Cyberpunk 2077 Interviews
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By now, most of you have probably seen the new Cyberpunk 2077 trailer and are curious to learn a bit more about CD Projekt's upcoming open world RPG. If that's the case, then you might be interested in checking out some interviews with an assortment of CD Projekt's developers and even Mike Pondsmith, the original creator of the Cyberpunk roleplaying game.
To get things going, here's a video interview by one Angry Joe, where Mr. Pondsmith shares plenty of insights into Cyberpunk 2077. He talks about the team's decision to go first person, the game's attempts to combine a gripping story with an open world structure, the importance of verticality to the whole thing, and even mentions the game's branching narrative where you can easily miss content and its so-called Metroidvania elements where your new abilities open up new, previously unavailable, paths for you. Check it out:
Then, there's this PC Gamer interview with the game's level designer Max Pears that focuses on the Night City, its environments, the driving sections, and more. An excerpt:
PC Gamer: Let's talk about the city. I think that's one of the most striking parts of Cyberpunk. It was staggering how dense the city felt, how alive it felt. What kind of challenge was it to create something like that?
Max Pears: One of the biggest challenges is that seamless transition from being in a mega building—these buildings, depending on the district you're in, are going very vertical. So you've got your own kind of, ecosystem, in the sense that there are different things happening in those buildings than on a street level. So having that transition there has been one of the bigger challenges. From that, as well, it's about making it feel dense. We want it to feel packed, depending on the district. Making sure it feels alive. That's been the big part. Not just alive as in it's populated with numbers, but it feels like stuff's actually happening around you.
During the demo the person running it said something like 'thanks to our new crowd technology we're able to do this.' Is that something you've significantly improved on over The Witcher 3, how you generate crowds and handle that?
I can't say too much detail on it, but as you saw, in Witcher 3, in Novigrad for example, you had loads of people moving around there. So we are looking into expanding and improving on these things. I can't say much, but it is something we're definitely looking into, for sure.
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.
Rock, Paper, Shotgun's interview with the game's lead cinematic animator Maciej Pietras is all about romances, flying cars, and hacking:
RPS: We saw an example of V hacking a person, to stop their gun from working, for instance. Are there any other examples of stuff like that which you can talk about?
Pietras: Yeah, of course. We call it Netrunning, which is again from the source material, and I think it’s a perfect description because … in the demo you had to hack a terminal first, and through that terminal you gave yourself “Quick Hack” to [apply] during combat on those enemies that you hack. And all while you’re hanging from your mantis blades on the wall, before jumping down and smashing the guy [laughs], so we were actually disabling the guy’s weapons, as you say. But other forms of hacking that I can tell you about for instance, let’s say there’s a turret, you will be able to hack it if that turret is connected to the network. If you hack the network, then you can hack the turret. Netrunning is for, like I say, turrets, weapons… doors, especially connections to different places. Like [there’s] a way to hack security systems, that will then be disabled when you enter the room.
[At this point in the interview, the PR comes in and tells us “last question”.]
RPS: I’m going to ask a cheeky question.
Pietras: Cheeky or tricky?
RPS: Maybe both. There were some murmurs of multiplayer. Can you tell me what’s happening there?
Pietras: Currently we are really focusing on developing the fully open-world role-playing game. And what you’re going to get straight from the box will be a fully fledged single-player experience. When it comes to the multiplayer, I’ll be honest, we’re doing some R&D, we’re researching but that’s all I have to say.
And Kotaku's interview with the game's quest designer Patrick Mills goes over the differences in quest design between Cyberpunk 2077 and CD Projekt's previous open world game, The Witcher 3:
Jason Schreier: Let’s talk about your specific role. So you’ve been a quest designer, you worked on The Witcher 3, you work on Cyberpunk. How is the quest design mentality for you guys changed since The Witcher 3? What are some of the things you wish you could do better, what are the things you want to do differently for Cyberpunk?
Patrick Mills: Well, one of the things, working on the expansions for The Witcher 3 that we started to look more into was the principle that if it was logically believable that your character would do a certain thing, or could do it in a different order, we would want to support that. And we want to do that with Cyberpunk as well.
Of course, now we’re dealing with a character that might have more options. Geralt, he had very good senses, he had a good sword arm, and a good knowledge of monsters, and that took him through. In this case, you can play, you know, mixing and matching with these three different archetypes. These three different skill-sets that we have, the Solo, the Techie, and the Netrunner. And so that’s an extra layer of complexity. Our quests are extremely complex right now. It’s… yeah, it’s daunting! But we hope we can do it.
Schreier: What’s the difference between Solo, Techie, and Netrunner?
Mills: These are all character-types from the original Cyberpunk 2020 [pen-and-paper RPG]. And the Solo is sort of the go in, shoot, get the job done, go straight on in. Even there though, we have different types inside that. You saw in the demo, V runs around and wall runs and things like that. That’s one archetype you could take, but Jackie on the other hand is a different type of Solo, lifts cars to create cover and that sort of thing.
