[HN Gopher] Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 207...
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Key takeaways from the quest design of Cyberpunk 2077 and The
Witcher 3
Author : adrian_mrd
Score : 22 points
Date : 2023-04-02 16:49 UTC (6 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.gamedeveloper.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.gamedeveloper.com)
| noobermin wrote:
| I initially closed the tab in disgust but reopened it to hate
| read it further to even more completely confirm my own disgust.
| This is why modern "gaming" which is closer today to flashy
| fantasy oriented story telling (where you press (x) to advance
| the story) just doesn't appeal to me. I have nothing wrong with
| movies or RPGs of the old sort where it's just one drawn out
| story, but I usually expected most of a "game" to be playing a
| game, where there is skill involved, where you can lose, where
| there is difficulty, where there is fun. I literally ctfl-f'ed
| "fun" and it doesn't appear in the article at all, what is the
| point of a game that isn't fun?
|
| It's good to see game "designers" from the big studios really are
| to blame here. While I've long since grown out of my teenage
| elitist disgust concerning "top 20" music the truth is games
| continue to a good place where "popular" usually defaults to
| "bad."
| zoklet-enjoyer wrote:
| My favorite game lately has been chrome://dino/
| uejfiweun wrote:
| To tell you the truth, playing these games taught me that I
| really don't care for quest-dependent games. I feel like CDPR
| games have no way to interact with their pretty worlds outside of
| the heavily scripted quests. You can generally just go anywhere
| you want, take anything, even loot the entire office of the
| captain of the army, and nobody even reacts.
|
| Contrast this to Bethesda games, where the entire game is an
| elaborate simulation that can be poked and prodded as you please.
| In fact I've never even completed a main quest in a Bethesda
| game, I just spend all my time exploring and dicking around and
| it's WAY more fun than the on-rails theme park rides that are
| CDPR games.
| Dalewyn wrote:
| I realized this rather spectacularly with MMORPGs.
|
| I've long been a fan of open world MMOs with basically next to
| no mandatory quests. Think Runescape, Ragnarok Online,
| MapleStory, etc. Loved them, and Ragnarok Online is to this day
| still among my top favorite games of all time.
|
| One day, Guild Wars 2 dropped to great hype and fanfare and I
| bought it to try it out.
|
| Good fucking god damn hell in a shit basket, I _fucking hated
| it._ Quests everywhere. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests.
| Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests. Quests.
|
| Walk around a bit? Here's a side quest! Pan the camera? Here
| please take this quest! No? How about this quest?!
|
| It is still the worst use of $60 bucks that I've ever spent.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Some people prefer paying $60 for a blank canvas with some
| brushes and paint, others prefer a good book.
| Isinlor wrote:
| I like simulation-like open world games, but Witcher 3 was one
| of the very few games with a good story. To be honest I think
| the only one that I cared about. Especially the bloody baron
| questline was amazing storytelling. Heart of Stone was also
| great story based on Polish ballad Mr. Twardowski.
|
| Cyberpunk is unfortunately nowhere near as good in terms of the
| story as the Witcher.
| gambiting wrote:
| Hard disagree, cyberpunk had a fantastic story, compared to
| the witcher 3 that I've tried to finish about 4 separate
| times and failed every time - the side quests are fantastic,
| the main quest is just unbelievably dragged out and boring.
|
| Everyone mentions the blood baron quest - and yes, it was
| great, outstanding even. I've never seen anyone mention
| anything after that point - it's just a mess of narrative
| that gets in the way of some other great content in that
| game.
|
| Cyberpunk has great main quest _and_ memorable side stories.
| Isinlor wrote:
| I played the Witcher 3 twice trough leaving a small bit of
| the second expansion unfinished just because I don't want
| this game to end.
|
| I lost interest in Cyberpunk quite early. To me Cyberpunk
| is too American with overdone themes. Although the
| Cyberpunk anime is great. Simple story, but has really well
| put together characters and delivers emotional punch. I
| will have to try to get back to the game. Maybe on second
| try it will be better.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Frankly, I think they're both bad. CDPR gets a lot of stuff
| right, but their self-insistence on their world and
| storytelling is only rivaled by Final Fantasy. Cyberpunk's
| main quest feels like Fallout 4 with a fake veneer of moral
| ambiguity, and the sidequests are either penis-based or
| another car who wants to lecture me on their philosophy of
| the week. Almost every single mission in that game had me
| cringing, to the point that I'd mute the dialogue and still
| wince as I read the subtitles. It's... pure suck. As for my
| review of the gameplay... it's just Borderlands again. I
| can't be fooled like this, sorry.
|
| The Witcher 3 is weird, relative to Cyberpunk. I haven't
| finished it, but it's writing is a lot more grounded and
| less... bad. The gameplay feels clunky and the pacing is
| _completely fucked_ (cutscene - > fetch quest -> cutscene
| -> fight -> GOTO 0;). Neither of these games really deserve
| commendations for the way they handled questing, and even
| the most heralded RPG interactions like Dark Souls and New
| Vegas leave plenty of room for improvement.
| [deleted]
| TillE wrote:
| Totally agree. It's the design philosophy of pick from a menu
| of scripted choices vs interact with a simulated world.
|
| I don't think Bethesda has ever quite lived up to that ambition
| even in the days of Daggerfall and Morrowind, but they have at
| least tried.
| prohobo wrote:
| The hell is he talking about? Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 are
| way past the golden age of gaming. They have nothing worthwhile
| to contribute here.
|
| It's reminiscent of mobile game designers from the 2010's, and
| how they were making "engaging" games. Lots of presentations
| about making engaging experiences that immerse players into the
| lore of the game world. Actually, just mediocre manipulation
| tactics pushing people into skinner boxes.
|
| It's all bullshit, and indie game devs would do well to stay
| naive and simply try to make fun games.
|
| If anything, a much better example of this stuff is in Disco
| Elysium.
| sbierwagen wrote:
| I'm not sure what you're responding to? The phrase "golden age"
| does not occur anywhere in the submission.
|
| This is a summary of a presentation by CD Projekt employee
| talking about the two games he's worked on, so naturally it's
| focused on those two games.
| XorNot wrote:
| This is right on the money for games which are impactful for me,
| and I noticed the writing being on-point in CP2077's decisions
| entirely: there were plenty of moment in my playthrough where I
| didn't have to stop and think about what a dialogue option was,
| it felt entirely natural to hit one of the prompts the moment I
| saw it because the way I was playing my character, that's what
| they would've done.
|
| That felt _great_ , compared to say, Mass Effect which did tend
| to suffer from a mismatch between the prompt and what would
| actually happen - it's a credit to CDPR that I never felt
| betrayed by a dialogue choice (except one, at the ending).
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