While I wish CDPR had pulled the band-aid and canceled (with refund or free upgrade to next gen) the PS4 and Xbox Series platforms, my controversial opinion is that this game has been GoTY on PC since day one. Plenty of my favorite games had rough launches (Vampire: The Masquerade Bloodlines, No Man’s Sky, Witcher 3, Skyrim - hell, I even lost an hour to the cross-save bug in Baldurs Gate 3), but it became a meme to hate on CP2077, and I understand why the devs claim to this day that the game deserves more credit.
I understand that players are tired of broken launches, and I agree that devs should be more cautious about what features they show in alpha/beta stages to manage hype, but I think the oversized backlash this game received stopped or delayed a large swathe of gamers from experiencing a truly great game and gave the devs way more stress than they had earned.
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I think a lot of the negativity also comes from misunderstanding what the game is.
Just like you, I played the game on release (on PC) and it is for me one of the best games of all time for one specific reason: immersion and story. That’s exactly what I expected from CDPR after Witcher 3 (another story and immersion focused game) and that’s exactly what I got. I didn’t expect a company known for their story focus and relatively weaker gameplay to deliver a game focused on gameplay or sandbox elements.
I think a lot of people wanted something that CDPR was never going to deliver, but it seems like Phantom Liberty is leaning more into the sandbox that people wanted and (unsurprisingly) didn’t get at release.
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