Cyberpunk 2077 - Big Interview

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Gamingbolt interviewed senior writer Magda Zych about Cyberpunk 2077:

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The Big Interview - CDPR on Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty's Development, Update 2.0, Cyberpunk's Future, and More

With Cyberpunk 2077 having completed its redemption arc, CDPR senior writer Magda Zych speaks with GamingBolt about the game's journey and what the future might hold for the property.

With the one-two punch of the radical improvements of Update 2.0 and the incredible Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2077 has well and truly completed its redemption arc, but though CD Projekt RED is now ready to move on from the open world RPG to the many other new projects it has in development, there's still plenty left to unpack with Cyberpunk 2077 itself. Recently, we had the chance to shoot across some of our most burning questions about the game in the wake of Phantom Liberty's successful launch to CD Projekt RED's senior writer, Magda Zych, who spoke with us about the expansion's development, the process of overhauling the base game, what the future holds for Cyberpunk, and more. You can read our full interview below.

Cyberpunk 2077 has had an eventful journey from launch to now, nearly three years later, and it's fair to say that things have turned around significantly for the game. Can you talk to us about what that journey has been like, and what your biggest takeaways have been from these last three years?

For me, this whole journey was divided into certain distinct stages, and it started even before the base game's release. When I looked at the finished dialogue graphs and saw how extensive they were compared to the graphs in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, I had a feeling that this was an enormous undertaking - this stage contained some anxiety and great expectations. Right after the launch, there was a period of shock and denial. Then began a period of reconciliation and trying to understand what happened, a period of discussions on how we can fix everything - and then probably the longest period of releasing updates and, in a sense, healing. We, as scriptwriters, started working on the Phantom Liberty expansion as the first team; the first brainstorms took place way before the release of Cyberpunk 2077, so we didn't have that much time to think about the aftermath of the release, but even we could see a clear change that came with it, for example in how we expressed concerns within the whole team instead of the "do it and see how it goes" approach.

After Update 1.6, many would have thought that with the vast majority of the game's technical issues having been addressed, there wouldn't be any further major changes to the base experience. At what point was it decided to introduce the many system and gameplay overhauls that Update 2.0 brings?

It's not the case that there was some decision after Patch 1.6 to introduce the changes that came with Update 2.0. Some of what was there was already planned earlier, but many of the changes came from player feedback and from how we saw gamers interact with the game, what we thought could improve their experience more, etc. We were working on these improvements and changes alongside the Edgerunners Update, aka Patch 1.6.

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