Hi, so after writing the preview I was left with a whole lot of questions that needed answering. So I got in touch with CDProjekt Red, and they were kind enough to do this interview, hope you find it interesting.
Gimp Mask: Thank you for doing this interview, it has been one of the most requested features on Duck And Cover, the premier Cyberpunk fansite. Cyberpunk 2077 is based on an old tabletop role-playing game, Cyberpunk 2013. How faithful is the new game to the original?
CDProjekt Red: If I had to rate the faithfulness on a scale of 0 to 10, I would say our game is like the promiscuous high-school cheerleader cum bucket. The game is to be played on a laptop not a tabletop so why bother? I would say 90% of our inspiration comes from classic Vine compilations. Also as far as communication with the original development team goes, the tabletop game developer has been "Excommunicado", which is industry slang for cancelled, and our studio is a wholesome bunch of straight shooters with a perfect track record, so it was a conscious move to distance ourselves from whatever Dark Web shenanigans the guy has been up to.
GM: The game entered pre-production back in 2016 so you've really taken your time with the game. What would you say have been the biggest hurdles along the way?
CDPR: I would say there have been absolutely no hurdles, the development process has been pretty straightforward. After The Witcher 3 we had amassed a nice little nest egg which we mostly spent on building a miniature model of the Night City out of superglue and Oxycontin. We then spent the next 3 years high on oxy just brainstorming and coming up with good ideas for the new game. We came up with nothing, so the rest of the money was spent on reskinning the Witcher 3, so it is very much the same game but with bullets instead of arrows. Actually reskinning the arrows wasn't in the budget so the guns shoot arrows, just use your imagination folks maybe they are cyber bullet arrows? Who's to say really, it is 2077 and none of us really know how gunfights will work in the future.
GM: You seem to have put a lot of effort into making Night City a real shithole of a town. What were your main influences in designing the game world?
CDPR: We actually did a lot of location scouting for the game. I don't own a car so I spent my weekends walking around my home town of Dziewierzewo, which accounts for the whole cyber-rural look of Night City. As for architecture, the city is completely based on Byzantine architecture. We slapped a bunch of neon signs on the buildings and voila, cyber.
GM: You have reported that the quests in the game can be approached in a myriad ways, which begs the question: how do player choices affect the plot?
CDPR: Once again we have stepped outside the box of traditional games development. Remember the scene in the Matrix, "there is no spoon?" Well in this game, there is no plot. So you can approach the quests however you want to because it will have absolutely no bearing on future, past or current events in the game world. It's a real free-for-all, the ultimate open world simulator with choices without consequences, just like in real life. The game consists completely of sidequests so there is no story progression. That is the beauty of it: you are free to create your own narrative.
GM: The game seems very complex in so many ways that balancing the game must have been quite an undertaking.
CDPR: Oh yeah, the game is totally unbalanced. For 90% of the game you will feel extremely underpowered and for the last 10% you will be extremely overpowered. Look at it this way: if you go punch a big burly man in the nose, do you expect a balanced fight? Now, if you point an arrow shotgun at the same man, is it any more balanced? I think realism invariably trumps balance. I don't want to give too much guidance because you're free to play the game as you wish, but for the most part the best strategy in the game is: stay home, stay out of trouble.
GM: Speaking of playstyles, how does the game cater for different playing styles?
CDPR: Oh yeah, you can play the game however you like I don't care. My style is to play it late in the afternoon after I have been drinking since noon, because it's not a very enjoyable game, but at least I will be drunk so there's that, and then I will still have time to hit the pub.
GM: Can you tell us how you got Keanu Reeves involved in the project?
CDPR: Well, we got the idea from Death Stranding; we also wanted to get a well-known big time Hollywood actor like Norman Reedus in our game. We could not afford Norman, but Keanu was an obvious second choice for us, he had worked on Johnny Mnemonic so he's like a walking wikipedia when it comes to all things cybernetics, we've been consulting him throughout the development process. But the best part is we don't even have to pay the guy, every week we tell him "the check is in the mail" and he still shows up for work, it seems like he has nothing else left in his life at this point, I guess it's either this or death by auto asphyxiation in some ramshackle roadside motel room for him.
GM: Besides the obvious focus on a world of corporate-controlled technological dystopia, you seem to have concentrated quite a bit on other related themes such as AI/human consciousness, cybernetics and futuristic subcultures.
CDPR: We have done a lot of research on the subject to provide an immersive game world that caters not only to the casual gamer but hardcore cyberpunk aficionados as well. I mean I have watched Johnny Mnemonic like 5 times so it's safe to say I know the world of cyberpunk inside out. As for the subcultures we have done our best to stay topical so that the game seems futuristic yet relatable. You are able to join several factions such as nerds, jocks, aryans, african americans, mods and greasers etc.
GM: There has been a lot of talk about the verticality of the gameworld. How does this affect gameplay in practical terms?
CDPR: Well okay here's an example. Say you enter an elevator, you can go up or down, that's it. I can't divulge the details at this point but almost all of the gameplay happens in elevators. Which floor you choose is up to you. Maybe you end up in an office space, maybe you end up in the garage. You take a quick peek and then just quite literally move on up in the game world, that is the whole point of vertical gameplay.
GM: The Witcher had many romantic encounters and bumping uglies was a big selling point of the game. What about the sexual relations of Cyberpunk 2077?
CDPR: We wanted to have the player deal with the big techno-philosophical questions such as what can change the nature of man? Well isn't sex the biggest part of human nature? But sex can also be robotic. During the pre-production phase we spent countless hours trying to figure out how to best implement these ideas into the game, in the end teledildonics was the most obvious choice. You might have guessed that the game uses a traditional controller, well you guessed wrong. The game comes with a sexual controller that you jack into your console and connect to your nether regions, it's equipped with ultra sensitive haptic sensors that will enable you to navigate Night City with ease.
GM: Seeing as Night City is a very desolate place, I assume you'll also have dynamic weather in Cyberpunk 2077?
CDPR: Oh no, there is nothing dynamic about this game. Dynamic implies change, and if you think about it, the only constant is change, so we have tried to keep things as constant as possible. It's clear skies all the way through baby.
GM: Let's talk about NPCs. To what extent do they interact with each other and the game world?
CDPR: Night City is a cold and uninviting place where everyone's looking out for themselves and that's it. So a NPC might pass you by on the street without even giving you a sideways glance. Another NPC might suddenly change their direction so as not to encounter you at all. Each and every NPC has their own scripted lifeline and a somber, traumatic backstory so they will very much ignore you and each other. I think we have done a great job simulating the isolated feeling of the dog-eat-dog dystopian future and I can guarantee that you will feel very, very lonely in the big city.
GM: How about the difficulty? Do you have some sort of a dynamic difficulty balancing system in place?
CDPR: Look man I already told you, it's not a dynamic game. There are two difficulty options, easy and medium. If you are a newcomer to the Night City, I suggest you go with either one of them, there's no difference.
GM: The release has been postponed several times at this point. Can you elaborate on this a little?
CDPR: Sure thing buddy. Years ago I read this interview that compared games development to fetal development, in a nutshell once you reach fetal viability you're good to go with the release, sure your baby might be missing some toes or parts of the brain but our culture of coddling will treat this child as an equal anyway so why waste any more time on its development. This has been the industry standard modus operandi for decades. Now, as you might know, we at CDProjekt Red have never been big on convention, so we took the idea, flipped it a full 360 degrees and worked backwards and upwards. Imagine this if you can: instead of giving birth at 9 months, what if you gestated the baby until it was a full grown man? Would that not be the biggest, baddest baby you'd ever seen? We think so and once this giant man-baby with six-pack abs finally bursts out of its womb arrow guns akimbo I'm 100% sure our fans will agree.
GM: Thanks for taking the time, I'm sure you must be busy this close to the release. Time to wrap things up; do you have any last words for the fans?
CDPR: Oh I'm not busy at all, I lost interest in this game long ago, I've been staying home, getting my drink on. As for the last words, here's the deal guys: developers... owe... you... nothing. So keep that in mind, stay safe, lube up and get your controller on because you're about to embark on one hell of a rollercoaster ride of digital debauchery. See you next year for more info on the latest postponements; until then, catch you on the flipside!
Cyberpunk 2077 interview.
Cyberpunk 2077 interview.
Last edited by Jeff on Wed Dec 02, 2020 3:18 pm, edited 6 times in total.
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SenisterDenister
- Haha you're still not there yet
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Get Megatron on board as the executive producer and get me FTP access to the old Wasteland subdomain from Taluntain, and I think we just might make it by the skin of our teethHyacinth wrote:I think a monthly interview like this of other big game titles or topics would be gold.
The Gimp Gazette.
I was thinking of a Cyberpunk fan site in the vein of the old Stalker and New Vegas sites but maybe you're onto something with the inclusion of other games as well. There's a multitude of ways to skin a tooth, but let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Last edited by Jeff on Wed Dec 02, 2020 3:02 pm, edited 1 time in total.
