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New Cyberpunk 2077 details emerge: modding, sex scenes, game length, destructible environments & more

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In its yearly polish community meeting, CD Projekt RED revealed some new details about its upcoming title, Cyberpunk 2077. The company shared some new details about the game’s gameplay mechanics, its story, the game’s length, its destructible environments and more.

Going into more details, CD Projekt RED claimed that the main story of the Cyberpunk 2077 might be a little shorter than the one in The Witcher 3. However, the team aims to make up for it with much higher replayability.

CDPR also aims to keep the balance between loot that will be useful for the player and one that will be useless from player’s perspective. Furthermore, there will be consequences for those that take too long before picking a dialogue option. Also, the team has confirmed that there will be a New Game+.

CDPR aims to add car physics that will be better than those of other open-world games, like GTA. The day-night cycle will also have a pretty organic impact on the gameplay. Moreover, the dynamic weather won’t affect the gameplay, however, the world will react to it. Players will also be able to destroy around 3/4 assets around them. Still, don’t expect to be completely destroying buildings.

Regarding the sex scenes, CDPR did a lot of mocap for those and they believe that their amount should satisfy everyone. The team also wants to add modding tools to the game, though it is not ready to make any declarations about it yet. And while players won’t be able to buy new apartments, V’s apartment will look differently based on the Lifepath they chose and it will change in some ways over time.

Here are all the new details that have surfaced online:

Story
  • on the question about if we actually get an option to do exactly what Johnny said and burn the city down, the response was just: „Of course!”
  • in terms of length, main story of the Cyberpunk 2077 might be a little shorter then in The Witcher 3, but will make up for it with much higher replayability. However at the same time they still didn’t measured the length of the entire game with all the encounters and smaller quests accounted for, only the main story and major sidequests
  • about the useless loot: they are aiming to keep the balance between loot that will be useful for the player and one that will be useless from player’s perspective. The reason why they are keeping loot that’s useless for the player is that even if it’s useless for them, it’s still something that was useful for the characters in the game and it wouldn’t be logical for all the NPC’s to carry only stuff that is beneficial for the player. In other words, their goal is to utilize that useless stuff as a way to expand the world building of the game by including, as a part of the loot, things that make sense for the location we are exploring or enemies we fight, even if it’s something that we, as a player, may disregard simply as a junk. Hopefully my explanation wasn’t too confusing
  • about the option to continue to play the game after the ending, the response was that they found a really cool way to do it, but it’s something for the players to see. They definitely want for the people to enjoy their game as long as possible
  • while most of the times waiting for too long before picking a dialogue option will only result in the person that you are having a conversation with throwing some annoyed comments at you (as I saw in the gameplay), in some situations, like during conversation with Royce and Dum Dum from the previous demo, doing that will have consequences
  • about sidequests: The Witcher 3 quest structure was compared to a single line, with a bunch of branches sticking out of it, which sometimes go back to that single line. In Cyberpunk 2077 those branches grow more branches, which then often tie around each other. That means (if I understood Pawe?’s explanation correctly) that sidequests that we decide to do will often evolve into more sidequests and those quests will have an impact on other quests, as well as the main storyline, to a much greater extent then they did in The Witcher 3. Thanks to all those branches it will be hard to find one playthrough, which will be exactly the same
Gameplay
  • (the question was if the access to certain locations will be blocked based on the choices we made, like for example in the second act of The Witcher 2) most locations should be still available for us to visit, no matter what choices we’ll make, but our choices might determine to what extent we get to explore those places. Some locations however won’t be available outside of certain paths
  • about car customization: they know this is a pretty often requested feature, but they are asking for a little more patience before they will say anything about it. Sounds like they do have some plans for something like that
  • while we won’t be able to buy new apartments, V’s apartment will look differently based on the Lifepath we chose and it will change in some ways over time. They also included certain mechanics tied to V’s apartment, which will allow us to „express the personality of our V” through it, but it’s something that they want for the players to discover on their own
  • about health regeneration: we will be able to restore our health using consumables like food and the drug inhaler. Some of those healing items will have an instant healing effect, while others will just slowly restore our health over time or work only under right circumstances. There is also a cyberware, which will provide us with health regeneration, however it will take a spot that could be used for a more useful peace of cyberware
  • they are aiming to make the car physics, while not on the simulator level, definitely more realistic then in something like GTA
  • day-night cycle have a pretty organic impact on the gameplay. During quests some places might be less or more guarded based on the time of day or in the night you may find some guards already sleeping, making it easier for you to sneak in. Some story scenes might also change depending on the time of day they are taking place in
  • about difficulty settings: while they would want to include as many differences as possible between each difficulty level beyond just stronger/tougher enemies, due to the huge scope of the game, it might be pretty difficult, so they can’t promise anything
  • reaching the borders of the playable world will work the same way as in The Witcher 3, so you are informed about getting close to it and then game will forcefully turn you back
  • police won’t intervene when they see you commiting some smaller crimes, like for example beating up some random dude on the street, because they treat it as just an everyday occurence in Night City, but if they see you commiting more extreme crimes, like pulling a gun out and shooting bystanders or driving through them with your car, they will absolutely try to fry your ass
  • dynamic weather won’t affect the gameplay, but the world will react to it. For example, in the rain some people will pull out their umbrellas, while the ones who don’t have those will look for a place to hide from the rain
  • player will be able to craft pretty much any usable item, with exception of clothes and cyberware, however it will be possible to craft different modifications for those, which will allow modification of their stats and of the way they look
  • car racing minigame is not going to be just a traditional car racing, they will also add some kind of extra Cyberpunk touch to it, which should allow us to really test the speed limits of our cars
  • regarding the question about the ability to own some kind of cyberpet in the game, the answer was that they know something about it, but they simply won’t tell (I don’t think it was referencing Flathead, since they talked about it in another response)
  • speaking of Flathead, it’s going to be just one of the tools on Techie’s disposal and will be useful in a specific situations
  • about how destructible the environment is, we will be able to destroy around ¾ assets around us, but of course we won’t be able to go as far as utterly destroying entire district
  • their goal is to make every playstyle equally valid and to not favorize one over another
Animations
  • they prepared an unique set of animations for every major character in the game, for things like movement, conversations and combat
  • one „simple” thing that wasn’t simple at all was such a crucial feature like… skipping cutscenes and dialogues. Since the game doesn’t have a traditional cutscenes like WItcher 3 did, they couldn’t just „leap through” the scenes like in their previous game, without taking the player out of experience. In fact, they developed around 10 different protypes just for that feature, but ultimately they found a really cool solution they seem to be satisfied with, but again, it’s something that they wish for players to experience for the first time on their own
  • about sex scenes: they did a lot of mocap for those and they believe that their amount should satisfy everyone, which should calm down anyone who assumed that they will just skip those entirely just because the game is in first person
Cyberware
  • some cyberware will require the ripperdoc services in order to install it into V, but there will be some cyberware modifications, which we might put into ourselves on the spot. For example, while only ripperdoc can install the mechanism of Mantis Blades in our arm, afterwards the blades itself can be detached and replaced on our own (but first will have to find the right type of blades to replace it with)
  • we will be able to install the Sandevistan upgrade, which will allow us to move as fast as the Animals we saw in Deep Dive video, making everything around us slower in the process, with exception of those fast enemies, whose speed up animations are then replaced by regular moving animations. While from the player’s perspective it’s something expected and normal, for animation team „simple” replacement like that was a huge technological challenge, but still they just refused to take a shortcut on that and delivered
  • V starts with a basic set of augments, which will include translator as well, but at the start of the game it will only translate the most common languages in Night City (like Spanish, Japanese and so on), but to be able to undestand less common languages, like Creole, you will have to buy right upgrades for your translator first, which is apparently a part of Kiroshi.
Other
  • about modding: they want to add modding tools to the game, but they are not ready to make any declarations about it yet
  • regarding the old version of „Chippin In” being included in the game or on the soundtrack in some form, their answer was for us to wait and see, and that they are aiming to make as many people happy as possible. Also it’s been said that they are going to say more about game’s music in general very soon
  • the diversity of NPC’s character models will be certainly much greater then in The Witcher 3 and they made an insane amount of them, however there is still a possibility that, due to the memory limitations, they might not be able to put all the unique models they made in the game and might be forced to make some compromises, but they work hard to ensure a distinctive look for as many NPC’s as possible without completely tanking the game’s performance

Kudos to Reddit’s member ‘shavod‘ for sharing these new details