There's a rumor on a Polish website that CP2077 underwent a major plot overhaul in the middle of development. According to this hypothesis, supported by some early quotes, there were initially going to be 3 mentor characters to choose from:
Johnny Silverhand (tech solutions, tech weapons),
Morgan Blackhand (handguns?, power weapons),
Saburo Arasaka (Hacking, smart weapons)
It is said that 2018 e3 gameplay presentation featured the choice of mentors.
Then Keanu Reeves turned up. Eventually the marketing team had a brilliant idea to get more out of Keanu. And since he's so awesome, why not make the game MORE about Keanu... In fact, why waste budget and manpower on the other 2 actors?
This type of problem with high profile actors is endemic in movie industry. A movie with Bruce Willis or Ryan Gosling will be about Bruce Willis and Ryan Gosling. The actors don't have to even act that well because plot will be adjusted to play into their strengths.(Look how much screen time aging Bruce Willis got in Looper and the new Blade Runner!)
There are various speculations in the thread, including that the game is so lacking in its systems (police, NPC schedules, driving...) because they were ordered to cut them out. They were meant to be in the game initially, but major direction shifts in the development meant they had to reassign developers to something else.
Some content in the game seems to support this line of thinking. There's a quest with a monk that works slightly differently depending on which story act you're in.
If you want to know my opinion, I think CDPR also overestimated their ability. A modern, urban world works very differently than fantasy sword game. CDPR had 3 games to perfect the formula, then they jumped into completely different setting. I don't blame them, in fact I feel for them because it's nice to work on something different once in a while.
People forget that there are over a dozen games and expansion packs that make up the Grand Theft Auto franchise. They didn't just make GTA5 in a vacuum. They had all those previous games to draw on. They've been working on police chase AI since the games were top-down with 2D car sprites.
There was no chance that CDPR could do something comparable on their first attempt. They tried to do way too much new stuff all at once in one blockbuster game. They should have made several smaller games with those different mechanics first before trying to pull it all together in one game.
> There was no chance that CDPR could do something comparable on their first attempt.
Yes, they could, by hiring experienced game developers or people who previously worked at Rockstar or whatever. The work conditions at CDPR Poland are apparently so bad the turn over is so high that most people who worked on Wither 3 dev left for better opportunity... in the USA... CDPR was left with hiring rookies, and even some of them quit before the end of the dev cycle.
they needed to keep their talent. A large number of talent left after TW3. When a studio loses talent - which took releases and experience to create - it's not so easily re-acquired.
The issue won't be solved with more time; the root cause is lack of appropriate planning, pre-production and project management needed for this level of complexity. Even if they're given 2 more years, CDPR is very likely going to waste 22 month due to fluctuating project expectations and repeat the same development fiasco.
That's a very good point. The first Witcher game has interesting ideas but not all that great just decent and innovative. The second was very much a refinement of the concepts from the first game, expanding the game world but keeping it within a workable scope. Then Witcher 3 basically took everything they'd learned from the first two, refined the gameplay even more, created a truly excellent story (not sure how much the story was planned as a trilogy) and on top of it all expanded it into an incredible open world. But by the time they built the world for W3 they'd had two games to refine everything and had a formula that worked.
Compare that to Cyberpunk and it makes sense that it's not as polished. You can make the same irritative argument for Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Spiderman etc. I'm super excited based on that to play the New Horizon game.
I was pretty excited about the game until the Keanu Reeves announcement. Something about having celebrities being a major selling point of video games never seems to work out well.
I've wondered this throughout my entire play through. Supposedly the lead voice actors for Red Dead redemption 2worked full time for ~5 years to get everything right (assuredly with endless rework). An A-list star usually spends 6 months to a year at max recording for a movie. How much did they have to tweak just to make sure they were getting the most from the Keanu investment vs. pivoting/cutting what wasn't working?
The plot with keanu was one of the few parts of the game that felt well executed. I think they could have done more cutting and focusing elsewhere too.
Then Keanu Reeves turned up. Eventually the marketing team had a brilliant idea to get more out of Keanu. And since he's so awesome, why not make the game MORE about Keanu... In fact, why waste budget and manpower on the other 2 actors?
This type of problem with high profile actors is endemic in movie industry. A movie with Bruce Willis or Ryan Gosling will be about Bruce Willis and Ryan Gosling. The actors don't have to even act that well because plot will be adjusted to play into their strengths.(Look how much screen time aging Bruce Willis got in Looper and the new Blade Runner!)
(polish) https://www.wykop.pl/link/5853285/czy-rola-keanu-reevsa-jest...
There are various speculations in the thread, including that the game is so lacking in its systems (police, NPC schedules, driving...) because they were ordered to cut them out. They were meant to be in the game initially, but major direction shifts in the development meant they had to reassign developers to something else.
Some content in the game seems to support this line of thinking. There's a quest with a monk that works slightly differently depending on which story act you're in.
There are some hints that developers really wanted to make a great game, but were gaslighted and bullshitted by the management. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-12-18/cyberpunk...
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If you want to know my opinion, I think CDPR also overestimated their ability. A modern, urban world works very differently than fantasy sword game. CDPR had 3 games to perfect the formula, then they jumped into completely different setting. I don't blame them, in fact I feel for them because it's nice to work on something different once in a while.