Quest director explains how Cyberpunk 2077 Phantom Liberty's story changed based on feedback from the base RPG: "Believe me, I tried"

gamesradar.com:

Phantom Liberty cemented Cyberpunk 2077's multi-year comeback, and CD Projekt Red quest director Paweł Sasko says the expansion's story benefited considerably from player feedback on the base RPG.

"We knew that players were unhappy with certain things, certain choices we had made," Sasko said in a recent interview with TheNeonArcade. "They appreciate one thing but did not appreciate another choice, and so on. That was all taken into account. When you look at Phantom Liberty's story, I hope you can see it, because goddammit, believe me I tried. And other people obviously as well." 

Sasko singles out a few specific ways that Phantom Liberty's story looked to smooth over some pain points in Cyberpunk 2077. For example, he says "there are clear moments that we sort of calm down the action so that you as a player can feel fine and justified to just go to the open-world and do stuff. There are moments where you're even asked to do the open-world. There are moments we tried to blend as much open world as we can with the main story."

Then there's choices and consequences – pillars of RPGs. "So many players pointed out that they enjoyed what was in Cyberpunk, but they want more of that," Sasko says. "There was too little for them. So we looked and said obviously, obviously that should be in there. We should look into it. That was one of the things I was really pushing for, both my open-world designers and my quest designers, please, always the choices, always the branches."

Telegraphing, or communicating to players what's happening and why, was another big topic during Phantom Liberty's development. He compares Cyberpunk 2077's approach to The Witcher 3's, and reckons CDPR swung a little too far in the other direction for the