[jds375]

Every single hacker news thread about the Cyberpunk fiasco has had a ton of top comments about they haven’t had any issues with the game.

Performance/bugs aside, what about the completeness issues? How can the game be acceptable or fun when cars run on tracks and NPC’s don’t have a problem being attacked?

That’s my main concern - I’m sure the performance/bugs will be worked out. But will the game actually be finished?

[tidepod12]

>Every single hacker news thread about the Cyberpunk fiasco has had a ton of top comments about they haven’t had any issues with the game.

I'm convinced that anyone who says they haven't had "any issues" is either lying, has very low standards, or just doesn't pay much attention to detail.

The game, no matter what platform or settings, is rife with bugs. Many of the bugs, especially on PC, are not game-breaking bugs. Things like getting into a car and having it launch you 100 feet into the air before returning you to the ground is pretty amusing, sure. Being able to drive straight through other cars with no collision is actually convenient at times. Having your dong flop around while T-posing on top of a motorcycle is pretty hilarious. I think a lot of people are giving these bugs a pass because they're mildly entertaining... but they're definitely still issues that should be addressed, IMO.

I am having plenty of fun playing the game despite the "jank", but the bugs are undeniably there and completely immersion breaking. The game very quickly goes from being a serious game about sex trafficking, drugs, and evil corporations into a meme game about flying cars and funny looking character models... if you don't care much about immersion and just want to shoot things and look at pretty neon graphics, I can see why you would still love this game, but I can't imagine that was what CDPR intended.

[belorn]

Let's see here, from playing maybe 30+ hrs or so:

Never been launched into the air.

Never driven through any NPCs or cars without collision.

No wardrobe malfunctions. Slow loading of textures when switching armor through, in the inventory menu.

Once had a T-pose flickering for a few milliseconds while driving a bike.

My computer is a 4 year old system with a 1080 card, and I have not touched the graphic settings beyond turning off motion blur. I have had a few glitches but so far only one bug that actually annoyed me and force me to repeat content. After a long period of unsaveable and unskippable exposition scene, which I see as a bug in itself, I had a race condition where I tried to take control of a turret just as the turret died and I got stuck in the dead turret interface without any option to exit it. Those are the bugs that I suspect they are working to fix in the first few patches.

[nerbert]

I’m on PS4 pro and have the same take as you. Game is fine to play, collision bugs & other graphic related bugs are issues that should be resolved. The game is not unplayable, the universe is well designed, story enjoyable BUT bug are common and I cant imagine playing on a base PS4. My experience with the pro is probably my lowest acceptable limit to play a game.

[kjakm]

I’ve completed it on the base PS4. Spent about 25 hours.

- I had maybe 5 hard crashes.

- Had to walk through doors frequently (I guess they had opened but still showed on screen as closed).

- Got into the car while crouched in one sequence which breaks progression so you have to reload your last checkpoint and get into the car standing to progress.

- HDR is unusable.

- Had to disable all graphical extras (blur, grain) or it looked really messy.

- While driving lights didn’t enable quick enough so that I was driving into darkness as lights turned on after I had passed through.

Those are the main issues I had. Besides that there were constant minor graphical issues.

The story was enjoyable enough that I finished it, largely skipping side quests. Once they have the issues worked out or I have a new console I’ll go back and enjoy the world a bit more.

Worth pointing out I mainly play sports games and only casually. I don’t have the kind of expectations a lot of people would have had for this game and just on bugs alone I would say it should not have shipped. It’s an mid level beta release at best.

[JohnJamesRambo]

Thanks for this. This definitely cements my decision to just wait until they release the next gen version and I get an Xbox Series X. I’m a patient gamer, I can wait. I just played Fallout New Vegas this year on an old Xbox 360 and loved it.

[daitangio]

The sad thing is PC version has a lot less bugs compared to PS4 / XBox version, and main review was done on the first one.

[erikpukinskis]

1080 is still pretty close to the best money can buy. That’s like a $750 card even today. You’re pretty much at the top of the capability curve.

[belval]

It's a high-end card for sure, but "pretty close to the best money can buy" is a big hyperbole.

The RTX 2070S beats the 1080Ti by a comfortable margin, while the 1080Ti beats the 1080 by a strong margin as well. I left out the RTX 3000 as they are hard to come by, but it's beaten by the RTX 3060Ti which, at MSRP is a $400 card.

[erikpukinskis]

And the 2070S is $900.

The list prices are meaningless if you can’t buy them at that price.

I’m just saying, the 1080 is a very high end card even today. You can’t afford it in a budget or even a mid range PC.

[hajhatten]

I've had none of the issues you mentioned above.

I've had some graphical issues sure, and a bad guy spawned inside a car once. That's in 80h so far in the game.

Everyone's experience is different, but don't say people don't pay attention. If they break the immersion for you, just stay away from the game for a while. It was the exact same situation with The Witcher 3, took a good 6 months for it to get good.

But they are still supporting that game after what, 5 years? I'm absolutely sure they will with this aswell.

[tidepod12]

Sorry, but I don't believe it. Either you're astronomically lucky or you just don't pay attention to the detail of whats going on in the game around you. And that's fine, but it doesn't mean the bugs aren't there - it just means you didn't notice them. And hell, maybe that's to your benefit - I wish I could just not notice the bugs, it sure would make the game a lot funner.

>That's in 80h so far in the game.

FYI it was just discovered that if you play the game for too long, your save file becomes too big and will be corrupted. A moderator on the CDPR forums just said that "the game is intended to be finished within 30-50 hours" and playing longer than that is liable to break your game, and specifically you should avoid using the "Crafting" function at all because it will corrupt your save even faster.

https://old.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/kg47yz/psa_y...

[rainonmoon]

Obviously this bug really sucks and deserves remedying, but it also seems like aberrant behaviour. I'm also chiming in from the 50+ hours crowd and the only bugs I've experienced have been a bit silly, but nothing game-breaking yet. Clearly this thing needed more time in QA based on other people's experiences, but plenty of us are playing and loving the game all the way through.

[moenzuel]

From what I understand the majority of players that have run into the save file size issue have been abusing (not saying it is wrong to do just probably unintended) crafting for a profit. That is not to say everyone won’t eventually run into the issue with time but I think it is a little overblown in the moment with all the bandwagon hating.

I have run into very few bugs over my 45 hours and when I have, I think it’s been in places where something was meant time to clean up. Such as going back to a npc after a long interaction that lead me away. So maybe bug frequency has a little to do with play style which I bet can vary person to person and is not compared in-depth via quick internet comments.

[saberdancer]

I played about the same amount. I had only one major bug where my character blacked out/was teleported.

I do notice that cars show up behind my back and sometimes disappear but never was I launched into the air or able to drive through other cars.

[libraryatnight]

29 hours in and also none of the bugs you mentioned. I'm sorry you're having a bad time, but there are legitimately a lot of people having minimal issues. Worst bug I had was a corpse clipped into a wall and I couldn't get the loot.

[EugeneOZ]

Only bug I saw in this game - my V is staying while riding the car. That's all. 28 hours in game. I extensively use Crafting.

[TwoBit]

I've played on OG PS4 for 8 hours and no significant problems. I heard that OG PS4 actually has significantly less problems than PS4 Pro, due to how the game tuning per-machine was done.

[myko]

I've got about 65 hours in. I've had one crash. One side quest is bugged and I can't finish it, which does suck, but it isn't a critical quest at least. I've had similar issues with quests being bugged in basically every other open world game I've ever played.

Had a similar save file being too large issue with Skyrim that was fixed months after release.

[TameAntelope]

Are bugs you don’t notice bugs at all?

You seem willing to discount the most important fact; people are still having fun. Why do you think it’s so important to you that this game be bad for everyone?

[tidepod12]

I specifically said that even I am having fun, despite the bugs. But again, that doesn't mean the bugs don't exist, and it doesn't mean the game wouldn't be better without the bugs. Where are you getting this "the game should be bad for everyone"?

If people enjoy this game, then that's wonderful. Far be it from me to interfere with someone's enjoyment of something. The problem is when people insist "well I haven't seen any bugs so the game is perfect and anyone saying otherwise should be ignored!" when that is clearly not the case.

[TameAntelope]

That’s not what people here are generally saying, and it’s weird that is what you’re interpreting their comments as saying.

It just sounds like you want to argue/be upset.

I'm the only one you replied to out of half a dozen replies, and my comment was admittedly the least kind and most confrontational, for example.

[mekkkkkk]

Just wanted to offset the sibling comments by mentioning that I've experienced most of the bugs you describe and then some. And a ton of soft locks. On PC.

I had truly great fun for 40 hours, but it has slowly taken its toll. I'll be waiting for patches before diving in again.

[libraryatnight]

I think the only reason people are piling on is because he called out that anyone with a different experience must be lying or not paying attention, nobody denies lots of players are having issues.

[Ardren]

> I'm convinced that anyone who says they haven't had "any issues" is either lying, has very low standards, or just doesn't pay much attention to detail.

It feels dismissive, but I agree. It seems unbelievable that there could be such a massive difference in bugs just based on different hardware.

Did these people never have a bald 'V'? Or have other characters clip into them? Or spook an entire street by dodging? Or get a wanted star for shooting a gang member? Or not have the weapon accessory page not update after salvaging? Etc.

[gambiting]

I'm a game developer so I'm pretty sensitive to bugs and no, the worst I've had in my 25 hours so far is some characters T-Posing, and oh, I sometimes can't loot stuff on the ground, the prompt just doesn't appear. None of the issues you mentioned. Playing on PC.

[dleslie]

> It seems unbelievable that there could be such a massive difference in bugs just based on different hardware.

Most of the bugs I've seen recorded can basically come down to failed animation triggers, or animation interacting poorly with physics, or behaviour trees breaking on animation cues.

Animation isn't just character posing, it will be many scripted behaviours.

And that animation logic? Usually it's quite sensitive to timing issues and race conditions in complex, many-agent interactions.

That makes it quite sensitive to cpu differences.

[jasonlotito]

What's funny is the number of people below your comment suggesting how they don't have problems, only to list a bunch of problems that don't make the game unplayable, including a bug that literally makes finishing a quest impossible, otherwise known as unplayable.

A game can be a buggy mess and CDPR should get called out for misleading it's customers by hiding reviews of the only officially released console versions (next gen hasn't actually been released yet). There are without a doubt lots of bugs. I have friends who enjoy the game who are still seeing the bugs.

It's okay if you like something that is still buggy. Don't be so insecure that you can't enjoy something even with it's faults.

Just don't pretend those faults don't exist.

[AnIdiotOnTheNet]

> I'm convinced that anyone who says they haven't had "any issues" is either lying, has very low standards, or just doesn't pay much attention to detail.

I feel the same way whenever anyone talks about their Linux Desktop that way, but I still give them the benefit of the doubt because I have legitimately been in that situation with a game.

[Sileni]

Looking back at the moments when I thought there were no bugs on my linux desktop supports his theory. It wasn't a lack of bugs, it was a lack of my ability to spot them.

[jniedrauer]

> Things like getting into a car and having it launch you 100 feet into the air before returning you to the ground is pretty amusing, sure.

These types of bugs can be very hardware-specific. If people are playing on hardware similar enough to the game developer's workstations, they might not encounter them at the same rate that you do. Something to bear in mind.

[lrem]

I've had none of the issues you mentioned, some 40-ish hours into the game. I don't even get much in terms of visual glitches, other than sometimes a character's rendering starting slow (first a bald head, then the headgear, then the hair). The thing that saddens me is the terrible AI, in all its manifestations: terrible enemies, terrible drivers and terrible wanted mechanics.

Edit: come think of it: I somewhat often get the visual glitch of foliage which should have been obscured being visible.

[merb]

> terrible enemies, terrible drivers and terrible wanted

yeah enemies and police are stupid, you can basically kill the hardest enemies with sharpshooting and hiding. from the police you can run away pretty fast.

and the drivers. well you can create a jam by parking on the road.

still love the game, since I think the story is not that bad and the side quests are sometimes amazing. not on zelda level, but still a good game

[sudosysgen]

Personally I've only had two issues with the game so far beyond sub-par performance.

One is that the mission after "Transmission" didn't show up

The other was that trees would bug into view if graphical settings were too high.

All in all, it's okay except for performance.

[meling]

I don’t play games, but reading this commentary made me laugh!

[ignoramous]

> ...I can't imagine that was what CDPR intended.

Is it not CDPR. It is 2020 and thankfully it is coming to a close.

[TheGRS]

After about 20 hours or so into it I was pretty shocked to see people who have comments that say its a great RPG or that the gameplay is great. Because at least for someone who likes to try out lots of different games, not just the big tentpole AAA games that get released near Christmas, this game is exceedingly mediocre at gameplay.

Its one undeniable quality is that the story missions are compelling and interesting, because I keep coming back to them and I want to see where it goes. But if you take any of the systems in the game, they leave a lot to be desired: crafting, gunplay, sneaking, hacking, quickhacks (or this game's magic system), driving, side missions, voice acting. Hell I find even many of the animations pretty generic most of the time when they are outside of the main story stuff.

The bugs are immersion-breaking for sure, and I hate when I need to restart a mission because of one, but the game is otherwise pretty mediocre. I compare it to Skyrim, where the bugs were present, and the individual systems were sometimes pretty lame, but I otherwise was still immersed in the game world completely and was always having a ton of fun. It was greater than the sum of its parts. Cyberpunk is not.

[dleslie]

I've been telling friends that it plays more like Saints Row than GTA, and it's certainly nothing like Pillars of Eternity.

[cbozeman]

OH no... I've had plenty of issues.

A lot of weird graphical glitches. A game-ending bug that locks you into the Maelstrom base and prevents you from leaving (had to restart from an older save game to get around that one). Non-aggressive NPCs can't always be hit by melee weapons, meaning I have to let the gang members go aggro on me before I introduce them to Mrs. Sockety Wench.

As far as completeness, I actually take a little of an opposite position. There's a lot of really neat side quests, and if you read the shards, there's a ton of interconnectedness. I was hired to kill a corporate executive, then later in just a simple assault quest, I got a datashard indicating she put a hit out on someone.

And there's tons of intersections like this. The Delamain side quest is genuinely one of the best in the game.

Yes, NPC and vehicle AI needs a serious overhaul. Yes, the game probably needed another 12-18 months of development, but its still a decent game even with all these faults.

[prithee]

I am one of those who was initially disappointed with the game and its numerous failings, but later enjoyed myself upon completion so I will try to convey why.

The product is incomplete, this is correct. But there is a degree of incompleteness or artifice I am comfortable with if there are other elements that work. Same goes with actual role playing games. When I play this game I have to wonder what is artifice? what is incomplete? and what is a concession for performance that has gone awry? In 2077 I feel all of these each session, which is unusual.

But with me: Immersion breaking issues such as cars on tracks, don't bother me. Following the narrative (though far from perfect) was a source of "fun" and being "acceptable" for me. I would be wishing all of these elements were strengthened, over the massive effort put into of an open world that doesn't really provide. I'm going to be won over by these arcs, and core gameplay and not point to point hijinks and antics. I don't feel 2077 ever lied in there, or at least the experience I wanted.

For a while in games they don't have to be real cars, but I want them to "feel" like real cars. So we get a complete games in a year where the AI to work beyond the paths, and now what is involved? It will be more immersive for sure, but how much longer till it is complete? For some playing the game, squinting at the 3D models now rendered as car sprites in the distance is enough.

[kodt]

The two things you mentioned don't really affect the gameplay at all. I guess if you were looking for a GTA style sandbox game where you could just cause chaos in the streets it does not satisfy that. But if you want to explore a huge detailed city and do quests/mission etc.. it works really well.

The police spawning/ai issue is really dumb when you encounter it, but as long as you aren't trying to shoot random people in the street you don't encounter it.

The traffic is mostly just background detail. Again if your goal is to create a big traffic jam ala GTA then it won't be nearly as entertaining but in terms of just making it feel like you are in a living breathing city.. it gets the job done.

Many of the side missions are fairly detailed and interesting, it is fun just exploring the city and completing missions.

[trzeci]

> How can the game be acceptable or fun when cars run on tracks and NPC’s don’t have a problem being attacked?

Because I don't interact with NPC's and traffic. I treat these aspects more like a decoration to the game, not an interactive content. There is plenty of interactive content and side missions, so I have enough of fun spending my time there instead of killing NPCs and pretending this is a GTA, so that I can fight police.

[nahname]

There are bugs. After 60+ hours of gameplay, I can say Cyberpunk is significantly worse than the Witcher 3 was at launch.

The thing is, on PC, the bugs are mostly visual annoyances or obvious lack of polish. Menu's not updating, UI glitches in cut scense, etc... I've had the game crash on me exactly once.

The core game has a great story. The side quests are unique and interesting. Characters have depth. Combat is surprisingly good. Cyberpunk has all the things I need to enjoy it and I did enjoy it.

[amatecha]

I'm surprised by people saying they haven't had issues. Have they just not noticed the issues? Like characters in completely static, motionless poses? Every little while there will be an NPC stuck motionless somewhere, or sliding along the ground as if they are a, well, non-animated 3d model. UI elements appear when they shouldn't, and a prompt to "[C] Skip to next" is almost always showing at the bottom right of my screen, during pretty much all gameplay. Further, I've had repeated crashes of the game which actually crashed the GPU driver (NVIDIA) and required me unplugging and re-plugging my HDMI cable so the GPU would reset and work again (most people seem to just reboot their computer altogether in this case due to not knowing the unplug/replug workaround).

Outside of straight-up bugs, the performance is utterly atrocious even on "Low" settings, and my PC exceeds the recommended specs by quite a decent margin.

At the same time, CDPR's prior games have received a ton of post-launch support so I can only hope Cyberpunk 2077 will receive a good amount of improvements in the new year. Fingers crossed!

[amatecha]

Being unable to pick up items that are supposed to be lootable is a constant occurrence. Just earlier I had a quest NPC glitch out and cancel the dialogue options I was supposed to be able to potentially choose from, so they attacked me (as if I had chosen certain sub-optimal dialogue choices). During that fight (which shouldn't have even been happening), I defended myself with a single shotgun blast and that happened to send that NPC flying and .. through a chair... where the NPC then froze in place and became "deactivated", wouldn't fight anymore, couldn't be killed?? I was already going to reload the last save due to the dialogue glitch regardless, but... This kind of stuff is so commonplace, I basically save the game after almost every action. Already have 81 save files. :)

[knolan]

I’ve had very few issues. One dialogue failed to trigger and I had to load a checkpoint to continue. I had some minor RTX shadow issues in the Hotel heist mission. Last night after about 15 hours of gameplay I had my first CTD. The most annoying bug is how frame rate tanks when in a car.

The game definitely has issues and the patch notes for 1.05 show how there are severe scripting problems in many missions. However there are also huge disparities between the game running on different systems and even within subsets of PCs. The removal of AVX support is particularly interesting in this regard.

Apart from all that the game is very similar to the Witcher 3 in terms of its core gameplay and mechanics. So yes, the implementation of crowds and traffic is poor compared to what we see in GTA. The world is a very densely detailed backdrop and not much else. It definitely could have (should have) been delayed but that would not change much about the core of the game.

If you want a Deus Ex game from the folks who brought you the Witcher this is pretty good, if excellent at times.

[drzaiusapelord]

>haven’t had any issues with the game.

I try to be a kind and generous reviewer and it gets frustrating to hear people try to invalidate my experiences. I have a 2070 that runs this game just fine from a performance perspective but I've encountered multiple broken missions. I play stealth non-lethal, so me finishing a mission usually means lots of saves and a lot of time invested only to be rejected at the end because its too buggy to finish properly. Target NPCs not spawning, scripting logic errors, hostile NPCs just staring into space, broken pathfinding, broken GPS, etc. Its all here.

And as you say, completeness is an issue. Night City feels empty and boring to me. Sure its super pretty but so what? NPCs just give some canned smart-ass one-liner, traffic/life/pedestrians, etc are all simple robots. There's no "soul" in this game like in other virtual worlds I've experienced.

Also, so much of it is well written, but honestly, by game standards its where a YA novel would be. Think the first 3 Potter books, not the last 4. Its not challenging art. Its written on the 5th grade level especially Silverhand's snotty and dismissive sophomoric politics.

Lastly, its all feels so 'last gen' to me. I'm doing old school inventory management constantly because the game focuses so much on loot dropping. I can't dress up V like I'd like her to look because I need to use the top armor pieces I have. The driving feels 'cheap.' The driving GPS is not level aware so it'll take you several stories below where you need to be. The world V lives in feels dead, not vibrant and alive, which was their major marketing point.

I think the "there's nothing wrong with this game" crowd is either being dishonest or are just running and gunning speed runs and avoiding some of the more subtle bugs and don't care about this game being anything but a dumb and pretty shooter.

[malwarebytess]

>completeness issues? How can the game be acceptable or fun when cars run on tracks and NPC’s don’t have a problem being attacked?

I don't know what to tell you except that in my 10 or so hours of play I have had plenty of fun. The highlights of the game for me so far are the story missions themselves and the world -- the environment itself. Seems like a finished product to me, albeit a buggy one with a diminished scope from what people seemed to be expecting. Don't forget that they intend on releasing what was it 3 expansions of content similar to witcher 3? I'm interested to see how they use the world they created for that purpose.

[inerte]

I do have a beef with this too. I bought a perk called throwing knives and... there are no “throwing” knives! You throw your regular knife and you can’t pick it up again. You lose the knife.

[Sileni]

I remember that moment. I turned to my girlfriend and said "Whelp, guess we're not playing a stealth build".

[cbozeman]

You have to combine crafting with stealth.

Throwing rare quality knives you create yourself (they're cheap to make) does a holy shitton of damage if your appropriate stealth levels are high.

[Sileni]

Wouldn't that mean going through the inventory system every time I want to throw more than a knife or two? That seems irrationally clunky. Like making someone use a menu for cut and paste.

[cbozeman]

Crafting is in a really fucked up place, its true... you can only craft a single item at a time, which is strange because eventually you can craft consumables (grenades, autodoc items, etc.).

I should be able to input a number of knives I want to craft, hit the craft button, and boom, I have 20 knives.

[inerte]

Ammo clips too. Now every 10 minutes I have to stop so I can hold the A button for 2-3 seconds for each of the about a dozen clips I need. It's super boring.

[Der_Einzige]

Was looking for this comment. Game had no bugs for me on PC but was obviously an unfinished mess.

Mass effect 1 style gun progression? People hated it in 2009 and I hate it now. It's unneeded here, and that's just the very tip of this really large sized iceberg on just how much they fucked up gameplay / RPG elements

[ravenstine]

> Every single hacker news thread about the Cyberpunk fiasco has had a ton of top comments about they haven’t had any issues with the game.

It's really hard to reconcile with the sheer number of video clips I've seen of bugs that are totally unacceptable in even alpha level software. I have to wonder whether those who are claiming they don't have that many bugs have simply grown up in the current era of buggy games on first release, or if they're just being dishonest because reasons.

Just watch The Act Man's compilation of Cyberpunk bugs and tell me that game is worth full price.

[krzyk]

> How can the game be acceptable or fun when cars run on tracks and NPC’s don’t have a problem being attacked?

This is a minor problem, NPCs are a background, so it is nice to see that they have a brain, but it is more like "cute" not "OMG".

E.g. notice that in Witcher 3 you couldn't attack non-enemy NPC (e.g. you couldn't kill everyone in a village).

Big problems are bugs in quests that don't allow finishing them or a story that doesn't allow choice in most cases.

[Shivetya]

There are numerous large audience streamers doing just fine with the game. A few have described their issues and most are related to undelivered original promises of content that would have been in game. However I have yet to see one play on anything other than a PC

It is pretty easy these days to generate outrage and make an issue appear far larger than it may actually be. It also can be an incident highly isolated to subset of gamers who play the game.

[Shish2k]

> How can the game be acceptable or fun when cars run on tracks and NPC’s don’t have a problem being attacked?

This is such a surreal comment to me - like “How can Tetris be acceptable or fun when it doesn’t even have cars or NPCs in the first place?”

(Answer: because (for me at least) the game isn’t about those things)

[nirv]

The Cyberpunk 2077 game is already amazing in terms of art direction, level design and story wise. I would also argue that the game is excellent in terms of graphics, although it has massive issues with performance. In my opinion, in addition to a lots bugs, at the moment the weakest aspects of the game are the complete lack of NPC AI, as well as some emptiness in the game world outside of story and other quests. The latter is understandable, there is room for multiple updates in the future, without affecting the storyline, including massive online multiplayer game mode.

As for poor, or rather the lack of, AI and NPC behavior was mentioned as a "bug" that will be fixed at a recent CDPR board meeting. In 2018 CDPR were advertising full day cycle AI system for all NPCs in game. The promise was not fulfilled. At the moment there is simply no AI, like it's 2003 again. Including awful police spawns behind player's back with no vehicle chase.

However, users reported that rare glimpse of intelligence does exist in the game, perhaps through an oversight, e.g. police is actually able to chase player in a car[1] (for a short distance though), and some NPCs can actually be found in unusual places[2]. We don't know for sure, but it's believed that CDPR hastily trimmed all of the NPC and vehicle AI in the game. If so, we can only guess for what purpose. Maybe they didn't have time to polish it for the mandatory release date on December 10, or perhaps older consoles weren't able to process it. However, in its current shape NPC AI is at the level of AAA games from 15 years back (GTA: San Andreas), not to mention the CDPR's own Witcher 3. In fact, it is so awful that it is even good: it gives hope that AI system will get significantly overhauled with one of the game's upcoming updates (two major updates are expected in 2021Q1).

Nothing of that prevented me from enjoying this amazing game for 100+ hours with great pleasure. I haven't been as excited about a videogame as a kid since 2004, when Half Life 2[3] was released.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-OZqwjzNas

[2] https://old.reddit.com/r/LowSodiumCyberpunk/comments/kewbai/...

[3] The Prey (2017) was an unexpected gem which I fell in love with, but I had zero hype since I didn't know anything about the game beforehand. I highly recommend reading Aphyr's (yes, that Jepsen's Aphyr) excellent Prey game review: https://aphyr.com/posts/344-prey-the-real-and-the-symbolic

[zkomp]

Nitpicking but San Andreas does have AI where police chases work and NPC do not feel completely brainless, and cars do not only follow tracks, it does not feel empty and lifeless.

[WorldMaker]

San Andreas was also, what, the third GTA game in the GTA III engine? It's a comparison between the first urban game in an engine (and the first ever for the developer) to the third game in an an engine that had years more polish (and at least the fifth urban game from the developer).

It's interesting how many of the current comparisons made to Cyberpunk are to sequels and much later iterations in various franchises (GTA, Saints Row, Crackdown, etc) and people have rose tinted glasses of the launch issues and bugs of some of their first titles.

"It's like they jumped back in time X years ago" should be the expected case for any game series because the games industry is one that notoriously doesn't have a lot of knowledge transfer, nor shared source/shared libraries, between developers and intentionally reinvents the wheel over and over again with almost every game/new game engine.

If gamers want a steadier sense of progression from game to game, studio to studio, they want a different game industry that reinvents fewer wheels between games. Expecting a single developer to somehow side step that industry problem is counter-productive to that goal. CDPR had no way to call up Rockstar and "borrow a cup of sugar", nor would they have probably been interested in doing that even if it were possible because it's less of an interesting problem full of engineering challenges to be "passionate" about to answer "how do we build Cyberpunk 2077 on top of the GTA engine?" than "how do we build Cyberpunk 2077 on top of the Witcher engine where the fastest vehicle is a horse?"

[EugeneOZ]

Is it your first game ever? Any game has some bugs/imperfections. If you are expecting perfect open-world game without bugs and with mechanics every player loves - you’ll be waiting more.

[tracer4201]

I haven’t played the game and don’t play video games too often, so my thoughts here perhaps sound naive.

“NPCs not having a problem being attacked” and “cars running on tracks” could be intentional design choices, right? We can speculate that the game’s feature set is unfinished, but is it also not possible that this video game in its “finished” state just isn’t what people wanted it to be? Clearly there are bugs and I agree the product right now isn’t finished, but once any glitches and performance issues are fixed, I’m not sure if the gameplay will ever meet expectations.

Edit: not sure of why I have -5 points.

[tidepod12]

The biggesr gripe I've seen is that if it is an intentional design choice, it is completely contradictory to what CDPR promised. Through years of marketing they promised "unprecedented" levels of AI and interactability with NPCs. They promised things like situational police presence/response, etc. But currently, the game has NPC AI that's years behind (games released 5-10 years ago have better AI).

The fact that such features were promised is what is causing people to think (hope?) that these features are simply unfinished. If it is an intentional design choice and CDPR has no plan to improve them, that's a whole other issue with what was promised vs what was actually intended.

[cbozeman]

No. The game is simply not finished.

The problem with creating a huge open-world game and then stating in all your promotional material that this, "will be the most immersive open-world game we've ever created" means that it has to surpass, at a minimum, The Witcher 3.

However, you paint yourself into an even worse corner with that, because everyone's going to compare you to Grand Theft Auto series as well when you use the phrase "open-world game". And that's a real titan to go up against.

Its clearly obvious this game needed a bare minimum of 6 more months of development, if to do nothing more than fix just the bugs. But it really needs about 12-18 months of development just to add the features they claimed the game would have at launch.

[tracer4201]

Saying it’s the most “immersive open world game” is just marketing speak. Unless they promised a specific feature, it’s hard to say much. I’m not arguing that it’s not a finished game, so don’t get me wrong. I’m just saying that people assumed this was going to be the perfect video game. It’s clearly not, and performance/glitches aside, I’m not convinced of why everyone seems so surprised it’s not.

[rsynnott]

So you're taking the approach that (a) they were lying and (b) everyone listening to them lie was meant to realise they were lying? That... still seems like pretty bad behaviour.

[tracer4201]

I’m not saying they were lying. Saying it’s the “most immersive game ever” could mean a lot of different things based on your definition of immersion.

There’s no clear definition of being the “most immersive game”. Every piece of software has a finite feature set, based on time, cost, and a vast set of constraints - whether organizational, technical, people related, and so on.

The game isn’t ever going to live up to the hype.

The two items you listed are inaccurate. I’m taking the approach that the game had practically infinite hype and it had no where to go but to go but DOWN and disappoint people. I’m taking the approach that it’s worth looking at this from a realistic lens. Yes the game is unfinished, but there are plenty of “finished” games that aren’t great or even just good. They are flat out terrible. Why people seem to think Cyberpunk is meant to be some marvel is beyond me.

[detaro]

If they designed it as that from the start while promoting it as an open-world, they made a serious judgement error, as cbozeman explained. If you promote an open world with cars, you need cars that act believable.

If they attempted to have it be a believable feature of the game world, it's apparently entirely lost on consumers (e.g. a world with stupid cars could be explained in an interesting way as one where only few exceptions actually drive themselves, whereas most just rely on stupid automations taking care of it - but you need to present that in a way people understand).

Some of the things people found also indicates that a few systems like this actually exist but are only triggered very rarely, which suggests they were intended to be there but disabled because they don't work well enough/don't scale.