It appears as though the critical and commercial success of 2014’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt is going a long way to repudiate any sense of disquiet fans awaiting CD Projekt Red’s next venture might have felt. Cyberpunk 2077 is a dystopian third/first person roleplaying game that takes place in the fictional Night City. Everything we know (which is alarmingly little) suggest it to be a bold undertaking for the acclaimed studio, even in consideration of their recent gamechanging bookend to Geralt’s run as The Witcher.
As we inch closer and closer toward the unconfirmed release date of 2019, the lack of details coming out of this project has turned my titillation to disconcern. The ransom controversy that plagued CD Projekt Red earlier this year proved to be little more than a mild setback, as the developers assured fans that the internal files threatened to be leaked were ultimately not representative of the most recent version of the game. As a final word of assuagement the studio promised official information about the game was not far off … but that was four months ago.
Again, were it any other studio delving out such sparse details about a title this daring, I think I would allow myself to feel frustrated or angsty. But I don’t, in part due to what we know about the innovative class system creative consultant (and creator of the original tabletop game), Mike Pondsmith shed light on earlier this year.
There are currently 300 devs putting in work on this futuristic epic according to President and joint CEO Adam Kiciński, they're all reported to be working “very intensely.” This is CD Projekt Red’s most expensive game to date, as the company recently experienced a rise in development costs to compensate for the sudden increase in team size.
CD Projekt Red is determined to the challenge. There must have been some considerable pressure to either produce another title in The Witcher series given Wild’s Hunt’s massive success, or to shit out anything to capitalize on their recent wave of adulation (Gwent, anyone?), but instead the developers have opted to tackle mechanics and a world unique to their own catalog and anything we’ve ever seen before. Although CD Projekt Red continues to tease the official release of details, they make no illusions about how long it may take before Cyberpunk 2077 is ready for release. And although it is both admirable and dispiriting, I wish more AAA publishers had a mind to do the same.
