Cyberpunk 2077 is CD Projekt Red's first deviation from The Witcher universe, but they sure got The Witcher's voice actor to narrate this video. Listen with rapt attention as Geralt of Rivia hammers out the phrase "action-oriented, narrative-driven, open-world RPG" to describe the absolutely bonkers level of detail you see happening in Cyberpunk 2077.
In this video, "Creating Cyberpunk," it recounts the broad timeline the game has gone through. From its announcement in 2012(!) to its cinematic teaser trailer in 2013 to the five years of dormancy where CD Projekt Red fell silent on the whole thing.
They're honest about the roller coaster of development that goes into making video games. Miles Tost, level designer, says, "It's an iterative process. What we have now might not be there tomorrow. We've had ideas that have died over the years, then they have been resurrected, then they died again, and now they're back."
A ton of production went into the need for a fully customizable main character. CD Projekt Red has thrived on the aforementioned Geralt of The Witcher series. But having a static main character wouldn't do for a tabletop-RPG-to-video-game like Cyberpunk, and they knew it. So, the protagonist, named "V," will give players the freedom to play themselves. They go on to describe further the challenges and absolute sea change CD Projekt Red had to go through during this development process, not just from making a character creation screen, but from shifting to a first-person perspective, or trying to create a vast world that you can drive in (rather than the relatively smaller requirements of creating a vast world that you experience on foot).
It sounds like they're trying to manage expectations. They know the hype level is unreal. So, they're sticking to the promise they made in 2013: "It's coming: when it's ready."
