In a new episode of CD Projekt Red’s official podcast AnsweRED, members of the development team for the sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 (currently titled Project Orion) sat down for an exclusive interview about the next Cyberpunk game. Executive producer Dan Hernberg and associate game director Paweł Sasko shared early hopes and goals they have for their upcoming game, as well as some details on its development.
One major headline from this podcast appearance was Sasko’s statement that “we didn’t push the envelope far enough in some places” in the first Cyberpunk 2077 game, going on to suggest that not only does the team want to dive deeper into social issues and themes in the next entry, but that they only “scratched the surface” of those issues in the first installment. Hernberg also chimes in, citing current problems in society such as the wealth gap and megacorporations as prime issues for the world of Cyberpunk to explore and discuss.
The two higher-ups also discussed the new Boston-based studio heading development on Project Orion, as previous installment in the Cyberpunk franchise was developed in Warsaw, Poland. While discussing the topic of why they decided to develop the game in America this time around, Hernberg said of the game: “It’s got a lot of punk energy, and [the tabletop game] was written by an American, so it just seems right to do it in America.” The duo went on to discuss how developing the first game in Poland lead to some inconsistency when attempting to create a realistic American city. “There was this post with the guy saying that there is this immersion-breaking bug in Cyberpunk, and the bug was about the fact that the covers for manholes for a sewer were the manholes that you use normally in Europe, in Germany, for a pavement,” said Sasko. “Those are not manholes that you normally cover in America on the streets.” The aesthetic details and accuracy of depicting American society are key focuses in the development of this new Cyberpunk game, which is still in early stages of development. You can watch the full episode of the AnsweRED podcast here.