CD Projekt RED’s Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most highly anticipated titles right now, featuring a huge open world with tons of exploration and quests to undertake. Interestingly, the story of the game is not that of a “zero to hero” since Night City is a metropolis beyond redemption. The main character will try above all to survive him/herself.
Metro.co.uk had the chance to talk with Cyberpunk 2077 quest director Patrick Mills, who revealed a few useful information bits about how the questline for the game was created and how it all fits into the theme of a cyberpunk game. What stands above all else, is that Cyberpunk 2077 is not a hero story but more like a quest to survive and climb up the ranks into the elite of the Night City.
As with The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 will include a robust questline, during which transitions will happen dynamically, as you might have already seen during its 48-minute gameplay video. As Mills pointed out, the demo wasn’t the product of in-game tricks to make it seem more natural and the game will indeed move from gameplay to cutscenes in a realistic way.
Apart from the main story, Cyberpunk 2077 will offer a huge amount of side quests, at least the same to the size of The Witcher 3. Mills have revealed that side quests will fill the gaps of the story, offering more depth to specific characters that CD Projekt RED felt like they deserved to. He said:
The way that we develop side quests is very often by looking at the main story; after we’ve written out and sketched out the main story we find the characters that maybe we want to spend more time with, themes, or even bits of old main story that aren’t getting used anymore.
And for us, our rule for side quests is that the story has to be something that you’ve never seen before, there’s gotta be something in this story that’s different. It’s never gonna feel like, ‘Go here, do that’. It’s you go there and do that and then something happens.
One thing that Cyberpunk 2077 theme touches though is politics, but not in the way most fans would think. Night City is a metropolis where chaos reigns, with corrupted corporations and socialite climbing being its main features. In Mill’s opinion this is only logical:
I mean they do, but they’re just not willing to talk about it. But I’ve been really glad that this company has let us, as developers, do so relatively freely. I mean obviously, we have to be careful because this is a big company and we’re selling consumer goods and we want people to like our stuff, for sure. But at the same time, these are games made by people. And people have opinions. So all of these games that say they aren’t political, those games are made by people. That makes them political. They’re made by people, they’re made by corporations. That makes them political.
He went on by saying that he played the original tabletop Cyberpunk 2020 back when he was 13 and he was captivated by the Night City, even though he now has a totally different view on it, having seen the extend of Cyberpunk 2077.
In terms of over-sexualization, Mills had another cool explanation. CD Projekt RED’s new game will include a lot of nudity and sexual scenes, something that was present in The Witcher 3 as well. In the era of Cyberpunk though, there’s a justified explanation as to why sexualization must be portrayed and not overlooked just for the rating:
One of the things about Cyberpunk is that it’s kind of a cynical take on transhumanism. So you have sort of utopian transhumanism were ‘technology will liberate us from our flesh, from our foibles, from all of our failings’. And then in Cyberpunk there is a certain kind of liberation but because the structures in place don’t really allow true freedom you’re just a slave of another kind. You’re turning yourself into a commodity in a different way.
Last but not least, Mills offered fans an ultimatum for the point of Cyberpunk 2077. Its story isn’t about saving the world but yourself. Totally acceptable if you ask us. He stated:
What I can say is that one of the aphorisms that Mike Pondsmith has about Cyberpunk is that in Cyberpunk you can’t save the world, you can only save yourself. So I would look for something like that. This is not a game about revolution, this is a world where that isn’t possible.
As you can see, every bit of Cyberpunk 2077 has been thoroughly reviewed upon and in a quest standpoint, all themes in the game are justified and included for a reason that may not be directly related to the story but further enriches the world Pondsmith has introduced to us decades ago.
Cyberpunk 2077 has no stated release date yet. It will launch on Xbox One, Playstation 4 and PC when the time comes as CD Projekt RED pointed out on several occasions.
