Cyberpunk 2077 "like making 20 movies at the same time"

Cyberpunk 2077 caught all the headlines at E3 this month by not only showing off a new trailer and a release date, but also by revealing Keanu Reeves as an in-game character at the Xbox press conference. To hear more about the game, we spoke with lead quest designer Paweł Sasko in LA, who talked to us about the work that goes into making games like these.

"I have [a friend] in the company who, he's an actual movie producer, we asked him once 'hey dude, how is it to work on a game in comparison to movies?' and [he said] 'it's absolutely like making 20 movies at the same time', because you have so many different locations, so many different actors, like we are doing versions in 18 different languages. It's like, imagine how much casting you have to do for this, right, and basically it's like making 20 movies," Sasko explained.

We also asked about the scope of Cyberpunk 2077 when compared to The Witcher 3, CD Projekt Red's previous RPG hit that made them international superstars in game development.

"Oh wow, well that's a really deep question," he said. "So the thing is that the game is absolutely massive. We have main quests, we have side quests, we have minor quests, and we have street stories, and all that, those are quests that have the same rules, so they are non-linear, you can use your life paths, use your play styles actually to play through them, and they're absolutely non-linear, you can do multiple choices when you walk through that."

"Now, you have asked me about the scope, and that's a really, I would say, tricky question, because the game is, comparing to The Witcher 3, our team is way bigger than it is before, like now we're like 400 something people, like slightly below 450 working on Cyberpunk, which is way more than The Witcher. And the thing is, in terms of play time, it's absolutely impossible for me right now to even say how much it's going to be, because the problem is, because of all the non-linearities, you can play in very different ways. You can be stealthy and you can play totally without killing anybody - that may result in players having way more hours on the clock than someone who's going guns blazing and so on - and now all your choices are actually triggering different branches on quests, and those branches are of course of a different size, because everything is story-driven."

"One thing I can tell you - the scope is absolutely massive. If you drive through the city with your bike or with your car, you can see how huge this whole thing is, and it's like... there's just so [many] things happening."

"When we did The Witcher 3, we did a branching storyline in an open world. What we are doing here is we are taking branching storylines in open world and we are adding branching gameplay to it," Sasko continued. "And all those branches actually matter, and they are changing your playthrough."

For our thoughts on Cyberpunk 2077's hand-off E3 demo, check out the video below and our written preview here. Do you have faith in the story of Cyberpunk 2077?