CYBERPUNK 2077
Stanisław Swiecicki, one of the writers on Cyberpunk 2077, augments our knowledge
Writer Stanisław Swiewicki reveals the tricks for turning a tabletop RPG into a videogame
After it was announced in 2012, Cyberpunk 2077 went quiet. It finally had a big blow-out of information back at E3 2018, in the form of a trailer and a chunky 50-minute gameplay demo. The game is CD Projekt Red’s next big release after The Witcher 3, and is based on the Cyberpunk 2020 pen-and-paper roleplaying game. We sit down with Stanisław Swiecicki, one of the writers, who also worked on The Witcher 3 and is a big fan of tabletop RPGs, to catch up with the project. OPM: So you’re one of the writers on Cyberpunk 2077. How big is the writing team? Stanisław Swiecicki: It’s around eight to ten people. Ten at the moment, I think. So, it’s quite a team. OPM: Writing a game like this must be a monumental task. Where do you begin? SS: At the beginning it’s like all the teams sort of meet up and on a higher level it’s decided what’s the direction. And then we come up with sort of a story outline so to speak – a very bird’s eye view of how the story progresses. […] Narrative is key at CD Projekt Red. I like to say that narrative is key, rather than story is key. Because it all comes down to all the narrative teams really working closely. Every department has a different focus: whether everything is logical, whether it works as levels, how good the cinematics and the
mood of the scene is. Then it comes back to us and we organically change the scenes in that way, as the other teams suggest. We write the dialogue, it comes back to us again. So, it’s really a multilayered process. OPM: How do you approach the writing, given V is so customisable and you can approach things in so many different ways? SS: V is you, basically, so what we wanted to make the strongest narrative part of it is the feeling of immersion. That it’s a character who you can really see from their perspective. Which is why it’s FPV [First-Person View]. V is a mercenary in this world. Being a mercenary in Cyberpunk means being in this world where you have megacorps on one hand and organised crime and psycho gangs on the other, you’re really carving a way for yourself. In many ways, what I like about the fact that V is you, is that we’re really close to the player, discovering the world together with you. V is a gun for hire on the rise about to become an urban legend. OPM: How does your approach to writing change when you’re dealing with an established license? SS: We use the mythos as a strong road sign for us in terms of mood and atmosphere, because we’re making a similar universe to what you’ve seen in 2020, but we’re giving ourselves the creative freedom to do major tweaks to what the universe is, and what rules it has. That’s sort of needed because Cyberpunk 2020, which I played as a role-playing game, was pen-and-paper right? So we’re making a very different game over here. But for us it’s really about the mood and what’s important about the world. OPM: Did playing pen-and-paper RPGs when you were younger set you on the path to writing RPG games? SS: The story team has all sorts of different Middle Cyberpunk’s world is a brutal one. Left We expect levelling up will be a very visible, physical process in the game. Right Even the medics are tough nuts. characters, some of them acclaimed writers of books. My origin story is very much from pen-and-paper to role-playing games. I played pen-andpaper for like 10 years when I was younger. When I heard that we were going to be doing Cyberpunk… you know, I used to play Cyberpunk before, so it was a really, really cool moment. OPM: What other tabletop RPGs did you play? SS: Warhammer, Dungeons & Dragons: Forgotten Realms, World Of Darkness – that’s Vampire: The Masquerade, Werewolf: The Apocalypse, Mage: The Ascension.
[CYBERPUNK] HAS A LOT OF POWER IN TERMS OF SOCIAL RELEVANCE AND REALLY RESONATES WITH THE FEARS AND PROBLEMS WE HAVE TODAY.
OPM: So having been a player and a fan of Cyberpunk 2020, how does it feel to be working on a game in that universe? SS: [laughs] It feels pretty awesome, you know! For me the moment when you’re in the mega building and the elevator takes you down – before that point you only got glimpses of the world – but when you get off that elevator and you’re in this bustling world full of crowds. There’s so much sensory stimuli coming at you. It’s how I always wanted it to look, on a very personal level. To see a city of the future, which is vivid, and filled with story hooks and NPCs that have their own tale to tell, and street stories where you can just allow the narrative of them to fully pull you in. That’s the moment that for me really does it every time! OPM: When you tackle something like The Witcher you’re dealing with pre-established characters like Geralt, but the star of Cyberpunk is the setting. Does that give you more freedom in crafting the narrative? SS: Every guy and girl who has played the pen-and-paper before will have a moment of like “Oh, I know a bit of this world”. And for everyone who hasn’t, we’re opening our arms wide saying “Okay, we’ll show the whole world to you”. It’s not necessary for you to know the lore of the pen-and-paper game to get into this world. But yeah, in terms of picking where narrative goes it was a lot more of a wider task in the sense of the scope of things and the motives we would choose, as the main thing was wider, but also in the sense that we’re really putting a lot of focus on you choosing what your story is. One of the things we had in The Witcher that we sort of made our paradigm when it comes to narrative was that big and small choices matter, and we’re going to keep that up in Cyberpunk 2077.
OPM: What is it about the Cyberpunk universe and its rich lore that stands out as unique to you? SS: I think it’s the punk component for me that’s prominent, for me that’s about freedom. The world we’re creating, and the delineation of that by making [V] a mercenary, is that in this world you know all that matters for a cyberpunk is being in control of who you are. It’s a very brutal universe in which everyone tries to bring you to your knees. The megacorps for whom life is very cheap and people are meat, and the psycho gangs who run the streets, and you’re really carving a way of your own between modifying your body with cyberware and taking jobs – and the price you pay for this freedom this is high because you take jobs which no-one else wants. Yeah, for me the most prominent thing is the motive of freedom and identity, of deciding, you know, your own path. OPM: What are some of your favourite Cyberpunk references you’ve squeezed into what we’ve seen so far? SS: The moment when trauma team is descending – I was on the team writing that. Trauma team and the meat wagon sort of mythos – so, you know, really tough guys in ambulances flying around, but also armed to the extent that you can’t really call them health care workers. They’re super-dangerous to be on par for this world. The moment when they descend it’s like “All right, yeah, this is the vibe I used to imagine”.
And also the machine gang you make a deal with. With the gangs we really want to emphasise that we don’t want them to be our comic book-esque villains – they’re not abominations that decided for almost no reason to put cyberware in themselves. It’s a dark, dangerous world and some people who aren’t able to make it to the megacorps or don’t want it… it’s a human need to seek identity, and some people just gravitate towards the gangs. Although their faces are modified they’re still human underneath, you know. It touches upon a universal feeling we all have: they need to belong to a group. OPM: Do you think Cyberpunk is more relevant these days than when it first came out? SS: If a group of rich people controlling a major part of the world’s assets, and, you know, treating people as they do isn’t relevant nowadays then I don’t know what is. I think cyberpunk is just like the Gothic style in architecture. It comes back in cycles, and I think it’s the same with cyberpunk. It has a lot of power in terms of social relevance and really resonates with the fears and the problems we have today, and that’s why I think it’s a genre which is so exciting right now. OPM: What do you think about people who say that games shouldn’t be political? SS: I think what makes games powerful… the moments like when I feel that a scene becomes powerful, it’s when they touch upon universal human emotions, like fear, loss, love, friendship, trust, and sometimes that touches upon the political spectrum. I think one shouldn’t stray away from that. For me anything that makes you feel emotions… the emotions become stronger the more it touches upon you as a person the better. Sometimes politics is part of that in a natural way. […] In the sort of storytelling we’re going for we really want to be a game for mature audiences, so it has to have all those themes. OPM: Given how many different decisions you can make as a player as to how you approach situations, will it be possible to shy away from much combat in the game? SS: Through the fluid class system we’re really going to give you the opportunity to personalise the combat experience for yourself. You’ll never be limited, and won’t make a single choice like, ‘Okay, I’m a Techie, or a Solo, or a Netrunner’, but it’s always going to be about mixing and picking and choosing, so that you can play the character you want. You’ll be able to defeat the game’s challenges in many ways. Sometimes it’s going to be through going in there guns blazing, sometimes it’s going to be about setting traps or employing viruses, sometimes it’s going to be about deciding – like you saw in the presentation – to just go in there even though it’s a dangerous situation, you take the risk and you do the talking. But it is a very dangerous world, so there will be times you have to reach for your gun. OPM: What’s your favourite stat in the game? SS: I think it would be the Cool stat! Because in the end Cyberpunk is really still what Mike [Pondsmith, designer of Cyberpunk 2020] said: “it’s style over substance”. So yeah, that’s my favourite.