Cyberpunk 2077 (10th December 2020)

[Julius]

35 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

Animal Crossing will be up there too for sure.

Valhalla or Watch Dogs potentially. Maybe Hades or Origami King (ok that last one is just my vote).

Tough one cause I thought Last of Us was very divisive. 

Yeah, think it largely depends on what the audience is like for TGA's this year I guess, I'm expecting a bit of a bump in voter turnout considering just how strong a year it's been for games. 

Animal Crossing I feel is a great shout as a dark horse, think that one really depends on who turns up to vote more than any of the others mentioned. I'd be happy for it to win, because while I dropped off after 50 hours or so, I still got a few weeks out of it, and had a really good time with it; it was a very welcome and much needed distraction early on in quarantine, that's for sure. I at least expect to see it win some awards, though I'm not sure if it will end up with GOTY at the TGA's at least. 

I think the other games you mention could end up as nominees, for sure, but I don't think any of them that'll take GOTY home. 

I think it'll end up being The Last of Us Part II that wins, or rather, I'd be surprised if it didn't. While I personally feel that the original is tighter all around, and I'll gladly take a linear story over some of the messier pacing we ended up with in Part II, the ambition is there for it on the visual, storytelling, and musical fronts as a strong case for GOTY at TGA's. That this game can run as smooth as it does on a base PS4 really is something, and I really hope it's accessibility features are highlighted on the night for all to see. Plus, Naughty Dog is as GOTY bait a studio you can get, all things considered. 

Personally of the opinion that it being divisive is down to a bit of a vocal minority - not that I'd disagree with some of the points they raise, but while there are some who genuinely have fair points to make, there are others who hated this game from before it was even released (character gender, sexuality, leaked plot, etc.) who are annoyingly loud about it, which definitely makes it difficult to gauge. 

Ended up loving Final Fantasy VII Remake after I had some time to digest it, killer soundtrack and a great next step for Final Fantasy in a lot of ways, but I think it genuinely has a tougher job than the rest, considering its being held up more to the original game than it is it's peers this year in the eyes of most gamers. Probably not fair, but that's just how it's going to be. 

Guess we'll have to wait and see, in any case!

50 minutes ago, Ronnie said:

As for Cyberpunk, let them take all the time they need imo. I’ll wait a couple months till there’s a few patches up. 

It not being delayed into early next year makes me a little bit concerned that the next gen upgrade is much, much later on in the year than I had previously expected. 

For me, I'll be playing it Day 1 with whatever patches are available, but if this game is worthy of a second playthrough for me, I'll probably save it for that next gen upgrade!

[Julius]

17 hours ago, Julius said:

It's strange, because my first instinct is that it might be an issue getting it to perform well on the base models of current gen (PS4/XBO). 

Well, there it (seemingly) is. Wanting it to be more polished for release on current gen systems. 

 

[Cube]

It seems odd to punish PC gamers for no reason if that's the case.

 

I can understand not releasing it on PS5/XBSSX as those versions don't actually exist yet, they're just saying they the PS4/XBO versions currently run well on those consoles.

[RedShell]

35 minutes ago, Cube said:

It seems odd to punish PC gamers for no reason if that's the case.

Yeah, a lot of people are incredibly pissed off about it by the looks of things.

I don’t think CDPR necessarily want to punish PC gamers, but rather they’re well aware that once the game is out there (on any platform) there’s going to be massive amounts of footage and info doing the rounds, which will inevitably see the game being overexposed to those that are still unable to play it. So by sticking to a simultaneous release they avoid the risk of large amounts of players seeing spoilers etc.

Of course it’s less likely the same thing would’ve happened if the situation was reversed and the console versions were ready to roll but the PC version wasn’t, but well... that’s pretty much always been the case, no?  

[Ronnie]

Damned if they do damned if they don't I guess.

Explain the delay and PC players get annoyed. Don't explain and everyone gets annoyed.

[Julius]

Well. Former CDPR employee:

That's...disgusting. I'll be honest, excited as I am/was for this game, I'm starting to sour on it.

It's hard not to: the crunch, the transphobia staring you in the face that makes you question if that's what you're actually looking at (it's worth looking up), and above all else, the treatment of the workers. It's just dire. 

And it's such a difficult position to be in as an audience of something, obviously not as difficult as that of the team working on it, but it is difficult. What are we, the audience, meant to do? Boycott the game and not support the people who have worked so hard on it? Buy the game but feel guilty that we're supporting CDPR in continuing with this? 

I don't know where, or how, we draw the line on things like this. I really hope things have improved since, but it's hard to not doubt it. 

[RedShell]

Impressive stuff.  

[bob]

Quote

Draw the rest of the damn owl

 

Booooooooo! 

[Julius]

Scoooooops (at least for the PS4 version). 

Game will require 70GB minimum and will ship on two discs (perhaps not too much of a surprise given the scale CDPR are going for). 

[Julius]

10 minutes of One X and Series X footage in a special episode of Night City Wire:

 

[Happenstance]

As Patrick Klepek said on Twitter, I’d probably be more interested to see footage of it running on the Xbox One S.

[Ronnie]

Looks incredible

[Julius]

Completely missed this  gameplay trailer:

Three weeks tomorrow! (unless it gets delayed again, but there's no way... right?)

Oh, and Episode 5 of Night City Wire too:

 

Edited November 19, 2020 by Julius

[Ashley]

Google has an offer that if you pre-order the game on Stadia you get a Stadia kit for free. Can't seem to confirm if it's available outside America though, but probably not because that's Google for you. 

[Julius]

PS4 Pro and PS5 gameplay (free next gen upgrade still coming next year). 

 

[martinist]

I kinda forgot all about this game untill the last Night City Wired episode. Looks really good on the pro and the one X. I've heared alot about the size of the game so i'm expecting to play this for atleast 100 hours or so. Maybe more, i dunno. Working my way through Yakuza 7 before this comes out.

[Happenstance]

I'll probably wait until the weekend to hear some more opinions on how the game is but if things are positive then I'll grab the PC version. I'm still not massively hyped for the game but I am interested enough that I'd like to play it at launch with everyone else.

[bob]

This looks like it might be a good thing to put on my Christmas list (in 2021).

[Ronnie]

I'm tempted to wait until they add a third person mode. I know it'll be over a year (if it happens at all), but I'd enjoy it so much more that way.

[Julius]

Had been debating whether I was going to play Demon's Souls and then follow it up with this so close to each other, but not playing games the last two weeks has put Demon's Souls on the backburner for me  

I'll get to it (eventually), but for now, enjoying something a bit shorter until Thursday now. ShopTo have emailed to say it's already at the warehouse, so all being well, it'll arrive on Thursday and on time 

Can't wait. Agree with @Ronnie that my preference would be a third person perspective, but fingers crossed this is one of those games where first person is done in a way which doesn't spin my head around! Still kind of sucks from a gear perspective, though...

[Cube]

The review situation sounds a bit worrying. Some selected people got the game ahead of time, while it seems most people have only just got it, meaning they have to crunch massively if they want to have it done before the game is out.

 

I expect a fair few "review in progress" type of reviews. 

[Julius]

Currently at a 90 on Metacritic after 32 reviews. 

Some reviews and impressions to dig into:

Let the hype take over 

Edited December 7, 2020 by Julius

[Happenstance]

Sounds like a lot of mixed opinions but enough issues that I’m probably going to wait for patches and a price drop.

[Cube]

Definitely sounds like you'll get a better experience in a year or so.

[Julius]

Yeah, having listened to Ben's thoughts in the Easy Allies Impressions, it's going to be a weird launch. I expected bugs, but some of the ones mentioned in the review...I mean, yikes, having characters T-pose part of the way through a mission and having the male voice applied to the female V sound like such bizarre, immersion shattering things; from the sounds of it, that most recent delay was almost certainly to clean up the Day 1 patch (also agreed with @Cube that the review situation is weird, wonder if this is part of the reason why?). All the reviews/impressions I've seen so far have been on PC, so it'll be interesting to see how much of this applies to the console versions. 

It's a real shame. I'm still super hyped, but guess I'll be going into this a bit more cautiously than I might have been planning on. I think I'll see how the first 5 hours or so shake out technically before committing to completing the game in its current state (it's not like there aren't other things I'd like to play!). We've waited this long that while I'm happy to give it a shot, I really don't mind waiting some more if it's as bad as it sounds in some of these videos.