Polygon's open-letter to BioWare regarding their open-world-like games.

They can't be BioWare because they're EA now. The conversion is almost come full circle.

People have the idea that Cyberpunk 2077 will be another huge hit - but not necessarily. If CDProjekt fumble the ball with that game, they will get the same treatment Bioware has. And they made it very hard to meet all the expectations after W3. they set a pretty high bar for themselves, creating a huge fanbase with Witcher.

Except I am not talking about staying frozenin amber.  I'm saying take a formula that works, and build upon it.  Make it the core of whatever you make next.  

Bethesda has taken open world and made it their own.  Quite successfully, through their iterations of The Elder Scrolls and more recently Fallout.

What does Bioware have?  What made them the big name in rpgs that can be built upon?  What is it that one could point at and say "That's what makes Bioware awesome"? 

Not another Mass Effect 2.

Not another Baldur's Gate 2

Not another KOTOR

Not another Jade Empire.

What they need to do is find the appeal these all have, and use it to make something more.  They should stop chasing other games and find what made themselves popular. 

Man I am so excited for Cyberpunk 2077 and we barely know anything about the game yet. Just the setting alone and knowing CDPR are making it just has my hype meter exploding. I hope they really outdue themselves with it.

I got bored of TW3 after 30 hours while trying to play it as an open world game: explore around, do stuff, don't bother with main quest unless I feel like it. TW3 sucks played that way. It's meant to be played as a linear game following the main quests and doing the side quests in each "hub" the main quest brings you. The actual "open world" content is all the pointless treasure chests, monsters nests, bandit camps, etc.

MEA, I didn't get bored once in 80 hours and I played it with "explore around, do stuff, don't bother with main quest unlike I feel like it"...

Is not that it annoys me, but it really is misleading as it doesn't follow any type of reasoning (hate rarely does). I wonder what popular games you would rate an 8? Surely there's very strict people out there but for the majority, if they do point the different aspects unbiased, I believe the +8 mark is difficult to avoid.

Many people forget that while the first witcher was good, it was certainly not perfect FAR from it, the combat system  it was a criticised system back in 2006-2007. I did liked it but the consensus did not, so it was changed in the second game.

Witcher 2 was great but it had many problems, with bugs and not a well made tutorial (the enhanced edition helped on that part but I am speaking of the game at release).

witcher 3 was awesome but it was built on the engine of witcher 2 and cd projekt had 2 games to perfect their way of making things in a dark fantasy game, refining already known characters that we don't have to be introduced to for the most part and can directly tell a story with an established universe. It was a progressive fondation that came to be better and better, it was not super awesome from the start. Cdprojekt had to learn before making the game that won so many awards.

Just like Bioware had to try first to refine their tps rpg, the first was mass effect was a good game overall, but it lacked the good gameplay mechanics to make combats more interesting, therefore the combat were a chore to play. the story parts were awesome but they were our reward for having to endure these combats. Bioware did not suceed the first time in all aspects, it needed try more than once.

Cyberpunk2077 is going to be a new start for Cdprojekt, its a sci fi universe, probably going to have a different combat system than the witcher, and will have to introduce the characters.

I have no doubt, its going to be a very good game but they will have to put even more works into it to live up to the witcher 3 reputation, because this time they don't have any fondation.

Not entirely.  It was my understanding the game is set in the same world/universe as Cyberpunk 2020, an old PnP RPG.  While they don't have an established story to draw inspiration from they aren't starting from a blank slate either.

Cyberpunk 2020

I don't believe he meant in terms of the property they are working with. Part of the reason CDPR went with this property is because it is already established like The Witcher was. What he means is they don't have a structural foundation in terms of game design, like they've had with The Witcher since the first game. In that sense, this game is new territory for CDPR. We also know they are planning to incorporate multiplayer, so this game will be an entirely different beast from TW3.

Lol. Jesus Christ, we're just getting silly now.

Oh I know that, I know its based on something. Maybe I should express it differently

Like many other players I never read the witcher novels, even if they exists. And most have no intention to read them, so cdprojekt had to introduce characters like they were new when they appear in the games, they have to deal with the fact that people would not read the books and therefore have to take that into account when a characters appears, even if he has a long story in the novels, for most of the players it will meant nothing so they have to write it a bit differently.

Many characters needs some kind of introduction because this is new to the players. They can make easter eggs or reference to the books with a few quotes with geralt, but it has to be limited and not "needed" to follow the story. Geralt might knew these characters but many do not and the writer at cdprojekt have to deal with that.

That is why they will have to introduce the world of cyberpunk because most of the players probably did not played cyberpunk 2020 or don't even know about it.