Summary of the Polish Q&A with developers (during Polish Community Gathering 23.11.2019)

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I’ve been in Warsaw last Saturday to take part in another CD Projekt yearly polish community meeting, this time centered around Cyberpunk 2077. The meeting took place inside a New Meta gaming bar, decorated with some CDPR and GOG visuals. At the entrance we were given a Cyberpunk armband with a number and also received a special coins (which should look familiar to anyone who bought physical edition of The Witcher 2) for alcoholic beverages, but food and non-alcoholic beverages at the bar were available for free. There was a special Cyberpunk menu prepared for the event, with drinks and dishes referencing Cyberpunk lore, so you could eat some kibble and SCOP, while drinking a glass of Silverhand. I personally got an opportunity to eat some kibble (in reality, chili con carne with some tortilla chips) and drink Nomada (apparently it’s an official polish translation for Nomad. I must admit, it’s going to be pretty hard for me to get used to it), Blood Razor and… the one drink the name of I don’t really remember, but it’s the one with the dead (in this case, jellybean) worm at the bottom. Afterwards we’ve got the showcase of the E3 2019 gameplay with polish voiceovers (which was previously shown on PGA, but this time around it was a full version) and Q&A with the developers. The event was concluded with the quiz (from the gameplay we just saw) and lottery with awards. I managed to take a third place in the quiz and was awarded with a placard and Samurai shirt. There were also Samurai jackets, but those were given for the first and second place plus another one in the lottery, so sadly I missed my opportunity, but third place was still worth it, so I’m not complaining. In the end, we were given Cyberpunk bags with bunch of gifts inside.

As usual, it was a very nice party and an opportunity to meet people from CD Projekt Red and fellow members of the polish forum. Unfortunately, I had some personal worries on my head that prevented me from fully enjoying myself (which was definitely noticeable at times), but it was a really good time regardless. Hopefully at the next event (which very likely will happen next year, for obvious reasons) I will be a better company.

Now I will try to recall everything noteworthy that we learn from the Q&A session.

- on the question about if we actually get an option to do exactly what Johnny said and burn the city down, the response was just: „Of course!”

- in terms of length, main story of the Cyberpunk 2077 might be a little shorter then in The Witcher 3, but will make up for it with much higher replayability. However at the same time they still didn’t measured the length of the entire game with all the encounters and smaller quests accounted for, only the main story and major sidequests

- about the option to continue to play the game after the ending, the response was that they found a really cool way to do it, but it’s something for the players to see. They definitely want for the people to enjoy their game as long as possible

- while most of the times waiting for too long before picking a dialogue option will only result in the person that you are having a conversation with throwing some annoyed comments at you (as I saw in the gameplay), in some situations, like during conversation with Royce and Dum Dum from the previous demo, doing that will have consequences

- about sidequests: The Witcher 3 quest structure was compared to a single line, with a bunch of branches sticking out of it, which sometimes go back to that single line. In Cyberpunk 2077 those branches grow more branches, which then often tie around each other. It means that sidequests that we decide to do will often evolve into more sidequests and those quests will have an impact on other quests, as well as the main storyline, to a much greater extent then they did in The Witcher 3. Thanks to all those branches it will be hard to find one playthrough, which will be exactly the same

- when questioned if the access to certain locations will be blocked based on the choices we made, like for example in the second act of The Witcher 2, they responded that most locations should be still available for us to visit, no matter what choices we'll make, but our choices might determine to what extent we get to explore those places. Some locations however won’t be available outiside of certain paths

- about car customization: they know this is a pretty often requested feature, but they are asking for a little more patience before they will say anything about it. Sounds like they do have some plans for something like that

- V’s apartment will look differently based on the Lifepath we chose and it will change in some ways over time. They also included certain mechanics tied to V’s apartment, which will allow us to „express the personality of our V” through it, but it’s something that they want for the players to discover on their own

- about health regeneration: we will be able to restore our health using consumables like food and the drug inhaler. Some of those healing items will have an instant healing effect, while others will just slowly restore our health over time or work only in specific circumstances. There is also a cyberware, which will provide us with health regeneration, however it will take a spot that could be used for a more useful peace of cyberware

- they are aiming to make the car physics, while not on the simulator level, definitely more realistic then in something like GTA

- day-night cycle have a pretty organic impact on the gameplay. During quests some places might be less or more guarded based on the time of day or in the night you may find some guards already sleeping, making it easier for you to sneak in. Some story scenes might also change depending on the time of day they are taking place in

- reaching the borders of the playable world will work the same way as in The Witcher 3, so you are informed about getting close to it and then game will forcefully turn you back

- police won’t intervene when they see you commiting some smaller crimes, like for example beating up some random dude on the street, because they treat it as just an everyday occurence in Night City, but if they see you commiting more extreme crimes, like pulling a gun out and shooting bystanders or driving through them with your car, they will absolutely try to fry your ass

- dynamic weather won’t affect the gameplay, but the world will react to it. For example, in the rain some people will pull out their umbrellas, while the ones who don’t have those will look for a place to hide from the rain

- player will be able to craft pretty much any usable item, with exception of clothes and cyberware, however it will be possible to craft different modifications for those, which will allow him to modify their stats and the way they look

- car racing minigame is not going to be just a traditional car racing, they will also add some kind of extra Cyberpunk touch to it, which should allow us to really test the speed limits of our car

- regarding the question about the ability to own some kind of cyberpet in the game, the answer was that they know something about it, but they simply won’t tell (I don’t think it was referencing Flathead, since they talked about it in another response)

- about how destructible the environment is, we will be able to destroy around ¾ assets around us, but of course we won’t be able to go as far as utterly destroying entire district

- their goal is to make every playstyle equally valid and to not favorize one over another

- they prepared an unique set of animations for every major character in the game, for things like movement, conversations and combat

- one „simple” thing that wasn’t simple at all was such a crucial feature like… skipping cutscenes and dialogues. Since the game doesn’t have a traditional cutscenes like WItcher 3 did, they couldn’t just „leap through” the scenes like in their previous game, without taking the player out of experience. In fact, they developed around 10 different protypes just for that feature, but ultimately they found a really cool solution they seem to be satisfied with, but again, it’s something that they wish for players to experience for the first time on their own

- about sex scenes: they did a lot of mocap for those and they believe that their amount should satisfy everyone, which should calm down anyone who assumed that they will just skip those entirely just because the game is in first person

- some cyberware will require the ripperdoc services in order to install it into V, but there will be some cyberware modifications, which we might put into ourselves on the spot. For example, while only ripperdoc can install the mechanism of Mantis Blades in our arm, afterwards the blades itself can be detached and replaced on our own (but first will have to find the right type of blades to replace it with)

- we will be able to install the Sandevistan upgrade, which will allow us to move as fast as the Animals we saw in Deep Dive video

- regarding the old version of „Chippin In” being included in the game or on the soundtrack in some form, their answer was for us to wait and see, and that they are aiming to make as many people happy as possible. Also it’s been said that they are going to talk more about game’s music in general very soon

- the diversity of NPC’s character models will be certainly much greater then in The Witcher 3 and they made an insane amount of them, however there is still a possibility that, due to the memory limitations, they might not be able to put all the unique models they made in the game and might be forced to make some compromises, but they work hard to ensure a distinctive look for as many NPC’s as possible without completely tanking the game’s performance

Well, that’s about all I remember right now. Maybe with time I will recall something more.
 
- in terms of length, main story of the Cyberpunk 2077 might be a little shorter then in The Witcher 3, but will make up for it with much higher replayability. However at the same time they still didn’t measured the length of the entire game with all the encounters and smaller quests accounted for, only the main story and major sidequests

Fine by me. Quality > Quantity

- they are aiming to make the car physics, while not on the simulator level, definitely more realistic then in something like GTA

- about how destructible the environment is, we will be able to destroy around ¾ assets around us, but of course we won’t be able to go as far as utterly destroying entire district

Bold :oops: I hope they deliver on that.

- police won’t intervene when they see you commiting some smaller crimes, like for example beating up some random dude on the street, because they treat it as just an everyday occurence in Night City, but if they see you commiting more extreme crimes, like pulling a gun out and shooting bystanders or driving through them with your car, they will absolutely try to fry your ass

Cool, very in character for the city. One of the many things I’m eager to see in the game is how security forces work in each district.

- dynamic weather won’t affect the gameplay, but the world will react to it. For example, in the rain some people will pull out their umbrellas, while the ones who don’t have those will look for a place to hide from the rain

Shame they couldn’t do something a bit more interesting with that (e.g. make acid rain slowly hurt V if they stay under it for a bit too long.)

- regarding the question about the ability to own some kind of cyberpet in the game, the answer was that they know something about it, but they simply won’t tell (I don’t think it was referencing Flathead, since they talked about it in another response)

Honestly I wasn’t expecting this feature. Might be nice, assuming it ends up in the final version of the game.

Also it’s been said that they are going to talk more about game’s music in general very soon

Can’t wait. This is one of the most interesting facets of the game for me.
 
I have never found the appeal of playing a... let's say 30-hour long campaign twice with slight variations over a 50-hour long unique playthrough. One of the things that made witcher 3 so special to me was the length, each of the characters and story bits was done in such depth. They took a lot of time with each part of the story. It wasn't rushed just for the sake of making things intense (Yet the last few missions felt a bit rushed).

It's their design decision though, so be it. I hope that the amount of side quests make up for it.

Everything else sounds totally awesome.
 
- about how destructible the environment is, we will be able to destroy around ¾ assets around us, but of course we won’t be able to go as far as utterly destroying entire district

Do that mean we'll be able to enter building by windows?
Cause that would be a real innovation as far as open world goes.
 
Man all the new info is awesome, especially the parts about destructible environments and their commitment to the driving mechanics. Seems they're making a lot of smart design choices regarding body modifications as well.
 
This was the best piece of info to come out for the game in about an year. Precise questions and precise answers. Thank you for this.
 
Thank you for this valuable piece of information. The "replayability" and "craft pretty much any usable item" is exactly what I wanted to hear. ^^
 
Below I included some extra bits from my reddit post, which I couldn't put in the post above due to the forum limitations. Nothing major, but I still think it's kinda interesting.

- the design of Night City was inspired by Cyberpunk 2020 books (of course), but also Los Angeles and San Francisco, since NC is located between those two cities

- again they strongly praised the partnership with Mike Pondsmith, his guidance and passion for the project. For them the most memorable and invigorating moment of the entire development process was Mike's reaction when they show him living, breathing Night City for the first time. After seeing it, they knew that they are going in the right direction with this adaptation and returned to work with way more energy then before

- about modding: they want to add modding tools to the game, but they are not ready to make any declarations about it yet

- we will be able to install the Sandevistan augmentation, which will allow us to move as fast as the Animals we saw in Deep Dive video, making everything around us slower in the process, with exception of those fast enemies, whose speed up animations are then replaced by regular moving animations. While from the player’s perspective it’s something expected and normal, for animation team „simple” replacement like that was a huge technological challenge, but still they just refused to take a shortcut on that and delivered

- about difficulty settings: while they would want to include as many differences as possible between each difficulty level beyond just stronger/tougher enemies, due to the huge scope of the game, it might be pretty difficult, so they can't promise anything

- about the useless loot: they are aiming to keep the balance between loot that will be useful for the player and one that will be useless from player’s perspective. The reason why they are keeping loot that’s useless for the player is that even if it’s useless for them, it’s still something that was useful for the characters in the game and it wouldn’t be logical for all the NPC’s to carry only stuff that is beneficial for the player. In other words, their goal is to utilize that useless stuff as a way to expand the world building of the game by including, as a part of the loot, things that make sense for the location we are exploring or enemies we fight, even if it’s something that we, as a player, may disregard simply as a junk. Hopefully my explanation wasn’t too confusing
 
- in terms of length, main story of the Cyberpunk 2077 might be a little shorter then in The Witcher 3, but will make up for it with much higher replayability
As an RPG fan this thrills me to no end as it implies branching dialog/missions so in one play-thru it'll be impossible to see and do it all.

UNFORTUNATELY in many games the supposed "replay-ability" boils down to different sets of "class skills" requiring slightly different approaches at various (not terribly numerous) points in the game. Or going direction 'A' rather then 'B' at a couple points in the game. So 95% of the game is exactly the same no matter what approach you use to play it.

- about the option to continue to play the game after the ending, the response was that they found a really cool way to do it, but it’s something for the players to see. They definitely want for the people to enjoy their game as long as possible
Also good to hear. It rather strongly implies procedurally generated content.
This is perfectly fine for "post main story" play but I hope they don't rely on it to much on it during the "main story".

while most of the times waiting for too long before picking a dialogue option will only result in the person that you are having a conversation with throwing some annoyed comments at you (as I saw in the gameplay), in some situations, like during conversation with Royce and Dum Dum from the previous demo, doing that will have consequences
HEY CDPR
Please insure that the length of these timers is increased if one plays the game in "Story" mode (or whatever you're calling it in CP2077).
Some of us don't have the reaction speed of a 16-year-old.

- about health regeneration: we will be able to restore our health using consumables like food and the drug inhaler. Some of those healing items will have an instant healing effect, while others will just slowly restore our health over time or work only in specific circumstances.
I suppose I should quit whining about this (don't hold your breath), but given the FPS basis for the game it's sort of inevitable.

Why not at least make that " ...cyberware, which will provide us with health regeneration ..." the basis of health regen? If it's important to you (and how you play the game) it's available but it's not the default.

- police won’t intervene when they see you commiting some smaller crimes, like for example beating up some random dude on the street, because they treat it as just an everyday occurence in Night City, but if they see you commiting more extreme crimes, like pulling a gun out and shooting bystanders or driving through them with your car, they will absolutely try to fry your ass.
YES !

- player will be able to craft pretty much any usable item, with exception of clothes and cyberware, however it will be possible to craft different modifications for those, which will allow him to modify their stats and the way they look
One has to wonder how important to game balance this will be.
If a player decides to rely on NPC crafting (of course costing more Eddies then doing it yourself) will the game be more difficult because it's assumed they player will be crafting items "superior" to those available from NPCs?

- car racing minigame is not going to be just a traditional car racing, they will also add some kind of extra Cyberpunk touch to it, which should allow us to really test the speed limits of our car
I hope this isn't to central to gameplay.
See my comment on some of us not having the reactions of a 16-year-old.

- about sex scenes: they did a lot of mocap for those
Not even going to ask about the actors who had to be filmed during the mocap ...
Nope.
Not asking.
I don't wanna know.

- we will be able to install the Sandevistan upgrade, which will allow us to move as fast as the Animals we saw in Deep Dive video
YES !
I wasn't too thrilled with the inhaler we saw in earlier demos.
But I'm sure it still exists.
*sigh*

- the diversity of NPC’s character models will be certainly much greater then in The Witcher 3 and they made an insane amount of them, however there is still a possibility that, due to the memory limitations, they might not be able to put all the unique models they made in the game and might be forced to make some compromises, but they work hard to ensure a distinctive look for as many NPC’s as possible without completely tanking the game’s performance
I'd imagine this will be a SIGNIFICANT issue for consoles.

- about difficulty settings: while they would want to include as many differences as possible between each difficulty level beyond just stronger/tougher enemies, due to the huge scope of the game, it might be pretty difficult, so they can't promise anything
See my comments above about increasing timers and making other "twitch" based game mechanics slower/simpler at the lower (lowest?) difficulty settings.
 
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Very cool, thank you!

About the length and replayability: I found The Witcher 3 to be perfect, it wasn't too long whatsoever. Precisely because of the (sometimes) slower pacing it delivered on a deep story. Nothing felt rushed and by the end I really connected with the characters and cared for them. That's definitely one of the things why W3 is so highly praised.

I will gladly take a longer game with good story over any game with replayability. I just can't roleplay as someone else and immerse myself when replaying the game, by forcingly making other choices than what I did in the original playthrough. It feels like I'm not making MY choices. So yeah, replayability is less important - to me of course.
 
I wasn't too thrilled with the inhaler we saw in earlier demos.
But I'm sure it still exists.
*sigh*

The Kereznikov inhaler is probably still available in the game. I'm wondering now how much would foes use inhalers and, most importantly, how different from Sandevistan would Kereznikov work on both V and the NPCs.

From V's perspective, it seems like Kereznikov is going to work like a cheap and disposable version of Sandevistan. From the NPCs' perspective, Kereznikov might work like an accuracy enhancer, perhaps?
 
The Kereznikov inhaler is probably still available in the game. I'm wondering now how much would foes use inhalers and, most importantly, how different from Sandevistan would Kereznikov work on both V and the NPCs.

From V's perspective, it seems like Kereznikov is going to work like a cheap and disposable version of Sandevistan. From the NPCs' perspective, Kereznikov might work like an accuracy enhancer, perhaps?
Depends how closely the follow the CP2020 rule set.
Sandevistan gives a temporary boost to your reflexes and is only usable at intervals. Think of it as a shot of adrenaline, too much for too long will fry your nervous system.
Kerenznikov is basically a nervious system replacement. You're always on speed. This is why it takes time to get use to it after having it installed, you need to re-learn how to walk and reach for/grab stuff.

Neither increases inherent/learned abilities, they just let you move and act faster (well, they sort of boost "dodge").
 
Below I included some extra bits from my reddit post, which I couldn't put in the post above due to the forum limitations.
In the future, you can always just immediately post "Reserved for additional info." under the first post, and then edit in the extra bits. That's what I do. Shakes fist at 10,000 character limit.
 
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