The January 2020 announcement that the long-awaited Cyberpunk 2077 will be pushed back to a later release date was met with a bittersweet response from fans. CD Projekt Red will have longer to perfect their expected hit, so in the meantime, let’s look at everything we know so far.
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This game has been one of the most highly anticipated since its developer first announced they were developing it back in 2012, and now – seven years on – fans were finally been given an expected release date at E3 2019.
CD Projekt RED have already revealed a few details about the next installment in the Cyberpunk franchise, though, with many leaks and rumors to give fans an idea of how things will play out when it eventually hits the shelves.
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When is Cyberpunk 2077 coming out?
During the Xbox conference at E3 2019, movie star Keanu Reeves, who was revealed to be in the game during the preceding E3 trailer, revealed an original release date of April 26, 2020.
However, on January 16, 2020, CD Projekt Red announced that Cyberpunk 2077 “won’t make the April release window” and rescheduled for September 17, 2020.
We have important news regarding Cyberpunk 2077’s release date we’d like to share with you today. pic.twitter.com/aWdtR0grYV
— CD PROJEKT RED (@CDPROJEKTRED) January 16, 2020
In their announcement, they acknowledged that the game is “complete and playable” but that they needed “more time to finish playtesting, fixing and polishing.”
While many fans obviously expressed disappointment, the announcement was generally met with understanding and appreciation for the developer’s choice to perfect the game rather than rush it out.
What do we know about Cyberpunk 2077 so far?
We could easily write reams and reams about expected features, rumors, or details about Cyberpunk 2077 (as there’s a lot out there!) but we’ll try to keep it as snappy as possible for you.
Generally speaking, fans have already been given a 48-minute gameplay reveal trailer, followed by snippets of information about how story mode will work, the size of the map, character creation tools, and more.
Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay reveal trailer
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Cyberpunk 2077 story mode details
As is the case with many roleplaying experiences, Cyberpunk 2077 will be judged on the quality and complexity of its story mode, and fans have already been given some insight about different aspects of the campaign.
First of all, we already know that the map will be “huge”, which should come as no surprise. This was confirmed by the official Cyberpunk Facebook page, which revealed Night City – the game’s main setting – will hold six different districts, all of which will be jam-packed with huge buildings for players to explore.
The following was posted by the page: “Floors stack. The Witcher 3 was, in a way, much flatter – the activities were scattered. Here, the world can be huge, but it can be huge upwards or downwards.”
In an interview with OnMSFT, producer John Mamais says Cyberpunk will feature around 75 ‘street stories’, which he describes as sidequests designed to explore the world and level up a character. He also said all the quests are custom done, with nothing automatically or procedurally generated.
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Character creation will have a huge impact
Players will not only be able to carve their own story, but depending on what type of character they create, the missions they undertake will differ – according to quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz. And, there’s even more layers to the story than just that.
“There are many ways to complete missions based on how you’ve created your character,” Tomaszkiewicz said during an interview with AreaJugones, where he suggested quests would be more complex than other games developed by RED.
Character creation looks to be on another level in Cyberpunk 2077.
He continued: “In The Witcher, we had a basic loop in the gameplay, finding non-linearity in the missions section. This time, the gameplay will also have a non-linear character. I think this is where the big difference lies in terms of the complexity of our missions.”
Cyberpunk 2077 will allow fans to create the perfect aesthetic for their character and even piece together their backstory.
Aside from this information, we now know – as of July 1- that Cyberpunk 2077 will have a total of three origin stories available for players to follow. The route that they take, however, will depend on a number of factors.
“The player in Cyberpunk 2077 can create a custom character that has one of three origin stories, that we call lifepaths: you can be Nomad, Corpo, or Street Kid,” lead quest designer Pawel Sasko revealed when speaking to VG247.
“Each of that lifepaths has a different starting location and story background that are strongly connected with the origin story. Anything more I say can reveal too much from the story, so I will leave it like this.”
Shape the backstory of your character in Cyberpunk 2077.
Cyberpunk will have minigames to rival Witcher’s Gwent
One of the most lauded features of The Witcher 3 is one of its minigames, Gwent, and Cyberpunk 2077 is set to have its own alternatives. Senior level designer Miles Tost has announced hacking, driving, and other minigames in a Tumblr Q&A video.
“A cool thing about this minigame [hacking] is that it’s not a binary thing, it’s not so much about success and failure so much as how big you win,” the design chief said.
“The fantasy behind it being that the better you are at this hacking procedure, the more control you get over the actual network that you’re hacking. And that manifests in additional rewards on top of your main objective, being added to you and maybe your inventory.”
Gwent, the popular card game in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
Other Cyberpunk 2077 details
CD Projekt Red has confirmed in multiple interviews that multiplayer will be included in the game, but that the team will be solely devoted to single-player until long after the initial release date. Don’t expect multiplayer for a while, and don’t expect much info about it for a while as well.
What we do know for certain, though, is that talk of this game requiring a lot of space on our hard drives looks to be an absolute certainty. In fact, according to a PlayStation store page, we’ll need 80gb of free space (minimum!) to play it.
To give players an idea of just how big the download would be, that’s larger than The Witcher 3 and all of its DLC combined.
Producer John Mamais said he was worried if Cyberpunk 2077 would work on Nintendo Switch, but acknowledged that they put Witcher 3 on Switch when they initially thought it was “too heavy.”
Last updated on February 5, 2020.
So, there you have it! That’s everything we know about Cyberpunk 2077 so far, but we’ll keep updating this article in the future with more news, leaks, and rumors when they’re made available to us.
