Why Cyberpunk 2077 failed at launch

This guy apparently had a chance to talk to a producer for 10 minutes at some event, and here's his story on the development of the game.

Here's a shortcut:

development started in 2013 (they acquired the licence quietly in 2010)

the 1st teaser took 4 months to make

during its development at that time, devs were pulled to work on Witcher 3, and the work on CP resumed in 2017

when the work resumed, came the "too many cooks" era - development was chaotic and all over the place. It was assumed that the game, at this pace, would be ready in 2024

suddenly, a prospect of a hostile takeover by Activision Blizzard scared the board. Secondly, they wanted to release the game in 2020, because it's iconic (which was probably an excuse to release it earlier)

a faster release would sooner increase the stock price, making the takeover less attractive

all of a sudden, the devs had 3 years to complete the game, instead of the 5-8 they thought they had

only 20% of the ideas made it into the game

the suits were breathing down their necks. most of the features never made it into the game, even with Phantom Liberty

Now, what was actually planned for the game:

10 romance options, instead of 4. 4 male only, 3 female only, and 3 who went both ways

Megablock 10 was supposed to be a mini-city, where you'd do most of your stuff

a metro system, replaced with a fast travel system

wallrunning

megatowers

many explorable buildings

a flying car

different type of clothing would give different bonus for various ocasions

The full story is in the picture attached.

So here it is - it all went to shit because the suits panicked.
Also, Activision-Blizzard really is an impressive company - not only do they destroy the IPs they own, but they also make other companies' games worse.

Open world slop will always be open world slop.

Who cares?

so what you're saying is that everybody wearing a tie needs to be hung from a street lamp and this wouldn't be a problem anymore

Do you feel alright? In the head, I mean.

my tie detector levels are off the charts on this post, please get on the bus with everyone else sir

How can you run a company when you're this unstable.

Even more interesting - how do you grow a company so successful when you're this unstable.

a game in development for a decade turns out to have tons of missing content because it needed to actually release

Damn I am shocked.

Sure it's believable but I see no evidence. This guy talked with a dev for a whole ten minutes and got details on exactly how many romance paths were planned? Stuff like the NCART and wall-running are just common sense that anyone can guess, and the rest is completely unverifiable.

No mention either of the scrapped techie skill tree or weapon modifications.

>megatowers

like giant scrapyards?

anything in grand theft auto, cyberpunk 2077 had it

whao so they were aware they were about to make just a gta like...lame

This guy talked with a dev for a whole ten minutes and got details on exactly how many romance paths were planned?

Why not? It could've been a quick answer for "what have you guys planned innitially", or something.

A little bit, but if you want to copy, copy the best.

they promised too much and the expectations were too high because witcher 3 was well received, overall cyberpunk was a extremely mid game

Yeah? That's the big thing? Exactly ten romances, including which way they swing but no other details? But instead of that romances were made "DEI compliant", whatever the hell that's supposed to mean in this context? Why is this the thing they *lead* with? It seems both too comprehensive for a "solid ten minute" conversation, yet too sparse in detail to be really believable. And again, I would've expected the cut skills and more comprehensive weapon systems to be a far juicier bit of intel than "there were even more romances, anyway moving on". There are things we know that got cut that it would be interesting to have details on, but those aren't mentioned here.

A story about corporate interference is an easy sell but again it's not really telling us anything we either didn't already know or can never verify.

suddenly, a prospect of a hostile takeover by Activision Blizzard scared the board. Secondly, they wanted to release the game in 2020, because it's iconic (which was probably an excuse to release it earlier)

a faster release would sooner increase the stock price, making the takeover less attractive

Are suits actually fucking retarded?

it failed at launch because the game didn't run on most machines, not because it was missing features

I hate the interesting stuff like cyberpunk is done by smaller companies and the big companies like rockstar is doing boring shit like gta. I need more cyberpunk into my veins NOAW!!!

10 romance options

thats what I was expecting. Old CDPR was probably the best in the biz at having a good number of very attractive romance options. New CDPR is full of trannies and faggots so thats pretty much over.

remember when it was pitched as an RPG and then it became a bethesda GTA game

bethesda GTA game

this is such a good way of putting it
I never appreciated how much effort went into GTA of all things until I played cyberpunk and the open world was abysmal

Why Cyberpunk 2077 failed at launch

It was BUGGY.
The devs said it wasn't ready to be shipped out yet but the executives didn't give a fuck so they shat it out while it was buggy.

People didn't like buggy. That's why it failed at launch.

Probably just retarded marketers

This is revisionism. The game could have released with no bugs whatsoever and still been massively unfinished and caught flack for the marketing just making shit up and theorycrafting for half a decade

nobody gives a shit about features announced 5 years before release being dropped

if I don't care about it then nobody else cares about it

even the normiesphere mourns the game the original vertical slice portrayed, you're just wrong

Why are people taking a youtube comment as fact? Is it that easy to fuck with people on the internet nowadays?

The story was crap even with the addition of Keanu Reeves

might want to loosen your tie next time you post

read entire post

no Keanu Reeves

This seriously compromises the believeability of this account, as bringing in Keanu Reeves to play Johnny Silverhand clearly represented a major change in direction for the game's development, yet it's not mentioned at all.

I started playing it recently and it's honestly decent now. When I first tried it years ago I dropped it because it felt like dogshit. Either they really reworked it or my tolerance for slop is now worryingly high. Either way, this whole "we'll fix it after release" attitude to games makes me root for a collapse of not just the industry, but Western society.

What the game could've been...

But I don't think it's possible for them, and certainly not modern nu-CDPR full of woke retards and women and lgbt defects.

an actual proper criticism of our society would've required recognizing the systems we made have become egregores feeding themselves off humanity without any sentience let alone care, it would've recognized how those systems create and perpetuate stuff like social justice not due to any human control but purely off runaway feedback loops creating worse and worse oscillations until everything breaks, it should've been showing how people are doing what they do without the ability to assess or realize they do not actually need to do it that way; that every person needs to have some cognizance and responsibility and understanding how to avoid the rat traps of advertising and media manipulation and psychological manipulation that hits them daily.

It needed and could have and should have explored the actual problems our society has, extended a mere 50 years in the future, to show just how much worse it could be if we don't wake the fuck up and start doing something about it.

alas, the team are fucking brainlets and the retards want to make it about "capitalism bad" with a soft spot for other contemporary brainwashed idpol beliefs

The game is virtually no different today than it was on release

all the problems the game has are the same as it did then, all the good things the game does are the same as then
What you are recognizing is that you were a brainwashed retard who jumped on a bandwagon, and you can't come to terms with that but you also can't explain how the game is inexplicably 'better' now.

Nobody who plays a videogame has ever felt it sucked because a random glitch made a car explode for no reason or spawned an NPC in a T-pose without clothing, and bethesda's shitfests can more than attest to that.

cyberpunk's high and low points had absolutely nothing to do with graphic or animation bugs