<story><title>Cyberpunk 2077’s Path Tracing Update</title><url>https://chipsandcheese.com/2023/05/07/cyberpunk-2077s-path-tracing-update/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>magicalhippo</author><text>&amp;gt; For me it feels alive but like a diorama.&lt;p&gt;This is one of the things that Oblivion and Skyrim did really well. You&amp;#x27;re just walking around randomly in a forest, see a small cabin, go to investigate, oh hmm some notes mentions a basement, but where? Oh there&amp;#x27;s a hidden door? Wut? A giant cave system, full with backstory notes of some guys trying to revive some old monster?!&lt;p&gt;This happened to me like 15 minutes into the game, and I spent a good hour or more (lost track of time) exploring the caves and fought the monster at the end.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d just stumble over these non-trivial quest locations, and for me that&amp;#x27;s something I&amp;#x27;ve not really felt in other games. Almost all just confine you to the narrow path.</text></item><item><author>ehnto</author><text>I hear this criticism a lot, I imagine it is different for everyone but what do you think is missing in comparison to other games?&lt;p&gt;For me it feels alive but like a diorama. You can&amp;#x27;t really interact with much, so once you stray from quests you really haven&amp;#x27;t got much to do.&lt;p&gt;Obligatory mention to check if you have &amp;quot;HDD Mode&amp;quot; disabled, with it enabled it reduces the NPC and vehicle count and variety. The game is also huge with day&amp;#x2F;night cycles, so there are times and places that have few NPCs.</text></item><item><author>EA-3167</author><text>My biggest issue with the game at launch was that the place felt empty, like a giant city with nothing going on. Has that changed at all?</text></item><item><author>jeron</author><text>It’s so crazy how this game continues to get significantly better and better but since they botched the release, these updates go mostly ignored</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>trafficante</author><text>&amp;gt; You&amp;#x27;d just stumble over these non-trivial quest locations, and for me that&amp;#x27;s something I&amp;#x27;ve not really felt in other games. Almost all just confine you to the narrow path.&lt;p&gt;It seems to be a casualty of the ever increasing time and expense needed to create a modern AAA game. Bethesda themselves are clearly suffering from this trap; their games are taking longer and longer to get released and get further “dumbed down” in each new title. I suspect this is one of the bigger contributing reasons for all the AAA studios going “games as a service”.&lt;p&gt;One bright spot: the, uh, upcoming Zelda title will absolutely scratch some of this itch. Somebody at Big N really took that “huge beautiful world, but mostly empty” BotW criticism to heart and sunk six years into addressing it. It’s honestly unbelievable.</text></comment>
<story><title>Cyberpunk 2077’s Path Tracing Update</title><url>https://chipsandcheese.com/2023/05/07/cyberpunk-2077s-path-tracing-update/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>magicalhippo</author><text>&amp;gt; For me it feels alive but like a diorama.&lt;p&gt;This is one of the things that Oblivion and Skyrim did really well. You&amp;#x27;re just walking around randomly in a forest, see a small cabin, go to investigate, oh hmm some notes mentions a basement, but where? Oh there&amp;#x27;s a hidden door? Wut? A giant cave system, full with backstory notes of some guys trying to revive some old monster?!&lt;p&gt;This happened to me like 15 minutes into the game, and I spent a good hour or more (lost track of time) exploring the caves and fought the monster at the end.&lt;p&gt;You&amp;#x27;d just stumble over these non-trivial quest locations, and for me that&amp;#x27;s something I&amp;#x27;ve not really felt in other games. Almost all just confine you to the narrow path.</text></item><item><author>ehnto</author><text>I hear this criticism a lot, I imagine it is different for everyone but what do you think is missing in comparison to other games?&lt;p&gt;For me it feels alive but like a diorama. You can&amp;#x27;t really interact with much, so once you stray from quests you really haven&amp;#x27;t got much to do.&lt;p&gt;Obligatory mention to check if you have &amp;quot;HDD Mode&amp;quot; disabled, with it enabled it reduces the NPC and vehicle count and variety. The game is also huge with day&amp;#x2F;night cycles, so there are times and places that have few NPCs.</text></item><item><author>EA-3167</author><text>My biggest issue with the game at launch was that the place felt empty, like a giant city with nothing going on. Has that changed at all?</text></item><item><author>jeron</author><text>It’s so crazy how this game continues to get significantly better and better but since they botched the release, these updates go mostly ignored</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>ehnto</author><text>Fallout isn&amp;#x27;t quite as good as Skyrim was at it, but that is what I loved from those games too.&lt;p&gt;Cyberpunk actually has a lot of good environmental storytelling moments just wandering the city, but they don&amp;#x27;t capitalize and turn them into self driven exploration, the stories don&amp;#x27;t go anywhere.&lt;p&gt;An example might be the homeless thief living under the underpass near North Oak, there are two story beats, you find the first note suggesting where they live, then you find the spot and there is a second note, and that&amp;#x27;s it.</text></comment>