Cyberpunk 2077 Preview From NowGamer

NowGamer recently put together a preview of Cyberpunk 2077 (archive.org backup), with added commentary from the tabletop RPG creator Mike Pondsmith, CD Projekt RED gameplay designer Damien Monnier, and others. It sounds like we won’t be seeing the sci-fi RPG for at least another year:

The visual style is immediately arresting and evocative of an Eighties vision of the future. Enormous, dark cities with towering skyscrapers and terrible overpopulation lit by neon streams and roaming searchlights, the sun never reaching the ground level through layers of concrete.

Quality of life isn’t exactly a priority.

The tabletop RPG is set in 2020, but the upcoming videogame will be in 2077, and working out how things have progressed in the time in-between is one of the biggest challenges for Pondsmith and CDPR. Luckily, the series already has a rich history that they can draw from.

“The biggest battle we are having is we have to regress the technology enough to where we wouldn’t find a natural process of technological development,” says Pondsmith, “where you are walking around with jet packs and flying cars and winged helmets. Lucky for us, we had a Corporate War that damn near destroyed most of the planet.”

Not only that, but a flood of lethal computer viruses has meant people can no longer communicate over the net. In many ways, the tech of 2077 is less advanced than that of 2020, and this is a key to maintaining the cyberpunk feel according to Monnier.

“To keep the feeling of cyberpunk, you kinda have to keep things broken just enough. You have to keep the technology curve down to where it’s still people, interacting on a personal level.”

That’s all we know so far, with no gameplay to judge and little idea of when to expect the game beyond ‘2015 at the earliest’.

CDPR is currently busy making The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk won’t be done until it’s good and ready.

Thanks, Nixit!