Now we've watched Night City Wire Episode 1 and watched and read our fav creators and sites weigh in with their hands on's...what do we think?

Personally, the admission of bugs by Parris and some IGN reviewers confirmed what i initially suspected: this game is fucking huge and those bugs are wild and they're trying to squash them well before release. Also this is the first time CDPR is making a game with gunplay and driving. So tweaking those to be more in line with what mainstream games feel like is taking a lot of refining.

For example, Sleeping Dogs driving mechanics are in my top 3 rpg-driving-mechanics of all time. Why? Because Sleeping Dogs driving was designed by Criterion--which among driving game devs is paramount to cheating :p But CDPR doesn't have that pedigree, so they're driving by the seat of their pants, so to speak.

They're not Treyarch/343/Bungie/etc, so the gunplay isn't gonna be COD/Halo/Destiny/etc level quality. It'll be it's own CDPR thing but they're still trying to organically determine how to make it not suck. That's not a lack of confidence in themselves. That's a developer doing a new thing and knowing "it's not there yet." They got this though. Parris' review was super helpful and honest. Gonna watch read some more in the meantime.

I read a review that talked about how the "cutscenes" really created a kind of seamless immersion where you don't realise you're just talking to a quest giver because there isn't an obvious cut to a scene and then cut back to gameplay. You as a player always seem to be involved with the narrative even as you're just being ushered through a questline or playing a tutorial of a particular mechanic, which i thought was pretty dope. i know the first person perspective isn't for everyone, but reading how the fpp relates to narrative immersion was cool to me.

All the different descriptions of how reviewers spent their 4 hours reminded me how dedicated they were to making different choice threads feel consequential. Apparently the Maelstrom gang/spiderbot mission can play out in truly WILD ways depending how you spec your character, not just how you behave narratively, which breaks my brain in beautiful ways. I don't want to include those ways in case people don't want to be "spoiled," but seriously, bruh.

Given the complexity of the game in those reviews, whatever ships in November will be at minimum forgivable if what is in it is truly memorable. And that's what important to me: that it works and that it is memorable.

Looks nice. Looks big.

Obviously there's still the chance that they'll drop the ball big time, but the game just looks so massive. If they can keep that up throughout the game then... Holy cow.

Always a chance. But so many of the reviews are basically saying the same thing: "it's not done, but holy shit." The level of agreement is frightening.

The reason i like Parris' review is because it's the most down-to-earth to me. The other reviewers are from outlets with histories (some tense histories sometimes). But Parris is pretty much a regular ass dude. And he was like, "there's stuff i like, stuff i don't; and the stuff i didn't like, they were already aware of and in the process of changing. [sic]" So again, they could drop the ball, but consensus seems to be that they're not really done dribbling anyway.

I agree. I don't think CDPR will make a mess of it at this point. But them having managed that quality throughout just sounds too good to be true.

I wasn't disappointed because I knew we weren't getting any new gameplay. The trailer was...odd. I watched the GTA and then the Rage 2 trailers afterwards for comparison and they are identical. Not comical but very whimsical in nature, which is fine for a game like Rage or GTA but Cyberpunk is this dark dystopian place and I just wasnt getting that sense in the trailer.

I dont know why instead of talking about character creation or some other in game mechanics they chose to talk about main story stuff. Maybe thats just me.

blah blah blah anime blah blah

The braindance thing looked quite interesting though.

But you got new gameplay. There are 25 Minutes of new gameplay provided by CDPR to the people who played the game. They were allowed to release it on their platform.

Here it is, if you want. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtoIjNDQ2kU

I really had a different impression than you did. I felt like the Gig perfectly captured the self-deluding mania of "the Street." The criminal world is full of people who dream big and have an unrealistic impression of what's going to happen. For example, Jackie seems very pleased with himself that he's "in the same league as" Drex (Dex?), and he laughs almost like he's high at some point. V, by contrast, expresses skepticism at several point. So we start with the giddiness of "What could go wrong?" and the trailer ends with what, exactly, can go wrong.

Jackie, and the audience, is being caught up in the "glamour" of the job offer. "Go get one last big score, and then we can live happily ever after," but it never works like that, and I felt like the trailer captured that nicely. It doesn't show you the consequences of that overconfidence in stark terms, but the clues are there if you look.

good take is good. Jason Hightower (Jackie's voice actor) put in that werque. protect Jackie at all costs.

also, we got new gameplay. the whole trailer was gameplay. the braindance was gameplay. gameplay we had not seen before yesterday. gameplay. in addition to the near 5 hours of articles and youtube reviews of people who played the prologue in a myriad ways being like, "yeaup, i played that shit specifically differently from how they did in the official demo and etc etc ǵ̵̩̫́̏́͑̾̄͠a̸͉̤͓͇͗̌̈́͊͐̍̚͝͠m̵̡̱̣̳̱̥̺̖̑̐̄e̷̦̞̎̈̈́̑̔̕p̷̗̳̲͋͌̽͜l̸̨̘̤̟͕͚̱̥̣̃͗͘a̷̢͙̹͈͖̩͈̬͐̔͂͌̓͑̀́̄͑͜ͅỷ̶̨͔͔͉͕̻̠̳͐̌" so i'm genuinely confused where the 'we didn't get new gameplay crowd' is getting their news.
additionally, kotaku australia rather painstakingly detailed the character creator as of this build of the game. considering the fact that the game isn't done i proffer four considerations: 1 character creator didn't include all the assets they've prepared for it 2 char creator will have its own reveal 3 char creator might not be revealed in its entirety because of its *ahem* robust feature set 4 (remember how) Geralt in TW3 got additional hair assets post launch; i would bet CP2077 gets additional char creator assets post launch

A new trailer is not gameplay. The 50 minute demo in 2018 was gameplay. 2 and a half minutes of chopped up gameplay versus an "influencer" is not a fair comparison, although I concede your point about braindaince. I dont want to see it written especially from a left wing parasite such as Kotaku. Especially when other people got a 4+ hours hands on experience.

We had to practially threeaten to burn CDPR's head office down to get that 50 minute demo. My point was they could have chosen to show off stuff people really wanted to see. But like I said i purposely didnt get excited about this event because I knew this would happen.

My point was the trailer seemed similar to GTA in the sense that it felt more light hearted than dark and gritty but I guess thats just me.

What about the 25 minutes of gamplay provided by CDPR that was uploaded along with the journalist's reviews? It's stuff from the trailer and more.

i swear to god peoples comprehension level is REALLY starting to irritate me. RELEASING FOOTAGE AFTER THE EVENT DOES NOT COUNT. There. i dont know how much fucking clearer I can possibly make it.

Oh it was clear. Just not clear why some people aren't just happy that there was new footage.

That sounds rather arbitrary. Why would it not count?

it makes less sense when you consider the "event" was Night City Wire, and the gameplay was released...

...during the event.

we're comprehending you perfectly fine. your content is genuinely dissonant against *checks notes* the event.

At every point of them talking about the game, there seems to be something they just aren't speaking about. Like something is trying to be swept under the carpet and hoped it's not noticed. I don't know what that is, but that's the feeling I get every time. It seems, at times, they don't even believe their own hype about the game and other times, you can see vividly what's being discussed or living whats being shown.

In terms of game revenue, you know they'd release what they have to bring back in line the faltering fan base if they had something. This project needs to move forward and no one knows this better then their home office. Bills, contracts, cost on overruns and development can be staggering. None of it is an asset until revenue is generated. Revenue won't come until certain things fall into place. They need revenue and they need to keep and build fan loyalties.

A definitive release date.
Game hype and live game trailers (current)
Game hardware specs.
An Asset in game value
Loyal and satisfied game consumers