It was a hot mess, but it got really good
this post was submitted on 27 Jun 2023
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I will continue to argue to this day, Cyberpunk should have been a PC exclusive. Most of the performance issues were on consoles, consoles that hold back innovation and progress in gaming. I remember a time when PC games were always at the forefront of better graphics and new ideas. Now, we cater to the lowest common denominator.
FWIW, I had a good time with the game on release. I don't know what was promised and still don't, but the game that I played was solid and fun. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
Most of the performance issues were on consoles, consoles that hold back innovation and progress in gaming.
except cyberpunk didn't do anything special that the consoles couldn't handle, it was just a case of a game that was very clearly designed for pc (the UI makes it obvious) and didn't bother to optimize their game. consoles didn't hold back anything.
Even on PC it was crap though. Not only was it extremely buggy but also poorly optimized. Low and unstable FPS even on my NVIDIA 3090 / Ryzen 5900X rig. It took several patches (and over a year) for performance to get better.
The game shouldn't have been a PC exclusive, it should have been delayed by a year or two (and not released on older consoles at all).
It was better, in that it was a good game compared to a lot of shovelware that gets released.
But that wasn't the issue. The issue was that it didn't deliver on a lot of what was promised, and one of the versions they released was virtually unplayable, to the point it had to be pulled off shelves.
If they had pulled back expectations and not made the old-gen version, it probably would've been much better received. They did a lot of things they shouldn't of done that either confused players, frustrated players, or just broke any trust they had.
Redmod sucks open up real modding and this solved
I still remember feeling so betrayed after pre-purchasing that game. They had a "gold certificate" or something saying it was working with minimal bugs. Cyberpunk is the reason why I don't pre-order anything ever.
I enjoyed it on my PC. I did wish there was more of the memory hack things.
Article absolutely doesn't go into why someone might've thought it was bad, nice meme
my opinion nobody asked for, as someone who played it:
think the main story is great and that it touches upon a lot of cyberpunk themes in a very faithful way, not personally into GTA type gameplay and openworld, so that was a loss for me, but in general the world felt empty (why i tend not to like openworld) and the combat basic especially in comparison to anything promised a year before launch.
It also had some cute sidemissions here and there, particularly the Ghost in the Shell easteregg is tragic, and I enjoyed the sentient car (though I wish I could've been hanging out with my AI car alongside my tulpa)
Did this dev even play the game on PS4 / Xbox? The current hardware it was developed for at the time? It run constantly sub 30 FPS, even dropping into 20s and below. Like I get the idea that it should of been a "next gen" only title, but copies of the game were sold with the expectation that it's would be payable, 20 FPS with poor frame pacing isn't acceptable
I actually kind of believe them. But not because the game was in great shape when it launched and everyone ignored it.
I played on release and it was rough. But I also played it recently and it was also extremely buggy even though people act as if the game was patched into perfection. Performance is still awful, although even at minimum the game looks amazing. Reflections in particular look "grainy" and awful unless you put Screen Space Reflections on Psycho or enable RT which murders performance.
On the other hand, the story is pretty good, the characters are outright fantastic and the secondary missions (that aren't just going somewhere and murdering everyone) are great.