Somewhat Damaged

[Dr.Sauce]

***Spoilers filled with spoilery spoils***

Dudes... I mean mission designer dudes.

You gotta stop doing this sort of crap. When people play a game and build a character, they want to play this kind of game, they don't want to suddenly have the rug pulled under their feet and have special rules introduced that are super punitive. They don't want to have some special obligatory exotic gameplay mid mission that you can't skip.

This robot instakill ♥♥♥♥... It literally makes me want to stop playing. If you're interested to know my reaction when I saw this I literally said out loud after the robot drilled my face after I literally got lost in the dark not knowing where to go. "Man... not that stuff... I don't want to do this." Then got served again a long cutscene where that ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ robot made his entrance again.

I mean... what was the reaction during playtests??? You literally don't know where to go, your character has false limitations, he gets instakilled by an enemy that is magically unkillable... I can't believe that playtesters were having fun.

Seriously if my character does X thing during 90% of the game, if those rules suddenly stop applying because it would break a mission design, it means that the mission isn't so great for this game.

How great would it be if during a mission I suddenly have to play cooking mama and if I failed at it I'd instantly die during a long cutscene that I can't skip?

[Bishop-Six]

I fully agree, it made me almost quit the game and not wanting to play it anymore. The only time in CP where i felt that.

I exactly DONT play games with such mechanics intentionally only to get forced into such a terrible sequence without any chance to alter the situation.

[Dr.Sauce]

Originally posted by Bishop-Six:

I fully agree, it made me almost quit the game and not wanting to play it anymore. The only time in CP where i felt that.

I exactly DONT play games with such mechanics intentionally only to get forced into such a terrible sequence without any chance to alter the situation.

I work at a game studio (I'm an artist), mission designers tend to do those things for cinematic ambience. I get it. But man, I hate this. I don't get why once your base game loop has been established you can't stick to your guns.

"people will get bored!"

Yeah and they'll go play something else for a few hours and come back when they want what you're offering. They're not going to magically stick around for that bit of half assed exotic gameplay! Come on!

And seriously, cyberpunk is great overall... but when you play again the cinematic railroaded bits are tedious. They actually hinder replay value.

[Svlyn]

lol honestly i stopped the game and restarted finishing another path. The quest is just so frigging scary my little heart can not handle it. However I am leveling a character just for this quest. When i get to it again on that toon I will finally 100 percent the game.

[Ryu]

Whoever designed somewhat damaged should be sentenced to an eternity of reloading saves

[Omnicide]

I'm convinced this was a lazy way to avoid having to code the AI for another boss fight. Same reason Reed crumples in a single shot despite having "Heavy Subdermal Armor" when you scan him. They can huff their own farts and paint it up as a cinematic homage to the pop culture that inspired the story but, it just boils down to it being another rushed release that had to cut a bunch of stuff to make deadline.

[Dr.Sauce]

Originally posted by Omnicide:

I'm convinced this was a lazy way to avoid having to code the AI for another boss fight. Same reason Reed crumples in a single shot despite having "Heavy Subdermal Armor" when you scan him. They can huff their own farts and paint it up as a cinematic homage to the pop culture that inspired the story but, it just boils down to it being another rushed release that had to cut a bunch of stuff to make deadline.

No it's by design. It's as much work as doing a boss sequence.

[Dr.Sauce]

Originally posted by Ryu:

Whoever designed somewhat damaged should be sentenced to an eternity of reloading saves

The problem with that thing is also that your death isn't quick, it's a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ sequence. When you reload you might get treated to another sequence so it's very annoying.

[Dr.Sauce]

Just as an info, I stopped playing altogether. It turned me off that much.

[EJR]

Don't know what you're talking about, I did that mission/ending for PL and I loved every second of it in every form. Needing to hide from some killer robot while the Blackwall is buffing it and nerfing you/V was a great terrifying experience to break the monotony of the overall Cyberpunk 2077 experience. It was also great that it showed V was just a merc and not a badass protected by plot, it is what the Adam Smasher encounter should have been like. Now is it for everybody? No, but finishing that part of the questline is definitely worth it.

[Omnicide]

Originally posted by Dr.Sauce:

No it's by design. It's as much work as doing a boss sequence.

If you think the number of interactions that have to be accounted for between the player and a boss fight are the same as a heavily scripted auto pathing thing, that immediately game overs you if you meet one of maybe two or three conditions that indicate you have been detected, then I dunno how to argue with you.

Agree to disagree I guess.

[Dr.Sauce]

I don't think it would be that much of a time saver, here is why:

The main effort isn't necessarily in programming but you also have the level design around it and the animated sequences. For a boss yeah I guess you have less programming to do, modeling, rigging, more or less the same effort, animation, slightly less work depending on both approaches, level design and art way more work with the scripted hide and seek thing. The hide and seek thing also requires more cinematic direction than a boss (cyberpunk type of boss).

Remember, it's not a type of enemy that you drop somewhere and what happens happens, its interactions are planned and people have to do that. What you gain in programmation, you lose elsewhere. Also, biggest time sinks in game are environments. This adds more.

I didn't do the whole hide and seek thing, I didn't play the hypothetic boss that would replace that thing either. Cyberpunk's bosses are mostly bullet sponges enemies without a lot of variations, in that respect I don't think that the hide and seek sequence is that much of a time saver. It is a conscious design choice. I don't think it is a good choice.

[Omnicide]

You are correct, you can make a really terrible barebones boss fight with a similar level of design, coding, assets, animations, and debugging compared to the scripted hide and seek that you can practically copy and paste from some student project.

I'm not gonna try to flex my cred on the internet either, but I agree you are right in that the rest of the boss fights aren't exactly shining examples in this game either.

[EJR]

I personally just like it because I am a huge fan of boss encounters that don't necessarily have to be boss fights in design, some of my best boss or boss-type moments in gaming (Both video and tabletop) is showing how near unstoppable a boss is and the only way to "win" is to survive. And that adrenaline, psychological horror/torment I got from the Cerberus robot was exactly the type of experience I got.

[Dr.Sauce]

Originally posted by Omnicide:

You are correct, you can make a really terrible barebones boss fight with a similar level of design, coding, assets, animations, and debugging compared to the scripted hide and seek that you can practically copy and paste from some student project.

I'm not gonna try to flex my cred on the internet either, but I agree you are right in that the rest of the boss fights aren't exactly shining examples in this game either.

This is all hypothetic of course. And as you said we are comparing this thing with the boss fights of cyberpunk, which are somewhat barebones. If it were another game with really elaborate bossfights... then maybe doing this sort of things could be a time/money saver. For cyberpunk, I doubt it.

So let's agree to partially agree.

[Alan]

This might be a great mission...in a different game. A game I would never buy.

In this game, it makes no sense and ruins everything good about 2077. It makes me want to reload a save from 20 hours (gameplay) ago and change my choices. No amount of roleplay is worth this ♥♥♥♥.