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[NaNoW]

Interesting read

E3 2018
How Cyberpunk 2077 Quests Will Be Different From The Witcher 3

Kirk Hamilton
Yesterday 2:30pmFiled to: SPLITSCREEN
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It’s hard to talk about CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077 without talking about the studio’s last game, The Witcher 3. And so it came to be that a lot of our E3 interview with Cyberpunk’s quest designer involved discussion of both games.

As part of Kotaku Splitscreen’s ongoing coverage of E3 2018, my colleague Jason Schreier sat down with Cyberpunk 2077 quest designer Patrick Mills to talk about the ambitious RPG. This was just after Jason saw the game’s apparently very impressive hands-off demo, which he wrote up in an article on this very website. It was an interesting chat, if a little bit frustrating, since argh, I just want to play this game already. You can listen to the whole thing below or download an MP3 here.



Below is a lightly-edited transcript of a couple of times when Mills talked about CDPR’s approach to quest design and how this game will feel a bit different from Geralt’s big adventure.

Jason Schreier: Let’s talk about your specific role. So you’ve been a quest designer, you worked on The Witcher 3, you work on Cyberpunk. How is the quest design mentality for you guys changed since The Witcher 3? What are some of the things you wish you could do better, what are the things you want to do differently for Cyberpunk?

Patrick Mills: Well, one of the things, working on the expansions for The Witcher 3 that we started to look more into was the principle that if it was logically believable that your character would do a certain thing, or could do it in a different order, we would want to support that. And we want to do that with Cyberpunk as well.

Of course, now we’re dealing with a character that might have more options. Geralt, he had very good senses, he had a good sword arm, and a good knowledge of monsters, and that took him through. In this case, you can play, you know, mixing and matching with these three different archetypes. These three different skill-sets that we have, the Solo, the Techie, and the Netrunner. And so that’s an extra layer of complexity. Our quests are extremely complex right now. It’s… yeah, it’s daunting! But we hope we can do it.

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Schreier: What’s the difference between Solo, Techie, and Netrunner?

Mills: These are all character-types from the original Cyberpunk 2020 [pen-and-paper RPG]. And the Solo is sort of the go in, shoot, get the job done, go straight on in. Even there though, we have different types inside that. You saw in the demo, V runs around and wall runs and things like that. That’s one archetype you could take, but Jackie on the other hand is a different type of Solo, lifts cars to create cover and that sort of thing.

Schreier: [Jackie] is the companion character you had, I should say.

Mills: Yeah, of course. And then the Technie is more interested in technology, and hacking, and breaking things and fixing things. The Netrunner is, you saw just a little glimpse of that in the demo where she hacks one of the gangsters.

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Schreier: So basically, she takes the shard, which is this little chip, out of the gangster, sneaks up behind him, takes it, and then hacks into it and uses it to disable guns for everyone else in the complex.

Mills: Yes. So that’s sort of our third archetype, is the Netrunner.

Schreier: Cool. And it seems like you’re not picking one of these. You just go through and…

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Mills: No. You fluidly move between them. In the original [pen-and-paper game] you’d pick a class, and you could pick skills from other classes, but you were that class and you had special abilities unique to that class. We don’t want to do that. We want you to be able to move freely between those.

Schreier: So you were saying, that just increases the complexity when it comes to quest design? Do you guys have to consider [the question of] is every single quest going to go in potentially three different directions depending on which class you are, plus…

Mills: ...plus all the different story beats, and what order you do things in, and how you play the different characters off one another. So yes, they are extraordinarily complicated.

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Schreier: So obviously I came out and talked to a bunch of folks at CD Projekt Red when I was working on my book, and the chapter about The Witcher 3. And one of the things people kept telling me is that they made so many quests, and cut half of them, and kept iterating them all over and over and over again, and it just seems like you guys have this really interesting, super intense process. Have you changed that at all for Cyberpunk, are you following a similar path where you put quests on a board, and you go through them and say okay these are the best, now we’re gonna keep iterating on them over and over again…

Mills: One of the things that is necessary to make the things that we want to make as good as we can make them is, well, it’s a bit like a maze. You’re inside the maze and you need to find your way out. And sometimes you’re gonna walk down dead ends. And sometimes you don’t know it’s a dead end [for] a very long time. And what you need to be willing to do is go back and try a different path. So that does mean iteration, and that does mean sometimes cutting things, and adding things late, and having to make them work. So, yeah.

[...]

Schreier: In The Witcher, obviously, there were some specific archetypes for quests. There was the contract, you would go and talk to someone, and they put you on some adventure, and then there’s a twist or something like that. But it was all very much, this is what Geralt would do in this scenario. Here, we have V, who seems to be sort of like a cross between a predefined character and a character created because you can pick his or her gender, you can pick a background and stuff like that, as we just saw in the demo. When you’re writing quests for a character that could be one of many different personalities, where do you even start with something like that?

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Mills: It’s a matter of iteration, on some level. You go through and you say, well, wait a minute, I’d really like to be able to solve this in a different way, and then you build that in. Beyond that, I think what’s really actually cool is that you’re not constrained [by] “What would Geralt do?” You can say, “What would just any dirtbag do?” Because you know, you’re kind of playing a bit of a dirtbag. But there’s a lot more variety.

Schreier: Doesn’t have to be honorable, doesn’t…

Mills: Doesn’t have to be honorable. And you know, V lives in a world that’s very very dangerous and full of intrigue, and full of danger. It’ll be interesting to see how players decide to navigate through that, not just in terms of solving quests but also just morally and ethically.

 

[Necrokiller]

The response to the gameplay demo has been absolutely nuts. This demo will likely be shown to public at GamesCom.

I'm not sure Jim Sterling even saw the gameplay demo:

Game Director for Control @NaNoW :

Someone should check up on Mr. Gibson and his new minions lol

 

[CerebralTiger]

CD Projekt Red fanboys who live close to the venue are going to lose their shit if they show the demo at Gamescom

Also, ab Jim Sterling acha hou gya :hah:

 

[Chandoo]

I'm not sure Jim Sterling even saw the gameplay demo:

That's his schtick. That's all he does on youtube now.

 

[Necrokiller]

That's his schtick. That's all he does on youtube now.

I wouldn't know I don't even watch his videos. But I'm definitely gonna follow him now..since I know hes considered the epitome of games journalism on PG (or was after this) lol

 

[CerebralTiger]

That's his schtick. That's all he does on youtube now.

I stopped paying attention to him since his whiny views on Breath of the Wild among other things. He's the epitome of attention seeking lol.

 

[Necrokiller]

Cyberpunk 2077 Is Unlike Any Open World RPG I’ve Ever Seen (E3 Preview)

Over the course of 50 minutes, I had my brain completely rewired as I discovered an open-world with an astonishing level of detail that would appear to completely blow its contemporaries out of the water.

there’s a genuine sense that exploration and discovery uncover quests and activities within this open world in a completely dynamic way. Remove quest markers, contract boards and obvious quest-giving NPCs from your mind right now – that isn’t how Cyberpunk’s open-world operates. It’s fluid and believable; a generation beyond today’s tired design template.

Cyberpunk is an entirely different animal; a bold new direction for the CDPR that seems destined to push the boundaries of video game design. Right now the only comparison I can draw between the two franchises is that just as The Witcher 3 pushed open-world RPGs into the next generation, Cyberpunk promises to reinvent the wheel in exactly the same fashion.

Look who dropped by to catch some limelight :tv:

 

[NaNoW]

Game Director for Control @NaNoW :

Someone should check up on Mr. Gibson and his new minions lol

yeah, I have seen this tweet..lol he is one of my direct boss

p.s he was also the creative director of QB and exec producer for alan wake

And let me say something : if he is complimenting something, he really means it, and that thing deserves it..He is not at all loose with his words...He is super hard to impress, and values quality alot. So yeah, I would 100% trust the guy.

 

[manigamer]

[h=1]Cyberpunk 2077 will include full nudity for a very important reason[/h]

[h=2]The genre is about so much more than fast cars and slick guns[/h]

The team at CD Projekt Red came to E3 this year with an enormous demo for its next game,Cyberpunk 2077. Coming in at 50 minutes in length, the demo was as much a showcase of the game’s feature set as it was a statement about CD Projekt Red’s capabilities as a studio. But, as impressive as that demo was, there was still one portion of it that elicited giggles from the crowd.
Early in the demo, the presenter revealed a mockup of the character creation system. It showed generic male and female avatars standing on a blue background. Both of them were completely nude, but their genitals were covered with pixelated white boxes of digital noise. Some in the crowd giggled. For some of them, I’m sure it was because they were uncomfortable with or perhaps prudish about nudity. Just as many likely giggled at the absurdity of censoring the human form in a video game.
Adding those white boxes to the menu system at E3 was a tactical decision by the team at CD Projekt Red, game director Adam Badowski told Polygon. In the final version of the game, that digital noise will likely be removed. But for its big reveal, CD Projekt didn’t want to be accused of using nudity for shock value, or to have its time with the international press sidetracked by conversations about male or female nudity in video games.
The team also wanted to keep the reaction in the room to a giggle, rather than outright laughter.
“We covered these parts for one reason,” said Badowski. “Because during the presentation, we don’t want people to focus on and think about these things and laugh. It’s normal! Nudity makes it more believable; that’s why we want to have it. There’s nothing special in it.”

A group of weapons merchants from the demo of Cyberpunk 2077. They are heavily augmented human beings, with articulated optical receptors where their eyes and foreheads should be. CD Projekt RedBadowski said that in the final game, his team intends to have full nudity, not for shock value but because it supports one of the most important themes in the cyberpunk genre: transhumanism, the belief that humanity can transcend its current mental and physical form with the help of technology. Throughout Cyberpunk 2077, players will have to grapple with what it means for them personally to become transhuman, and one of the pieces of imagery the team plans to use is nudity.
There was one scene in particular from the E3 demo that Badowski pointed to as an example. It opened with a simple quest to retrieve a kidnapped woman, but turned into a bizarre and gruesome tableau. The kidnappers weren’t holding her for ransom; they were planning to chop her up for spare parts, harvesting the high-tech implants throughout her body for sale on the black market.
After players gun down the enemies in the compound, they find the kidnapped woman and another NPC lying naked in a bathtub filled with ice. With her eyes rolled back in her head and her body glistening with water, the player must carry her in their arms out into the light to the waiting paramedics.
“Nudity is important for us because of one reason,” Badowski said. “This is cyberpunk, so people augment their body. So the body is no longer sacrum [sacred]; it’s profanum[profane]. Because people modify everything, they are losing their connection to the body, to the meat. And that’s why we need to use the nudity in many situations.
“You see that there are bodies in the tub, and you need to take care of this woman. But at the same time she is augmented,” he continued, searching for the right words. “She is not clean. Maybe she is augmented too much. Maybe the humanity level is pretty low in her, so it’s an interesting topic. It’s one of the key themes in cyberpunk. The very first scenes in the originalGhost in the Shell anime show exactly the same aspect. Because where is sacrum and where isprofanum in a world when you can simply modify yourself to such limits that it makes you a different kind of person? It’s one of the most important themes in cyberpunk, as a genre.”


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S*x sells, what can one say more

 

[Necrokiller]

It sells a lot more when it is a make out session center stage in front of millions of people :tv:

But for its big reveal, CD Projekt didn’t want to be accused of using nudity for shock value, or to have its time with the international press sidetracked by conversations about male or female nudity in video games.

[MENTION=1416]SolitarySoldier[/MENTION]

 

[Chandoo]

making out = nudity now

phri yahi frustrated mulla "LESBOOOOOOS" karte hain doosre topics mai jaa ke

 

[Necrokiller]

Thread me ao to masla, na ao to khud idhar tapak jaate hain loug lol

 

[Chandoo]

bhai phir ap game x ki thread mai game y k against bongii naa maaro na phir

hum log thodi game y ki thread mai aur games discuss kar rahe.

 

[NaNoW]

you know its getting real when the roman urdu starts coming out opcorn:opcorn:

 

[Necrokiller]

you know its getting real when the roman urdu starts coming out opcorn:opcorn:

Roman urdu ke saath algebra bhi lol

 

[SolitarySoldier]

It sells a lot more when it is a make out session center stage in front of millions of people :tv:

[MENTION=1416]SolitarySoldier[/MENTION]

As long as people making out are straight, yes, but in this case they may have actually damaged their sales, as the public reaction indicates. [emoji14]

 

[Hassan Aftab]

Full nudity that makes sense.. Sounds almost as though Projekt Red may have a Kojima among their ranks trying to emulate his gooey teenage fantasies.

 

[manigamer]

As long as people making out are straight, yes, but in this case they may have actually damaged their sales, as the public reaction indicates. [emoji14]

yeah the youtube comments while watching the trailer for tlou2 was LOL... so much hatred and disgust wow

 

[Journeys End]

But for its big reveal, CD Projekt didn’t want to be accused of using nudity for shock value, or to have its time with the international press sidetracked by conversations about male or female nudity in video games

this is exactly what ND was doing with their trailer, SHOCK VALUE. CDPR's games are a billion times more untamed than ND but they would NEVER use such tactics in their trailers. thats how mature game studios work!

lota fanboys and LGBT activists kuch seekho aor samjho!

 

[Necrokiller]

The industry is legit shook right now.

Cyberpunk 2077 preview – the game of the (next) generation | Metro News

Cyberpunk 2077 may be the best video game ever made. That may seem like a meaningless statement considering it’s nowhere near release yet, but what we saw of the game at E3 is probably the single most impressive preview we’ve ever been witness to.

We’ve no idea what Cyberpunk 2077 will look like on current gen consoles but even if it’s a significant downgrade the underlying mechanics of gameplay and narrative choice are still hugely impressive. The demo alone was one of the most entertaining video game experiences of the year and we weren’t even playing it.

From everything we’ve seen of Cyberpunk 2077 it seems like the hype is not only real but if anything understated. We’ve got an interview scheduled with the creators tomorrow, which we probably won’t have time to transcribe until we get back from E3, but at this point they’re going to have to be the ones convincing us this isn’t the most exciting video game of the generation(s), not the other way around.

Cyberpunk 2077: What we learned in the most mind-blowing game demo we've ever seen | PCWorld

So far, so Cyberpunk. And yet while the tropes may feel familiar, it quickly became clear to me that the game itself is anything but.

Straight up: Cyberpunk 2077 is the most impressive game demo I’ve ever seen.

Listen, I’ve played a lot of video games in my life. Almost 30 years of them at this point. I know what a “city” looks like in video games, and I’ve watched that definition evolve over the years. [...] So I’m deadly serious when I say: I didn’t think Night City was possible. Not yet, at least. I literally didn’t think the technology existed. What I saw during CD Projekt’s demo was astounding.

I remember seeing a demo of The Witcher 3 back in 2013 though and having that same “They can’t possibly pull this off” feeling. And while The Witcher 3 did change quite a bit before release, it was mostly minor nitpicks—I remember forum threads about the stone walls being less detailed. The core of The Witcher 3, the parts I thought were impossible, ended up just as CD Projekt said. So I don’t know. I’d certainly like to believe that everything I saw in this Cyberpunk 2077 demo was real, not just part of some elaborate “vertical slice” hoodwink. Because as I said, this is the most impressive demo I’ve ever seen. And if CD Projekt can make the game that CD Projekt claims it’s making? The game it showed to us? We’re all in for a real treat.

Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay Demo Blew My Mind << Video Game News, Reviews, Walkthroughs And Guides – GamingBolt

When E3 rolls around once a year, all of us gamers are wondering: What’s going to be the next big thing? What will be the best surprise of the show this year? Definitively, that game this year is Cyberpunk 2077.

And that’s only a taste of Cyberpunk 2077. There wasn’t a moment in this edge-of-your-seat thriller where fatigue set it. Every second had my eyes wide open, ready for more. Every scene is filled with attention to detail that you’d only notice in a real life setting. Not only was the engaging story, gameplay mechanics, and lively world impressive, Cyberpunk 2077 is easily my best game of the show for E3 2018.