Cyberpunk 2077 is an upcoming action role-playing video game developed and published by CD Projekt. It is scheduled to be released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on 10 December 2020. Adapted from the Cyberpunk franchise, it takes place in dystopian Night City, an open world with six distinct regions. Players assume the role of the customisable mercenary V in a first-person perspective, with skills in hacking and machinery, an arsenal of ranged weapons, and options for melee combat.
Cyberpunk 2077 is developed using the REDengine 4 game engine. They launched a new division in Wrocław, Poland and partnered with Digital Scapes to assist production. Around 500 total staff members are involved with the development, exceeding the number that worked on the studio's previous game, The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith consulted on the project, and actor Keanu Reeves has a starring role.
Gameplay[]
Cyberpunk 2077 is an action role-playing game played in a first-person perspective as V, a mercenary whose voice, face, hairstyles, body type and modifications, background, and clothing are customisable. Stat categories—Body, Intelligence, Reflexes, Technical, and Cool—are influenced by the character classes that players assume, which are NetRunner (hacking), Techie (machinery), and Solo (combat). V must consult a "ripperdoc" to upgrade and purchase cyberware implants; black markets offer military-grade abilities. The rarity of any given equipment is shown by a coloured tier system. V can take cover, aim, run, jump, double jump, and slide. Melee strikes can be dealt with close-combat weapons. There are three types of ranged weapons, all of which can be customised and modified—Power (standard), Tech (which penetrate walls and enemies), and Smart (with homing bullets). Ranged weapons are equipped to ricochet bullets in a target's direction and slow them down in bullet time. Four types of damage can be inflicted and resisted—Physical, Thermal, EMP, and Chemical. Weapon use increases accuracy and reloading speed, which are manifested in character animations. Gunsmiths repair and upgrade weapons. The game can be completed without killing anyone, with non-lethal options for weapons and cyberware.
The open world metropolis of Night City consists of six regions; the corporate City Centre, immigrant-inhabited Watson, luxurious Westbrook, suburban Heywood, gang-infested Pacifica, and industrial Santo Domingo. Its surrounding area, the Badlands, can also be explored. V navigates these locations on foot and in vehicles, which are subject to either a third- or first-person view. Pedestrians are vulnerable to vehicular collisions. Depending on the location, law enforcement may be alerted if V commits a crime. Radio stations are available to listen to. The full day-night cycle and dynamic weather affect the way non-player characters (NPCs) behave. V owns an apartment and a garage. Night City features non-English-speaking characters, whose languages can be translated with special implants. "Braindance" is a device that allows V to undergo other people's experiences. Branching dialogues enable interaction with NPCs and actions in quests. Experience points are obtained from main quests and fuel the stats; side quests yield "street cred", unlocking skills, vendors, places, and additional quests. Quests are acquired from characters known as Fixers. Throughout the game, V is aided by various companions. Consumables, like soft drinks, are used for healing, and objects can be inspected in V's inventory. Minigames include hacking, boxing, auto racing, martial arts, and shooting ranges. The player's in-game choices can lead to different endings.
Synopsis[]
Setting[]
Night City is an American megacity in the Free State of North California, controlled by corporations and unassailed by the laws of both country and state. It sees conflict from rampant gang wars and its ruling entities contending for dominance. The city is reliant on robotics for everyday aspects like waste collection, maintenance, and public transportation. Its visual identity is derived from the four eras it underwent—austere Entropism, colourful Kitsch, imposing Neo-Militarism, and opulent Neo-Kitsch. Homelessness abounds but does not preclude cybernetic modification for the poor, giving rise to cosmetic addiction and consequent violence. These threats are dealt with by the armed force known as Psycho Squad. Trauma Team can be employed for rapid medical services. Because of the constant threat of physical harm, all citizens are allowed to openly carry firearms in public.
Plot[]
The game begins with the selection of one of three lifepaths for the player character V (Gavin Drea or Cherami Leigh): Nomad, Streetkid, or Corpo. All three lifepaths involve V starting a new life in Night City with local thug Jackie Welles (Jason Hightower) and having various adventures with a netrunner, T-Bug.
In 2077, local fixer Dexter DeShawn (Michael-Leon Wooley) hires V and Welles to steal a biochip known as "the Relic" from Arasaka Corporation. They acquire the Relic, but the plan goes awry when they witness the murder of the megacorp's leader Saburo Arasaka (Masane Tsukayama) at the hands of his treacherous son Yorinobu (Hideo Kimura). Yorinobu covers up the murder as a poisoning, and triggers a security sweep in which T-Bug is killed by Arasaka's netrunners. V and Welles escape, but Welles is fatally wounded in the process, and the Relic's protective case is damaged, forcing V to insert the biochip into the cyberware in their head.
DeShawn, furious at the unwanted police attention, shoots V in the head and leaves them for dead in a landfill. Upon awakening, V is haunted by the digital ghost of war veteran turned iconic rock star Johnny Silverhand (Keanu Reeves), believed to have died in 2023 during an attempted thermonuclear attack on Arasaka Tower. V learns from their ripperdoc Viktor Vector (Michael Gregory) that DeShawn's bullet triggered resurrection nanotech on the biochip, repairing the damage to V's brain but starting an irreversible process to overwrite their memories with those of Silverhand, leaving V only a few weeks before the process completes. The biochip cannot be removed, so V must seek out a way to remove Silverhand and survive.
Through reliving Silverhand's memories, V learns that in 2023, Silverhand's then-girlfriend Alt Cunningham (Alix Wilton Regan) had created Soulkiller, an artificial intelligence able to copy netrunners' minds through their neural links. However, the process destroyed the target's brain. Arasaka kidnapped Cunningham and forced her to create their own version of Soulkiller, which would store the minds of its targets in Arasaka's digital fortress, Mikoshi. Silverhand led a rescue effort to save Cunningham, but failed to find her before Arasaka used Soulkiller on her; Silverhand's later thermonuclear attack was a cover to free Alt's consciousness from Arasaka's subnet, but Arasaka captured him and used Soulkiller on him as well.
By 2077, Arasaka was advertising a "Secure Your Soul" program, and conducting secret research into writing a digital copy of a mind into a living human brain, from which the Relic arose. Eventually, V must decide whether to mount an attack on Arasaka Tower to gain physical access to Mikoshi and use Soulkiller to remove Silverhand from their body.
Depending upon player actions throughout the game, V can choose between different options to conduct the attack. V can decide to commit suicide, allow Silverhand to stage the attack with his former crew, mount the attack with a network of allies assembled during the game, or mount the attack solo. Regardless, after successfully using Soulkiller, it is revealed that the damage to V's body is irreversible. Depending on player choice, V either remains in their body, with an uncertain life expectancy, or allows Silverhand to take over permanently, in which case he pays his respects to his friends and leaves Night City to start a new life.
Development[]
Cyberpunk 2077 was developed by CD Projekt Red's studios in Warsaw and Kraków, while the Wrocław office devoted about forty people to research and development. It is based on Mike Pondsmith's Cyberpunk role-playing game franchise; Pondsmith started consulting on the project in 2012. He also appears in it as a character. The game drew its influences from the 1982 film Blade Runner, manga and anime series Ghost in the Shell, and video games System Shock (1994) and Deus Ex (2000). Pondsmith's follow-up to Cyberpunk V3.0, Cyberpunk Red, also made an impact on the lore. The game cost an estimated 1.2 billion Polish złoty (US$313 million) to develop, making it one of the most expensive games ever made.
The game entered pre-production with approximately 50 staff members after CD Projekt Red finished The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine (2016). The team was expanded over time, surpassing the size of the team for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). After the release of The Wild Hunt, the team began to upgrade its REDengine 3 for Cyberpunk 2077, which went on to use the engine's next iteration REDengine 4. CD Projekt Red was granted subsidies of US$7 million by the Polish government in 2017, which was used to hire team members to work on particular themes such as City Creation and Cinematic Feel. In March 2018, a new studio opened in Wrocław to aid the production. CD Projekt Red partnered with several companies: Digital Scapes to craft additional tools, Nvidia for real time ray tracing, QLOC for quality assurance, and Jali Research to procedurally generate the lip sync for all ten localisations. In 2018, CD Projekt Red stated they had focused on optimization from the start of the project. Originally to include multiplayer features, this feature was later decided to be a post-release addition.
The first-person perspective was chosen to immerse players more than what third-person would allow. Cutscenes and gameplay were both made in first-person to seamlessly blend together. The game features full nudity, which game director Adam Badowski said encapsulates the theme of transhumanism—"the body is no longer sacrum [sacred]; it's profanum [profane]". The quest designers focused on enabling players to decide the order in which quests are undertaken. Side quests were often made from unused parts of the main story. The story was made shorter than the Witcher 3's as CD Projekt found that many players had not finished that game as a result of its length. Animation systems were remade to better generate muscle movement, motion capture was improved, and environments were created from prefabricated designs. Reused models had their colours and details altered. Feedback from E3 2018 influenced the non-lethal playthrough and removed the male-female option in character customisation, instead basing it on voice and body type.
The script was written in Polish and a separate team translated the dialogue into English. Persons translating into languages other than English were provided with both the original Polish script and an English localization. The English localization was the base for all language versions except the Polish one, however, it was not a determinant that had to be translated one-to-one and allowed translators to be creative. Some other versions, such as the Russian one, were also based on the original, if the translators knew Polish. English and Polish dialogues were recorded independently of each other, as were some of the other language versions. Screenwriters took part in the recording of Polish dialogues, providing the actors with additional information about the characters and the context of the situation, helping them put themselves into the role. Dialogues previously recorded in Polish or English could be made available to authors of later versions in order to correctly convey emotions by the actors. Polish and English actors participating in the recordings, where the game's creators were also present, could suggest changes to the dialogues, some of which were recognised.
Night City was designed with the help of urban planners, and its architecture drew on the style of Brutalism. The world is loaded with vertical streaming, a rendering technique that omits objects below and above the player's field of view, rendering only the elements that appear on the screen to save memory and make visible objects look more detailed. By August 2018, the story was completed and could facilitate a complete playthrough. The content was nearly complete in mid-2019, with the rest of development focused largely on polishing. Staff started remote work in March 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic, causing a halt in localisation. Despite the studio's disavowal of mandatory overtime in May and June 2019, "crunch time" was implemented in the final weeks. In October 2020, Cyberpunk 2077 was released to manufacturing.
Marcello Gandini's designs from the '80s and '90s shaped most of the vehicles' looks. It features a motorbike from the Akira manga and anime film and a car inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). In July 2018, actor Keanu Reeves was approached for the role of Johnny Silverhand, codenamed Mr Fusion to maintain secrecy. He would lend his likeness to, voice, and do motion capture for the character. Reeves' dialogue amount is second only to that of V. Having first spent fifteen days recording his lines, Reeves was later granted his request that Silverhand's screen presence be doubled. Masane Tsukayama portrays Arasaka Corporation leader Saburo Arasaka in Japanese for all regions and the voice acting is not localized. Musician and producer Grimes voices the frontwoman of Lizzy Wizzy and the Metadwarves.
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt composer Marcin Przybyłowicz wrote the score with P. T. Adamczyk and Paul Leonard-Morgan. They created seven and a half hours of music, customising assets for every quest. Genres like rave, intelligent dance music, and industrial had an effect on their approach, infusing the tracks with a '90s feel. Analogue synthesizers were employed as much as could be achieved. In-game radio stations play original songs by numerous licensed artists. Sebastian Stępień served as head writer and creative director until early 2019.
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