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Cyberpunk 2077’s multiplayer feature spent a long while in the research and development phase as CD Projekt Red wanted to be sure that it would align with the lore of the game (via Video Games Chronicle).
Multiplayer for Cyberpunk 2077 was officially confirmed in early September, after much to-ing and fro-ing. Initially, the Polish studio said that its sci-fi dystopian game would copy the format of The Witcher 3; a single player experience with future free updates of DLC. However, CD Projekt Red president Adam Kiciński stated that there are three Cyberpunk projects in the pipeline. Expectedly, one of these is the main game, one was revealed to be multiplayer, and the other was unspecified. Now, we know why CD Projekt Red was tentative to confirm the multiplayer feature.
Cyberpunk 2077 level designer Max Pears spoke to Video Games Chronicle at Tokyo Game Show, and said that the multiplayer needed to link seamlessly with the single player experience. ‘I can’t say too much on it because it’s still going through its process, but it’s about making sure that multiplayer fits in with the lore of the world and it feels right,’ he explained.
‘It’s about making sure it fits in with who we are as a company as well, because story is so important to us, plus it needs to fit in with how we design and deliver games. That’s why it was so important to go through the R&D process with it, to make sure that we’re not just throwing something in and that it feels like a CD Projekt Red multiplayer that has our beliefs and design philosophy,’ Pears added. So, it sounds like we won’t receive modes like battle royale or prop hunt because these assumably wouldn’t work in the world of Night City.
But, it does seem like the multiplayer will continue threads of the single player narrative, perhaps using characters from certain factions that would post jobs to be done, causing different players to cooperate or compete for their reward. ‘We’ve still got work going on and we’re hiring to make sure that we get the right people for the job,’ Pears said. ‘The main focus is still single-player right now and we’re making sure that people understand that this world is more than big enough for single-player.’
That sentiment is echoed by Cyberpunk 2077 producer Richard Borzymowski, who said that Night City may be smaller than the map of The Witcher 3 but it is chockablock with content. ‘It’s an integral part of the setting; it’s essentially a protagonist if you want to call it that,’ he explained, ‘So it has to be denser. It wouldn't give us the end effect we wanted to achieve if the city wouldn't be believable […] so we packed it full of life.’
Cyberpunk 2077 is out on April 16, 2020, for PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
