Cyberpunk 2077 Interview

If you head on over to PC Gamer, you’ll find a detailed new interview dedicated to CD Projekt’s highly anticipated open world RPG Cyberpunk 2077. The interview touches on the game’s procedurally generated crowds, atmosphere, animations, attention to detail, story and quest design, and more. Here are a few sample paragraphs:

“We want to give Night City a Californian feel,” he says. “It’s not just another abstract dystopia. I visited LA for the first time this year and it was very inspiring, especially walking along Venice Beach. We want to bring some of that vibe to the game. The sun, the palm trees, but a darker side, too. It’s an incredibly diverse place, with all these different people, fashions and cultures sharing the same space, but it can also be dangerous.”

As we walk through Watson, a bustling shopping and entertainment district bombarded by neon billboards, the passing hordes of citizens give me a sense of this diversity, and I don’t see one repeated character model. Crowds are generated semi-procedurally to avoid repetition, mixing body parts, faces, clothes and hairstyles, and CDPR promises the finished game will feature an even greater variety of heights, weights, and body shapes.

“Watson is a multicultural district with a strong Asian influence and a rising crime problem,” says Swiecicki. “But there are other districts too, each with their own unique feel. Westbrook is where the middle classes live; Heywood was once home to the tech giants, but abandoned and left to rot; and Pacifica is a suburban district ruled by gangs, and the most dangerous place in the city. Wherever you are in the city, there’s a layer of darkness.”

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The focus on action in a demo, Swiecicki explains, was a result of them wanting to show off as many game systems as possible. “Storytelling is hugely important to us as a studio,” he says. “We want to tell stories that resonate with people on an emotional level and ask important questions. So there will be a lot of that in the actual game. It’s an important part of the genre.”

Pietras adds that everything starts with story at CDPR, and that every department, from quest design to cinematic animation, has an intimate working relationship with the writers. “In one scene the writers wanted Meredith Stout, a corporation boss, to look visibly nervous and frustrated, because she knows someone in her corp is trying to screw her over,” he says. “So we took that direction and animated her accordingly.”

Another of CDPR’s high level goals for Cyberpunk is making the game as seamless as possible, from being able to move around the city without any loading breaks, to conversations. “In The Witcher you talk to someone and there’s a transition to dialogue, then back to the world when you’re finished,” says Swiecicki. “But here we want the blend of story and action to be seamless, which is really challenging from a writing perspective. If you turn and look at something during a conversation, we want the NPC to notice. We want the reactivity in the game to be super high. It’s almost like you’re an actor in a scene, rather than just passively watching it play out.”