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First of all I want to thank you for taking the time to watch and then write all this out but what I don't appreciate is the *extreme* mischaracterization of what was said in the video here to then extrapolate out and put words in all of our mouths in some of your quotes here. I had to dance around a lot of my thoughts here because I didn't want to spoil it for my friends which I don't think is an issue honestly its called common courtesy however, I will go through and address the points you made here a little more freely. 1) I think you are being pretty disingenuous here about how Songbird and Lucy are nothing alike. They are both extremely skilled netrunners who have dark and traumatic pasts *and* specialize in cover operations *and* utilize the Blackwall *and* due to outside circumstances from both employers or things they cant/couldn't control they want to get to the moon to start over. I will give you however that their personalities are absolutely different however I never said they were the same during this discussion whatsoever. Not to mention that if you do choose to save songbird and send her to the moon the DLC ends with a giant 1 VS 1000 style final battle just like the anime dude. Also yes I am *extremely* aware that you can choose not to save her and side with the government however that also leads to, what is widely regarded, as one of the defacto worst endings you can get in the game so it doesn't really feel like that's what they want you to do anyways. I also didn't bring that up because again I am not going to just spoil the game for my friends. I also never said Lucy and David were unique snowflakes lmao and its very silly to act like that happened but to be clear between her and songbird those are the only two characters that I am aware of that have had fully realized stories involving getting there so its pretty relevant to the discussion and a few billboards in the game really aren't and in fact only lend themselves as reference points for the fully realized stories that we do have between the game and the anime. 2) Just because edge runners was made under the supervision of CDPR doesn't mean that its okay to have narrative theme's lifted from it. I personally believe that is lazy story telling and while they are completely within their "right" to do so because you cant steal from yourself (I never said they couldn't by the way) I do personally believe that it is lazy at worst and at best anti-climactic FOR ME. I also think the moon is an extremely relevant location here because as you pointed it out its been used "all-over the game" as a destination for people to start over so it can't really "mean nothing and it could have been any destination" and also be this giant touch point in the universe like you described. I also didn't turn my brain off after the first three hours and then "rush" through the next 47 hours lol and to pretend like that is said even once during the video is extremely silly lol. I played the game for 50 hours! that is more than enough to have an opinion on the game and more importantly the only side quests I didn't do were some of the random fixer jobs you can get and the community is pretty split on whether on not those even are "worth" doing so I am not sure what to tell you here but to pretend like doing ALL the main side quests AND the main narrative is not enough is just outright dumb. 3) I think this one is probably the most important thing here and want to be very clear on a lot of your misconceptions in this comment. First we actually *did* talk about all the updates and different things cyberpunk has went through in a different video which is *why* I started playing the game in the first place (as well as really enjoying the anime) and its not mine or anyone else's fault that you didnt go watch that video or know what you are talking about in regards to this point in the slightest. Secondly, We were talking about this game because this WHOLE CHANNEL is a gaming book club that three friends get together and do (a single look at the uploads could have gotten you to this point) but we start out every episode with talking about what we have been up to this week as a way to CATCH UP with each-other and thats been the format of the show since the beginning and taking a peak at any other part of this channel would have told you that instead of pretending like we mentioned cyberpunk just to "shit on it" for no reason which is just a lie lol. So thats why we "wanted" to talk about it lol and again its not our fault that you did absolutely ZERO research on this part when any other video about our channel or what we do is literally RIGHT there. We also aren't talking about books lmfao we have a "gaming bookclub" where we all playthrough games together and then talk about how we feel about them. Again, all of this is literally. right. there. 4) I am barely going to touch on this witcher 4 piece because its strictly my opinion and not really relevant here but suffice to say since the story of Cyberpunk 2077 did not resonate with me at all I dont think its wildly off base for me to say that I hope there will be different writers on the witcher 4 but I never said it was going to be bad or anything like that. I also think its completely disingenuous to say that people's only issue with Cyberpunk 2077 was just technically based when you can go through TONS of critical reviews that complain about how completely undercooked every aspect of that game was and while these new updates have made it a far cry from how it launched it doesn't change the fact that it absolutely was not just a technical flop. I also don't think its relevant that people have done "in depth lore videos" about this game considering that those exist for almost every game that has ever been released and I am sure we could both find them for games the other doesn't care about. 5) I absolutely agree that the great thing about this hobby is that different works can resonate with people differently but I also never said that wasn't the case here and everything on this show is completely opinion based and is never state to "objective fact" or anything of the sort. If we would like to talk about media literacy just because we don't preface everything we say with "my opinion" or something like that (which any grade school or middle school language or grammar teacher would tell you is a mistake) doesn't mean its not opinion based because when talking about art its *ALL* going to be opinionated because art by its NATURE is subjective. I wasn't being cynical or snarky I was literally just describing how that game resonated with me but in a way that didn't outright ruin the experience for my friends who I KNEW were going to try and play it at some point. Also pretending to know how engaged I was with Cyberpunk is potentially the most ridiculous thing in this entire comment. I didn't skip a single line of dialogue and read every single article or email I picked up in the game because that's *absolutely* how I play RPG's but guess what? the game's overall narrative still felt incredibly weak to me especially when compared to how absolutely STELLAR the first act of the game is (which again if you had watched other video's you would know) and that's OKAY. It's also okay that YOU loved every aspect of it and I hope you love the next one! As a matter of fact I hope *I* love the next one! I want all games to be good because the medium is better for it when that happens but its also okay when it just doesn't work for someone and to act like it was some fault on the person who didn't resonate with it like you did is honestly just childish.

@@Sudowoodo45I appreciate your candor and your in depth response! However, I don't think it's reasonable to expect someone to do research on your channel just to be informed enough to make a comment about a disagreement with a topic in this video. I haven't seen or heard of you guys before, but TH-cam's algorithm is promoting newer and smaller creators and if a topic piques my interest I'm happy to watch and engage. Also, not to sound like a broken record but in a "book club", don't you discuss material you've ALL read in the previous interlude? I still think it's very strange to make something a main topic of a discussion podcast and then have TWO OF THE THREE PARTICIPANTS not familiar with the product in its entirety, or at all! It was obvious from the title that you guys weren't gonna brown-nose CDPR and stan for the game, but as someone with over 200 hours in the game on 2 separate playthroughs I'd like to think I'm pretty familiar with the game both in terms of its flaws and strengths and the entire history of the product from launch up until the most recent patch. And so I wondered in which context you guys experienced the game as being broken, and had legitimate interest in seeing or hearing some examples, maybe even recent ones that I had "lucked out" on missing in Phantom Liberty or so. I played through the very first unpatched versions of the game (after following its development for years) and had my fair share of disappointment or frustration of sorts. Most of which just being somewhat disappointed by the dishonest marketing, generally being outraged as a consumer for people who wanted to play on last-gen consoles, and mostly saddened to learn of all the internal strife, difficulty and dishonesty that CDPR went through during the development and launch period of this game. Coming from Witcher 3, that was a massive blow because I consider that game to be one of my favorites. While I was still pretty satisfied with the product as it was (on a decent PC anyway), I'm also of the opinion that the state that the game is in NOW, after three years of patches and updates, should have been the state it launched in. But I still think it's an extremely impressive title, albeit first more of a diamond in the rough (and very understandably for some an unplayable experience, but fortunately that wasn't the case for me). I still think it's absolutely fine to give a raw opinion when you're in a casual discussion setting, but there's only one REAL participant in your coverage, who then (in my opinion) gives a ton of unnuanced, out-of-context and oversimplified examples that (in my opinion) mischaracterize the game completely, and especially because there's no one else knowledgeable enough about the topic, there's no interesting back and forth where you compare findings, conclusions, and subjective opinions. It's just you shitting on the game, while ignoring its many many REAL faults, bugs, flaws and controversies. So as a viewer, I found that disappointing. The depth of the discussion was as shallow as the clickbait itself. Everything is subjective of course, but if you played through EVERY side quest and read every terminal et cetera, and you still come out of the experience SOUNDING like your take-aways were that only the first 3 hours were good, that the delamain taxi-mission was the best side mission, that Smasher never mattered in the game or in Johnny's story, that the DLC is ripping off the anime with one of it's lead characters because MOON, and that it's all on rails and boxed in...and then y'all finish with some conjecture about the writing quality on Witcher 4 and there's some silly anecdote about how you duped the MaxTac police AI so hey guess what, the police systems still aren't super in-depth, this still isn't GTA6, tell us something we don't know and don't go for such low-hanging fruit just to solidify an already underdeveloped opinion. And yeah, maybe you covered a bunch of those topics (like the improvements in the patches/updates) before. But once again I don't think I need to do "research" to understand a video that you upload for public consumption in a way where it's presented as easily digestible, right? You're not a long-running show with seasonal arcs, you just said this is supposed to be a book club of sorts. Also, you guys have 51 subscribers so maybe lower your expectations on viewer engagement in that sense? Most of your views will either be your core fanbase which you likely know by (screen)name at this point still, or they're gonna be random strangers who happen to get algorithm'd your way for the very first time by happenstance. It's your "responsibility" of sorts (I use that very loosely so don't put too much weight on that) to make sure your content is accessible enough for first-time viewers and fans, right? I mean, obviously you can upload whatever you want, but then you don't get to be surprised if people aren't all onboard with every little detail of what you do or who you are. I'm seeing you for the first time. I don't know if you've ever uttered more nuanced opinions on the game (like you seem to do in your reply). I just hear the shit you say in this video, and so I'm reduced to making some assumptions based on the limited context I have to work with. And a last little point; I honestly don't know if 50 hours with this title is enough to form a fully fledged opinion. Hell, I can't even state with certainty that I've heard, seen or remembered everything in the game with my 200 hours because A) that's just insane and of course we're just regular players and not professional journalists or documentarians who take extensive notes, but also B) Because this game is just an absolute JUGGERNAUT when it comes to all the content, both in gameplay and in worldbuilding. What I CAN say however, is that statistically (according to howlongtobeat) the average completion time for main + sidequests is 62.5 hours (completionist is over 100h). So apparently you would comfortably beat the average playtime by a full 12.5 hours. And that's just the base game, because Phantom Liberty offers another 23 hours of gameplay on average. So doing most of the main and sidemissions in both games would take you at least 85 hours. So if you truly are that gamer who does every quest, talks to every person, reads every book, looks in every nook and cranny, then either you've missed a whole bunch or you're the world's fastest completionist (there might be a job-opening for completionists, I think?). Or...maybe you just weren't as thorough with the game as you'd like to believe?

@@Zaerin87 Normally I would agree that it is absolutely not someone's fault to be served a random video to not know all the fact's however if you are going to make a comment about sweeping generalizations about the channel, what we do, how we play games, how I feel about something, etc then yes you should do some due diligence before typing those things out. If you had came in and said that you feel as though this comes off as a little click-baity and isn't a fully realized discussion then that would be one thing but that's not what happened *and* it is still happening even in this reply. Yes we are a book club and we are *extremely* aware of how book clubs work and if you had made it to the end of the video you would know that the game we are actually playing for the book club is Zone of the Enders the 2nd runner and that *this* episode is just the preamble to that discussion where we all just catch up on what we have been playing in our personal lives over the last week or so. We do it this way because that was a request that the fan's of the channel made. So no it *doesn't* matter that the other two people hadn't played the game because that's *not* what the discussion was about and I think we are pretty clear about that during the sections of this video. Finally Idk what to tell you man. I think that 50 hours is more than enough to decide if I like something or not and I just fundamentally disagree on that point. I felt the same way about Final Fantasy 13 when people told me to stick with that game past 20 hours even though I find lightning to be a completely flat and bland protagonist. I think we can just agree to disagree here because I think that part comes down to personal taste. I am not sure what else to tell you really on the speed part. Yes I know that my time is faster than the *average* on HLTB but there are absolutely times that were submitted to HLTB that match up with my time so it's clearly not me being the worlds fastest gamer lol. That is obviously how averages work though and I also was clear on saying that I skipped most all of the fixer jobs which would account for the a nice chunk of those hours but again I think if we are being honest with ourselves the community is pretty split on whether or not those missions even matter at all. At the end of the day man I am happy that you love this game so much. I didn't though and I think I have done a pretty good job illustrating as to *why* I didn't like it but this video and this discussion that was had was never going to be some giant in depth review because it wasn't supposed to be. In an attempt to be extra clear here these weekly prologue videos are just us catching up and talking about what each of us has played since we last talked. Thats why some of the other games that are brought up are Persona 3 Reload, Animal Well, Space Marine 2, and Splitgate. The bookclub portion again is about Zone of the Enders 2 and *not* Cyberpunk at all. This is all stated in this video and not a different one.

@@BattleBrotherZuriel I’m on a 3070ti which is way above the minimum specs dude my PC is fine. This “works fine for me” logic also doesn’t work at all. People get shot everyday but since I personally haven’t should I walk around an go “Man 30 plus years and I have never once been shot this definitely seems like a problem these people are causing themselves”

The old "works good on my machine must be you" argument.

@@michael-hd3iu It's the best! lmao

@Sudowoodo45 Well, it's just me, buddy; thousands of other players have had no issues with it. The same sentiment can be flipped on your perspective. "Oh, it didn't work for me, so it must suck". Get off your high horse guy.

@@BattleBrotherZuriel Lmao dude no one is on a high horse but you came into here and immediately got on the defensive about this game and tried to say that *anyone* who has issues with Cyberpunk are all self inflicted and thats just childish lol. You are right after the updates there are plenty of people who are having way less bugs now and that's great! but there are still tons of people running into bugs and to pretend like they are all either making it up or causing it themselves is just ridiculous. and you are right that same sentiment could be flipped except I never said that the game sucked dude. I just said I had a bunch of different issues while playing it and that I didn't enjoy MY time with it.

To be clear I said that the points they stole from the anime were *specifically* for phantom liberty and not the main game whatsoever and I stand by that. I think Songbird's and Lucy's story is pretty damn similar even down to their desired locations and what happens to get them there (trying to be light on spoilers here) as well as the amount of people trying to stop them. I also never said that Cyberpunk wasn't based on tabletop games although to be fair its a continuation of that lore but it is a completely original story by CDPR. As far as the witcher is concerned I think we are splitting hairs on the words here. While the games aren't 1 to 1 re-creations of the books they are absolutely "adaptations" of them because characters, locations, motivations, and even some plot points are pulled from those books. CDPR took a lot of creative liberties obviously but to pretend like they have nothing to with each other is silly. All that being said, I was not saying Cyberpunk is an objectively bad game or anything like that it just wasn't for ME and thats okay lol. I am glad you enjoyed it and if they do another one at some point I hope its great! this one just didn't resonate with me. we appreciate the comment though and thanks for interacting!

​@@Sudowoodo45 Yea, lol, Cyberpunk is one of my favorite games ever. I love the story after the heist, especially on a second playthrough. And while there is similarity, there is defenetly more then enough difference between Songbird and Lucy in the Lore. And I also don’t agree that after the first mission the set pieces are less impressive. I think it stays just as good, if not even getting better. There is a difference between a game and story not being interesting for you because you might have had something different in mind and it being bad in the game itself. You give off the vibe of saying it’s bad, and that the recommendations people get.. I also find the side missions here really good again, especially the ones with Panam, Judy, River, Peralez, etc. The fights aren’t just fun but are also unique thanks to the cyberware. Plus, the game is barely broken anymore compared to before.

@@lucalbrecht1477 Hey man, that's awesome that it worked for you! I absolutely was not talking about the game in any sort of definitive way and it was just my opinion because art in any form is by it's nature subjective. I certainly couldn't get into my full thoughts here because I didn't want to spoil it for my friends and I even mention that maybe at some point when they get to it that we could do a more complete discussion. Honestly my only real issue with there being similarities between edgerunners and phantom liberty is that it just feels lazy in my opinion. Obviously it's their stories so they can do what they want but this is the same company that gave us the two DLC's for the witcher 3 that are (in my opinion) some of the best stories in games so it was just a bummer to see phantom liberty have similar theme's to edge runners. *For me* I think that the front part of the game in ACT 1 is just so stellar and they really really knocked it out of the park that when I got to the rest of the game it just didn't grab me as much. I did however really enjoy the Delamain side quests as well as the Panam and Judy ones which I say in a different video as I was playing through the game. The way we do our show is a weekly catch up since we only record once a week so this was recorded after I had finished the game and its not realistic for me to rehash my full complete thoughts on every single video that we record. That being said I certainly dont think (and never said) that Cyberpunk 2077 is a bad game in any stretch it just didnt really resonate with me by the end but I am glad it did with you! and to be honest if they do another one I hope its great and will absolutely check it out! Also thanks for watching and giving your thoughts!

​Thanks for the extensive answer.

@@lucalbrecht1477 of course! Not a problem at all.

I just did a playthrough of it on Ps5 and it ran great. Had a near flawless 90 hour run.

Yeah to be clear you might have a better time on console but I have seen plenty of people bump into issues on console and my run was on PC and I ran into tons of stuff on that playthrough.

I've put about 80-90 hours into the game and I haven't noticed any major issues at all. There are a few small bugs like every game has, but for most of the time it was a great and fun experience. I have heard that the ps4 version isn't great and runs terribly because it couldn't get the 2.0 update though. Definitely a great game though.

@@Sudowoodo45 what bugs?

@@givemeanameman1 for me personally I had the bug where cars fall out of the sky randomly as they spawn in, in some of the infiltration areas I had the quick hack for turning off cameras not work randomly, enemies seize and clip into the ground during almost all of my cyber psycho missions, I had one during the hotel mission when you are in the wetsuit and the surface button wouldn’t go up but instead kept pushing me down into the ground over and over again, and I had 10 hard crashes to desktop.

Yeah to be clear I dont think the Witcher 4 is going to be bad or anything like that I was specifically talking about the writing for cyberpunk and how I hope that narrative team isnt on witcher 4 thats all. They also have so much more to go off of with their previous work with the witcher that I am sure it will be fine.

just rember that they realised cyberpunk on that date beacuse of pressure, not beacuse they wanted to.

@@milekb07 Oh for sure man. To be honest I think that publisher pressure causes almost all modern games to release before they are ready and that part is not on CDPR at all.

We will certainly add it to the list!

Thank you for all of your support!

I am going to take your word for it but Prestons comment about species mixing was felonious behavior! 😂

For real?!

Okay we totally do it's just the first playlist we ever made so you just have to keep looking dawg!

I rescind my previous comment and would like to take this time to clarify that I'm just an idiot.

Thanks for the kind words and suggestion. I will definitely look into the playlist situation. I was just adding them in as I go but will definitely take some time to check in on that for sure! The issue with the cut scenes in KotoR is that it minimizes the game so it's like it's own new window. To keep it on my stream I play the game in windowed mode. I just have to resize it for the stream using OBS. I have not tried it on discord but maybe putting it in windowed mode and choosing the window to stream? Hope this helps!

I think it was called the Bone Spear build if I remember correctly. It got rid of all the minions in favor of higher crit chances. We already recorded this weeks episode but next week I'll bring it up and go over the basics of the build. Thanks for the comment!

Also, I have that same Cowboy Bebop shirt.

Sorry for crapping on your childhood but man some of those Luke missions are rough. Not this sunday but next we will do the Wedge missions and I think they are mostly ship combat so I think I'll enjoy it more then. Come visit so we can play coop ;)

They did a great job with what they had to work with