CDPR dev admits that Cyberpunk 2077 ‘could have been better’

techradar.com:

In a recent stream, Cyberpunk 2077’s quest director Paweł Sasko took the time to answer questions from viewers about the highs and lows of CD Projekt Red’s dystopian sci-fi RPG. 

In what might otherwise have been a run-of-the-mill stream of Cyberpunk 2077, Sasko used the platform to answer some fan questions about the title’s story composition and had a lot to say about its narrative design (via PCGamesN(opens in new tab)). 

He acknowledged that the game has an “insane amount of linearity” and that the different branches of player choice were “not satisfactory”. He went on to highlight how developers tend to see “nonlinearities in a much broader sense than players do”, which meant that “for the players [Cyberpunk 2077’s story choices] were not enough”. 

That said, Sasko did describe some of the player criticism as “slightly overblown”. “People claim there’s nothing, [but], if you use such a strict definition [of what branching storylines are], then you get to the fact that literally only the biggest branches matter and nothing else,” Sasko said. “I’m not saying that we did a… wonderful job. I think it’s fine. I think it could have been better.” 

You can find the full stream on Sasko's Twitch channel(opens in new tab). His discussion of players’ questions and Cyberpunk 2077’s narrative design can be found at the 1:17:00 mark if you want to hear his comments for yourself. 

Sasko also drew comparisons between Cyberpunk 2077 and CD Projekt Red’s previous project: The Witcher 3. The Witcher 3 set something of a bar for story-driven open-world RPGs with branching narratives, and Sasko spoke highly of it: “it’s not possible to have identical playthroughs [of The Witcher 3] at all”. 

“Players expected more [from Cyberpunk], because of