Cyberpunk 2077 Story “Much Grander” Than The Witcher 3

Next year, the hotly anticipated Cyberpunk 2077 will finally arrive on PS4, Xbox One, Stadia and Microsoft Windows. Developed by CD Projekt Red, the team behind The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077 has earned some lofty expectations, as a result. The game certainly has some big shoes to fill, but CD Projekt Red seems to feel the game will exceed its predecessor in one particular area: the story. In an interview with Inn: Poland (translated by Video Games Chronicle), Story Director Marcin Blacha told the outlet that the story is much larger in scale.

“For me everything is on a much grander scale than the stories of small human dramas presented in The Witcher.”

In the interview, Blancha was asked about the game’s word count, but the Story Director could not give an exact figure. Blacha instead discussed the amount of dialogue compiled and the director’s notes that had to be shared between the team.

“It turned out that we wrote two thick book volumes of dialogue, and another whole two volumes of directorial comments to go alongside them. The texts that will not be recorded will be the same, and the words in the documentation for the game cannot be counted, but there were plenty of them too.”

There are certain hurdles that must be overcome when creating a futuristic setting, and writers often must come up with new terms to describe elements of the newly created world. Cyberpunk 2077 abstains from this, instead re-appropriating existing expressions, granting them new purpose.

“We avoided neologisms in the dialogue, but we often gave new meanings to known terms. The characters talk about ‘full conversion’, meaning the exchange of the biological body for the electromechanical body, and when they say ‘optics’ they usually refer to electronic sight implants.”

The news comes on the heels of the announcement that Cyberpunk 2077 will be shorter than The Witcher 3 but will offer “much higher replayability.” Given The Witcher 3’s massive amount of side quests, alternate endings and DLC, it’s a fairly bold proclamation.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt released to rave reviews when it originally released back in 2015. The Witcher 3 has won more than 800 awards in total, including a Golden Joystick Award for Best Storytelling. While scale does not necessarily indicate quality, it is interesting to see CD Projekt Red is aware of the expectations gamers have for Cyberpunk 2077.

Gamers will be able to judge for themselves whether or not Cyberpunk 2077 meets those expectations when it arrives on April 16, 2020. Are you looking forward to the game? Do you think CD Projekt Red can top The Witcher 3? Let us know in the comments or share your thoughts directly on Twitter at @Marcdachamp to talk all things gaming!