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Cyberpunk 2077 was “better than it was received,” CDPR dev says (www.pcgamesn.com)

submitted 2 years ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Cyberpunk 2077 faced a tough reception at launch, but with the Phantom Liberty DLC nearing launch, one CDPR dev feels the RPG was better than history records.

…uh, no. It was a hot mess at launch.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (18 children)

Nevertheless, Platkow-Gilewski also says that he feels the original version of Cyberpunk 2077 was “better than it was received.”

“I actually believe Cyberpunk on launch was way better than it was received, and even the first reviews were positive. Then it became a cool thing not to like it. We went from hero to zero really fast. We knew that the game was great, yes we can improve it, yes we need to take time to do it, and we need to rebuild some stuff.

“That took us a lot of time, but I don’t believe we were ever broken. We were always like ‘let’s do this.’”

Yeah, I actually can get behind this. They got a lot of crap for the technical performance of the last-gen console version, partly because there was no current-gen native version. Having played it on PC day one my impression was that it was rough-to-normal (still better than day one Skyrim). Design-wise, the combat parts and open world design are the least interesting parts of it to this day, but even at the time I thought the narrative elements and obviously the visuals were great.

Just to sanity check this, even with the torubled launch the PC version reviewed with an average of 86 on Metacritic and sold very well. It was a technically rough launch and they should have delayed the console ports at the very least, but it's not a bad game.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 2 years ago (10 children)

"(still better than day one Skyrim.)"

I'm glad you mentioned this because I almost never see anyone make the comparison, and skyrim didn't get nearly as much hate despite that fact. I remember if you were playing on PS3, walking into water would crash your game, and it was like this for the entire first year of the game on PS3. It also had a problem where save files that were too big would guarantee save file corruption. It was the definition of unplayable for lots of people.

Not saying cyberpunk is better than skyrim, just explaining how dire the launch for skyrim was, many people have forgotten just how rough around the edges skyrim was.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 2 years ago (2 children)

People tend to forget how broken games were at launch once they're no longer broken, which is why these days you only get broken games.

I think studios need to reassess what is a showstopping bug these days, because restricting it to hard blockers is no longer enough, but that may require people having a different perspective on these things.

But yeah "the game will eventually get into an endless crash loop if you play too much of it" is a pretty high bar to meet in terms of launching a broken game, and since I did play Skyrim on PS3 first, I may have a bettter memory of it than others.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) (1 children)

I think there's definitely some room for interpretation here, some games suffer from basically being brigaded, and this OP actually points that out. Some games are cool to hate. CP2077 was one of those. Skyrim wasn't. People forgave it for a lot because it wasn't cool to hate.

Look at Horizon Zero Dawn. Same story. That game has incredible game play, some of the most creative and new ways to do it. But certain people - ahem - brigaded reviews and made it cool to hate. Which sucks because that game has an amazingly unique combat system. Really nailed an action based trapping and hunting instead of just overwhelming force or stealth.

Conversely people adored MGS5 and to be completely honest it was generic at best. Go figure it featured a hot naked woman with jiggle physics who couldn't speak and would die if she put clothes on.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 years ago

Wait, did they brigade Zero Dawn? I mean, my impression of it is that they're cursed as a franchise with the worst possible timing, having released against genre-defining competitors two out of two times. If anything the impression I get from people is that it's the "deserved better" franchise.

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