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The makers of The Witcher discuss its new game, Cyberpunk

Ryan Fleming
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Following the announcement of its existence shortly before E3 in June, we haven’t heard much from Polish developer CD Projekt RED regarding their Witcher follow-up, Cyberpunk.

The name alone obviously brings to mind several preconceived regarding the cyberpunk theme, but the game itself is still something of a mystery. To satiate the fans, the developer decided to open itself up and answer a few questions on its website.

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Marcin Momot, community manager for CD Projekt RED fielded the questions, and discussed such things as the influences for the game, the affect choosing a particular class can have, customization, and more:

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Richie79: What elements are you using as inspiration (references) for making Cyberpunk?

Marcin Momot: There are quite a few actually. Aside from the obvious ones like the works of William Gibson or the Blade Runner movie, we also take from the first Ghost in the shell, both anime and manga. We’re also looking up to ShellShock because of its interesting approach to gameplay. The first part of Deus Ex is also a very important source of inspiration to us.

Guipit: Will choosing your class affect the story? If so, how much?

MM: It’s always been very important to us to deliver mature and ambitious entertainment. It’s not going to be any different this time around. We want to keep the role system from the pen & paper version of Cyberpunk. As opposed to the regular fantasy set-up with mages, warriors and archers, we’re going for something different. In Cyberpunk, each character role will offer a set of special skills that will impact your stats in many different ways. That’s where the challenge kicks in, we want to create a game where character customization will be strongly tied with the plot. Now going from that, we believe that we can make a game where, with many different role choices, you will get a very strong, engaging story, just like it was with The Witcher.

Mihura: Will there be full customization of our character like a D&D game, things like gender, ethnicity, moral stand point, sexuality…etc or we will be restrict to something like Geralt from TW2?

MM: We definitely want to give players way more freedom with customization of the main protagonist then they had with Geralt in The Witcher series. We are planning on letting them change their statistics, equipment, implants and much more.

Saoe: When can we expect to see more info, screenshots or first videos from the game?

MM: I keep bothering guys from the art team to release some new content soon but they don’t want to listen to me for some reason. I won’t give up though, so make sure to follow our website and social media because when I finally convince them, you will be the first ones to know.

Geralt The Riv: Will the setting be a totally new designed by CDPR(You know like name of the planet, country, state, city etc) or just a mimic of a current location?(New York, L.A. Miaimi etc…..)

MM: Cyberpunk’s story takes place all over the world, but we’re going to focus on it’s most characteristic venue – Night City. One thing is certain, we want to make a game with an open, living world that stays true to the source material.

No word yet on when we can expect the game to be released or what system(s) it will be on, but that should be coming in the coming weeks and months.  

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Ryan Fleming
Ryan Fleming
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Ryan Fleming is the Gaming and Cinema Editor for Digital Trends. He joined the DT staff in 2009 after spending time covering…
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