Leans a bit towards cringey edgelord at times…

You’re not wrong. I like the heart of the character, though (from what I’ve seen).

The more I see of him, the more I kind of wish he was just the player character and it was just his story. V is such a blank slate, I feel like I’d prefer a more realized main character, much like Geralt in The Witcher. As the player I can make choices, but they’re all still sort of filtered through his character. That is also true of V, I guess, but she’s just not very well realized as an actual character.

How do you like Keanu in the game?

I think he’s great so far. He shows up way more often than I expected. Seems like damn near every quest he pops up and has something to say, and sometimes even just randomly as I’m walking around.

Leans a bit towards cringey edgelord at times…

I think he’s great so far. He shows up way more often than I expected. Seems like damn near every quest he pops up and has something to say, and sometimes even just randomly as I’m walking around.

As far as patches go… I haven't had a crash in 3 days. 1.05 seems to have stopped that issue. Honestly the backlash is super overblown. Did they fuck it up? Yeah. But is it still playable and fun? Also yeah. I'm on the PS4 Pro. Don't know about the base systems.

I tried to play again tonight. It’s not overblown at all, this game is fucked. I can’t make any dialogue choices, the hacking menu just straight up disappeared so I can’t do that either. I was in the mission in the mall and all of the enemies spontaneously went on full alert for no reason. Etc, etc. It’s a complete mess.

Which is a shame, because of it worked properly, it would be absolutely incredible.

Also, partly I just don’t think the game looks very good, and I’m hoping future patches will address that, and the upgrade patch definitely should.

In the old days when I played more games than Destiny, I would have been all over this. I'm glad I held off. The visuals are a big part of the appeal in this case. Besides, I haven't even played Witcher 3 yet. :)

Well now you should wait to play The Witcher 3, too, as it’s also getting a next gen upgrade next year. I did launch it on the Series X, though. It’s 4K 60fps and looks amazing. But they said they’re going to add ray tracing and stuff. I guess I need to finish that 5th play through, and a good enhancement for Series X will almost certainly be enough to get me to do it.

Also, partly I just don’t think the game looks very good, and I’m hoping future patches will address that, and the upgrade patch definitely should.

In the old days when I played more games than Destiny, I would have been all over this. I'm glad I held off. The visuals are a big part of the appeal in this case. Besides, I haven't even played Witcher 3 yet. :)

I’m on the Series X and I’ve had two crashes. More than that, though, it’s a near constant barrage of tiny little shit that is just bothersome enough to make me want to wait. I had subtitles that got stuck on screen until I rebooted (despite having subtitles turned off in the first place—they randomly come up still). Lots of weird broken animations and AI still.

Also, partly I just don’t think the game looks very good, and I’m hoping future patches will address that, and the upgrade patch definitely should.

I'd say it looks both good and bad. I'm glad I've been playing this game. Lots to talk about. Everything from the incompatibility of RPGs and open world, to the idea of immersion and ludonarrative distance, to the hits and misses of theming, design flexibility and rigidness, technomisogyny and sexuality, and more.

Stay tuned.

Also I'm convinced photo mode is only there for creepin'

As far as patches go… I haven't had a crash in 3 days. 1.05 seems to have stopped that issue. Honestly the backlash is super overblown. Did they fuck it up? Yeah. But is it still playable and fun? Also yeah. I'm on the PS4 Pro. Don't know about the base systems.

I’m on the Series X and I’ve had two crashes. More than that, though, it’s a near constant barrage of tiny little shit that is just bothersome enough to make me want to wait. I had subtitles that got stuck on screen until I rebooted (despite having subtitles turned off in the first place—they randomly come up still). Lots of weird broken animations and AI still.

Also, partly I just don’t think the game looks very good, and I’m hoping future patches will address that, and the upgrade patch definitely should.

Is it really long? I’ve heard you can get through it in as few as 20 hours.

You can, but I'm at 20h myself and haven't even unlocked the first area yet.

Some of the sidequests are really really intricate and story heavy. Very substantial. Others not so much. But if you don't do the intricate ones you are missing out.

I’m still not super far, but I was leaning into hacking already, and it seemed good from the very beginning. I’ve seen a lot of people online that are talking about what’s good or not good in the skill tree, but it doesn’t seem like any of them actually focused on a single direction, instead opting for a jack of all trades style. This very much seems like a game that is better if you focus on one or maybe two trees.

I'm 100% all in on intelligence. Already maxed it out, so putting points in to cool. Definitely focus.

What difficulty are you on? I started on Hard, and that seems like the way to go, because there have been instances where shooting my way out wasn’t really a viable option, or it was only barely so. The only thing that makes it possible is that the game really just throws tons of healing items at you. Again, I’m sure if I had put more points into gun skills that would be totally different.

Hard. It was the default surprisingly.

As far as patches go… I haven't had a crash in 3 days. 1.05 seems to have stopped that issue. Honestly the backlash is super overblown. Did they fuck it up? Yeah. But is it still playable and fun? Also yeah. I'm on the PS4 Pro. Don't know about the base systems.

Is it really long? I’ve heard you can get through it in as few as 20 hours.

You can, but I'm at 20h myself and haven't even unlocked the first area yet.

What difficulty are you on? I started on Hard, and that seems like the way to go, because there have been instances where shooting my way out wasn’t really a viable option, or it was only barely so. The only thing that makes it possible is that the game really just throws tons of healing items at you. Again, I’m sure if I had put more points into gun skills that would be totally different.

I was wondering about that. I'm absolutely drowning in health stims, but I thought it was a Normal difficulty thing. Is it also like that in Hard?

I’m excited to play more (especially given the way you talk about it), but I think I’m still going to wait on patches.

I’m still not super far, but I was leaning into hacking already, and it seemed good from the very beginning. I’ve seen a lot of people online that are talking about what’s good or not good in the skill tree, but it doesn’t seem like any of them actually focused on a single direction, instead opting for a jack of all trades style. This very much seems like a game that is better if you focus on one or maybe two trees.

I do think guns feel pretty good to shoot, so I can see playing the game that way bring pretty fun.

What difficulty are you on? I started on Hard, and that seems like the way to go, because there have been instances where shooting my way out wasn’t really a viable option, or it was only barely so. The only thing that makes it possible is that the game really just throws tons of healing items at you. Again, I’m sure if I had put more points into gun skills that would be totally different.

WTF are they smoking.

If you spec for it and upgrade your cyberdeck, it's straight up almost broken. I can ping an enemy, then kill all the revealed enemies THROUGH WALLS all without firing a shot (literal wallhax lol). Disable all turrets and cameras with a breach protocol. Blow up mechanical things in one short circuit.

I literally have not fired a gun outside of the required sequences (scripted car chases and johnny's flashbacks)

After seeing what all my friends are doing, I think I can say it has nearly the complexity of possible builds and approaches that Deus Ex has. I would be excited to try a guns blazing or sword build or something, but this game… is really really long. And I have no idea how much is even left.

Also why is the entire internet thirsting for Panam? Judy's where it's at guys.

Also a weirdly relevant meme involving Deus Ex.

The bigger news is that they’re removing it from the PS store. That’s wild and clearly not good for CDPR. I’m not sure how to feel about that. I think this might be the first time this has happened.

Don’t care. Bought physical :-p

Although, thinking about it, CDPR kind of forced the issue. By releasing a statement advising refunds (seemingly without actually making some sort of deal with Sony and MS), they are forcing Sony to deal with the costs of processing refunds en masse—it makes sense they would remove the game from sale until the issues that cause refunds are fixed.

Jeff Gerstmann talks about it in the Giant Bomb podcast that went up yesterday. It also just has a good discussion about the game in general. Discussion of the game is after the first few minutes, and the stuff about cert is around the 24:00 mark.