The Non-Player Quests of Cyberpunk 2077
Вставка
- Опубліковано 29 тра 2024
- My name is Thane Bishop, and I need to talk about environmental storytelling, and why I think Cyberpunk 2077 does it so well.
This video is a small breakdown of the value that good, well balanced environmental storytelling can add to an open world game, as well as how it can add incredible value to places where the player interacts with that story telling.
Help support this work! - / thanebishop - Розваги
Okay, okay, last video on Cyberpunk 2077 for a little while, I promise. I've got a lot of fun ideas in the works for when I get back to the desk in a few days. Want in to the community discord to chatter about 'em with me?www.patreon.com/ThaneBishop
aww :(, excited to see some new stuff though!
You sure?
In two days NCART Metro gets added, there might be some other concept to tackle...
Edit: Ha ha got to the end where Fallout comes up. lol
Did you play launch Fallout 76 by chance? It would've been right up your alley. The environmental storytelling was all there was as there were very few NPCs, they've since added NPCs and the environmental storytelling is still there but I wonder if now it is less impactful or maybe more impactful as it's now more of the "non player questing" you mention that's is still a layer.
quick comment on the video-- the opening montage shows you, the player, facing down (and presumably helping with the demise of) that same sixth street ganger
I loved all the NCPD scanner hustles that expounded upon how shitty Jotaro was. I read some before his gig, and some after, and it really hammered home how much people wanted him gone
And Joanne Koch, one of the other monsters of Night City.
4th playthrough, and I just found the room in the clouds with on break dolls. They are having a whole discussion about how shitty joturo is
@@nifty_biscuit Which is odd, considering that the person who flatlined him a few weeks ago is listening in on the convo.
If I remember what happened in my last playthrough correctly, I had just gotten Gorilla arms when I did the Jotaro gig and I shattered his skull with a hard swing. Quite satisfying turn of events.
I’m playing a non-lethal for my first playthrough and I’m kinda regretting knocking him out. Though I think he gets delivered to the Mox. They might have better plans.
The NCPD hustles are part of the game I've really come to enjoy for just this reason. One of my favorites has you climbing up on to one the buildings under a building. As you move along the ledge headed to your target, evading or clearing the mines they've placed to watch their back, you hear a single large-caliber gunshot. You come upon a single individual, and kill her. You can tell she's been set up there for a bit, from the food nearby, and there's an Asura sniper rifle on the ground. Probably the source of the gunshot you hear. The shard she has on her is a gig spec from a fixer for a assassinating a politician. If you follow her sightline, go across the street, and on top of the building there, you can find her target. Dead, of course.
But the real kicker? Her fixer warns her the NCPD will have to actually investigate the politician's death. Except...you're given the NCPD hustle assignment *before* she even takes the shot. That leaves a big question, who actually wanted her dead? Did she merely get careless and someone saw her head up to her nest? Or was someone looking to clear up loose ends after the assassination? Or did her fixer double-cross her to protect himself and his client? Who knows!
did that one today, never know i could see the politician dead, i just readed the code and nothing else, pretty clever, id think it was a loose end to me
There's a similar one where you have to clear out a group of gangers who had just slaughtered a homeless encampment. You read the shard and note that an NCPD commander has ties with a guy who just bought the land the homeless guys are on and want the gangoons to "clean it up a bit" and promises a high fee...its another NCPD scanner mission, do the math.
Bro night city is my favorite open world city ever. Even just riding through the city feels massive and alive. The actual aesthetic also feels realistic yet sci fi and gives me major cozy vibe feels. I can’t put my foot on it but it feels like comfort food on a cold winter night.
I know the game has improved immensely, but a lot of what people are praising today, was there at launch, when the general attitude seemed to be that cyberpunk was a shallow, pointless, lifeless and inconsequential non-RPG and was in fact a basic open world action game. It wasn’t
Yep even now content creators some of them skipp all gigs because they think its like in other games repeatable nonsense content, sp silly
Also i preferred when V was less powerful, and always strapped for cash, added to the oppressive feel of the City e.g. having to help the police when that goes against the general ethos of this world
Yep the story the world building and the amazing first person animations during conversations were always there, I see people praising the game now like they just remade everything from scratch. This stuff was always there, and personally playing on pc at launch I had 0 gamebreaking bugs, any bug I had was visual stuff. Hell I had entire companion conversations getting skipped and thus the story not making sense in BG3 at launch but somehow that game gets praised like it's perfect.
@@pinnacleevolution1634 That's because your experience is rare. That doesn't mean everyone else is wrong, it just means your personal experience is different to what most people experienced.
I would argue that your experience is the skewed one and that it's not reflective of what the two games were like and if you take your experience as the correct one then that leads to hasty misinterpretations and judgments.
I don’t get it at all, I still think its just ok but with fun gameplay
You can take a step back farther and find the same thing being reiterated.
Each area of NC is populated by a different mix of NPCs. You won't find nomads or raffen downtown. You won't find people in the fancier suits or dresses outside of downtown. Industrial areas of Watson have a mix of people that is different from the more service industry focused areas like Kabuki.
Everywhere you go there is an indication of class struggle. That people are where they are isn't an accident.
It's great thing for a DM in a dnd campaign to do too. Picking between either cleaning out some bandits out a town or slay an owlbear that gotten too close to another town? The bandits are less dangerous and the owlbear will still be there afterwards right? Nope another adventuring party took care of it while you were dealing with the bandits. That one npc the DM made on the spot, but you thought was totally interesting so you give him a few pointers of being a fighter? He used those lessons to defend someone and they got married while you were galivanting around in the feywild.
A good DM knows that the story revolves around the party, but the world does not.
Man, if there's one thing that bugs me in a GM, it's not knowing that there difference between the main character(s) of a story and having the world that story takes place in revolving around them.
The GM who says "the PCs aren't the main characters" are most often the ones that will just run over the player, rather than working with them.
It's the whole "we imprint ourselves upon the world through our actions" bit, and I'm all here for it.
Same.
It really goes to show how many people overmissed these small things in Cyberpunk 2077, I remember way before they did all the major patches just exploring on my first playthrough and taking everything in and having no guide just playing how I wanted, amazing to see how good the game was then and how far it has come now.
But this small things were always there.
The lore, story, world building were one of the few things that CDPR not only excels, and it was there in the game from day one, most of the things that CDPR change in the game were just polishing, improvements and tweks on the gameplay, story wise the only real major change was the DLC, wich is essentially a small sacle new campaign.
I mean it's easy to miss this stuff when you're getting distracted by shitty driving and your character T-posing randomly during said driving. The initial release wasn't even half-baked, it was barely-cooked on one side.
Like, I'm happy the game finally got properly updated, and I'll probably give it another go as soon as the train update drops and I decide to drop the cash for Phantom Liberty.
@@romxxiistarted playing almost a week ago and I'm loving it, played it on my friend's PS4 when it released and it was not fun at all, I'm happy they fixed and improved the game, though, there's still space for improvement
Yes you deffo should. Expansion and updates been great@@romxxii
@@G59METHDo you also play the expansion
I want a 10 hour video of just someone combing all the non player stories in night city, from something as complex as B@d to just regular Joe having a bad time in the corpo world.
Considering it took players 5 years to find all of these small "non player stories" in TW3 I would assume it would take just as long to find every little thing in CP2077 CDPR fill their games to the brim with stuff like this.
If you play on PC there is a mod called "Missing Persons - Fixer's Hidden Gems" (and a similar one for the DLC) that makes them missions. So yeah, it could be done.
One of my favorite examples of this, is in Phantom Liberty - an unseeable NPC interaction and quest that takes place entirely through text message. The way they wrote this character (Ashlay) felt so rich and vibrant compated to other NPC's that you can interact with who have a character model.
Hopefully this isnt a spoiler - but specifically with Ashlay, she seems to be impatient with how slow you are to reply to her, however at some point she is slow to reply because she ordered pizza and its at her door - she leaves you hanging while grabbing it, just for a few minutes to pass for her to reply with "kk"
It's even more funny if you go weapons blazing instead of stealth as they suggest, sends you message that reads like it was written by a 12 year old and alerts all the Barghest in the area towards you. I love when games actually treat the player character like someone that would fit in the world they inhabit instead of the fucking savior that fixes everything and gets the white picket fence ending by just existing.
I love Cyberpunk. One time I was just walking through Night City after the main Konpeki Plaza mission and a random npc in kabuki was on the phone with someone and said "Yorinobu isn't just going to confess to murder” and I can’t remember the rest of the convo but I was shook. Also Gary the Prophet is my favorite quest line since you have to go there and talk to him like 5 times to trigger it and it’s so extensive
@@pinnacleevolution1634 To be fair, this may be the only time the game actually does that. For most gigs you will still get paid, albeit not in full, even if you don't manage to succeed at the "optional" mission goals and leave a pile of corpses behind instead of ninjaing your way in and out unseen as demanded.
I always said, people calling the gigs and even the NCPD scanner hustles “filler” or “usual open world bullshit” r completely wrong.. every single little event or Easter egg or anything u come across in this game has a story linked to it, u just have to uncover it yourself through the environment and shards.. it’s really an excellent way to enhance and improve upon the usual open world outpost type content by making it directly contribute to the world building and believability
But they make absolutely no sense in relation to the story, that's a huge problem for me. From a roleplaying perspective there's very little reason to engage with them, it's all so very "game-y", it only makes sense for you, the videogame player, as "oh, some more content to play". From V's point of view the absolute priority should be the main narrative and almost nothing else appart from maybe the quests given by friends like Judy, Panam, River, etc...
@@vee1766bro, you are literally a merc and still have to make money
I don't think the stories that's enough to justifiy the insane quantity of NCPD scanner and gigs compared to the low quantity of side quest, Dogtown has a better balance between meaningful content and ncpd scanner style content, and the gigs in the DLC are like side quest.
@@vee1766 That's not a problem with the NCPD hustles but with the main story pacing
@@vee1766 The whole point of half of them is for "Worldbuilding," and I think they struck a pretty good balance of player interactivity. it's not so much that it's obnoxious for the casual player but just enough that "Roleplayers" can still enjoy it. In a few RedStreams the Devs have mentioned that more interactivity is something that might be looked into for a sequel, (Called Orion and in pre-production still apparently) but maybe it will become another farcry 3? Who knows. But I personally appreciated the lore and worldbuilding a lot, what's most impressive is how most of these notes and writings match up with multiple other areas and quests, it's genuinely impressive. But you as a player have to be willing to take the time to read notes and connect dots, if you decide it doesn't match the story or isn't worth your time... of course you're not going to like it. I don't want to be like every video essay youtuber who's like "OMGG>>>> LUDONARRATIVE DISSONANCE???." But ehhhhhhhhhh
Not invalidating your opinion, but once I ignored that V was dying (which was on my 3rd playthrough probably) I started noticing how much effort was put into everything that wasn't the main story. If you find yourself struggling to engage with some of it, please at least try the kabuki fixer gigs, they're wonderful
PS: The NCPD Scanners are totally filler, but they're fun (and yes, have worldbuilding arrrgh)
Thank you for this
It always gets on my nerves when people say the city is dead or not immersive or just a set piece
That's what happens if you skip all the text. On the surface, you go to a gig, kill everyone and get some cash and that's it.
this was always one of my favourite aspects of the game. you, as V, are the main character of cyberpunk 2077, the video game. but in 2077, in the setting of cyberpunk, you are nothing more than another merc. in fact the game tells you this plenty of times but actually landing that, keeping to its promise is spectacular. all the way up until the ending it feels like you are nothing more than a welcome addition for the people in a world that could not care less about you. you are not the main character of night city because everyone in town lives their own lives and theres millions of people in town, how could you be? you help people who stumble upon you but you are not the saviour of night city, you are simply a merc
I disagree. V is constantly changing Night City and having a profound effect on it. V has the biochip in his/her head which Arasaka and the voodoo boys both want, V causes an EMP that costs the city hundreds of millions in repairs, (depending on your choices) V kills Royce, Sasquatch and Brigitte, leaders of three of the biggest gangs in Night City, V becomes a close acquaintance of Jefferson Peralez, the MAYOR of Night City, V is hailed as the best merc in the business by many, V crashes the highly attended Dashi Parade and then I don’t even need to mention the endings.
@@iancoates2100 im happy to disagree, but i definitely think that V is not the main character of night city itself. the power goes out, it comes back on with an apology, its a minor inconvenience. v kills important gang members and leaders, but (probably bc it is underbaked) the gangs arent affected, and probably have a chain of command to resolve those issues if you choose to kill them. you arent a part of jeffersons campaign, you just help him with some discrete detective work, confirming his suspicions. you arent on stage with him celebrating his election win. you just did a job or two for him, and maybe become a future scandal topic if his under the table payments become leaked. you work in the shadows the entire time when crashing the dashi parade, and i dont think your name would get out to the general public after doing so. this is more specultion, but once youre out of the abandoned hotel ambush section, arasaka doesnt pursue you relentlessly. it probably becomes a corp coverup that becomes a sign of a growing destabilisation in arasaka. and bringing up the endings, only rogues ending really would make you a household name in night city. choosing arasake wouldnt even get you a drink on the menu at the afterlife and choosing panam would see you ride off into the sunset as arasaka crumbles. V is not a big time merc up until the end of the game, and just isnt the main character of night city to me. the story could end at any moment, you could catch that stray bullet the clouds worker talks about, and night city, a population of people, would not care. gang fights happen every day, a merc with dangerous tech wanted by two big players in the city surgically implanted in them wouldnt even make it to the news, let alone be headline worthy
@@iisquared77 just because V isn’t famous to the general public, it doesn’t make him/her any less of a main character to me, especially in the endings (except suicide and Arasaka endings - I haven’t done the DLC ending yet so idk about that one). Just because V rides off with Panam, it doesn’t change the fact that he/she killed Adam Smasher, finished Arasaka and destroyed Mikoshi - that’s a HUGE deal, regardless of whether or not people know who specifically did it.
@@iancoates2100 i think we are in agreement with different terms of what we mean. like i feel like you and i are saying the same stuff but coming to different conclusions. im sorry if my original comment came off as like thats the truth and theres no debate, i definitely see where youre coming from. i just feel like in the grand scheme of night city, V isnt the main character bc despite the measurable effect you have on peoples lives, you are just a merc at the end of it. a badass merc who has pulled off some incredible shit, but a merc nonetheless. like i said i feel like we agree on pretty much everything but came to different conclusions and have different terms of what we mean
@@iisquared77 🤝
It’s always a little funny when someone’s “rainy day” video ends up being one that blows up because it’s just so well done & captivating.
It really do just be that way sometimes. But we take the wins where they present themselves lol, glad you like the content
One example of this is when you find victims of that Biotecnica's scientist, Dr. Joanne Koch, in some gigs and random places around the city because she's trying to clean any traces of her involvement in some "experiments" with humans, and then after some time, after you forgot about her, getting a gig to eliminate her. When you find her she might talk your brain out to let her go because she sounds so innocent, but if you've seen and read what she has done you already know what she really is. If you hadn't read what she had done and the type of psychopath she is, you might just let her go.
This is why I started writing down the names and a brief description of the situation whenever i found shards in gigs or in a interesting places in the game. I've noticed that a lot of them reappear in other gigs or other places, and it gives you more information about the behind the scenes quest. This was one of my favorite parts of Skyrim and New Vegas, and it's one of my favorite parts of Cyberpunk. It makes exploring the world more fun. And all of this was there at launch, with the 2.0 i noticed that they added a lot more of environmental story telling, but most of it was already there. Maybe that's why i loved this game since it came out.
A fear I've been having was that no game will ever be able to make me fall in love with it so much like Cyberpunk 2077 has. And I think you just summed up the reason for that feeling so well. It's not just the gameplay, or the story, but the world in general. It is alive, and has been crafted with so much love and passion... how will anything ever be able to compete with that?
Great work ! That's also one of the things I absolutely loved about RDR2. I remember stumbling across an abandonned, half burnt down native american holding camp, exploring a bit and going back on my way, only to encounter a few days later a war veteran at his camp halfway across the map, sitting down to talk to him, only for him to tell me his story and slowly uncovering that he was stationned there and telling me what went down. The fact that there was absolutely nothing guiding me toward this encounter and that I totally missed it in my forst playthrough made the world feel so much more alive
Agreed.
Rockstar experimented a bit with this in GTA5 but it didn't feel as alive and immersive. Hopefully they get it even better in GTA6.
the world building - through missions or just through all the database journal texts you can pick up & read - was one of my favorite things about cyberpunk
I'm one of those freaks that actually really likes exposition dumps. I love when a world has enough detail that the teams behind them can't even really show it all, but they still want to demonstrate the lengths to which things have been thought out. Even at the cost of it being anticlimactic, I love when games have the main character be an outsider to events, sometimes super important. It grounds how the player character is still just one person in a sea of other people.
There is story in every little encounter in this game. Absolutely amazing world building
That little quest with El Padre ilustrate how CDPR now carries the Bethesda magic more than Bethesda this days, but it isn't just Bethesda magic, is bethesda magic improved in any way, shape or form, in Cyberpunk you have great stroy telling, amazing well written characters that feels alive and present, you don't need to go further is just to look at the companions in Bethesda games and the friends V has, the companions in Bethesda games spent the whole story alongside you, but they feel souless, while characters in Cyberpunk feel alive not only in the way that they are animated and personality wise, but also in their schedules, they have a life of their own, they are not always around V, despite V been always doing something for this characters, you may just do a side mission alongside, Rogue, but she isn't there to follow your commands she is there giving you the orders, that you as the player can defy anytime you want or follow along.
In a Bethesda game, your companions feel like tralls, in a CDPR game you can only call companion someone like Jhonny, because he is always with you no matter what you do, despite that he is mostly wortheless when comes to combat and stuff like that, on the other hand V has friends, and love interests, this friends and love interests will sometimes fight alongside you, and sometimes you will fight alongside them, you don't own them, you are just a friend.
I'm sorry but the schedules argument isn't very good, it only work until mid game, after that they don't have any more dialogue and stay at the same place doing nothing.
Rogue awkwardly stay alone at the afterlife for the rest of the game, the companions stop feeling alive the moment you finished their quest, you can talk to them about dogtown and that's all.
@@ni9274 i not arguing that, what i'm saying here is that they are more than just characters without being fully companions at the same time, and THIS is what makes them more alive, even if it is just and illusion (it's a magic trick if you like), so far theres few games that have realistic companions, Bethesda was never great in this regard, the companions you have are poorly developed, they peak in F4 in this regard and from there Bethesda wen't downhil.
My own staple for companions is Mass Effect companions, they are well written, they evolve from one game to another and they are incredibly interesting.
Cyberpunk, essentially doesn't have companions, they closest you have is Jhonny that is only a christmas ghost, what you do have is TEMPORARY companions, wich are V friends like River, Kerry, Panam, Judy and Takemura.
BUT there's some changes comming at least for the romances in Cyberpunk Tuesday with the update 2.1.
At least now you can do some more stuff with your girlfriend / boyfriend...
I love the shards that help you make connections to other npcs/jobs you’ve completed. Lotta people mentioned jotaro already, but pretty sure the doctor you rescue from maelstrom comes up a lot too. Usually from bodies you find asking for her help, but it always makes what seemed like a small job seem more real/entwined with the world at large
I waited 2 full years to play this game and to even look up any form of playthrough. Best decision I’ve ever made
This game has become one of my all time favorites in a short period of time.
I like stories that have side quests that affect the main quest.
The idea that the side quest isn't mandatory but if you want the best ending and the best gear you need to do as many side quests as possible.
Pathologic's implementation of this was good, even if everything about the rest of the game was.. torture
I'm on my fourth playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077. It never ceases to amaze me how I keep finding things I had not noticed before; just locations I missed, sights I didn't catch because I didn't look in a certain direction and, as you were discussing here, environmental stories. The amount of detail in this world is just mind boggling. There are other, newer, games I've played which seem very shallow by comparison (I'm looking at you Starfield).
As someone who grew up in a pretty crazy city, I found the way we slowly hear about other notorious mercs through the grapevine, shadows, traces, etc - just so realistic and exactly what I think Night City would feel like for a merc. There was part of me that was worried they wouldn't be great at a gameworld that needs to be so different than what they had done with the Witcher, but they knocked the writing and world design out of the park on release. The gameplay mechanics definitely had to catch up, but considering everything from writing, environments, mechanics, and even perspective was all something new to the studio and the in-house engine, I think they did a hell of a job for a company who have made such massive leaps already since Witcher 1.
Think I am on my 7 or 8th play-through, yet I still keep making connections and recognising people and events. Just last night I did a couple NCPD sites and a gig in a different order than I usually do so I ended up doing them back to back. And only then did I realise that they were actually connected, despite being some distance apart. And did an NCPD site that mentioned the woman from Highwayman that I never realised before. Also, a couple playthroughs ago it finally dawned on me that the Valentino couple at the Ofrenda is the same couple involved in so many gigs, shards etc. later. I love it!
I am so glad someone is finally talking about this. This is my favourite aspect of the game but I didn’t know what it was called!! now I know it’s called environmental storytelling and cyberpunk does it best in my opinion. great video dude ❤
Okay, I am also glad people are talking about this, but it isn't environmental storytelling in and of itself.
Env Storytelling is Storytelling not given directly, like, for example, a field of dead bodies around an NCPD officer. You say, okay, the officer killed a bunch of gangers.
The reason this is unique environmental storytelling is because the game *refuses* to tell you that its there. Its storytelling in the environment, that there's absolutely no reason for you to ever see.
If you enjoy this sort of thing (like I do) I really recommend checking out the recent Deus Ex games. Their open world sections are full of environmental storytelling like this. There's a reason why I'm still talking about them all these years later, a bunch of reasons actually, and one of the main ones is that they really understood that a world limited in geography but deep in storytelling is way better than one miles wide with nothing to say.
It is the first few games that pioneered clickable keypad and in-game computer emails. I still remember writing down my UNATCO login for JCDenton being the star employee and all.
This makes me wish I had been reading more shards but the problem is…there’s so so many 😭
When you eventually start a new game, try reading them as you collect them, takes less than a minute to read a shard and the surroundings you find it in may be relevant to the content of the message
It's well worth it in this game to wander. Read the shards, sometimes they actually come back and change some options in dialogue.
Also suggest walking places. You won't see most of the map by car.
@@eric_has_no_idea most people don't have the sheer volume of spare time you'd need to play that way. It's already a long ass game, just getting through the first act (i.e, started the game proper) can take upwards of ten hours. My alternate advise is to play it in short bursts, one job a session. That way, you're not so burned out. The game throws text logs at you by the handful, it doesn't take long to start tuning them out
It’s well written and makes sense. It’s like a soap opera show where things happen in the background all the time like in real life.
Even regular TV shows have the same kind of viewer disassociation
Hey man, great findings, I went through pretty much all of these quests, and I barerly catched any of it. Watching this made me connect more dots and I appreciate Cyberpunk more thanks to you.
One of the best examples for this is kingdom come deliverance with it's "interesting locations"
Plz keep making videos about the beauty of Cyberpunk, they’re so captivating!
Great work man, makes me want to play through the entire game again and take notes. Im the type that wants to squeeze every bit of lore or world building out of a game, but cyberpunk is so vast that there were many times where I had forgotten when or why a character was mentioned. You just cleared up one of these for me in this video, so I thank you for that, but it makes me wonder what else I have missed or not connected yet.
Your videomaking and voice over is so professional that if I hadn't checked your subscriber count I'd think you to have amassed at least over a 100 thousand subscribers. Amazing video!
Yeah, when you give all these dudes agency outside of the player, it reaaaaally helps sell the illusion that they're real people.
I don't think it's odd at all moments like these in games are my favorites. Thank you for highlighting some cool ones in Cyberpunk 2077. I stumbled across the movie set and Bad's destroyed bunker myself but I was unaware of some of the other places that moment went until now. :)
I know Rockstar did it first with GTAs but the radio/loading screen/NET all responding with the progression of your main quest is something that I have come to appreciate.
Maybe I don’t play enough rpgs but just the fact that basically right away I was a passenger in an “a to b” quest instead of the driver was such a fresh breath of air.
I hate how every game you’re the “chosen one”
If you liked that the gonk who pulled iron on Padre ended up the way he did....(and you are playing on PC...) you really should try the mod 'missing persons: Fixers hidden gems'
Not only does it give an in game, lore friendly way to find all the hidden gems.. But its really well done.
(You do the gig 'monster hunter' for Regina, and then you start to get text messages, giving you mini gigs from the Fixers, which send you to almost all of the hidden gems. Its totally customisable that you can change how much money/street cred/experience you get, if you are given the exact location to visit compared to just finding the area yourself via the detes the text message gives you ect. The maker of the mod has done it so well, tied the text story into the shards dropped and the environment they are found in. I personally can't play happily without it, and they are working on an expansion version to go with phantom liberty)
Good suggestion! I'll check it out
Loved that mod. Used back for version 1.6. Def looking forward to another olaythrough with it.
Hopefully the PL update for it drops relatively soon.
I knew about B@D from Reggie's quest and one or two other shards I picked up across my four playthroughs, but I never found their lair! God, the amount of detail and hidden things in 2077 is insane. I've clocked around ~600 hours in the game and still haven't found so many things! This was a great video, Thane.
I removed the NCPD scanner missions from the map and the minimap and now they feel like random encounters like the hidden gems. It made me appreciate them more without them feel like *things to do to complete the game* but more like *things that happens while you are doing something else*
Good points all round. Having that element of stories unfolding in in the player's periphery while not involving them directly goes a long way to balancing the player's agency in the bigger picture. They're the decisive character in their own story but not all-important. Getting those background details just right sets the tone thematically for the larger story as well. With V's survival story arguably being a huge downward spiral, having those other similar stories ending badly so often really turns into a race to the bottom of a bottomless pit.
this is an awesome video diving into something i have struggled to really articulate when explaining why i love this game's world so much. the b@d "non-player quest" is something that has continued to keep me curious for more hours than i have in the game, along with so many other things like the rogue AI and of course the monks/ff06b5 lol. cp77 is best experienced as a detective game imo, if guns blazing is someonnes style then obv not but the amount of small stories and mysteries you uncover walking around and reading datashards is just insane, cp77's world really does feel alive when you take a closer look at it
It is impressive how this game turned itself upside down. I've started playing in 2021, but from the first moments this world really got me, i didn't experienced everything, but i got a lot of these different types of storytelling which made me really connect with the universe of Cyberpunk even more. The game really had passion to it, specially in what and how it wanted to express itself, which i believe to be one of the main principles that made CDPR stick with the game and sort it out, the potential that is has become today. Either way, wonderful video man, i like the short style, can help keep the coherence and high quality in the script, overall great video, cheers!
One thing I only noticed with the outtro was the building lights change around like people are actually in there
When I first played cyberpunk after the 1.6 patch, I played through every single side quest before I even got to the VDBs. Then did the same thing a second time after the 2.0 patch in Dogtown as well. There is an astounding amount of world in that game and I can see why it struggled on release so much. I can tell that a lot of effort and time was placed into making Night City feel alive and real, even if it was at the cost of stability and playability.
A few hours into my playthrough, I remember being taken in by the atmosphere as someone threw up in the alley next to me, someone else was having a shouting match, and some gangs were having a shootout down the road. "God I love this city."
For Cyberpunk 2077, Night City itself is a lot of things. At some point, I believed the city lived and moved with or without you. The things you do were because you affected it. It affected you in some ways to get you involved through storytelling and missions/gigs/NCPD scanner and environmental telling design. No other game has come this close regarding immersive storytelling like Cyberpunk 2077.
Other games have clans and factions but remain static until the player does something to start a chain reaction. In other games like Kenshi, it is incredible when it comes to a reactive living world that is constantly on the move with or without player agency. Kenshi is a strong contender to be one of my favorite games.
One detail i love about the world building is in the afterlife bar where you can listen to other mercs talk about jobs they’re getting ready for
Respect man, 100% agree. Environmental story telling is probably the biggest thing I seek out in games. Halo and Halo 2 were some of the biggest contributors to that for me. Finding hidden encampments and ammo stashes littered with an obvious battle. Very cool. Thank you for the video.
Thanks, you put into words some ideas I was stewing about conservation of detail and how "fuzzy edges" in story worlds are part of the "runway" the audience's imagination needs to feel like the world exists beyond the events of the story. One major example I think went hard the wrong way in this specific regard is Star Wars: part of what captured everyone's imagination was the relative "smallness" of the story in its history and scope and how often there wasn't more than a moment to introduce things in motion that were never returned to, leading to the whole Expanded Universe which paid that ambiguity and modular scope forward by both sharing in the detail of whatever "parent" work something was based on. The collection Tales of the Bounty Hunters took some cool costumes from Empire and not only expanded the stories of those characters but explained how cultural or personal forces that shaped these characters to be motivated to their momentary roles in Empire and also shaped the world they came from which was completely new information not introduced or mentioned elsewhere until after these stories. A huge part of what eroded the excitement over that world started with the Prequel banishing some thematic mysteries, reusing familiar locations "by accident", or putting all the events in arm's reach of the highest levels of galactic government. The erosion intentionally accelerated with Disney not only de-canonizing the rich legacy of the Expanded Universe (which the prequels actually worked hard to incorporate and build on) but using the "fuzzy edges" just as hollow references, set dressing, and plot beats to keep attention on the cast and framing everything they do as being personally responsible for the only important events in the galaxy. Destiny 2 also veered dangerously into focusing too much on the player character being the story's most interesting person when the original game worked hard to make it feel like killing gods and traversing unfathomable impossible spaces was just what any Guardian character does in the line of duty and after years of course correction we still haven't quite recaptured the feeling that the player is forging their own path through a world bigger than the on-screen events the way Master Chief of Halo or Security Officer in Marathon was just the right guy in the right place at the right time.
Just found your channel. Love the passion you have brother. Hope you find success here
Those archived conversations are the cherries on top an already amazing cake.
This game, night city, the whole cyberpunk world and vibe leave me with the feeling I get after reading an a amazing book. Thought provoking and incredible
Thanks for making this video (and to weird YT algo for letting me see it).
You expressed my experience eith the game since its release. I was never able to express it that well.
Also now that I heard you, I sort of start to understand why so many people did not liked the game. Apparently there is a portion of gamers who only see surface vale of the game that they are involved directly. The whole "world building" narrative that happens in background and make world believeable - they just never saw it or not understood it.
I for once was always (and still am, even more now) an edge case of a CP 2077 fa. Because for me this is not even a game about V. It is a game about Night City. You just happen to see part of it. But main content is The City and its story.
Thanks again for this great, insightful perspective on Night City.
The amount of shards I've picked up that have interconnected names is crazy to me. I don't really read shards unless they're required for quests, but the number of common things just between those shards alone makes Night City feel like an actual city.
My favorite bit of environmental story telling in Cyberpunk 2077 was just a random encounter I had while walking around the city and was stopped at a street corner (I don't know why I was waiting for the crossing sign to change in a video game, but I was). There was a bar/cantina thing on the street corner and a male NPC was talking to this woman and was saying how they should hook up "the old fashion way" or something like that. She declined.
I thought that one interaction, which i've never seen or heard again, was a huge. It implies that there are people in the city who are disillusioned with all the cybernetics and enhancements, who just want to live a slightly more normal life.
2:42 - My man on his way to get a blowie. ;)
Love the content since the first video, keep it coming.
i finally pulled the trigger and bought the game a few days ago and this is definetly one of the best surprises i ever had with a game. Cuz i knew the lore was deep cuz of the RPG and that CD crafted good worlds, but NC is just in a whole nother level. The details speak for themselves.
The NCPD scanners definitely added to the world for me more than the side quests. The side quests were great, the NCPD scanners almost always made me hate the corps or gangs so much. And going even further than that the random dead bodies with logs were even better. Like the gang that tried to bust into Kerry's house, the paparazzi who died while trying to stake out the house of the ex drummer from samurai
I also really loved the worker area at the south east of kabuki where there was a hacker who turned all the self defence systems against the workers ending up with a massacre. It's just such an amazing expansive world.
The scav killing everybody in a rave, the dirty NCPD commissioner sending non-corrupt cops to certain death, but I like how the Maelstorm faction war ties to various cyberpsychos being created/born.
I love it when a game presents Me as the "side" character to someone else's story, it's why I always ignore Main Quests whenever possible.
Red Dead 2 and Rockstar Games in general do this unbelievably well.
and Fallout 3 & 4
Thank you for yet another banger.
I appreciate that!
The best part about your topic with Padre and the 6th Street Gang is exactly what most "reviewers" criticized Cyberpunk for. You're exactly right and stumbling upon random things is what made Witcher 3 so great. Stuff that had no baring on the Story but added to the living World around you.
Kingdom Come Deliverance did this 'immersive side quests you just find' so well too, can't wait for KCD:2!
One of my favorite parts of the game is a random interaction between two NPCs in a Japantown alleyway that ends up with them fighting. I can’t find any videos on it but it happens near the market where Fingers’ clinic is
For me i realized this with Mikhail Akulov the Russian fixer. There are so many gigs and little things to find that tell a story but it's not obvious. You have to actually pay attention and keep track. One minute I'm doing a gig placing a tracker on his car and another I'm in the bad lands searching through a shack to find his name is mentioned in an email with a dead netrunner on site.
Fantastic work!
I remember when I early on tried to explain the storytelling in this game to my wife. I told her, it's like a book, filled with many books. You could follow one story, by going to another page, or you could continue to another part of the book and another story. If you wanted later on, you could return the the one story you left at one point, and these intertwined stories all go together, tell a small or a large part of the greater story.
Beside being a most excellent video game, CP2077 is a fantastic piece of storytelling as well...
So, you could say, I really really understand what you are saying here
Absolutely. The world existing beyond the player is what makes exploring a game worth for me.
The NPC content is also where they put a lot of the pop culture references like Mad Max: Fury Road, or the Matrix (of course,) or Blade Runner, or GTA San Andreas.
The Fury Road one was great.
I have a habit of exploring the nooks and crannies of open worlds looking for hidden item caches, so I've encountered a few of these. I remember finding this random dead guy in a small rooftop building with a datashard on him that indicated that he'd fucked over a joytoy and got done in by a member of the Mox for it. I just remember laughing at it because of the circumstances, but also being so intrigued by the fact it was here at all because it absolutely could have been a gun for hire gig. Yet, here we were, standing over the corpse of some dead guy with nothing to gain but a datashard.
Also, there's several conversations that can be overheard throughout Night City that I feel like would result in an optional quest for a player in other games but don't here. Conversations like the two bickering cops outside of Megabuilding H10 or the doll who's pleading to the Moxes to help get her room back. I feel like in other games there would be an option to step in and help, but here, the game world tells you "no, this isn't your concern."
I live for these details, especially in 2077 where a main theme is the futility of individual actions. It really drives home that, for all your street cred, no matter how high you climb, this city will never be in the palm of your hand. You will always be weaving between the lines.
think this is why i love NC even tho obvi it felt so short from what it should've. it just makes me excited for the sequel for cdpr having learnt their lesson, shown active care in later patches and dlc, and rlly putting their all into breathing life into their world again. like theres some parts in the game i get a little sad cos theres such clear potential that was never fully realised but other parts where its actually brilliant. just wish the best for the franchise.
Cyberpunk, skyrim, fallout 4, even fallout 76... those are my jam because of the environmental storytelling, the little bits you run across that don't matter, that don't shape your actions, more importantly that your actions don't shape.
Spot on sentiment here. I totally agree. This is the stuff that makes games for me.
There is a gig from Regina, where you are to recover original BD recording of murder... thing is, V isn't the first one who gets this job from Regina.
You can actually find netrunner who tried and failed. You can also find a body of guy who got BD from murderer, and sold it for him.
Recording itself is also mentioned and praised by some Maelstromers, when they chat and we eavesdrop...
i sat there and cried when i found that kid in kabuki, just this kid wanted some edds and probably never got to appreciate the view...
One thing I would have liked in 2077 is a journal like that of Arthur Morgan in RDR2 -- where all these little details get recorded as V's (i.e. the player's) brain dances. This way I could look back on them when I'm not in the middle of some other activity. I know the shards can be reviewed, but often they are missing the context and I forget where I found them. If they had paired each data shard with a brain dance, I would have loved that as a side-activity. Each little non-player story coming with a brain dance that lets me examine the environment in a way that feels very cyberpunk instead of just a data shard that might as well be a medieval scroll.
Also, I tended to ignore the lore and environmental storytelling because there was always something else in my face to deal with, or I had some other purpose/agenda at the moment of finding these little stories and didn't want to lose focus . Thanks for pointing all this out -- now I want to go do a replay paying more attention to these.
You also actually rescue b@d in person from tyger claws as well a little after this. Wakako calls V for the gig and b@d had locked herself in the net so the tygers couldn’t get her. But she obviously can’t stay there so that’s where v comes in.
Finding the couple who got fried netrunning in the desert or the gig about the sister with Cyberpyschosis were tragic and memorable.
cool stuff, thx for the content earned another sub
Sometimes I stop and listen to NPC conversations. Sometimes they just talk about their life, other times the conversations relate to something V did earlier in the game.
interesting though on cyberpunk 2077. there is a hidden storyline/quest in cyberpunk 2077 that V is participating in. So people think V is a Merc only. In this secret quest line V is an Utilitarian with multiple different skills. V is making Night City the City of Dreams.
I have always said that it is the little details that you can tell the people that worked on the game really loved it, even if it didn't turn out the best.
I sort of commented on a similar vein to my partner just this afternoon. I was doing Mr Hand's gig for the 2 brazilian intelligence agents. I was sneaking into the musuem, and 2 of the scavs were talking while I was prowling and trying to set them up. One says something that clearly indicates they are there looking for a female. At first I was wondering if somehow V was being set up. However after the boss fight, the boos drops a shard that details his task to kill Katya. And I comment to my partner that it kinda drives me nuts that V doesn't actually react sometimes to things she sees. That V is going to go into this room and be totally surprised that there's a woman there instead of Marc Bana. V should be EXPECTING to meet Katya inside and not Bana.....And lo and behold that's exacty what happened. V goes in the room and is floored that it's not Bana there.
Yeah, one of the things that really draws me out of a game is when everything that happens, happens to me, or is connected to me, or i end up having to deal with.
The world does not revolve around me, i am merely the one whose story is being highlighted.
My favorite side quest experience (mightve been a gig) was when I went to find out what happened to (Julia?) for Muamar. Reading the shards I collected showed taht (Julia?) thought her sister and sisters husband were poisioning her, if you go through the computer in the basement you get to see orders for betahaloperidol, which my own out of game research told me, is used in schizophrenia treatment among a list of other conditions that explain perfectly why julia was trying to decapitate me when i found her. idk, it felt really awesome to feel like i stumbled across that extra information by chance.
I actually play Bethesda games for this. Picking up notes, seeing oddly-positioned corpses or objects, the random clutter in a person's locker which sorta tells you what they're about.
There is great many things I love about side content in CP77, but I just want to mention one line of quests in Watson, the ones available before Act 2. Cuz gradually, through the NCPD alerts, you can naturally get into few encounters with Tyger Claws, kill some baddies, sometimes rescue some people, but there is a whole series of missions concerning one Jotaro Shobo. All the lives his people took on his orders, all chances they thwart - a girl trying to get away from being prostitute's life in NC together with her sweetheart, a guy wanting out of his dealing with Claws and paying for it dearly, some poor dude butchered like a pig in a garage, with his sister (I think) trying to reach out to him, while he was already captured.
It's just a single, not necessary line of quests without anyone telling you to do them, but it slowly builds an image of absolutely disgusting animal who CAN NOT be left alive under any circumstances. And then you stumble upon the gig in Ho-Oh club set up by Regina and you know it's about taking Jotaro down and you remember those little encounters. And you do NOT take him alive. Not a single time.
I love this game for many little and big things, but you made me connect some neurons here. Thank you
I paid a lot of attention to the things going on with Jotaro simply because of the name. Very glad I always paid attention to those.
love your videos
9:07 "Someone set us up a bomb!" reference.
im glad that this game has been fixed, this is also my favourite open world and its so refreshing because it feels like every other open world is just an ongoing franchise
This is what I would have stumbled upon in previous Bethesda games , no wonder I got hooked with Cyberpunk.
Yea cyberpunk is becoming my favourite open world too. I adore red dead redemption’s world but this one is so rich.
*you’re not weird for that joy at all. It’s actually a dealbreaker for me when it comes to open world*
I see that V has a pressing appointment at 2:40. Share the wealth with the poor and needy of Jig Jig Street.
Personally I keep hoping to find more information about Li'l Bex and Annie Nox's rescue attempt that went so very badly wrong. The parallels with V & Judy's detective work intrigue me.
And my search for Eric Maldonado's bike shop guarantees the Valentinos a bad time as I peer into every corner of the Glen.
Dude... you're so fuckin right and i couldn't quite put my finger on what it was, but this is my favorite game, and thats a hugeeeee reason why