Cyberpunk 2077 Pre-Release Thread [GAME RELEASED, GO TO NEW THREAD]

[DalekFlay]

That is more like world-building, which yes can be considered part of the story. But in my previous post when I mentioned story I was more specifically talking about the writing, characters, story progression and plot. Still all these aspects in a game should be made in order to enhance gameplay and content(=quests, levels and exploration) and not the other way around.

Maybe the best way to summarize what we're trying to say is that game stories excel when they focus on world-building and its impact on gameplay, rather than straight narrative. I love the writing and "story" of Veronica in New Vegas for example, but I'd never consider that a typical movie or novel style "storyline." It's unique to games.

 

[Quillon]

https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/21677/cyberpunk-2077-e3-2018-trailer-frame-by-frame-ep07-cyberware

Cyberpunk 2077 E3 2018 Trailer Frame by Frame EP07 - Cyberware

Even though cybernetic prosthetics were originally developed for practical and medical purposes, they’ve since become a matter of lifestyle choice. In 2077, cyberware has become as commonplace as tattoos and jewelry. The reasons for installing it are many and varied, including simple tech upgrades, combat enhancements, and even fashion statements. The possession of trendy cyberware has become an integral and defining part of Night City culture. Uniqueness is just another form of currency. To make it big, you need to look the part. Style is everything.

RealSkinn technology — synthetic skin designed to cover cybernetic implants.

 

[WhiskeyWolf]

 

[Infinitron]

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/07/12/we-played-cyberpunk-2020-with-its-creator

WE PLAYED CYBERPUNK 2020 WITH ITS CREATOR
Rolling dice in the 'Dark Future'...

After having been thoroughly wowed by CD Projekt Red'sCyberpunk 2077 demo at E3 2018, we've been eager to dive deeper into its dystopian sci-fi world. To that end, my fellow IGN tabletop fans (read: huge nerds) Cassidee Moser and Casey DeFreitas decided to check out the pen-and-paper RPG on which it was based, Cyberpunk 2020.

We were fortunate enough to have Mike Pondsmith (creator and author of Cyberpunk 2020/203X/RED) agree to lead the session, because who better to show off the world of Cyberpunk than the man behind it?


Character art and select musical tracks by Cassidee Moser and Eric Sapp

Our adventure took us all over Night City, from a luxurious apartment up in the hills to the city center and into the insanely dangerous combat zone, and introduced us to a host of wild factions and characters (including but not limited to a gang of particularly crazy Gilligan's Island cosplayers). While we're sure there will be major differences between the tabletop experience of 2020 or 203X and Cyberpunk 2077, it was a great time and an excellent way to immerse ourselves in the unique style of the Cyberpunk world.

If you want to check out the world of Cyberpunk 2020 for yourself, the core rulebook has recently been re-printed by R. Talsorian Games and is available online as well. If you can't get enough tabletop content, be sure to check out IGN's Gen Con 2018 coverage, and consider signing up for one of our panels if you're going to attend!

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/07/12/cyberpunk-creator-on-2077-perfection-takes-time

CYBERPUNK CREATOR ON 2077: 'PERFECTION TAKES TIME'
'We're going to do stuff that has never been done before'

To make Cyberpunk 2077 the best it can be, "We need space, we need time, and we need the privacy to mull it over," says Cyberpunk 2020 creator Mike Pondsmith of the games long development timeline. In an interview with IGN, the author of the cult-classic tabletop RPG said that his biggest concern is whether or not fans can be patient enough to allow CDPR to build the game they want to build. "We have an awful lot of stuff that we want to do, and it's going to take time to do it. And I'm hoping the fans are going to give us the time to do it."

He confided that "The game we have right now is pretty damn close to what I would have built if I built it alone myself in a broom closet. I look at things in there and I just go, ‘Oh my God, that's perfect. That's just downright perfect.'" He continued, "But to get that kind of perfection does take time. It takes iteration."

He went on to explain that he felt it was "very smart not to show the whole world gameplay." As we've mentioned before on IGN, pre-alpha gameplay demos are done more to showcase ideas, themes, and mechanics of upcoming games, as opposed to a segment of the final product. Running demos and receiving feedback allows developers to find the best method of implementing the mechanic or idea that they want to see in the final game.

Pondsmith continued, "If we're going to do stuff that has never been done before - or has never been done the way we're doing it - we need space, we need time, and we need the privacy to mull it over. If we have too many cooks in the kitchen we're not going to get a good dinner out of it."

https://www.pcgamesn.com/cyberpunk-2077/cyberpunk-2077-tabletop

CD Projekt got the Cyberpunk license because “they were fans,” says tabletop creator

Cyberpunk 2077 builds from a tabletop legacy going back three decades, though CD Projekt Red’s take on the RPG has certainly brought the name to light for many more potential fans. But the makers of the Witcher games weren’t the first to pitch an adaptation - they were just the first to do so as fans.

The tabletop Cyberpunk RPG - best known by the name of its second edition, Cyberpunk 2020 - is the brainchild of Mike Pondsmith, and he’s been turning down videogame adaptations of the concept for years.

“What we faced,” Pondsmith tells us, “is people wanted to take the name or the roughest idea of it and slap it on either something new, something they’d done - you know, reskin it - or they just didn’t get the gag about how the world worked and how the politics worked, how it’s structured.

“CD [Projekt Red] was different because from the beginning they were fans. The running joke was we licensed Cyberpunk in, like, nine countries, and we licensed it to Poland, and I said ‘OK I guess we’ll sell five copies there’. And remember, when we did this, they were still just getting out of the Soviet bloc, so we figured there are maybe six guys who are going to see it in Polish. Turned out those six guys worked in CDPR.”

CD Projekt pitched the adaptation, and Pondsmith says “what fascinated us was that they knew the material and they loved the material as fans. When I went up to see them, they could quote me chapter and verse of characters they wanted to have in it, and groups and organizations and events. So unlike many of the people who wanted to do Cyberpunk as a videogame, CDPR got it because they liked it, loved it, had lived it. The other thing is that they’re meticulous and they’re really, really good at what they do, and they’re willing to push it to get a really, really good project.”

Even though the folks at CD Projekt know the source material well, Pondsmith says he heads over to the studio “two or three times a year” for support, though that’s slowed down since the game’s hit full production. “They also come over here quite a bit, so I meet with different people in the team, and we have these intense week to two-week periods where we just jump on everything and talk about ‘what does this mean, how does this work, what will work here, what character or things will be the most important?’”

With CD Projekt’s love of the property and Pondsmith’s own involvement, the designer of Cyberpunk is pretty pleased with how the game’s shaping up. He saw the trailer a month before its E3 debut, and says the devs “nailed” the look of Night City.

The Cyberpunk 2077 release date is still some distance away, but CD Projekt has been pretty open with dropping new details on social media. With the game’s faithfulness to the source material, you can find out plenty through reading up on the RPG - and we did just that to break down what you should expect from Cyberpunk 2077’s factions, classes, and lore. Stay tuned for more details as they come up.

https://www.pcgamesn.com/cyberpunk-2077/cyberpunk-2077-tv-guide

Cyberpunk 2077 could have a full, canon, TV schedule

The world of Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City looks like it could easily be the most detailed that developer CD Projekt Red has ever created. The game’s E3 trailer, which was released last month, shows an intricate world. According to Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the original tabletop game, that level of detail could go all the way down to the programmes Night City’s citizens watch on their televisions.

In an interview with PCGN, Pondsmith said that while talking to him at E3, a CDPR developer complained about not knowing “‘what people watch, what they do on their video screens’.” As you can see from the trailer (which you can watch at the bottom of this article), those screens are likely to play an important part - news bulletins feature regularly, and plenty of characters are seen watching their phones or with TVs playing in the background.

Fortunately, Pondsmith had an answer for the dev, telling them that one of the Cyberpunk books features “an entire TV guide.”

Pondsmith states that the guide “actually lists [...] one week of programming then [sic] in-depth on several programs.” They might not be the most high-brow television, as Pondsmith states that the team created them largely out of nowhere “throwing out just stupid programmes.” That should offer CDPR plenty of room to come up with their own creations, all while staying within official Cyberpunk lore.

Elsewhere in the interview, Pondsmith reveals that CD Projekt Red got the license to the game because “they were fans” of the tabletop game, after some devs bought the Polish version of the original tabletop game. If you fancy some more Cyberpunk lore, we’ve got you covered, with an in-depth look at the game’s setting, story, and classes.

The Cyberpunk 2077 release date hasn’t been revealed yet, but hopefully we won’t have too long to wait. Either way, CDPR says it'll be more open to talking about the game now that it’s been officially revealed, so we should hear more soon.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.pcgamesn.com/cyberpunk-2077/cyberpunk-2077-warning

Cyberpunk 2077’s warning for the world is more important than ever

Cyberpunk is back in the spotlight like never before. Blade Runner was undoubtedly a peak for the sci-fi sub-genre but anticipation for CD Projekt Red’s first-person RPG Cyberpunk 2077 suggests it’s about to be topped. People crave the game like a dilapidating android chasing down a new cybernetic implant.

But not everyone is enthralled with it. William Gibson helped to invent cyberpunk with his 1984 novel Neuromancer - its gritty depiction of a plugged-in future was a revelation, winning it a slew of literary prizes and resulting in more than six million sales to date. Gibson wasn’t impressed with Cyberpunk 2077’s E3 2018 trailer. He made this clear by taking to Twitter to say that it “strikes me as GTA skinned-over with a generic 80s retro-future.” Ouch.

A similar sentiment comes from Bruce Sterling, one of Gibson’s fellow cyberpunk founders, who says he can “admire the technical quality of that trailer,” but reckons “it’s got the same problem that DC and Marvel movies have.” By which he means it’s too glossy, too interested in being pretty, and doesn’t do anything new.

There’s a contradiction at the heart of modern cyberpunk that stems from it being sucked into mainstream culture. What was once a celebration of the techie underground - its hackers and misfits - is being repackaged and sold to us by the corporations that cyberpunk tells us to fight against. Mike Pondsmith, creator of tabletop-RPG Cyberpunk 2020 - the source of CD Projekt Red’s videogame adaptation - also recognises that cyberpunk’s visual style has been co-opted by suits. He recalls seeing an advert in the early 2000s for “some corporation like Apple” that slavishly copied the style of Blade Runner: “What had happened was those visuals had become symbolic with cool, and so the megacorps had begun to absorb those images.”

However, Pondsmith maintains that the philosophy and worldview of cyberpunk retains its outsider credentials, even if the visuals don’t. “This is one reason I think that Blade Runner 2049 [failed to break even at the box office]: it wasn’t just about what it looked like, it was also making you think about things you probably didn’t want to think about.”

Through mirrorshades, darkly

Cyberpunk is certainly having a renaissance at present, but it’s confused - separated from the context it originally emerged in, it’s been warped so that it’s more an aesthetic than anything deeper. Stop to consider it for a minute and a few questions emerge: what qualifies as cyberpunk today, what does it mean, and what will it become? To find the answers you need look to at what cyberpunk was when it started out.

Both Gibson and Sterling were around at cyberpunk’s beginning, when it was nothing more than a mailing group comprised of authors who circulated ideas on the fast-moving world of technology - distancing themselves from the shiny space-age futurism of previous decades. “We used to photocopy a lot of newspaper and magazine articles about tech development, futurism, samizdat, punk DIY tech, cities, globalisation, new materials, the military,” Sterling says.

These writers latched onto the idea of corruption through technology, and often dealt with the same immediate period that English novelist J. G. Ballard (a favourite among the cyberpunk authors) explored: “the future of the next five minutes,” as he put it. They were concerned with the seeds of the technological future being sown in the present.

Another significant influence on these seminal cyberpunk authors is the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick. Published in 1968, the novel explores a future in which android replicants are near-perfect copies of humans, blurring the line between the biological and the machine: “the electrical things have their lives, too.”

The efforts of this group culminated in 1986, with the short story anthology Mirrorshades - a compilation of sci-fi tales compiled and edited by Sterling. “We didn’t call ourselves ‘cyberpunks’ - that label got stuck on us by a critic named Gardner Dozois,” Sterling tells me.

It was then that cyberpunk became a literary sensibility - one that had plenty of followers but struggled to find a definition. “We had some bumper-sticker slogans people liked. ‘The future is already here, just not well-distributed’, ‘High tech and low life’, ‘The honesty of complete desperation’,” Sterling says. “If you were the kind of guy who would read something like that and think ‘Huh, maybe they’re right’, then you were a cyberpunk sympathiser.”

Jacking in

Pondsmith is one such sympathiser. He first encountered cyberpunk through the theatrical release of Blade Runner in 1982 and was later enthused by it again when reading the 1986 cyberpunk novel Hardwired by Walter Jon Williams. It was enough for him to start working on Cyberpunk, his tabletop-RPG that took heavily from these influences, and in a more direct way than Pondsmith had initially anticipated.

“A friend of mine happened to be running a Repton giant robot game, and it turned out that one of the people in his game was Walter Jon Williams,” he says. “So after fanboying out a bit, I started talking to him, and I said I wanted to do something along the lines of what he was doing with Hardwired. So Walter ended up being the first science fiction writer in the crew to actually play my early prototype of Cyberpunk.”

Gibson became a big influence on the Cyberpunk tabletop game about six months into its development too, when Pondsmith read Mona Lisa Overdrive: “I remember shaking my wife awake and saying ‘this guy’s stuff is so good it makes my teeth hurt!’,” he recalls.

Released in 1988, Cyberpunk was a big hit for Pondsmith’s company, R. Talsorian Games, and was followed by a second edition, Cyberpunk 2020, in 1990. He thinks its popularity is partially down to its appeal to outsiders, which “in a way mirrors how I’ve seen life for myself,” but also that there’s an “inherent kind of power fantasy in 2020.”

He puts this down to the fact that high-level technology is freely available in this world, “so that means that while there may be corporate assassins and bad guys out there, the ubiquity of the technology means that you might be able to get a hold of that same capability and use it… In Cyberpunk we offer you the hope that if you are badass enough, tough enough, and willing to cyber up enough, you can make a difference, you can have an effect.”

While Pondsmith is influenced by the original cyberpunk authors, his working definition of the sub-genre differs from theirs. He divides cyberpunk into two overarching ideas. The first is that it’s set in a “craptastic world” where technology has not worked out for us.

“We established the idea when I was a kid that technology was going to be guys in white coats leading us into the future,” Pondsmith says. “But the technology in cyberpunk is ubiquitous, and it’s not controlled by guys in white lab coats, it’s now at the street level, and the street is able to find its own uses.”

He also cites regular citizens not having any control over their lives as another defining aspect of cyberpunk. “There’s not even an illusion of control,” Pondsmith says. “Powerful forces, whether they be governments, corporations, individuals, all have the power ostensibly arrayed against you, and you’re fighting for your life and the way you want to live. And that’s very important because it means that it’s a personal thing.”

Blurring realities

This idea of an uprising in cyberpunk is what mainstream media based on it has focused on most, packaging and selling it as a power fantasy. The 1999 smash-hit film The Matrix is one of the most widespread purveyors of this form of cyberpunk, alongside its videogame adaptations, but it was beaten to the punch by the likes of Syndicate, System Shock, Shadowrun, and soon after Deus Ex. There was even an early game version of Neuromancer itself.

Cyberpunk has an especially long reach in videogames perhaps due to their virtuality easily meshing with the cyberpunk ethos. The relationship even extends to Neal Stephenson’s hugely influential 1992 novel Snow Crash, and its depiction of a networked world, which went on to inspire the creators of Xbox Live, as well as popularise the widely-used gaming term ‘avatar’.

But the influence of cyberpunk in the today’s world goes far beyond videogames and movies. The technologist and policy analyst Vinay Gupta thinks cyberpunk has directly influenced our reality. In a talk about the promise of blockchain, he argues that the programmers who created it and other net-based technologies were very much influenced by the cyberpunk stories of the 1980s.

“If you want mental models of how to think about the reality we’re currently in, you have to go back to the science fiction of 30 years ago published under a general [genre] of cyberpunk… a fiction that describes the reality we’re now in. It’s about virtual reality, it’s about drones, it’s about biotechnology that reroutes your nervous system, it’s about virtual currencies and artificial intelligence.”

Gupta points to Mirrorshades in particular and adds that by reading early cyberpunk “you can begin to flesh out the stories that all of the programmers had in their heads when they built these technologies, and that’s how you get your head around what’s happening [today].”

He’s not wrong. There’s little difference between our current reality and the cyberspace dreams Gibson and his contemporaries wrote about in the 1980s. Virtual reality has arrived, the top five giant tech corporations are worth nearly $3 trillion, AI has made its way into everyday homes via Google’s Home and Amazon’s Alexa, and national governments are even using AI to autonomously defend against cyber attacks. And, as cyberpunk predicted, the ubiquity of technology has seen it turn into a double-edged sword, as likely to hinder us as it is to help - think about this the next time Alexa dims the lights instead of playing that jazz playlist you asked for.

Where does cyberpunk go now?

If we’re living in the cyberpunk future depicted in the 1980s then this raises questions about its purpose in modern culture. Cyberpunk is meant to predict the tech futures we’re about to spill into - and as we already occupy the years that the original vision was concerned with, surely it needs to move past that iconography and the ideas its authors originally formulated. This is the problem Gibson has with Cyberpunk 2077’s trailer: it is stuck firmly within the 1980s worldview of cyberpunk. But should we really expect cyberpunk to move beyond that - and would it hold the same appeal if that were to happen?

“The future for cyberpunk is the same as the future for science fiction generally,” Sterling says. “The particular objects or tech toys that get valorised, they change a lot with time - for Jules Verne it was hot-air balloons and for us cyberpunks it was desktop computers.” Sterling doesn’t see cyberpunk evolving much from its neon-heavy aesthetic, nor does he see change for the topics it tackles, but he believes the “conceptual vitality” of cyberpunk will be cherished by future generations, much like Verne’s classic novels are today.

Pondsmith agrees with Sterling to an extent but, unsurprisingly given that he’s working on the game, he sees worth in Cyberpunk 2077 rehashing ideas from 30 years ago for a new audience. “Cyberpunk 2020 is as much of a cautionary tale as it is a setting,” Pondsmith says. “It’s ‘do you really want to live in this world’? And before you think ‘oooh, flying cars and neon and walking around in big ragged coats’, think about what this means for your day to day, think about what this world means.”

Publishers have been vying to make a videogame version of Cyberpunk 2020 for years but Pondsmith had always turned them down: “they just didn’t get the gag about how the world worked and how the politics worked, how it’s structured,” he says.

The reason he went with CD Projekt Red was simply because the team proved to be dedicated fans of the roleplaying game. “When I went up to see them, they could quote me chapter and verse of characters they wanted to have in it, and groups and organisations and events,” Pondsmith tells me. “So unlike many of the people who wanted to do Cyberpunk as a videogame, CDPR got it because they liked it, loved it, had lived it.”

Working with the new setting of 2077, Pondsmith has been consulting CD Projekt Red - referring to his role as the “vision holder” - to ensure it’s faithful to Cyberpunk 2020 while also advancing parts of its fiction to reflect the jump forward in the timeline. He visits the studio two or three times a year to point them in the right direction, helping to adapt the huge volumes of background lore provided with the original tabletop game so that it resonates better with people of today.

When that Cyberpunk 2077 release date rolls around cyberpunk’s old guard probably still won't be impressed, then. But it’s the best chance for the sub-genre to engage with new, younger audiences, and to bring its warning to the generations who find themselves actively living in the cyberpunk future that the writers of the 1980s foresaw.

 

[Quillon]

https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/21749/cyberpunk-2077-e3-2018-trailer-frame-by-frame-ep08-gangs

Cyberpunk 2077 E3 2018 Trailer Frame by Frame EP08 - Gangs

Night City has seen its share of gang warfare over the years. Night City gangs vary by structure, hierarchies, and backgrounds. Organized crime in this town is driven primarily by violence. There’s an ever-present need to prove oneself. Self-actualization through violence is a philosophy followed by many in society. At the bottom, physical brutality settles most disputes. At the top, corporations do whatever’s necessary to maintain both hard and soft power. Here, fear is king.

Below Deck — An underwater-themed club opened in a former aquarium.

 

[Zer0wing]

Dude, let your wallet out! It's an RPG! Don't you believe in RPGs?

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

we need more cyberpunk in our life!

 

[RNGsus]

Cyberpunk is meant to predict the tech futures we’re about to spill into - and as we already occupy the years that the original vision was concerned with, surely it needs to move past that iconography and the ideas its authors originally formulated.

No.

 

[Quillon]

Pondsmith Interview:

 

[Gerrard]

 

[HoboForEternity]

I mean when you can easily swap bodies and replace parts, the idea of gender really can be changed too.

When most ofvyour bodies arent DNA but plastic and steel, the x/y chromosome become irrelevant and depending on their mind, they literallty can be any gender they want, even become a crazy futanari with multiple vaginas and penis fingers that can orgasm at the same time possibly frying your brain from chemical and stimulant overdose.

 

[DalekFlay]

Yeah, I got retardo'd for saying it a handful of pages ago but do think this is one of the few settings where you could have some good commentary on what gender means in a world where body parts are interchangeable. However the problem with that is that unless CDP handled the issue the same exact way Polygon or Waypoint, i.e. being trans is a wonderful world of wine and roses, they would get ENDLESS shit for being transphobic and evil. So it would be WAY smarter of them to ignore the issue altogether, which is a horrible side-effect of our current outrage culture. No one's going to actually present interesting topics or questions because they're scared of being labeled something bad.

 

[HoboForEternity]

Yeah, I got retardo'd for saying it a handful of pages ago but do think this is one of the few settings where you could have some good commentary on what gender means in a world where body parts are interchangeable. However the problem with that is that unless CDP handled the issue the same exact way Polygon or Waypoint, i.e. being trans is a wonderful world of wine and roses, they would get ENDLESS shit for being transphobic and evil. So it would be WAY smarter of them to ignore the issue altogether, which is a horrible side-effect of our current outrage culture. No one's going to actually present interesting topics or questions because they're scared of being labeled something bad.

yup. That kind of world can be a boon for those with conditions, like transgenderism, to have the body they wanted (even though they were born with y chromosome, their brain are structured more like the opposite gender) but also can be a slippery slope of degeneracy of sexual depravity, loss of identity and other stuff.

So yeah, as long it is portrayed in balance, that many things can be wielded in good light or evil shadow, it is an interesting subject thats rarely brought up because PCness from SJWs and ignorance/denial from alt right that these exist an can be used for good, despite the bad possibilty of misuse.

 

[Quillon]

https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/21848/cyberpunk-2077-e3-2018-trailer-frame-by-frame-ep09-gun-laws

Cyberpunk 2077 E3 2018 Trailer Frame by Frame EP09 - Gun laws

Gun laws are lax in Night City — anyone can own a gun. And thanks to frequent riots and the daily threat of violence, just about everyone does. Open carry of firearms is commonplace and many even wear bulletproof clothing as they go about their lives — just in case. No one bats an eye at a pistol here or a rifle there. To stay alive, you need to look out for yourself… Even if that sometimes means turning a blind eye to the constant violence happening all around.

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

About the setting i think they are nailing it good but in the end since Mike is involved i never doubt about that.

Another video from IGN and Gamespot with Mike talking about the game.

 

[Infinitron]

https://www.gamespot.com/videos/cyberpunks-universe-explained/2300-6444989/

Cyberpunk's Universe Explained
Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith breaks down the world of Cyberpunk 2020 and 2077.

CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 was the talk of E3 and, given that it's being developed by the team behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, there's a whole lot of new people interested in the Cyperpunk universe. While it may be some time before we get to play Cyberpunk 2077 on PS4, Xbox One, and PC, the wait means we can get familiar with the source material. And who better to do it with than Mike Pondsmith, creator of original Cyberpunk 2020 role-playing game.

GameSpot was fortunate enough to sit down with Pondsmith and get a crash course on the universe. In the video above he explains what cyberpunk is all about, talks about the "craptastic" world the game is set in, and the impact of the technology that is critical to it. He also discusses the history of cyberpunk and how the idea of classes fit into it--and by extension the upcoming video game.

Pondsmith's take on cyberpunk has some elements that are unique to his vision, such as the Rockerboys--partially inspired by the band U2--the inspiration Mad Max had, along with the book Hard Wired, which contributed to the creation of the Nomad class responsible for moving goods in a world where an established mail system no longer exists.

There's also a discussion about how Pondsmith works with CD Projekt Red for the creation of the video game, as well as his reaction to the E3 2018 trailer. Cyberpunk 2077 is a first-person RPG with shooter elements. Microsoft's E3 2018 press conference featured a surprise Cyberpunk 2077 trailer. After that, we got to see the game behind-closed-doors at the show, and you can read our Cyberpunk 2077 preview to find out what we think of the game.

You can also find out about how Cyberpunk 2077's character customization and class progression works. If you'd like to learn more about the world CD Projekt Red is creating, you can read about Cyberpunk 2077's six districts here.

http://www.ign.com/articles/2018/07/17/how-cyberpunk-2077-benefits-from-its-tabletop-origins?watch

HOW CYBERPUNK 2077 BENEFITS FROM ITS TABLETOP ORIGINS
“Steal from the best, but admit you did it.”

As a veteran designer for both tabletop and digital games, this is the advice that Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith offered new game designers during a recent interview with IGN. He expounded, saying that “You’re not going to invent it all yourself - you’re going to learn from other people.” While this is certainly excellent advice for newcomers to the world of game development (or just running their own tabletop RPG session), the idea also bolsters my faith in CD Projekt Red’s upcoming Cyberpunk 2077, and reminds me of how important it is that Cyberpunk 2020 (along with several other versions of the tabletop RPG) came before it.

Before any of you out there start foaming at the mouth, this doesn’t mean I’m calling either CDPR or Pondsmith and the R. Talsorian Games team plagiarists or imitators - they’ve all proven themselves time and again to be incredibly creative, original designers and have wonderfully unique games you can go play right now to prove it. What I mean, rather, is that CD Projekt’s ability to craft fascinating new stories in worlds with well-established lore (like that of The Witcher) is the perfect compliment to the Cyberpunk universe, which pulled many threads of its own world from a plethora of dystopian sci-fi. “The big trick I think Cyberpunk 2020 has done over the years,” Pondsmith says, “Is to have synthesized many different cyberpunk writers’ styles, many different articulations of cyberculture, into one place.”

It’s easy to see the influences of authors like William Gibson or Phillip K. Dick (though Pondsmith tells us he hadn’t read Gibson at the time he created the first version of Cyberpunk), or even directors like Ridley Scott and Paul Verhoeven, in the pages of the Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook (as well as the original Cyberpunk 2013 and subsequent Cyberpunk 203X). From the horrific socioeconomic breakdown of Night City to the dangers of cyberpsychosis, much of the narrative legwork has already been done for CDPR. Now, they just have to decide what story they want to tell - the workings of the universe, how everything fits together, has already been established for them.

“What I love about the [pen and paper game] is the reality of it,” said Pondsmith. “We didn't just pull the ideas, concepts and technologies out of nowhere… For example, when we did cyberware, we sat down with a guy who was a neurosurgeon and said ‘How do we make this stuff work, how do we implant it? What's the surgical procedure, what can we get away with?” The tabletop combat system, for example, is designed to mimic the frenetic pace and danger of a real-life gunfight - something that seems to have shifted mechanically in 2077 (I doubt players would want their characters going into shock after one hit), but that ultimately serves to inform the development team on how the combat in 2077 should feel.

Having this sort of resource available in the TTRPG and Pondsmith himself, who spent several years developing video games for studios like Monolith and Microsoft, offers not just options to the 2077 team, but insight into what will and won’t work. “I could look at the issues that they were going to have to deal with making a video game as opposed to a paper game… things that were easy to describe in pen and paper that would be amazingly difficult to do in [a video game].”

The biggest hurdle, according to Pondsmith, will be capturing the spirit and the feel - not just the workings - of the world itself. Developers can create a world that’s incredibly complex when it comes to infrastructure or how technology works, but without the right spirit there’s nothing keeping it from becoming just another grim sci-fi dystopia. What makes Cyberpunk unique is right there in the title - the punk. “It isn't all grim, dangerous and painful,” he says about the dark future he created for 2020. “There's this sense of rebellion, and fighting back, of hell-raising that should come with that. That's why it's Cyberpunk not just Cyberpain.”

From what we’ve seen of Cyberpunk 2077, the spirit of the tabletop game is alive and well. It may not have packs of cannibalistic cosplayers roaming the streets, but it seems to be the most faithful adaptation of the source material possible. As Pondsmith himself said, “It’s pretty damn close to what I would have made myself, alone in a broom closet.”

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

What i like about cyberpunk is the creative pen and paper people interested also in storytelling and edgy stuff.

In the other hand you have pen and paper with a absolutely dumb fanbase interested mainly in cosplay instead of roleplay.. Vampire is an example.. Hell that game has more people that plays live than the ones actually playing in the pen and paper version just a bounch of posers that likes feels special and dress black.

 

[Jenkem]

mike pondsmith doing a lot of damage control I see

 

[Mebrilia the Viera Queen]

Damage control on what? For who was in the forum and who was knowing the pen and paper knew the main focus of the game would be Solo Techie Netrunner those are the class that can fit in all ambients... we knew that they could not implement all classes because they have a totally different playstyle and they interact with wide different ambients.. For example a corporate will never ever visit the middle low class and the combat zone.. A corporate move others...

 

[conan_edw]

I really still think it will be great to have a short DLC that's a corporate playthrough or a cop. Ideally a 5 hour playthrough that can be completed in completely different styles with more classes included than the base game will be perfect but that's like asking for a game from heaven . It seems doable if it was short but it's impossible that they will even bother

 

[Strange Fellow]

All these setting overwiews and Pondsmith interwievs really hammer home how excited I would be for a proper Cyberpunk CRPG.

 

[DalekFlay]

All these setting overwiews and Pondsmith interwievs really hammer home how excited I would be for a proper Cyberpunk CRPG.

Go play Shadowrun Dragonfall and quit moping.

 

[Gerrard]

There it is, found the most inane post in a while.

 

[Paul_cz]

I mean, I wouldn't expect Cyberpunk of all games to focus on awesome driving mechanics, but I agree with the guy that it would be nice to have.