Cyberpunk 2077 is definitely one of the most promising RPGs coming in the future, and it seems like CDPR wants the game to be better than The Witcher 3 in every possible way, making even side-quests engaging and introducing some gameplay mechanics which will have big repercussions on the whole game.
The latest issue of EDGE magazine, which has been summarized by Reddit user Jackjackea, revealed some additional details on the Cyberpunk 2077 quests. Apparently, CDPR wants to make sure that every quest will feel like a complete story in and of itself.
Related CDPR: Success of The Witcher 3 Gave Us Confidence; Cyberpunk 2077 Has New Animations, We’re Pushing our Engine
Any stories, characters or themes that aren’t explored in depth in the main story are taken to be fully fleshed out in sidequests
“We want to make sure that all of them are up to the standards of the main quest – that there’s nothing that feels like filler, just something to do while waiting for the next quest, or to get more money to buy the next thing. We don’t really like to do that. We want to make sure that every quest feels like a complete story in and of itself.”
The freedom of choice will also be unprecedented, and consequences of choices will manifest at a later time in the game.
There’s more choice to what we’ve just seen than is usually available in videogame quests: for instance, you could take DeShawn’s money and run at the very beginning, eschewing his mission but having to deal with the consequences later. You could make off with Stout’s eddies, too, although we presume you’d have to get the virus on the chip scrubbed off somewhere. “We don’t artificially limit ourselves,” Mills says. “Our philosophy for quest design is, ‘If the player can logically do it, then they can’. And if they can’t, then we have to come up with a damn good reason why.”
CDPR’s Patrick Mills also talked about the cyberpsychosis mechanic, which will bring a negative effect on the character’s mental health if they are over-augmented.
Cyberpunk 2020’s ‘cyberpsychosis’ mechanic, in which players who overly augment themselves with cyberware start to see a negative effect on their mental health, will form part of the game – though CD Projekt won’t go into details. As a quest designer, the Faustian bargain behind transhumanism is fascinating to Patrick Mills. “All the travails of the flesh fade away, and you become a perfect machine of chrome. But you had to buy those body parts from someone, and now you’re in debt to them; if you need parts, you’ve got to go to their store. You have this very utopian idea of being liberated by technology. And it’s like, not so fast – you haven’t solved the problems. The problems are still there, and technology actually makes them worse. ‘High tech, low life’ is one of Mike’s mottos.
Cyberpunk 2077 is now in development for PC and consoles.
