Cyberpunk 2077’s Long Development Was Due to It Being Partially Rebooted
Cyberpunk 2077 has been a long time coming. The game’s first teaser trailer was posted on YouTube in January of 2013, following the game’s actual announcement in May of 2012. However, CD Projekt Red remained almost silent on the project for five years until the recent debut of their story trailer at E3. Speaking in a recent interview with Kotaku, the studio’s co-founder, Marcin Iwiński addressed the game’s unusually long development cycle.
Why Has Cyberpunk Taken So Long?
Iwiński stated that the biggest factor which extended development of Cyberpunk 2077 was due to a major change of direction. Although he hesitated to call it a reboot per se, he did state that; “We were changing directions, and actually we were looking for the substance of the game.” It’s certainly true that the 2013 teaser trailer and the 2018 story trailer do look significantly different. Although cybernetics and neon predominate in both, the aesthetic of the story trailer appears much more unique. For example, the outfits worn by law enforcement are substantially different. While Iwiński may hesitate to use the term, it certainly seems like the game received at least a partial reboot.
“It is super difficult when you’re establishing a new IP,” explained Iwiński; “because you can do whatever you want to do, but at the same time you’re always questioning yourself. The process of this internal dialogue – or sometimes even like a monologue happening in people’s heads – it is very difficult and hard because you don’t know, is it going to be cool or not?”
Iwiński went on to explain that CD Projekt Red was unafraid of losing months of work to ensure that a new team understands their vision for the game; ensuring that the end product is truly what they aim for. CD Projekt Red originally planned to develop Cyberpunk 2077 alongside The Witcher III: Wild Hunt. However, The Witcher III ended up taking all of their resources to develop. In the end, they started development of Cyberpunk immediately after the studio finished The Witcher III’s Blood and Wine DLC. Although they have yet to announce a release date for the game; it seems likely that it could release in 2019-2020, as it is planned for release on next-generation consoles.