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We caught up with CD Projekt Red's Jakub Smodrzak and Yigsoft's Levente Kocsi in Madrid to learn more about the creative and development process behind the sci-fi RPG's innovative motion controls on Nintendo's latest hardware.
"Hi Gamereactor friends, I'm at the MAD Games Show in Madrid where, other than indie games, there are some interesting talks and some interesting behind-the-scenes meetings going on.
And, you know, I joined this industry 21 years ago because I loved motion controls, and they have evolved a lot, and that was when Nintendo had something called the Nintendo Revolution, before it was called the Wii, and I was very interested in, you know, waving and pointing and moving my way around games, and you guys know a lot about this."
"And you released or participated in one of the most advanced motion-controlled games that are available on the market right now, which is the Cyberpunk 2077 on the Nintendo Switch 2.
All in all, it's a very interesting adaptation of the game, but you guys added a very nice touch to it, so congratulations on that."
"So what can you tell me, Jakub, about the initial approach to this development?
When you guys were thinking, we need to do something special with these controllers, let's try these moves, let's try these other things, how did you approach it initially in the development process?
So, as you said, we wanted to do something fun with the controllers."
"We wanted them to be like the extension to the game, not add like a cognitive load to the players.
We wanted the players to feel more immersed in the game, to feel like they are actually in there, like the samurai with a katana, or like, I don't know, an assassin with a gun.
So I think that was the initial approach that we tried to stick to, and I think it worked out pretty well, because we managed to get a pretty consistent and really immersive, reliable motion controls that people love, and I think that's it, mostly."
"And how did you guys work with CDPR, assisting this motion controls development?
And what can you tell me about the technology you had at your disposal when you worked on this version?
So, basically, at the start, we helped them on the design, and we looked at what is supported by the platform in overall, and we could see that, okay, there is a very cool feature like motion recognition, and we wanted to came up something cool that is connected perfectly into this game, and for that, we tried out many, many, many different approaches and many different gameplay actions, how to connect it into the game, actually."
"And, yeah, it was a lot of trial and error, and the technical gap was very big at the beginning, but we kept our mind focused and went really enthusiastic about it to make it really work, really a special, unique play style.
And I think you mentioned this briefly, there are a couple of very special moves that we're not used to seeing in games as of late, such as, for example, when you heal yourself with the left hand, or when you reload, which to me felt like a light gun arcade machine."
"So what can you tell me about these slightly different special moves you guys implemented in the game that are not the usual, you know, waving or aiming, or more specific to this game, and which would you say is the thing you're the most proud of about motion controls?
So, when it comes to the motion control, I can tell you the healing pattern, because you use the left arm to lift it, so it basically mimics the same action in the game."
"When you use the inhaler, V gets the left arm and presses the inhaler to heal.
So I think that was the design we wanted to follow, and when it comes to the reload, correct me if I'm wrong, but I also think that it resembles the magazine sliding out of the gun, so it also felt intuitive, felt immersive, so that's why we went with it."
"And you also get the rumble feedback at the same time.
And the thing you're the most proud of, both of you, in terms of motion controls, in this project?
I think so. A major part of this project was the playtesting program we had in our company.
We partnered with our UX research lab, and we would run playtesting sessions with the internal team, not the team that was working on the project hands-on, but with the people from the company."
"So they would sit down and they would play with the game.
And at the beginning you could see that they had problems with these motion controls, and they struggled, they didn't use them as much.
But over time, when we iterated and we improved the patterns, we could actually see them using them, being immersed, and the patterns not giving them a headache, because they were the extension of the game, basically."
"So I think that was one of the best sights to see, the reception from our internal team.
And I think that there were a couple of YouTube videos that also praised the gyroscopic and motion patterns.
And that was also fun to see, and it was lovely that people liked them and paid attention to them.
Do you feel the same?
Yeah, pretty much. I'm also proud of the overall result, because I think 90% that we wanted to integrate gameplay extras, for example melee attacks and healing and so on, we did it and we could make so intuitive motions that feel distributed and don't compete with each other."
"And I'm also proud of the tooling that we introduced for this feature, because on the playtesting side and on the QA side, they also needed something that can help the reporting process to give feedback back to the developers.
And for that we introduced a so-called motion tool by one of our developers, Dominic Kovacs from Yigsoft."
"So I'm really proud of that.
And the last one for you as well.
What do you think is coming next in terms of motion controls in other games in the future, technology?
I don't know, for example, it took so many years to get one-on-one sword swinging and sword fighting, and we get a lot of innovations with VR as well."
"So what do you expect to see next in terms of motion controls?
I hope that our work really opened the eyes in the industry, because we could see that motion controls work very well in sport titles and VR games, because they feel connected to the experience."
"But if we do not bring this design perspective in other game types like action RPGs, it is very hard to integrate motion controls in a way that it is a gimmick or a technological showcase.
So I'm hoping to bring this new perspective to the industry, so if someone chooses to do this playstyle, to integrate in their game, then maybe they will think about those intuitions that we bring."
"And anything that you would like to highlight from your upcoming talk?
Any takeaway that you want to convey to the audience gathered here?
Well, come to the talk and see.
That's fair enough."
"It's going to be an interesting talk, I think.
We have some insights from the development, and we will also share some tips and tricks we had.
We have cool videos.
Cool videos. Looking forward to that one, it's today at 6 o'clock."
"So thank you so much for your time. Enjoy the show.
Thank you very much.
Thank you."
