CD Projekt RED has officially confirmed that Cyberpunk 2, formerly known under the codename Project Orion, has moved beyond the conceptual stage and entered pre-production. Concrete details remain limited, but the early picture suggests that the studio is not simply preparing another tour of Night City: according to Mike Pondsmith, the sequel will also feature another city, with a mood he described as something closer to a Chicago that has gone badly wrong.

The story of Cyberpunk 2077 has become one of the more dramatic turnarounds in modern games. After its disastrous 2020 launch, CD Projekt RED spent years rebuilding and improving the game, while the Phantom Liberty expansion ultimately delivered both critical recovery and strong commercial results. In May, the Polish company announced that Phantom Liberty had surpassed 10 million copies sold, and later confirmed that total sales of Cyberpunk 2077 had moved beyond 35 million units. That gives Cyberpunk 2 a very different context: this is no longer a sequel to a wounded brand, but the next major step for a franchise that has been rebuilt into one of CD Projekt’s main pillars.

The game is still far from release, however. CD Projekt is currently using the name Cyberpunk 2, but that is not necessarily the final title; for now, it mainly signals that this is the next major game in the Cyberpunk universe. As of the end of April, 96 developers were working on the project, which is being led by CD Projekt RED North America, with the Boston and Vancouver teams supported by staff in Poland. The studio previously confirmed that several key figures from Cyberpunk 2077 and Phantom Liberty are involved, including Gabriel Amatangelo, Paweł Sasko, and Igor Sarzyński.

As for the content of the sequel, this is where the hype needs to be handled carefully. A larger and more immersive open world, more advanced AI, deeper cyberware systems, and a new storyline are all reasonable expectations, but CD Projekt RED has not yet presented those as an official feature list. What is clearer is that the sequel is being built around Unreal Engine 5, and that Mike Pondsmith, creator of the original tabletop Cyberpunk RPG, has already seen material from the game. Pondsmith has said that Night City is still present, but that the team is also working on another city. He described its atmosphere as not feeling like Blade Runner, but more like “Chicago gone wrong”.

That is a particularly interesting direction because one of the strongest characters in Cyberpunk 2077 was Night City itself: not just a map, but an enemy, a trap, a drug, and a promise at the same time. If the sequel really uses more than one city, CD Projekt RED will have to create contrast not only through size, but through society, architecture, visual identity, and gameplay systems. There is still no release date, and The Witcher 4 remains the company’s largest active project, so Cyberpunk 2 is almost certainly still years away. What is already clear is that the sequel is not starting from zero. It is being built on a painfully repaired, now commercially powerful franchise.

Source: CD Projekt, CD Projekt, VGC