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NeoGAFs Kent Brockman
[ICYMI] Building the future on pen and paper: CD Projekt Red on Cyberpunk 2077 and moving on from The Witcher - MCV/DEVELOP
“We’ve stuck to as much of the original Cyberpunk 2020 as we can"
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As the upcoming launch of Cyberpunk 2077 looms large in the distance, currently slated for April 2020, it’s hard not to wonder if CD Projekt Red is feeling the pressure. The studio has a stellar reputation, following its astronomical success with The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – a hard act for Cyberpunk to follow, which also marks the studio’s first title outside the fantasy novels from which Geralt sprung.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set in a dark future that could hardly be more different from its previous work. It is another adaptation, though, this time of the cult pen-and-paper RPG Cyberpunk 2020 created by Mike Pondsmith way back in 1988. And that presents a new set of challenges and opportunities for what is the most highly-anticipated title of 2020.
While adapting Andrzej Sapkowski’s fantasy book series for The Witcher was a comparatively smooth transition, adapting a pen-and-paper RPG into an open world game with real-time combat was more taxing, as the game’s producer, Richard Borzymowski explains: “The thing is, every pen-and-paper RPG is essentially turn-based. It’s dice throwing, right? That doesn’t really work when there’s a zillion bullets flying across the screen.”
“We’ve stuck to as much of the original Cyberpunk 2020 as we can, but to keep things enjoyable we’ve had to change some things to make it adapt well into the video game format. From things like character attributes to guns – a lot of it is taken from the core book. We’ve added some new ones, of course, but we’re staying true to what Mike Pondsmith created. It was really important to us to remain faithful to the original, because we know there’s this community of Cyberpunk fans that have been out there since the 1980s. We’re not going to be exploiting the franchise, we’re not going out there saying ‘Hey, this is our game, it’s entirely unconnected to whatever it was before.’ We’re here to enhance Cyberpunk, alongside Mike Pondsmith.”
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