CD Projekt RED’s Quest Design Coordinator, Philipp Weber, has shared some new details about Cyberpunk 2077. According to Weber, the game will feature four types of quests. Moreover, CD Projekt RED will handcraft all quests, and the team will not be using many fetch quests.

Going into more details, Cyberpunk 2077 will feature main and side quests, as well as street stories and some minor quests.

“Main quests are usually the largest quests in the game. They are the ones players have to play to get to the end of the story. Of course we make a nonlinear game, so not all main quests are always required. However, those are usually the ones that have the main characters and themes in them that we want to convey. If you wanted, you could only play the main quests and should still get a really good experience.

Side quests are all other quests we put into the game. They can be as large or even bigger as a main quest, or just very short. They are based on all the ideas and stories we want to tell that don’t have a place in our main story. Sometimes they also have a specific purpose; like introducing a new theme to the game, or telling the story of a specific community or location.

Street Stories are the bread and butter of a street merc like V; a bit like monster hunting for a witcher like Geralt. These are the jobs that V gets from fixers like Dexter DeShawn. Doing these jobs gives V more street cred, so she gets a reputation around the city. These jobs can be very varied and of course also benefit a lot from our different playstyles. There’s often many creative ways to solve them. Street Stories are designed and implemented by our Open World Team. As a quest designer I’m actually really looking forward towards playing them myself, because I don’t know them as well as other quests in the game and I’ll be able to play them almost as any other player.

We also have minor quests, which is just our term for short or smaller side quests. Sometimes they can just be a few minutes long, but they all should tell an interesting story nevertheless. This is often where we can be the most creative, because there’s not a lot of pressure. Many cool moments that people remember from Wild Hunt are from these smaller minor quests.”

Weber has also confirmed that CDPR will handcraft all quests, and that there won’t be any procedural “radiant” quests.

“For us, quality is always more important than quantity, and we just couldn’t deliver this quality with modules we assemble in different ways to create these random quests. We don’t just want to keep people busy, but actually give them something to do that’s worth their while.”

Weber has also claimed that the team won’t be using a lot of fetch quests. Not only that, but the fetch quests that will be present will be better than those players encounter in most other games.

“Our quests usually aren’t built around specific gameplay actions, but interesting stories. Sometimes you need to fetch something there. But if there’s more to the story than you probably also do five other things on the way, so the one part where you fetch something doesn’t feel bad.”

Lastly, Weber shared some more details about the consequences of players’ choice in Cyberpunk 2077.

“There can be many different story consequences that of course always depend on what the quest was about. However, one thing that’s part of our design philosophy is not to have a game over screen other than player death.

This means that for many different cases, we have to come up with solutions how the quest can continue. Even if the player makes a big stupid mistake. It’s especially important for our main quests, because those can’t be “failed” in the classical sense; the player should always be able to get to his ending of the story. But of course we can make these decisions, but then have to live with the consequences, which sometimes can feel like we failed someone.

But of course, if we get a job and it’s specified that we shouldn’t go on a rampage, we simply fail our job if we do it and won’t get paid. So we just always try to find what makes sense and offer as many different possibilities and consequences as possible. However, sometimes we also have to balance how much we can realistically do.”

Weber has also shared some more details about the quest system of Cyberpunk 2077. For instance, the game will have more nonlinear quests thanks to its fluid class system. Not only that, but there will be different ways via which players can gather information. Therefore, I strongly suggest reading his entire Q&A interview here.

Cyberpunk 2077 releases in April 2020!