For years, “mature” games meant little more than violence and sex. But the director of Cyberpunk 2 says the industry needs to actually grow up. Pawel Sasko is especially proud of what the team accomplished with The Witcher 3.

Ten years after launch, The Witcher 3’s influence on its entire genre is undeniable. This open-world RPG set a new standard for how fantasy worlds could be built and left millions of gamers hungry for more sophisticated, thought-provoking adventures.

Pawel Sasko—lead designer on The Witcher 3 and now director of the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel—sees Geralt’s third outing as a turning point for different reasons. In a recent GamesRadar interview, he notes that The Witcher 2 was a product of a time when “mature” games were mostly about two things: “One of them was aggression, just killing. The other was nudity and sex.”

An Industry-Wide Shift

Sasko is happy that The Witcher 3 became part of a change—a game that, while it still featured combat and sex, also dealt with more nuanced themes. The script—packed with layered characters and tough moral choices—remains one of its most praised elements, and such complexity was rare in big-budget games at the time.

It’s a trend that CD Projekt continued with Cyberpunk 2077. The game even won praise from Josh Sawyer (director of Pentiment and Fallout: New Vegas) for its handling of romance and sex. Sawyer, who has often criticized these mechanics as exploitative, said the Polish studio managed to weave them naturally and thoughtfully into the narrative.

For Sasko, this isn’t just about CD Projekt. “It’s a broader process” happening across the industry. The reason? Big-budget games are no longer the domain of twenty-somethings; now, they’re often made by people in their forties with families and new priorities. Gamers have grown up, too. “When you’re in your 30s or 40s, the things you thought were cool in your teens or twenties just don’t hit the same.”

This shift has inspired a running joke about the “dad simulator” trend—like 2018’s God of War, which rebooted its adolescent edge into a more reflective story inspired by Cory Barlog’s own fatherhood. We don’t know yet if Cyberpunk 2 (which won’t be its final name) will feature any dads, but it’s clear the developers are focused on deeper, more grown-up storytelling.

Source: 3djuegos