Sinnerman is the worst side quest in any game I have ever played in my entire life

[yolomancer]

The writing is unbelievably stupid, why in the world would I get in the car?

The gameplay just getting there is even worse though. It's completely scripted to make it as frustrating as possible, every light is red and the same cars JUST SO HAPPEN to be always turning and getting in the way one after the other just to make it even more frustrating.

The NCPD car doesn't obey the laws of physics and doesn't slow down, it is obviously on some BS unfair invisible track that is pulling it where it needs to go rather than actually driving like I have to, you can easily see this when it rams into trucks and doesn't even slow down and takes 45 degree turns going 70mph while my car spins out like soap on glass going 20mpg.

Then you get 40 meters away and the car is force stopped and I'm told I failed?

Then you finally get to it and you try to kill the guy (the thing you were hired to do) and it puts you into this BS scripted nonsensical interaction where you're supposed to let the client die and get in the car with the murderer instead? WHAT? How in the world does that make any sense at all?

None of this is related to a bad game engine, all of this is just extremely poor game design. And then the car itself and the cop are giving totally ridiculously inflated stats to stop V from being able to kill them in a reasonable way, and even if you do you instantly get 4 stars and the entire police force descends on you to stop you from killing the murderer.

The game would literally be better if this entire bad quest line was flat our removed. This is the WORST sidequest I have ever experienced in all my years in gaming. Nothing about it is redeemable. The game itself is made worse for it's presence. Absolutely horrendous.

[Tuco]

This feels like a GTA mission if GTA was made by mentally impaired people.

It doesn't help that even putting aside the issues specific of THIS mission, Cyberpunk in general has one of the worst driving models I've seen in any game where driving is featured so prominently.

Everything feels constantly as if you were driving on GREASE and vehicles are barely controllable despise moving at turtle speed.

"But yeah, the worst offender is "♥♥♥♥, bastard's gone" and mission instantly failed when he's literally 50 meters ahead on an empty road.
It would be comedic gold if it wasn't so stupid.

The icing on the cake is that you can't even quicksave in the intermediate steps of the quest as saving gets temporary disabled, so if you are a bit unlucky with the execution enjoy listening to the same trite dialogue half a dozen times.

[Nar!]

The chase sequence is actually very easy to accomplish. The truck handling mechanics is purposely written to handle like crap. It's heavy, slippery and has poor breaks. Spins out of control if you push on the gas too hard.
It's meant to have you figure out how to problem solve it's weakness.

But then again, I am using a controller to drive. It may be a nightmare to do on keyboard, because you don't have the best method of regulating your speed, unlike a controller that has sensitivity triggers.

Many people generally make the chase part a nightmare for themselves (as I've seen on a handful of live streams) because they always try to drive fast, out of fear of losing the SUV..

The way to get through this short chase, is to make sure you're not trying to kiss their bumper. Trail behind at exactly 40 meters. Not 30 meters or less, and of course not 50 meters either, because that's an instant fail.
Stay at 40 meters and you'll get through this without a problem.

This means, you'll have to keep your speed regulated. If you try to catch up to the SUV at a very close range, you're opening yourself up for the problematic obstacles (that are scripted, not randomized) waiting ahead of you.

If you regulate your speed and keep your distance, you will easily be able to drive around these obstacles (cars driving out in front of you, etc) and make good clean turns without crashing into rails or spin out of control.

As far as the quest line with Joshua, you don't even have to agree to do it. lol. So I don't really understand the argument about being on rails. I've tried various ways of finishing it and each way has some unique result. Including that of getting paid more (if you're a corpo) and never hearing from Joshua again (but you'll learn a bit more about the show runner later).

You get multiple opportunities to bail out on that mission. Even miss out on the diner (last supper) part. Just dip if you don't want to engage this one. It still marks it as a finished job.¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Revalopod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh EricHVela:

Every game has moments of railroads.

Unless it's Fallout New Vegas, one of the only FPS RPGs that actually offer genuine choices throughout the whole game, and not just at the very ending.

[Revalopod]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Nar!:

As far as the quest line with Joshua, you don't even have to agree to do it. lol. So I don't really understand the argument about being on rails.

That's still a basic binary choice of "Go along with it" or "bail" which isn't much of a meaningful or interesting choice. Why can't we just decide we're fed up and want to shoot him? Or make a choice of our own that wasn't one offered by someone else? Where is our brain? All our choices basically boil down to "agree with someone" or "betray someone." How about we come up with a choice on our own for once!

And in PL, one of the most important choices is a binary choice of "Betray character A" or "Betray Character B" and both are just going along with pre-proposed plans by the aforementioned characters. Why can't we choose our own plan, betray both! Or some clever way to betray neither? Idk, I just feel like the writing and choices could have been way more interesting.

[Nar!]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Revalopod:

That's still a basic binary choice of "Go along with it" or "bail" which isn't much of a meaningful or interesting choice. Why can't we just decide we're fed up and want to shoot him? Or make a choice of our own that wasn't one offered by someone else? Where is our brain? All our choices basically boil down to "agree with someone" or "betray someone." How about we come up with a choice on our own for once!

And in PL, one of the most important choices is a binary choice of "Betray character A" or "Betray Character B" and both are just going along with pre-proposed plans by the aforementioned characters. Why can't we choose our own plan, betray both! Or some clever way to betray neither? Idk, I just feel like the writing and choices could have been way more interesting.

Hmmm. Much to ponder here.

I'm not sure if I'm reading you correctly, as far as player choice is concerned, but I do know that making your "own" plans based on your own personal whim, per every quest or mission in the game, will require a very highly complex system of cause and effect, that won't tarnish or break too much story/character canon, overall.

It may be possible to achieve it (we'll see what happens with Orion), but who knows how long it would take for the devs to ensure everything is neatly connected together, no matter what random choice a player makes (according to what's available to them of course).

This is a story based action rpg after all, and one thing we all know about stories, no matter the medium, they are always going to be on rails of some sort.

Rails aren't always a bad thing, imho. They're meant to usher you through a line of complex situations, which you can then engage with, understand and branch out of without losing you in the fray.

So I really don't mind them much, as long as I am given a set of interesting choices I can play out, to help unravel a story in a certain way (as I'm also role playing the part of whatever life path I chose).

For the most part, the choices offered in every questline in this game, felt pretty satisfying to me and were in line with my own personal sensibilities.

Maybe a few here and there, weren't to my liking, but most worked out just fine and I was able to stay locked in and carry on. I really didn't have a problem with Sinnerman quest, in terms of player choice, tbh. I just found it to be disturbing as heck. The experience was the meaningful part of this quest. Not so much player agency.

The Sinnerman quest in particular, was clearly designed to trigger your feelings and innermost thoughts about the entire debacle between the self chastised murderer turned "zen", and the forgiving sister of the victim, who used her religious faith as a coping mechanism, to find some sort of release from her own anguish and spiritual devastation.

The entire situation by design, was very psychologically heavy and the devs/writers really wanted you to feel it under your skin. So they made sure to entice the player to engage with it and not be tempted to stray off. Hence why Johnny pressures you to hop in the SUV.

It has depth. But not the kind that relied on your own personal desires. It simply guided you into a hallway with a set of doors to open, only if you wished to take a peek, or just walk straight to the exit and be on your merry way as if nothing.

But anyhow, to better understand and consider your critique, can you give me a detailed example of what you would have wanted implemented in this particular quest that would satisfy you as a player? What would you come to expect if you could simply shoot Joshua, Vasquez and maybe even the show runner/agent?

Maybe you have a good point and of course there's always room for improvement in any work of art.

Personally, I feel too much player agency can over complicate things, if isn't handled with extreme care and strong attention to detail, so that your random choices, whatever they may be, don't cause a strange tear in the story line that simply would no longer make any sense by the time you've reached the end.

But I might be over reaching than what you're expecting. :)

Sometimes, I feel it's ok to have a set of binary choices, so long as they unlock a branch of more profound player choices.




ps. Sorry for the text wall. Being concise is not one of my talents. :P

[Holografix]

Diposting pertama kali oleh Nar!:

Diposting pertama kali oleh Revalopod:

That's still a basic binary choice of "Go along with it" or "bail" which isn't much of a meaningful or interesting choice. Why can't we just decide we're fed up and want to shoot him? Or make a choice of our own that wasn't one offered by someone else? Where is our brain? All our choices basically boil down to "agree with someone" or "betray someone." How about we come up with a choice on our own for once!

And in PL, one of the most important choices is a binary choice of "Betray character A" or "Betray Character B" and both are just going along with pre-proposed plans by the aforementioned characters. Why can't we choose our own plan, betray both! Or some clever way to betray neither? Idk, I just feel like the writing and choices could have been way more interesting.

Hmmm. Much to ponder here.

The Sinnerman quest in particular, was clearly designed to trigger your feelings and innermost thoughts about the entire debacle between the self chastised murderer turned "zen", and the forgiving sister of the victim, who used her religious faith as a coping mechanism, to find some sort of release from her own anguish and spiritual devastation.

The entire situation by design, was very psychologically heavy and the devs/writers really wanted you to feel it under your skin. So they made sure to entice the player to engage with it and not be tempted to stray off. Hence why Johnny pressures you to hop in the SUV.

It has depth. But not the kind that relied on your own personal desires. It simply guided you into a hallway with a set of doors to open, only if you wished to take a peek, or just walk straight to the exit and be on your merry way as if nothing.

But anyhow, to better understand and consider your critique, can you give me a detailed example of what you would have wanted implemented in this particular quest that would satisfy you as a player? What would you come to expect if you could simply shoot Joshua, Vasquez and maybe even the show runner/agent?

i like your response, but dislike Revpod's comment. Rev proposes that V be able to "BETRAY BOTH (Reed/Song)" which of course is inconceivable to V because s/he needs to be cured of the relic, and Song/Reed both promise solutions.

If maybe there was a 3rd option to the relic situation, then we could fulfill a "BETRAY BOTH" condition.

Sinnerman is an exposition and critique on religious belief in a high-tech world. Sinnerman explores the boring old trope of "religious belief in the age of cyborgs" done to death by other games like "Deus Ex - Mankind Divided," "The Surge 2 (Cathedral of the Spark), etc...
Specifically, how can technology disseminate religious experience more efficiently (brain-dance), and the age old tech-question: is there god in the machine?

Sinnerman is merely a stop on the way to 100% steam achievements, but as a quest it fulfills a requirement that this genre CYBER-TECH-FUTURE-CYBORGS requires. Like, what if god was one of us, and he was a born again murderer signed by corpo-media to peddle religious experience as braindance.

CUE ad-spot on MEGA-building 8 elevator:

"Religion really truly is personal! YOU TOO can experience the rapture FIRSTHAND! BELIEVE in the TRUTH of the LORD! brought to you by CORPO-media Braindance studios!"

[EricHVela]

If it were only so simple...
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3175199486

[Deus Vultica]

The sinnerman questline, even the later ones, are some of the most poorly designed "quests" I've had the displeasure of playing. CDPR must've smoked something strong, and never even looked at the quest again after release. It plays like an alpha or pre-alpha quest. Can't be finished.

[Desi Kalakaar]

If you are OP enough, you can still kill it like me lol. But I STILL spent about 10 minutes just killing random cops at 6 stars just to keep my HP up before I realised what the actual objective was. The van was STILL invincible to the 9 grenades that I threw at it. Finally I took out a pistol to kill that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ since melee attacks and grenades (my whole build) weren't working.

[AmesNFire]

I saved before the car chase, played along for maybe half a minute and reloaded so I could shoot the egotistical @sshole whose letting himself get played by a corp for profit.

Also the cop being absurdly difficult to kill was ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

To put it lightly, Gary's quest and the Lilith maelstrom thing's tenuous connection to the overarching story for V was wildly superior to sinnerman.
The former causes questions and thoughts, the latter was somebody's napkin notes while they attended church.