What Cyberpunk 2077's Design Got Wrong, According to One of Its Lead Developers

ign.com:

When Miles Tost moved from The Witcher 3 to Cyberpunk 2077 in 2016, he soon realized that he was dealing with a unique challenge. Despite both being RPGs, the two “couldn’t be more different,” with CD Projekt aiming to make a “gigantic leap forward” in terms of the freedom that Cyberpunk 2077 offered with gameplay. As a level designer, Tost was asked to create levels that supported every style of play, from brute force to stealth to everything else in between, all in a huge open world.

“As insane as it sounded, it also sounded f*cking awesome, and boy were we up to the challenge,” Tost said.

Of course, we know what happened next. Cyberpunk 2077 struggled when it was released in 2020, especially on older consoles like the PlayStation 4. Even beyond its technical problems, though, many players observed its shortcomings as an immersive sim. In particular, it did a poor job of making the various playstyles feel meaningful, dampening the sense of reward gained from exploration. Cyberpunk 2077 has since recovered somewhat, but CD Projekt remains keen to figure out exactly what went wrong with its ambitious RPG.

Tost’s observations were part of a GDC 2023 panel entitled “What Cyberpunk 2077 Taught Us About Non-Linear Level Design,” which delved into the issues that CD Projekt Red encountered in trying to make branching paths feel rewarding and special. Like many of CD Projekt’s developers, Tost has a blunt and self-deprecating sense of humor about Cyberpunk’s launch. When a power surge makes it difficult to make out some of his level design diagrams during the talk, he joked, “It wouldn’t be a Cyberpunk talk if everything was working fine.”

But these quips belie a company-wide desire to learn as many lessons as possible from its