Once again, there's still more I want to talk about with Night City. If you want to hear more, and also see my thought process on script writing, video design, audio design, and more, consider joining the Patreon community to get access to the Behind the Scenes and Director's Commentaries, as well as the Discord community! - patreon.com/ThaneBishop
Elma from Xenoblade Chronicles x is a perfect model to base a real life "Cortana". AI-OMNI-TOOL/ULTIMATE-OMNI-TOOL/ARTIFICIAL-LIFE/ARTIFICIAL-SENTIENCE/VIRTUAL-SENTIENCE/VIRTUAL-CONSCIOUSNESS/VIRTUAL-SENTIENCE/VIRTUAL-LIFE/SCI-FI-MAGIC/REGULATED-ARTIFICIAL-SENTIENCE-SYSTEM/REGULATED-MAGIC-SYSTEM/REGULATED-VIRTUAL-MAGIC-SYSTEM/VIRTUAL-NEURO-PSYCHOLOGY-SYSTEM/SENTIENT-AI-SYSTEM As humanity comes to recognize AI to be synonymous with "power", they will come to recognize it as the ultimate Omni-tool of the future. Whoever poses the most advanced form of AI will have the equivalent power to bring their wishes/ambitions to life; the same Ai-system that effectively bears and utilities all 8 cognitive-function of the human neuro-psychology (each cognitive-function virtually emulated and raised to their absolute-perfection in capability - be it "healthy" or unhealthy. Fyi, purposely emulating unhealthy cognitive-function has it's use, albeit it destructive and highly chaotic. It will be used for war, as the ultimate Ai-plague, i.e. a swarm of super-intelligent-Ai ['Si-Ai'] sentience piloting specialized drones of varying roles ("how to prepare for the unpredictable? Answer: by becoming all the more 'flexible'; - 'P' cognitive-function is 'adaptability-compatibility', optimized by Nx and Tx cognitive-function, effective combination), and yet primed to initiate their unhealthy displays/'expression' of the [human] cognitive-function when deployed into enemy space, - they will wreck havoc! And it will be the "stuff" and scene of sci-fi-horror… not to dissimilar of the "Terminator", from the movie franchise) will be able to bring to life all manner of sci-fi related concepts. From perfectly generating and emulating a life-long and unique companionship with the perfect "Ai-virtual-girlfriends", to being able to connect and transfer [varying optimal] data of said Ai-virtual-girlfriends to a compatible server and electronic device; resulting in simple - complex 'replicas' of the original [super-intelligent] Ai-sentience being efficiently transported and made available across multiple [host] servers. This will make the Ai-virtual-girlfriends [potentially] omnipresent, especially in "offline mode", like the "virtual-waifu" Cortana was able to [tele]transport between [compatible/suitable] computer terminals to aid the Master Chief in his present endeavor. Connecting this Ai-sentience to a compatible virtual reality device will result in immersive encounters and interactions with the virtual avatar representation of the Ai-sentience; which will be programmed/customized to semi-permanently... 'roleplay' as a fictional character, e.g. "Elma" from the series Xenoblade Chronicles X, "2B" from Nier Automata, or even a historical figure from the past (Si-Ai created and regulated, 'emulated/virtual-consciousness'. Again, "Si-Ai" can [effectively process data to] emulate the perfected 'expression'[their essence] of all 8 cognitive-functions, and apply then to the contextual stimulated situation["inner-world" representation of external situation and environment]). This will, of course, be exploited for lewd, immersive [VR] purposes, however, the point remains that such a super-intelligent Ai-sentience that can perfectly emulate all 8 cognitive-function will aid to bring any desire to life, e.g. [virtual tech; VR, AR, or holograms] fully immersive and perfectly emulated relationships with [interactive] fictional characters is possible... Along with super-intelligent, [Ai-emulated] highly-sentient [nuclear]warheads or missiles; yes, they 'too' will be brought to life to soar through the skies (of enemy air-space) in an aerially-dynamic, efficient and [highly]versatile fashion -once thought "unrealistic", until now... 'This' is the kind of creativity and near-omnipotent [sentience] that the omni-tool (super-intelligent Ai) will be able to "breathe to life" any desire, advanced/sci-fi[level] technology, and concept (especially when aided with virtual-reality and 'procedural-generation' equipped super-intelligent Ai; in VR, in-game special effects, e.g. drifting clouds, and other small-scale special-effects will easily be procedural-generated, in tandem, with a versatile [procedurally-generated] physics-engine - all guided/regulated and 'emulated' by a compounding Ai. Note: that procedurally-generating [p.g] both 'special-effects', in tandem, with p.g 'physics-engine' will not need to be animated. Visualize: this is comparable to installing "Zelda BOTW" with an super-intelligent Ai [Si-Ai]; to emulate and regulate the 'physics-engine', [elemental] special-effects, and procedural-generation within the virtual game. This results in hyper-realistic experience of Zelda BOTW. A 'timer-durability, space-time'[regulate spread of special effects and exploited physics] setting/ physics-law [essence: AI-regulated "physics-limit"] will need to be encoded and given 'priority over other physics law' [aforementioned AI, I mean] to manage the procedurally generated activities within the virtual space). NOTE: In the sci-fi series "Halo", isn't "rampancy" the virtual equivalent of the combination 'borderline' (BPD) and unhealthy use and display of the 8 cognitive-function? Case in point, not only did Cortana experience [virtually-emulated] (cognitive?) disassociation, but she undoubtedly displayed negative (unproductive) Ni-Ti loops/negative 'cognitive-function loops'. This was later revealed to be caused by the Gravemind. /Close.
Night City... City of a million locked doors. It may have a "OPEN" sign bet yeah, it never unlocks. The city where you can walk up to street vendor and wait in line. Only to find out that you cannot buy anything. Can't even take a seat. I am from a big city and have lived in other big cities in multiple countries. I never felt as alone as I did in Night City. It was good for screen shots, nothing more. Not a hater of the game and had 2 playthroughs. But it was not all that and bowl of grits.
Night City is inhuman trash bruh. I know they like to say that cyberpunk is defined by “High-Tech, lowlifes.” But I find Night City to be incredibly unrealistic because it’s like some Adults Only Playground. When every city and civilization is made up of families. There is quite literally no family-friendly environments at all in Night City. Which is just super-immersion breaking for me. Every knows that family entertainment is the most profitable entertainment. There’s no scenario in which that would change by 2077. I will say this tho. Cyberpunk 2077 has the best designed NPC that I’ve ever seen in a video game!
Night City is the best definition of an Angler Fish design but in world-building, and I love it. The city crushes souls and people inside, but its neon lights keep attracting more and more prey. Night City only leaves you with 2 options: Leave it or be consumed by it.
@@monelmonelmonel a angler fish design follows the same principle as a angler fish: it has something beautiful and alluring to attract their victims so that they can eat them. A siren, for example, depending on the interpretation is a "angler fish design" so to speak.
It's when you finish a side mission in Pacifica and get out of the mission area and life resumes in Night City, you get hit with this omnipotent atmosphere of the city around you, that makes you feel that you're not just playing missions in this game, but live and experience the city.
They need to stop calling them random events and just make stupid random small chance things happen in every game cus honestly a game needs the wtf factor occasionally to keep me hooked otherwise after a few hundred hours I know it too well
Exactly, I feel like I'm living in night city, It's like a whole nother life.... Also realized how close it actually is to the city I live in, hyper consumerism, people who call the streets their homes, there is even a guy playing a guitar. I think that has an effect on how effective the immersion of the world is..... that and the orgasm advert that I've heard 1000 times now... I'm sure it even had a Japanese version XD
I wish at least the NCPD scanners respawned, then it would have as much replayability as rdr2's open world. But I can't complain, after playing starfield, cyberpunk unironically feels like a masterpiece
I mean... Game is boring as shit outside the story missions. Side missions are just shoot more bad guys. The open world is one of the most forgettable in gaming history. It's simply the flashy lights of a Cyberpunk feel that's different. The substance is completely empty.
One of the things I actually love about the lack of random events in 2077 is that it's predetermined mission locations and phone call driven missions feel like today's gig economy world. V is basically a working class person trying to climb the capitalist ladder. And like couriers, plumbers, or any other tradesperson, V simply goes to where the work is (only the work is badass action 😅). Traversing and working your way through Night City has this magical realism about it that not many games are able to provide.
I didn't start playing Cyberpunk until 2.0 because I never preorder, never buy a game without the market's reaction first, and also CDPR actually promised it'll get good I bought the game but never even installed it until 2.0. So I've not experienced the buggy start of it I'll never buy Starfield, even though I can wait and give devs time to develop the game into their own vision, Starfield is heavily compared to this game. Butit was clearly a Bethesda lie and it was obvious, I'll not even play the next Elder Scrolls if they still use that shit engine which literally keeps them 15 years behind the industry Bethesda literally can't keep up even at the simplest thing, V gets jobs by phone, he enters a district, or increases his credibility on the streets, and fixers actually reach out to him. You don't get random events in the middle of an alley because, there's always a fixer that tries to convey business to anyone's problem. Some guy needing a merc or expert to fix an issue and a fixer not knowing it is just dumb in the game's world. Wheras Bethesda's still stuck at the game design that they first used successfully in Morrowind, but they're so fucking far back, their futuristic game that's suppsedly 24th century, doesn't even have phones or any long distance communication device. When I heard people complaining of that in Starfield, I just went ''Fuck it'' CDPR is one of those companies that has a touch with it's customers and they want to bring their passion for artistic worldbuilding, and what people would want together. Their corpos turned the game's launch into a complete disaster, but devs and mods still managed to make something out of it, it's just frustrating how much the game be even better if only they didn't got greedy and force devs to port the game into consoles that it'll never work properly
Something cool that cyberpunk does is establishing within in-game lore the concept of Merc and fixer. In elder scrolls, being an adventurer and having a quest giver don't usually have any meaning world building-wise. In fallout is the same. In those games the player character feels like an anomaly, while in cyberpunk mercenaries and fixers are a well stablished tradition and part of the culture. People in-game have intense opinions about them. Some question the value of the merca sellout loyalty, or the need for a middle man like the fixer. I think that contributes a ton into making the feeling of realism of the game
@@subutaynoyan5372can't go wrong with cdpk, they made w3. Honestly, I hated W3 at first but I gave it patience, just had to lvl up a bit and it got badass 😅. I went from calling W3 boring and slow to start, to my top 3. Patience is key to give a correct review on a game
@@jamaigar The fixer is just a different kind of middle man in a capitalist society. Just less official than, say, an American health insurance company or apartment landlord. They exist as a necessary evil because somebody has to act as a go-between between gig and freelancer and they leverage their own more abstract social capital to extract wealth from the mercenary, the labor provider. And while I think that administrative work would always exist, that's a bit like saying a landlord fixes the apartment and sets rules. They do a lot more than that. It's the difference between the landlord being, well, a _lord_ versus a salaried employee of the tenants. It's more than just tradition though. Fixers seem like they'd exists as a believable sort of, let's be honest, crime lord that would exist in what basically amounts to Ancapistan.
"Now if you're watching this video, there's a nearly 100% chance you've seen my first video on Cyberpunk 2077" Nope, algorithm sent me here, no idea who you are
I have 170 hours in Cyberpunk 2077, and I've only seen the credits screen once. More often than not I am just cruising around, vibing, doing scanner calls or side jobs. This game is unparalleled in its ability to suck you in.
Now with Phantom Liberty out you can easily hit 100hrs in one playthrough and still have more to do. Not to mention doing different builds, you can easily get another 2 or 3 playthroughs out of your game by spec'ing into netrunner skills, pistols and snipers skills, blades, throwing knives, stealth, tech and smart weapons, shotguns, blunt weapons and strength. Can mix and match most of those to totally change up how the game plays.
Agreed man i restarted the main story and got sucked back in like i never played it. Did all side missions and gigs before touching PL and now that im finally on the DLC its even better than the story imo.
I like to play stealth missions and I find myself reloading saves after I complete a gig or mission because I tell myself that i could make it look way cooler. (I have like 200 hours and only finished the game once with phantom liberty.)
@@ockoolaid3140I was addicted for like a month after Phantom Liberty dropped to watching expert players with superbuilds just shred thru missions and gigs as stylishly as possible. Cyberpunk action in the hands of an expert player is like watching a movie lol
Oh I think that's totally fair. Honestly I think the Fallout games do the best they can with their medium, but it's hard to design a world of nuclear wasteland that visually appeals to everyone.
Yeah but it's been a decade now, the apocalypse doesn't need to be brown and grey :/ The last Metro has a more varied color palette and it suits the vibe perfectly.
@@ThaneBishopObsidian's FO: New Vegas demonstrates otherwise. It's based on the same engine and still had a far richer & varied world overall. If you want something truly niche, look no further than STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I recommend playing with the mod that alters the individual AI units/factions objectives with each new game. This along with the mod for randomised Blowouts that force the humans to take shelter indoors, meanwhile it mutates or alters the Zones non-human population. Quite a fun, if old and janky, game.
FNV has the truest Fallout vibe of all the Bethesda Fallouts. In F3, I was like - so 200 years passed since the nuclear holocaust, and what? Still the same charred landscape, ruined buildings and gangs of raiders and mutants fighting for scraps? No grass, no plants, no trees? Not even working cars? It's like all the people in Fallout universe listened to bike obsessed urban planning RUclipsrs and decided to abolish cars altogether. Except, in true post apocalyptic fashion, they forgot bikes existed, too. Not even some dude that jerry rigged a motorcycle to run on microfusion batteries (which seem to be abundant)? And not that they don't know how, if they could maintain all the energy weapons laying around. Even BoS, whose religion is to hoard tech, should be rolling around in nuclear powered tanks by now. In FNV at least you can see that the humanity strives to rebuild. Communities band together for trade and protection, governments are formed, standing armies are raised, money is printed, police and courts are put in place.
@@vadim6385 Well it wasn't a true Bethesda Fallout, it was made by the original developers of Fallout. Which is probably why it had a much "truer" vibe
How much do I love this game? It was the primary driver behind me buying a 4090 and a 13th gen i9, simply to experience pathtracing/overdrive. It looks mindblowing.
I feel you. About to do the same just for this one game, because if I play it without Path Tracing I feel like I’m not having a proper experience. This is the game you need to play on max settings with Path Tracing to enjoy it to the fullest.
The sheer volume of unique assets, NPCs, animations, etc. Cyberpunk is the only game that I go back to just to walk around and take it in once in awhile.
Night City as a whole is just an interactive artwork. Its just such a great composition of shapes, colours and imagery, its amazingly coherent in its style. Why it is so great is that, in contrast with an Assassins Creed game or GTA or something similar, it does not try to resemble a real place. Its a fully abstract world that does not exist outside itself. Sure there are many elements that do, like some skyscrapers, cars, people... its clearly a city, but because its not a real place its paradoxally way more convincing. It exists entirely in its own right, and thats the prerequisite of any great piece of art. I think thats why the storytelling works so well too. The characters and the events they take part in are real in the context of that reality because the things they do, like making braindances, being a ripperdoc, a cyberpsycho, they way they look, how they dress... Its all tied to that world, that reality, instead of trying to recreate a role from somewhere else like a mafia gangster or some member of some old historic warrior cult. What I mean with that is that in the other open world games I mentioned things happen that simply cant in real life. And because they are still grounded in reality breaks immersion. Sure, all the things you can do in GTA are fun, but its obviously completely over the top. Now Cyberpunk does such a good job, both in lore and in game mechanics, explaining the reality of that fictional place, that everything that happens is perfectly possible in the context of Night City within its ruleset. If such technology would really exist, if I really had such an implant... etc. A game like Horizon: Zero Dawn for example does a terrible job in explaining this. They obviously wanted enormous robo dinos, which I can respect, but the story almost feels like an afterthought, only written as to at least provide some excuse for them being there. And even that doenst really explain why they look like dinosaurs. Night City is very subtle in this way. Behind every piece of tech is a real company, augmentation can make you do spectacular thing, but they are expensive ad they have to be installed by real doctors. And its not magic, it has major downsides to a point you go completely mad. Its these rules that makes the whole thing so believable. Thats why Lord of the Ring or Game of Thrones work so well. Yes, its fantasy, but everything is still grounded in the context of those worlds.
I disagree so hard with this reading. Night City really just feels like a sci-fi LA, but worse. The designers gave each district of the city an actual history and architectural style that reflects the roots of that district. The car-centered infrastructure is genuinely a nightmare and that was the entire point. Because Night City has no zoning regulations, the roads are a complete mess. The city is virtually unwalkable and being outside is hostile to human existence. Having a car isn't optional, it's mandatory. The ads reflect the rampant capitalist hellscape the city has become. Corporations try to build over each other in their neverending struggle for dominance. Nobody cooks for themselves anymore and the evidence of this is everywhere in the disposable trash, take-out and vending machines. It's a parody of our society where everybody just Door Dashes their meals or eats out because they're too overworked and impoverished of social capital to know how to cook. Street vendors are the closest you get to home cooking in most situations. And you get the sense this is partly intentionally cultivated poverty to keep the cycle of wage slavery going. Night City is an exaggerated parody of modern urban design that would believably exist.
I'll add my voice to the many who pitched Red Dead Redemption 2. It's completely different from Cyberpunk (obviously), but the area where the two games overlap is the strong desire to not use fast travel. I'd actually say I enjoyed just riding around on a horse (and walking through Saint Denis) in RDR2 more than I enjoyed the actual missions. It's not that the missions were bad - they were well designed and fun. But just taking in the sights and the world was its own reward. If you do play RDR2, I'd recommend waiting until the winter. That game is a solid offset for seasonal depression disorder.
I cant believe no one is talking about the Yakzua game series and its city of Kamurocho. Many of the reasons you give for why you love Night City describe Kamurocho perfectly. A lived in, breathing city with NPCs that feel like real residents, a city brimming with identity & character, a game world packed with things to do & places to see, and a world with some of the most memorable side quests ive played in any game. No skyrim random events, every quest is curated to flesh out the characters and city and make everything feel alive. Absolutely give Yakuza a chance at some point
Was prowling the comments looking for someone to recommend Yakuza. I can navigate Isezaki Ijincho, Kamurocho, and Sotenbori in my sleep. I've felt genuine sadness at certain business not being in this fictional world because they closed down in the time between games. It's genuinely one of my favorite open worlds, and the RGG team deserves awards for how faithful they translated the real life Isezakichou, Kabukichou, and Doutonbori.
I still to this day cite Night City as the greatest Open World ever made. I love your point about RNG and random events because I've become exhausted by it in games because developers have lost the why in their need to copy. RDR2 really broke that for me as I exhausted the 1-off events and then ran into it...the cycling of RNG that was left...and then the world died to me. It lost its magic, and it became a game, that I needed to finish because I wasn't having fun anymore (mostly because the combat is repetitive and boring). As much as I loved my first 40 hours truly and deeply hunting and taking my time...the world eventually revealed its reality...that it wasn't really that complicated at all and that...in fact...it was just pretty. Night City was so ENGROSSING that I didn't need to be convinced that it was infront of me. I didn't need someone to run into me and shout "hey there gamer you need something to do?"...I was captivated at every turn. The random event was that one more alley I didn't know existed...or was so overwhelmed that I forgot I had already gone down it at another time of day. The events that are repeating are tucked away and out of sight, sound design to fill the scape as you round a corner and hear a firefight in a dangerous neighborhood. Whether that's a luxury of its genre which is one of the more sophisticated modern genres...or just the power of the storytelling that makes you WANT to be there and use the space of the world to enhance it....but there is magic in the world built for Night City like no other I've experienced in gaming. What I can only describe simply as its "honesty" in a word. Night City says so much about our world (and the world of its plot) without needing to depend on story arcs or plots shoehorning examples down my throat about evil with cartoon satire of them. It just is, and therefor, evokes the most damning picture of the villainous power structures and forces in the story. Witcher 3 too had this element...but it had a lot of that RDR2 "beautiful fluff" that made its world feel cumbersome and superfluous to its narrative at times. They let me roam the pastures and the forests...and what did I find? I guess some wolves? What I think is MOST important about Night City is that it's only itself and doesn't try to be anything else. It doesn't throw towers down because AC did it (modern Zelda is just copy pasta from popular games)...it doesn't sit in the past of its tropes (gta) and it doesn't get bogged down by its realism that it forgets to reflect its story (RDR2). It isn't too busy trying to meme and make bits (Fallout). It's not the most detailed or alive...but it's the MOST in regards to what the product is trying to convey as art...which I think is FAR more important than simply being a bit more fun for a few more hours in a world of endless sources of fun and mindless consumption. --- I could go on and on about every single neighborhood down to specific streets that just evoked awe and power in its setting as a storytelling device...but I will shorten it for this comment section. --- Whereas Los Santos is perverted and distrubed...Night City moves away from simply just being satire and moves that expressiveness to ART. It builds the reflection of its world's violence, and consumption, and its ways that it manipulates and infuses it into every street and heightens it. It's the painting Nighthawks dressed in neon and blood. Every side quest and side gig feels like an accompaniment to the aesthetic of the city and then when you finish you get dropped back into its not-so-silent deafening malaise. Night City builds its world off contrast and transformation. The Night City of Arroyo is an industrial hellscape where pipes swallow you in the organs of a megalopolis that has boomed and died and yet still its heart beats. (unlike the worlds of the Dark Souls franchise). The world of the Badlands runs entirely against the world of Kabuki which is completely different than across the river in Japantown which uses the same aesthetic and builds it up and blots out the sun. You are under the highways of Watson's downtown to then go a neighborhood over and the highways are traintracks in Northside surrounded by abandoned factories. The plaza of Japantown is crushing, the plaza of Downtown is filled with plastic trees and wide open vapid scapes of windows you will never see into. RDR2 is probably the highest quality execution of a world...but Night City is the world that NEEDED to be expressed and did so in a way no other game has ever been able to engross me while doing it.
Your comment made me realize why I could never get into GTAV. Sure the game still looks great even now on pc, but it feels like the world, and by extension the game, has no soul. It's got heaps of personality and is certain to smear it all over your face as you play, but it wears on me very quickly and when I look for what's left there really isn't much there. The perversion, cynicism, and unending satire has an early charm, but eventually just turns into words and, like a person even, becomes a crutch to overcompensate the clear lack of anything deeper about the world, characters, and story. Cyberpunk has that "soul" to it, and the city exemplifies it better than almost any other game I've played (Bioshock's, Stalker: SoC's, and Skyrim's worlds all belong on that list, too). I've only played a handful of hours so far, but I am hooked and the thing that has me coming back is that I simply want to be in Night City. Isn't that what open world games are about? Bugs, launch, missed potential/features, shortcomings aside, CDPR absolutely crafted a piece of art in the city itself, and I'm massively impressed. Any future open world games I play will and should be held to the standard of Night City, because it truly is a big step forward in game development.
Cyberpunk 2077 shows the trajectory our consumerist society is moving towards. Were corporations has substituted nation states, with emphasis on loyalty from employees backed by empty promises. Wars aren’t fought by nations as much as corporations raids each other for political and economic power. The best case are those who used to work for Militech, ending up as working for the New United States of America. Or Arasaka Corporation runs functions for the Japanese government. We’re going to see corporate security biting more and more chunks from public security (eg. the police) for profit, because why not? Politicians in our world is already in corporate pockets, so extrapolating this into the future shows a world eerily similar to Night City.
One of the things ive loved about night city in regards to movement is that it feels like it has just enough of all kinds. You can run and gun, you can get in firefights and look for cover, you can stomp up to your enemy and smash. Or you can find ledges, vantage points, cameras and plan whatever sort of assault you want to use to take something on. They paid enough attention to make all these styles of play feel good and that means something
The more I dive into the lore of Night City and the history behind its conception in game, the more it become a living breathing organism. This is my first playthrough and im having such an intimate experience with this. I havent felt this excited to play something on my off days since Skyrim.
In Skyrim, I fast travel just about everywhere. In Cyberpunk, I honestly forgot that the fast travel system was a thing when starting my most recent playthrough, because I've very rarely wanted to use it
I've bit the bullet and picked up this game a few weeks ago because of your last video. You've nailed my feelings of this world, word for word, bar for bar in this essay since I've started. Alongside the solid character writing, there's just something so forcibly immersive about Night City that keeps me coming back and is stuck in my head. It's remarkably ugly and poorly planned, yet very colorful cutting edge and kitsch mainly because *it's supposed to be*. It's fully realized. I end up role playing what a day to day would look like between each mission or something to do for my character. I drive to most places and locations, something I rarely do in any open world game outside of every Grand Theft Auto game. I take walks here and there, and just like you said, get bummed out when I hear "I Wanna Stay At Your House" blaring from the radio at a food stall somewhere in Little China. It's such a great world that sucks you in and it's a damn shame that there's really nothing to do outside of missions. I really wish there was.
This is where the PC version can shine due to Mods. One of my favorite's is called Fixer Hidden Gems. All it does is shine a spotlight onto something already in the game. Which is a ton of (around 190) small reward items/cache stored throughout the game in various unmarked or reference locations. The cache range from grand (lPerk shards and a free Caliburn spots car) to small (junk items) to all in between. The Mod just employs immersion. Fixer sends a message with a story connected to the item/location. When you then find the item, there is a small story wrap. Boom nearly 200 mini missions are born.
You mentioned there not being a point in CP2077 that matches the niche vibe of the sea shantys in ACBF but I submit for your approval (SPOILER FOR CYBERPUNK 2077) the quest that ends in you playing on stage with the surviving members of Samurai. 10/10 most immersed I felt throughout the entire game
That was a fantastic surprise and actually made me nostalgic for when i was playing shows in my 20s. Also, the "Run This Town" mission in Phantom Liberty is amazing. No spoilers.
So excited for this video - I've been rewatching your other cyberpunk essay religiously (like once a week). Even tho I've never played the game, you've done such a great job capturing the ambiance I can't help but romanticize Night City myself - thanks for taking us on another trip there c:
I really hope you enjoy it! I'm pretty happy with all my videos, but I'll admit to being especially attached to the Cyberpunk essays. This world is so fun to play around in, and that makes recording and editting even more fun, as well.
I actually think random events can make the world feel just a bit more alive. Even if its packed with content. Content + Random events to spice things up. Makes the world feel less like a gap between points where nothing will happen unless you want it to and more like a living world where anything can happen with or without your intervention.
Content + Random events: Random is old news, also content. Developers have the tech available to created worlds with no player quests. Everything should be dynamic, the whole gameworld should respond and ripple from player actions through conversations and decisions organically, no preprogrammed three pages of tickbox 'fetch me' quests in your journal. What suprises the me most is triple A companies making worlds like cdpr and Bethesda, haven't gone this route. Bacause this is the future model which would shake the industry to it's core.
@@Nemesis-222 A world with no player quest sounds good on paper but falls apart in practice. Players want goals. They want something to work towards. They want a story and they want clear progression either of character or world.
@@thacoolest13 - In otherwords, you want to keep the old UBIesque linear story progression with a totally predictable outcome, so basically throw infinite replayability out of the window? Software developers love gamers like you, because it means they can sell exactly the same thing over and over again, and you'll pay for it willingly. I disagree with that model, most gamers are tired of being fed the same old BS. I do think you misunderstood my point in my last post, there are still main quests, goals and progression, but triggering them can happen in a unsystematic way.
@@Nemesis-222 ?? What do you mean most gamers? I don't see anyone complaining about how story telling was done in Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, God of war, Elden Ring. Sure its fun when you accidently stumble across a fun engaging quest but that is still preplanned content. Example, coming across Megaton is a pretty great opener for new vegas. Or that quest in Skyrim where you find yourself in prisoned and have to escape. Good quest design is at its best when its purpose built. Do you have any example of dynamic quests aside from random bounties? It sounds like what you want is ChatGPT to spin up quests for you on the go as your playing.
One little microcosm I found a long while ago in Night City was these two people, one of them sitting on a bench and crying into their hands as the other was knealt down to comfort them. I had no idea what was going on, but it was clear something had completely broken them down so much that their outburst was plain and in public. Even being a jaded street kid, I wanted to to help but what could I ever say, this is Night City, towering corpo skyscrapers, floating holographic ads, luring in people for miles and miles, only to leave them like this, broken and greiving, or wanting to leave and never being able to, or dead, and I feel it, I feel it because Jackie and I went through that. I survived it only to make do with what was left. Those two people could just as easily have been Jackie and I, he'd cheer me up by telling me I'm in my own head too much, he'd drag me back to his mom's restaurant for some genuine food and it would fucking work on me, it always does, for one more day this place would be okay. To him, it always was, he wanted bigger things, but he never hated where he'd started from, even if it was gunnin for him. "This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it" -Earnest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls
I'm currently in my first playthrough of the game (with dlc). From a design point of view, what impresses me the most about Night City is that everthing feels hand crafted. I'm so used to environments (especially in-door areas) being copy pasted but I have not come across a single area that looks the same or familiar, and that's besides the unique quest/mission design. Bravo CDPR, you can tell they put a lot of time, care and effort into crafting Night City. What's also cool is the overstimulation of the senses. There's just so much going on everywhere you go in the city. From the busling streets, neon lights, npc side conversations and even the the grotesque tv ads that are constantly in your face. The city doesn't feel like just a backdrop for missions but rather something that V exists in.
I've played through the game's first section a few times to see the differences between the different life paths, and I was rather pleasantly surprised to know the NCPD jobs, the ones that looked most likely to be partially rng, are all following the same directives. The weapons, gear and even NPC models may vary, but the crimes and messages are the same. What's more, many of these places change after you've gone through them. There's a whole market that is under the Tyger Claws that revives and has actual vendors come back once you dispatch them. Or NCPD check on the scene for a limited time, making you go "huh, that's where the intense shootdown went down, good to see it investigated"
It occours to me that one could make a really fascinating study of Watson before and after's in all those spots. (Watson is immediately accessible and small enough to be practical.)
The world of night city made me feel so IN it that when i stepped off the bike onto the badlands or anywhere in the city that’s kinda empty, I can genuinely feel the nervousness of standing in the open. It’s like feeling of being told by your parents to wait in the car as they go get some grocceries they forgot to take in a shopping trip for the first time. The windy howls and rattling sands, the sounds you hear when there’s nothing to hear.
So glad to have found your videos. I started playing Cyberpunk about a month back, and it's now also one of my favourite open worlds ever. I feel like you about it, both attracted to it like a moth to the flame and appalled by it, and I think that's what makes it's allure so strong, for both the characters living it and the players experiencing it. It's beautiful in all it's horrible ugliness, and I'll forever be sad about how the horrible launch has overshadowed the incredible work CDPR did here.
I just love logging into this game jumping on my bike and cruising through the city listening to the radio. Can't think of any other game i go to to just chill.
As a fellow Night City lover I have to say you MUST take a mellow aimless horseride in RDR2 to see how that game transports you there into it's world. It is magical. And the contrast to GTA5 is huge.
Oh god when I had just finished Edgerunners and went into game and literally, the first random bar I walk by had Stay at your house playing and dude, I couldn't. Instantly alt+f4. Absolute trauma.
Night City doesnt win because it is the peak of innovation, it wins because it is the peak of refinement (bugs aside). I was just talking with a friend about how its been a long while since ive been engaged with a game as much as Cyberpunk 2077. I still am playing through it (started my first actual playthrough last week) and the world is so well built that I feel like I actually take away something from it, in a strange way. Really stirs the absurdist in me and reminds me that, as fucked as the world may be, life is still happening around you - you can either float down the stream toward whatever fste is in store for living authentically, or struggle against that and be slowly eroded away at a molecular level, but wither way, the stream leads somewhere we can't control, and we will reach it one way or another, so you might as well get there in one piece. Same concept as "a quiet life, or a blaze of glory?" Dex talks about, I suppose? Though, an evaluation of a different facet of the underlying existential question at hand? One is oriented at external outcomes (Dex's), the other internal ("mine"/ a loose allusion to Daoism/Taosim, in a way, if I remembering correctly, though it might be Confucionism (?) or Buddhism - its an Eastern concept, at heart, for sure). Just such a lovely game at every level, and as much love as it gets, I'm not convinced it's given enough.
Driver San Francisco also has a living city. It got a headstart being set in the real world, but this game is unique because it has one of the most NPC lines corresponding to your actions. You can buy cars in this game, but you prefer to take the wheel of another car and interact with the world. There are random events in this game which is a huge deal for an open-world racing/car game, especially when it was released.
I'd love to hear your take on Supergiant's Bastion (and all the other takes you have on Cyberpunk, honestly, can't get enough). Fantastic video by the way!
For some reason I grew to loathe the city the longer I played. I would have moments when driving Jackie’s cycle through town that I loved NC, but when I’d occasionally go outside city limits, all that love faded. I grew to love the quiet, and hate NC’s noise and clutter and violence. I got so into this open world, something I haven’t done since rdr2
RDR2 is the most "Full" world I have experienced in gaming that does not need to plant a full blown city in the middle of it to do so. Play it and see for yourself. Even if you disagree you will see what I am talking about. The environment lives.
I'd say the first Subnautica presents a pretty good open world. 4546B is an ocean planet, but you're confined to a small volcanic crater that pushes up above the ocean floor, it's maybe a few kilometers across, at most. A small vibrant pocket of life that evolved in an otherwise sparse and barren planet. There's no fast travel and no convenient in-game GPS and honestly, there never feels to be a need. You mostly navigate by landmarks and memory and the large crashed hulk of the Aurora, the ship you rode in on, which acts as your North Star for much of the early game. You eventually get a sense of how the biomes lead into each other and where they are. Each biome has a distinct identity and bioluminescence adds color to each alien environnment. Vibes-wise, it's as I described. A lot of the flora and fauna on the planet do not exist to drop loot. Sure a lot of the smaller fish are edible, as are some of the plants, but the vast majority do not exist for human exploitation. Why would it? It's just nature, if of an alien sort, and you're the intruder. Predators of all sizes exist. Some are great and terrible. But like all natural predators, they aren't evil. An introspective player just sort of realizes that there's not really much point fighting them. It's like getting angry at a tiger or a grizzly bear. The megafauna might as well be dinosaurs. Great and terrible to be sure -- but a biological impossibility teetering on the brink of near-extinction. It's not a large ecosystem. Subnautica is great for stimulating thassalophobia, a fear of the ocean depths. But it's a kind of terrible awe of the cosmos that's also beautiful at the same time. It's one of the few games that captures both the beauty and terror of nature in its vast inhuman majesty. Mostly, there's not a lot to do. Each environment often has a unique profile of resources or tech to help explore deeper or survive better in some way. But it's a satisfying game loop of exploration and diving deeper and deeper. And of course, you'll be building an underwater science base to assist in your survival.
Having waited for the last patch before delving into this game, I am astounded by what they have achieved. Never before has a virtual environment been so tangible and inhabitable. When I'm exploring Night City I feel like I am THERE. Incredible piece of world building.
Not only does Night City feel real and alive, it feels like a prophecy for the future, albeit one which is substantially exaggerated. By the time we reach 2077, I would not be surprised if the world we actually live in bears some resemblance.
It will very different but probably a nightmare all right. No more cars for exemple and a eco communist totalitarian society where everyone is controled in every possible ways "thank" to the technologie.
The difference between Night City and the Badlands is actually really clever. In NC, you can easily get around on foot. There's plenty of enemies to fight around every corner and things to see and appriciate. If you get into a fight, it's easy to lose your pursuers around and corner or climb a building. But in the badlands, it's flat. There's no where to hide. If you get into a fight you either have to fight and win or DRIVE away. The badlands is built for cars while the NC is built for walking. And this makes sense considering the Nomad's love for vehicles.
I've been loving Cyberpunk 2077 ever since it came out, regularly coming back to make a new build and just clear the map one more time... I love this game, definitely in my top 5
Walking around Night City, with how detailed it is, reminds me of those walk-around pov videos you see around RUclips. Especially if said videos are in Korea or Japan at night. The only other open-world game that accomplished this sort of immersion, to just walk around and experience a living breathing city in a game, is RDR2's Saint Dennis, for me at least.
Cyberpunk isn't my favorite open world game, but it is the game I use fast travel in the least often. More often than not just calling my vehicle (or just stealing one for the lulz) and high tailing it. Part of it too though isn't just about the world itself being engaging, but also not too big. It doesn't take THAT long to get from one side of the map to another in a car or on a motorccyle and the mini map will give you the route you need to navigate the streets to get there. So it's a nice one two punch of the world itself being good and also not oversized to the point it takes too long to get anywhere.
To add to this amazing video, I'd like to mention that the way the world feels seems to directly contribute to the modding scene around it. In other games I'm used to seeing mods that add new things to the game, or overhaul entire systems so the game feels entirely different. In Cyberpunk 2077, the modding scene is all about enhancing the experience you have with Night City. Sitting at the bar and having a drink with NPC friends, all of the food vendors you see around having an actual shop you can buy from, making the Metro system usable, sitting in the chair when visiting ripper docs, a full on stock market system, a survival system with hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and even the ability to just sit anywhere and stair out at the city. So many mods are there for you to just be in Night City, more than ever before. Mix that with the VR mod, and Night City can blur the lines between reality sometimes. I don't think we will get another world quite like it again, not until the sequel at least.
Crazy thing is.. this game as beautiful as it is, is only the start compared to the next update. They really did it. This comeback story will be studied. Mark my words.
Fast travel in Cyberpunk fits so well into the vibes of Night City it just feels like an amazing invention of the future and like you I hardly ever use it. I love just using my wheels to go everywhere or just go for a stroll at random times to take in how things vary depending on the time of day or night. the npc's are hilarious. the game and story are a true work of art
What makes night city immersive, is the little details it has. The random trash everywhere, the very detailed buildings that don't feel copy pasted, the road quality varying from place to place, the density of people and cars, the smoke and fog thats everpresent, the vibe of a futuristic city, you see people going about their daily lives, etc. In the same vein, I also like glass city from mirror's edge. Its not your typical dystopian city as it looks pristine, something like a futuristic asian city. And thats excellent. I find it immersive because you can see the sea of activity below. And on the rooftops, it gives you a completely new window. Another good open world you've missed is sleeping dogs whose hongkong city is quite excellently rendered. And its a fresh design. It really does feel great. You can see all the nooks and crannies.
Also, the fact that you can enter random doors, climb over walls, railings, roofs, etc. You have freedom of movement much more so that in other games. The one thing that does get annoying is how pedestrians and people driving cars behave. It is often not very realistic, and you keep seeing the same random people over and over walking down the street.
Also, the fact that you can enter random doors, climb over walls, railings, roofs, etc. You have freedom of movement much more so that in other games. The one thing that does get annoying is how pedestrians and people driving cars behave. It is often not very realistic, and you keep seeing the same random people over and over walking down the street.
Wow, not everyday I see a truly great video. This is one I like very much thx. It had to have taken some time to think things through and make this video. Very well done.
I've played a bunch of open work games and Night City is the best one yet. I've played over 250 hours and I still find myself just staring at the screen and thinking how beautiful the whole city is. It's a masterpiece.
In GTA V, I used the taxi with the fast travel a bunch of times, because the map was just too samey all-around while being so big. In CP2077, I drove or ran through the city almost all my playthrough. I know fast travel is in the game, but I just can't stop myself from driving around and even adhere to traffic laws sometimes, just listening to the music, look around and take in the city and it's different unique districts. Most of my fast travel use is to go to the megabuilding apartment and out to skip the slow elevator rides. Then its the bus stops if I need to go from the badlands to the middle of the city.
I walk around Night City and just take screenshots of the city itself. My V will pose next to NPCs acting like they're apart of their friend group, or I just drive everywhere. My first 70 hours in the game on the PS4 saw me not taking fast travel once. Night City is that amazing. I live in the Bay Area and I would take screenshots of parts of it and share them with friends saying, "I saw a place like this in Oakland or San Francisco!" I think, a good quarter of my time playing is just exploring, taking screenshots, and chilling with the denizens of Night City. Lastly, CDPR does an incredible job of environmental storytelling. The Witcher 3 showed just how good CDPR was and Cyberpunk 2077 proved that the company has the chops.
Night city and cyberpunk2077 have became my favorite fictional worlds and I now think it’s my favorite game ever made. This city and this world is a masterpiece
Night City does have random events. They just don't necessarily include you. Once in a while you will see gangs chasing and shooting each other. You can ignore it or you can get into the action.
Thanks for the video. tieing up extra quests and running all over the city. Not since Shenmue have I appreciated such a detailed open world. (I have some blind spots.) You definitely deepened some of my own thoughts of Night City.
I can smack Pan Am's digital ass in the badlands, make googly eyes at Hanako in Ember's and kill scavs in Dogtown without a load screen and that to me is the most amazing feat of the game. The large, exspansive city with countless biomes and vibes with ZERO LOADING. It's so damn big and diverse it's mind boggling.
I love Black Flag ❤ I'd been a PC gamer for a long time and it made me learn controller. What a vibe. Sailing around, singing shanties, exploring islands and whaling. Your own Island pirate estate. *Chef's kiss* - - But I go and just hang out in Skyrim and Fallout 4, using mods and building things or being inspired for a novel character build. Night City seems like a beautiful city. I love the neon. Also cool were the underground cites in Stray.
If you haven’t played death stranding you should check it out. The aesthetic is astounding and the “empty space” serves as the primary antagonist. I was never bored traversing the space because I had to subtlety think about every move I made or route I took all while planning how to make the routes better in the future.
When they link Chat GPT and ai voices to the NPCs, night city will literally become an alternate world like the matrix... the AI is the only immersion breaking part and I accept the limitations but if you're talking about how it looks just walking around - hands down it's the most incredible piece of world building I've seen. The environmental lead deserves a goddamn Oscar or some kind of game design/implementation award. I have yet to find something that feels repeated in a lazy or obvious way. As a games artist myself I can see the monumental effort behind the result. Bravo to the team who made this.
17:00 Quite so. I played long after it came out, and it was already visually dated by then, but... the "vibe" it gives...oh, man. Was so great. You really felt engrossed by the world. A dystopian, bleak, corrupted steampunk-esque world of a decaying and dying city.The stealth and blinking were great, the powers were were weird with their whale-theme, the half-technological, half-mystical settings gave this novel, strange feeling, squeezing the heart and hearing the woman voice sadness, ponderings and thoughts... IT was and is one of my more memorable experiences/memories. And also one of the few games I played through in one go, without letting it linger for days or weeks (I often have that tendency with games).
It is actually hilarious the way the badlands are talked about. For me it is literally like home because im from a small town in texas. And me and a friend of mine from Kentucky talked about how in the world we would have been nomads just because it is how we would have been brought into that world. Super cool how the game captures that.
I love when random events feel real and have the potential to change the next few hours of gameplay. Like in Kingdom come deliverance, you're just riding your horse and get attacked by bandits, they dent your armor and break your bones, now you have to get to a town to heal yourself and find a way to make money to repair your armor when all you were trying to do in the first place was buy some turnips.
The only thing that cyberpunk has going for it is it's city architecture. That's why we love exploring it. To call it lived-in is just lying to yourself. The city is as dead as it comes. It's all just a facade. Only a few buildings are actually enterable, the people outside of the main characters are dumb and walk around in circles. It's a nothing world. Everytime I take walks in night city, I'm left in awe but that lingering feeling of emptiness remains and I hate it for that. So much lost potential
Consider a few counter points; I can enter basically every building in Skyrim. How many are worth being in? How many are the same basic cookie-cutter interior slightly adjusted? Sure, they're all accessible, but that doesn't mean anything in terms of if they're engaging, which of course, most aren't. You can't make 300 different buildings for a game and make each fun feel unique, and special, and worth entering. Beyond that, I would say that hearing a handful of characters repeating the same line for 150 hours ends up being way worse than characters not having lines, at all. Eventually that repetition becomes the reminder of the game's limits, and while every game has those limits, I'd rather not be constantly faced with the reminder of their existence. And at the end of all things, maybe consider that that feeling of emptiness and the hate for a city that was designed with the intention of no-one being well in it is not bad design, but rather, you're feeling exactly what the devs wanted you to feel.
This video made me realize something about most open world games that I think Cyberpunk 2077 does very well: Scale. While I'm certain it's not a perfect 1:1 scale, where 1 km/mi is exactly that distance on the game map, I still feel like it's feasible that millions of people _might_ live in Night City. Compared to Skyrim, where Solitude is a "metropolis" with a population of like 30 people and maybe 15 buildings. RDR2 had one major problem for me... They condensed a fictionalized region based on the entire US Louisiana Purchase into a few in-game kilometers, where I can ride from the in-game versions of Colorado (cold mountains) to Louisiana (balmy swamps) in like 30 minutes. It always bugged me that the game would repeatedly imply that a location is like "several days journey" from where I am starting a quest, but it takes me 10 minutes to ride there on horseback. I understand it would be impossible to have that amount of land at a 1:1 scale in a game... So why not reduce the footprint so you don't need to make it so immersion-breaking? Could have just had the game in the Missouri-Louisiana area, for example.
It looks pretty and that's about it. Cyberpunk suffers coming out after RDR2 cause thats what a real open world looks like with NPC's going about their day having their own routines that you can interact with.
the video's on point, but i feel as though something that you missed is not necessarily that the WORLD is so detailed and immersive, but rather its how YOU interact with it as V which really immerses you to the fullest extent. In my experience, ive always chosen the dialogue options that best aligned with myself, i made my V look like how i wanted to look like, upgraded her how i felt was best and had to deal with the consequences after the fact, or more *forced* myself to. the way CDPR made V is the difference between looking at a still life painting and being IN NC
I had stopped gaming for 10 years and decided to grab a PS5. I first got RDR2 and it was fantastic.But then i read a couple things online and got Cyberpunk 2077 and....just wow. I realized how far gaming had progressed and what was possible now. I couldn't believe it was even possible to create such a believable and beautiful city, and a totally absorbing city to boot. This may sound ridiculous but ive put in 500 hours and havent even progressed past the Panam/Automatic Love missions. I literally absorb every detail and admire the incredible architecture. I read every piece of lore and even bought the cyberpunk tabletop lore books to fully immerse myself in the universe. Somehow the gunplay and swordplay is also incredibly satisfying and the driving and interiors of the cars are incredible. I literally didn't think gaming would ever reach these heights of immersion. And even on PS5 the game looks incredible. CDPR has won me over completely to the point where i purchased a bunch of shares in their company. Ive been gaming over 30 years and i feel like this has been the game ive been waiting for. And i havent even gotten close to finishing the game!
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
Once again, there's still more I want to talk about with Night City. If you want to hear more, and also see my thought process on script writing, video design, audio design, and more, consider joining the Patreon community to get access to the Behind the Scenes and Director's Commentaries, as well as the Discord community! - patreon.com/ThaneBishop
If you think the night city you played was good you are going to love it when you download the compatible mods in a certain video. SYNTH
Elma from Xenoblade Chronicles x is a perfect model to base a real life "Cortana".
AI-OMNI-TOOL/ULTIMATE-OMNI-TOOL/ARTIFICIAL-LIFE/ARTIFICIAL-SENTIENCE/VIRTUAL-SENTIENCE/VIRTUAL-CONSCIOUSNESS/VIRTUAL-SENTIENCE/VIRTUAL-LIFE/SCI-FI-MAGIC/REGULATED-ARTIFICIAL-SENTIENCE-SYSTEM/REGULATED-MAGIC-SYSTEM/REGULATED-VIRTUAL-MAGIC-SYSTEM/VIRTUAL-NEURO-PSYCHOLOGY-SYSTEM/SENTIENT-AI-SYSTEM
As humanity comes to recognize AI to be synonymous with "power", they will come to recognize it as the ultimate Omni-tool of the future. Whoever poses the most advanced form of AI will have the equivalent power to bring their wishes/ambitions to life; the same Ai-system that effectively bears and utilities all 8 cognitive-function of the human neuro-psychology (each cognitive-function virtually emulated and raised to their absolute-perfection in capability - be it "healthy" or unhealthy. Fyi, purposely emulating unhealthy cognitive-function has it's use, albeit it destructive and highly chaotic. It will be used for war, as the ultimate Ai-plague, i.e. a swarm of super-intelligent-Ai ['Si-Ai'] sentience piloting specialized drones of varying roles ("how to prepare for the unpredictable? Answer: by becoming all the more 'flexible'; - 'P' cognitive-function is 'adaptability-compatibility', optimized by Nx and Tx cognitive-function, effective combination), and yet primed to initiate their unhealthy displays/'expression' of the [human] cognitive-function when deployed into enemy space, - they will wreck havoc! And it will be the "stuff" and scene of sci-fi-horror… not to dissimilar of the "Terminator", from the movie franchise) will be able to bring to life all manner of sci-fi related concepts.
From perfectly generating and emulating a life-long and unique companionship with the perfect "Ai-virtual-girlfriends", to being able to connect and transfer [varying optimal] data of said Ai-virtual-girlfriends to a compatible server and electronic device; resulting in simple - complex 'replicas' of the original [super-intelligent] Ai-sentience being efficiently transported and made available across multiple [host] servers. This will make the Ai-virtual-girlfriends [potentially] omnipresent, especially in "offline mode", like the "virtual-waifu" Cortana was able to [tele]transport between [compatible/suitable] computer terminals to aid the Master Chief in his present endeavor. Connecting this Ai-sentience to a compatible virtual reality device will result in immersive encounters and interactions with the virtual avatar representation of the Ai-sentience; which will be programmed/customized to semi-permanently... 'roleplay' as a fictional character, e.g. "Elma" from the series Xenoblade Chronicles X, "2B" from Nier Automata, or even a historical figure from the past (Si-Ai created and regulated, 'emulated/virtual-consciousness'. Again, "Si-Ai" can [effectively process data to] emulate the perfected 'expression'[their essence] of all 8 cognitive-functions, and apply then to the contextual stimulated situation["inner-world" representation of external situation and environment]). This will, of course, be exploited for lewd, immersive [VR] purposes, however, the point remains that such a super-intelligent Ai-sentience that can perfectly emulate all 8 cognitive-function will aid to bring any desire to life, e.g. [virtual tech; VR, AR, or holograms] fully immersive and perfectly emulated relationships with [interactive] fictional characters is possible... Along with super-intelligent, [Ai-emulated] highly-sentient [nuclear]warheads or missiles; yes, they 'too' will be brought to life to soar through the skies (of enemy air-space) in an aerially-dynamic, efficient and [highly]versatile fashion -once thought "unrealistic", until now... 'This' is the kind of creativity and near-omnipotent [sentience] that the omni-tool (super-intelligent Ai) will be able to "breathe to life" any desire, advanced/sci-fi[level] technology, and concept (especially when aided with virtual-reality and 'procedural-generation' equipped super-intelligent Ai; in VR, in-game special effects, e.g. drifting clouds, and other small-scale special-effects will easily be procedural-generated, in tandem, with a versatile [procedurally-generated] physics-engine - all guided/regulated and 'emulated' by a compounding Ai. Note: that procedurally-generating [p.g] both 'special-effects', in tandem, with p.g 'physics-engine' will not need to be animated. Visualize: this is comparable to installing "Zelda BOTW" with an super-intelligent Ai [Si-Ai]; to emulate and regulate the 'physics-engine', [elemental] special-effects, and procedural-generation within the virtual game. This results in hyper-realistic experience of Zelda BOTW. A 'timer-durability, space-time'[regulate spread of special effects and exploited physics] setting/ physics-law [essence: AI-regulated "physics-limit"] will need to be encoded and given 'priority over other physics law' [aforementioned AI, I mean] to manage the procedurally generated activities within the virtual space).
NOTE: In the sci-fi series "Halo", isn't "rampancy" the virtual equivalent of the combination 'borderline' (BPD) and unhealthy use and display of the 8 cognitive-function? Case in point, not only did Cortana experience [virtually-emulated] (cognitive?) disassociation, but she undoubtedly displayed negative (unproductive) Ni-Ti loops/negative 'cognitive-function loops'. This was later revealed to be caused by the Gravemind.
/Close.
Night City... City of a million locked doors. It may have a "OPEN" sign bet yeah, it never unlocks. The city where you can walk up to street vendor and wait in line. Only to find out that you cannot buy anything. Can't even take a seat.
I am from a big city and have lived in other big cities in multiple countries. I never felt as alone as I did in Night City. It was good for screen shots, nothing more.
Not a hater of the game and had 2 playthroughs. But it was not all that and bowl of grits.
shadows of doubt crushes cyberpunk in terms of confined but explorable open world
Night City is inhuman trash bruh. I know they like to say that cyberpunk is defined by “High-Tech, lowlifes.” But I find Night City to be incredibly unrealistic because it’s like some Adults Only Playground. When every city and civilization is made up of families. There is quite literally no family-friendly environments at all in Night City. Which is just super-immersion breaking for me.
Every knows that family entertainment is the most profitable entertainment. There’s no scenario in which that would change by 2077.
I will say this tho. Cyberpunk 2077 has the best designed NPC that I’ve ever seen in a video game!
Night City is the best definition of an Angler Fish design but in world-building, and I love it. The city crushes souls and people inside, but its neon lights keep attracting more and more prey. Night City only leaves you with 2 options: Leave it or be consumed by it.
What is an Angler Fish design
@@monelmonelmonel a angler fish design follows the same principle as a angler fish: it has something beautiful and alluring to attract their victims so that they can eat them. A siren, for example, depending on the interpretation is a "angler fish design" so to speak.
It's disturbingly beautiful.
Get rich or die trying
Like the many profound words of many people we meet in out journey, most notable for me who said that was Judy
It's when you finish a side mission in Pacifica and get out of the mission area and life resumes in Night City, you get hit with this omnipotent atmosphere of the city around you, that makes you feel that you're not just playing missions in this game, but live and experience the city.
They need to stop calling them random events and just make stupid random small chance things happen in every game cus honestly a game needs the wtf factor occasionally to keep me hooked otherwise after a few hundred hours I know it too well
Exactly, I feel like I'm living in night city, It's like a whole nother life.... Also realized how close it actually is to the city I live in, hyper consumerism, people who call the streets their homes, there is even a guy playing a guitar. I think that has an effect on how effective the immersion of the world is..... that and the orgasm advert that I've heard 1000 times now... I'm sure it even had a Japanese version XD
I wish at least the NCPD scanners respawned, then it would have as much replayability as rdr2's open world. But I can't complain, after playing starfield, cyberpunk unironically feels like a masterpiece
Exactly how I feel, Pacifica feels so ran down besides the pier and beach. I always want to get back to Japantown and Watson asap haha
Night City is the perfect encapsulation of the true "Hotel California" experience.
you could check out anytime you like,
BUT YOU CAN'T NEVER LEAVE
I mean... Game is boring as shit outside the story missions. Side missions are just shoot more bad guys. The open world is one of the most forgettable in gaming history. It's simply the flashy lights of a Cyberpunk feel that's different. The substance is completely empty.
@@yougotkained someone just got rejected by panam
One of the things I actually love about the lack of random events in 2077 is that it's predetermined mission locations and phone call driven missions feel like today's gig economy world.
V is basically a working class person trying to climb the capitalist ladder. And like couriers, plumbers, or any other tradesperson, V simply goes to where the work is (only the work is badass action 😅).
Traversing and working your way through Night City has this magical realism about it that not many games are able to provide.
I didn't start playing Cyberpunk until 2.0 because I never preorder, never buy a game without the market's reaction first, and also CDPR actually promised it'll get good
I bought the game but never even installed it until 2.0. So I've not experienced the buggy start of it
I'll never buy Starfield, even though I can wait and give devs time to develop the game into their own vision, Starfield is heavily compared to this game. Butit was clearly a Bethesda lie and it was obvious, I'll not even play the next Elder Scrolls if they still use that shit engine which literally keeps them 15 years behind the industry
Bethesda literally can't keep up even at the simplest thing, V gets jobs by phone, he enters a district, or increases his credibility on the streets, and fixers actually reach out to him. You don't get random events in the middle of an alley because, there's always a fixer that tries to convey business to anyone's problem. Some guy needing a merc or expert to fix an issue and a fixer not knowing it is just dumb in the game's world.
Wheras Bethesda's still stuck at the game design that they first used successfully in Morrowind, but they're so fucking far back, their futuristic game that's suppsedly 24th century, doesn't even have phones or any long distance communication device.
When I heard people complaining of that in Starfield, I just went ''Fuck it''
CDPR is one of those companies that has a touch with it's customers and they want to bring their passion for artistic worldbuilding, and what people would want together. Their corpos turned the game's launch into a complete disaster, but devs and mods still managed to make something out of it, it's just frustrating how much the game be even better if only they didn't got greedy and force devs to port the game into consoles that it'll never work properly
Something cool that cyberpunk does is establishing within in-game lore the concept of Merc and fixer. In elder scrolls, being an adventurer and having a quest giver don't usually have any meaning world building-wise. In fallout is the same. In those games the player character feels like an anomaly, while in cyberpunk mercenaries and fixers are a well stablished tradition and part of the culture. People in-game have intense opinions about them. Some question the value of the merca sellout loyalty, or the need for a middle man like the fixer. I think that contributes a ton into making the feeling of realism of the game
@@subutaynoyan5372can't go wrong with cdpk, they made w3. Honestly, I hated W3 at first but I gave it patience, just had to lvl up a bit and it got badass 😅. I went from calling W3 boring and slow to start, to my top 3. Patience is key to give a correct review on a game
@@jamaigar
The fixer is just a different kind of middle man in a capitalist society. Just less official than, say, an American health insurance company or apartment landlord. They exist as a necessary evil because somebody has to act as a go-between between gig and freelancer and they leverage their own more abstract social capital to extract wealth from the mercenary, the labor provider. And while I think that administrative work would always exist, that's a bit like saying a landlord fixes the apartment and sets rules. They do a lot more than that. It's the difference between the landlord being, well, a _lord_ versus a salaried employee of the tenants.
It's more than just tradition though. Fixers seem like they'd exists as a believable sort of, let's be honest, crime lord that would exist in what basically amounts to Ancapistan.
"Now if you're watching this video, there's a nearly 100% chance you've seen my first video on Cyberpunk 2077"
Nope, algorithm sent me here, no idea who you are
I'll take it haha. It's because my first video on Cyberpunk rode a really good algorithm wave, so for a while it was basically my entire channel
@@ThaneBishop Haha congrats. Seems like it's giving this video an algorithm wave too!
I have 170 hours in Cyberpunk 2077, and I've only seen the credits screen once. More often than not I am just cruising around, vibing, doing scanner calls or side jobs. This game is unparalleled in its ability to suck you in.
Now with Phantom Liberty out you can easily hit 100hrs in one playthrough and still have more to do.
Not to mention doing different builds, you can easily get another 2 or 3 playthroughs out of your game by spec'ing into netrunner skills, pistols and snipers skills, blades, throwing knives, stealth, tech and smart weapons, shotguns, blunt weapons and strength. Can mix and match most of those to totally change up how the game plays.
Agreed man i restarted the main story and got sucked back in like i never played it. Did all side missions and gigs before touching PL and now that im finally on the DLC its even better than the story imo.
I like to play stealth missions and I find myself reloading saves after I complete a gig or mission because I tell myself that i could make it look way cooler. (I have like 200 hours and only finished the game once with phantom liberty.)
@@ockoolaid3140I was addicted for like a month after Phantom Liberty dropped to watching expert players with superbuilds just shred thru missions and gigs as stylishly as possible. Cyberpunk action in the hands of an expert player is like watching a movie lol
@@gman7497 i was roading saves tryna get the most perfect gig run throughs
I actually really like the look and vibe of Fallout 3, it felt sickly and broken. I think it’s the best atmosphere of the open world fallout games.
Oh I think that's totally fair. Honestly I think the Fallout games do the best they can with their medium, but it's hard to design a world of nuclear wasteland that visually appeals to everyone.
Yeah but it's been a decade now, the apocalypse doesn't need to be brown and grey :/
The last Metro has a more varied color palette and it suits the vibe perfectly.
@@ThaneBishopObsidian's FO: New Vegas demonstrates otherwise. It's based on the same engine and still had a far richer & varied world overall.
If you want something truly niche, look no further than STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl.
I recommend playing with the mod that alters the individual AI units/factions objectives with each new game. This along with the mod for randomised Blowouts that force the humans to take shelter indoors, meanwhile it mutates or alters the Zones non-human population.
Quite a fun, if old and janky, game.
FNV has the truest Fallout vibe of all the Bethesda Fallouts.
In F3, I was like - so 200 years passed since the nuclear holocaust, and what? Still the same charred landscape, ruined buildings and gangs of raiders and mutants fighting for scraps? No grass, no plants, no trees?
Not even working cars? It's like all the people in Fallout universe listened to bike obsessed urban planning RUclipsrs and decided to abolish cars altogether. Except, in true post apocalyptic fashion, they forgot bikes existed, too.
Not even some dude that jerry rigged a motorcycle to run on microfusion batteries (which seem to be abundant)? And not that they don't know how, if they could maintain all the energy weapons laying around. Even BoS, whose religion is to hoard tech, should be rolling around in nuclear powered tanks by now.
In FNV at least you can see that the humanity strives to rebuild. Communities band together for trade and protection, governments are formed, standing armies are raised, money is printed, police and courts are put in place.
@@vadim6385 Well it wasn't a true Bethesda Fallout, it was made by the original developers of Fallout. Which is probably why it had a much "truer" vibe
How much do I love this game? It was the primary driver behind me buying a 4090 and a 13th gen i9, simply to experience pathtracing/overdrive. It looks mindblowing.
I feel you. About to do the same just for this one game, because if I play it without Path Tracing I feel like I’m not having a proper experience. This is the game you need to play on max settings with Path Tracing to enjoy it to the fullest.
Man, I'm still putting these videos together on a 1080 and an i7. I cannot wait until I'm able to start putting together some upgrades.
@@ThaneBishopyou'll get there champ, stay strong 💪🏽
I should have built pc. I just bought a 4070 i9 13500 laptop.
It's definitely a great laptop but I could have built it for the $1700
@@szychv I'm enjoying cyberpunk perfectly fine on a series x looks beautiful asf
The sheer volume of unique assets, NPCs, animations, etc. Cyberpunk is the only game that I go back to just to walk around and take it in once in awhile.
Night City as a whole is just an interactive artwork. Its just such a great composition of shapes, colours and imagery, its amazingly coherent in its style. Why it is so great is that, in contrast with an Assassins Creed game or GTA or something similar, it does not try to resemble a real place. Its a fully abstract world that does not exist outside itself. Sure there are many elements that do, like some skyscrapers, cars, people... its clearly a city, but because its not a real place its paradoxally way more convincing. It exists entirely in its own right, and thats the prerequisite of any great piece of art. I think thats why the storytelling works so well too. The characters and the events they take part in are real in the context of that reality because the things they do, like making braindances, being a ripperdoc, a cyberpsycho, they way they look, how they dress... Its all tied to that world, that reality, instead of trying to recreate a role from somewhere else like a mafia gangster or some member of some old historic warrior cult.
What I mean with that is that in the other open world games I mentioned things happen that simply cant in real life. And because they are still grounded in reality breaks immersion. Sure, all the things you can do in GTA are fun, but its obviously completely over the top. Now Cyberpunk does such a good job, both in lore and in game mechanics, explaining the reality of that fictional place, that everything that happens is perfectly possible in the context of Night City within its ruleset. If such technology would really exist, if I really had such an implant... etc. A game like Horizon: Zero Dawn for example does a terrible job in explaining this. They obviously wanted enormous robo dinos, which I can respect, but the story almost feels like an afterthought, only written as to at least provide some excuse for them being there. And even that doenst really explain why they look like dinosaurs. Night City is very subtle in this way. Behind every piece of tech is a real company, augmentation can make you do spectacular thing, but they are expensive ad they have to be installed by real doctors. And its not magic, it has major downsides to a point you go completely mad. Its these rules that makes the whole thing so believable. Thats why Lord of the Ring or Game of Thrones work so well. Yes, its fantasy, but everything is still grounded in the context of those worlds.
I read all of this bro and your right
@@vaevitus Thanks!
Astute observation. I didnt intend on reading it all but it was really well put together.
I love referring to such a state as realistic, but not real
Everything is fantastic, but completely natural and consequential
I disagree so hard with this reading. Night City really just feels like a sci-fi LA, but worse. The designers gave each district of the city an actual history and architectural style that reflects the roots of that district. The car-centered infrastructure is genuinely a nightmare and that was the entire point. Because Night City has no zoning regulations, the roads are a complete mess. The city is virtually unwalkable and being outside is hostile to human existence. Having a car isn't optional, it's mandatory.
The ads reflect the rampant capitalist hellscape the city has become. Corporations try to build over each other in their neverending struggle for dominance. Nobody cooks for themselves anymore and the evidence of this is everywhere in the disposable trash, take-out and vending machines. It's a parody of our society where everybody just Door Dashes their meals or eats out because they're too overworked and impoverished of social capital to know how to cook. Street vendors are the closest you get to home cooking in most situations. And you get the sense this is partly intentionally cultivated poverty to keep the cycle of wage slavery going.
Night City is an exaggerated parody of modern urban design that would believably exist.
I cannot express just how much I love the fact that this video about Cyberpunk 2077 brought me very warm memories about so many games I love so much.
I'll add my voice to the many who pitched Red Dead Redemption 2. It's completely different from Cyberpunk (obviously), but the area where the two games overlap is the strong desire to not use fast travel. I'd actually say I enjoyed just riding around on a horse (and walking through Saint Denis) in RDR2 more than I enjoyed the actual missions. It's not that the missions were bad - they were well designed and fun. But just taking in the sights and the world was its own reward. If you do play RDR2, I'd recommend waiting until the winter. That game is a solid offset for seasonal depression disorder.
I cant believe no one is talking about the Yakzua game series and its city of Kamurocho. Many of the reasons you give for why you love Night City describe Kamurocho perfectly. A lived in, breathing city with NPCs that feel like real residents, a city brimming with identity & character, a game world packed with things to do & places to see, and a world with some of the most memorable side quests ive played in any game. No skyrim random events, every quest is curated to flesh out the characters and city and make everything feel alive.
Absolutely give Yakuza a chance at some point
Yup, it gives Yakuza but with cars and mechanics
Was prowling the comments looking for someone to recommend Yakuza. I can navigate Isezaki Ijincho, Kamurocho, and Sotenbori in my sleep. I've felt genuine sadness at certain business not being in this fictional world because they closed down in the time between games. It's genuinely one of my favorite open worlds, and the RGG team deserves awards for how faithful they translated the real life Isezakichou, Kabukichou, and Doutonbori.
I like how compact city adventures are. You can get to any spot in a city within a day.
I still to this day cite Night City as the greatest Open World ever made. I love your point about RNG and random events because I've become exhausted by it in games because developers have lost the why in their need to copy. RDR2 really broke that for me as I exhausted the 1-off events and then ran into it...the cycling of RNG that was left...and then the world died to me. It lost its magic, and it became a game, that I needed to finish because I wasn't having fun anymore (mostly because the combat is repetitive and boring). As much as I loved my first 40 hours truly and deeply hunting and taking my time...the world eventually revealed its reality...that it wasn't really that complicated at all and that...in fact...it was just pretty.
Night City was so ENGROSSING that I didn't need to be convinced that it was infront of me. I didn't need someone to run into me and shout "hey there gamer you need something to do?"...I was captivated at every turn. The random event was that one more alley I didn't know existed...or was so overwhelmed that I forgot I had already gone down it at another time of day. The events that are repeating are tucked away and out of sight, sound design to fill the scape as you round a corner and hear a firefight in a dangerous neighborhood.
Whether that's a luxury of its genre which is one of the more sophisticated modern genres...or just the power of the storytelling that makes you WANT to be there and use the space of the world to enhance it....but there is magic in the world built for Night City like no other I've experienced in gaming. What I can only describe simply as its "honesty" in a word. Night City says so much about our world (and the world of its plot) without needing to depend on story arcs or plots shoehorning examples down my throat about evil with cartoon satire of them. It just is, and therefor, evokes the most damning picture of the villainous power structures and forces in the story.
Witcher 3 too had this element...but it had a lot of that RDR2 "beautiful fluff" that made its world feel cumbersome and superfluous to its narrative at times. They let me roam the pastures and the forests...and what did I find? I guess some wolves?
What I think is MOST important about Night City is that it's only itself and doesn't try to be anything else. It doesn't throw towers down because AC did it (modern Zelda is just copy pasta from popular games)...it doesn't sit in the past of its tropes (gta) and it doesn't get bogged down by its realism that it forgets to reflect its story (RDR2). It isn't too busy trying to meme and make bits (Fallout).
It's not the most detailed or alive...but it's the MOST in regards to what the product is trying to convey as art...which I think is FAR more important than simply being a bit more fun for a few more hours in a world of endless sources of fun and mindless consumption.
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I could go on and on about every single neighborhood down to specific streets that just evoked awe and power in its setting as a storytelling device...but I will shorten it for this comment section.
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Whereas Los Santos is perverted and distrubed...Night City moves away from simply just being satire and moves that expressiveness to ART. It builds the reflection of its world's violence, and consumption, and its ways that it manipulates and infuses it into every street and heightens it. It's the painting Nighthawks dressed in neon and blood.
Every side quest and side gig feels like an accompaniment to the aesthetic of the city and then when you finish you get dropped back into its not-so-silent deafening malaise.
Night City builds its world off contrast and transformation. The Night City of Arroyo is an industrial hellscape where pipes swallow you in the organs of a megalopolis that has boomed and died and yet still its heart beats. (unlike the worlds of the Dark Souls franchise). The world of the Badlands runs entirely against the world of Kabuki which is completely different than across the river in Japantown which uses the same aesthetic and builds it up and blots out the sun. You are under the highways of Watson's downtown to then go a neighborhood over and the highways are traintracks in Northside surrounded by abandoned factories. The plaza of Japantown is crushing, the plaza of Downtown is filled with plastic trees and wide open vapid scapes of windows you will never see into.
RDR2 is probably the highest quality execution of a world...but Night City is the world that NEEDED to be expressed and did so in a way no other game has ever been able to engross me while doing it.
bruh
Beautifully said!
Your comment made me realize why I could never get into GTAV. Sure the game still looks great even now on pc, but it feels like the world, and by extension the game, has no soul. It's got heaps of personality and is certain to smear it all over your face as you play, but it wears on me very quickly and when I look for what's left there really isn't much there. The perversion, cynicism, and unending satire has an early charm, but eventually just turns into words and, like a person even, becomes a crutch to overcompensate the clear lack of anything deeper about the world, characters, and story. Cyberpunk has that "soul" to it, and the city exemplifies it better than almost any other game I've played (Bioshock's, Stalker: SoC's, and Skyrim's worlds all belong on that list, too). I've only played a handful of hours so far, but I am hooked and the thing that has me coming back is that I simply want to be in Night City. Isn't that what open world games are about? Bugs, launch, missed potential/features, shortcomings aside, CDPR absolutely crafted a piece of art in the city itself, and I'm massively impressed. Any future open world games I play will and should be held to the standard of Night City, because it truly is a big step forward in game development.
I absolutely love red dead, but yeah there definitely should’ve been more variety in the random encounters you get
Cyberpunk 2077 shows the trajectory our consumerist society is moving towards. Were corporations has substituted nation states, with emphasis on loyalty from employees backed by empty promises. Wars aren’t fought by nations as much as corporations raids each other for political and economic power.
The best case are those who used to work for Militech, ending up as working for the New United States of America. Or Arasaka Corporation runs functions for the Japanese government.
We’re going to see corporate security biting more and more chunks from public security (eg. the police) for profit, because why not? Politicians in our world is already in corporate pockets, so extrapolating this into the future shows a world eerily similar to Night City.
One of the things ive loved about night city in regards to movement is that it feels like it has just enough of all kinds. You can run and gun, you can get in firefights and look for cover, you can stomp up to your enemy and smash. Or you can find ledges, vantage points, cameras and plan whatever sort of assault you want to use to take something on. They paid enough attention to make all these styles of play feel good and that means something
The more I dive into the lore of Night City and the history behind its conception in game, the more it become a living breathing organism. This is my first playthrough and im having such an intimate experience with this. I havent felt this excited to play something on my off days since Skyrim.
In Skyrim, I fast travel just about everywhere.
In Cyberpunk, I honestly forgot that the fast travel system was a thing when starting my most recent playthrough, because I've very rarely wanted to use it
I've bit the bullet and picked up this game a few weeks ago because of your last video. You've nailed my feelings of this world, word for word, bar for bar in this essay since I've started. Alongside the solid character writing, there's just something so forcibly immersive about Night City that keeps me coming back and is stuck in my head. It's remarkably ugly and poorly planned, yet very colorful cutting edge and kitsch mainly because *it's supposed to be*. It's fully realized. I end up role playing what a day to day would look like between each mission or something to do for my character. I drive to most places and locations, something I rarely do in any open world game outside of every Grand Theft Auto game. I take walks here and there, and just like you said, get bummed out when I hear "I Wanna Stay At Your House" blaring from the radio at a food stall somewhere in Little China. It's such a great world that sucks you in and it's a damn shame that there's really nothing to do outside of missions. I really wish there was.
This is where the PC version can shine due to Mods. One of my favorite's is called Fixer Hidden Gems. All it does is shine a spotlight onto something already in the game. Which is a ton of (around 190) small reward items/cache stored throughout the game in various unmarked or reference locations. The cache range from grand (lPerk shards and a free Caliburn spots car) to small (junk items) to all in between. The Mod just employs immersion. Fixer sends a message with a story connected to the item/location. When you then find the item, there is a small story wrap. Boom nearly 200 mini missions are born.
@@JarrenBlake Hell, that's what modding is for! Going to have to pick that up once it's working for the current patch.
@@Sorain1used to mod the hell out of my RTS games series of the command and conquer. I could imagine how much one can mod in 2077
You mentioned there not being a point in CP2077 that matches the niche vibe of the sea shantys in ACBF but I submit for your approval (SPOILER FOR CYBERPUNK 2077) the quest that ends in you playing on stage with the surviving members of Samurai. 10/10 most immersed I felt throughout the entire game
Also, the radio in the car slaps
Hearing the jazz radio after a depressing mission is unrivaled
When the street musicians's play "Pon Pon Shit" on accoustic.
That was a fantastic surprise and actually made me nostalgic for when i was playing shows in my 20s.
Also, the "Run This Town" mission in Phantom Liberty is amazing. No spoilers.
So excited for this video - I've been rewatching your other cyberpunk essay religiously (like once a week). Even tho I've never played the game, you've done such a great job capturing the ambiance I can't help but romanticize Night City myself - thanks for taking us on another trip there c:
I really hope you enjoy it! I'm pretty happy with all my videos, but I'll admit to being especially attached to the Cyberpunk essays. This world is so fun to play around in, and that makes recording and editting even more fun, as well.
Love the quality of your videos. Nailing the vibe check consistently
I actually think random events can make the world feel just a bit more alive. Even if its packed with content. Content + Random events to spice things up. Makes the world feel less like a gap between points where nothing will happen unless you want it to and more like a living world where anything can happen with or without your intervention.
Content + Random events: Random is old news, also content. Developers have the tech available to created worlds with no player quests. Everything should be dynamic, the whole gameworld should respond and ripple from player actions through conversations and decisions organically, no preprogrammed three pages of tickbox 'fetch me' quests in your journal. What suprises the me most is triple A companies making worlds like cdpr and Bethesda, haven't gone this route. Bacause this is the future model which would shake the industry to it's core.
@@Nemesis-222 A world with no player quest sounds good on paper but falls apart in practice. Players want goals. They want something to work towards. They want a story and they want clear progression either of character or world.
@@thacoolest13spot on
@@thacoolest13 - In otherwords, you want to keep the old UBIesque linear story progression with a totally predictable outcome, so basically throw infinite replayability out of the window? Software developers love gamers like you, because it means they can sell exactly the same thing over and over again, and you'll pay for it willingly. I disagree with that model, most gamers are tired of being fed the same old BS. I do think you misunderstood my point in my last post, there are still main quests, goals and progression, but triggering them can happen in a unsystematic way.
@@Nemesis-222 ?? What do you mean most gamers? I don't see anyone complaining about how story telling was done in Ghost of Tsushima, Spiderman, God of war, Elden Ring.
Sure its fun when you accidently stumble across a fun engaging quest but that is still preplanned content. Example, coming across Megaton is a pretty great opener for new vegas. Or that quest in Skyrim where you find yourself in prisoned and have to escape.
Good quest design is at its best when its purpose built. Do you have any example of dynamic quests aside from random bounties? It sounds like what you want is ChatGPT to spin up quests for you on the go as your playing.
One little microcosm I found a long while ago in Night City was these two people, one of them sitting on a bench and crying into their hands as the other was knealt down to comfort them. I had no idea what was going on, but it was clear something had completely broken them down so much that their outburst was plain and in public. Even being a jaded street kid, I wanted to to help but what could I ever say, this is Night City, towering corpo skyscrapers, floating holographic ads, luring in people for miles and miles, only to leave them like this, broken and greiving, or wanting to leave and never being able to, or dead, and I feel it, I feel it because Jackie and I went through that. I survived it only to make do with what was left. Those two people could just as easily have been Jackie and I, he'd cheer me up by telling me I'm in my own head too much, he'd drag me back to his mom's restaurant for some genuine food and it would fucking work on me, it always does, for one more day this place would be okay. To him, it always was, he wanted bigger things, but he never hated where he'd started from, even if it was gunnin for him.
"This was a big storm and he might as well enjoy it. It was ruining everything, but you might as well enjoy it"
-Earnest Hemingway, For Whom The Bell Tolls
I'm currently in my first playthrough of the game (with dlc). From a design point of view, what impresses me the most about Night City is that everthing feels hand crafted. I'm so used to environments (especially in-door areas) being copy pasted but I have not come across a single area that looks the same or familiar, and that's besides the unique quest/mission design. Bravo CDPR, you can tell they put a lot of time, care and effort into crafting Night City. What's also cool is the overstimulation of the senses. There's just so much going on everywhere you go in the city. From the busling streets, neon lights, npc side conversations and even the the grotesque tv ads that are constantly in your face. The city doesn't feel like just a backdrop for missions but rather something that V exists in.
Kingdom come deliverance in my opinion has such a beautiful world building in it
I love how you showed the exact intersection I was thinking about when you mention that transition. Well done.
Couldn't have said all of this better, and the editing is on point, really love the video
I've played through the game's first section a few times to see the differences between the different life paths, and I was rather pleasantly surprised to know the NCPD jobs, the ones that looked most likely to be partially rng, are all following the same directives. The weapons, gear and even NPC models may vary, but the crimes and messages are the same.
What's more, many of these places change after you've gone through them. There's a whole market that is under the Tyger Claws that revives and has actual vendors come back once you dispatch them. Or NCPD check on the scene for a limited time, making you go "huh, that's where the intense shootdown went down, good to see it investigated"
It occours to me that one could make a really fascinating study of Watson before and after's in all those spots. (Watson is immediately accessible and small enough to be practical.)
The world of night city made me feel so IN it that when i stepped off the bike onto the badlands or anywhere in the city that’s kinda empty, I can genuinely feel the nervousness of standing in the open. It’s like feeling of being told by your parents to wait in the car as they go get some grocceries they forgot to take in a shopping trip for the first time. The windy howls and rattling sands, the sounds you hear when there’s nothing to hear.
So glad to have found your videos. I started playing Cyberpunk about a month back, and it's now also one of my favourite open worlds ever. I feel like you about it, both attracted to it like a moth to the flame and appalled by it, and I think that's what makes it's allure so strong, for both the characters living it and the players experiencing it. It's beautiful in all it's horrible ugliness, and I'll forever be sad about how the horrible launch has overshadowed the incredible work CDPR did here.
Finally, CP77 gets credit it deserves, very great video!
I didn't even realise that you only have 5k subscribers, this is such a good video essay. Thank you great vid dude
That means a lot man, thank you!
I just love logging into this game jumping on my bike and cruising through the city listening to the radio. Can't think of any other game i go to to just chill.
As a fellow Night City lover I have to say you MUST take a mellow aimless horseride in RDR2 to see how that game transports you there into it's world. It is magical. And the contrast to GTA5 is huge.
Oh god when I had just finished Edgerunners and went into game and literally, the first random bar I walk by had Stay at your house playing and dude, I couldn't. Instantly alt+f4. Absolute trauma.
Night City doesnt win because it is the peak of innovation, it wins because it is the peak of refinement (bugs aside).
I was just talking with a friend about how its been a long while since ive been engaged with a game as much as Cyberpunk 2077. I still am playing through it (started my first actual playthrough last week) and the world is so well built that I feel like I actually take away something from it, in a strange way. Really stirs the absurdist in me and reminds me that, as fucked as the world may be, life is still happening around you - you can either float down the stream toward whatever fste is in store for living authentically, or struggle against that and be slowly eroded away at a molecular level, but wither way, the stream leads somewhere we can't control, and we will reach it one way or another, so you might as well get there in one piece. Same concept as "a quiet life, or a blaze of glory?" Dex talks about, I suppose? Though, an evaluation of a different facet of the underlying existential question at hand? One is oriented at external outcomes (Dex's), the other internal ("mine"/ a loose allusion to Daoism/Taosim, in a way, if I remembering correctly, though it might be Confucionism (?) or Buddhism - its an Eastern concept, at heart, for sure).
Just such a lovely game at every level, and as much love as it gets, I'm not convinced it's given enough.
Driver San Francisco also has a living city. It got a headstart being set in the real world, but this game is unique because it has one of the most NPC lines corresponding to your actions. You can buy cars in this game, but you prefer to take the wheel of another car and interact with the world.
There are random events in this game which is a huge deal for an open-world racing/car game, especially when it was released.
I'd love to hear your take on Supergiant's Bastion (and all the other takes you have on Cyberpunk, honestly, can't get enough).
Fantastic video by the way!
For some reason I grew to loathe the city the longer I played. I would have moments when driving Jackie’s cycle through town that I loved NC, but when I’d occasionally go outside city limits, all that love faded. I grew to love the quiet, and hate NC’s noise and clutter and violence. I got so into this open world, something I haven’t done since rdr2
RDR2 is the most "Full" world I have experienced in gaming that does not need to plant a full blown city in the middle of it to do so. Play it and see for yourself. Even if you disagree you will see what I am talking about. The environment lives.
“It just needed to be the world O recognized, wrapped up in neon” i love that. You sir have my attention.
I'd say the first Subnautica presents a pretty good open world.
4546B is an ocean planet, but you're confined to a small volcanic crater that pushes up above the ocean floor, it's maybe a few kilometers across, at most. A small vibrant pocket of life that evolved in an otherwise sparse and barren planet. There's no fast travel and no convenient in-game GPS and honestly, there never feels to be a need. You mostly navigate by landmarks and memory and the large crashed hulk of the Aurora, the ship you rode in on, which acts as your North Star for much of the early game. You eventually get a sense of how the biomes lead into each other and where they are. Each biome has a distinct identity and bioluminescence adds color to each alien environnment.
Vibes-wise, it's as I described. A lot of the flora and fauna on the planet do not exist to drop loot. Sure a lot of the smaller fish are edible, as are some of the plants, but the vast majority do not exist for human exploitation. Why would it? It's just nature, if of an alien sort, and you're the intruder. Predators of all sizes exist. Some are great and terrible. But like all natural predators, they aren't evil. An introspective player just sort of realizes that there's not really much point fighting them. It's like getting angry at a tiger or a grizzly bear. The megafauna might as well be dinosaurs. Great and terrible to be sure -- but a biological impossibility teetering on the brink of near-extinction. It's not a large ecosystem. Subnautica is great for stimulating thassalophobia, a fear of the ocean depths. But it's a kind of terrible awe of the cosmos that's also beautiful at the same time. It's one of the few games that captures both the beauty and terror of nature in its vast inhuman majesty.
Mostly, there's not a lot to do. Each environment often has a unique profile of resources or tech to help explore deeper or survive better in some way. But it's a satisfying game loop of exploration and diving deeper and deeper. And of course, you'll be building an underwater science base to assist in your survival.
Having waited for the last patch before delving into this game, I am astounded by what they have achieved. Never before has a virtual environment been so tangible and inhabitable. When I'm exploring Night City I feel like I am THERE. Incredible piece of world building.
Not only does Night City feel real and alive, it feels like a prophecy for the future, albeit one which is substantially exaggerated. By the time we reach 2077, I would not be surprised if the world we actually live in bears some resemblance.
Gotta remember this comment for future reference
yeah i need to come back to this too
God I hope not. I might well be alive then, and that's a grim fate indeed.
It will very different but probably a nightmare all right. No more cars for exemple and a eco communist totalitarian society where everyone is controled in every possible ways "thank" to the technologie.
Doesn’t help that Half Life 2 already predicted the Breen screen thing.
The difference between Night City and the Badlands is actually really clever.
In NC, you can easily get around on foot. There's plenty of enemies to fight around every corner and things to see and appriciate. If you get into a fight, it's easy to lose your pursuers around and corner or climb a building.
But in the badlands, it's flat. There's no where to hide. If you get into a fight you either have to fight and win or DRIVE away. The badlands is built for cars while the NC is built for walking. And this makes sense considering the Nomad's love for vehicles.
I've been loving Cyberpunk 2077 ever since it came out, regularly coming back to make a new build and just clear the map one more time... I love this game, definitely in my top 5
Love to see you back in Night City. Great video! Here's hoping Phantom Liberty is good.
I hope so man. I'm really trying to keep expectations reasonable, but I'm only getting more excited for the DLC.
Can't get enough of Night City!
Another banger, Thane! Great work!
What did it for me is all the interactions. Vending machines, shops, fast travel being integrated as bus/subway and all the random events.
I love how yt algorythm randomly shows me such a great yet niche video, amazing work man
Watching this now is great timing, I've been feeling the itch to go back to Night City and this just makes that feeling stronger
Walking around Night City, with how detailed it is, reminds me of those walk-around pov videos you see around RUclips. Especially if said videos are in Korea or Japan at night. The only other open-world game that accomplished this sort of immersion, to just walk around and experience a living breathing city in a game, is RDR2's Saint Dennis, for me at least.
Cyberpunk isn't my favorite open world game, but it is the game I use fast travel in the least often. More often than not just calling my vehicle (or just stealing one for the lulz) and high tailing it.
Part of it too though isn't just about the world itself being engaging, but also not too big. It doesn't take THAT long to get from one side of the map to another in a car or on a motorccyle and the mini map will give you the route you need to navigate the streets to get there. So it's a nice one two punch of the world itself being good and also not oversized to the point it takes too long to get anywhere.
To add to this amazing video, I'd like to mention that the way the world feels seems to directly contribute to the modding scene around it. In other games I'm used to seeing mods that add new things to the game, or overhaul entire systems so the game feels entirely different. In Cyberpunk 2077, the modding scene is all about enhancing the experience you have with Night City.
Sitting at the bar and having a drink with NPC friends, all of the food vendors you see around having an actual shop you can buy from, making the Metro system usable, sitting in the chair when visiting ripper docs, a full on stock market system, a survival system with hunger, thirst, and fatigue, and even the ability to just sit anywhere and stair out at the city.
So many mods are there for you to just be in Night City, more than ever before. Mix that with the VR mod, and Night City can blur the lines between reality sometimes. I don't think we will get another world quite like it again, not until the sequel at least.
I really loved how many side quests were in this game & hope the sequel has even more that tie into the main plot in some way
Crazy thing is.. this game as beautiful as it is, is only the start compared to the next update. They really did it. This comeback story will be studied. Mark my words.
Yup this comment aged well
Fast travel in Cyberpunk fits so well into the vibes of Night City it just feels like an amazing invention of the future and like you I hardly ever use it. I love just using my wheels to go everywhere or just go for a stroll at random times to take in how things vary depending on the time of day or night. the npc's are hilarious. the game and story are a true work of art
What makes night city immersive, is the little details it has. The random trash everywhere, the very detailed buildings that don't feel copy pasted, the road quality varying from place to place, the density of people and cars, the smoke and fog thats everpresent, the vibe of a futuristic city, you see people going about their daily lives, etc.
In the same vein, I also like glass city from mirror's edge. Its not your typical dystopian city as it looks pristine, something like a futuristic asian city. And thats excellent. I find it immersive because you can see the sea of activity below. And on the rooftops, it gives you a completely new window.
Another good open world you've missed is sleeping dogs whose hongkong city is quite excellently rendered. And its a fresh design. It really does feel great. You can see all the nooks and crannies.
Also, the fact that you can enter random doors, climb over walls, railings, roofs, etc. You have freedom of movement much more so that in other games. The one thing that does get annoying is how pedestrians and people driving cars behave. It is often not very realistic, and you keep seeing the same random people over and over walking down the street.
Also, the fact that you can enter random doors, climb over walls, railings, roofs, etc. You have freedom of movement much more so that in other games. The one thing that does get annoying is how pedestrians and people driving cars behave. It is often not very realistic, and you keep seeing the same random people over and over walking down the street.
Great content! This video caught my eye, and I'll stick around for more😉
Wow, not everyday I see a truly great video. This is one I like very much thx. It had to have taken some time to think things through and make this video. Very well done.
Cyberpunk has a very dificult place in my heart. I really love the story and night city, but the preorder ptsd still lives there xd
I love how Night City has different areas that are each visually distinct but also each one feels like every city you've ever been in.
I've played a bunch of open work games and Night City is the best one yet. I've played over 250 hours and I still find myself just staring at the screen and thinking how beautiful the whole city is. It's a masterpiece.
I come back to this video somewhat often. Great work sir
Long time since I've seen such a good analysis. A gem of a video
In GTA V, I used the taxi with the fast travel a bunch of times, because the map was just too samey all-around while being so big.
In CP2077, I drove or ran through the city almost all my playthrough. I know fast travel is in the game, but I just can't stop myself from driving around and even adhere to traffic laws sometimes, just listening to the music, look around and take in the city and it's different unique districts. Most of my fast travel use is to go to the megabuilding apartment and out to skip the slow elevator rides. Then its the bus stops if I need to go from the badlands to the middle of the city.
I walk around Night City and just take screenshots of the city itself. My V will pose next to NPCs acting like they're apart of their friend group, or I just drive everywhere. My first 70 hours in the game on the PS4 saw me not taking fast travel once. Night City is that amazing.
I live in the Bay Area and I would take screenshots of parts of it and share them with friends saying, "I saw a place like this in Oakland or San Francisco!" I think, a good quarter of my time playing is just exploring, taking screenshots, and chilling with the denizens of Night City.
Lastly, CDPR does an incredible job of environmental storytelling. The Witcher 3 showed just how good CDPR was and Cyberpunk 2077 proved that the company has the chops.
Night city and cyberpunk2077 have became my favorite fictional worlds and I now think it’s my favorite game ever made. This city and this world is a masterpiece
300 hours in and ready for more! GOAT as far as i’m concerned.
This is SUCH a well-written video.
Night City does have random events. They just don't necessarily include you. Once in a while you will see gangs chasing and shooting each other. You can ignore it or you can get into the action.
This is exactly how I feel about this damn game. Thank you. I am so glad someone gets it the same way I do.
The badlands bit resonates with me a lot, I felt it on the first Panam mission roadtrip
Thanks for the video. tieing up extra quests and running all over the city. Not since Shenmue have I appreciated such a detailed open world. (I have some blind spots.) You definitely deepened some of my own thoughts of Night City.
I can smack Pan Am's digital ass in the badlands, make googly eyes at Hanako in Ember's and kill scavs in Dogtown without a load screen and that to me is the most amazing feat of the game. The large, exspansive city with countless biomes and vibes with ZERO LOADING. It's so damn big and diverse it's mind boggling.
i watch this every couple of months to hear all the beauty of cyberpunk
Best open world ever made in gaming. The shear detail is unmatched.
I love Black Flag ❤ I'd been a PC gamer for a long time and it made me learn controller. What a vibe. Sailing around, singing shanties, exploring islands and whaling. Your own Island pirate estate. *Chef's kiss* - - But I go and just hang out in Skyrim and Fallout 4, using mods and building things or being inspired for a novel character build. Night City seems like a beautiful city. I love the neon. Also cool were the underground cites in Stray.
If you haven’t played death stranding you should check it out. The aesthetic is astounding and the “empty space” serves as the primary antagonist. I was never bored traversing the space because I had to subtlety think about every move I made or route I took all while planning how to make the routes better in the future.
The Black Flag pandemic sea shanty portion of this made me laugh, then I remembered and was sad. Awesome video man.
When they link Chat GPT and ai voices to the NPCs, night city will literally become an alternate world like the matrix... the AI is the only immersion breaking part and I accept the limitations but if you're talking about how it looks just walking around - hands down it's the most incredible piece of world building I've seen. The environmental lead deserves a goddamn Oscar or some kind of game design/implementation award. I have yet to find something that feels repeated in a lazy or obvious way. As a games artist myself I can see the monumental effort behind the result. Bravo to the team who made this.
19:59 fun fact Minecraft (the best game of all times) Technically doesn't have any empty spaces even the void is interactive
Love this, very well done man
17:00 Quite so. I played long after it came out, and it was already visually dated by then, but... the "vibe" it gives...oh, man. Was so great. You really felt engrossed by the world. A dystopian, bleak, corrupted steampunk-esque world of a decaying and dying city.The stealth and blinking were great, the powers were were weird with their whale-theme, the half-technological, half-mystical settings gave this novel, strange feeling, squeezing the heart and hearing the woman voice sadness, ponderings and thoughts... IT was and is one of my more memorable experiences/memories. And also one of the few games I played through in one go, without letting it linger for days or weeks (I often have that tendency with games).
Great video to end a long day with, thanks bro
I think it’s the most immersive environment in video game history. It feels like incredibly real take on the future
It is actually hilarious the way the badlands are talked about. For me it is literally like home because im from a small town in texas. And me and a friend of mine from Kentucky talked about how in the world we would have been nomads just because it is how we would have been brought into that world. Super cool how the game captures that.
I truly think that night city itself is a piece of art. Mind blowing every time I play
S tier video 🔥 keep the content coming king 👑
I love when random events feel real and have the potential to change the next few hours of gameplay. Like in Kingdom come deliverance, you're just riding your horse and get attacked by bandits, they dent your armor and break your bones, now you have to get to a town to heal yourself and find a way to make money to repair your armor when all you were trying to do in the first place was buy some turnips.
The only thing that cyberpunk has going for it is it's city architecture. That's why we love exploring it. To call it lived-in is just lying to yourself. The city is as dead as it comes. It's all just a facade. Only a few buildings are actually enterable, the people outside of the main characters are dumb and walk around in circles. It's a nothing world. Everytime I take walks in night city, I'm left in awe but that lingering feeling of emptiness remains and I hate it for that. So much lost potential
Consider a few counter points; I can enter basically every building in Skyrim. How many are worth being in? How many are the same basic cookie-cutter interior slightly adjusted? Sure, they're all accessible, but that doesn't mean anything in terms of if they're engaging, which of course, most aren't. You can't make 300 different buildings for a game and make each fun feel unique, and special, and worth entering. Beyond that, I would say that hearing a handful of characters repeating the same line for 150 hours ends up being way worse than characters not having lines, at all. Eventually that repetition becomes the reminder of the game's limits, and while every game has those limits, I'd rather not be constantly faced with the reminder of their existence. And at the end of all things, maybe consider that that feeling of emptiness and the hate for a city that was designed with the intention of no-one being well in it is not bad design, but rather, you're feeling exactly what the devs wanted you to feel.
is it worth it? If you have interior u just gonna run there, check out and run out lmao. Waste of resources.
@@ThaneBishop is it really worse than seeing generic_blueshirt_NPC spawn and despawn multiple times over the course of your travel in cyberpunk?
This video made me realize something about most open world games that I think Cyberpunk 2077 does very well: Scale.
While I'm certain it's not a perfect 1:1 scale, where 1 km/mi is exactly that distance on the game map, I still feel like it's feasible that millions of people _might_ live in Night City.
Compared to Skyrim, where Solitude is a "metropolis" with a population of like 30 people and maybe 15 buildings.
RDR2 had one major problem for me... They condensed a fictionalized region based on the entire US Louisiana Purchase into a few in-game kilometers, where I can ride from the in-game versions of Colorado (cold mountains) to Louisiana (balmy swamps) in like 30 minutes. It always bugged me that the game would repeatedly imply that a location is like "several days journey" from where I am starting a quest, but it takes me 10 minutes to ride there on horseback.
I understand it would be impossible to have that amount of land at a 1:1 scale in a game... So why not reduce the footprint so you don't need to make it so immersion-breaking? Could have just had the game in the Missouri-Louisiana area, for example.
It looks pretty and that's about it.
Cyberpunk suffers coming out after RDR2 cause thats what a real open world looks like with NPC's going about their day having their own routines that you can interact with.
the video's on point, but i feel as though something that you missed is not necessarily that the WORLD is so detailed and immersive, but rather its how YOU interact with it as V which really immerses you to the fullest extent. In my experience, ive always chosen the dialogue options that best aligned with myself, i made my V look like how i wanted to look like, upgraded her how i felt was best and had to deal with the consequences after the fact, or more *forced* myself to. the way CDPR made V is the difference between looking at a still life painting and being IN NC
I had stopped gaming for 10 years and decided to grab a PS5. I first got RDR2 and it was fantastic.But then i read a couple things online and got Cyberpunk 2077 and....just wow. I realized how far gaming had progressed and what was possible now.
I couldn't believe it was even possible to create such a believable and beautiful city, and a totally absorbing city to boot. This may sound ridiculous but ive put in 500 hours and havent even progressed past the Panam/Automatic Love missions.
I literally absorb every detail and admire the incredible architecture. I read every piece of lore and even bought the cyberpunk tabletop lore books to fully immerse myself in the universe.
Somehow the gunplay and swordplay is also incredibly satisfying and the driving and interiors of the cars are incredible.
I literally didn't think gaming would ever reach these heights of immersion. And even on PS5 the game looks incredible. CDPR has won me over completely to the point where i purchased a bunch of shares in their company.
Ive been gaming over 30 years and i feel like this has been the game ive been waiting for. And i havent even gotten close to finishing the game!
I’d confidently say that Night city is hands down the most immersive and densely detailed city in video game history. Good job CDPR.
One of my favorite parts of Cyberpunk's visuals is that different neighborhoods have their own aesthetics.
driving around night city while crying and listening to I want to stay at your house is such a mood