Cyberpunk 2077 Sequel Gets New Update

CD Projekt has offered new details about how the Cyberpunk sequel is coming along.

Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty just released last month, but CD Projekt is already looking to the future of the franchise. A sequel to the game, codenamed Project Orion, was announced several months ago, but little else was revealed. CD Projekt chief creative officer Adam Badowski offered some new details on the how the Cyberpunk sequel is progressing during a recent investor presentation (via Video Games Chronicle). While the company seems to have some big plans in place, it sounds like Project Orion won't be releasing for quite some time, as it's currently in the concept stage. 

"This project is on a conceptual design level right now, and it's going to be designed by a team of veterans who were responsible for fine-tuning Cyberpunk 2077 and designing Phantom Liberty," said Badowski. "We're going to work out of North America, Vancouver and Boston locations, team leadership are already there. And late in 2024, we're going to work with teams comprising several dozen people, while as a target, half of the developers are going to work out of northern US and the other half out of Poland."

Lessons from Cyberpunk 2077

It will be interesting to see when the game does end up releasing, and the lessons CD Projekt learned from Cyberpunk 2077's release. The original game dropped in 2020, after years of hype. While things seemed promising initially, the game launched in a broken state. The PC version was closer to what CD Projekt had been hyping, but the game's console releases were a mess, especially the versions on PS4 and Xbox One. Things got so bad that it led to legal troubles for the company, and the game was pulled from the PlayStation Store for several months.

These days, Cyberpunk 2077 is in much better shape. The game has gotten a lot of updates over the last three years, fixing many of the game's biggest issues. Not only has the base game improved, but the Phantom Liberty DLC has been almost universally well-received. Despite the DLC's critical and commercial successes, CD Projekt will not be making any more expansions. The publisher has decided to move away from the company's current Red Engine, and will begin using Unreal Engine for future games, including Project Orion, presumably. Since CD Projekt is ready to move on to another engine, no additional expansions will release for the current game. That might be disappointing for some fans, but many others might prefer a new game, instead.

Hope for the Future

Hopefully the quality of Phantom Liberty bodes well for Project Orion when it does launch! CD Projekt likely has no desire to repeat the mistakes of Cyberpunk 2077's launch, or deal with any of the same fallout. Of course, some gamers might still be hesitant to purchase the game on launch day, just in case.

Are you excited about the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077? Do you think the next game will launch in better shape than the previous one? Share your thoughts with me directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp or on Instagram at @Dachampgaming!