CD Projekt Red has been up and about regarding the Cyberpunk 2077 franchise. With recent help from Nvidia’s RTX 40 series’ RT cores and AI-powered DLSS 3.0, they brought realistic path tracing to the game, launching on April 11th.
The lead project designer, Miles Tost, recently in an interview with IGN cited the famous stealth title “Dishonored 1” and 2 as his inspiration for developing the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077.
He reinstated the importance of the choices and paths that players take and admitted how Arkane’s stealth series Dishonored does a better job at rewarding smart choices and strategies than Cyberpunk did.
It is worth mentioning that albeit Cyberpunk’s generic path has a cool feel to it, but it feels pretty inconsequential in-game, Tost claimed that the choices would come to a “bottleneck.”
He means to say that no matter what choices the players make, the results tend to be similar in the game. Which is exactly the problem that he looks to mitigate.
The psychology behind paths is that the more the implications of each choice, the more it spikes the players’ interest and further heightens a sense of curiosity.
A heightened sense of curiosity directly translates to better gameplay and more engagement. It also leverages the fear of missing out, as Tost says players would replay it to ensure they experience all the paths.
He mentioned three different principles in the interview, based on which he is looking to design the sequel:
- Distance – The farther the paths are designed from each other, the more choices matter.
- Exclusivity or isolation of the path is equally important as it heightens the importance of the game to the player as it introduces the “What If” factor.
- “Validation” – Paths must be treated as special, giving them value and the value of choice.
Tost says that moving forward, the team at Projekt Red would be looking to incentivize stealth gameplay more and more. Beating a powerful enemy with stealth is far more exciting than brute force and also ensures replays, giving a sense of satisfaction when the player puts in the work.
The sequel title was announced in late 2022 under the pseudonym “The Project Orion”. There’s very little-known information about the project. However, it seems that the developer is looking to improve the gameplay significantly.
It must be remembered that CPDR is also working on a new Witcher title; fans of the ambitious RPG must be patient for any news on the sequel.
About Cyberpunk 2077
Cyberpunk 2077 is a 2020 action role-playing video game developed by CD Projekt Red and published by CD Projekt, based on video game designer Mike Pondsmith’s game series.
Set in a dystopian cyberpunk universe, the player assumes the role of “V,” a mercenary in the fictional Californian city known as “Night City,” where they deal with the fallout from a heist gone wrong that results in an experimental cybernetic “bio-chip” containing an engram of the legendary rock star and terrorist Johnny Silverhand (played by Keanu Reeves) threatening to slowly overwrite V’s mind; as the story progresses V and Johnny must work together to find a way to be separated and save V’s life.
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