The Witcher has evolved drastically over three games. I wonder what Cyberpunk 2 will be like?
As problematic as Cyberpunk 2077 was at release, it’s remarkable to think back to what CD Projekt Red’s game was like just 12 years earlier. The first Witcher game seemed almost comically rudimentary next to the lavishly moving, ray-traced first-person world of Cyberpunk. But it was fun and the fantasy setting felt different from other RPGs I was playing at the time. The graphical leaps from 2011’s The Witcher 2 were stunning, and the quality of The Witcher 3’s massive open-world side quests made CD Projekt my favorite RPG developer four years later. I’m thinking of this development even now that CD Projekt has moved on to work on a sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 – and so have the developers.
“Think about The Witcher games and how much they changed with each installment. We want a similar evolution here,” said narrative director Igor Sarzyński in a recent interview with PC Gamer.
What does this mean for a studio that has already gone from scrappy, idealistic RPG developer to one of the titans of the gaming industry? CD Projekt has already proven that they can make incredibly good looking games. The Witcher 2 was already one of the best-looking video games in the world back in 2011, and even then it showed how CDPR’s narrative ambitions will really come to fruition in The Witcher 3. The story of The Witcher 2 diverges into two completely separate paths halfway through the game, which was a bold move that no one has done since. And apparently, CD Projekt has now come to the open world. What’s next?
“Cyberpunk 2077 was our first foray into a futuristic sci-fi world, with tons of new gameplay mechanics, narrative tone, theme, and art direction,” said Sarzyński. “Some things worked almost immediately, such as the art, city design, music, interactive scene system, gameplay styles. Other aspects, such as character development, NPC interactivity and optimization, took more time. That’s natural; it’s impossible to do everything the first time solve. Now that we’ve iterated every game element and it’s working well, we’re going to focus on connecting them even more tightly and creating a coherent, fully immersive experience.”
Source: PC Gamer
