The Cyberpunk Expose

We knew this day was coming

Bloomberg has developed something of a reputation ever since they hired the one journalist in the entire Gaming news industry. They're like the vultures who circle around carcasses picked clean in the court of public opinion. The second you see that 'Reach out to me' Tweet from Mr Schreier, it's pretty much brown trouser and alibi time for every single executive who so much as forgot to refill the break room kettle, thus when something the scale of Cyberpunk 2077 happened; well, the expose was coming. We're talking about the sort of exposé articles that detailed the Fallout 4 debacle, the Anthem disaster, Black Ops 4's upheaval, the Naughty Dog... thing. (Still not sure what that one was about) All those skeletons are piled up at this one man's desk so you can bet this was inevitable and likely to bring out every single dirty detail to light. And it... kinda did. I guess. I don't know, I guess this whole mess just wasn't as juicy as some of his others, but that doesn't mean that there wasn't enough fuel there to light a fire. I mean, one could argue that this didn't so much light a fire as pour several jugs of gasoline ontop of one, but either way the Cyberpunk dumpster fire is, once again, alight and thus I want to talk about it again. What can I say, I'm like a rabbit. The dancing lights and pitchforks entrance me.

First of all we've been hit with cold facts; development for Cyberpunk 2077 started after the release of The Witcher 3 rather than when the game was announced several years beforehand. What a revelation... except we knew this. From another Schreier expose in fact. The team put out a recruitment call for Cyberpunk 2077 but when The Witcher 3 underwent a few development issues, such as a full engine jump, everyone had to be reshuffled to that project. There were stories of developers who signed on for Cyberpunk, got burned out in the death march for Witcher and then left without getting to ever touch the Cyberpunk project. So I guess we already knew that the game wouldn't enter development until all that was behind the team, but with new news we actually learn that there was actually a big project restart around this time. (Feel like the exposé covered that too, but I can't quite remember.)

Now this isn't exactly the smoking gun some might be claiming, but it does put a correction down on those who stood gobsmacked at the quality of Cyberpunk saying things like "this took them seven years?" Actually it was more like four, which is actually still a little more than a lot of AAA games get nowadays, but not nearly as much as the game obviously needed. We also heard about other factors to impede development, such as communication breakdowns as the team swelled in size. New teams were bought together without the closeness that is enjoyed by veterans and some issues, which can probably be traced back to mismanagement, led to doubled workloads. One of my favourite stupid examples of this, although not mentioned by the exposé in question, is the way how modders discovered unused voice lines for a romance between Male V and Judy in the game, despite the fact that Judy is canonically lesbian. The official response from the team (Which they really didn't need to give, by-the-by) claimed that this was because the team were afraid of missing out gender specific lines so they just recorded everyline for both genders. This was done in fear of missing something and having to go back and redo it. Which means that they intentionally doubled their workload in this regard in order to avoid accidentally doubling their workload? Yeah, no. That was clearly just some poor planning and messy execution. (Hey, at least the VAs got paid.)

Of course, with this truncated development time the question on a lot of rational minds might be something along the lines of; well what did you expect? In fact, the report even follows one person who directly asked something along the lines of 'how can we make a game that's technologically more demanding than The Witcher 3 in the same amount of time.' And their answer? The grand smack down to all the non-believers out there? Well allegedly it was; "We'll figure it out."(KO, haters, how will we ever stand up to such sound logic?) Now I've heard some people compare this to the whole 'Bioware magic' insulating device which was utilised whenever concerns were bought-up regarding Anthem, but I still maintain distance to criticizing  a term which seems like an inside joke. I mean sure, from the outside that sounds like a damning case of sticking one's head in the sand and hoping everything works out, but without working in Bioware, it's hard to say if that's just a throwaway expression. What you can't argue with, however, are the results. Anthem was a mess, and Cyberpunk is a shadow of what it could have been. Huh, guess logical challenges do have a place on the development floor, huh?

The rest of the report was largely made up of reiterations on things we either already knew or could have inferred simply from... you know... what we ended up getting. The focus on Johnny Silverhand over the development of the protagonist was made after Keanu Reeves joined the project, (That's alleged) when the claim was made that the game ran "Surprisingly well" on current gen consoles that was a barefaced lie aimed at luring customers into a false sense of security. (that is not alleged) The early release was fuelled by the external factors of the newly releasing consoles, quite contrary to the trite we were fed at the time. And that embarrassing Police system where cops literally spawn behind you the second you get a wanted level; was cobbled together as the game was getting pushed out the door. Showing you clearly how much effort was put into creating the 'open world' in this 'open world game', in case the actually brain-dead civilian AI didn't manage that for you already.

But, of course, there was one revelation from this whole affair that really took the Internet by storm. One reveal which had people taking off their hats in mourning, for their heroes had died with that announcement. That was the 'shocking' reveal that the gameplay video which first shocked the world, and incidentally was the place where I began obsessed with the project (albeit, that was from a recount of the video rather than when the video itself launched) was fake. But what do we mean by 'fake'? Well, apparently it was a demo that was put together against the wishes of some of the team who believed it took several months away that could have been used in development. So that makes it 'fake', apparently. I mean the thing was made, it did function; this wasn't just a cobbled together VFX rig. But I think some people were under the assumption that this was a vertical slice taken out of the full game which, I'll be honest, I don't think was ever said.

Now if you've been around here long enough you'll know that I'm never the apologist standing up for these companies when they screw us, but I think the reaction to this news is a little bit of the public's own consequence, because I certainly knew exactly what the trailer was at the time. It was a proof-in-concept, a vision of what they wanted the final product to look like and they were excessively clear about that. That was why everyone was telling them 'Go and make that game. That standard we saw; that's what we want you to hit!' Which is something they ultimately failed to pull off. I mean sure, the final game looks a lot better, but pretty much every single described or implied system was either downgraded or non-existent. That doesn't change the fact that the trailer wasn't a lie, or even sold as one; the public just choose to see it as more than it was, and if we're being really honest with ourselves; isn't that a little stupid? I mean come on; if the general game looked that polished in 2018, why the hell do you think they'd spend another two years in development? What do you think they would be developing? What, does it take two years to wrap up the story quests? Of course not, that was the time they spent building the spine behind what they teased, and that spine ended up mostly crooked.

Enough with the grandstanding though, people feel like they've been lied to and in most respects they have been. I mean, if nothing else we were absolutely sold the lie that this was 'the most believable open world ever' when the final product is really an example of all the worst open world traits. Beautiful and gleaming but shallow as a puddle. And all the rebuttals that have since come out toward the exposé (all from a company who curiously refused to comment on the exact same exposé when formally asked. Very bad form.) ring hollow. Even the apology doesn't hit it. Because at the end of the day all the higher-ups want to talk about are the bugs, because they can be fixed, when the truth is that the rot runs deeper and closer to the heart of the very game itself. They billed this as the new Deus Ex, but what we got was a slightly better Ubisoft game. (Okay, to be fair people say the story is good, which automatically makes it the best Ubisoft-style game.)