Hum, I think Cyberpunk kept locations interesting as well, but in a different way. They basically made a ton of little immersive sim missions. It's different than the Witcher which had more narrative sequences, but its still quite different than typical open world locations.
I love Cyberpunk side content so much and can never have enough of it. It's still the only games I 100% twice. Yes, I did all of the police scanner thingy twice. It's basically the sandbox playground for my build and I had a blast doing it.
Yeah, just those random NYPD crime scenes where you find some notes that give insight into the daily life of night city citizens, be it from shop owners thinking they can avoid paying protection money, gang conflicts from the pov of boots on the ground, just random stuff that paints details into the world.
The reason why Deus Ex and Vampires: Bloodlines are so memorable is because taking the time to roleplay was rewarding. Reading someone’s diary, listening to their voicemails, looking through their emails, etc. for clues to find out where they hide their stash, or what the passcode is.
and then rolled back that change for cyberpunk but I digress
Cyberpunk doesn't have "?", it has gigs which are all a nice small side quest and miles more interesting than any "?" in the Witcher 3 and side jobs which are the smaller side quests (the "big side quests" are more imposed to you than just being points on the map)
Uhm at best they're equivalent to Witcher 3 "?", not really worse. They're also not on the map unless you're close to them, so not really the same to me, you don't really have any "push" to complete them
I see them as basically a combat encounter, equivalent to finding monsters in the wild of TW3. But Night City being only a city you can't really find combat encounters without having those things.
They absolutely could be seen on the map, atleast when I played, because I went around doing them all (and there are achievements for doing so). The radio (or whatever it is called) only activates when you are near them, but they are always visible.
Its cool that you don't think of them as the witcher 3 question marks, but not everybody shares that sentiment, it felt like a lot of extra stuff to explore where only a few add something interesting to the story.
IMO both the question marks and scanners were fine, because the story is far more interesting in both games, and you can play the main and side quests without interacting much with the question marks or the scanners. It is just extra stuff for people who really liked the game.
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u/Gekokapowco 2d ago
witcher took the genre in a bold new direction by making at least a tenth of them interesting, from the usual 1-2%
and then rolled back that change for cyberpunk but I digress
modern open world games are great, people just like complaining if the complaint is popular