What Is it and Why Should You Care?
While hard at work on what would become one of the most acclaimed RPGs of all time in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Polish developer CD Projekt Red announced its next project. It did so in 2012, announcing Cyberpunk 2077, a game title that implied an experience as far away from the medieval fantasy setting of The Witcher 3 as could possibly be. Sure enough, when CD Projekt Red released the first animated trailer for the game in 2013 it stunned audiences and generated lots of hype.
Five years later, CD Projekt Red has published The Witcher 3 and two full expansions for the title but has merely released snippets of information for Cyberpunk 2077. So here’s a rundown of every slither of information we could find on the game.
This post was originally written by Matthew LaMar.
What Are the Inspirations of Cyberpunk 2077?
Cyberpunk 2077 is a new intellectual property without any direct ties to previous lore. This is a stark contrast to The Witcher series, which is based on the world created by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski.
However, the title of the game suggests that it will exist in the subgenre of cyberpunk itself. Lawrence Pearson, former editor of the Hugo Award-nominated sci-fi fanzine Nova Express, wrote about cyberpunk characters and their environment, which might be a good insight into the world of Cyberpunk 2077:
Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, a ubiquitous datsphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body.
Pearson also notes that the William Gibson novel Neuromancer is the archetypal cyberpunk story. The famous film Blade Runner and its Phillip K. Dick novel inspiration, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? are other standout examples of the genre.
Specifically, Cyberpunk 2077 is drawing inspiration from the 1988 tabletop role-playing game Cyberpunk, with CD Projekt Red hiring original writer Mike Pondsmith to consult on the project.
What Kind of Game Will it Be?
CD Projekt Red is keeping to what it knows best–creating amazing RPG experiences–and so Cyberpunk 2077 will be the studio’s next big RPG. In fact, Cyberpunk 2077 is shaping up to be even bigger than The Witcher 3.
The studio released this description of Cyperpunk 2077 when they dropped the trailer:
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 among boostergangs and megacorporations in a city of filth and sin. Drugs, violence, poverty and exclusion haven’t disappeared by 2077, as people stayed 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.
As for what type of game Cyberpunk 2077 will be, it is going to be a “big RPG,” according to Marcin Iwiński in an interview with PC Gamer. In the interview, Iwiński also addressed the loot box controversy that has permeated modern gaming recently:
Where we stand is quite simple and you could see it with all of our past releases—most recently The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt and GWENT. If you buy a full priced game, you should get a big, polished piece of content, which gives you many, many hours of fun gameplay.
“The definition of ‘many’ may vary on a title-by-title basis, but in our case it was always 50-60+ hours of the main story-line, with up to a couple hundred of hours of side activities—if you really wanted to max out the title.
While Cyberpunk 2077 will feature some version of multiplayer and “online elements,” Iwiński’s comments should allay fears that Cyberpunk 2077 is going to feature loot boxes, microtransactions, or some other form of paid content gating. All evidence points to another robust RPG in CD Projekt Red’s long history of excellent releases within the genre.
As Cyberpunk 2077 is in development, we will continue to hear more and more about the game in the coming months and years. Keep your eye out on cyberpunk.net and the game’s Twitter feed for official announcements, and keep your eyes here on Twinfinite where we’ll continue to cover the game through its release.
When Is it Coming Out, and On What Platforms?
Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development since at least 2012, when it was announced. However, CD Projekt Red focused most of its efforts on polishing up The Witcher 3. By late 2015, though, the studio had shifted a majority of its developers over to Cyberpunk 2077, with the remaining chunk working on The Witcher 3: Blood and Wine expansion.
The game has no release date, and it does not even have a vague release window. Furthermore, Cyberpunk 2077’s Twitter account was silent for four years before firing off a cryptic tweet in January 2018:
*beep*
— Cyberpunk 2077 (@CyberpunkGame) January 10, 2018
The game’s development timeline has been an unusual one, with development interrupted by a gigantic release of its studio’s other game and even a bizarre document ransom situation, so it is very difficult to speculate when the game will be released. However, Cyberpunk 2077 will be at E3 2018, its first time at the storied trade show. This, combined with the revving up of the game’s official Twitter account, suggests that development has at least picked up some steam. Since we haven’t seen any gameplay yet, it seems extremely unlikely that we’ll see CD Projekt Red’s new baby this year. A 2019 or 2020 release would probably be realistic, but that’s just pure speculation. For all we know, the game could actually be on track for 2077 (though that seems like an awfully long time for a game to be in development).
As for what consoles the game will be available for purchase, we know for sure that it will be on PC. According to Rafal Jaki, business development manager at CD Projekt Red, the game will “probably” also be coming to PS4 and Xbox One. Considering The Witcher 3 and its expansions were released for consoles, it seems likely that Cyberpunk 20177 would also do so. Just probably don’t expect a Nintendo Switch port.
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