Cyberpunk 2077

As someone with over 1k hours in CP2077 and about 40-50 in Witcher 3 (currently playing), this is a hard genre thing for me. My first thoughts in playing Witcher 3 was that it felt like a call-back to a lot of RPG tropes and mechanics from older games. I feel like there was enough of a gap between Witchers 2 and 3 that they could have easily overhauled a lot of the systems to be more in line with a standard action adventure game similar to GoW2018, but deliberately chose not to. It feels kind of like a slicked, modern RPG with the soul of one made in the early 2000's. CP2077 felt like CDPR wanted to flex their modern game dev muscles and show us that they could do that as well. They're made by the same people, but to scratch two very different itches in my opinion.

That said, I think my playtime makes it clear which I like more, but I've always leaned more towards the sci-fi side of fantasy. Both The Continent and Night City feel very organic and immersive, but I think Night City wins that fight. It might be the geography or maybe just the classic structure of it, but I've noticed The Continent feels much more... segmented. Compartmentalized. It feels very game-ified, with how distinct the various zones like villages, etc. work. The genres are very different, but it feels almost like Pokémon with how static and predictable the environment feels. The pack of wild dogs is always just outside the east village gate. The peasant in the blue shit and leather coif is always standing by the bulletin board. The lady in the white dress is always pulling carrots in her yard and complaining about her bowels. Meanwhile, Night City has random scenes thrown into locations sometimes like firefights, crime scenes, police investigations, corpo deals, car bombs, and the like. It makes the city feel alive, constantly changing in its minutae but largely the same overall.

Two very different games, almost tailored to opposite ends of the target demographic. Witcher feels like it wanted to please older gamers, with some hopes of pulling in some new ones as well. Cyberpunk felt reversed.