2077 definitely needs a playable Netrunner clone.
Robert Purchese from Eurogamer delivered another CDPR-related article, this time about Cyberpunk 2077 from Mike Pondsmith’s perspective. Worth checking out! I’ve just about wrapped up Blood and Wine (absolutely sublime), and I couldn’t be more excited for this game.
What impressed him most, however, was how much CD Projekt Red knew about Cyberpunk. “They knew more about a lot of the things we did in the original Cyberpunk game than anybody we’d ever talked to,” he says. “There were points where I was going, ‘I had forgotten that,’ and I wrote the damn thing! I realised these guys are fans. They loved it because they had grown up playing it. Nobody had really looked at it from that standpoint before.”
CD Projekt Red shrugged and explained: “We had Communism and we had Cyberpunk.”
“And that,” Pondsmith says, “sealed it for us.”
When he struck his deal with CD Projekt Red, Mike Pondsmith had many advantages over the studio’s other major licence partner Witcher author Andrzej Sapkowski, who openly bemoans his lot. Sapkowski had no faith in games and no faith CD Projekt Red would actually make one. A decade later, Pondsmith - who had plenty of faith in games already - could play The Witcher 2 and see development of The Witcher 3. He had also spent time working on intellectual property at Microsoft so he knew what kind of deal he wanted to cut. “Suffice to say we made a lot more money in this deal than Sapkowski,” he tells me. “I don’t want to retire but I could.”
Glad he cashed out, but we haven’t seen anything at all of the game yet, and it’s been a long time since the teaser.
Mike is a great guy. Not to mention very savvy. But the biggest thing in his favor here was how much they seem to love Cyberpunk.
Oh no.
I assume this means microtransactions, and possibly lootboxes.
OK. Somewhere out there, the next great indie developer is building something I haven’t heard of yet, and it won’t be designed primarily around microtransactions and games-as-a-service. I’ll play that game instead. I’m find dumping CDPR from my ‘devs I love’ list the same way I have so many others, when they got to this point.
Hopefully, I have this all wrong :)
Cyberpunk 2077 Loot Boxes confirmed!
CDPR have built a lot of good community will over the years. I wonder if this will translate to them being given the benefit of the doubt, and people staying calm until more concrete information comes to hand - or whether the internet will instead fly into a rage and start delivering developer death threats. ;)
This could just as easily mean a Gwent-like component
I don’t think it’ll be loot boxes, but who knows
There’s nothing inherently wrong with developing a game that can make money for years if the price point compared to the entertainment provided is good, and the system isn’t pay to win. That being said, I’d be lying if this didn’t make me mildly nervous. But I’m willing to wait and see before jumping to any conclusions.
My heart skips a beat everytime this thread gets bumped
I’m ok with this …looks like a hybrid model…single player than when you’re done, multiplayer world perhaps…lets face it…MMO’s are just single player games till you get to the ‘end game’ which are raids and pvp
there , I said it
I wish they would have tried this with a different game. But right now it can mean so many different things. I just find the timing after the EA spectacle regarding lootcrates unfortunate. Let’s see where they take this.
Must admit, it has me concerned, but if it sticks to the multiplayer side of things, I think I could live with others paying them to make good games. As long as the extra funds don’t just feed the need for more multiplayer and microtransactions, taking away from the great offline single player experience.
Why are you folks jumping to loot boxes? This could mean anything, and given their track record, it will most likely be take-my-money awesome.
Maybe it just means Soapstone Messages.
“Try tongue but hole.”
“Amazing chest ahead.”
“Woman therefore liar.”
Multiplayer might help the cyberpunk setting, too. In the Witcher games, Geralt traveled the countryside, mostly alone. As his character was so singular, so legendary, it made sense for the gameplay to reflect that. Cyberpunk settings rely on densely populated areas, with lots of chatter on the internet-equivalent and lots of huddled masses to slip through on the rainy streets. There are many specialists but very few legendary figures–and those that are legendary are, more often than not, villainous.
Here’s speculation: imagine a set-up like From Software’s Demon’s Souls, where other players graffiti the world your character walks around with clues, curses, and traps. Rarely, a friendly stranger can fight by your side, and rarely, some jerk can gank you.
More speculation: the Matrix in Harebrained Schemes’ Shadowrun adaptations was fine. The associated Shadowland BBS provided a place for a bonus store, a place to find missions, a place to read prewritten chatter. For this project, it could be a place for real life players to chatter in their cyberpunk argot, hire each other for tough missions, and buy/sell secrets and stuff to each other. The upshot is that it resembles a busier, more chaotic world that CDProjekt would have to program.
It was a joke… saying that I bet people jump immediately to loot boxes.
That’s my concern as well… the GTA V Effect. Go ahead and make your multiplayer stuff, if you must, but please don’t forget us single-player folks, the ones who bought millions of copies of Witcher 3.
If CD Projekt released Cyberpunk as nothing but loot boxes, they’d still be my most beloved dev of all time for Witcher 3. I’ll give CDP the benefit of the doubt.
Not to mention, I just don’t care about loot boxes, nor get the drama.
Shadow of War was roundly trounced due to its micro transactions, and playing the game, I wouldn’t know they existed but for Internet hand wringing.
There is zero chance this results in positive results for gamers.
That quote could easily have been written by an EA exec.