Cyberpunk 2077 Sequel Will Fix One of The Key Story Criticisms of the First Game

Cyberpunk 2077's upcoming sequel, codenamed Orion, will address one of the things fans didn't totally love about the first game. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most infamous games of the last several years. CD Projekt Red spent the better part of a decade hyping up its new franchise after knocking it out of the park with The Witcher. A new first-person shooter with cars, guns, and a dense city was new territory for them. It made a lot of big promises, some of which weren't met, much to the dismay of fans. Cyberpunk 2077 launched with a controversial reception as it was broken, buggy, and not quite what some fans hoped for. It has been tremendously fixed and CD Projekt Red has redeemed itself in the years since, but there are some lingering critiques for the game that can't really be fixed with patches.

Cyberpunk 2077 allows players to pick a "life path" at the start which basically reveals the background of the character you're building and changes the opening of the game. You may start out in the desert, working in a fancy office, or hustling on the streets of Night City, but it doesn't change the game much more beyond the opening outside of some dialogue choices and optional side quests pertaining to your life path. CD Projekt Red narrative director Philipp Weber noted on the Answered Podcast that the team is aware that this system could be better and result in more of a branching storyline in the future.

"I do think there are things with, for example, the life paths, that kind of gives you a promise as being able to play more different kinds of characters," Weber said. "I think this is a thing where, in the future, that's as an example something we would like to improve. Since I do think we gave a promise there that maybe in the end we did not really sell."

He went on to note that the studio's experience will allow them to possibly build upon these ideas more successfully in a sequel.

"The game begins with this very specific thing, you can be a Nomad, a Corpo, a Street Kid, but then it sometimes goes away a little bit. We move it all together. Then sometimes you can do it," Weber said. "As a quest designer, I think in retrospect we can see the old topic, given more experience, given more time, I think maybe we would make it a bit less muddled than we did it there."

[H/T IGN]