According to CD Projekt RED (CDPR), the fact that their code-named project Orion, the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, is being developed by their US-based studio will allow them to pay more attention to detail.

The AnsweRED podcast was mainly about the Orion project. It’s being worked on by the new CDPR studio in Boston, and according to acting executive producer Dan Hernberg, “Cyberpunk is a unique, obviously American story. It’s got a lot of punk energy, it’s got an American writer, and so it makes sense that the game and the story would be set in the U.S. (It would also look silly if it was set in Eastern Europe!)

“There’s this interesting story after the release of Cyberpunk 2077 that blew up on Reddit at some point, and it’s the manhole debacle. You know, the manholes that cover the streets, right? There was this post with this guy saying that there was this immersive breaking bug in Cyberpunk, and the bug was that the covers for the manholes for a sewer were the manholes that you normally use in Europe, in Germany, for a sidewalk. These are not manholes that you would normally cover on the streets in America. This basically shows you the differences, right? When you go to America, there are things like fire hydrants, where they’re placed and how they look. The street lights, where they are placed, the garbage cans, right? They’re in front of the house, right on the street. In Poland, in Europe, you don’t see that almost anywhere. There’s so much nuance. Dan, when we talk about it, he calls it the Americana,” said Associate Game Director Paweł Sasko.

“Our curbs are different, our color is different on all our signs. Everything is just slightly different. It doesn’t break the immersion, but it’s just that little thing where you go, “Well, maybe this wasn’t made by people who live here or people who fully understand the whole American culture. I also think that being in America allows us to have those cultural touchpoints with the larger American, you know, kind of influence with Hollywood. Obviously, Cyberpunk 2077 was set in LA, and so there’s just all these cultural touchpoints and things that we can kind of interact with, whether it’s music or story or just different parts of America that are interesting to explore,” Hernberg added.

The Boston studio favors CDPR because they can easily attract North American developers, so students from Harvard or MIT can easily join them. They work in conjunction with their Vancouver studio, and Hernberg says the Canadian team is working on something cool for the sequel.

The game’s release is still a long way off.

Source: WCCFTech