CGI teaser trailer from January 2013 and here is
the making of. Here is an accurate
analysis of the trailer by IGN.
Originally Posted by
IGN
The trailer is short but communicates quite a bit about the game world. The woman featured within it is not a robot, but a heavily augmented human. In the world of Cyberpunk many modify themselves with artificial elements, often in pursuit of some ideal beauty. The catch is that with every modification the potential to go crazy rises as artificial elements of the body clash with the organic. Sometimes those psychotic breaks can result in the kind of violence you see in the trailer. In Cyberpunk 2077’s setting of Night City special MAX-TAC agents, also known as Psycho Squad, are deployed to fight against those who lose control.
Summary
- Open world action RPG
- Near futuristic setting with ultramodern technology in the corrupt and tech-advanced world of the year 2077
- Set in the sandbox of Night City (fictional west coast American city) in a country where mega-corporations prop up the government
- No map gating based on story progress
- Sequel to the pen and paper game designed by Mike Pondsmith in 1990
- Primarily single player but has multiplayer
- First person and third person
- Advanced RPG mechanics based on pen and paper RPG system, upgraded to the 2077 setting
- Gigantic arsenal of weapons, upgrades, implants and cool high-tech gadgets
- Character creation
- Choose your gender
- Choose your appearance and clothing
- Choose from different character classes
- Non-linear character progression with cybernetic implant system
- Non-linear, complex and mature story
- Morally ambiguous choices
- New dynamic conversation system
- Rise to power story about someone who rises from a filthy gutter to stand against a hostile world.
- Many factions
- Type of character created, appearance and past actions influence quest options and outcomes
- Set in a decadent and degenerate human society
- Core theme is "style over substance"
- Inspirations include System Shock, Fallout, Baldur's Gate, Deus Ex and Skyrim
- Cyberpunk 2077 will be a much larger game than The Witcher 3
- CDPR wants Cyberpunk to be a franchise
- The Witcher 3 composer is returning
- CGI trailer graphics represent the target for the actual game
- Cyberpunk 2077 began development in 2012 and will not be discussed before 2017
Overview of Cyberpunk 2077 (January 2013)
The world of Cyberpunk 2077 presents a grim vision of the future. Tech advancement went hand in hand with the decay of society. Body augmentations invented to serve society simply multiplied the problems, and sometimes lead to mayhem on the streets. New inventions led to addictions and poverty became an even larger problem.
In Cyberpunk 2077, the player will be thrown into a dark future. The metropolis of Night City is a stage set to tell the tale of one individual, raised on the streets, who tries to lift himself up from the gutter and find a way to survive amongst boostergangs and megacorporations in a city of filth and sin. Drugs, violence, poverty and exclusion haven’t disappeared by 2077, as people stayed as they were for centuries – greedy, closed-minded and weak. But not only ghosts of the past trouble mankind, but new issues have appeared. Psychos go on rampages and the streets are filled with junkies addicted to a new form of entertainment – the braindance, a cheap way to experience the emotions and stimuli of someone else, someone living a more exciting life.
[...] This is the world of 2077. The gap between high and low is bigger than ever. Drugs, violence, braindance, psychos on the loose… Will you be able to function in this defunct society or end up a BD-junky with nothing left, set aside like garbage - still living someone’s else life – not aware of what’s going on around you? Whether you like it or not - this is the age of braindance decadence; this is Cyberpunk 2077.
Story, character and setting
The format of the story (June 2012)
Originally Posted by
Gamastura
"
Players should be able to choose how deep they want to enter the story or the plot," said CD Projekt's head of marketing, Michal Platkow-Gilewski. "If they're really hardcore, they can really dig deeper and deeper and deeper, and if they're just casual, they can still learn about the characters and the story, but they'll do that by going in another direction."
While CD Projekt isn't talking about specifics for Cyberpunk just yet, Badowski said the team plans to add this depth by creating
plenty of optional content for players, spanning everything from "new quests, characters, areas," and more.
By reorganizing the game's optional story elements and creating a more focused main plot, the team hopes that Cyberpunk will be able to attract and hold the attention of a much wider audience, while still upholding the studio's dedication to rich, well-realized stories and worlds.
The focus of the plot (May 2013)
Originally Posted by
IGN
“The psycho squad is just one of many cool elements in this world," Sebastian explains. “We had several ideas for this short teaser and had to focus on one of them. Augmentations and cyberware is a big subject in the world, and that’s why it’s in the teaser. But it won’t be a game about police hunting cyber-psychos. That’s a sub-plot… The story will be low-level.
We are not going to save the world, or even save a city. We are focused on the main character and his problems, or her problems.”
Possible character classes (October 2012)
Originally Posted by
Eurogamer
There are nine classes - known as Roles - to pick from in the game. They are Cop, Corporate (businessman), Fixer (dealer-type), Media, Netrunner (hacker), Nomad (gypsy warrior), Rockerboy (rebel rockers!), Solo (assassin) and Techie (renegade doctors and mechanics).
These were the classes for Cyberpunk 2020 - the game that CDPR wishes to stay true to so the classes in Cyberpunk 2077 should be either these nine or something like them.
Character customisation (August 2012)
Originally Posted by
CVG
"As opposed to the regular fantasy set-up with mages, warriors and archers, we're going for something different," said Momot. "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."
He went on to say, "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."
More about character customisation (May 2013)
Originally Posted by
IGN
Character customisation, for instance, was necessarily not an option in Geralt’s world. But in Cyberpunk 2077, it’s self-defined role-playing:
your style and personality will have deep and far-reaching effects on the world and how it reacts to you. “We will have several features that allow you to
create your [visual] style, and your style will affect gameplay, storyline and relationships between characters,” explains creative director Sebastian Stepien. “
Your appearance and your dress will change the behaviour of NPCs, and also the story also in some parts,” Mateusz adds. Style and appearance works together with the personality you create for your character and express in conversation to determine how the world reacts to you.
The new dialog system (May 2013)
Originally Posted by
IGN
“
It’s about telling story via what happens, not cutscenes or other features,” Mateusz says. “To do that we need to create a totally new unique dialogue system – we’re doing that right now, it should be awesome.”
The setting (August 2012)
Originally Posted by
CVG
"
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," said Momot.
More about the setting (October 2012)
Originally Posted by
CDPR
A multi-thread, nonlinear story designed for mature players (a CD Projekt RED trademark) will take place in the sprawling metropolis of Night City and its surroundings. Players will have a chance to visit places well known from "Cyberpunk 2020", including
a combat zone completely taken over by gangs, the legendary Afterlife joint and the nostalgic Forlorn Hope.
The surroundings were described as "surrounding wastelands" in
their Siggraph 2013 PowerPoint. They also confirmed that the game was third person + first person (without any elaboration).
Building the city (January 2013)
Originally Posted by
IGN
The city is being designed so it doesn’t look like a purely futuristic metropolis.
Older elements of buildings will be mixed in with more modern structures to make it look like the city was built in layers to create a more realistic, Blade Runner-esque style. Badowski commented, "
It’s important to show that the city was not built in a day."
Multiplayer and graphics
Cyberpunk has some form of multiplayer (March 2013)
"It will be a
story-based RPG experience with amazing single-player playthroughs, but we're going to add multiplayer features," Badowski said.
They were "thinking about something" for The Witcher 3 at that time.
Unofficial:
The kind of multiplayer that we can expect based off job listings (August 2013)
Originally Posted by
Nirolak
Given the posting lists things that are relevant to both regular gameplay as well as database backends, it seems they will probably have both direct player interaction and some kind of backend services that will presumably consist of things like multiplayer stats tracking, campaign telemetry data, and other such things. [...] They put up another technical posting directly under the Cyberpunk category that makes it sound like a pretty traditional multiplayer setup.
The trailer represents the level of graphics that they are targeting (January 2013).
The technology in the world of Cyberpunk 2077
Entertainment in 2077 (January 2013).
Originally Posted by
The Verge
Among these is a new kind of entertainment called "braindances."
These digital recordings let viewers fully experience events in their mind — the sites and smells of an explorer out on an adventure, for instance, or if you're into underground recordings, you can check out what it's like to be a serial killer. In 2020 braindances were still a nascent technology, but in 2077 they've become a
massive entertainment industry that has incited widespread social problems. "People live someone else’s life while sleeping in the gutter," explains Janiszewski. "It’s like a new drug."
A braindance is a new form of media in the 21st Century, which consists of a digital recording of a person's experience. The viewer can stream a braindance directly into his neural system via a special brain augmentation, called a BD player. Braindances allow the viewer to experience all brain processes registered, including emotions, muscle movements and all stimuli perceived by the recording person.
The braindances made by megacorporations have relatively simple and attractive themes, allowing the viewer, for example, to feel the full experience of an explorer with all the appropiate thrills, sweats, smells, views, sounds and even the drive and curiousity that pushes some men to go beyond the horizon in defiance of fear and physical weakness. But there is also a darker and more controversial side to braindances - because some recordings are created illegally in the underground, free of megacorp oversight, You can enter the mind of a serial killer, seeing not only the monstrosities he performs, but also living out his lust to kill and the fulfillment of that desire.
All kinds of these emoitions and stimuli can be achieved from the comfort of an armchair for a reasonable price, which makes BDs
the most popular form of mass entertainment in 2077.
More about the impact of braindances (January 2013)
You haven’t experienced the latest New Hollywood recording? You’re nobody! The streets live with braindances, everyone just got crazy and wants to be a part of this new entertainment fad. Some people push it even too far and they cannot stop living other people’s lives. If you’re not linked to a braindance right now, you are probably discussing what happened to you during your last session. Of course, just like every great new cultural movement, BDs have people who criticize them. Just watch
these two guys arguing about this phenomena.
How new technology affects society in Cyberpunk 2077 (January 2013)
Originally Posted by
Polygon
"This is what the street loves; everyone is into braindances," Stępień said. "New Holywood lets you be a space pilot, but there's also an underground for illegal recordings, for example, putting you in the mind of a serial killer. The problem is that this new medium is completely addictive. So people are thrown out of their houses and onto the street, because they don't pay their rent. They lie in the gutter and still experience some cool braindance, but don't know what is going on around them.
"This is just one of the new social issues the player will encounter. Another are
psychos — people who went too far with cyber implants and just lost it; they are more machine than human and they can't handle it.
The woman in the teaser trailer is one."
Cybernetic implants in Cyberpunk 2077 (January 2013)
Originally Posted by
IGN
“In 2077 as we imagine it, technology will be so advanced that implants will fit in the tip of a needle, making modification easy. The decision to change will therefore be largely aesthetic and ostensibly harmless. Realskin synthetic skin looks real but is better than real. It’s soft, it has pores that subtly release sweat, but it is so much more. It’s amazing, those who adopt it look like pumped, modified dolls, because they are perfect, or some version of it.
When people choose modification, they’re making a statement, they’re expressing a preference.”
“
When somebody walks around with a chrome hand, it’s not because there’s some underlying technology that makes their hand look like that. It’s because they think chrome hands look cool. When somebody has a leg with servomotors, it’s because they choose to look extreme (like the best new carbon fiber bike). And their choice is completely based on style, it extends and enriches their style. You’ll get access to a rich arsenal of firearms, but if you want to have blades because they look cool, go for it. All these elements will make it into Cyberpunk 2077.
'Style Over Substance' is our core theme, after all.”
NPCs may talk in multiple languages and you may require a translator implant (March 2013)
In an interview with dubscore.pl, CD Projekt RED’s Sebastian Stepien said, “Decisions are not yet made, but we are thinking about some kind of system which could tell more about the game world.
“
The idea is to record everything in its original language. If there are, for example, Mexicans in the game, they will speak with slang. All performed by Mexican actors.
Then a player could try a translating implant, and according to its level, he will get better or worse translation.”
