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Mike Pondsmith, original creator and game designer of the Cyberpunk series, has been speaking about working with developer CD Projekt Red on the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 game, and he's got plenty of good words for the studio.
Speaking in an extensive interview with Video Games Chronicle, Pondsmith said that the Cyberpunk license had been 'optioned for years to many, many different studios. But what I saw in CD Projekt was that they really cared about it and the things that were important to us were important to them. So I knew it was in good hands.'
Speaking to the dedication of the studio, he said 'From the start CDPR are fans: they play the [pen and paper] game. Many of them grew up playing the game. So this is like a bunch of guys who watched the Star Wars movies as kids and then got a chance to make a Star Wars game: they would do the best damn job they could.'
Mr Pondsmith is probably more of an authority than most people who work in licensing, given he used to work in video games, including on the original Xbox. 'So that means I could give the development team some useful input about how to do it. I’ll give you an example: we talked about the AV’s, which are the flying cars, and I had worked on Flight Simulator so I could bring that to the table and tell them what to do and what not to do for 3D flight.'
He's not shy about saying he'd like to work with CDPR again in the future too, saying 'At the core, they’re people who are honourable, straightforward, care deeply about what they do for who they’re creating for. All of us are very much driven by what fans will get out of this, because we are fans.'
Cyberpunk 2077 is set for an April 16 2020 release on Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC and features one Mr Keanu Reeves.
