Details on CD Projekt Red’s upcoming first-person RPG are scarce, but a Spanish publication Area Jugones published an interview with quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz and he shed some light on a few elements on Cyberpunk 2077. Tomaszkiewicz answers questions about the evolution of gameplay since the E3 2018 gameplay reveal, Witcher 3 easter eggs, and more.
Tomaszkiewicz is one of the developers behind adding story content and he also works on secondary missions, giving feedback and solving design issues uncovered through regular play. Therefore, Tomaszkiewicz has a pretty informed perspective on the game’s current state, including how different it looks from the E3 2018 Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay reveal.
“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,” Tomaszkiewicz said (translated via Google). “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.”
In our early preview of Cyberpunk 2077, we noted that it looks like the RPG will have a lot of player choice. Not only will consequences be a major element of the game, but Tomaszkiewicz also shared that there’s one specific thing in this project that will set it apart from previous CD Projekt Red games.
“As I mentioned before, we have decisions, consequences, good characters, etc,” he said. “I think the new thing in this project and that takes it to the next level is the non-linearity of the gameplay, which we will realize when we play through the missions. Which means there are many ways to complete missions based on how you’ve created your character, tools you use, etc. And I think this is something that makes our game different from The Witcher. Because in The Witcher we had a basic loop in the gameplay, finding non-linearity in the missions section. This time the gameplay will also have a non-linear character. I think this is where the big difference lies in terms of the complexity of our missions.”
No specific spoilers ahead (step away if you haven’t completed The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s main campaign), but there’s a moment where a key character describes another world. There’s travel to other worlds as well, but one particular description included a place that sounded like the potential foundation for Cyberpunk 2077’s world or one adjacent to it; The place was said to have people with “metal in their heads.”
In response to an inquiry if more Easter eggs like this would be in Cyberpunk 2077, Tomaszkiewicz said, “Although it is a complicated question, since Easter eggs are part of a stage near the launch of the game, we currently have some in mind, but right now it would be difficult to know how many of them there are. However, we have a great creative team and the Easter eggs and references are something that is added later in production, usually when people want to leave some reference for themselves, and I am sure we will have a good amount of them.”
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