CD Projekt wants the Cyberpunk series to experience 'a similar evolution' to The Witcher games
As troubled as Cyberpunk 2077 was at launch, it's remarkable to think back to what a CD Projekt Red game looked like just 12 years before. The first Witcher game is almost comically rudimentary next to the lavishly motion captured, ray traced first-person world of Cyberpunk. But it was fun, with a fantasy setting that felt different to other RPGs I'd played at the time. The graphical leap in 2011's The Witcher 2 was nothing short of stunning, and the quality of the sidequests in The Witcher 3's massive open world made CD Projekt my favorite RPG developer just four years later. I'm thinking about that progression now that CD Projekt is moving on to work on Cyberpunk 2077's sequel—and so are the developers.
«Consider The Witcher games and how much they changed with each installment. We want a similar evolution here,» narrative director Igor Sarzyński said in a recent interview with PC Gamer.
What does that mean for a studio that's already gone from scrappy, idealistic RPG dev to one of the titans of the gaming industry? CD Projekt has already proven it can make incredible-looking games. In 2011 The Witcher 2 was already one of the best-looking videogames on the planet, and it also showed a glimmer of the narrative ambition CDPR would really flex in The Witcher 3. The Witcher 2's story branches into two completely separate paths at the halfway point, a bold move that no one's really pulled since. And obviously CD Projekt now knows its way around an open world. Where do you go from there?
«Cyberpunk 2077 was our first venture into a futuristic-sci-fi world with a ton of new gameplay mechanics, narrative tone, themes, and art direction,» said Sarzyński. «Some of the stuff worked almost right out of the box, such as the art,
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