CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[Infinitron]

https://www.thegamer.com/gamescom-latam-2024-pawel-sasko-interview-cd-project-red-cyberpunk/

Gamescom Latam 2024 - Finding Growth Through The Pain With Pawel Sasko​

It’s a characteristically hot day in Brazil, but I’m quite comfortable in gamescom latam 2024’s well-cooled press lounge. In front of me sits Pawel Sasko, associate game director at CDProjekt RED, and we find ourselves talking about what lies on the horizon for him after the launch of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty.

“Right now, I’m an associate game director for a new Cyberpunk video game, so I'm based in Boston with other members from the RED Team. We have moved from Europe to America to build a studio, and we are hiring [for] and working on the new Cyberpunk game,” he tells me. “It's in the early stages, but we are really excited!”

Of course, since this is gamescom latam, previously known as the Brazil Independent Games Festival, I wanted to ask Sasko about his early days at Metropolis Software and Reality Pump Studios, and what can be learned from the past as the Latin American indie gaming industry begins to rise in recognition.

“I started as a game dev when I was 19 years old; I’m 39 right now, so I've been over 19 years in the industry. At first, I started in small indie teams; we made a couple of games, or should I say prototypes, that were never released,” he confesses. “We didn't even use the term ‘indie’, so at that time it was more like a demo scene, rather than actual indies”.

When I ask him about the biggest challenges of those days years ago, he says, “For me, it was just really a learning process. At that time YouTube existed, but there was nothing on it, right? So, at that time, there were just cat videos, and for me to learn, I had to buy books in America and import them to Europe, and they were already dated, so you had to learn mostly by doing it yourself or thanks to other devs.”

“Everything was just really garage companies at that time, and the first serious company that I joined was Metropolis Software, where we did a game that was never released. I also remember there was a time when our server broke at Reality Pump and we lost the whole game. The only backup was in the computer of one of the graphic designers, who was on paternity leave, so we had to bring back his computer very carefully to the company to copy the game from his drive back onto the server dude.” He laughs. “Those were the days”.

A lot of independent studios are showcased at gamescom latam, and several of them face financial and creative challenges, especially during such a volatile period for the industry. A psychologist by education, Sasko has shared on previous occasions that he has a mindset of working through a rough situation rather than pretending it isn’t happening.

“The important thing about therapy is that the best way to grow and become better is through [feeling] your pain, not avoiding it. I believe that when you have scars, you should become proud of your scars and carry them. There were many hardships in my past, games that I worked on that were canceled and then, of course, Cyberpunk,” he says. “To sum it up, Phantom Liberty worked significantly better at its launch because we completely changed the production style, something that couldn’t have been possible if the initial reception of the game wasn’t as negative as it was. And it changed me and us as a studio.”

While having a healthy attitude in the face of difficult times helps people to grow, material factors still have major impacts on the well-being of developers. The industry is facing a time when studios big and small are facing waves of layoffs and closures, and many developers have to live with the knowledge that their livelihoods are perpetually at risk. Do smaller developers still have enough opportunities to find success?

“Oh, absolutely. If anything, I think that the whole scene is fertile for indie developers right now. For example, during [Summer Games Fest], they were showing multiple indie games on the big stage, with a viewership of 80 million people around the world,” Sasko reflects. “Nowadays, everyone knows that big financial success can be found in the indie scene, and there's so much creativity in those titles that everyone is opening up and working on them, from publishers that [are] solely dedicate[d] to work[ing] with independent developers, to even major companies like Nintendo”.

However, creativity must be fostered for indie developers to thrive, and indie-focused events like gamescom latam, are the ideal places for it, something that Sasko agrees with. “Giving the spotlight to indies and talking about these games helps so much to encourage them to keep making games, and even the biggest publishers have more labels now, to support smaller devs,” he says. “Nowadays, video games come from more places around the world; Guacamelee, for instance, has a Mexican director, and then Tales of Kenzera: ZAU, which just came out, has a director of Kenyan descent. There are so many more independent studios popping up, and it's quite nice to see them.”

After we wrapped up, I complimented his work before saying my goodbyes, and I couldn’t help but notice how, in his humble demeanor, Pawel’s earnestness and energy mirrored the vibe of gamescom latam. We might have arrived a bit late to the game, but today, it’s nice to see that the Latin American gaming industry is a place where independent developers from all paths of life converge to collaborate, and hopefully, work together through their hardships to lift each other.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamesradar.com/games/rp...ke-group-therapy-after-2077s-crushing-launch/

Cyberpunk 2 director recalls that making Phantom Liberty was like "group therapy" after 2077's "crushing" launch​

Paweł Sasko remembers a particularly hard time at CD Projekt Red

After Cyberpunk 2077's disastrous launch - plagued with bugs, missing features, and a storm of online controversy - making the game's excellent Phantom Liberty expansion and 2.0 facelift was a kind of "group therapy" for the development team, according to the expansion's lead.

Cyberpunk 2 and Phantom Liberty director Pawel Sasko recently recalled the heated 2020 launch in an interview with Flow Games, where he says the base game's reception was "absolutely crushing," particularly for developers who had joined CD Projekt Red after The Witcher 3 had already snatched up endless acclaim.

"I know how success feels because I've already shipped games that were really cherished. I know how that feels," Sasko explains in the video below. "And then you have members in our team who had never experienced that... For me, that was probably the worst aspect of it - seeing the people in the team crushed by that... we took it really bad in general." The subsequent production of Phantom Liberty was "like our group therapy," as the team was "trying to go through this and work through those issues."

Sasko then runs through what that journey looked like, calling patches 1.2 and 1.3 "stepping stones" that fixed "a lot," but ultimately didn't do much in terms of public perception. Update 1.5 was a much bigger leap for the game's road to recovery, but still, player feedback felt like a "consolation prize" for Sasko, as if the team "came seventh in a marathon." What really turned things around was the Edgerunners 1.6 update that launched alongside the Netflix anime series of the same name, and really "tipped the scales." Sasko says the anime was an even better introduction point to the universe than even the game, and in conjunction with the prior updates, Edgerunners gave the team the "additional motivation" needed to believe "Maybe this is possible, maybe we can fix this for real."

Cyberpunk 2077's 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty expansion proved the team's hunch was right, they could fix it, since the developers recently celebrated the RPG's 'Overwhelmingly Positive' Steam review comeback.

 

[Heroic Liberator]

And making the sequel will be like trooning out))

 

[Maxie]

utterly baffled by all of those dumbass emails and convo logs the world's peppered with for whatever reason and which some hapless interns had to shit out at some point lmao
entirely skippable with impunity, why do devs still insist on this type of content eludes me

 

[moon knight]

So essentially, you could stretch out a delay (according to some level attained, I dunno, somewhere between 20 and 30) for the next meetup with Taki (the waterfront) PLUS the call back from Mr. Hands re. him having arranged a meetup with the Voodoo Boys, PLUS the call back from Rogue re. info. re. Hellman. Those are all points where a level-gated delay would feel natural because they've said they will get back to you about something.

That might be even easier to do, yes, good point!

Don't know if you are still interested, but I've managed to delay Takemura call. The condition is time, though, not player's level (I don't think such condition exists in the vanilla game)

 

[ind33d]

TBH fam I am surprised that people would compare Cyberpunk 2077 to GTA at all. It is Deus Ex: Mankind Divided with much larger maps and cars.

cyberpunk is Far Cry: Blood Dragon with no jokes

 

[Gargaune]

utterly baffled by all of those dumbass emails and convo logs the world's peppered with for whatever reason and which some hapless interns had to shit out at some point lmao
entirely skippable with impunity, why do devs still insist on this type of content eludes me

During development, CDPR bragged that all of their bazillion quests were handmade by designers, taking an obvious potshot at Todd "Please retrieve my <RADIANT_OBJECT> from <RADIANT_FUCKING_LOCATION>" Howard. Of course, what they didn't tell us was that 90% of those quests were minor local encounters prettied up with an SMS or two. They're basically Skyrim's giant camps, but the giants have Twitter.

 

[Maxie]

utterly baffled by all of those dumbass emails and convo logs the world's peppered with for whatever reason and which some hapless interns had to shit out at some point lmao
entirely skippable with impunity, why do devs still insist on this type of content eludes me

During development, CDPR bragged that all of their bazillion quests were handmade by designers, taking an obvious potshot at Todd "Please retrieve my <RADIANT_OBJECT> from <RADIANT_FUCKING_LOCATION>" Howard. Of course, what they didn't tell us was that 90% of those quests were minor local encounters prettied up with an SMS or two. They're basically Skyrim's giant camps, but the giants have Twitter.

NCPD radar encounters aren't strictly quests per se - and even among generic gigs given by fixers i'd say a half has something going on there, including all of phantom liberty ones. As is typical for CDPR, not all content is created equal, and they've quite obviously left some juniors add in a random ass sneaking section or a random ass shooting arena here and there just to fill out the map. Most attention being put on Watson Orchard.

 

[gurugeorge]

So essentially, you could stretch out a delay (according to some level attained, I dunno, somewhere between 20 and 30) for the next meetup with Taki (the waterfront) PLUS the call back from Mr. Hands re. him having arranged a meetup with the Voodoo Boys, PLUS the call back from Rogue re. info. re. Hellman. Those are all points where a level-gated delay would feel natural because they've said they will get back to you about something.

That might be even easier to do, yes, good point!

Don't know if you are still interested, but I've managed to delay Takemura call. The condition is time, though, not player's level (I don't think such condition exists in the vanilla game)

There's now a mod called Live a Little which does a good job of streching things out a bit, though it's still not level gated but only time gated. Delaying Takemura's call and Mr. Hands' callback (after you've called him upon discovering the VDB connection), just those two go a long way to making the game much more comfortable and feel (psychologically, subjectively) less rushed:-

- Edit some 30+ time sensitive quest objectives to better indicate points of no returns and give V some reason to go out and explore more
- Increase timing before calls from certain quest stages and NPCs (Takemura, Mr Hands in Pacifica)
- Increase Rogue's admission fee to 40,000 eddies (she is the Queen of the After Life.. she won't do your dirty work for less).
- Increase Clouds entrance fee to 10,000 eddies (you are getting a VIP Experience there... if you want a cheap lay, try JigJig Street).

 

[moon knight]

So essentially, you could stretch out a delay (according to some level attained, I dunno, somewhere between 20 and 30) for the next meetup with Taki (the waterfront) PLUS the call back from Mr. Hands re. him having arranged a meetup with the Voodoo Boys, PLUS the call back from Rogue re. info. re. Hellman. Those are all points where a level-gated delay would feel natural because they've said they will get back to you about something.

That might be even easier to do, yes, good point!

Don't know if you are still interested, but I've managed to delay Takemura call. The condition is time, though, not player's level (I don't think such condition exists in the vanilla game)

There's now a mod called Live a Little which does a good job of streching things out a bit, though it's still not level gated but only time gated. Delaying Takemura's call and Mr. Hands' callback (after you've called him upon discovering the VDB connection), just those two go a long way to making the game much more comfortable and feel (psychologically, subjectively) less rushed:-

- Edit some 30+ time sensitive quest objectives to better indicate points of no returns and give V some reason to go out and explore more
- Increase timing before calls from certain quest stages and NPCs (Takemura, Mr Hands in Pacifica)
- Increase Rogue's admission fee to 40,000 eddies (she is the Queen of the After Life.. she won't do your dirty work for less).
- Increase Clouds entrance fee to 10,000 eddies (you are getting a VIP Experience there... if you want a cheap lay, try JigJig Street).

Yes, it actually is a pretty easy mod to make, because the game already has these delay time based conditions coded and implemented, so it's just a matter of changing the amount of time it needs to pass

Spoiler

The Takemura call delay for the diner scene I made is a bit trickier, I had to place the condition myself and then move the fact that enables side content in a parallel path, because it normally follows the Takemura call

Spoiler

I haven't found a delay condition based on player's level, so I guess that function needs to be coded from scratch

 

[Wesp5]

If something like this is possible, would it be possible to move the heist way back into the endgame area so you can build up your reputation before that? Or is there just too little Jackie content for that to work?

 

[lukaszek]

If something like this is possible, would it be possible to move the heist way back into the endgame area so you can build up your reputation before that? Or is there just too little Jackie content for that to work?

all watson areas got optional keanu content, depending if you did heist yet or not. I assume that other areas never received such treatment.
wakako also makes comment(s) about jackie. There might be some other surprises as I think that relics gets mentioned here and there

 

[Wasteland]

There is a lot of Watson side content. Although it's true that you can miss some Keanu/Jackie dialogue by doing Watson early, I think the game is at its best at the beginning, if you ditch the storyline early to do Gigs in Watson. On the hardest difficulty setting, the combat at this point in the game is a lot of fun. Progression isn't even impeded much if you stay in the first area, because at some point (IIRC Patch 2.0) CDPR lifted the restrictions on Ripper Docs' Cyberware inventories.

It's downhill from there, but this early section demonstrates that there is a decent game under all of the railroaded cinematic BS. I've written before about how CDPR could have vastly improved the game's pacing by simply forcing the player to complete more of Watson before the 6-month-montage-into-Maelstrom-Food-Plant/Heist sequence. The content is already there. It just needed to be rejiggered.

 

[Wulfric Pinewood]

Im happy that Cyberpunk 2 will be made on Unreal engine, it's vastly superior to the RED engine and i hope this time CDPR will learn how to implement latest FSR. Other than that , everything is perfect in this game.
Maybe add better sidequests next time with Witcher quality, not some ukrainian free workers shit gigs.

 

[tritosine2k]

Im happy that Cyberpunk 2 will be made on Unreal engine, it's vastly superior to the RED engine and i hope this time CDPR will learn how to implement latest FSR. Other than that , everything is perfect in this game.
Maybe add better sidequests next time with Witcher quality, not some ukrainian free workers shit gigs.

Let's not even dissect this it's too juicy
fact: it was made in cooperation with semi-famous studio known for unity "the heretic" trailer, also some interiors presumably

presumably it's not their problem poles high on narrative-driven aspirations think they're Tolkien or something
...

 

[Maxie]

lmao the final quest of phantom liberty is an alien type horror game

 

[Dark Souls II]

My reaction having to bear through 5 minutes of Cyberpunk 2077 story or Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay or Cyberpunk 2077 combat or Cyberpunk 2077 dialogues:

 

[TC Jr]

Any recommended mods for a first time playthrough? I don't plan on playing it more than once otherwise I'd just keep it vanilla, probably will do anyway lol.

 

[Maxie]

Any recommended mods for a first time playthrough?

 

[moon knight]

Maybe add better sidequests next time with Witcher quality

They don't exists. The best side quests of The Witcher 3 have that kind of quality because they were supposed to be part of the main quest before they rewrote the story of the game