely had several actors scouted to attach a face to before the game even got off the cutting room floor.

Now get mad because I don't tow your line about how this game was rushed or ruined because you want to be some angry hipster.

[Grobut]

Smetrix a écrit :

Johnny is a 1 dimensional character

That's just not true.

Johnny Silverhand is an incredibly damaged man who hides behind a facade of arrogant bravado, and if you treat him like an unwated cancer throughout the game, then it's possible to end the game having never learned anything more about him. He will simply continue the facade.

But if you don't treat him with outright hostillity he will eventually open up to you, you will learn a lot more about him, you will see more sides of him, and learn that his facade is how he copes with his many regrets and self doubt. He can go through a full arc from antagonist to friend if you let him, and he changes how he interacts with you.

For a videogame character, he is actually remarkably complex, as are the options you have in dealing with him.

Going any deeper into him would be going into heavy spoiler territory, so i'll leave it there.

[WarForged]

Roderick a écrit :

A big point of Cyberpunk genre is the question what a soul is. Exspecially if you were able to copy memories and thought processes, would you have created a second soul?
It's about the question whether we even have a souls, or whether we are just "meat computers", ceasing to function when destroyed with nothing such as a soul ever inside.
Below all this stuff about the Relic and Johnny Silverhand this question is embedded. And at least for those who like this part of the Cyberpunk genre, it is this which makes it a true Cyberpunk game.

Exactly this. ^^^

The game is full of similar problems and situations that mirror what's happening to V and Johnny. There's the politicians who are having their minds messed with, turning them into different people. There's Delamain where his psyche splits into different vehicles, and what to do with them afterwards. Do you destroy them because they're dangerous and separate to him, or do you combine them into one and create who knows what? There's actual mention of the soul during a conversation at the end with Alt, where she says she can make an engram of Johnny and V, then slot V back into the body, but what she can't replace is the soul.

That's just a small selection of how the V / Johnny situation is all a part of the overarching theme of the game. Hell, you even get a Buddhist monk turning up to give you meditation sessions.

Personally I think it's a very well designed, very clever game, the way it tells its story and uses other stories to both influence your decision making and to make you understand the situation better. But then, you need to be paying attention, not just GTA blasting your way to the final boss.

[Maviba]

Wolf a écrit :

[...]
The story that shipped with the final product didn't meet the standards expected of CDPR. There's also the abundance of technical issues, but I'll leave those to other threads/posts.

I also don't see why you said "the game is so good" in a previous post. It's really not, and the reviews and current player count reinforce that claim. Maybe it's good to some people, but overall it's agreed that it's pretty mediocre.

A game can be ghood even if it has technical issues.
I'll take GTA frenchise as an example since it's often (wrongly) compared to CP2077.
Any GTA being released since 2001 had technical issues the when it was it was released, mainly in terms of performance and outdated graphics compared to its competitors.
But it's got other strenghs that compensated for this.

Same goes for CP2077.
Those who are disaapointed by the game are those who got tricked by the hype or just were expecting a kind of GTA 2077.
But experienced gamers should know not to buy things on day 1, especially if they got extraordinry hyped.
Because that always means devs were unter pressure and therefore bugs have to be expected.
This goes in particular for games which are expected / supposed to be a GTA-killer.
Many Company tried this the last 2 decates and all of them failed.
And CDPR doesn't even have half the amount of employees like rockstart has.
So for me it was clear it won't work that way.
I've been too long in the business in order to be fooled by hypes.

So why do I think its good and what are the strenghs of Cyberpunk?
It's the combination of its dystrophic cyberpunk atmosphere, great storytelling and authentic characterts.
At First I didn't bother about CP at all, since RPG isn't exactly my cup of tea. But when I saw it on sale I thought giving it a shot.
Since I wasn't affected by the hype I had literally no expectations and therefore I'm able getting an unspoiled impression of the game.

Maybe it's good to some people, but overall it's agreed that it's pretty mediocre.

well, I don't care much about what other people say, since I'm always but apparently you're wrong with that.
Agreed by whom? It might fit to the console version but not for the PC one.
Metascore is above 80%, that's beyond medicore.

Sure, it's still a bugfest, render distance of game objects seems is questionable and UI is sometime annoying.
But as mentioned above a CP does have other strenghs and none of these issues were able spoiling my game experience

[Maviba]

Grobut a écrit :

Smetrix a écrit :

Johnny is a 1 dimensional character

That's just not true.

Johnny Silverhand is an incredibly damaged man who hides behind a facade of arrogant bravado, and if you treat him like an unwated cancer throughout the game, then it's possible to end the game having never learned anything more about him. He will simply continue the facade.

But if you don't treat him with outright hostillity he will eventually open up to you, you will learn a lot more about him, you will see more sides of him, and learn that his facade is how he copes with his many regrets and self doubt. He can go through a full arc from antagonist to friend if you let him, and he changes how he interacts with you.

For a videogame character, he is actually remarkably complex, as are the options you have in dealing with him.

Going any deeper into him would be going into heavy spoiler territory, so i'll leave it there.

This!
Johnny is broken goods. He experienced grieve, sorrow,hate and even love (although he barely admits).
He's got a lot in common with V, making him way more than an 1 dimensional character.
In fact he seems to have a lot of facettes as we can see in late game.

[Wander Wild]

Maviba a écrit :

Grobut a écrit :

That's just not true.

Johnny Silverhand is an incredibly damaged man who hides behind a facade of arrogant bravado, and if you treat him like an unwated cancer throughout the game, then it's possible to end the game having never learned anything more about him. He will simply continue the facade.

But if you don't treat him with outright hostillity he will eventually open up to you, you will learn a lot more about him, you will see more sides of him, and learn that his facade is how he copes with his many regrets and self doubt. He can go through a full arc from antagonist to friend if you let him, and he changes how he interacts with you.

For a videogame character, he is actually remarkably complex, as are the options you have in dealing with him.

Going any deeper into him would be going into heavy spoiler territory, so i'll leave it there.

This!
Johnny is broken goods. He experienced grieve, sorrow,hate and even love (although he barely admits).
He's got a lot in common with V, making him way more than an 1 dimensional character.
In fact he seems to have a lot of facettes as we can see in late game.

I have to agree with all this, especially as a player who initially put off playing this game as I just didn't think I could stand Johnny. In my Corpo V playthrough with Temperance ending... I thought it was an incredible arc, for both of them.

[Maviba]

Wolf a écrit :

I don't know where you got the 80+ metacritic score. I checked the PC review and it's barely above 70%. I'm assuming you looked at critic reviews, which matter little since more times than not, they're written by people out of touch with what actual players experience.

I didn't only look here.
https://www.metacritic.com/game/pc/cyberpunk-2077

But also here
https://www.gamestar.de/artikel/cyberpunk-2077-test,3364844,wertung.html

https://www.4players.de/4players.php/spielinfo/Allgemein/31172/Cyberpunk_2077.html?awc=13542_1622245096_b706a8bf8c87ff7f696557a929dbde34

https://www.pcgames.de/Cyberpunk-2077-Spiel-20697/Tests/Rollenspiel-RPG-Review-Fazit-Wertung-Meinung-1363144/2/

https://www.gamepro.de/artikel/cyberpunk-2077-test,3364874,wertung.html

It's german, but those mags are renowned, have been in biz for decades now and numbers are international. ;-)

Those are professional reviews.
User reviews are important, but Issue with user reviews is, they are way more subjective and don't reflect the real quality of a game most time.

But if you're looking for user reviws, why not just here?.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/1091500/Cyberpunk_2077/#app_reviews_hash

You can't ignore the continually dropping player count (even after several patches when they were supposed to bring player count back up) and how quick it went downhill since launch day.

why? Of course numbers are dropping since it's a single player game which was released 6 months ago. What were you expecting?
Hype is over, Most players have finished all three storylines and new games have been relesed since then.
It's a pretty normal development for a game.

Even without the technical issues, Cyberpunk 2077 is still a mediocre game at best, and many people who've played it as well agree.

And both professionals as well as many players who played it don't agree.

You can go through player reviews on the Steam store page and anywhere else and you'll find similar issues people have with why the game isn't good, letalone a masterpiece like some say.

I went throuh the steam review and according to steam recent reviews are mainly positive.
Having issues still doesn't mean it's a bad game.
It only means some people had other priorities or expectations than others.

Again, you can't expect people that aren't close followers/fans to believe that the game is good when the numbers say otherwise. This one game alone has already shafted CDPR's reputation.

That's your opinion but it doesn't seem its the majorities opinion.
I'll give you the one that CDPR's reputation has been shafted. But that's not because of cyberpunk being bad, especially not on PC.
It's mainly because of the console version as well as the hype they started which caused totally unrealistic expectation in many people's heads.
That's why most players are simply not capable of evaluating the game in an objective way at the moment.
But it still doesn't mean the game itself is bad. I just didn't meet some peoples expectations.

Without that hype the exactly same game with all its bugs would have had far better poularity right now.

[MadDog78]

Yeah, well. It's not a good-ending-honeypie-unicorn-story. At least one time in a decade there's a kind of a dark story with many dilemmas where it's not clear what's right and wrong in a game and you guys go crazy cause it's not in your brain's world. Deal with it.

[Maviba]

Wolf a écrit :

I don't see what you're trying to get across here. If the game is really that great, the player count should be higher than it is along with the ratings. The fact is that it struggles to compete against much older titles like Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, and Skyrim. Why?

Because they follow a different concept that is more appealing to many players.
As it's for fallout for example the game is built more around the open world and once story is finished you still may do some stuff.
CP was built around the story and it's characters. Its open world is just meant for the purpose.
Once story is over, game is over. But again, it's not a bad thing. It's just a different concept.

Because past all the flashy lights of Night City and other visuals, the game fails on multiple fronts (besides technical issues). Again, because the storytelling isn't there, in many side and main missions. If you've ever played a renowned game, The Witcher 3 for example, then you would understand that Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn't even come close to matching the standards set by it.

Not sure if we're playing the same game. How do you come to the conclusion there's no story telling in the game?
The entire game is all about storytelling. There's the story of V where the player experinced how it could feel like getting.
There's also the story of johnny, Jackie, Claire or Panam.

I also don't understand what you mean by "it doesn't mean the game is bad, it just didn't meet people's expectations". Not meeting expectations led to an abundance of negative feedback and a small player count. Yes, it means that the game is bad. There's no excuses for putting out substandard work.

It means, some players had the wrong expectation about the game, got tricked by the hype and bought it without having read a single review.
I'm not talking about the bugs. It's without question that this game is a bugfest.

I'm talking about the game concept which turned out to be totally different from some players wished or expectations.
Apparently many of them thought they were buying a GTA 2077. Open world, causing chaos and mayhem in night city ... seems that was what people were demanding.
Then it was released and CP turned out as being a RPG Storytelling game "only", and NC was nothing more than a stage for the story. With a lot of bugs on top.
So no chaos and mayem for many GTA kiddies and so they started ranting.

People like this are neither able nor willing evaluating the game objectivly any more, since they're just looking for the negative sides and ignoring the positive ones from that point on.
But those who acceped the game concept have a good time with the story and its characters.

The Witcher 3 having way more players alone on Steam at this time should already tell you enough what the majority of people think of CDPR's latest work. Hardly anyone is playing a game that was released six months ago versus a game released over five years ago. People are putting their money and time into an older game (and keep in mind Cyberpunk 2077 is currently on sale). Your claim that the player count isn't doing well because "it's a single player game" is simply false.

No it's not completely false, it's a simple fact because of the circumsatances.
But i should have said "single player story telling game" instead of just single player game. would have been clearer.
CDPR sold 13.7 mio copies of the game and most of them were sold on release due to the hype.
Means they started playing early and therfore they simply finished the game early. and since there's not much to do in the game after finishing the story, player counts drop.
That's totally normal development for games like this.

The Witcher 3 didn't have such hype, at least not comparable to the CP2077 one.
It's sellings are more distributed over time instead of being compressed like it's CP
As a result its curve was flatter but lasts longer.
An keep in mind: A cyberpunk background is not everyone's cup of tea, while a medievil fantasy game does have way more fans.
Haven't played TW3 yet, so i can't tell much about its longterm motivation. but from whot I've seen so far it seems to be a bit different compared to CP2077 anyway.

I also stand by the fact that critic reviews mean little compared to user reviews, especially after seeing several notable titles in recent years receive exceptionally high scores in contrast to low ones given by players. The truth is that critic reviews these days are way out of touch with the actual product(s) being reviewed. Cyberpunk 2077 is also currently sitting at an overall score of 76% with a recent review score of 65% on Steam. Not sure how they does not count as bad when people who have been playing are scoring it a C.

That's a wrong assumtion.
It would fit if everyone who actually bought the game would also leave a review for the game. But that's not the case.
As it's for steam as CDPR sold at least 1 million copies here but there're only 365.000 reviews of the game.
what about the other ones? did they all refund the game? Very unlikely.
As a matter of fact people tend to leave reviews only if they're either very angry or excited about something, but most time they just want to rant and express their dissappointment.

Those who don't leave a rating are usually quite pleased with their product so they don't bother writing a review since it's time consuming. that's a proven psychological fact.
And That's why user reviews don't always reflect the game's actual quality.
Here's the difference to professional reviews.
And according to this the majority seems to be quite confident with the game.

[Maviba]

MadDog78 a écrit :

Yeah, well. It's not a good-ending-honeypie-unicorn-story. At least one time in a decade there's a kind of a dark story with many dilemmas where it's not clear what's right and wrong in a game and you guys go crazy cause it's not in your brain's world. Deal with it. :hunter0:

I agree with that. Probably many people don't understand the nature of the cyberpunk theme.
It has a message.
Therefore a happy end won't fit very well in a dystopian game.

[WarForged]

Wolf a écrit :

I don't see what you're trying to get across here. If the game is really that great, the player count should be higher than it is along with the ratings. The fact is that it struggles to compete against much older titles like Fallout 4, The Witcher 3, and Skyrim. Why?

It's really simple. The game came out with problems, the problems hit Youtube, hit the PS5 release, etc. People are aware there are issues with the game, only made worse by game sites constantly bashing it, Youtubers getting clicks by saying how bad it is, etc.

The thing is, it's really not, it's an amazing game. But people aren't going to find out because their views have been skewed by all the bad press. If you saw a cake which looked really good, but a few people said yeah, don't eat it, the inside is really bad, would you eat it anyway? Of course not. Same thing with this. We need the people who are enjoying it to sway public opinion, but it's like fighting uphill against a wave of disbelieving cultists.

[Maviba]

WarForged a écrit :

It's really simple. The game came out with problems, the problems hit Youtube, hit the PS5 release, etc. People are aware there are issues with the game, only made worse by game sites constantly bashing it, Youtubers getting clicks by saying how bad it is, etc.

The thing is, it's really not, it's an amazing game. But people aren't going to find out because their views have been skewed by all the bad press. If you saw a cake which looked really good, but a few people said yeah, don't eat it, the inside is really bad, would you eat it anyway? Of course not. Same thing with this. We need the people who are enjoying it to sway public opinion, but it's like fighting uphill against a wave of disbelieving cultists.

This.
People have been blinded by both hype and hate, resulting in a partially loss of their perception.

[Pythagoras]

Love the game, really. I keep playing and searching for corners and alleys with "bad guys" so I can level up, get materials and sell to make money.

I am trying to avoid the main story line atm because I truly like the open world walk around and try cyberattacks or weapons. Wished I could open all parts of the city. That is an incentive to move on. So, I can see both sides of Johnny messing up the game or not.

However, I think I that probably due to the overwhelming feeling that I personally get from the game its just a phase, just me.

[MadDog78]

Maviba a écrit :

I agree with that. Probably many people don't understand the nater of the cyberpunk theme.
It has a message.
Therefore a happy end won't fit very well in a dytopian game.

Exactly this!

[GUARDIAN]

cp2077 and altered carbon are in the same universe.