'Cyberpunk 2077' Team Had To Watch 'Bladerunner' and 'Ghost in the Shell' Before Development

When it comes the the genre of cyberpunk, there's a few books and media you have to read and see to really understand the genre.

For one, you're going to want to read William Gibson's Neuromancer, aka The Bible of cyberpunk. You may also want to be familiar with New Wave science fiction and read cyberpunk authors Rudy Rucker and Bruce Sterling.

And on top of this there's a few films and anime you may want to see, such as: Akira, Ghost in the Shell, and of course, Blade Runner.

That said, the developers behind the upcoming role-playing game Cyberpunk 2077, have revealed that the Poland-based team made sure to cover and consume all of the great cyberpunk media before development kicked into high-gear, and of course, familiarize themselves with Cyberpunk 2020, the pen and paper RPG created by Mike Pondsmith that the game is based upon.

"The core of the inspiration: the entire studio likes 'Cyberpunk 2020, the pen and paper RPG. And just, generally, Cyberpunk as a genre, movies like Bladerunner, Ghost in the Shell, and books like Neuromancer," said Senior Quest Designer Phillip Weber while speaking to Sector.sk. "This is the same reason why we also made The Witcher, because we really, really love it and want to make a good video game....that we want to play ourselves."

Weber continued:

"If you want to tell really, really good stories, you have to really know the world. So, story team -- the writers, the quest designers, cinematic designer -- we had to assemble a list. 'These are the books you have to read,' 'these are the rulebooks of Cyberpunk 2020 you have to read,' 'these are the movies.' We had to get really immersed in it. Of course, many of us who were fans of cyberpunk knew those things already. But, it really was, we have to know cyberpunk just as well as we knew everything around The Witcher. On the other hand, we make mature games. We want to tell interesting stories with interesting themes. That hasn't changed. Telling interesting stories is the same thing we did before, so in that way, it feels like something we know."

According to Weber, the real goal was to make sure the team could "put the punk in cyberpunk." And judging off what has been shown of the game so far, they have seemingly accomplished that, and more.

Cyberpunk 2077 is in development for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC, and potentially next-gen systems. At the moment of publishing, there's been no word of a release date or even a release window.

Thanks, Cog Connected.