Developer CD Projekt Red is making more than one Cyberpunk 2077 game, according to a recent report about the studio. The developer is most famous for The Witcher game franchise that has become popular since the Polish studio took the reigns of its video game series, spawning a heavily-anticipated Netflix adaptation starring Henry Cavill.
The studio’s follow-up to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, which is widely considered to be one of the greatest RPG games ever made, will by Cyberpunk 2077, an adaptation of the popular tabletop franchise Cyberpunk 2020. Early reception for the title has been mixed, with critics who have seen closed-door demos suggesting it will be an exciting addition to the studio’s already impressive games library being balanced out with fans crying for better representation within the game. Cyberpunk 2077 controversies have ranged from its treatment of race to the way it portrayed transgender people as a punchline, although the latter has spawned the late addition of a transgender option in the game’s character creator while the former has been defended by Cyberpunk’s creator.
According to a report from Polish outlet Bankier.pl (via Nibel on Twitter), CD Projekt Red isn’t just stopping at Cyberpunk 2077, and is clearly unaffected by the controversy that has tended to gravitate towards the title as more details about the 2020 release become available. CD Projekt Red is currently at work on three different Cyberpunk titles: Cyberpunk 2077; what’s being described as CD Projekt Red’s next big and innovative project; and a rumored standalone title that will be a Cyberpunk multiplayer game.
In the context of what we already know about Cyberpunk 2077’s development process, this makes a lot of sense. CD Projekt Red has split into three teams tackling these projects, and each of them fits what analysts have uncovered about the studio’s decisions over the past few years. The next big game, for instance, could be what uses the world-building technology that CD Projekt Red patented years ago that made many believe Cyberpunk 2077 could be an MMO-style project. By contrast, CD Projekt Red’s decision to focus on multiplayer development and then bafflingly play coy about whether Cyberpunk 2077 will feature that function post-launch makes a lot more sense when the developer is simply trying to bide time before announcing a standalone multiplayer venture in the same universe.
Of course, not all of these details are confirmed, and plans can change. There’s a possibility we’ll see something like Gwent come out of Cyberpunk 2077 and CD Projekt Red are already trying to get out ahead of the next minigame craze. There’s also the chance that the two other Cyberpunk games are completely unlike what we’re expecting - it’s hard to put anything outside of CD Projekt Red’s range, as the studio’s ambition is one of it’s major selling points. All we know for now is that the first and only confirmed Cyberpunk game, Cyberpunk 2077, is still set to release in early 2020.
Source: Bankier.pl (via Nibel/Twitter)
