CD Projekt Lead Quest Designer Thinks AAA RPG Development Is Hitting A Wall

thegamer.com:

Developing triple-A games is an expensive business. In fact the costs of making the ambitious, story-driven, and visually stunning games that owners of current-gen consoles and powerful PCs expect have been ballooning for years. For example, the graphically impressive The Callisto Protocol reportedly cost $162 million to develop. For longer and more complex RPGs meanwhile the effort and resources required can not only be intensive but lengthy.

In a recent roundtable interview, a CD Projekt Red developer addresses these issues. Famed for its expansive role-playing games, CDPR is the Polish studio behind The Witcher 3 and Cyberpunk 2077. Its lead quest designer and the quest director for Cyberpunk 2077 Paweł Sasko responded to a recent editorial published by PC Gamer that remarked that "the cinematic BioWare-style RPG is dead, it just doesn't know it yet".

Related: The Witcher 3’s Fast Travel Is Its Most Important Mechanic

Apparently that editorial caused "a commotion" among CD Projekt's designers. "Everyone actually, after reading this article, said 'we mostly agree, actually, with the thesis'", Sasko told PC Gamer. "At least when it comes to triple-A, we are just running at a fucking wall, I think, and we're gonna crash on that wall really soon".

This "wall" to which Sasko referred is the ever escalating costs and complexity associated with making games like Cyberpunk 2077. CD Projekt's ambitious sci-fi RPG is one of the most expensive games ever made, with a reported budget of $316 million. The game is critically acclaimed and appreciated by its fans, but it came in for a storm of criticism when it launched due to its numerous bugs and glitches. But those quick to criticise should realise just how difficult the