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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   2814 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for December 1, 2023

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I've been playing cyberpunk 2077. Fun game, has been sucking up my time. Only downside is that I went in with a particular playstyle that I enjoy from shooters, and its sometimes been hard to get the cyberpunk leveling to play well with my preferred playstyle. I ended up having a "cool" based character that absolutely murders with a silenced pistol. Cyberneticed like crazy, and hacks my way through things.

I'm also going to go see Bert Kreischer's standup tour soon. Very excited for that.

Only downside is that I went in with a particular playstyle that I enjoy from shooters, and its sometimes been hard to get the cyberpunk leveling to play well with my preferred playstyle.

How well does it handle stealth? I have been a first-person sneaker fiend since Thief.

I recently finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution as...a stealthy hacker.

I recently finished Deus Ex: Human Revolution as...a stealthy hacker.

Isn't that the one where the boss fights can be quite difficult for certain (non-combat) role choices?

Maybe?

I recall playing the original Deus Ex with a stealth assassin. The game took care to provide killphrases for two of the minibosses. And then—whoops!—I had a devil of a time trying to deal with Walton Simons(?) at Area 51 armed just with a sniper rifle. Apparently if I had just spent a moment to knock him unconscious in the previous mission he never would have appeared...

I think the key frustrations for DE:HR boss fights boil down to a couple of things.

  1. You have to carry along weaponry on mission after mission so it'll be available during the four boss fights. For most of the game, that meant a fully tricked-out revolver, based on wiki advice. Then I added a grenade launcher. They take up room, especially when added to a tranq rifle and a stun gun.
  2. You'll find the usual game designer trope where your weapons don't really do much until you've dealt with some precondition.
  3. Pretty much every time I save spammed and retried and then looked on the wiki for hints and then won, I explored the area after the fight. Lots of weapon/ammo caches, and other rooms and corridors besides the main "arena". So maybe they did design them to support hiding and sniping. (Your non-lethals won't work.) But when the cut scene ends and the mini-boss is in front of you, there's a very strong tendency to just start unloading.

There's a DLC The Missing Link where the final boss is just a guy, and sneaking over and doing a takedown works just fine. That was nice.

There are still (at least?) two ways to get past Simons in Area 51 without killing him. That game did not want want to be accused of railroading you.

Apparently they patched the boss fights so they're beatable even when you didn't spec into "apply gun to enemy in open combat".

Here we are. Director's Cut only.

Reworked Bosses

Now remember that the reworked bosses is incredibly important for this DLC and the main selling point for many fans. The reason the Deus Ex Human Revolution bosses were unfaithful to the original source was that the game itself was outsourced to another company to create the boss battles so it didn't really follow as close to the other work done on the game as it should have. Leading to the bosses being more like a generic FPS instead of having multiple viable options based on how you developed your character.

They did not add ways to avoid bosses completely however they have given you various options on how to deal with them depending on how you progressed with your character.

Hacking is now a viable way to deal with bosses

Boss 1 Example: [...]

Boss 2 Example: [...]

https://gaming.stackexchange.com/questions/137386/whats-different-in-deus-ex-human-revolution-directors-cut

I elided the spoilery bits.

The stealth is quite good. Many of the gigs and other side jobs have thieving or installing a virus on the network as a goal. You get a bonus for remaining undetected. You can get cybermods to be more stealthy and can hack cameras / turrets / etc.

Have you played phantom liberty yet? Being a stealth hacker in PL is op as fuck, legendary quickhacks are ridiculous. My set up goes invisible and slow mo if anyone sees me and contagion plus iirc cyberware malfunction drops entire rooms of enemies, with every death cutting any potential trace progress by a third. It's a lot of fun, but it does feel cheap.

I haven't, I just got around to playing Cyberpunk in the last few weeks. I really liked it and I'm planning to get PL.

With the Sonic Shock (?) hack, you never even get traced at all, it’s very OP and costs almost nothing to put at the start of your queue.

Stealth feels like a major part of the game. Some main story line missions require stealth. Many side missions have rewards for stealthy completions. And nearly every side mission can be completed in a stealthy way, if you have the right build.

The stealth system of the game goes deep. Pretty much every character build type gets some stealth bonus options. Even unintuitive ones like "body" (strength) have stealth benefits, a high body stat gives you more entry options into a building, so you could take slightly easier routes.

There is also a whole hacking system in the game that has covert options. Its necessary to use it to take out cameras, but it can also be used to create distractions, or blow up environmental hazards. Certain hacking things are "traceable", but the tracing takes some time, you'll just be on a time limit until you can finish off the enemies. There are also a variety of hacks against people, you can erase their memory to make a quick move behind them and take them out. You can disable their optics to make a dash to a new set of cover. You can disable their hearing and audio to make a takedown of the guy next to them unheard. Or you can just ping an electronic item or person to get a whole layout of the all the people, cameras, and gadgets in the vicinity.

Takedowns can be lethal or non-lethal.

Bodies need to be hidden, if another enemy finds a body they'll alert the whole place.

I usually don't go out of my way to play stealth games, but I often enjoy the mechanics. I'd say cyberpunk is comparable to dishonored in terms of fun stealth mechanics, and certainly better than the assassin creed games.

An example stealth run:

I'm given a mission to plant a virus on a club owner's computer.

I can walk into the main area of the club without getting in trouble as long as my guns aren't drawn. I do this and tag as many cameras and goons as I can. Each time I find a camera I shut it down. I leave the club and circle around the outside for easier entrances. I'm blocked out of one door because it requires body to enter. Another door requires technical ability. I open it up and peak in to see a camera in the room. I quickly disable it.

Then I jump into the camera system through that camera. I cycle through all the cameras, making sure I've tagged every goon I can find. If any cameras are within sight of each other I turn them off.

A security room is on the first floor near the entrance I found. My objective is on the second floor. I make my way to the security room, there is a goon inside, but his back is to the door. I sneak and do a stealth takedown of the goon. I have access to the computer terminal with all the security cameras. I make sure all the security cameras are shut down.

If there is a loose goon walking around that isn't covered by other goon's field of vision I'll try and do a stealth take down and stash the body either in the security room or outside the club.

I'll make my way upstairs. Sometimes there is a separate security system for the second floor, so I need to be checking the walls for additional security cameras.

The final room with my objective has two goons in it. They are talking with each other. One camera in the room that I already shutdown from the lower floor security room. I hack the camera to distract the two goons. They turn towards the camera, one is in front of the other one. The one in front I audio hack while I shoot the one in the back in the head. Then I move in and do a stealth takedown.

At this point if I have an objective for a stealth exit I'll run outside the club to get the stealth award. And then I'll turn back around, go back into the club and start a gun fight with the goons. Gunning them all down and stealing their valuable gear. I'll try to start the gunning down stealthily with a silenced pistol, but I rarely kill more than a few goons before they all hear me and it turns into a real gun fight.

IMHO this makes it sound slightly more exciting than it is, but it’s still pretty fun. That said, I still think Deus Ex Mankind Divided has better cyberpunk stealth, especially in some of the standout levels (the bank in Prague, Golem).

I forgot I played Deus Ex, but I remember often being frustrated with stealth gameplay in Deus ex, because it often had choke points that forced you to either have a super stealth build or enter combat. So I guess I like the level and map design in cyberpunk 2077 better

I actually very much like Cyberpunk’s gameplay now. I still have mixed views on the story, it’s extremely linear, doesn’t work very well for a game because of the implied time pressure, key relationships are rushed and it’s not a great cyberpunk story (the anime’s story would have been much better for the game). It does have some high points and I think the acting is mostly great, and the plot isn’t bad enough to be distracting (unlike Baldur’s Gate 3), but I was hoping for better after Hearts of Stone.

Yeah the implied time pressure annoyed me, once I realized it was only implied I completely dropped the main story campaign and have been having fun doing side missions.

It is a weird thing in open world games. There has to be a main quest line. But it is so common for me to enjoy side storylines way more. I've played many open world games where I basically treat the main storyline as one of the last interesting side quests I can find. I was playing hogwarts legacy a few weeks ago, and it was the same. The main storyline was good, but I still had more fun just putzing around and exploring stuff. The Bethesda games are notorious for boring main storylines.

I think it’s completely ridiculous that the game tells you you’re about to die in WEEKS and then you’re expected to square that with spending your time farming NCPD scanner missions to buy a nice car or rent a better apartment, like why would V care? It’s awful for roleplaying, I contrived some explanation that my V basically didn’t believe she was going to die, and so spends a couple months just working as a merc until she notices some more symptoms and THEN goes to meet Takamura, but it still felt very dumb.

Red Dead 2 also has urgency issues (in the last three chapters in the game especially), it harms the plot despite it being an all time favorite. I think the best thing is for open world RPGs to have optional main storylines that the player can choose to pursue, but which mostly lack urgency outside of key moments, and have downtime otherwise.

Batman: Arkham City is identical to RDR2 in this regard after Batman is poisoned. The only side mission which organically makes sense for Batman to prioritize is the Mad Hatter one, because it's predicated on Hatter tricking Bruce with a fake cure. But then it doesn't make sense if you wait till after the main storyline is done to complete the mission, because Bruce is already cured.

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