STACK #193 Nov 2020

GAMING FEATURE

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SUMMER NIGHT CITY Following up a game that’s considered by many to be near-perfection isn’t easy. For CD Projekt Red, the huge success of TheWitcher 3:Wild Hunt and its two massive expansions is a hard act to follow, but they’re confident that next mont ’s long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 is up to the task. Words Anthony Horan

member of a band called the Metadwarves. Yes, the music of the future – and the future’s fictional past – plays a big role in Night City – more than just a background blast on your vehicle’s sound system. As with The Witcher 3 ’s world, the entirety of Night City has been handcrafted by CD Projekt Red’s designers. Famously having spent huge amounts of time hand-placing objects inside towns (and inside the houses in those towns) in that game to give the world a more authentic, lived-in appearance, they’ve taken it to similar lengths with Night City. But the density of the environment and the vast array of options available has given them the chance to get even more creative. This isn’t a static, cut-and-paste city; it’s been deliberately sculpted to work as a vital part of the game’s character and the stories being told, and exploration is often rewarded. After the game launches, CD Projekt Red will still have a lot of work to do – there’s a bunch of free DLC to be released, and multiple expansions are planned which, if the two Witcher story expansions are anything to go by, should be very much worth the money. And, in 2021, full- scale PS5 and Xbox

S elling over 20 million copies, winning countless awards and catapulting the developer into true triple-A status, the story-rich, lavish open-world of The Witcher 3 could have defined everything CD Projekt Red did going forward. Instead, as soon as work was done on the Blood and Wine expansion, the team went in a completely different direction, turning to an outside source unfamiliar to most – a 1988 tabletop game designed by Mike Pondsmith. Cyberpunk 2077 puts the player into the body and

(yet still huge) multi-zoned monster of a city where verticality comes very much into play. This time, the game is played in first-person, a design choice that suits the genre perfectly and also avoids some of the awkward character animations (and associated gameplay delays) of the studio’s previous games. The game’s big reveal last year saw the announcement of Keanu Reeves’ voice and rendered likeness as a key part of the game, as Johnny Silverhand, a member

• Cyberpunk 2077 is out Dec 10

Series X versions of the game are coming – free upgrades for anyone who owns the PS4 or Xbox One versions. Which makes Cyberpunk 2077 , appropriately, future-proof.

of a gang of musicians called the Rockerboys (excellent!) However, there’s since been another notable addition to the cast – popular multi-genre electronic singer and musician Grimes, who appropriately plays Lizzy Wizzy, the only human

IT’S ABOUT TIME! While they haven’t revealed exactly how long the game’s story will keep us playing for, CD Projekt Red have decided to focus more on replayability this time around, and claim that Cyberpunk 2077 will be “slightly shorter” than The Witcher 3 . But don’t worry – the constantly branching quests will easily keep players involved for 40 to 50 hours, with the idea being that there’ll be new tales to find on subsequent playthroughs.

mind of a character named V, navigating six densely-packed districts of the fictional west coast metropolis known as Night City, a futuristic dystopia where heavily stylised gangs rule territories, commercialism and technology is everywhere, and almost everything (and everyone) is for sale at the right price. Cyberpunk 2077 runs on a vastly upgraded version of the REDengine used for The Witcher 3 – but while that game was set in a sprawling, lush and massive open world with vast spaces between destinations, Night City is a densely packed, intricate

18 NOVEMBER 2020

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