Night City flings open its gates
48 minutes of Cyberpunk 2077 are out in the wild – it’s max
Once again we take the lift down from V’s mega-building, and we’re in the crowded city streets of Night City. But this time they’re not just filled with NPCs going about their business in the sunny-yet-neon smoky streets (with a full day/ night scale, it’s not permanently cast in night). You’re also there experiencing it too, thanks to CD Projekt Red’s unprecedented move to share 48 minutes of footage with the world as the first gameplay reveal. Talk about confidence.
Unlike the Witcher games, which revolve around Geralt Of Rivia, an established character from Andrzej Sapkowski’s books, Cyberpunk 2077 is based around V, a character you create and customise yourself. As the game draws from the pen-andpaper tabletop RPG Cyberpunk 2020, this makes sense. But there’s still a lot of crafted story, albeit one where the choice of how to do things is constantly in your hands, and you’re never locked down into following one certain route.
In the gameplay reveal we’re introduced to V and her partner Jackie as they complete a mission, before taking on a new mission to recover a robot. The visuals and the overall scope of Night City are indeed impressive, but it’s the detail that’s truly astounding. We watch as CD Projekt Red guides us through this robot side-quest and makes countless small decisions and tweaks, walking through this lived-in world, and we’re utterly engrossed – but then we remember: thisisjust aside-quest.
Our minds boggle at how dense the whole game could be, this world you shape yourself as V. It’s simply not been done before. As much as Deus Ex impressed, this is augmented cyberpunk to the nth degree. Night City is a real place. At this point you might be sceptical about how much of the gameplay is just a vertical slice of proofing (with the sort of polish Paul Hollywood himself would be in awe of), but with The Witcher 3 under its belt, there’s no doubt CD Projekt Red is a studio that can deliver on ambition.
CHROME AND GOLD
We shouldn’t be too surprised it’s looking good – after all, despite the
OUR MINDS BOGGLE AT HOW DENSE THE GAME COULD BE.
first chunk of gameplay only just being made public, Cyberpunk 2077 has been in development for six years already. Given the level of detail shown in the new footage, you’d be forgiven for thinking we’re still some years off. However, it’s further along than you might think, Cyberpunk 2077’s producer, Richard Borzymowski, has revealed. Currently, the team can play through the whole game from start to finish and get a sense of the complete framework. Of course, there’s a huge amount left to do – finalising assets, playtesting, bug testing, and with the sheer amount of choice there’s so much to the side of what a simple playthrough would entail. Even so, we might be logging into the network sooner than expected.