Exactly, I'm really not a hard CDPR fan here, just open to all sides of the coin. Everyone has its specific interests in big releases such as these, and its always way too easy to forget the influence of just simply people being people, with egos, their own issues, and their ability to function as part of a team.
CDPR is well known for friction among devs and management. I think that is a key part of the issue, as it has been before - except with TW3 it didn't leak into the final product. The pressure on postponing that release I think was also a lot lower - mostly internal, and not so much from partners.
Having completed the game by now, I must say I can agree with many of the complaints, but also can't with just about the other half. Yes, the city lacks interactivity and emergent gameplay. But at the same time I see brilliant writing, fantastic voice acting and superb story missions, and apart from the perp encounters on the map, all those little side gigs are little stories of their own. The quality is there. The city even for lack of interactivity feels vibrant around the city center - much less so in the surrounding areas. But there's a lot of it with tremendous detail and hand-crafting. You don't see sixteen of the same interiors in the game like you do in most, all of them rotated one way or the other. Its just different stuff. Only once or twice did I catch myself thinking 'this looks like a copypaste'.
That conclusion leads me again to shaky project planning. A bit like how Star Citizen puts serious attention in all those new models and concept art but still hasn't released a beta with solid all-round gameplay. It looks the part. The basics work alright. But its not fleshed out as something that wants to last, like, say, Grand Theft Auto. The AI... oh my god. Its shock and horror really. CDPR admitted on it I believe, but still. how did that get like this so late in the dev cycle? Any investor or product owner would categorize it as a serious risk to the overall viability of the product if not a blocking issue.
maybe, if so it was a pretty stupid fuckin agenda. If cdpr never sold titles on console they wouldn't be where they are at today. period. Good luck alienating console users and making it in the gaming industry...
Not sure, here's a perspective I'm getting more fond of right now:
CDPR has become a bit arrogant, as it shows today. A little kick in the nuts and back to their PC roots wouldn't hurt them. They've overstretched and they completely miscalculated this one. All the last minute decisions were dollar signs in their eyes, not the CDPR we really knew. Prior to release they had my favor of the doubt, but having seen the end product now... Nope.
Call it a market correction?
They won't go under for this. And to be perfectly honest, I still trust them enough to fix the issues and add a bit of repeatable content to the game that's missing now. Thinking back to NMS, at the time that was ALSO one of the rare games I bought right at launch, and I spent a good 60 hours in it, enjoying it even with the issues, and I had the same faith in future updates... look where it is now. Both involved studios I still view as people who work on games out of passion, and if you do that, you just want to deliver, if not today, then tomorrow.
One last painful conclusion I draw now is that upper management in CDPR has absolutely no handle on how corporate works. Hello Games - similar deal. Both younger studios that made it big in no time and then got to deal with Sony et al. Both studios with a PC-first game that then needed a console release. Both studios made a big show in media and both were under heavy release pressure. Post-release they stack PR blunder one upon another, clearly with lacking dialogue between studio and publisher. Its so similar its almost scary
Now... does anyone remember how Starcraft: Ghost panned out? Blizzard fridged it because the game didn't offer enough. That was to be their first console-ey shooter. They had experience/capable management and turned tail. I think I just figured out why.
The Steam store page has this for reviews.
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I'll take a covid curve like that! Herd mentality FTW
I think Steam's review system is borderline unreliable now when it comes to numbers though - they have all sorts of review bombing measures in place.
