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.
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.