u/_PRINCE-VEGETA

I have taken inspiration from games like RDR2 and Last of Us to make this post.

Place: Night City but expanded (expansion happened due to security reasons and more workplace requirements after V's Arasaka raid). Corpos invaded a huge chunk of badlands.

Time: 3 years after Adam Smasher's death

Difficulty System: All enemies have similar health bars in all difficulties, but their weapon upgrades vary from easier to harder. Alongside boss enemies always shoot for the head in harder difficulties. Stealth is harder with difficulty levels, as the enemies have better hearing and will react to your footsteps if you are not crouching, and the eye level for catching fills faster.

Life Path: There are the Same three paths to choose from, but they have different starting stats this time and totally different backgrounds and objectives from each other.

Nomad:

• Best starting strength stats but lowest intelligence and tech ability stats.
• The kindest behavior out of all life paths makes it easier to romance them than on other life paths.
• Starts in badlands on an operational table where Militech and some nomads are forcefully trying to give them cyberware.
• They have been trapped here for days. Militech is trying to change their face to someone else's.
• After a bit of struggle, they get out of there and search the area.
• They find out that their entire nomad clan was wiped out except themselves.
• They were being experimented on in order to make a clone of a legendary merc of Night City as they were the only person from the clan that met all physical features of the merc (height, gender, body archetype, etc.).
• After searching more, the player can find the rotting body of a merc and a shard that says this merc was one of the best mercs in Night City 5 years ago.
• You can find out that the merc is here because they were assigned to assassinate a Militech target in Badland, but Militech took support from some nomads to kill them.
• In exchange, that nomad clan took Militech's weaponary to kill almost every other nomad clan.
• The player was one of the clans that were being hunted. they survived for 5 years, but at last after getting caught, Militech ordered the nomads to keep you alive so they can create a clone of that merc to blackmail the entirety of Night City. Your memories were also about to be erased. But you survived.
• The first boss fight happens when you destroy the memory shard that was going to replace you and loot the body and surroundings of the dead merc. The boss you fight is the clan head and has a lot of militech armor.
• You need to kill him using stealth, weapons found lying around, and a bit of hack, as you are forced to take a militech biochip into your head, as there is no way out.
• Before dying, the boss you defeated sent a message to kill you on sight to other nomads.
• So now you are hunted in the entirety of the badlands. You have 10 in-game minutes to fight an infinite wave of enemies, find a starter legendary pistol, and get out of the Badlands into Night City, but not as yourself but as the merc who disappeared 5 years ago.
• You will also not be able to enter Badlands until much later in the story for a certain mission, as if you do, all of badlands will hunt for you.
• However, since you have only ever been here your whole life, you only have this map in your head, and the other major part of this map (Night City) is blank. You will either need to explore everything to get the full map or buy a full map from somewhere (it will be costly). Fast travel will have the entire map though, you can also fast travel to any location on the map even if you have not visited them first, unlike in the previous game.
• Your journey is to make a name for yourself and get revenge on Militech.
• Thanks to your changed face and body, you will now live as the merc, do his jobs and slowly gain exploits on Militech.

Streetkid:

• Most balanced stats of all three paths.
• You are the Merc in Nomad's story, but you didn't die. Your clone did die, though.
• You wake up in the same spot as Nomad, but this time the nomad's dead body is there, and you need to run away from there.
• You were trapped here for 5 years, but now your keepers made a mistake, and you can now get back.
• The rest of the story goes the same: you are sought out for revenge against Militech, except that you have the entire map of the world and you have crazy connections.
• You are also banned from Badlands.
• Being an experienced merc gives you a boost in defusing arguments easily when they get heated up.
• Though after reaching Night City when you are revealed to the news of someone killing Adam Smasher your focus diverges into finding out the killer's identity and location.

Corpo:

• Highest Tech and Intelligence stats. Lowest strength.
• You work in Militech, and your consignment is to accompany a lot of other people in delivering some weapons.
• You are a desk worker, so you are not expected to fight, but you are given a chip just in case.
• Your consignment gets ambushed by some people, and now you are to survive.
• Obviously you do. There is no boss fight, but a lot of weapons to loot as the place is filled with enemies and an underground bunker to explore.
• You explore and find out that this ambush happened because of a mole in Militech.
• You try to explore more and follow the enemies to get to any surviving members from that consignment, but there are no survivors except yourself.
• You go back to Militech, but someone has already given them the shards you found in the bunker, meaning they know that there was a mole, and they think the mole must have survived, so you are the prime suspect, and a kill on sight order is issued against you.
• They reach your home and kill your family in order to get any info about you.
• Your aim is to prove yourself innocent and get back on Militech.
• You do not know anything outside of Night City, so when in a later mission you do go to the Badlands, you will have a hard time navigating, but at least you are not wanted there.
• You also have the best negotiation skills to get the best price for your work.

Major Story Elements:

1. Arasaka is on the hunt to find the killer of Adam; they have been targeting every merc in Night City for 5 years. If you make progress too fast, you might get a visit by Arasaka goons.
2. You can actually see how Arasaka maintained themselves after V. Hanako is leading the empire with Kei Arasaka on the run.
3. You can at one point in the story get to meet Hanako, and you can make a deal to help Arasaka destroy Militech to the core.
4. Male, Panam romanced, given body to Jhonny, Reaper V is canon to the story.
5. Panam is hunting Jhonny, but he has gone somewhere she isn't able to find, so she left Night City and Nomads to find him.
6. Regina is retired. Wakako and Sebastian are dead. Dakota still rules the badlands, and Rogue is still in the afterlife.
7. Claire made a drink for V.

New Updates:

• You can now compete for the best Merc as the leaderboard for merc is available. This takes care of the gigs you complete and matches it with points across the whole map for all fixers.
• You can lose money in stealth-focused gigs if found.
• You can no longer see all hidden jobs on the map until you are near or have completed a previous part of it. Gigs and NCPD scanners are still visible though.
• Joytoys now will leave feedback about you. Customization of those parts now matters a lot.
• An Online mode for multiplayer with a worldwide leaderboard for the best Solo and Merc will be available. You can now see what NPCs see when you use a Sandevistan.
• In offline mode, you can now buy a subscription for Trauma Team. If you do not have a subscription, you will die forever. If you do have that subscription, you will wake up in a hospital later after being flatlined.

I reached chapter 2, and i treated it like I treated CP2077 and Ghost of Tsushima.

Follow main mission, get side quests while doing main mission, complete those missions and there you have explored a big chunk of map already.

This kind of worked well, but then I got distracted by my horse being slow af. So I tried to catch a White Arabian horse in the snowy mountains (later realised I could have gotten a thoroughbred for free as well).

During random encounters I saved one man from a snake, and he gave me a free rifle.

I was starting to get exhausted by getting killed by bounty hunters (I never duck a fade), so I looked on youtube for some beginner tips. thanks to that, I gathered like 3.5k in money, upgraded camps, collected debts and then went hunting to get the Legend of East Satchel. Little did I know this took me way more time than I expected as I kept dying to panthers but I got it. Then later I got to know from somewhere that I can kill a panther and get its saddle as well, so.....

Now shall I complete the main missions or something else?

I have level 2 bonding with my horse. I am still searching for ways to upgrade my health and weapons.

I will not be playing online. i am just playing to explore the open world and story of this game.

what are some things I should know?

Are there any necessary mods I should install to enhance my experience?

In this I want to ask about Open World gameplay only. NO GRAPHICS, JUST OPEN-WORLD GAMEPLAY and WORLD BUILDING!

Now what I mean by this is in how many ways can you complete a mission and how well structured the open world is, like choices MUST MATTER & AFFECT OTHERS EVEN IF THE TWO CHARACTERS ARE NOT CORRELATED! For example if you kill someone in one mission, you get refrenced for that in another (this rule does not apply to main story quests as it is written as a main story). Also the example I gave is a vague one but you get the idea.

This all would make it infinitely replayable (or at least for more than 2-3 playthroughs).

I also stumbled upon this reel where she claims only 3 games ever capture the true essence of open-world games, which are Cyberpunk 2077, Fallout: New Vegas, and RDR 2.

What I do think is a great game but fails at open-world gameplay is Ghost of Tsushima. This is because it follows a similar trail of missions over and over again. Surely the combat is fun whether you play with all honor or stealth ninja, but it does lack the variety and lore depth of a lot of missions. By this I do not mean side quests but the Mongol Territories (which are the most abundant type of extra quest you get in the game). Plus, another downside of this lies in the fact that the mongol territory Ryuzo wants to overtake, if you clear it before meeting him, you need to liberate that territory twice. (I faced this in my playthrough, and after that I did not clear a territory until a mission specified it or I was 100% sure that this territory WOULD NOT come in any missions.)

I have not played RDR 2 or any Fallout games (yet), so I do not know how they handle open worlds, but what I have played is Cyberpunk 2077, and I FUCKING LOVED THAT SHIT! The main game story is short, but the side quests make it perfectly fine for long playthroughs and exploration. It has many types of quests you can pick up on, help the NCPD, do gigs for fixers, steal cars, and defeat mini bosses like cyberpsychos, AND EACH ONE OF THEM HAS LORE! On top of that, you get special quests for exploring more, which is one of the biggest benefits OR MUST BE A BENEFIT IN ANY OPEN WORLD GAME as it encourages exploration! Plus there are references to modern-day pop culture, like Predators, GTA IV, Batman as well in these extra quests, which help you out big time! The side quests matter so much that a guy from the Konpeki mission will remember you at the Somi mission, and a woman will literally help you in that same mission just because you helped her in another side quest! Plus the ripperdoc discount and a ripperdoc exempting you from using his services are also a great example of integrating all these small quests into a real open-world scenario where you face consequences and reap benefits as well!

I, though, have also heard that Elden Ring has a lot of lore and a great open world, but I have yet to play it, so I will not share any opinion on that (this is the next game on my wishlist to play alongside RDR 2). So I want you guys to give me your opinions about those games and others as well.

An honourable mention also must go to Shadow of Mordor for the Nemesis system, and I think that is what open-world games actually need! (correct me if I am wrong, but Cyberpunk also uses a similar system where gangs chase you for killing some of their friends. Idk if that would classify as Nemesis, but the idea is the same). The other mention of a game I will make is Watch Dogs: Legion just because you can befriend almost every single one of 1000+ NPCs in the game, but I feel the game itself was not good enough to be placed here.

I will also add these comments from the same reel so you can share your opinion on that as well:

"The Yakuza series and its spin-offs are the perfect examples of what open-world games should be."

"only one of those games can be consider good open world and it's RDR2" (in reference to calling Cyberpunk and fallout a perfect open-world games)

"I will not accept GoT slander. Oh no, you have a ton of places to do the incredible combat. Good. Give me 100 more!"

"Cyberpunk is not perfect ...I beat it once but the open world ..never brought me back ...like GTA did ...at least that freeroam I can go see strippers, pick up a hooker lol 😂, fight with the local gangs, ride a bike on the small paths, act like a dork on the beach, fly a plane into a building 9/11 style ...In Cyberpunk I can't do any of this but look and Panams big ass." (I think this guy is a larper because I am pretty sure you can do almost everything he said except flying an airplane.)

the reel: reel