A senior CD Projekt Red official explained that the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 sequel aims to mimic the evolution of The Witcher series.

A senior CD Projekt Red official has spoken about how the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel will mimic the evolution of The Witcher series. This sneak peek at the upcoming RPG comes 13 months after the studio confirmed that another Cyberpunk 2077 game – codenamed Orion – is in the works.

With the recent release of Phantom Liberty to critical acclaim, CDPR has run out of projects nearing completion and is now refocusing on long-term efforts, such as the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel and the fourth entry in The Witcher franchise.

The sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 will try to imitate the development of The Witcher series. That’s according to CDPR’s Director of Narrative Igor Sarzynski, who told PC Gamer in a recent interview. Elaborating on this, the official emphasized that The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings offered a radically different experience than the first part of the franchise. Which, however, was transformed again by The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. CDPR is aiming for a “similar evolution” between Cyberpunk and its upcoming successor, Sarzynski explained.

“Some of the stuff [in Cyberpunk 2077] worked almost right out of the box, such as the art, city design, music, interactive scene system, playstyles,” Sarzynski said, indicating that the upcoming sequel will probably leave these elements untouched.

The levelling system and NPC interactivity could also return significant changes, as the official said CDPR is happy with their current state while admitting that both took quite a while to “get it right”.

As a reminder, these aspects of the game were last updated in September 2023. That’s when the developer released a massive 2.0 update to the game. The transformative patch brought the game closer to CDPR’s original vision. So now the company is ready to take another stab at the dystopian RPG formula. Only this time, it’s not starting from scratch. Instead, the developers plan to tie existing game elements together “even more tightly” to create a “cohesive, full immersion experience” with the second entry in the Cyberpunk franchise, Sarzynski concluded.

Whether CDPR will succeed in this remains to be seen for some time. During an investor presentation in October, another company official revealed that the project is still in the “concept design” stage. This suggests that a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 is still years away from release.

Source: PC Gamer