Still remember a year ago when I was talking to people on this very forum telling them that the delays are not a good sign at all and that the game is gonna be a dud and quite literally no one believed me. Everyone thought that they just needed time to "polish" the game. You don't delay a game four times for polish, you do it because the game is in a catastrophically bad, non shippable state.
Haha, I remember that too. Because I was thinking and saying the same. First one, I let slide. Well... I made a cheeky joke about war in the streets if the game was a hot pile. Second one made it crystal clear that joke was less of a joke than I meant it to be.
FWIW I still enjoyed the game, but for me the delays, and the things they were saying about the delays were like... "We've all seen this before." It was so obviously bad management... not even different bad management. It was the same exact thing you see anywhere else. Same spiels and noncommittals. Oh, and the crunching after making such a big deal out of never ever needing to do it again. That says to me that a plan fell apart big time somewhere. I have some experience in management and I can tell you if I ever got that sort of thing from someone on a task or project, I'd already be mounting for a remediation of coming problems. I felt like I knew going in that it was gonna be a mess. Of course, I couldn't actually know, but the sense was so strong. And it's not like that struck me as some big insight that only I could have. It was as intuitive as "Looks like rain today." I brought an umbrella to the Epic store.... looking around like "Nobody seeing this? Okay. Time will tell. Here we go..." No lie, part of me bought it at launch just to see first hand. It just felt like something big...
Like... man. They KNEW so much. And they hid it. Even in acknowledging it, they dodged heavier criticisms about features and mechanics to talk about bugs. It's not cool. I have a hard time respecting how they tried to smooth things over. Everyone behind that can go as far as I care.
They had a lot of goodwill. People wanted to believe their promises. I never fully did, myself. It was more like "Okay, lets see what they do. This could be cool." I can throw in that much. I like TW3 a lot and saw them as one to watch... a studio that could do something special at their best. They've kept more of it than I expected. I really hope this was a big wake-up call for those remaining in the company. The game had so much potential, and not even half of it was realized. Instead, it almost ended them. So it was about the worst outcome, for everyone.
I can get the defensiveness. It's such a huge disappointment for many. I don't really begrudge people that. For others, it was fine. To me, that's regular people stuff that comes with the territory. You are never going to have a situation like this where that isn't a factor. I chalk that up to the ways of the entertainment world and experience. It's going to come down to expectations and experiences every time. I myself would like for there to be clear logic behind these forces, but if there is, I haven't seen it yet. I sometimes get nothing out of games that are objectively good only to lose my life to games that by my own standards have glaring issues.
End of the day, I think it brought some recurring things back to the forefront in ways many didn't expect, when they probably should've. I think people might need to see that. To understand. I think Cyberpunk is still a fun game. I really like it, actually. But I also understand perfectly well what it is... and that many people will still have experiences with it that aren't enjoyable or fulfilling at all. I can look at different parts of the game and see why. And it's obvious where the bulk of the problems came from.