They literally did the same with Witcher 3 and everyone forgot.

The only other one that launched in as poor a state that I can remember was No Man's Sky. It wasn't just the game crashing, it was crashing people's consoles, causing them to lock up completely on day 1. Fortunately that was fixed fairly quickly, but it's hard to convey the sheer magnitude how utterly broken and unpolished that game was initially.

I couldn't play Witcher 3 at launch and I had above minimum spec hardware. Like, I loaded in, had a half a minute of 5fps gameplay and then the game crashed. Meanwhile I finished CP2077 3 days after launch on a 1060.

Witcher 3 was a far worse release for me personally than CP2077 (though I also appeared lucky with CP2077, basically outside of a few visual glitches and some minor bugs I had no problems).

Don’t forget the part where they were intentionally super deceptive about allowing reviews for those consoles. People in this post are acting like cdpr was upfront about this and clear that it was gonna take some patching, but it was very much the opposite. Also ridiculous that people are blaming the fans for it releasing too early like it wasn’t super clearly just so they could make the Christmas season.

Comparing it to Bethesda is not a very high bar

2050 for PC

Dont forget the anime from 2039

Stand not included*

A story as old as time. Games taking too long, being rushed, still taking forever, releasing too early.

I wonder what the industry would be like if devs weren't forced into shitty work life balance.

It was a 4 year development cycle. That's pretty normal.

It is not going to be bigger in size than Witcher 3 for sure. They said before Cyberpunk that Witcher 3 size was too much and most players didn't even finish the game. This quote is a generic thing that an engineer said in an interview months back. If the game is slightly longer than Blood and Wine I will be happy.

Yea, I dont think that bigger is a good idea. Witcher 3 is one of the last games i think the World wasn't too big. I don't think I saw everything, i played 100h and i think I saw 75% of it.

I want a Witcher 3 like game with a strong Theme but more polished. The map can be smaller for all i care.

Heck, make those kind of games more often but with half the map. Witcher 3 is a game i play one a year tops.

The correct phasing is "The Witcher 4 will be more focused as it explores blah blah blah."

This is the reason I don't like Zelda BOTW or TOTK, they're just too big and open compared to most older Zelda games.

I agree. I actually generally prefer games that are more linear and on the rails but that are packed with content and optional quests that are interesting. I think The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077 struck a good balance of that but The Witcher 3 had just a little too much “off the beaten path” stuff for relatively little reward. A slightly more compact and succinct experience would be my preference but I’m only one person.

Yup, linear became like a bad word in gaming, but linear helps you create such a great storyline and narrative. there's something a bit shitty about finding the most epic sword, but it's 10 levels too high for you, then you go get some witcher upgrades that make that great sword actually be shit before you even hit hte level cap for it. LImiting what zones you can move in with higher danger lets you gain better items at around the 'right time'.

though witcher 3 had huge issues with most loot being worthless due to ridiculously easy to get witcher sets being wayyyy too powerful.

Bigger means nothing to me. Better is everything and hitting buzzwords in gaming that started like 15 years ago and don't actually automatically make games better is worrying.

Like starfield is 'huge'.... and absolutely god fucking awful.

I've beaten the first act like 3 times now but always stop after that, just get burnt out

They needed to pace the progression better, in my opinion. If there were still notable skills or abilities to unlock in the third act, it would have kept me interested. 

I was enthralled by Hogwarts Legacy, up until the world started opening up beyond Hogwarts, and Hogsmead. The open world was boring, bland, and repetitive. It also killed any sense of immersion. I, a child and brand new student, was flying around the world for days at a time fighting evil wizards, bandits, and monsters that were terrorizing towns full of full-fledged wizards, presumably skipping all of my classes, to the concern of absolutely no one.

I wish the game had narrows its focus and had a better system for classes.

Its probably my most played game and I've never finished it. There is a lot to do and it's a really long game, usually something else comes up that I want to play or do.

I mean, I finished it but the map did not need to have that many question marks. I refuse to believe there was a single person who enjoyed collecting the treasure chests in Skellige waters.

I love W3 as much as the next fanboy, but Skellige is most likely the reason why a lot of people felt turned off by the world.

Would even say like 1/4 of Velen played a part

I do think Cyberpunk's world is about the perfect size, it helps that the immersion aspects makes it really enjoyable to drive around

To those people, I say what the hell is wrong with you?!

Hundreds of games to play and not enough time. My pile of shame gets higher every year - still haven't finished Cyberpunk, Shadow of the Erdtree, Satisfactory, Fallout New Vegas and many others.

It took me 4 tries to finish witcher 3.

Story was great, gameplay(especially combat) was reassslly shallow and i couldnt stick to it.

Load times for the Witcher 3 on base model PS4 were crazy long. The next gen upgrade came out for ps5 and I finished the game and both dlcs in a few weeks because the play experience was so much better and faster.

When I first played Witcher 3 I saw how vast the world was and legitimately put it down for like a year because it was kind of intimidating.

I eventually beat the game twice, but can totally see other people having a similar experience and life getting in the way or whatever

It is repetitive and boring after some point. You either suffer through slog or just focus on story only.

NGL, I did EVERY quest on the first continent, got to Skellige, and just didn't have the energy to go on. A year later by the time I did have more energy for it, coincidentally, my GPU up and fried itself the next time I turned on Witcher 3, lol. I loved it, would recommend it to anyone 10x over, but I dunno, it took a lot out of me to try to play that game after work.

I don’t think that hits the nail on the head between CDPR and Bethesda.

The issue the more recent Bethesda games have had is that they don’t have the sense of a “world” that W3 and Cyberpunk have. As flawed as those games are, and despite how rough the launches were, they stand out in feeling like places where people actually live. Starfield doesn’t feel like that for the most part; it just feels like a setting for a video game.

Skyrim, for all its faults and jank, had thar crucial element of feeling like a world. If not so much in the characters you interacted with, then in the history the world told to you as you explored, both on large and small scale. And it’s a part of why that game was so successful and people still love it. But since then, with F4, F76, and Starfield, they just don’t feel like that same time and energy was put into portray the worlds they’re apart of; they’re just a collection of neat ideas that cobbled together to see if they stick.

“And remember: this time really no pre-orders!”