Cyberpunk 2077 has revealed a major upgrade from The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt. When Cyberpunk 2077 releases next month via the PS5, PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Google Stadia, it will do so without one of the few rare shortcomings of The Witcher 3. When the latest Witcher game hit back in 2015, it raised the bar for open-world games and storytelling. Not only is it widely considered one of the best games of the generation, but of all time. However, lip-syncing was a problem for the game. Not a huge problem — not even close — but a noticeable problem. That said, it looks like it won’t be a problem in Cyberpunk 2077.
According to CD Projekt Red, facial animations and lip-sync were a big focus when making Cyberpunk 2077. More specifically, the team wanted to make sure there was a measurable improvement from The Witcher 3. And so far, everything shown of the game illustrates the Polish developer has been successful in this pursuit.
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CD Projekt Red notes this applies to not only main characters but every character in Night City and will be consistent no matter what language you’re playing the game in, which is impressive because the game will be fully playable in ten different languages.
A big contributor to this improvement is JALI, a fairly new piece of technology that is said to allow high-quality animation to be made scalable across multiple facial animations and speech types.
Of course, for now, it remains to be seen how much more improved the lip sync will be and whether it will be on par with games like The Last of Us Part 2. Ultimately, the answer to this will be “no” given that’s an open-world game with far more characters and animations to account for, but hopefully, it won’t be a negative point for the game like it was with The Witcher 3.
Cyberpunk 2077 is set to release worldwide on November 19 via the PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, PC, and Google Stadia and priced at $60.
