It’s pretty common knowledge by now that The Witcher 3 was a huge hit with the gaming industry. It was a beautiful game with tons to do, much to see, and boundless detail, as well as a great story with well written characters. So it’s easy to understand why people are excited about Cyberpunk 2077 and what it has to offer.
Unfortunately, there’s not that much information on the game, nor any kind of specific (or even estimated) release date by the developers themselves, which I suppose is reasonable considering they were probably swamped with all the work they were putting into the Witcher game for quite a long time. However, people are still itching for any kind of news on the game, myself included, so I put together a small list of all the available information I could find on Cyberpunk 2077.
Let’s start with the basic information, such as what kind of game it will likely be. From what we can gather, it’s going to be a first or third person sci-fi RPG in an open world, taking place in a setting that I can only compare to the recent Deus Ex games. In fact, a lot of what I saw from trailers reminded me of Deus Ex. Sci-fi futuristic streets with a woman clad in augmented limbs, being hounded on by a bevy of armed police because, from the looks of the dead bodies surrounding the woman, it appears she used those intimidating looking scythe arms of hers to kill them all. There’s not too much to draw on from the trailer however in terms of gameplay, as it’s obviously just a trailer meant to provide people with the information of the game’s world, its feel, and its setting, but we can probably expect guns to be the primary method of combat.
What’s important to note is that Cyberpunk 2077 is derived from the pen and paper tabletop RPG of the same name (or as Cyberpunk 2020) created by Mike Pondsmith, so it’ll be interesting to find out just how the game will play when adapted from this original idea. Likely, most of the content will just be based from the game’s setting and RPG nature, and placing you as the player in a large open world to reinforce this idea that you are free to do just about anything you decide, at least within the limitations of the game.
CD Projekt Red have also divulged another piece of information on the world of Cyberpunk 2077, and that’s “Braindance”. Braindance is basically a recording made by a person or corporation, and can be experienced through the use of an augmentation in the brain. From my understanding, it’s literally the recording of what it’s like to be a person in any situation. It would allow the user to experience every part of the brain, including sights, smells, sounds, touch, and any other sensory anomaly. This does include emotions as well, allowing the user to not only experience the actions of someone, but to feel their raw emotions and feelings toward the situation. It’s like for a brief moment you literally become that person. I’d assume that this feature will play a very large role in parts of the game’s story, hopefully in a way that’s driven by curiosity and followed by some sort of grounding emotional and moral repercussions.
And with translations from a member on Neogaf, it appears that even more people are working on Cyberpunk 2077 than were working on even The Witcher 3, and given how the latter game turned out, that’s an exciting proposition to think about. There’s also the possibility of multiplayer, as recently it’s been discovered through a post on gamepressure.com that CDPR has applied for the ability of “Seamless multiplayer”. This could mean anything really, as it doesn’t really divulge the kinds of game modes we can expect, but quotes such as “unique multiplayer gameplay mechanics” and “support for different game modes along with a unique set of dedicated tools” have been translated, which gives reason to believe we might get multiple types of multiplayer experiences.
My hope, given that there’s word of a massive team working on the game, the multiplayer will consist of a fully cooperative campaign. Personally, playing through a game in co op is one of my favorite gaming experiences, and I don’t mean the watered down versions that tend to permeate games such as Far Cry 4, Call of Duty, or Homefront: The Revolution. I realize tailoring a campaign experience to be playable both solo and cooperatively is a large and difficult task, but if this team of developers is as large as I imagine them to be, I’m certain they could pull it off fully featured.
The game will also use an updated version of the REDengine 3, the same engine used to power The Witcher 3, so we can be confident that the game will at least have some impressive technology behind it. In the same post mentioned earlier from Gamepressure, technologies that state about possible city building tools allow “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 supporting innovative processes and tools for making top-notch open-world games”.
It’ll be interesting to see how it fairs in a different settings entirely from a medieval fantasy world. What we don’t know is who will we be playing as. There’s theories out there that suggest that we will be playing as a single, solid protagonist, but I personally believe with RPG origins in the game’s blood, we may likely have some sort of character creation system, allowing us to pick class, attributes, and maybe even appearance.
Character customization is a staple in many popular RPG games, and it’d be a bit of a disappointment if CDPR decide to forgo that system in favor of forcing us to be in the shoes of a single character. If CDPR want us to be as immersed in the game world as I imagined they would want us to be, it’s a good idea to give some control over who our character is so it’s easier for more people to place themselves in the universe.
But in my time researching, I’ve found that all we can really do is guess. CD Projekt Red have been very tight lipped about the game so far, despite announcing the game as early as 2012. It wasn’t quite officially announced as a real project until a couple years later, but it’s been awhile since we’ve started conjecturing what this game could be about. There’s very little official material to go off of other than an announcement trailer and a video with Mike Pondsmith himself.
What we do know though is that the game is at least in very capable hands. CDPR have continuously proven they can handle themselves in this industry, by providing some fantastic games and their own distribution system of some amazing classics on GOG.com. To boil this all down, Cyberpunk 2077 will be a first/third person shooter RPG in a large, scifi open world with help in creation by one of the father’s of cyberpunk RPG’s himself, Mike Pondsmith, and feature an updated game engine, interesting cyberpunk technologies, likely some moral ambiguity, and an adaptive story created by a very talented team.
While we must remember that much of this is based off of very little information, it’s also safe to remain optimistic that this will at least be a very well crafted RPG.
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