Second Wind interviewed CD Project Red devs:

The Rebound After Cyberpunk 2077 Interview with Yahtzee & JM8

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Couchpotato spotted a new CD Project Red podcast:

AnsweRED Podcast 4 – Episode 4: How Do Voice Actors Bring Characters to Life?

In the fourth episode of the AnsweRED Podcast, our hosts Sebastian Kalemba and Paweł Burza are joined by special guests Jane Perry, the voice of Rogue, and Minji Chang, who brings Songbird to life in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.
Our hosts sat down with Jane and Minji to discover how they got their start in the industry, what makes voice acting for games different from acting in other projects, and which characters they feel the most connected to. Our guests also shared insights into their time recording lines for Cyberpunk 2077, how they developed the characters, and much more!

Couchpotato spotted this Cyberpunk 2077 voice actor interview:

REDstreams special - Interview with Alix Wilton Regan & Jane Perry

Curious about the behind-the-scenes magic of capturing the voices of Night City's formidable women? Look no further!

PC Gamer reports that CD Project assigned some veterans devs to the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel:

Cyberpunk 2077 sequel announces new lead writer, design director, and executive producer: 'It's like renaissance but with laser katanas,' creative director says

CD Projekt has added a number of veteran developers to the team, including the former narrative director of the Fable reboot.

CD Projekt officially confirmed in October that the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 is in early development, and it seems that process is starting to heat up. The studio announced today that it's added five veteran developers "with years of experience" to the team, including former New World head of production Dan Hernberg and Control pre-production narrative lead Anna Megill.

[...]

Thanks Henriquejr!

Gematsu reports that the expansion Phantom Liberty has been sold 5 million times.

Cyberpunk 2077 update 2.1 will launch on December 5:

Discover New Content Coming To Cyberpunk 2077 With The Free Update 2.1 This December!

CD PROJEKT RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 will be receiving a brand new, free update introducing hotly anticipated gameplay elements. The latest REDstreams presented details regarding the new features coming with Update 2.1, which releases on December 5th for Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Snapshot:
A brand-new, free update is coming to Cyberpunk 2077.
During the most recent REDstreams, developers Paweł Sasko and Monika Janowska discussed new features, including a fully functional metro, replayable car races, boss fight improvements, accessibility features, and more. The update will become available to players on December 5th, the same day as the release of Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition.

Full article:
With Cyberpunk 2077’s Update 2.1, players can expect several exciting additions to the range of experiences Night City already offers. Chief among them is a city-wide fully functional NCART metro system, offering a more relaxed way of getting about the most dangerous megalopolis of the dark future — and taking in the beautiful views along the way. Radioport, another new feature, lets players enjoy the eclectic musical vibes of Cyberpunk 2077’s selection of radio stations beyond the confines of their vehicle of choice — for example, during a peaceful walk through the city center. New hangouts with romantic partners are also available to partake in, as following Update 2.1 players will be able to invite their in-game significant other to enjoy some quality time together in V’s apartment.

The latest REDstreams, hosted by Senior Community Managers Alicja Kozera and Amela Kołat, premiered December 1st on Twitch and featured CD PROJEKT RED Producer Monika Janowska and Quest Director Paweł Sasko, who shared additional details about the upcoming free update to Cyberpunk 2077.

Further new features include additional chases and replayable car races — the latter was only available as a finite set of missions, but now can be replayed to gain further rewards and discounts on the Autofixer website, through which players purchase cars. The developers also prepared a series of improvements to boss fights, including the late-game Adam Smasher fight. Smasher’s AI has been improved and he’s now equipped with a Sandevistan, as seen in the award-winning anime Cyberpunk: Edgerunners.

Also coming with the new update are the Porsche 911 Cabriolet, new motorcycles, upgraded motorcycle handling and new riding mechanics, new secrets to discover, and more, including a healthy dose of technical improvements and accessibility features for players to choose from — such as a larger interface font and the ability to turn off the timer in the Breach Protocol minigame.

Read the full list of accessibility features

Ahead of the release of Update 2.1, players can discover more of Night City’s history with the Night City Archives, a video series that delves into the complex past and dark future of the city.

[...]

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Spoiler Warning:

Cyberpunk Director Breaks Down Phantom Liberty Endings

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Gamingbolt interviewed senior writer Magda Zych about Cyberpunk 2077:

The Big Interview – CDPR on Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty’s Development, Update 2.0, Cyberpunk’s Future, and More

With Cyberpunk 2077 having completed its redemption arc, CDPR senior writer Magda Zych speaks with GamingBolt about the game's journey and what the future might hold for the property.

With the one-two punch of the radical improvements of Update 2.0 and the incredible Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2077 has well and truly completed its redemption arc, but though CD Projekt RED is now ready to move on from the open world RPG to the many other new projects it has in development, there’s still plenty left to unpack with Cyberpunk 2077 itself. Recently, we had the chance to shoot across some of our most burning questions about the game in the wake of Phantom Liberty’s successful launch to CD Projekt RED’s senior writer, Magda Zych, who spoke with us about the expansion’s development, the process of overhauling the base game, what the future holds for Cyberpunk, and more. You can read our full interview below.

Cyberpunk 2077 has had an eventful journey from launch to now, nearly three years later, and it’s fair to say that things have turned around significantly for the game. Can you talk to us about what that journey has been like, and what your biggest takeaways have been from these last three years?

For me, this whole journey was divided into certain distinct stages, and it started even before the base game’s release. When I looked at the finished dialogue graphs and saw how extensive they were compared to the graphs in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I had a feeling that this was an enormous undertaking —  this stage contained some anxiety and great expectations. Right after the launch, there was a period of shock and denial. Then began a period of reconciliation and trying to understand what happened, a period of discussions on how we can fix everything — and then probably the longest period of releasing updates and, in a sense, healing. We, as scriptwriters, started working on the Phantom Liberty expansion as the first team; the first brainstorms took place way before the release of Cyberpunk 2077, so we didn’t have that much time to think about the aftermath of the release, but even we could see a clear change that came with it, for example in how we expressed concerns within the whole team instead of the “do it and see how it goes” approach.

After Update 1.6, many would have thought that with the vast majority of the game’s technical issues having been addressed, there wouldn’t be any further major changes to the base experience. At what point was it decided to introduce the many system and gameplay overhauls that Update 2.0 brings?

It’s not the case that there was some decision after Patch 1.6 to introduce the changes that came with Update 2.0. Some of what was there was already planned earlier, but many of the changes came from player feedback and from how we saw gamers interact with the game, what we thought could improve their experience more, etc. We were working on these improvements and changes alongside the Edgerunners Update, aka Patch 1.6.

[...]

Thanks Couchpotato!

Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will be released on December 5:

Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition arrives on December 5th!

Starting December 5th, Cyberpunk 2077: Ultimate Edition will be available for purchase digitally all around the world and physically in selected markets. If you like boxes, be on the lookout in your local store!

In the Ultimate Edition, experience the original Cyberpunk 2077 story as well as a new spy-thriller adventure in the Phantom Liberty expansion — a high-stakes tale of espionage set in the deadly district of Dogtown.

The release contains the base game, including the free Update 2.0, which overhauled many of the game’s systems such as dynamic skill trees, vehicle combat and enhanced enemy and police AI, and added various new weapons, vehicles, and clothes, as well as all free DLCs and the Phantom Liberty expansion.

Legends will be made here. What will yours be?

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Couchpotato spotted a Phantom Liberty Special Episode with Alex Jordan:

REDstreams — Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty | Special Episode with Alex Jordan

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Gamer Headquarters interviewed Cherami Leigh, voice actress for Female V in Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 Interview [Cherami Leigh] Female V Voice Actress

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Gamesradar checked out Cyberpunk 2077 version 2.0:

I bounced off Cyberpunk 2077 three years ago, now I can't get enough of it

Against all odds, Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 might just be the most fun that I've had with an RPG this year

There are times where I can't help but stop and stare. Marveling as strikes of neon light struggle to piece thick slabs of smog suffocating the skyline of Night City, trees gently swaying in a breeze as rainwater pools in languishing side streets. Death and decay, exuberance and excess – the city is awash with it, and it's difficult to turn away from. Now it is, at least. I couldn't have turned away from Cyberpunk 2077 any faster when it launched almost three years ago, as my poor old Xbox One struggled to quantify one of the most calamitous console editions to release in a generation. 

[...]

Skill Up reviewed Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty:

I strongly recommend: Cyberpunk 2077 (and Phantom Liberty) - Review

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Mortismal Gaming checked out the Phantom Liberty DLC:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty DLC Review

The DLC Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be released tomorrow:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - Official Launch Trailer

 Friends Per Second interviewed Phantom Liberty Game Director Gabe Amatangelo:

Cyberpunk's Director talks Phantom Liberty, redemption arcs and Cyberpunk 2 | Friends Per Second #30

Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
03:15 Interview with CyberPunk Phantom Liberty Game Director Gabe Amatangelo
48:13 Nord VPN (ad)
50:42 Lies of P 
01:05:52 Unity Discussion
01:15:35 Ascendant Studios Layoffs
01:25:26 Final Fantasy VII Rebirth
01:43:03 Spiderman 2 
02:01:59 User Question
02:10:08 This Week In the Wayback
02:17:30 Wrap Up

Thanks Couchpotato!

Couchpotato spotted the live action trailer for the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - Official Live Action Trailer (feat. Idris Elba)

Mortismal Gaming checked out the Cyberpunk 2077 2.0 update:

Cyberpunk 2077: Update 2.0 Impressions

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Fextralife checked out Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Review

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Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty gets many positive reviews. The PC Metacritic score is currently 89.

IGN shows the lastest NVIDIA technology for Cyberpunk 2077 - Phantom Liberty:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty - Official NVIDIA DLSS 3.5 and Full Ray Tracing Overview Trailer

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Couchpotato spotted a Phantom Liberty Special:

Cyberpunk 2077 — Night City Wire: Phantom Liberty Special

Night City Wire is back — with a special #PhantomLiberty episode! We’ll talk about new radios, learn more about Reed from Idris Elba himself, discuss gameplay & new abilities… and throw in a surprise or two. Don’t miss it!

Gabe Amatangelo talks about new features of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty – Interview with Game Director Gabe Amatangelo

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CD Projekt Red posted a summary of Thursday's REDstream on patch 2.0 and Phantom Liberty:

REDstreams — brief summary and recap

Did you miss Thursday's stream? Not to worry! We’ve got you covered!

Alicja Kozera and Amelia Kołat, our Senior Community Managers, together with Kacper Niepokólczycki, Lead Environment Artist, and Gabriel Amatangelo, Game Director, showcased Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty. Here’s a brief summary of what transpired:

Perk overhaul
Come September, we’ll see a total overhaul of perks in Cyberpunk 2077. Skill trees have been rearranged and you’ll need to redistribute points anew. Your perk points will be reset by default, but in addition to that all players will now be able to do a single attribute reset too (yes, all players, including new playthroughs)!

New skill tree
Although we’re not adding a new attribute, Phantom Liberty (or rather Songbird) will unlock a new skill tree related to the Relic. In order to level these up, you’re going to need to seek out Militech data terms hidden around.

Car Combat
Oh yes, if you’ve dreamed about being able to shoot from and using your vehicle, you’re going to love this. Blast your way through the city with car mounted guns and rocket launchers, hack other cars, or just shoot your guns out of a window, but remember that…

Updated Police System
…but remember that NCPD will no longer take it easy. Get ready for car chases and severe repercussions for violating the law. You can try to shoot your way out of a chase, but remember - the more you shoot back, the harder the police will get onto you.

Dogtown history lesson
For all of you who are lore hungry, we’ve had an entire segment dedicated to Kurt Hansen, Barghest and Dogtown in general. However, since this is only a brief and the segment was everything but, why don’t you watch the full recording here?

To sum up everything we discussed so far: redesigned perks, redesigned cyberware, revamped police, and vehicle combat are some of the changes coming in the free Update 2.0 — which will be available for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC.

With the Phantom Liberty expansion, you will be able to experience a new storyline featuring President Myers, Songbird, and Solomon Reed, explore new content-packed zone Dogtown and enjoy additional side content, use the new Relic skill tree allowing you to dive into some advanced combat abilities, get your hands on powerful new weapons and vehicles, and more.

Thanks Redglyph!

PC Gamer hopes that the expansion Phantom Liberty will fix the game:

I'm hoping against hope that Cyberpunk 2077's expansion overhaul will finally fix the game's lingering mechanics malaise

I've always loved this game, but it's never felt quite right.

When Cyberpunk 2077 had its big redemption arc thanks to post-launch patches and the Edgerunners anime, I scoffed⁠—this game was always this good, glitches or last-gen console performance notwithstanding, but those vaunted updates never quite got at the real malaise at the heart of its RPG system: character building and gear that never felt substantial or rewarding, and always served as more of a drag on Cyberpunk's great combat, stealth, and storytelling.

[...]

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Shacknews interviewed Gabe Amatangelo about the Phantom Liberty expansion:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty Director Talks Dogtown, New Cyber Implants, & Base Game Lessons

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Bloomberg reports that the expansion Phantom Liberty will enhance the main game and a full sequel is planned:

CD Projekt Aims to Redeem Cyberpunk 2077 With Major Expansion

On Sept. 26, the Polish game publisher will release Phantom Liberty, a newly overhauled version starring Idris Elba

Prior to its debut, Cyberpunk 2077,  which stars Keanu Reeves and is set in a massive, dystopian sci-fi city, was one of the most-hyped video games on the planet. But when it was released in 2020, the game suffered from myriad glitches and other problems. 

Now, its publisher, CD Projekt SA, is looking for redemption. On Sunday, the Polish company said it plans to release a new expansion, Phantom Liberty, on Sept. 26. It will feature a new story, starring  Idris Elba, while overhauling various parts of the game, such as its class abilities and its much-derided police system.

“There’s an absolute dedication to what’s needed to be done to make it right,” said Gabe Amatangelo, the expansion’s director.

Phantom Liberty features an ambitious storyline that involves rescuing and protecting the president of the game’s fictional “New United States of America.” Based on a recent hour of playing time, the new extension appears to challenge players with lots of interesting decisions, such as whether to trust a pair of drifters who show up at the safe house in which the president is hiding.

[...]

Amatangelo said that after Phantom Liberty he will direct a full-blown sequel to Cyberpunk 2077.  This time around, rather than using proprietary technology, CD Projekt will use Epic Games’ Unreal Engine — a decision that will also likely help the company’s recruiting efforts. 

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IGN reports that the Phantom Liberty DLC changes Cyberpunk 2077:

How Phantom Liberty Turns Cyberpunk 2077 Into a Whole New Game

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IGN checked out Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty:

Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty Hands On Gameplay Preview - IGN Access

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PC Gamer reports that not every player is happy about Cyberpunk 2077 winning the Steam's Labor of Love title:

Cyberpunk 2077 players furious at other Cyberpunk 2077 players for awarding it Steam's 2022 Labor of Love

Not everyone thinks CD Projekt's cyber-RPG deserved the win, and they're saying so in the reviews.

CD Projekt's troubled RPG Cyberpunk 2077 won the Labor of Love category in the 2022 Steam Awards, given to the game that "is still getting new content after all these years." But in the wake of the win, it's become clear that not everyone feels that the correct decision was made.

Steam Award winners are chosen by vote, which means that a majority of users selected it over the other entrants in the category: Dota 2, Project Zomboid, No Man's Sky, and Deep Rock Galactic. But in a way, Steam's user review system means the Steam Awards are never really over. And sure enough, a slew of new negative user reviews were posted on Steam following the Labor of Love win, many of them expressing the feeling that it was the popularity of the Cyberpunk: Edgerunners show on Netflix, and not the game itself, that put it over the top.

[...]

Mortismal Gaming looks at Cyberpunk 2077 two years after release:

Cyberpunk 2077 - Two Years Later

Gamesradar reports the the upcoming DLC Phantom Liberty for Cyberpunk 2077 is not free:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be a paid expansion

Cyberpunk's expansion will cost you, but probably not as much as a full game

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty will be a paid expansion, CD Projekt Red has confirmed.

In a comment provided to GamesRadar+, CDPR's global PR director Radek Grabowski confirmed that "as for the expansion's pricing - we have not revealed exact details yet, but it will be a paid one."

[...]

Vallun reviewed Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 No Spoiler Review in 2022

Cyberpunk 2077 has sold 20 million units, according to CDPR:

Twitter - Cyberpunk 2077

Over 20 million cyberpunks have been roaming the streets of Night City – partying with Jackie and getting to know Johnny, driving around with Panam and diving with Judy, hanging out with River and listening to Kerry’s songs. Thank you and we hope to see you all in the Afterlife!

Thanks Redglyph!

The expansion Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty has been announced for 2023:

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty — Official Teaser

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The Gamer reports that according to quest director Paweł Sasko Cyberpunk 2077 still needs some improvements:

 CD Projekt Red Is Aware There Is Still "Work To Be Done" On Cyberpunk 2077 After Recent Patch

The studio isn't done with Night City just yet.

Cyberpunk 2077 gamplay alterations include AI and NPC changes

Cyberpunk 2077's recent version 1.5 update was a huge step-up, bringing the game closer to what was promised at launch. With free trials and big sales taking place since then, it's clear that the studio saw this as something of a soft re-launch, trying to bring in new players who gave the game a miss in 2020. But despite all the work that went into the update, CDPR isn't done with Cyberpunk just yet.

On a recent livestream, quest director PaweÅ‚ Sasko confirmed that the team is still actively working to improve Cyberpunk. Sasko says that they are very aware that there is still "work to be done" to the game, and that he is personally improving quests "daily" in order to bring it more in line with audience expectations. 

[...]

Wccf Tech mentioned videos showing the improvements brought by patch 1.5 to the AI and physics, it's not glitch-free though.

Cyberpunk 2077 AI and Physics Comparison Videos Highlights Massive Improvements Over Launch Version

New Cyberpunk 2077 comparison videos that have been shared online highlight the massive improvements made to AI and physics introduced in the 1.5 patch.

The videos, which have been put together by Bear Gaming Asia, highlight how NPCs reactions, in particular, have been improved a lot in the latest update. Things still are not perfect, but it's undeniable that the new patch is a step in the right direction.

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Cyberpunk 2077 1.5 patch, which went live earlier this week, also marked the game's debut on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X, and Xbox Series. New content has also been added, such as new rentable apartments, appearance customization, and much more.  [...]

@henriquejr spotted a new patch for Cyberpunk 2077, thanks!

Enormous Cyberpunk 2077 patch tweaks almost everything about it

CDPR has announced and detailed a major new patch for Cyberpunk 2077 that has gone live, and the studio has clearly been hard at work on this one. The list of fixes, tweaks and additions are enormous, and cover everything from AI behaviour to re-balancing skills, adding new elements to the world, and pretty much overhauling the driving model. Night City is about to go through some big changes. 

Perhaps the most significant are those that CDPR groups under 'Living City', because there's an truckload of improvements to enemy and NPC AI. The patch notes basically list fixes for everything that non-player characters ever do in the game. The following is a partial list taken from the full patch notes, and there are improvements to:

"Taking cover, positioning, reloading, equipping weapons, dodging, blocking and many others [...] hit reactions and death animations [...] Enemies are now much better at blocking and evading (Kerenzikov) attacks [...] Further diversification of melee and ranged combat behaviors for different factions: reckless, aggressive, balanced, defensive and cautious [...] Followers now contribute more in combat [...] Numerous fixes and balance changes to netrunner combat."

On a more macro level there are also changes to how crowds react, with certain NPCs now willing to get aggressive if you're out of line, and generally improved reactions to the player, better pathfinding, and (hopefully) less obvious de-spawning. This applies to NPC vehicles also, which as well as receiving visual improvements on their turning and general movement within traffic, will now react to danger, or being bumped into, and NPC passengers can now die in car crashes. And if you're being chased by the cops, you can opt to hide-out in the area they're looking (previously you just had to put distance between them and you).

[...]

The patch came in for me at 47.09GB in size. The full notes can be read here.

According to Wccf Tech, new community mods add support for nVidia DLSS 2.3.2 in Cyberpunk 2077, improving performance but often showing artefacts.

Cyberpunk 2077 New Mods Introduce Unofficial NVIDIA DLSS 2.3.2 Support, New Street Kid Themed Apartments

New Cyberpunk 2077 mods that have been released online introduce unofficial NVIDIA DLSS 2.3.2 support as well as three new great-looking apartments for V.

The DLSS 2.3.2 Update mod introduces support for the latest version of NVIDIA's technology by lifting it straight from NVIDIA's SDK. According to reports, the new version brings decent performance improvements, especially on mid-range systems, although many are also reporting some noticeable ghosting issues. You can download this mod by heading over Nexus Mods.

Game Rant reports that a new quest director has been assigned to Cyberpunk 2077.

Cyberpunk 2077 has a new quest director, who had a hand in some of The Witcher 3's most notable story arcs.

It’s been nearly a year now since Cyberpunk 2077 launched, and it’s still been unable to shake the controversy associated with it. While the game was touted as a generation-defining RPG, it launched with a bevy of issues that caused fan backlash. While the technical issues have persisted despite patches from CD Projekt Red, there have also been fans asking for updates on expansions and new quests. For those fans, Cyberpunk 2077 has a new quest director.

PaweÅ‚ Sasko, who was previously the lead quest designer for Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3, is now taking over as Cyberpunk 2077’s quest director. Sasko is a games industry veteran with years of experience, so his expertise will undoubtedly come in handy when working on new content for Cyberpunk 2077.

[...]

However, Cyberpunk 2077 is still in an interesting place right now. CD Projekt is still chipping away at technical fixes for the game’s laundry list of issues, issues that have turned the public perception of the game – and even CD Projekt Red itself – sour. That leaves the studio in between a rock and a hard place, as fans are asking for new content but there are still some fixes to be made that should take priority.

Whether or not Cyberpunk 2077 will be the game it was meant to be is a matter of debate, but CD Projekt Red does seem to be doing its best to capture the original vision. While there’s still a long way for it to go, moves like this promotion and hiring The Witcher 3 modders to create better mod support for Cyberpunk 2077 are both examples of things trending in the right direction.

VGC details CDP's staff breakdown according to the multiple projects. A quarter of the staff is assigned to the first expansion of Cyberpunk 2077, while another third is working on the game's support and console port (which has been delayed).

CD Projekt has committed a quarter of its dev staff to Cyberpunk’s first expansion

“WE STRONGLY BELIEVE IN THE LONG-TERM POTENTIAL OF THIS IP”

Nearly a quarter of CD Projekt’s development staff (160 people) are now working on Cyberpunk 2077’s first expansion, the company claimed on Wednesday.

The breakdown was shared during The Witcher developer’s H1 2021 earnings call, listened to by VGC, in which it was hesitant to share any core details on its expansion plans beyond acknowledging that a chunk of its staff was now focused on it.

In comparison, just over a third of the company is working on Cyberpunk 2077’s new-gen console version, as well as support for the original game. Its remaining development staff are working on Gwent and unannounced triple-A projects, it said.

“The next-gen version is an important step on our adventure in the Cyberpunk universe,” said joint CEO Adam KiciÅ„ski. “We strongly believe in the long-term potential of this IP. That’s why we’re currently working on the first expansion for the game, although I cannot say anything for more about it at this point in time.”

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[...]

Despite an overall increase in revenues, Cyberpunk 2077 weighed downs on CDP's profit due to development & update costs, reports gamesindustry.biz.

DSOGaming reports that CD Projekt RED has hired some modders to add official modding tools to Cyberpunk 2077.

Now here is a pleasant surprise. The creators of Wolvenkit, the unofficial modding tools for Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077, have announced that CDPR has hired them. As such, the team will be working with CDPR in order to create official modding tools for Cyberpunk 2077.

Theoretically speaking, this will give a big boost to Cyberpunk 2077’s modding community. And, to be honest, the game desperately needs such a thing.

[...]

Patch 1.3 for Cyberpunk 2077 has been released. It offers some improvements and free DLCs:

Patch 1.3 — list of changes

Patch 1.3 is coming to PC, consoles, and Stadia soon! Here is a list of the most notable changes coming in this update.

Please note that the issues listed below did not affect all players.

ADDITIONAL CONTENT

• A list of all the free DLCs can be found in the Main Menu under "Additional Content".

• Johnny Silverhand's Alternative Appearance – can be enabled in Settings in the "Additional Content" tab.
• Multilayered Syn-Leather Deltajock Jacket, Luminescent Punk Jacket - both available in the stash in V's apartment after receiving a message from Viktor after completing The Ride. They're of Rare/Iconic quality by default, Crafting Specs to craft a higher quality will also be unlocked.
• Archer Quartz "Bandit" - available as a reward or for purchase (depending on choices made by player) after completing Ghost Town and then receiving a message from Dakota or Rogue. If you haven't received the message, make sure to be in the Badlands area and move further away from Dakota's workshop. Dakota will also need a couple of days to contact you.

[...]

Thanks Henriquejr!

Henriquejr spotted Cyberpunk 2077 patch 1.23:

Patch 1.23 for Cyberpunk 2077 is live on PC, consoles and Stadia.

You can find the list of changes below:

Quests & Open World

Space Oddity

•  Fixed an issue where the "Open the package" objective could change location.

Gig: Family Matters

• Fixed an issue where Juliet's car could disappear on sight after completing the quest.
• Fixed a streaming issue in Juliet's house.
• Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to enter Juliet's house if the player didn't meet either of the Attribute requirements.

The Heist

• Fixed an issue where Jackie could go through glass.
• Fixed an issue preventing some guards from attacking the player.
• Fixed an issue where the "Search the Arasaka officer" objective could remain active after fulfilling it.
• Fixed an issue where the mech didn't spawn in the lobby.
• Fixed an issue where some Arasaka guards could clip through the door.
• Fixed an issue where some guards could spawn on player's sight.
• Fixed an issue where Arasaka officer's body could be unaccessible, making the player unable to loot the shard and blocking progression.

The Nomad

• Removed unnecessary button prompts.

The Hunt

• The news segment in the shard from River will now properly play audio.

The Beast in Me

• Fixed an issue where progression could be blocked if the player left Claire after the Santo Domingo race too early.

Queen of the Highway

• Fixed an issue where the Basilisk could clip through some of the trees.

Down on the Street

• Fixed an issue where there were no quest-related dialogue options when talking to Wakako.

Forward to Death

• Smoke and dust will no longer flicker when riding the Basilisk.

Gig: Goodbye, Night City

• Fixed an issue where progression could get blocked after rescuing Bruce if the player called Delamain.

Path of Glory

• Fixed an issue where V could get stuck in the AV if they stood at the landing spot before it arrived.

Gig: No Fixers

• Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to open the door to Dakota's garage at the end of the quest.
• Fixed an issue where Iris could teleport instead of walking.

Gig: Getting Warmer...

• Fixed an issue where fixer's car could drive straight through the intersection instead of turning right.
• Fixed an issue where the prompt to use the coolant on 8ug8ear could still be selected while plugging her out, which could break the animation.
• Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to pick up 8ug8ear.
• Fixed an issue where NPCs could spawn underground, blocking progression.

Gig: Many Ways to Skin a Cat

• Fixed an issue where notifications from Regina regarding this gig could appear during The Heist.
• Fixed an issue where it was possible to connect to the computer after failing the quest by destroying the van, which resulted in player getting stuck.
• Fixed an issue where progression could get stuck on the "Go to the Revere Courier Servies facilities" objective.
• Cyberpsycho Sighting: Where the Bodies Hit the Floor
• Fixed an issue where after collecting the information the next objective to send it to Regina wouldn't appear.

Cyberpsycho Sighting: On Deaf Ears

• Fixed an issue where after collecting the information the next objective to send it to Regina wouldn't appear.

I Fought the Law

• Fixed an issue where River wouldn't be present at the meeting spot before entering Red Queen's Race.

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where after killing a NPC and stealing their car, their body could get stuck in the car.
• Adam Smasher will no longer receive damage during animations between his attack phases.
• Fixed an issue where dropping a NPC's body caused too much destruction.
• Cataresist cyberware should now work properly.

Visual

• Fixed Johnny's spectral appearance in various quests.
• Fixed various issues related to clipping in NPCs' clothes.
• Fixed appearance of rocks in the Badlands.

The Pickup

• Fixed an issue where one of the Maelstromers was T-posing.

Stability and performance

• Numerous crash fixes in animations, UI, scene, physics and gameplay systems.
• Memory optimizations and memory management improvements in various systems (reducing the number of crashes).

Various console CPU optimizations.

• Memory and I/O improvement leading to fewer instances of NPCs with identical appearances spawning in the same area, and to improved streaming.

PC-specific

• Fixed an issue where it wasn't possible to click the upgrade button while playing with 1280x720 resolution.
• Fixed an issue where toggling the Windowed and Fullscreen modes with Alt+Enter made the game appear unresponsive.
• [Steam] Changing language settings to default will now set it to the language of the Steam client.
• A popup message asking to verify integrity of game data will now be displayed when incomplete or corrupted game data is detected.

Xbox-specific

• Fixed an issue where signing out during a scene fade-out could result in the game being partially unresponsive.
• Fixed an issue where the Pause Menu would open again on its own if the Xbox guide and the Pause Menu were closed in quick succession.

Henriquejr spotted a new hotfix for Cyberpunk 2077:

 Hotfix 1.21 for Cyberpunk 2077 is live on PC, consoles and Stadia.

In this update we focused on further improving the overall stability of the game and fixing the most common issues that could block progression. Here's what changed:

Quests & Open World

• Fixed an issue in Gig: Getting Warmer... where the player was unable to lower 8ug8ear's body temperature.
• Fixed an issue where being unable to pick up the "Send a crew" shard in Cyberpsycho Sighting: Discount Doc could block progression. Reading the shard is now an optional objective.
• Fixed an issue in Down on the Street where Takemura would get stuck in Japantown Docks after player chose to go to Wakako alone and left the area too early.
• Fixed an issue where the clues in Cyberpsycho Sighting: Bloody Ritual would not count if the player scanned them before talking to the wounded NPC.
• Spray Paint should now trigger properly when player approaches Brendan.
• Fixed an issue in Play it Safe where upon connecting to the Access Point the screen could become black, blocking further progression.
• Fixed an issue where Reported Crime: Dredged Up would not complete if the player opened the container before scanning the blood trail.
• Fixed an issue where a Maelstromer could spawn in an area unreachable for the player, blocking progress in Losing My Religion/Sacrum Profanum.
• Fixed an issue blocking progression in one of the Assaults in Progress in Japantown.
• Addressed an issue where the game could crash during Gig: Hippocratic Oath if the player jumped through the window after breaking it.
• Fixed various issues with enemies clipping through objects and floating in the air in Suspected Organized Crime Activity: Privacy Policy Violation.
• Fixed an issue in Suspected Organized Crime Activity: Privacy Policy Violation, where progression could be blocked due to enemies being stuck in a hangar.
• Holocalls from Mitch should no longer get stuck and repeat if the call was interrupted before.
• Fixed Johnny's appearance in various quests.
• Dennis' car should now spawn correctly in Big in Japan.
• Players can now enter Dennis' car from the right side in Big in Japan.
• Windows inside the shack should no longer break upon opening the container in Big in Japan.
• Big in Japan will now fail if the player leaves Haruyoshi instead of carrying him to safety after opening the container.
• Fixed an issue where player could become unable to use weapons and consumables after getting out of Takemura's van in Down on the Street.
• Player can no longer call Takemura during the meeting with Oda in Down on the Street.
• Fixed an issue where Oda could be found on the bridge between Watson and Westbrook before going to Takemura's hideout in Search and Destroy.
• Fixed an issue in Down on the Street where Oda could crash into player's car if it was parked in his way.
• Fixed an issue where Burning Desire/Night Moves could get stuck on the "Wait for a call from distressed man" objective after player failed the quest.
• Fixed an issue where the door to Cassius Ryder's ripperdoc shop would not open, preventing the player from completing The Gig.
• Saul will no longer follow the player around the world if they leave the quest area after freeing him in Riders on the Storm.
• Fixed an issue where sandstorm could be present in the city if the player fast travelled there during Killing in the Name or Riders on the Storm.
• Riders on the Storm will now fail if the player leaves the Wraith camp before rescuing Saul.
• Gig: Severance Package should now trigger properly after approaching the quest area.

Gameplay

• Fixed an issue where, after the player commits a crime on the roof of a building, NCPD officers would spawn behind the player's back.
• Fixed an issue preventing the player from climbing ladders out of water.

Visual

• Fixed various issues related to clipping in NPCs' clothes.

UI

• Added back the icon above NPCs, who are under the Distract Enemies quickhack effect.
• Scanning UI is now less cluttered.
• Fixed an issue where Japanese/Traditional Chinese text could disappear if the player changed the interface language from English to one of these languages.

Stability and performance

• Various memory management improvements (reducing the number of crashes).

Console-specific

• Players should now be able to select stickers in Photo Mode using the Circle button in the Japanese version of the game on PlayStation 4.

Stadia-specific

• Fixed some graphical issues on a bridge in Mikoshi in Belly Of The Beast/Changes.

@Gamer Headquarters  An interview with the actress behind Panam in the game Cyberpunk 2077.

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Cyberpunk 2077 Interview with Emily Woo Zeller, the voice of Panam Palmer who is a primary character of this incredible open world RPG set across one remarkable Night City environment. This title follows Marianne, a gifted individual that can dive into the spirit realm. You use this mechanic to solve puzzles as you face off against various monsters or dive into mirrors to reach somewhere new.

Thanks Farflame!

Henriquejr spotted some newsbits about patch 1.2:

What’s new in Night City? [Patch 1.2 development insight]

Welcome to this special report of N54 News, bringing news from Night City to every Night Citizen stranded away from home! Stay with us if you'd like to learn more about some of the upcoming changes. I’m Gillean Jordan, and here’s what’s new in Night City:

NCPD Quick Response Team too quick?

You heard right! The NCPD Quick Response Team is under fire from concerned Night Citizens and corporations alike. The rapid deployment tactics they recently adopted forced mercenaries to think twice before pointing a gun at anyone, but will now be adjusted to give the other side some breathing room.

-> video

What was supposed to make Night Citizens feel safe on the streets resulted in a staggering drop of public trust towards NCPD officers.

“My choom, Jake, was in a shoot-out with Tyger Claws the other day, when he missed a shot and hit a pedestrian on the other side of the street. In an instant, the NCPD swarmed up on him and put him down. It’s like they appeared out of thin air right behind his back! It’s too brutal of a response for a regular accidental murder if you ask me!” — Mike from Kabuki, 28.

Aside from upsetting the local community, the NCPD's effectiveness resulted in a tremor in the corporate security market.

“Personal security in Night City has always been our priority. The recent spike in NCPD efficiency might seem like a step towards safety, but it isn’t. Upsetting the fragile balance in the security sector might soon result in more people cancelling their protection subscriptions and inviting gangs and terrorists to take over the city.” — Andrey Fomin, Militech PR Manager.

Regardless of how you look at the situation, it seems that the change will be a welcome one. We asked our experts to analyze the situation:

“This is an important step in addressing the behavior of the police in our game. It should decrease the problem of NPCs spawning behind players' backs and create an impression that it takes some time for the police to arrive at the crime scene after the crime has been reported. We've also added a recon "drone" unit to create the feeling of the police assessing the situation.” — Patryk, Lead Gameplay Designer & Łukasz, Technical Design Coordinator, CD PROJEKT RED

 

Vehicular manslaughter statistics higher than ever

Look left, then right, then left again — and then run for your life. As morgues are filling up with roadkill, it is now statistically safer to stroll through Kabuki Market with shiny new cyberware than to cross some of Night City’s intersections. The City Council approved a bill forcing vehicle manufacturers to update their steering firmware.

-> video

Soon, the mandatory update will allow for better synchronization between the CrystalDome system and the vehicle, resulting in a more fluid driving experience even when the image signal skips a frame or two.

In addition, drivers should also expect to be able to better personalize their driving experience by adjusting the sensitivity limits to a level they are comfortable with — providing a much needed breather for insurance companies.

Will this be a good change, or will it subject morgues, street sweepers and auto repair shops to economic hardship? Here’s an opinion from our expert:

"Analyzing feedback on our driving model suggested a lot of players were having issues with the speed of the steering. Most complaints came from players using keyboards on PC or were on platforms with lower frame rates, and centered around how hard it was to keep cars off the sidewalks and such.

We have added a Steering Sensitivity slider to the Options menu. This allows the steering speed for all vehicles and all input devices to be slowed down, without affecting the maximum turn radius.

When experiencing lower frame rates, our cars were harder to control. We traced this to some code that wasn't handling extreme changes in frame rate properly. The steering speed is now very consistent from 20 to 60+ FPS.

Last, we looked at a bunch of tweaks to individual cars and adjusted some of them that were too twitchy in low frame rates, including the player's Archer Hella." — Séamus, Senior Vehicle Programmer, CD PROJEKT RED

 

Rock&Roll for racers

No, it’s not a new genre of music! The brand new Rock&Roll vehicle subsystem will allow any unfortunate street racer who missed a turn and ended up stuck on a pile of garbage to quickly get back on track. The system will allow drivers to rotate or rock their vehicles back and forth in order to regain traction.

-> video

Gone are the days of abandoning a vehicle in the middle of the city just because things got out of control. Accidents happen and being in a rush isn’t a crime! Now, if somebody appears out of nowhere when you’re crossing a red light, you will still be able to make it to your meeting on time and let your insurance take care of the mess.

Still not sure whether you need the subsystem installed in your vehicle? Let our expert convince you:

"There are cases where our vehicles can get beached or high centered on stuff in Night City. We have now added an Unstuck feature that kicks in when you are accelerating and not moving. While holding down the accelerator, you can now rock the vehicle forward or back, or rotate it left/right." — Séamus, Senior Vehicle Programmer, CD PROJEKT RED

 

Update your neuroprocessor drivers or die

This is not a joke! It’s raining men in Night City and not for the reasons you’d expect. Just over the last month authorities recorded nearly 4000 fatal accidents caused by a neuroprocessor glitch causing users to dodge without intending to. The manufacturer has prepared an update to address the issue.

-> video

According to our survey over 30% of all Night Citizens experienced an irresistible urge to burst forward for no reason and the majority of affected people admitted that it put them in danger of falling from a high place. Manufacturer claims that the glitch is caused by a lack of perfect synchronisation between the user's brain patterns and the neuroprocessor.

The update will allow users to better personalize their chips and match software responses with their neural patterns. Aside from resolving the issue with sudden dodging, it will also mean that people will find it easier to move and use the chip, regardless of their handedness, abilities or personal preferences.

What do these improvements mean in layman’s terms? Our expert provided an explanation:

“Dodge on double-tapping a movement key can be turned off in the Controls settings. The Dodge action can still be performed by double-tapping the Crouch(toggle) action key (default C).

It should now be more feasible to move WASD bindings around the keyboard. There still remain a few bindings that need to be addressed, but these should be fixed in upcoming patches.” — Wojtek, Tools Programmer, CD PROJEKT RED

 

Thank you for tuning in to "What's New in Night City". We'll see you next time.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been reviewed at Kordanor's Gaming Lair:

Cyberpunk 2077 - Review / Conclusion

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Conclusion:

So what's the overall conclusion for Cyberpunk 2077? How much fun you will have with the game is strongly depending on how you play it. If you focus on the main quests and the more fleshed out sidequests, and know how to differentiate between them in the Quest Overview, then you will be less bored by the assembly line work. If you value story higher than mechanics, then you will have no problems with just ignoring the plethora of bad mechanics in the game. If you strictly follow the quests and aren't really the type of player who goes his or her own way exploring the world, then it might not come to your attention that most of the work into designing the world was put into creating beautiful facades beyond which there isn't really much to find.
My final rating for the game now is still a full thumbs up, but one which barely made it. 

Thanks Kordanor!

Cyberpunk 2077 on Twitter:

While we dearly wanted to deliver Patch 1.2 for Cyberpunk 2077 in the timespan we detailed previously, the recent cyber attack on the studio’s IT infrastructure and extensive scope of the update mean this unfortunately will not happen — we’ll need some additional time. 

Our goal for Patch 1.2 goes beyond any of our previous updates. We’ve been working on numerous overall quality improvements and fixes, and we still have work to do to make sure that’s what you get. With that in mind, we’re now aiming for release in the second half of March.

It’s not the news we enjoy sharing, but we want to make sure we launch this update properly. Stay tuned for more information as the time draws closer. Thank you for your continued patience and support.

Thanks Henriquejr!

CogConnected share their five pet peeves about Cyberpunk 2077.

2. Menu Mismanagement

Who would have thought navigating menus in a game would become a full-time job? In Cyberpunk 2077, it is. I’m not going to break down all the in-game menus – trust me, I originally did that and it ended up looking like a massive wall of painfully constructed text. There’s just no way I can be concise about Cyberpunk’s menus, and therein lies the problem. This game is so deep you’re likely to drown just trying to figure out all the different systems and subsystems. The Character menu – where you tweak your abilities – has a bunch of Attributes and Perks you can fiddle with. Yet all these perks and attributes just add minor, incremental enhancements that really don’t add much to the overall game. The Inventory is a disorganized joke with non-sensical icons denoting each item category. The Journal is an ever-growing honey-do list of missions you can tackle. The Map is a disorientating Jackson Pollock painting. And finally, there’s Crafting, which after all my time with this game, I still have zero idea how it works. In talking with some of my colleagues, they rarely, if ever, used Crafting either. To compound this problem, the menus use a cursor system – which makes sense if I’m using a mouse and keyboard – but is a pain in the ass when using a controller.

The Ripperdoc suggests: First, scrap the Crafting component, it’s useless. Second, add proper tutorials for absolutely every aspect of the menu. And no, not those stupid on-screen prompts that show up at the worst possible moment or the “help” option that displays vague information on screen. I want full tutorial videos that I can watch within each menu that clearly lays out what everything does and how I can get the most out of this game. And finally, drop the annoying cursor navigation and come up with a system that works well with a controller.

[...]

Twinfinite have suggested five ways Cyberpunk 2077 could be improved.

Better Economy and Money System

Cyberpunk 2077 is a pretty massive game, with tons of different perks to unlock and attributes to level up. You’ll definitely want to level V up quickly to start getting better equipment, but you’ll need to make sure you have the cash for it too.

One of the biggest problems we’ve encountered in this game is just how hard it is to get, well, anything. You can get a fairly steady flow of income from doing main missions, side gigs, and other optional quests. However, equipment and upgrades are extremely expensive, and just trying to get a couple of Ripperdoc upgrades will certainly deplete your bank account in the blink of an eye.

Money aside, getting experience for specific skills can also be a slog. Crafting, in particular, feels extremely unrewarding once you get to the mid-game stages, as it’s hard enough to gather crafting components to craft more valuable items, and it only stings more when you realize how little crafting experience you get from it.

The same can be said for pretty much any non-combat skill as well, making the game feel a little inflexible overall. It’s no wonder that players have been quick to find money and experience exploits to speed up the leveling process.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Henriquejr spotted this CD Projekt statement:

Cyberpunk 2077 — Our Commitment to Quality

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Dear gamers,
here's CD PROJEKT’s co-founder’s personal explanation of what the days leading up to the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 looked like, sharing the studio’s perspective on what happened with the game on old-generation consoles.

For more details about the progress being made on Cyberpunk 2077’s further development, including information about updates and improvements, free DLCs, and more, please visit cyberpunk.net/ourcommitment

NeverKnowsBest analyzes Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 - A postmortem of 2020's biggest game

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After years of uncontrolled hype public opinion has now turn to hate but is Cyberpunk 2077 as bad as people say?

Thanks Redglyph!

NPR checked out Cyberpunk 2077:

In 'Cyberpunk 2077,' The Only Truly Punk Move Is Not To Play

"Burn Corpo Sh**"

That's what it says on my jacket. My weirdly puffy, annoyingly yellow, impressively armored and oh-so-very cyberpunk jacket. Because Cyberpunk 2077 operates almost exclusively in a claustrophobic first-person, I can't actually see the slogan sloppily written on my super-cool popped-collar jacket except when I'm tinkering with my loadout on the inventory screen. But I know it's there. I know it's there all the time.

[...]

The game tries so hard to be cool — to come off as crass and edgy, to talk tough and play like some kind of anti-capitalist anarchy generator. But you lean too hard into that act and it will always come off more like a desperate pose than anything honest. One of the reasons I think I had so much trouble getting into the game is that all the gloss and chrome and affected, fake punkery gelled together like a hard shell in the first hours. No matter what I did, I just kept bouncing off, unable to get past the surface of it, told to act punk and do whatever I wanted, but then offered only a narrow spread of pre-approved systemic options that usually broke down to a) shoot everyone, b) have sex with a robot, c) buy things, d) quit.

I hung with it, but honestly? Quitting is the most punk option of them all. I wanted to love this game. I really did. I've been waiting decades for someone to take my teenage techno-dystopian fantasies and turn them into something I could play around in. But names and labels aside, this ain't that. It's all surface, no depth. All signal, no content. You wanna stick it to the mega-corps and hit 'em where it really hurts, choom? Just turn the game off and walk away. You wanna burn it all down?

Thanks rjshae!

Porcozaur spotted that over 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077 have been sold:

Current report no. 67/2020

December 22, 2020

Subject: Disclosure of estimated sales of Cyberpunk 2077

Legal basis: Art. 17 item 1 of the Market Abuse Regulation – inside information

The Management Board of CD PROJEKT S.A. with a registered office in Warsaw (hereinafter referred to as “the Company”) hereby announces that, based on reports obtained from digital distribution platforms and data collected from physical distributors, it estimates that by 20 December inclusive gamers have purchased over 13 million copies of Cyberpunk 2077. This figure represents the estimated volume of retail sales across all hardware platforms (factoring in returns submitted by retail clients in brick-and-mortar as well as digital storefronts), i.e. the “sell-through” figure, less all refund requests e-mailed directly to the Company by the publication date of this report in the framework of the “Help Me Refund” campaign.

The Management Board has decided to disclose the above information in the form of a current report due to its potential impact on investment-related decisions.

COG reviewed Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 Review - What The H*** Happened?

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Techraptor has reviewed Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 Review

Not Quite Breathtaking

Cyberpunk 2077 has a lot to say about humanity and the world we live in, often in very unsubtle ways. With more than a few controversies about the game’s development, you won’t be able to stop yourself making comparisons to some actions and words spoken in the game. Corporations are evil, selfish, and deceitful, but 2077 also asks: are the people on the street any better? So should you get in line like the good consumer you are, ready to fork out your hard-earned cash for another product from those sociopathic corpos at CD Projekt Red? 

While we usually just mention the platform of review in a disclaimer at the end, the vast disparity between the different versions of Cyberpunk 2077 make the question of which platform more relevant. This review was conducted on a high end PC. You’ll find more information on the PC specs in the comments below.

If you do decide to bow down to the corpos and buy the game, you’ll take on the role of V, a mercenary (merc) who hopes to go down as a legend of Night City in one way or another. At one point, V ends up with a chip in their brain that contains the psyche of a Night City legend of old, Johnny Silverhand. A rocker/corpoterrorist, Johnny’s relationship with V, as well as the mystery of why this chip was created and what it’s doing to V, is the main story driver of Cyberpunk 2077.

[...]

Cyberpunk 2077 | Final Thoughts

It wouldn’t be a Cyberpunk 2077 review without a quick mention of bugs. I definitely experienced a lot of them frequently, but they were minor. Weird visual things, some sounds not playing or playing in the wrong places—stuff like that. Nothing that crashed my system on PC and nothing that spoiled any of the game’s big moments. Your personal experience may be different, however.

Outside of the world design and the graphical candy on display, nothing in Cyberpunk 2077 is innovative. The questing is familiar and works as it always has, the open world is a formula we’ve been used to for a couple of console generations now, and gameplay mechanics are not nearly as engaging as they could be. However, all elements—aside from the bugs obviously—are crafted with a high level of competency. Much of it is obviously done well but not going to wow you, apart from Night City.

Cyberpunk 2077 is still a very enjoyable game that is a ton of fun to play. You’ll find a new favorite character, laugh at a great line of dialogue, and you’ll find yourself fully immersed in the year 2077. Just don’t go in expecting a deep RPG experience, as you will certainly be disappointed.

Score: 8.5/10

C4G checked out Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 - C4G Impressions & Thoughts | After the Insane Hype

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Worth A Buy checked out Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 Review - A gamers perspective, not a corporate one.

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AngryJoe checked out Cyberpunk 2077:

AngryJoe's Early Impressions - Cyberpunk 2077!

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THE ANGRY REVIEW IS STILL COMING, THIS IS JUST a Montage of some Early Funny Bugs & Glitches & our Early Impressions!

Cyberpunk 2077 has been released on GOG and Steam today:

Cyberpunk 2077

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your character’s cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where the choices you make shape the story and the world around you.

Become a cyberpunk, an urban mercenary equipped with cybernetic enhancements and build your legend on the streets of Night City.

Enter the massive open world of Night City, a place that sets new standards in terms of visuals, complexity and depth.

Take the riskiest job of your life and go after a prototype implant that is the key to immortality.

tom's HARDWARE tested the system requirements of Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 System Requirements: Ray Tracing Recs Revealed

The official Cyberpunk 2077 system requirements have been updated with recommendations for higher quality modes and ray tracing.

12/7/2020 Update: We have now tested Cyberpunk 2077 benchmarks on a collection of GPUs, using a preview build. Based on our initial testing results, it looks like the official Cyberpunk 2077 system requirements target performance of 30-40 fps.

The official Cyberpunk 2077 system requirements have been updated with recommendations for ultra quality as well as ray tracing. As we expected, running at higher settings and resolutions will need a fair amount of hardware, at least on the graphics card front. After pushing the launch back to December 10 (from November 19), here's the sort of PC hardware you'll need to run the game in all its glory.

We've known that Cyberpunk 2077 will support ray tracing and DLSS 2.x for a while. It's no surprise then that if you want the full fidelity experience, you'll need one of the best graphics cards — and by that, we mean you'll want at least a GeForce RTX GPU. Cyberpunk also requires DirectX 12, though Windows 7 is supported as DX12 has been ported to it.

[...]

Here's a launch trailer for Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 — Official Launch Trailer — V

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Some more reviews for Cyberpunk 2077:

Ars Technica
Game Informer - Score: 9/10
GamesBeat - Score: 3/5
GameSpew - Score: 10/10
GameSpot - Score: 7/10
GamesRadar+ - Score: 5/5
GameWatcher - Score: 9/10
God is a Geek - Score: 10/10
IGN - Score: 9/10
PC Gamer - Score: 78/100
PCGamesN - Score: 9/10
Polygon
RPG Site - Score: 9/10
Screen Rant - Score: 4/5
The Verge
TheGamer - Score: 5/5
Trusted Reviews - Score: 4/5
VG247 - Score: 5/5
VGC - Score: 5/5
Windows Central - Score: 5/5

Some video reviews for the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 - in short: Brilliant, short main story, a bit buggy!

IGN

WhatCulture Gaming

YongYea

LegacyKillaHD

Laymen Gaming

VGC

GameWatcher reports that Wolvenkit, an open-source modding project/toolset for The Witcher 3, will also be supporting Cyberpunk 2077.

WolvenKit Cyberpunk 2077 Modding

"WolvenKit is a community open source project that allows for almost complete modding support for TW3, including but massively surpassing the official modding tools of the game."

The team is seeking input from both the community and CD Projekt Red staff as it begins work on WolvenKit to enable Cyberpunk 2077 modding.

The RPG is built on the latest version of the developer's proprietary Red Engine, which makes the transition very likely to happen.

That being said, the team behind WolvenKit hasn't provided any timeframe on when Cyberpunk 2077 modding will be available, nor details regarding the initial scope of the project.

[...]

Cyberpunk 2077 has been previewed by Gameinformer.

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Cyberpunk 2077 is the gift that keeps on giving with Keanu Reeves, a massive open-world playground, and more weapons than you could possibly keep track of. With the final hands-on preview for the upcoming CD Projekt RED game, we dive deep into what Keanu brings to the table, how does the music stack up to some of the greats, and Silverhand's ability to make people pregnant just by walking past (kidding on that last part).

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

IGN checked out Cyberpunk 2077:

 Cyberpunk 2077: The Final Preview

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Largh spotted some Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay footage:

Cyberpunk 2077 — Night City Wire Special: Xbox One X and Xbox Series X footage

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Gameinformer reports that the Cyberpunk 2077 devs didn't know about the delay:

Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Didn't Know About The Delay Until The Day Of, Here's Why 

Yesterday, Cyberpunk 2077 was delayed until December (despite already going gold) to ensure that current-gen versions of the game come closer to the high standard that the team has for the PS5 and Xbox Series X iterations. Shortly after the news, an official tweet surfaced from the day before, supposedly confirming no more delays. This mixed messaging set the internet in a frenzy. How could something so important be confirmed one day, and then incorrect the next? The answer is: When that initial response went live a day before, it was true at the time. The wider team at CD Projekt Red didn't find out about the delay until the day it was announced. 

When the news broke, I spoke with several CD Projekt Red developers who confirmed they didn't know about the delay until they received an internal email shortly before the announcement went live on Twitter. When that knowledge became public, the online backlash was almost instantaneous, sparking criticism of the studio's internal communication practices and how messages are conveyed to the community. Since then, I've spoken to several more CD Projekt Red developers on both the Polish and U.S. sides; according to them, the news was shocking, but not for the reasons people are assuming. 

According to three developers, the decision to delay was a swift one after looking at the quality differences between the current-gen and next-gen versions. CD Projekt Red has said that it wants the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 to be perfect, so any perceived flaws are addressed quickly. According to the team, the decision to delay was not even discussed until Monday (October 26), with a decision being reached on Tuesday (October 27). According to Polish labor laws, leadership was not legally allowed to tell the whole team, due to its size of over 1,000 employees, without each individual signing a non-disclosure agreement. To do so would be considered, in terms of relation to stock equity and insider trading, as "leaked insider information." 

[...]

Thanks Largh!

Cyberpunk 2077 will be released on December 10 -> Tweet.

Thanks Yemeth!

DSOGaming reports on some new videos for Cyberpunk 2077 shows off the vehicles.

CD Projekt RED has released a new gameplay trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 that focuses on vehicles. This trailer will give you a glimpse at the vehicles you’ll be able to drive. Moreover, CD Projekt RED confirmed that the game will feature races.

[...]

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IGN reports that the map for Cyberpunk 2077 has been leaked.

The Night City map offers a closer look at the many regions in the game that have previously been mentioned, including Pacifica, Watson, Westbrook and Santa Domingo, as well as the City Center. A few places of note include the space port in the far west of the map off the coast, as well as the Northern Oilfields up top and some kind of stadium just south of the city centre.

[...]

Thanks Capt. Huggy Face!

Mike Pondsmith was interviewed by PC Gamer about making RPGs in the early days.

With so much money on the line, Pondsmith says budding videogame designers will probably meet fewer helpful people than they'd meet in the tabletop industry.

 

"I think that's partially because videogames are a little more like Hollywood. The stakes are ridiculous, and there's a lot more of a problem with reaching and talking to fans directly. There's a wall there between you and the people who use your game."

Still, Pondsmith says, "Even in videogames you're going to meet people, just a fewer number of them, who are willing to talk to you about this mystical thing we call game design."

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Thanks Farflame!

TheGamer has an exclusive interview with CD Projekt Red about the gangs of Cyberpunk 2077.

Okay. Each gang seems to have a specific rival. I know you can’t join a gang because you said so in the video, but will you be forced to choose a side in those conflicts?

Like I mentioned in the video, you will sometimes get jobs that were given to a fixer by some gang members. So you kind of do dabble in this dynamic between them, but you won’t really push sides - it’s more doing gigs that will change some local bands of power, rather than shifting the huge bands of power in the entire city. Of course, you will encounter them a lot when you explore the city. Some of them do fight each other over territory or some gang business and stuff like that. I guess that covers it without going too much into the spoiler area.

You said that they have conflicts with each other - is that systemic, does that happen naturally in the world as you are exploring as well as during the story?

To be honest, most of our content is hand-crafted. It’s mostly tailored. We don’t really go into systemic, generated solutions that would generate some random conflicts across the city. Most of the stuff you see as you travel through Night City - like in The Witcher 3 - is hand-crafted and custom made by us.

[...]

Gameinformer has an preview of Cyberpunk 2077.

Diving Deep Into Progression

CD Projekt Red has discussed skill trees and customization in the past, but we were not prepared for the full breadth of options available. Every time we leveled up, exciting new perks beckoned, and finding new gear and weapons of various rarities made us want to search every corner of the world. One of the strongest aspects of Cyberpunk 2077 is how every system has multiple layers. It can be overwhelming at first, but once you get a handle on the way those systems interact, tinkering with them is exhilarating and rewarding.

As you level up, you unlock attribute points and perks. You invest points in improving the main attributes, but each one also has its own branching perk tree for unlocking new skills. For instance, in the intelligence attribute path, there are two hacking paths: device or target. You can mix and match skills from both. Device skills improve your prowess with hacking things like security systems and turrets, while target skills disrupt enemy cyberware, like calling an enemy to another to get them both in range for a grenade detonation. Prefer the subtle approach? A high cool attribute provides options for stealth, like adding aerial takedowns, or a Cold Blood tree that buffs movement, damage, and other effects when your health drops.

How far you go down any given path is determined by the corresponding attribute level, and the more you do something like hack or use a specific gun, the more your proficiency grows. “Basically if you want to level up a skill and a specific weapon … you basically level it up as you use that specific tool,” Tomaszkiewicz explains. “However, the maximum amount to which you can level up that skill is limited by a specific stat. For example, your hacking ability cannot exceed your intelligence stat. So if your intelligence is four, you cannot level up hacking higher than four.”

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

PC Gamer reports on the system specs for Cyberpunk 2077.

Minimum:

• OS: Windows 7 or 10, 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-3570K or AMD FX-8310
• Memory: 8GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 780 3GB or AMD Radeon RX 470
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 70 GB HDD, SSD recommended

Recommended:

• OS: Windows 10, 64-bit 
• Processor: Intel Core i7-4790 or AMD Ryzen 3 3200G
• Memory: 12GB RAM
• Graphics: Nvidia GeForce GTX 1060 6GB or AMD Radeon R9 Fury
• DirectX: Version 12
• Storage: 70 GB SSD

A new Cyberpunk 2077 trailer:

Official Night City Tour Trailer

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DSOGaming reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will have micro-transactions in its multiplayer.

CD Projekt RED stated in the past that Cyberpunk 2077 wouldn’t have any micro-transactions or in-game purchases. Thus, a lot of gamers felt betrayed earlier today when it was revealed that there will be micro-transactions. However, these micro-transactions will be only available in the upcoming multiplayer mode. The single-player campaign, that will release in November, won’t have any micro-transactions at all.

[...]

DSOGaming reports on a new trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 and some new 4K screenshots.

CD Projekt RED has released the second episode of the Night City Wire for Cyberpunk 2077. This new episode features new cinematic in-engine and gameplay footage from Cyberpunk 2077, so make sure to watch it.

The second episode of Night City Wire also features the rock band Samurai. Additionally, this episode reveals new details about lifepaths, weapons, and more.

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DSOGaming reports that CD Projekt RED has no plans for XBOX Game Pass or for a Demo for Cyberpunk 2077.

As CD Projekt RED stated, a playable demo requires a lot of resources. After all, the team is currently focusing on completing the full game, meaning that it cannot spare any resources for such a thing.

Of course this should not surprise us as there wasn’t a public demo for The Witcher 3 too. And, in case you’re wondering, CDPR is not trying to protect its game – from pirates – by not releasing a demo. The game will come out on GOG, which means that a DRM-free pirated version will appear immediately.

[...]

Twinfinite reports on a panel attended by Mike Pondsmith where he was asked about politics in games and his vision for Cyberpunk 2077.

...

That being said, what we have a tendency to do now is to say “it’s not political” unless it’s lining up with our politics, and that’s part of the problem. It’s that people see it as a tool or a weapon to be used with or against their own personal beliefs.

I tend to look at it as “freedom is important” not for the area of the people involved, but in a society or indeed a civilization. Freedom allows a civilization to get checks, balances, to grow, to learn from its mistakes.

That’s part of the foundational elements I see in politics in a game.

Along with that, I’ve also said that if you want somebody to see your point of view, you really have to stop preaching. When you preach at people and they don’t find it out themselves what happens is invariably they shut down because you’re now threatening what they see. They say “you’re wrong and my way is right.”

You may not be right or only partially right and that’s when you need to be able to talk to other people and find out what’s right for a lot of people. If you preach you don’t get there. You’re just basically giving your side of the statement and it never seems to work that way.

What I believe is that the way to do politics in games it should be something that occurs in the game but doesn’t necessarily have a visible agenda.

At no point does anybody in Cyberpunk come up and go “you should follow this belief structure.” What they’re saying is “There’s this situation here. This is not a world designed to promote your life and livelihood and your friends and your neighborhoods, and anything that you care about.”

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

RPG Site checked out the RPG Elements of Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 hands-on: 8 points for RPG fans

There’s a lot of questions to be answered about Cyberpunk 2077. The biggest question is, of course, if it’s any good. Coming off the back of The Witcher 3, one of the most highly regarded RPGs of all time, CD Projekt RED has a lot to live up to.

The release is fast approaching, and even in the wake of another delay Night City feels so close that we can practically taste it. We’ve now been hands on, playing the game from character creation through four hours of story, side content and open-world exploration.

Rather than a traditional preview, we thought we’d have an internal conversation on the RPG Site team, coming up with questions we figured RPG fans might want answered from that hands-on. So, here’s our hands-on impressions with the biggest RPG of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077. 

[...]

Obviously Cyberpunk 2077 is based off of the Cyberpunk tabletop game, so I assume a large part of the creation mimics what one would draft as a character sheet?

As far as stats go, it’s pretty simple, but I think as an RPG Site it’s pretty important we talk about this one in more detail. What I want to say off the bat is that this is a fully-featured RPG. RPG fans won’t be disappointed.

So, it’s classic RPG stats but with a Cyberpunk twist in naming and stuff. So the stats are Body, Reflexes, Technical Ability, Intelligence and Cool. Body impacts things like health and heavy weapons, while Reflexes will be speed and rifles and stuff, for example.

As well as pumping points into these as you level up, each stat has its own set of related perks that can be unlocked. It seems like the more points you’ve put into a category, the more access you have to purchase perks in that category. Perks in Body might give you extra health, for instance, while perks in Reflexes might make you move quicker or make handling of Rifles more smooth. Intelligence perks seemed to be centered around hacking and stuff like that, while Cool actually had some stealth perks - presumably because keeping cool under pressure allows you to stay hidden better when you almost get spotted.

That’s how it works, but obviously there’s progression beyond points and stats.

[...]

PC Gamer shows some Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay:

Cyberpunk 2077 | New Gameplay Commentary

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DSOGaming reports on a new in-game teaser clip for Cyberpunk 2077.

CD Projekt RED has released a short but sweet in-game teaser clip for Cyberpunk 2077. This teaser clip showcases a panoramic view of Night City at night, with lots of neon lights. And, while it’s short, I’m certain that most Cyberpunk 2077 fans will find it cool.

CD Projekt RED has also revealed that the first, 25-minute episode of Night City Wire will air tomorrow at 6PM CEST. In this episode, the team will show a brand new trailer, present fresh gameplay footage and chat with the devs in detail about one of the game features.

[...]

Bluesnews reports that Cyberpunk 2077 has been delayed until November 19th for game balance reasons.

CD PROJECT RED tweets that they are delaying the release of Cyberpunk 2077 from September 17th to November 19th (thanks MacAllen). They say the sci-fi RPG  is feature complete, but they plan to use the extra two months to iron out bugs and tweak game balance. Here's their message:

[...]

This week, journalists from all over the world are starting to independently play the game. We are eager (and quite stressed) to hear their opinions, as well as see your reactions when they publish their previews right after we air Night City Wire on the 25th of June. We hope this will satisfy some of your hunger for the game as we work to polish it for the November launch.

DSOGaming reports that a reddit user has pieced together new game footage for Cyberpunk 2077 from an interview done last year.

Cyberpunk 2077 is still a few months away, but we already know that the game is basically finished. CD Projekt Red is now only fixing and polishing  the game. We also informed that Cyberpunk 2077’s DLCs and expansions will be similar to The Witcher 3. Last year, CDPR released a Q&A video for Cyberpunk 2077, where the developers answered some of the most popular questions.

A reddit user pieced together the extra game footage from that video. In the video we can see V following Placide in the crowded streets of Night City. According to the UI the name of the quest/mission is ‘Pattern Recognition’.

[...]

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Gaming Route reports that CD Projekt have released some official art and all the gang names for Cyberpunk 2077. Screenshots at the link.

That’s all of the Corporate logos in Cyberpunk now take a look at the Art:

This is probably the art for one of the gangs you join as you can see the gang prefers Substance over Style or Technically Function over Style.

[...]

Henriquejr spotted an interview with CD PROJEKT Red’s John Mamais:

Interview: CD PROJEKT Red’s John Mamais talks Cyberpunk 2077’s creation, VR, DLC, Nintendo Switch, and more

I recently sat down with CD PROJEKT Red’s John Mamais to talk about the studio’s highly-anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 video game which is due out later this year on Xbox One, PC, and PS4.

We talked about the creation of the futuristic world in which the game is set, cyberpunk inspirations, possible third-person perspectives, immersive sound design, censorship issues in Australia, and the potential (or lack thereof) for a Cyberpunk 2077 release on Nintendo Switch and a VR version.

When did development on Cyberpunk 2077 start exactly? It’s been planned for a while now.

We had a team going when we were working on The Witcher 3 actually. We built two teams to do the two games in parallel then we cannibalised the second team to come back and work on Witcher 3 before putting everyone on this project.

So Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development for a while then?

Yeah, for a little while. In pre-production. We had about 75 guys working on it at that time.

[...]

Cyberpunk 2077 will be released on September 17.

Thanks Ragnaris!

MCVUK interviewed the devs of Cyberpunk 2077 about moving on from The Witcher and adapting things from pen and paper.

“We’ve stuck to as much of the original Cyberpunk 2020 as we can, but to keep things enjoyable we’ve had to change some things to make it adapt well into the video game format. From things like character attributes to guns – a lot of it is taken from the core book. We’ve added some new ones, of course, but we’re staying true to what Mike Pondsmith created. It was really important to us to remain faithful to the original, because we know there’s this community of Cyberpunk fans that have been out there since the 1980s. We’re not going to be exploiting the franchise, we’re not going out there saying ‘Hey, this is our game, it’s entirely unconnected to whatever it was before.’ We’re here to enhance Cyberpunk, alongside Mike Pondsmith.”

While stepping into an established franchise with pre-existing fans can be intimidating, as Borzymowski notes, it also allows CD Projekt Red to be more open with fans about what to expect.

“Very often I think, not just in games, but in books and movies too, you see promises being made without actually showing anything behind it – and then you’re building hype essentially based on just your words.
Even if the product is very good, people might feel let down, and be like ‘oh, this isn’t what I thought it was going to be.’”

Enter Cyberpunk Red. The latest edition of the pen-and-paper RPG was released in August by R. Talsorian Games, and provides a teaser of what to expect in Cyberpunk 2077. Set in 2045 – the midpoint between Mike Pondsmith’s original and the upcoming game. The RPG acts as a ‘midquel’, bridging the gap between the two titles – directly linking CD Projekt Red’s game to the original work.

Given the 32 year gap, there are unlikely to be any direct plot threads linking Cyberpunk Red and 2077, but the Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit establishes the game’s setting – Night City, and an explanation of the politics of the future, detailing the horrific events known as the fourth corporate war.

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AusGamers have interviewed CD Projekt RED about Cyberpunk 2077.

As a studio, CD Projekt Red is pushing the visual envelope with Cyberpunk. Even though The Witcher III still looks fantastic and can put any high-end gaming rig through its paces, Cyberpunk 2077 is taking everything to the next level. And in one case, the next-generation of hardware. “We started working on that about a year ago,” John tells me when asked about Cyberpunk’s use of real-time ray-tracing. “It's not something we started with because ray-tracing is also a recent thing within the industry. And we use ray-tracing for emissive lights to make adverts and the neon lighting you see look amazing. We also use ray-traced ambient occlusion and ray-tracing for the skyline.”

Although PC-specific, and at launch tied to hardware from NVIDIA – Cyberpunk 2077 will look impressive no matter the platform it’s played on. Advanced shadow effects from long range shadows and contact shadows, to new Houdini physics simulations for particle effects, fluids, cloth, and more. The tech team is still hard at work in some key areas, with the Global Illumination (GI) used in Cyberpunk still being refined and improved upon. To hit a mark that goes beyond anything we’ve seen from the studio before.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

VideoGamesChronicle interviewed a level designer for Cyberpunk 2077 about building the game while Wccftech took a look at the layered design elements.

Do you have a checklist of considerations when you build a level for Cyberpunk?

We do try and make sure that the levels feel consistent in terms of options, but it’s about the narrative as well, because for CD Projket Red the story is king. We do try to make sure that everything is balanced, but if for example the story needs certain things then we take that into consideration.

Have you had to change anything in your levels based on playtesting? We imagine different character types might have brought up unexpected results.

I think that has been one of the most interesting parts, watching people play. Whether you’re watching teammates or even playing yourself, you encounter different experiences that the player has. There was definitely constant tweaking and iteration, because in one playtest the player might not even touch certain routes. It’s been interesting to try and highlight which play style can lead you down which path: that’s been one of the most crucial tweaks, making sure that we highlight all the options for the player.

It’s about making sure a certain character doesn’t bypass important areas, but also that they don’t get stuck halfway down a route for example. Maybe you’ve made a Netrunner and then the only way past something is for a strong player. And because it’s a fluid class system and people can mix and match their characters, you constantly give different options to tackle different challenges.

[...]

In a recent interview with GamesIndustry, CD Projekt RED’s Marthe Jonkers (Senior Concept Artist and Coordinator) explained how the developers are trying to inject more believability into the game world by designing a layered Night City, where players will be able to recognize the district and the history of its inhabitants simply by looking at it.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

VideoGamesChronicles reports how the gender customisation options will work for Cyberpunk 2077.

Pears also revealed that one way the game is attempting to be inclusive for all players is by having NPCs refer to the player character, V, by name instead of gender.

He said: “We really want to make sure players get the representation that they want. In the genre of Cyberpunk as well, it asks such deep questions about what it means to be human, let alone what it means to define your gender.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

CD Project Red recruits MP specialists for Cyberpunk 2077:

1/2 Until now, the only thing we said about multi was that it was in R&D. As we’re getting closer to launching ‘single player’ Cyberpunk 2077 in Apr. 2020, we’d like to confirm that multiplayer's in the works! If you feel like lending us your skills apply:-> Link

A deep dive video of Cyberpunk 2077 has been made available. It is a 15-minute-long video featuring new game footage, as well as details regarding the story and lore.

Accompanying the video is an extended version, which includes a recording of a special Deep Dive Q&A with members of the development team — Miles Tost (Senior Level Designer), PaweÅ‚ Sasko (Lead Quest Designer), and Philipp Weber (Quest Design Coordinator). Hosting the panel is Hollie Bennett, CD PROJEKT RED's UK Head of Communication.

Metro has interviewed Cyberpunk 2077 senior concept artist Marthe Jonkers, who is in charge of the team responsible for Night City.

GC: I guess your team would’ve been one of the first ones to start doing serious work on the game? Back when the project first began.

MJ: Yeah, well we have to design the whole world. [laughs] Me and my team, we are in Kraków. We have several studios, actually, and we are really focused on creating the city and we really approached that in a holistic way, because you have to think about the composition of the city. We work with urban planners. We have an urban planner in our team and she is always thinking, ‘What’s the layout of the city and the map, and where would all the streets go?’

Because if you drive around the city we want you to have good views and we want you to always know where you are so you don’t get lost; so the layout of the city is very important. Once you have that sort of skeleton then you can start building up the city, and so we made six districts and all those areas are really different.

My team is really responsible for making these areas distinctive and we make sure that we use a different colour palette for each. It’s very subtle but you will see it in different areas and we make sure that there’s a difference in some areas where they’re really crowded and some are sort of abandoned…

That area you saw in the demo was called Pacifica and that is a district to the south of Night City and it’s very abandoned and there are not that many people living there, actually. But if you go to Watson, which is another area in Night City… I don’t know if you saw the demo last year?

GC: I did. I remember what an impression it made coming down in the lift at the beginning and seeing the whole city in front of you. I guess that was all your team’s work?

MJ: A collaboration, of course, we purely do visual designs of the buildings and interiors.

GC: Seeing the verticality of the environment was very impressive but I’m still not clear how many of those buildings or floors you can actually go into?

MJ: That’s a good question, because we have a lot of verticality in this game. But we also value quality over quantity. So we made sure that… not every building will have a hundred floors for you to explore because that would be really boring, really repetitive. So we make sure that we have the right balance in how much you can explore and it will be a lot, but it won’t be so much that it’s not fun anymore.

Note that the video they showed at E3, gamescom and Pax West should become available this Friday!

Thanks Morrandir!

Gamingbolt has interviewed quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz about Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 Interview – Welcome To Night City

Read GamingBolt’s chat at E3 2019 with quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz about the upcoming megaton.

One of the hottest games coming out of E3 2019 is undoubtedly Cyberpunk 2077. With its intricately designed open world, you can take on locations your way. Face hordes of enemies head-on, or find hidden paths to sneak around them.

Promising a fully customizable and interchangeable character class system, you can design your character to fit your preferred play style and edit him or her exactly how you want along the way. With so many unanswered questions still out there about Cyberpunk 2077, we had a chance to sit down with CD Projekt RED’s Quest Director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz to figure out what answers we could uncover about their next big game.
[...]
"We are trying to take the experience from The Witcher 3 in order to create the same quality of quests – in terms of side quests and main quests. We are still sticking to choices and consequences, handcrafted designs and so on. On top of that we’re adding this element that brings more quality and more interesting outcomes to specific quests."
[...]

Thanks Farflame!

It is official now, Cyberpunk will also be available on Google Stadia.

Cyberpunk 2077 coming to Google Stadia

CD PROJEKT RED announces Cyberpunk 2077 for Stadia — the cloud-based gaming platform from Google.

Gamers will be able to enjoy the immersive first-person RPG, its mature narrative, and cutting-edge visuals across dozens of supported devices.

Cyberpunk 2077 is an open-world, action-adventure story set in Night City, a megalopolis obsessed with power, glamour and body modification. You play as V, a mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant that is the key to immortality. You can customize your character's cyberware, skillset and playstyle, and explore a vast city where your choices shape the story and the world around you.

Cyberpunk 2077 will release April 16th, 2020, for PC, Xbox One and PlayStation 4. The Google Stadia version will launch the same year — additional details will be made available at a later date.

Afterlife: The Card Game has been announced on the Cyberpunk 2077 website.

Announcing Cyberpunk 2077 – Afterlife: The Card Game!

August 1, 2019

We’re excited to announce Cyberpunk 2077 – Afterlife: The Card Game, a standalone physical card game created in collaboration with an international board game publisher CMON!

Cyberpunk 2077 – Afterlife: The Card Game thrusts players into the dark alleyways of Night City, where ruthless gangs clash with corporations in an endless war for money, power, and control.

In the game, you become Fixers — databrokers and masterminds of Night City. Your job is to recruit cyberpunks, equip them with gear, and send them out on missions. Each successful mission raises your Street Cred, with mission survivors becoming Veterans, imparting their knowledge and experience to newer recruits. In this chrome-infused world, Street Cred is the only currency that matters.

And nothing comes cheap in Night City. You need to balance between what you want and what you can actually afford. Using an innovative drafting mechanic and special dashboard, you must decide which cards you want to buy, and which to sacrifice for funds in order to purchase new ones.

Cyberpunk 2077 – Afterlife: The Card Game will be released in 2020.

Cyberpunk 2077 is always in the news as different things are slowly revealed.

Let's talk about nanowires in #Cyberpunk2077!

With our very own @MilezZx. 😎 pic.twitter.com/dQghtgTU96

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) July 23, 2019

Wccftech reported on Johnny Silverhand being more realistic thanks to Keanu Reeves.

Speaking to Xbox: The Official Magazine (September 2019, issue 180), CD Projekt RED’s Story Director Marcin Blacha described the thought process behind choosing Keanu Reeves as well as how the renowned actor of The Matrix and John Wick helped define Johnny’s character in Cyberpunk 2077.

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DSOGaming talk about a new gameplay demo that has been circulating amongst the Polish press, which we will hear more about at PAX West.

The following information comes from three Polish websites (WP GRY, Miastogier and Onet) that were invited to see this new Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo.

In Cyberpunk 2077, players will be able to start a conversation with an NPC without leaving their bike or car. This works like a classic dynamic conversation and CD Projekt RED showcased an example of it in the new gameplay demo.

Religions will be very present in Night City, players will be able to buy clothes from merchants, bots will be able to hack at a distance, players will be able to perform small upgrades themselves, mini-games related to hacking will be different depending on the installation you hack and your inventory will be limited according to the weight that can be transported.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

GamePressure took a critical eye to what they were shown of Cyberpunk 2077. Additionally Wccftech interviewed the developers about how they are making the game accessible to non-shooter fans.

I am convinced of such "non-interactivity" of Night City residents by, for example, how they behave when a player accidentally knocks them down on the sidewalk. In fact, virtual people make the impression of icebergs in such random events. They don't lose their balance or even throw insults at the hero – they simply move V as a cube of physics, walking further in their own direction. Maybe it's just a feature that's still waiting to be implemented? Or maybe it is also not a coincidence that such NPCs from the crowd never have a given level by their nameplates, unlike any gangsters, corporate soldiers or other characters who could potentially want to snoop out V's eyes?

On the other hand, the developer has announced that the game will include a "search system". This would suggest that there is, however, the possibility of committing crimes and attracting the attention of law enforcement. It sounds promising, but in fact it does not have to be a more complex mechanism than the one from Witcher 3, in which guards simply threw themselves with bare swords at Geralt, if he stole a sweet roll in front of their eyes. This is likely to be the case if CDPR have ruled out the option of surrendering to law enforcement and going to prison (or to a cyber-psychiatric institution for braindance therapy). In short, for the time being we are not able to say how much of the living world Cyberpunk 2077 we will actually see.

[...]

Sounds great. Is the whole of Night City open from the start? Or is it like unlocked over time?

We’re not going to have this locked, invisible wall where you can’t go past it because we show a message on the screen saying you must go back. It doesn’t make sense, right? It’s like I just crossed the street, what’s the issue? So we won’t have anything like that.

But you might venture into some places where enemies are way tougher than you can handle.

Yep. We have UI to help lead players. Actually, in the demo, you can see the NPCs levels and that will give you a quick gauge of how to make sure that you want to engage. We are an RPG after all and that’s one of the implications of an RPG, you want to do progression. But like in The Witcher 3, you could always just run to Novigrad, you could have skipped the Baron quest, you could even go to Skellige if you managed to get enough money to pay for the boat. That freedom in an open world is pretty awesome and I think Cyberpunk 2077 is going to be very similar. But of course, you know, in The Witcher 3 when you were like level one and went to Novigrad you didn’t have a very fun time. You might expect something similar here, but you can still go if you want to.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

GameRant reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will have unkillable children and story NPCs.

On Reddit, one user shared a screenshot of their direct messages with the official Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account. When asked if players would be able to “kill regular people” and how players could engage with Night City in “violent ways,” the account confirmed that players will not be able to “attack children or NPCs connected with the plot.” However, players will be able to act aggressively towards “most” of the people that they meet. These aggressive actions will likely be done through the game’s dialogue system, which was seen briefly in the 48-minute long gameplay video shown at Gamescom 2018.

[...]

Gamingbolt reports on 84 new character screenshots for Cyberpunk 2077 meant to help cosplayers.

CDPR are in the midst of running a cosplay contest, and to help out fans they’ve released a set of a staggering 84 high quality still screens that show characters from various angles via their Twitter. We’ll show you a sampling of some below to get an idea of what kind of stills they have, and you can also see the whole thing here (big thanks to Twinfinite for compiling the full gallery there). You can also download the files from the official Twitter in several .rar file links that we’ll provide below. If you decide to participate in the contest, good luck! And if you just want to just marvel at the character models, there’s nothing wrong with that either.

[...]

Gamingbolt reports on the pending tabletop release of Cyberpunk Red which will feature updated lore that ties into Cyberpunk 2077.

The new edition of the tabletop game is called Cyberpunk Red. This August, a version of it, called the Jumpstart Kit, will launch at Gencon 2019, which takes place August 1st. As the name implies, it won’t be the full version of the game, but the creator has said he’s been working on unifying the lore and story of 2020 and 2077, which means that Red will be the first look at the updated lore that will feed into the 2077 universe.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Primagames reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will have a rewarding ending and the open world can be used for expansions:

Cyberpunk 2077 Will Have a "Very Rewarding Ending," Complete Expansions

Not unlike The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 will continue to evolve with the player in mind.

From everything we've seen thus far of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt RED's newest IP looks to honor everything that this studio is known for: a damn good story. In an age of live service games and half-cooked launches, the studio promises that they have their player base in mind and will have a completely finished game at launch, complete with a "very rewarding" conclusion ahead of future expansions.

Speaking exclusively with Prima Games, UI Coordinator Alvin Liu opens up a bit about what the future holds for Cyberpunk 2077. "We are talking about expansions in the future," he tells me. "We want to make sure everything's complete, but we also want to build open worlds. I know when I was playing The Witcher 3 and I finished everything, I still want to know what everyone was up to. I think we're going to have opportunities like that as well for Cyberpunk 2077."

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

Cyberpunk 2077 interviews from InvenGlobal and Eurogamer.

CDPR stated that they'll focus on the gunplay experience in Cyberpunk 2077. In which aspects did you focus in terms of combat?

The most important thing was to offer as many tools as possible for the players to do whatever they want. We added guns, which fits well in modern and future scenes and also weapons that are fit for close combat. A katana was revealed in one of our past clips.

Firearms are classified into three categories; tech weapons, smart weapons that automatically track down enemies, and power weapons that can be charged for a powerful strike. Weapons will be mainly classified into those 3 categories and you can also customize your weapon.

Our ultimate goal is to leave options open, let the gamers customize their own character, and let them take part in combat in their own way.

[...]

In the demo we saw various class options - do things play out differently, other characters treat you differently because of it, as well as just these unlocking extra dialogue options?

Sasko: In The Witcher 3 we put a branching storyline in an open world. With this, we put the branching storyline in an open world and added branching gameplay. So depending on the class you have, you can do different things. The character and build you have will influence the scenes. If you have an engineering background, you have certain knowledge which will be displayed in a different branch of the scene to the one you'd have normally. And that's a pretty normal thing - in basically every quest, there will be some spots where this happens, though it has to match the story. We make sure players are rewarded for their playstyle.

You mentioned you have a fluid class system - how fluid is it?

Sasko: We'll make sure, no matter the fucking weird build you have, you can always play. There's always a way to figure it out, there's always a way to finish it somehow. Of course, some branches may not be accessible but you can do it. It's a tough thing but a fun thing.

[...]

Hardcore Gamer and Gameinformer delve deeper

For example, a V that comes from the streets will be better able to relate with gang members or just intimidating their way into places than a V without that background could. Alternatively, former-corpo V can more easily network with Night City’s business elite and gain what would otherwise be restricted information. For comparison, Geralt didn’t have this kind of flexibility; he had to approach every situation from one angle, that of a Witcher.

[...]

You also have access to augmentations by putting them into slots in your body, such as your legs, torso, nervous system. You can then upgrade these as well. “Say you replace your legs with an augmentation for double jump, which will give you access to different places in the missions, but then you want to upgrade that to be better itself. So, you add this extra layer of augmentation to your legs, which basically gives you like quiet walk or run,"  Tomaszkiewicz used as an example.

[...]

Worthplaying provide a preview based on what they saw at E3.

Initially, the presenter took a stealthy approach with V, sneaking past some chatting guards while eavesdropping on them with an implant that amplified distant conversations.  They snuck up behind one guard and grabbed him, and then used the environmental takedown system to eliminate them.  In this case, they slammed his head into a large piece of metal and threw him down a garbage chute.  It was then noted that technically, you can play through the entire game without killing anybody.  Technically.  Even the game's equivalent of bosses don't have to be killed if you want to extend your mercy that far.

For a little while, that certainly was the case.  The presenter skulked around and found a network panel to hack via a minigame that didn't seem to make too much outward sense.  It involved matching pairs of hexadecimal characters to achieve certain outcomes.  It wasn't a straight pass or fail type of minigame; there are three to five possible rewards to get, and while it is possible to get none of them if you fail too badly, you also cannot get them all.  These rewards might include shutting down a camera or overriding a turret's targeting system.  It might also let you access other nodes on the network.  The presenter chose the latter option, and soon after hacking that panel, the presenter hacked a boxing robot to literally punch its sparring partner's head off.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

According to this tweet by Marcin Momot the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 gameplay demo will be available for all at the PAX West. Thanks henriquejr!

DSOGaming has some new screenshots for Cyberpunk 2077.

A couple of days ago, we shared some official E3 2019 screenshots for Cyberpunk 2077. And today, we’ve got some more screenshots to share with you, showcasing some of the environments and characters that players will meet in the game.

[...]

PC Gamer checked out the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 trailer:

This year's Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo is staggering in scope and detail

At E3 2019, we got a fresh look at Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay. Here's what we thought.

The latest 50-minute hands-off demo of Cyberpunk 2077 is the first time it's looked like a real videogame. At E3 2019, we're past the spectacle of seeing a new CD Projekt game for the first time and are finally figuring out what it actually is. We’ve seen the menus, the upgrade systems, shop inventories, dialogue systems, varying approaches to solving problems—the usual ‘go in stealthy versus guns-blazing’ approaches were mentioned. We’ve seen the box art and ridiculous collector's edition.

Cyberpunk 2077 feels like Deus Ex with an obscene budget and Keanu Reeves. Like a thing that we will conceivably play and finish in April of 2020. It exists. The demo wasn't a revelation in game design, even if the technology and art direction is staggering in scope and detail. This is CD Projekt pulling back the curtain and tamping down the cumulative years of excitement to remind everyone that it's made a very large role-playing game and that it looks very nice and that it's coming out soon. Here's what I saw and what I thought about it.

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[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

The E3 trailer for Cyberpunk 2077.

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E3 2019 Cinematic Trailer of Cyberpunk 2077. The latest from E3 2019 here!

CD Project Red promises in an interview with Kotaku to be more humane to the devs in crunch-time:

As Cyberpunk 2077 Development Intensifies, CD Projekt Red Pledges To Be 'More Humane' To Its Workers

Footage of the upcoming role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077 has blown away fans so far, but coupled with that hype is a burning question: Are workers at CD Projekt Red, the Polish studio behind the game, ruining their lives to make it? The developer best known for The Witcher series has cultivated a reputation for crunch—asking its employees to work nights and weekends for weeks or months at a time—but studio management now tells Kotaku they want to improve their work-life balance, even if they continue to feel that crunch is a necessity.

“We’re known—let me be humble for a moment here—we are known for treating gamers with respect,” said Marcin IwiÅ„ski, the company’s co-founder, in an interview with Kotaku this week. “This is what we’ve been working hard toward. And I actually would [like] for us to also be known for treating developers with respect.”
[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

An interview by areajugones about Cyberpunk 2077.

How is the game different from the gameplay shown last year?

" Well as you know the game is still in development, and obviously we want it to come out the best it can be. We are polishing everything and constantly thinking how to make this game more interesting, how to make the gameplay cool and, well, the gameplay we saw last year was basically a small fragment of the game. There was not a clear picture of how the game fits into an open world or how it fits into a larger image of the game. So, there are obviously many things that we have not taught about the game yet, there are things that we are still working on, then I would say that the game is quite different from the gameplay, but as I said, there are still details in which We are currently working . "

[...]

Would you describe the gunplay in Cyberpunk 2077 as realistic or something more arcade?

" I think it would be something in between, because it's an RPG and we have statistics, damage and so on. And as you know, enemies also have stats, then it is not super realistic like a World War II title where a shot means to be dead, but I would say that it does not reach the level of arcade like the examples you have described (In this case they were Borderlands and Bulletstorm ) . Here you still need to cover yourself, then you can not just jump and avoid enemies. Although there are ways to play the title in this way using for example the melee weapon we saw last year, the katana. And if you move in this direction you will achieve a more arcade style for your character. In short, I would say it would be something in between ".

Thanks Farflame!

Hitc reports that Cyberpunk 2077 is in the advanced stages of development. While Twinfinite reports that this years E3 will be the most important ever for CD Projekt RED.

Speaking at the company's 2018 financial results presentation, CD Projekt RED’s President and joint CEO Adam KiciÅ„ski said “this year’s [E3] is going to be the most important one ever for us. We have really prepared a strong show.” Discussing Cyberpunk 2077, KiciÅ„ski mentioned that it’s in an advanced state, that it won’t be swayed by recent trends in gaming (meaning no Battle Royale mode), and that it could be cross-gen if the opportunity arises.

[...]

Speaking at the company's 2018 financial results presentation, CD Projekt RED’s President and joint CEO Adam KiciÅ„ski said “this year’s [E3] is going to be the most important one ever for us. We have really prepared a strong show.” Discussing Cyberpunk 2077, KiciÅ„ski mentioned that it’s in an advanced state, that it won’t be swayed by recent trends in gaming (meaning no Battle Royale mode), and that it could be cross-gen if the opportunity arises.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

GameRant reported on developer comments about Cyberpunk 2077 quest complexity.

According to Weber, he has to consider the “different new opportunities” the game offers in the way of Cyberpunk 2077‘s character classes, citing Netrunning Skills as an example, and how utilizing their abilities can provide a variety of options to “solve a quest or challenges within a quest”. The Quest Designer even went so far to say that some quests could have “3 to 5” different ways in which they can be solved, which makes designing the quests themselves “more complex in some areas”.

Weber’s rundown of how the forthcoming first-person RPG’s quests operate are somewhat commensurate with past statements made by Quest Designer Patrick Mills, who said that Cyberpunk 2077‘s quest complexity can be compared to The Witcher 3‘s in some instances. As explained by Mills, Cyberpunk 2077‘s quest design philosophy came from methods developed through The Witcher 3‘s expansions.

[...]

PCGamesN reports that Lady Gaga is possibly attached to Cyberpunk 2077.

While those reports are currently unconfirmed, the suggestion is that Gaga will perform motion-capture (and presumably voice acting) for the game. Sources also state that her involvement with the project will be officially announced during E3 2019, and that we’ll find out the Cyberpunk 2077 release date at the same time.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

PC Gamer reports that development on Cyberpunk 2077 is far from over.

The video showcases clips of gameplay from last year's big 48-minute walkthrough, and touches on a number of different topics including why the developers opted for first-person perspective, why the studio went silent for years after the first Cyberpunk 2077 tease, and—something I didn't know—that the game isn't just set nearly 60 years after the RPG that inspired it, but also takes place in a parallel timeline.  

[...]

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AltChar reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will not be exclusive to any store, including GOG.

From a financial perspective though, it would make perfect sense to not share 12 per cent revenue with Epic Games or 20 per cent with Valve. The lower percentage for Valve was cited as there is no reasonable doubt at this point that Cyberpunk 2077 will earn more than $50 million.

CD Projekt Red apparently decided to forego potentially higher revenue on their own store in favour of keeping their game accessible through as many platforms as possible. A simple inquiry on Facebook revealed that they don't have any intention of making Cyberpunk 2077 exclusive to any store, including GOG.

[...]

GameRevolution offers the opinion that Cyberpunk 2077 shouldn't be an open world game.

Cyberpunk 2077 has more than 400 people working on it as reported by GamePressure.

Last week there was a reshuffle in the digital entertainment industry. Sebastian Stepien, who worked for over 12 years at CD Projekt RED, moved to California, where he became Creative Director at Blizzard Entertainment. Stepien was one of the key figures in the team working on the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, so his departure raised a lot of questions about the future of the game. Fortunately, as reported by StockWatch (in Polish), the work on the title is in full swing. The team working on the game consists of over 400 people – such information was provided by Karolina Gnas from CD Projekt’s investor relations department.

[...]

Thanks porcozaur!

Gamingbolt interviewed level designer Miles Tost about Cyberpunk 2077 and asked about the setting, freedom of choice, side quests, and more.

We saw hints of destructibility in environments during the demo. I know you’ve spoken about this a bit recently, and I understand that right now you may or may not have pinned this down, but is that something you’re looking to make a much larger part of the game?

We believe that having a world you can interact with and which reacts to your presence is a key part of a good open-world experience. Dynamic environments ultimately serve to fulfill that promise exactly: they help to enhance your immersion, the game world to become more alive and believable, and — what’s especially important when it comes to Cyberpunk 2077 — add a whole different level of weight and grit. Combat becomes that much more vicious too, enhancing the feeling of a world shrouded in violence and danger. Given all that, let me just say that we’re working hard on making sure that our environments look just as good when they’re untouched as when they’re getting blown up, without sacrificing the performance.

Night City has looked absolutely stunning so far, but will we be visiting any other areas in Cyberpunk 2077? Perhaps suburbs or lesser known townships in the vicinity of Night City?

Night City’s six districts are designed to be unique in many ways — their architecture, culture, atmosphere, people living there and the problems they are facing. We’re making sure that all of these districts blend nicely into one consistent and believable city environment.

Not all parts of the city are covered in darkness by shadows thrown from skyscrapers. Take for example Pacifica, which was a district planned to be Night City’s prime tourist resort. When the funding died, so did this dream, leaving many started construction projects unfinished and ultimately taken over by gangs as their hideouts. Each district has its own history which you will be able to uncover. It is really important to us to allow for this variety whilst also keeping it grounded within the lore of our world.

[...]

PC Gamer interviewed CD Project Red about Cyberpunk 2077:

Story comes first in the making of Cyberpunk 2077

We speak to CD Projekt Red about the granular details of 2018's biggest reveal.

You’ve seen the Cyberpunk 2077 demo by now. After keeping it behind closed doors at E3, the Polish developer suddenly released the entire thing on YouTube. It was a power move by a studio aware of how anticipated this follow-up to The Witcher 3 is, and the video is now sitting at over ten million views: figures usually reserved for Rockstar games.

When I sit down in a cavernous boardroom in the studio’s Warsaw headquarters to see the game, I’m aware it’s the same demo. But the difference is, this one is just for me. The developer manning the controller tells me he’s relieved there’s no time limit, no queues of hundreds of people waiting eagerly outside, and he takes the opportunity to give me a slower, more detailed demonstration, stopping to take a closer look at things. It’s a game world that aches to be studied and scrutinised, with a cluttered, lived-in feel that few virtual worlds manage to accomplish this well.

One of the most striking things about the game’s setting, Night City, is how vibrant it is compared to the dark, rain-soaked dystopias usually associated with the genre. Cyberpunk 2077 is set in a future California, and writer Stanislaw Swiecicki tells me that the studio is going to great lengths to capture the Golden State’s distinctive atmosphere.

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

GameRant reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will have lots of activities available in tall buildings.

One Cyberpunk 2077 fan sent a message to the game’s official Facebook page asking the studio how big it will be compared to The Witcher 3. The developer’s representative was more than happy to share, explaining that while the exact world size hasn’t been calculated yet, Night City features “lots of buildings and these buildings have floors.” Many of the taller buildings in the game will be explorable,” added the rep, and “each floor can house a lot of activities.”

[...]

An interview about Cyberpunk 2077 from Dualshockers.

G: Since you have a certain amount of freedom in designing your character, do the quests actually recognize your choices in creating your V beyond the obvious gender choice? Maybe someone could call you a “blondie” if you have blonde hair or something like that?

PM: Absolutely, and not even just your appearance, but the choices that you make will also affect things later. To make up an example — this is not an actual thing — maybe the way that you solve a quest… If you complete it without a fight, and later on you need help from some people… If you solved that quest by fighting, those people will remember it and say “Actually, you shot one of my friends last week, I’m not gonna help you out.” On the other hand, if you didn’t fight, maybe they’re going to help you out.

But yeah, also the way you dress, the way you customize your character, we want the world to respond to these things.

G: So if you dress in a certain way, NPCs will treat you differently? That’s pretty rare. 

PM: It was done in a limited way before in a few other games. Alpha Protocol did it a couple of times and also going back all the way to Daggerfall.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Gematsu reports that CD Projekt RED has partnered with Digital Scapes Studios on Cyberpunk 2077.

Cgmagonline interviewed CD Projekt Red about Cyberpunk 2077.

CGMagazine: How as designers do you ensure players have a seamless experience with so many different types of narrative tools at play? How do you ensure they feel they are part of that world, part of the overall experience while still showing visual flares, and setpiece moments?

Maciej Pietras: Yeah that’s really a cumulative task of all the teams in the company because you don’t think about it. The reason you’ll notice certain elements is not just because someone decided to put that thing there. It’s a cumulative experience because the game designer will plan out how the level works, the level designer will place structures but they also check out how it will all work with the environment team that builds their environment around it. And then you have the open world team who are placing the whole environmental elements like characters, vendors, and prostitutes walking the city.

And then you have cinematic designers who are creating the narrative experience that is strictly connected to that one person. And then you have the lighting guys who are working to make sure that if we want to showcase that specific character, we probably do some light showers or maybe a skylight that will highlight with light and show that you might be able to talk to this guy. We can also use light to show all those foods vendors, to actually make sure that the player looks at that point they may find the most Interesting.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Cog Connected looked at 15 small details you probably missed about Cyberpunk 2077.

1) Blink and you’ll miss the detail in the demo’s first frame, specifically V’s companion Jackie. His pistols are gold and he’s wielding both simultaneously, which leads me to speculate that akimbo wielding will be available to the player character. Speaking to the pistols’ appearance, the gold finish might foreshadow a deeper level of weapon personalization. I don’t think I’m alone when I say that weapon cosmetics would be a fun feature.

2) A few frames later, we can see the machete on Jackie’s back. It’s never used in the demo, but I doubt it is merely aesthetic. In an ideal Cyberpunk world, the same weapons in an NPC’s arsenal would be available to the player. Ideally, the player would be able to switch between holding a blade and wielding two guns. But I’m a dreamer, and I felt this little detail was worth a mention.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

One Angry Gamer looked at Cyberpunk 2077 and wrote what they didn't like about the demo.

...

Instead, the Cyberpunk 2077 demo talks a lot about choice but we don’t see any of it.

Now granted, if the game is still two years out from release one could be forgiving to CD Projekt Red about this sort of thing; but then I’m at the point of saying why even show the gameplay demo and talk extensively about choice and options when you’re not going to show us any choices or options?

You can defend CD Projekt Red all you want, I don’t care, but if you’re going to talk extensively about choice and options, I would like to think you would have a few on display that actually highlights that point. Otherwise, why talk about it?

That’s not to mention that the choices the player are presented with seem superficial at best. After completing the main mission at the centerpiece of the demo you’re given a few dialogue options to address the corporate stooge and Dex, the ghetto pimp. The options basically boil down to saying very similar things in different ways.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

@R.Talsorian Games At PAX West Mike Pondsmith chatted to Eurogamers Johnny Chiodini about Cyberpunk as a genre and as a game.

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"Maximum" Mike Pondsmith sits down with Johnny Chiodini of Eurogamer to discuss the history of cyberpunk, both as a genre and as a game.

@Gamingbolt Cyberpunk 2077 will not have a companion system and purchasable properties will be a feature.

“Like in The Witcher, if the story calls for it, you will have a companion or two for a mission,” Weber said. “But we don’t want to do a ‘companion system’ where you’re never alone. In some quests you will be by yourself, in some you will have one person like Jackie or even a whole group, and in other quests you might be alone or with someone else depending on the choices you made. We really want to have it fit the story, so basically you’ll always have someone with you if we think it’ll be interesting.”

Weber also gave some brief details on how your own choices might also affect whether or not you’ll have a companion for the duration of a mission. “Like I said, it can also be dependent on the choices you made,” he said. “Sometimes if you leave someone behind and it makes sense for the story for them to stay behind, we’ll do it. And another time they might catch up. Whatever works best in a situation.”

[...]

Farflame found a bunch of articles and video that looked closer at the character creation process behind Cyberpunk 2077.

From Yongyea a full analysis and breakdown of character creation:

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VG24/7 took a look at the city environment and beyond:

This is V’s first apartment and it acts as your hub until you purchase another property in one of the game’s six districts. While stuffed with detail, it isn’t exactly lavish. It is located right near the top of a megabuilding, a superstructure built to pack in Night City’s residents and solve the housing crisis of the future.

Leaving your apartment isn’t a case of clicking the door, watching a loading screen, and appearing on the city streets. Instead, you put on your jacket, walk out the door, and find the massive industrial elevator to take you all the way down, past the boxing gym, shops, and apartments housed in the block. The megabuilding seems almost like a level in itself.

[...]

Wccftech found some interesting scraps of information:

Still, we found more information provided by a few developers in a live-streamed interview with the official Gamescom channel. The most interesting tidbit is that the shooting in Cyberpunk 2077 has been fine-tuned with the help of a former professional Counterstrike player. It turns out the player is none other than Łukasz ‘LUq’ Wnęk, who won the World Cyber Games in 2006 with team Pentagram G-Shock and in 2009 with AGAiN, among other prizes.

Eurogamer interviewed CD Projekt RED and asked about transhumanism and gender pronouns:

There are lots of futuristic video games which deal with dystopian futures and big corporations being the bad guy. Fewer deal with transhumanism. Where does Cyberpunk 2077's focus lie?

Weber: I think our game deals with both equally. Our Cyberpunk game has all of Night City, which is the place where Cyberpunk 2020 already took place so we want all of those things in there. All of those aspects are part of Cyberpunk so we can't ignore them. Cyberpunk as a genre has always been political, in terms of there being a few big people at the top and many many people on the bottom. And you are one of those people on the bottom. So for us it is important to have the corporations in the game, to talk about how they shape society and the future.

But the individual part is important to us too - how human you still are when you change your body. Look at the gang in the demo - whose entire goal is to lose their humanity and become machines. We're trying in every quest to have these themes and since you can always choose in the game how to deal with them, you can choose whether you want to fight the people on top or become more like them.

[...]

Here is the gameplay video, which was shown to me at Gamescom. It probably says more than I could ever write.

Some new screenshots of Cyberpunk 2077 have been shown off by CD Projekt RED from the E3 demo.

New screenshots from #Cyberpunk2077 are here! pic.twitter.com/Rj5qM8QNYv

— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) August 21, 2018

Wccftech reports on a recent interview published in GameMaster which suggests choice in Cyberpunk 2077 will be much more impactful than in The Witcher.

To begin with, he made it clear that the ramifications of player choice in Cyberpunk 2077 will be way more impactful on V (the protagonist’s name, regardless of gender choice) than they ever were for Geralt in The Witcher.

Every well-established protagonist needs a story, and our character is no exception. That said, the choices players make will play a huge part in shaping V on more levels than they ever have in our previous games.

Whereas Geralt was a professional, a veteran monster slayer who knew the world inside out, V is a hired gun looking to make the big leagues. When you look at it this way, V’s perspective isn’t too different from the player’s, who is also just getting to know Night City and deciding their stance towards it.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

PC Gamer reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will be staying true to the settings themes.

"Cyberpunk 2077 is a game about people with power at the top and people at the bottom with none", he replied. "That power can come from money, hierarchies, technology and violence. The original Cyberpunk 2020 setting, like the setting of The Witcher stories, was a complex critique of the author's world, and we don't shy away from that in our games. On the contrary I think it's one of the things that sets us apart [...] Cyberpunk is an inherently political genre and it's an inherently political franchise."

[...]

Thanks Capt Huggy Face!

@Wccftech Capt. Huggy Face noticed some news about Cyberpunk 2077 which details some of the RPG mechanics.

Cyberpunk 2077 RPG Mechanics, Leveling Detailed; Additional Languages Confirmed

Cyberpunk 2077, the next big RPG from Polish developer CD Projekt Red, is still quite far from release, but it seems like the team already has a good idea on how some of the game’s mechanics and leveling will work.

A few hours ago, the game’s Official Twitter profile revealed some additional information on stats and how players will be able to increase them. Skills and Perks have also been detailed, and it seems like the game’s mechanics will not be too different from the pen and paper RPG Cyberpunk 2020.

[...]

Eurogamer looks closely at the lore of Cyberpunk 2020 and asks what augmentations will be in Cyberpunk 2077.

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Installing Cyberware is an essential part of being a Cyberpunk, but just what augmentations will be in Cyberpunk 2077? Johnny dives into Cyberpunk 2020 to see what it can tell us.

DSOGaming have the first official screenshots for Cyberpunk 2077.

CD Projekt RED has released the first official screenshots for Cyberpunk 2077. Cyberpunk 2077 is an open world, narrative-driven role-playing game set in the universe of the classic pen & paper RPG system, Cyberpunk 2020.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Mike Pondsmith was interviewed about Cyberpunk 2077 by LastKnownMeal. You might also want to check out some information on the class system from Gamingbolt.

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Today we have one and only, Mr. Mike Pondsmith, the creator of Cyberpunk 2020 talk about the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, Cyberpunk as a genre, The Witcher Tabletop RPG and so much more.

I want to personally thank Mr. Mike Pondsmith for coming and Mrs. Lisa Pondsmith for setting everything up.

[...]

Max Pears, Level Designer on Cyberpunk 2077, spoke about this system in an interview with ShackNews, and went into some interesting details, going on to give examples for what sort of stuff this system will allow you to do and what kinds of opportunities it will open up. “We have this really cool class system,” Pears said, “where we have things like Netrunner, Techie, and Solo, but what we do is we’ve got this fluid class system. Each of these is gonna have different abilities. So a Netrunner can hack into people’s brains, [like] in the [E3 2018] demo.”

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

On the Cyberpunk site they have broken down the trailer frame by frame. EP1, EP2, EP3, EP4.

In 2077, society is vastly dependent on drones and robotics. From simple camera drones, able to both record and transmit live feed, to big clunky creatures, warehouse machinery and training bots. It’s not unusual for people to see huge automated trash collectors or robots sweeping the streets. Either mass produced by corporations or put together from stolen trashed pieces of tech, robotics serve a huge role in both economics sectors and are an everyday addition to the life of people in Night City.

[...]

Twinfinite shared some concerns based on what they saw

Indeed, the controls seemed rather stiff in terms of the physics that dictated the car’s movement and maneuverability. Driving appeared very much as “this is how you move from point A to point B,” rather than actually being exciting to handle. And the car noise itself sounded more like a tin-can than a grunty V8 – a minor detail for some, perhaps, but for our money, there’s nothing that spoils immersion than hearing a car cycle through 100 gears to the generic hum of “any old engine,” which was exactly the case during the demo.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Cyberpunk 2077 is getting alot of writeups and some interesting stuff is emerging. Gamasutra talked about quest design with Patrick Mills while VG24/7 talked to CD Projekt RED about katanas, dismembering, romance, deep RPG systems and the decision to go first person.

Players can single out particular limbs, whether chopping at arms with a katana of blasting out knees with a shotgun. This isn’t spray and pray – you approach an enemy tactically and switch up your weapons based on their defence or skillset.

“When it comes to combat we have three different types of weapons. Each are for a different approach to the gameplay,” says Pietras. “What I can tell you about hand-to-hand combat is that we will have it; where you can use the katana or other weapons. It’s a cool thing because we have a dismembering system. It’s visceral, it’s brutal.”

[...]

Inspirations and philosophy

From a production perspective, Mills says that CD Projekt Red's general goal is to ensure quest designers have ownership over all quests they're authoring. So not only are they conceiving it and pitching it, they're designing the game logic and nursing it to life alongside other designers, programmers, artists, and QA. On his own quests, Mills says he likes to start with a high-level theme or vibrant character that can help anchor the experience, and drive the aforementioned twists he has to work in. 

When pushed to discuss inspiration outside the original Cyberpunk tabletop game, Mills jumps to a somewhat surprising reference --- the title of a Blonde Readhead album. "The title is 'Fake Can Be Just As Good,' and I go "okay, I like that, let's figure out how to do that."

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

Some previews for Cyberpunk 2077.

Gamingbolt

And that’s only a taste of Cyberpunk 2077. There wasn’t a moment in this edge-of-your-seat thriller where fatigue sets it. Every second I had my eyes wide open, ready for more. Every scene is filled with attention to detail that you’d only notice in a real life setting. Not only was the engaging story, gameplay mechanics, and lively world impressive, Cyberpunk 2077 is easily my best game of E3 2018.

Wccftech

The cool stat! For example, it’s going to unlock certain things that you might not have been able to do, certain options when dealing with situations. Or, another example, the vendors that you have, the ripperdocs, if you have that cool and street cred level, they might bring down certain weapon prices or unlock certain weapons you might not have had there. So it is an integral part of it. It’s also a throwback to the original tabletop game as well. So we are thinking of—forgive me for saying this—cool ways to use it. It’s going to be an important thing for sure. It’s definitely a way to help interact with people.

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Worthplaying

Cyberpunk 2077 has roots that date back to the tabletop game Cyberpunk 2020 from the late 1980s, so this universe of ideas has been swirling around for a long time. Seeing how CDPR has given life to these ideas and packaged them together in one experience (we haven't even gotten into how Night City has six different districts), makes Cyberpunk 2077 an event release — whenever it comes out.

Thanks Farflame!

Digital Trends is impressed by Cyberpunk 2077, too:

‘Cyberpunk 2077’ preview

The epic sci-fi sprawl of ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ feels like the future of gaming

Cyberpunk 2077 looks like the future.

That seems obvious, given the name – but I’m not talking about the setting. The future I see in Cyberpunk 2077, the upcoming first-person shooter-RPG from The Witcher series developer CD Projekt RED, is an unprecedented level of choice and consequence in RPGs.

Cyberpunk cultivates an open-world experience where every small detail is perfectly curated to immerse you in a dirty neon city. It helps quite a bit that, even within a highly structured demo, it feels as if Cyberpunk imposes very few limits. You can approach every conversation and scenario however you’d like and perhaps, more importantly, it seems as if every system — from driving to dialogue to hacking to shooting — is well-considered and polished.

Simply put, Cyberpunk 2077 feels like a larger, more complete simulation than any game I’ve ever seen. If the game works half as well as its E3 2018 hands-off demo suggests, it should be at the top of your wish list.

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An interview conducted by PC Gamer about Cyberpunk 2077.

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Another thing I noticed in that demo is there's a scene where you're walking down an alley and they point out a crime scene on the side and say "Night City's dangerous, crime's happening all the time." What I was curious about is how dynamic or how static Night City is. Is that crime scene something that's always going to be there in that district?

This stuff is going to depend on, we've got dynamic weather and day and night cycles. Things are going to happen differently depending on that time and weather. I can't go into too much detail, but there's going to be a sense of feeling a different space, and how it feels different in those time events, as well.

Okay, so returning to that same area, things will be changing as you go?

Yeah.

Because you're a level designer, I'm curious—this is a roleplaying game and a shooter, I feel like there's a massive challenge in combining those two very big genres and making both parts feel equally satisfying. Level design is so paramount to making a good shooter. How are you designing these environments that enable roleplaying, feel realistic and immersive, but also make for a good shooter experience? The two don't always go hand-in-hand, you know?

I think you hit the nail on the head when you say they don't always go hand-in-hand. But one of the things that's been great to work on this game, from my personal perspective, is that class system. We showed a bit today. There's the three you can have: netrunner, techie, solo. Each of these is going to have a different way to solve a combat encounter or an environmental challenge.

Having that makes this easier, in the sense that because it's about choice, that way there's more options for you to handle those situations differently. Because of that you'll be able to move through the space, and you'll have the traditional sense of that sort of shooter space, but to layer that extra stuff on top, that excitement when you use those abilities for that class system—that's what's made it an exciting thing, from my point of view, to make the levels. And I know the rest of the team, the other level designers, enjoy having those choices.

[...]

Angry Joe has interviewed CD Project Red at the E3 about Cyberpunk 2077:

Cyberpunk 2077 - Angry Interview E3 2918!

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Cyberpunk 2077 has been demoed for the games press and they wrote their impressions. You may find this interview by Variety of value also.

PC Gamer

Those were some of the biggest highlights of that hour-long demo, and I cannot wait to see more. Honestly, my head is still spinning, and it's hard to say whether the full game will be able to feel as dense and intricate. I never expected that our first look would have so much to cover, which is hopefully a good sign of how much more is still to come for Cyberpunk.

Gameinformer

This first taste of Cyberpunk 2077 was unexpected and nothing short of amazing We know CD Projekt Red has a firm handle on player choice and narrative – which are both evidenced here – but now we see this dev has first-person shooter chops as well. The combat looked dynamic, fun, and filled with RPG elements galore. Although we were treated to roughly an hour of finely polished and beautiful gameplay, the developer didn't share a release date or give any hint of when we might see it. That likely points to 2019 or later. Don't worry, it's for this generation, and is currently slated to hit Xbox One, PlayStation 4, and PC.

VG24/7

We met a lot of different characters in Night City, most of them clearly out for self. As one character puts it, “everybody gets fucked”. We met a gangster boss who gifted us a mission to prove our worth, a gun for hire, a corporate exec with nothing but disdain for the working classes. Don’t expect to make any friends in Cyberpunk 2077. And if you do, well, don’t trust ’em.

Thanks BoboTheMighty!

Cyberpunk 2077 got a good looking trailer at E3.

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Watch the E3 trailer for Cyberpunk 2077 — the role-playing game of the dark future from CD PROJEKT RED, creators of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

Night City, California. Year 2077. 

The world is broken. MegaCorps manage every aspect of life from the top floors of their sky-scraping fortresses. Down below, the streets are run by drug pushing gangs, tech hustlers, and illegal braindance slingers. The in-between is where decadence, sex and pop culture mix with violent crime, extreme poverty and the unattainable promise of the American Dream.

You are V, a cyberpunk. In a world of cyberenhanced street warriors, tech-savvy netrunners and corporate life-hackers, today is your first step to becoming an urban legend.

@Gamerant A new rumour concerning Cyberpunk 2077 says that the E3 Presentation will be an hour long affair.

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This much comes from Francesco Fossetti, the editor for Everyeye.it – one of the most known outlets in Italy – who stated on Facebook that he recently made an appointment with CD Projekt Red for a closed doors presentation that will last an hour. While Fossetti said that he wasn’t exactly sure what the exhibition would be for, many are theorizing that it has to do with a demonstration related to Cyberpunk 2077.

[...]

Gamerant reports on a rumour that Cyberpunk 2077 is exclusively first person.

Cyberpunk 2077 is expected to have a proper reveal at E3 2018 in June, but some details may have potentially leaked ahead of time. One of the supposedly leaked details for Cyberpunk 2077 is that the game will be played from the first-person perspective, standing in stark contrast to CD Projekt Red’s previous games like The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which have been third-person experiences.

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PCGamesN reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will have no multiplayer at launch.

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Kiciński confirmed that the game would not have any multiplayer at launch, stating “first of all we’re going to deliver players a huge, story-driven role-playing game for a single player,” likening the release to that of 2015’s The Witcher 3. He said he didn’t want to comment on any further expansions, but said that “we already said in the past that we wanted our future projects to integrate online components at some point.”

[...]

PC Gamer reports that Cyberpunk 2077 is even more ambitious than the Witcher 3 for CD Projekt:

CD Projekt touts Cyberpunk 2077 as a 'blockbuster franchise'

CEO Adam Kicinski said Cyberpunk 'is our new Witcher 3.'

CD Projekt spoke a bit about its big new project Cyberpunk 2077 at the Pareto Securities Gaming Seminar last week, describing it as a "true RPG" set in an open-ended world that's even more ambitious than The Witcher 3. 

The presentation is very dry and as far as Cyberpunk goes there's really nothing new said, but the studio certainly doesn't appear to be interested in dialing back expectations at this point. 

"Cyberpunk is our new Witcher 3, but even more ambitious. Our goal is to establish a new blockbuster franchise from the beginning. We work [in a] new universe, futuristic universe. We believe it's very appealing to players, not only RPG players—but this is [a] true RPG, like Witcher, like Witcher 3, for mature audiences. It's handcrafted, detailed, of course open-world, with open-ended gameplay ," CD Projekt CEO Adam Kicinski says in the video. 

"Great game, more ambitious than Witcher 3, and we believe that we can aim [at] more ambitious business goals as well—of course, still having gamer-centric focus and quality focus as a main priority."

[...]

Thanks henriquejr!

PCGamesN reports on the first commercial for Cyberpunk 2077 that comes from an unusual source - Vodafone.

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New details of Cyberpunk 2077 have surfaced courtesy of a somewhat bizarre source - Vodafone. As part of a joint campaign with Spanish newspaper El Pais on the future of technology, the European telecoms giant spoke with Mike Pondsmith, the author of the pen-and-paper RPG on which Cyberpunk 2077 is based.

 

The news comes to us via Spanish YouTuber and Cyberpunk fan Madqueen, who helpfully provides English captions on the interview. You can watch her video above, or alternatively, can get auto-translated English subs on the original Spanish version here. Either way her channel has a ton of great Cyberpunk content, so do consider subscribing.

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Henriquejr spotted a rumor on PC Gamer that Cyberpunk 2077 will be playable at the E3 this year:

Polish website says Cyberpunk 2077 will be playable at E3

The rumor comes from two independent sources.

The Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter account sputtered to life last week with a single, solitary "beep"—the first (and so far, only) word to come out of it after four full years of silence. Now a rumor has surfaced on Polish site GRYOnline (via Google Translate) that a new trailer for the game will be shown at this year's E3, and that it will in fact be playable—although only behind closed doors.

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Techraptor reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will include some online elements:

Cyberpunk 2077 to Contain 'Online Elements'

CD Projekt Red’s CEO Adam Kiciński has mentioned that the next major game for the studio, the highly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077, will contain ‘online elements’ of some capacity.

In an interview with Polish investment site Strefa Inwestorow, Kiciński discussed all of the current projects from the studio, including the future of the Witcher franchise, the card game Gwent, and of course, Cyberpunk.  Kiciński primarily discussed the future of the company, citing Gwent and Cyberpunk as the driving mechanisms going forward.

“We want to experiment in new fields that were not yet explored in the Witcher,” says Kiciński. “I can’t say much about Cyberpunk, although our ambitions are set really high because that is our style of work. We want to go even higher, and especially seeing how we’re having a business chat, we’re interested in Cyberpunk being commercially even more significant.”

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@PCGamesN CD Projekt RED have responded to rumours generated when some staff members left Cyberpunk 2077. They say things are progressing as planned and individual departures have no great effect on the project.

pic.twitter.com/kQo0xGSiPO

— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) October 16, 2017

[...]

They explain that individual departures do not have a significant impact on the project. They also say that the reason for some departures is that "every role-playing game we ever developed seemed impossible to achieve at the moment we set out to create it." In essence, the studio is extremely ambitious, and has a culture of reinventing everything they do to stay out of their comfort zone and "make the magic happen."

According to Gamepressure some Cyberpunk 2077 devs left CD Project RED:

Cyberpunk 2077 loses key developers

Is Cyberpunk 2077 in trouble? Although that conclusion may be a bit too hasty, it is noteworthy that several key developers left CD Projekt RED last month.
If you are eagerly waiting for Cyberpunk 2077, then you may be interested in today’s news from Poland. There have been some high-rank personnel changes in CD Projekt RED, which we’ve learned about via LinkedIn accounts of some of the studio’s employees. There are two names that are especially noteworthy. Until recently, Mateusz Piaskiewicz had been the Lead Level Designer in CD Projekt RED, but he has changed colors and is now working for the Warsaw-based studio Flying Wild Hog (creators of Shadow Warrior 2) since the beginning of this month. Before CD Projekt RED he used to work for Treyarch on Call of Duty: Black Ops III.

[...]

Thanks Farflame!

@Yongyea Cyberpunk 2077 will have physicalized objects and destructible environments.

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According to Gameramt, Cyberpunk 2077, the game CD Project Red currently is working on,the game will have unconventional classes like executives, journalists etc.

Instead of traditional character types one would see in a typical science fiction game such as soldier or scientist, Cyberpunk 2077 will have classes like journalist, executive, rock star, and more..........Similar to the actual attributes they will contain, their names are a bit unorthodox, too, as the classes are Cop, Corporate, Fixer, Media, Netrunner, Nomad, Rockerboy, Solo, Techie, and Med-Tech.

As of now this game has not recieved an official release date nor has it been mentioned what platforms it wil be released on.

Eurogamer reports that assets have been stolen from Cyberpunk 2077 and are being held to ransom. The assets themselves are from an old build and not representative of the final product.

Here's the studio's statement in full:

"An unidentified individual or individuals have just informed us they are in possession of a few internal files belonging to CD Projekt Red. Among them are documents connected to early designs for the upcoming game, Cyberpunk 2077.

A demand for ransom has been made, saying that should we not comply, the files will be released to the general public. We will not be giving in to the demands of the individual or individuals that have contacted us, which might eventually lead to the files being published online. The appropriate legal authorities will be informed about the situation.

The documents are old and largely unrepresentative of the current vision for the game. Still, if you're looking forward to playing Cyberpunk 2077, it would be best for you to avoid any information not coming directly from CD Projekt Red.

When the time is right, you will hear about Cyberpunk 2077 from us - officially.

CD Projekt Red Team"
[...]

Lucky Day spotted a statement from Brian Bethke about CD Projekt's Cyberpunk trademark on World Trademark Review:

Cyberpunk legend expresses concern over controversial trademark: "I wish someone from CD Projekt Red would contact me"

There has been an outcry over trademark applications for the term CYBERPUNK filed by video game developer CD Projekt Red. While much of the negative sentiment has been put to rest after the company released an open letter expanding on the marks, some concern remains – including from Bruce Bethke, who originally coined the term ‘cyberpunk’ in 1980.

The furore began last week following the discovery of an EU trademark application for the term CYBERPUNK, the term used for a popular subgenre of science fiction (exemplified by classic works of fiction including Blade Runner, Ghost In The Shell and Neuromancer). The trademark registrant was CD Projekt Red, developer of the popular Witcher series of video games and an upcoming title in development called Cyberpunk 2077 (based on 1980s role-playing game Cyberpunk 2020, created by R. Talsorian Games).
[...]
A comment emerged that was attributed to Bruce Bethke, the author who originally coined the term ‘cyberpunk’ in in a popular short story written in 1980. He claimed that entities often try and trademark the term but they “never hold up” due to “the enormous amount of well-documented prior art”. Other commentators directed their disappointment at CD Projekt Red, with one asking: “Would it be better if they went with ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ specifically? This seems like overreach.” Another compared the mark to previous trademark applications that received public backlashes: “This is exactly the same as oppressive trademarks such as [King.com filing for] Saga or what the Fine Bros tried to do with React, however I can guarantee that despite how [bad] this is, there will be people ... who will defend this. In their eyes CD Projekt Red can do no wrong. This trademark will probably get rejected but it's still a scumbag thing to attempt to get.”
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Farflame spotted this new Cyberpunk 2077 release date on PCGamesN.

Glixel have interviewed Mike Pondsmith about the origins behind the classic tabletop Cyberpunk which is the basis for Cyberpunk 2077.

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There are twelve character classes to choose from in Cyberpunk, and they're a far cry from the druids and bards and barbarians of Dungeons & Dragons. There are mercenaries, corporate raiders, med-techs who can graft machinery onto flesh, Max Headroom-like media manipulators, Netrunners who can jack into computer systems to disrupt or delete or steal data.

Some of the character types sound lame until you read the fine print. Rockerboys, who are essentially glammed-out pop stars, have a Charismatic Leadership skill that allows them to control crowds. At Level 5, you could incite thousands of people at an arena concert to destroy a neighborhood. At level 9, you have "the same sort of mesmeric ability as an Adolph HitIer - you can raise armies, start movements, and destroy nations."

One of the most innovative features in Cyberpunk is something called Lifepath, a system for generating an elaborate backstory for your character. Several rolls of the dice could determine that you're a secretive Bulgarian who is desperately in love with a professional rival that hates your guts. Different die rolls could result in you being an arrogant and aloof Micronesian whose CEO father sold you into bondage when his fortunes crashed, and now you don't trust anyone except for your digitally enhanced doberman.

"I wanted you to be able to sculpt an interesting character," says Pondsmith. "Nowadays, it seems like everybody does that - lifepath is everywhere."

Cyberpunk also had an innovative combat system called Friday Night Firefight. "Most RPGs have really complex combat," says Appelcline. "Like, you'll play for four hours, and spend couple of those hours on a single battle. Pondsmith created a combat system that was really quick and bloody and dirty and gritty - really true to cyberpunk."

"I didn't want people to have to deal with a lot of numbers," says Pondsmith. "And I wanted to make it like a real gunfight. The average one takes place at 12 feet distance, and it's not like movies where every shot connects and guns never run out of ammo - most cops throw 30 rounds down line and hit with two of them." A bullet that actually connects in the game is very likely to be lethal. "In Cyberpunk, you hoped you didn't get into a fight, and when you did, you tried to get out of it as fast as you could," says Appelcline.

Upgrading your body for combat is a core feature of Cyberpunk and a perfect fit for the kind of games CD Projekt Red has been making for years - The Witcher series is known for its deep character development systems - but Pondsmith tried to make sure that every cyborg enhancement was a carefully considered decision for players. "That's not just because of control of play and game balance," he says. "If you wanna maim yourself so you can be Robocop, you're gonna pay the price."
[...]

@Gamebanshee they have spotted a retail listing for Cyberpunk 2077 that states pre-orders are beginning February 2nd 2017.

Over on the official Cyberpunk 2077 Reddit feed, several contributors have been pointing to this page hosted by video game retailer Komplett, where they've announced that CD Projekt RED's forthcoming role-playing title will be released on September 30th, 2017.

While anyone can slap a random date on their profile page, it's also interesting to note that they have announced that the title can be pre-ordered as of February 2nd, 2017, which seems to suggest that they have at least some official information about the game's availability. Given the length of time that has surpassed since the well-regarded team announced the game, a Fall 2017 target date really wouldn't be surprising; in fact, it would probably be expected.

Farflame spotted this long Cyberpunk 2077 article:

Cyberpunk 2077 – what to expect from an RPG made by the studio that gave us The Witcher 3?

Although Cyberpunk 2077 has occupied a place in our minds for more than four years now, there’s literally no information pointing to what the new CD Projekt RED game is going to be. Still, there are sources allowing us to make certain assumptions.

In the field of triple-A games, cases such as Cyberpunk 2077 are few and far between. Entertain the following idea for a second: how many developers decide to announce a project just to keep it in the cellar for the next five years, feeding us mere shreds of information and convincing people that the work is still in progress? Even Mass Effect: Andromeda, which hasn’t really been a high-profile project during the four years since its announcement (similar time span as Cyberpunk’s), cannot hold a candle to CD Projekt RED’s secrecy.

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@PCGamesN report on some information from the studio's Polish investor forums that confirm Cyberpunk 2077 will be the next big release.

It's looking likely that CD Projekt's big sci-fi RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, will release some time in 2018, according to some information on the studio's Polish investor forums.

CD Projekt have already said they're planning to release two triple-A RPGs between 2016-2021, and now they've confirmed on the forums that Cyberpunk 2077 will be the first to come out, which makes sense, since it's the only one they've released any information on.

The studio also said that work won't begin on the second RPG until they've wrapped up Cyberpunk.

Now, The Witcher 3 took three-and-a-half years to develop, so chances are development time will be similar for both Cyberpunk and the unannounced game. Work on upgrading their game engine for Cyberpunk began around the release of The Witcher 3, so we're probably looking at the sci-fi RPG coming up to the halfway point in its development.

Furthermore, if we assume the same timeframe for the second unannounced RPG, that would put that game's development start date at mid-2018. It all lines up just right for Cyberpunk to release around then.

Other than all this lot, CD Projekt have also revealed that they have no interest in publishing third-party games, unlike like another local studio, Techland. CD Projekt say this is because they want ownership over the products they release - the titles that represent them as a company.

@GamePressure The Quantum Break lead designer and the gameplay producer from Rockstar North joins CD Projekt to work on Cyberpunk 2077.

There's no way you haven't heard that Cyberpunk 2077 is the next big thing from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt creators, Poland-based CD Projekt RED (unless you are a caveman, in which case you're not reading this anyway). How big the project is going to be we can guess not only from the developers' vague comments and leaked info on possible in-game features, but also from the sheer size of the team. CD Projekt RED are hiring even more people, and they won't settle for just about anybody. One of the studio's latest acquisitions is Quantum Break lead designer, Kyle Rowley, of which he himself informed the fans via Twitter. Also, the team has been recently joined by a new gameplay producer from Rockstar North (best known for the Grand Theft Auto series).

@GamePressure they speculate on the potential features of Cyberpunk 2077. They base this on the list of projects which submitted for grants from the Polish GameINN program. Being speculation nothing is confirmed yet.

CD PROJEKT S.A. - head of the capital group that includes CD PROJEKT RED, developer of Cyberpunk 2077- applied for a grant for something called City Creation, which, according to the official description (as translated from Polish by GamePressure), is "a complex technology for creating a huge living city, playable in real time, which (the technology) is based on rules, AI, and automation, as well as supports innovative processes and tools for making top-notch open-world games."

Another noteworthy feature CD PROJEKT needs extra funds for is Seamless Multiplayer „a complex technology for making unique multiplayer gameplay mechanics, including the ability to search out for opponents, manage game session, replicate objects, as well as support for different game modes along with a unique set of dedicated tools". This type of seamless multiplayer seems similar to what Ubisoft is going to offer in Watch Dogs 2, in which people will be able to join another player's session at any time.
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Gamepressure reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will feature drivable vehicles and planes:

[...]

CD Projekt RED are very stingy when it comes to sharing new information about Cyberpunk 2077, their upcoming RPG, which is said to be bigger and better than their previous hit The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. However, they couldn’t prevent the Internet community from viewing their job offers, which reveal some tasty details on the game. One of them, for a senior vehicle artist, mentions the need for modeling “incredibly complex vehicles, planes, bikes, robots and mechanics”. Another one says that the vehicles will by drivable/flyable and have different handling models.

[...]

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CD Projekt RED gave some clarification about the "developer tools revision" statement that's stoked our collective cynicism so much.

A couple of weeks ago, we reported that CD Projekt RED is revising their development tools for Cyberpunk 2077, per a conversation that iDigitalTimes had with CDP's visual effects artist Jose Teixeira. While the source of that information seemed to suggest that this would place the release of the RPG somewhere in the better half of the distant future, Mr. Teixeria has since cleared the air during another conversation with Kotaku:

“I mentioned that we were upgrading the engine based on the feedback everybody gave from The Witcher 3,” Texiera said. “We’re upgrading the engine. It’s a pretty thorough upgrade. Almost every aspect of the engine is getting upgraded. My particle effects editor is getting upgraded, as is almost every other tool.”

“But the article that was written online was worded in a slightly click-bait-y type way that made it sound like we haven’t even started really working on Cyberpunk yet,” he added. “I didn’t say that. We’re just upgrading the tools. That’s all I said. That’s something that any company that uses custom software has to do from time-to-time. That’s all.”

An engine is a software framework used for game creation. Some engines, like the Unreal Engine and Unity, are more widespread than others. The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk both use versions of CD Projekt’s custom REDengine, an in-house proprietary engine tailored to their particular needs. Development tool upgrades are actually a pretty regular thing with game engines, and they don’t necessarily impede progress. CDP’s learned a lot while working on Witcher 3 DLC and Cyberpunk. Naturally, they’re feeding that back into the engine’s capabilities and ease-of-use.

“The engine team took all the feedback, and they’re upgrading it,” said Texiera. “The hope is that it’ll allow us to do a lot more with the same engine. A lot more and faster. It’s still very much an ongoing process, but it’s promising stuff.”

Source.

iDigitalTimes reports that Cyberpunk 2077 isn't as far along as we might all hope. Currently the Witcher developers are overhauling development tools before work officially begins.

"The most important thing that's happening at the moment is that the programmers are taking the feedback we gave them from working on The Witcher . As cliche as it sounds it was a big learning experience," he said, explaining that by the end of the development everyone had a list of features they wanted for new dev tools. "The programmers are updating our software quite drastically."

This includes a brand new visual effects editor, which Teixeira is very excited about. He admits that he's got a little more enthusiasm for the upcoming project than he did for The Witcher 3 . For him, Cyberpunk 2077 represents a chance to explore a genre he finds more interesting.

"I immensely appreciate medieval fantasy games," he said. " But I don't know what it is about Cyberpunk 2077 but it just clicks. There's something about this game that just clicks with me and I'm really happy to be working on it."

Cyberpunk 2077 is scheduled for release sometime in the next four years , so don't hold your breath for any big announcements in the near future.

DualShockers reports that Cyberpunk 2077 will be better, bigger and more revolutionary than originally intended:

CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk 2077 to Be “Better, Bigger, More Revolutionary” Than Originally Intended

During CD Projekt’s 2015 financial results conference, President Adam Kiciński and Studio Head Adam Badowski talked about Cyberpunk 2077, which will come some time in the future for PS4, Xbox One and PC.

We learn that we’re still “a long ways away from the premiere.” Badowski explained that the studio wants to make better and better games, and since The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt has set the bar of success very high, Cyberpunk 2077 has to be “even better, even bigger, even more revolutionary” than originally intended, which is why CD Project still has “a lot of work to do” on it. They want it to be a “truly outstanding game. ”

We also learn that Cyberpunk 2077 is a “huge game,” with a magnitude “much greater” than The Witcher, and the studio has “amazingly large ambitions” for it.

Earlier during the call, Kiciński mentioned that CD Projek will invest heavily in the development of its games, and wants to at least double the size of the studio in terms of developers. Currently they have 400 people working on their games, and want to get to 800 or more. Those developers will be split in four teams, some of which will “penetrate new gaming segments.” [...]

Thanks Eye & Couch!

Gamepressure reports that Marcin Przybylowicz - music director for the Witcher 3 - will also work on Cyberpunk 2077:

"My superiors already force me to do it, because I spend most of my time with Geralt; however, some first attempts with Cyberpunk were already made."

Thanks Eye!

Henriquejr spotted this rumor:

Gamereactor Germany has been told, that Cyberpunk 2077 (PC version) will be released at the end of 2016. A source is close to CD Project Red has assured that:

CD Projekt Red will Cyberpunk 2077 nun Ende 2016 veröffentlichen. Das hat eine dem Unternehmen nahe stehende Quelle Gamereactor Deutschland bestätigt. Offiziell gibt es weiterhin nur eine PC-Version, wobei es mehr als wahrscheinlich ist, dass der Titel auch für PS4 und Xbox One erscheint. Es könnte allerdings sein, dass sich einer der beiden Konsolen-Publisher das Spiel als Exklusivtitel schnappt.

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CD Project Red is focussing more and more on Cyberpunk 2077:

CD Projekt RED emerged briefly to claim five Golden Joystick Awards earlier today, but now it's straight back to work on Cyberpunk 2077. And, to a lesser extent, The Witcher 3.

"The team is divided right now," Michal Nowakowski, CD Projekt SVP of business and publishing, told GR+ news guy Leon Hurley at the show. "There's a sizable team still working on [The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine], but an even more sizable team has actually been working on Cyberpunk for quite a while right now."

Nowakowski noted that Cyberpunk 2077 has been in the works since it was first announced back in 2012, though he did add that it was "very early development." CD Projekt Red hasn't given any hint of a release date for the sci-fi, open-world RPG (it's never even officially said the game's coming to this generation of consoles) but we'll hopefully hear more after Blood and Wine launches in the first quarter of 2016. [...]

According to this article Cyberpunk 2077 is much bigger than the Witcher 3:

CD Projekt Red: 'Cyberpunk 2077 is far, far bigger than The Witcher 3'

Cyberpunk 2077, the next game from The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red, is the biggest title the studio has ever made.

The sci-fi-flavoured RPG was originally announced back in 2012, but the Polish outlet has remained quiet on specificities of the project since.

Now it has been revealed that the title will be ever grander in scale than the third and final entry in the developer’s sprawling fantasy series, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

“Cyberpunk is far bigger than anything else that CD Projekt Red has done before,” visual effects artist Jose Teixeira told MCV. “Far, far bigger.

“We're really stepping into the unknown in terms of complexity and size and problems we encounter.”

The Witcher 3 became the fastest-selling game in the UK during 2015 upon its release back in May, but was overtaken by the launch of fellow open-world title Batman Arkham Knight one month later.

Teixeira continued by saying that The Witcher 3’s scope had helped the studio to refine its open-world formula for Cyberpunk 2077.

"The Witcher helped Cyberpunk quite a bit, because the game got so big and so complex that it really taught us,” he explained. “We really didn't know what was going to happen.

“If anything, working on The Witcher 3 was a really good and often brutal learning experience. Cyberpunk is going to benefit greatly from it. I can almost guarantee it.

"I have a lot of things that I want to change and do better the next time around, and I can guarantee that almost everyone in that studio has something that they go 'I did this this time, next time I can do it differently, I can do it better'.”

Unsurprisingly, Teixeira refused to give any clues regarding a potential release window for the title.

“The name of the game is Cyberpunk 2077, and we usually say the release date is 2077,” he joked.

Gamespot had the chance to talk with CD Projekt Red's Michal Platkow-Gilewski who is the developer's head of marketing and public relations about Cyberpunk 2077.

If you're eager to hear more about The Witcher developer CD Projekt Red's intriguing-looking role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077, you may want to get comfortable. The Polish developer tells GameSpot today that the studio's current focus is squarely on May's open-world RPG The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

"The first rule of Cyberpunk 2077 is that we don't talk about Cyberpunk 2077," said Michal Platkow-Gilewski, the developer's head of marketing and public relations.

"On a more serious note, in short, communication-wise, we are now focusing entirely on The Witcher: Wild Hunt. Everyone is working crazy hard to give gamers around the world an RPG to remember. Worry not, Cyberpunk 2077 is OK, its time will come."

So nothing new but its nice to have some news about the game.

CD Projekt Red's Marcin Iwinski talks to Gamespot about the Witcher 3 delay, and says development on Cyberpunk 2077 is not affected. So put your worries to rest everyone.

"Cyberpunk 2077 is developed by a separate team within CD Projekt Red, so the development of Cyberpunk 2077 is not really affected," Iwinski told GameSpot today. Cyberpunk 2077 is "probably" coming to Xbox One, PS4, and PC.

But that's not the full story. Because The Witcher 3 is such a large project, some Cyberpunk 2077 developers have moved over to The Witcher team to help get the product out the door.

"In order to ship a huge RPG we do use help of certain team members between teams. It works this way between Cyberpunk 2077 and The Witcher 3," he said.

These developers bounce between teams to finalize "key" elements and features, he said. This is a standard development practice and The Witcher 3's delay is not going to impact in any significant way development on Cyberpunk 2077. "So no harm done here," he explained.

"We are working hard to deliver an outstanding RPG and rest assured, that all the learnings on The Witcher 3 are being applied to the Cyberpunk 2077 development," Iwinski said.

I Game Responsibly took the time to ask a couple of questions with Michal Krzeminski the Senior Art Producer for Cyberpunk 2077.

Thus far we’ve heard precious little information about CD Projekt RED‘s Cyberpunk 2077. The mostly still-framed teaser trailer gave us a good look at the militarized, dystopian universe in which the events of Cyberpunk 2077 will unfold. It wasn’t easily discernible what genre the title would inherit, or even more so, what kind of gameplay we were to expect. With that in mind I wanted to get a bit of information about the project from developer CD Projekt RED. I knew the studio hadn’t openly spoken about the project since early last year, so my inquiries were going to have to be general.

NowGamer has a new preview with information about Cyberpunk 2077.

If you were going to pick a development studio to make a game based on a classic tabletop RPG, which would you choose? It’s a question that had often played in the head of Mike Pondsmith, creator of the beloved game Cyberpunk 2020.

Over the years, he’s had several offers to turn his vision into a digital reality.

"There have been some fairly big players, which non-disclosure agreements do not allow me to discuss," says Pondsmith.

"Something always happened to bring the project to a premature end. Often the team broke down because of external factors, like they couldn’t get enough money together. I remember a memorable case where I really loved the prototype, and then the president of the company was drafted and had to go back into the military."

That all changed when Pondsmith received an email from The Witcher developer CD Projekt RED, expressing interesting in creating a new Cyberpunk videogame.

"To us it made sense to adapt something that we enjoy playing,” explains gameplay designer Damien Monnier. “The world of Cyberpunk is so gritty, mature and deadly – it really fits the sort of games we make here at CD Projekt RED."

"They were asking me questions about stuff and the background history of Cyberpunk 2020," explains Pondsmith, "which showed they genuinely knew their stuff and were not just slapping a label on it, which happened with some of the larger companies we had talked to. They have the capability, they have the money, they have the team and they have the desire to do the real thing, as opposed to something that just has our name on it."

Polygon took the time to post a short interview with Rafal Jaki the Business Development Manager at CD Projekt Red.

While The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt continues development at CD Projekt Red, a second team has been methodically working on their next big game: Cyberpunk 2077.

"It is going really, really well and the team is growing and the development... well, I don't want to brag or anything, but really the stuff they've come up with is mind-blowing," said Rafal Jaki, business development manager at CD Projekt Red told Polygon at New York Comic Con.

The company, and Jaki, remain tight-lipped about exactly how they're bringing the storied table-top role-playing game to video games, but Jaki reiterated that it was coming to PC for sure and most likely next-gen consoles.

"It most probably will be," he said, "but we can't confirm or deny because it's too early for that."

What Jaki could talk about was the growing team at CD Projekt Red that is sprouting up to support the developer's two titles.

There are 210 people working at the developer right now split into three groups.

The red team, which is more than 100 people, is dedicated to development on The Witcher 3. The black team, which is smaller than the red team, is dedicated to work on Cyberpunk. And a third "sizable" team spends its time working on the game engine that is being used for both games.

DualShockers has a new article about Cyberpunk 2077. If your curious what goes on behind the scenes during game development here is your chance.

PR Manager Agnieszka Szóstak is one of the ladies working at CD Projekt RED. To be more precise she’s the one that has to arm herself with with quasi-angelic patience to put up every day with the unending requests and queries from us video game writers, and today she revealed something quite interesting about the development of the upcoming next generation RPG Cyberpunk 2077:

In an article style interview IGN talked to creative director Sebastian Stepien and game director Mateusz Kanik from CD Project Red, whoc are currently working on Cyberpunk 2077.

Character customisation, for instance, was necessarily not an option in Geralt’s world. But in Cyberpunk 2077, it’s self-defined role-playing: your style and personality will have deep and far-reaching effects on the world and how it reacts to you. “We will have several features that allow you to create your [visual] style, and your style will affect gameplay, storyline and relationships between characters,” explains creative director Sebastian Stepien. “Your appearance and your dress will change the behaviour of NPCs, and also the story also in some parts,” Mateusz adds. Style and appearance works together with the personality you create for your character and express in conversation to determine how the world reacts to you.

“It’s about telling story via what happens, not cutscenes or other features,” Mateusz says. “To do that we need to create a totally new unique dialogue system – we’re doing that right now, it should be awesome.”

Cyberpunk hasn’t been as easy to adapt as a video game as you might think. Pen and paper mechanics have been the foundation of many digital RPGs over the years, but they do not translate well into the kind of game that CDP is trying to make. “The game mechanics are totally different on paper, they don’t work in video games because they would be super boring,” Mateusz says.

“The main problem is that the original system is based on dice rolls. When you think about Cyberpunk you think about shooting, action, a lot of explosions. But that doesn’t fit dice rolls in a video game. We want to make it more action-like – there will be a system that lets you use active skills actually in the gameplay in a shooting sequence or something like that, rather than just passive skills like in the books.”

There's an interview with game director Mateusz Kanik at Russian site Gamestar, thankfully there is an English version.

Cyberpunk 2077 — this is an open world, non-linearity … How free can player feel in this dark world of the future? Would it be possible to play the game without killing anyone with your own hands? How many endings do you plan?

It’s too early to talk about the endings. I can promise you that the gameplay will be diversified and will depend and each goal will have its own means. Not only the story will be driven by your decisions, but also how you play the game. Each class will feel different and even while replaying the game with the same character, you’ll find different approaches.

We want to have a completely new level of non-linearity, achieved by combining freedom in playing your own character, free-roaming the environment and also having choices that have real consequences after you make a decision.

In a Cyberpunk 2077 interview with one of the devs in Polish here it was said that they are thinking of adding a translator implant in the game, which translates what they NPCs say, which are obviously talking in different languages.

As of yet no decisions have been made, but we're thinking about a system that could tell the world's story. The idea is to record everything in original languages, i.e. if we'll meet Mexicans in the game, they'll be taking -- Mexican slang even, portrayed by Mexican actors. The player would be able to buy a translator implant, and depending on how advanced it is, he'll get better or worse translation.

You can't reliably recreate street slang of Los Angeles or some other American city, you can't simply dub it and reproduce those emotions, rhythm of speech, mannerisms. Everything has to be cohesive. Otherwise we'd simply hear that Polish actors are trying to imitate Americans. That won't work.

Found on Reddit.

CDP Red's Mateusz Kanik has been interviewed by Rock, Paper, Shotgun on Cyberpunk 2077.

Here is something on the video:

RPS: Let’s start with the trailer. Why did you decide to emphasize that particular moment? Will any of the characters we saw be playable?

Mateusz Kanik: We wanted to catch the atmosphere of Cyberpunk. The moment is important, but what we wanted emphasize is the setting: How the city looks, how it feels, how augmentations can change your mind. So you can see that we are very faithful to the original, despite moving it 50 years forward. You have megacorporations, the psycho squad and the problem of people losing it after too many improvements. We surely do want the characters from the trailer to appear in the game, but it’s too early and a little bit spoilerish to talk about the details.

RPS: Why that woman? A number of people were fairly taken aback by the fact that she was a scantily clad and in a compromising position, which is understandable. However, the camera panned out to reveal that her arms were grotesque scythes, which struck me as making it less about sex appeal and more about creating a striking image of destroyed beauty by way of rampant technological augmentation. Is that what you were going for?

Mateusz Kanik: Why not that woman? As for your interpretation: It is really cool that our short clip created some food for thought like that. We enjoy that people dive deeper and they do not see an “epic, omg” flick on youtube, but something they think about when it’s finished. That’s how we want to make our games – you saw that in The Witcher series, moral choices and the problems the player faced were not trivial. Many people thought about decisions they made after they stopped playing. That’s what we want to do with Cyberpunk 2077. The worst thing I could do as someone behind the trailer is to tell you how you should interpret it. So, no, I won’t tell you what we were going for. It would spoil the fun.

Robert writes about a (Dutch) interview on Cyberpunk 2077. You can find the Google translation here, with the conversation covering Mike Pondsmith doing voice acting, the inclusion of some 2020 characters, possible mod support and more.

Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith discusses the gameworld in this video:

GameTrailers has an interview with Mateusz Kanik, the lead for Cyberpunk 2077.  The interview covers the game's atmosphere, a definiton of what braindance is as well as how they'll modify the 2020 rpg tabletop version for this game and much more. 

Here's a quote on how the atmosphere in the just released teaser trailer will make it into the game:

We just watched the first teaser for your game. What elements we saw will surely appear in the game?

I think the most important thing that will be brought with the game is the atmosphere. The teaser really feels like what we are working on. If you are thinking about the presence of melee combat, yes, we will have those cool arm implants. Cyber-psychos will also be present. These are people who lost their sense of humanity, because of too many cyber-modifications in their bodies. We will have aerial vehicles, the psychosquad, and all the weapons you saw are our modified versions from the rulebook. I hope that the woman you've seen in the trailer will also be there.

In a post at the official forums, Masos from CD Projekt RED has revealed the visions for this game as well as some background details. A quote on how the world will be like in 2077, according to CD Projekt RED:

In Cyberpunk 2077, the player will be thrown into a dark future. The metropolis of Night City is a stage set to tell the tale of one individual, raised on the streets, who tries to lift himself up from the gutter and find a way to survive amongst boostergangs and megacorporations in a city of filth and sin. Drugs, violence, poverty and exclusion haven't disappeared by 2077, as people stayed as they were for centuries - greedy, closed-minded and weak. But not only ghosts of the past trouble mankind, but new issues have appeared. Psychos go on rampages and the streets are filled with junkies addicted to a new form of entertainment - the braindance, a cheap way to experience the emotions and stimuli of someone else, someone living a more exciting life.

A new teaser trailer has been made available for Cyberpunk 2077. At the end of the video there is also a short message that an announcement for something else CD Red is working on (The Witcher 3?) will be made on the 5th of February.

The Cyberpunk 2077 blog has been updated with the third installment of recipes for a kick-ass cyberpunk game.

Piotr Skorok: Beneath a Steel sky

“One of best cyberpunk stories ever told. And that is an important thing, if you want to create good cRPG…”

Excellent point. We talk about gameplay, weapons and style but people often forget to mention an immersive story that takes you by the nuts and shows you the real, gritty Cyberpunk universe. By the way, Beneath a Steel Sky is available for free at GoG.com and I would highly recommend you guys check it out.

On a sidenote: If you enjoy it, let the nice people at Revolution Games in York know that you are looking forward to the sequel, I know I am.

CD Red's Senior Designer Marcin Janiszewski talks about the games they are inspired by for Cyberpunk 2077, using elements from each of them.

Here at CD Projekt Red we are inspired by many different types of games, not only cyberpunk games. And INSPIRED is the key word here.  Taking one feature from game A, another from game B and yet another from game C doesn’t mean that final product will be a game of A+B+C quality. There is actually a high chance that if the process of adapting features wasn’t done carefully or mixed properly, then the final game will be a disaster  – the sum of a bunch of things that do not work well together. And no one want to end up with Cyberpunk game like that, right?

Dystopia and Syndicate are, of course, not the only games that we are looking at, though they are obvious inspirations. There are quite few more. I will only highly major features of these games that have guided what we want Cyberpunk 2077 to become, and maybe in the future we will go into more details about how these concepts work together.

System Shock (1994) – Great atmosphere combined with non-linear gameplay

Fallout 2 (1998) – A character’s development could determine the available dialog options he/she would encounter

Baldur’s Gate Saga (1998-2000) – Faithful adaptation of a Pen& Paper RPG system without getting bogged down in numbers.

Deus Ex (2000) – Considered by many to one of the best (if not the best) Cyberpunk game. It had an involving story multiple ways to accomplish a goal. One of first games of its time and still one of the very few games where it was possible to finish it without killing anyone.

The Witcher series (2007, 2011) – Rich and mature story. Stunning graphics.

Skyrim (2011) – One of the best implementations of an open, sandbox world.

A second part of the Cyberpunk 2077 Recipes for kick-ass games blog post is up at CD Projekt Red's home for this future title. A look at the classic title Syndicate:

I am talking about Syndicate (senior), of course!

3 ingredients that make it excellent:

1 – Cyborg Agents
You are in control of a bunch of cold blooded killers; four threnchcoat-loving cyborg agents, to be precise. With little to no backstory, other than the rather disturbing intro depicting a man having his limbs pulled out and replaced by bionic ones; the fantastic four will be yours to  customise like the Cybernetic Mr Potato Head ™that they are. You spend money on them and look after them after each mission, and you  eventually start getting attached to them, despite the clear lack of love in their cold eyes. They are cool, they are badass and they are yours to command and customise.

Cyberpunk 2077 designer Damien Monnier shows his recipe on how to create a great cyberpunk game, which neads to have 3 ingredients: Cyberspace, Maps and Inplants. All of the ingredients that are available in Dystopia.

Cyberspace is this incredibly attractive, beautifully trippy world where Hackers can take over all sorts of devices. Your actions in the CyberSpace world are reflected in the real world. Consequently, if you play as a Hacker your team will absolutely rely on your mad hacking skills to open doors or even shutdown security systems– It adds an insane amount of pressure on your little punk shoulders:  Jack-in, hack stuff, trip balls and die*.

*Noob sidedish, serve cold.

Piotr Gnyp from Polygymia has tweeted some tidbits from an interview made with Adam Kicinski. It is in Polish but Kodaemon has translated the tweets to English. The quote:

- Unnanounced dark fantasy title (Witcher 3?) is in more advanced stages than Cyberpunk 2077.

 - Cyberpunk 2077 is the first in a series, both games are larger than The Witcher, both are multiplaform

 - 2013 will be smaller stuff for CDP RED, no Witcher-caliber release

 - Witcher for iPhone - too early to say anything, but not impossible

 EDIT: missed some stuff:

 - no Witcher for PS3 next year, they want TW on Playstation, but not current gen

 - both TW3 and CP2077 will appear on next gen consoles

Mike Pondsmith provides part 3 of the introduction to Cyberpunk 2077, talking about the right team.

Which leads us at last to the Right Team thing. It was obvious from the start that the CDPR team was going to give us a true to to life rendering of our Cyberpunk® world—they were fans. Most of them had grown up PLAYING Cyberpunk® at a time when RPG’s of any type were far and few between in a then-Communist Poland. For many of them, this was a dream come true. So we knew the team loved the world as much as we did (maybe even more, if you counted the many obsessive crushes on the lissome Alt Cunningham I encountered while over there!) Get it right? Are you kidding?

Skills? Execution? All I had to do was play a level of the Witcher to see THAT. It wasn’t just gorgeous to look at—it was dense, complex, and immersive. It was so well done that it made you have to play it. We looked at what the crew at CDPR had created in their exacting recreation of Sapkowski’s world and we positively drooled at what the same crew could do with OUR world. And knowing that they loved Cyberpunk® as much as we do just sealed the deal.

On the Cyberpunk 2077 blog, Mike Pondsmith made two entries covering why they went with CD PRoject Red and what it takes to make a good cyberpunk game.

True cyberpunk also needs an adult feel (and that means more than just the sex). Unlike other genres, cyberpunk characters should have vices to go with their virtues. How they DEAL with those vices is a big part of their complexity. When we looked at the Witcher series, we saw a world where gambling,drinking, hookers and other vices were a big part of character development, but were also handled as part of the general adult character of the world. But in addition, relationships were treated as actual relationships, with the fights, negotiations, regrets and reconciliations that are part of the way real adults handle real situations.