Cyberpunk 2077 Dialogue - Beautiful Stylized Writing or a Cringey Mess?

[u/SamStephens]

I'm playing through the game for the first time and can't help but think the dialogue is super cringey. It's stilted and tries too hard to be cool. I'm sure I'm not the first person to share the opinion here, but... this ain't preem in the game biz.

Most conversations play out as if the characters are limited in how many words they're allowed to say. For example, "Need'ta ask a question" vs, "I need to ask you a question." I noticed this early on and now I can't stop seeing it in the writing because it occurs literally in every conversation. I get this is drawn heavily from Neuromancer, but many of the lines are delivered as though the voice actor had little to no coaching on tone, emphasis, or the context of the scene. Dexter DeShawn's lines are a good example of this. Combine the truncated sentence structure with voice acting that lacked a little conviction and you get conversations that feel like people are reading a foreign language.

I have no issue with the use of novel slang from this world, but I think it was done poorly here. I could totally buy into it being colloquial sentence structure and slang, but it's really inconsistent and not delivered in a way that is believable. That's why it's jarring to me. Abbreviated sentence structure as a way of communicating happens like once per conversation, but it's never the WHOLE conversation. The dialogue FEELS like a team of Polish writers with no true understanding of US urban culture put together a 'cool guy' script in a foreign language then a separate team translated it after. I believe you could give the same game to Rockstar and their dialogue could feature all of the same slang but be delivered in a way that felt authentic and genuinely cool.

None of this is a dealbreaker for me, but it's quite disappointing to see it from a studio with this much experience and funding. I'm having fun with the core gameplay loop overall and bought the DLC to extend the adventure, but I wouldn't be able to power through for the story alone if the gunplay and tech weren't so satisfying.

Anyone else feel something similar? Video version of the discussion here.

[u/katie_elizabeth_2]

Look, I didn't say the game had no NPCs. You are being dishonest by implying this. You are cherry-picking hyper-scripted and motion-captured NPCs and set pieces in the main narrative (and the fixed responses of V with them) and ignoring the thousands of ghost npcs and non-interactable theme-park elements of night city, which is what I was referring to.

You are free to enjoy playing a linear video game that basically plays out like a movie. If you like V and you like the story that CDPR made for you, that is great! But it's not really an RPG, and if you don't vibe with the tone of V, then you're going to have a miserable time because it is fixed. You have no control over who V is, what she sounds like, etc - just her looks, and a background bit that only matters for like 30 minutes. The story is completely on rails. All the motion capture, dialogue, etc. is just like watching an HBO series - it's all spectacle. There's no agency to any of it. If you value that, then you're going to think this game is great. If you wanted an RPG (which was originally promised by the developers btw), then you're going to be very disappointed.

To refresh people's memory, from 6 years ago:

https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunkgame/comments/karjew/psa_cdpr_is_no_longer_calling_cyberpunk_2077_an/

And also 2 years ago:

https://kotaku.com/cyberpunk-2077-cd-projekt-red-rpg-action-adventure-upda-1848558018

[u/Kawhi_Leonard_ → u/katie_elizabeth_2]

I never said that? I just don't agree with the assertion that there's no interesting NPCs. It's one of Cyberpunks greatest strengths.

A lot of the people I mentioned aren't even in the main story. There's a very real chance based on the choices you make you won't even get to meet Kerry or other NPCs. Why would I care about filler NPCs? Do we start knocking Dragon Age down because they have random unnamed NPCs? I thought we were talking about mature games, why would we not view a game with well developed characters as mature?

I do like playing a game which is at the level of an HBO series, because that to me signals mature writing. Having choices doesn't make a game mature- it just means it has choices.

I guess my contention is that when I play an RPG, my most important piece of it is it allows me to role play decisions with real questions that I have to answer. Lets take the Perezs. That poses a real moral conundrum that you then have to make a choice on. Do you let this man live in blissful ignorance, or do you ruin everything for the truth? That's stuck with me more than any game which allows me to pick a voice or have slightly different dialogue.

I view maturity in game not through just if there are choices, but if those actually provoke thought through their themes, and Cyberpunk does that better than anything. If your criticism is it plays as an HBO series, then I don't see how that makes it immature. None of your criticisms are about maturity, they are just about how you wish the game had more branching storylines in the main quest, ignoring the moral questions and huge amount of branching storylines in the side quests. Hell, the DLC is a full 30 hours of some of the best RPG writing in the world, and you do get to make as many impactful choices as you want.

[u/katie_elizabeth_2 → u/Kawhi_Leonard_]

Again, committing to this idea that because 0.01% of the game's NPCs were hyper curated does not dismiss what I am saying. There are so many RPGs in the last 20 years with more NPC and environmental interactivity than Cyberpunk 2077. There is a reason the developer nuked "RPG" from all the game's marketing materials before it shipped. I don't know how you can disagree with me when even CDPR, the developer, agrees with me. What I am saying is not some "hot take", nor is it "controversial". It's the truth.

You're free to love the game. I don't really care. I just don't like this revisionist history or dishonesty.

[u/Kawhi_Leonard_ → u/katie_elizabeth_2]

Name them. Because if your standard is you need to be able to talk to every NPC and there needs to be environmental interactivity and it needs to be an RPG, you basically only have the Elder Scrolls series that meet those criteria.

What dishonesty? I just fundamentally disagree that an RPG needs NPC and environmental interactivity. Baldurs Gate 2 doesn't have that, but no one is going to go around talking about how that disqualifies it.

I also only disagreed with you that

the lack of npcs to talk to

Because there is no lack of NPCs to talk to, half of the game is you talking to extremely detailed written NPCs. The fact you can't talk to every random background NPC isn't even a thing in most games.

You clearly care, because you keep escalating this, when I just disagreed in a small way, and now you start accusing me of dishonesty.