CD Projekt Red appreciates that there are all types of gamers out there, and some of them need games to be punishing in order to really have fun. Their hit game The Witcher 3 let players choose to enable perma-death mechanic where the game would delete your save file if you let Geralt die. For their next game, CD Projekt Red will include an option in Cyberpunk 2077 that disables the UI in Hardcore mode.
CD Projekt Red’s UI Coordinator Alvin Liu gave an interview to Wccftech recently where he shed some light on different UI options in the upcoming tech-saturated first-person Cyberpunk 2077. He also talked about what went in to making a shooter-style game appeal to people who don’t tend to go for the genre.
“The most fun [difficulty setting] I think will be the Hardcore setting where we turn off the UI you live as well,” Liu said. “And that will be a real challenge for a lot of players.” Disabling the UI is sure to ramp up the difficulty, as information about the environment and the player’s status isn’t immediately available at the flick of an eyeball.
Hardcore modes can be fun, but for gamers who are more interested in a narrative experience and don’t love the competitive, twitchy vibe that first-person shooters often convey, Cyberpunk 2077 has solutions to keep the game feeling good. During the interview, Liu also talked about options built into the game’s gear choices and settings that will help streamline Cyberpunk 2077 for casual players.
“Also, at the same time [as Hardcore options] if you want to play more casually for the story and maybe you’re not experienced with shooters, which was a real big concern for us. We want to tell a story and maybe you’re a big fan of The Witcher and you’re not comfortable playing a shooter, we have settings available for that. We even have weapons for that. If you recall from last year’s demo, we had a weapon called the smart gun, which helps you aim. The bullets were much slower and usually a bit weaker. But if your aiming isn’t your forte, you can always pick up the smart gun,” Liu said to Wccftech.
Liu added that there will be graphical options in Cyberpunk 2077 that should appeal to people who aren’t thrilled that CD Projekt Red chose to make the game with a first-person perspective, and Wffctech referenced gamers who struggle with motion sickness and nausea in their question to Liu. Liu responded by detailing a Field of View slider option and subtitles that will help “people who might have trouble reading some of the text.”
You pull the gun and you’re immediately shooting people.
Liu added that CD Projekt Red is excited about the first-person perspective of Cyberpunk 2077, saying that the team was “able to do a lot of new stuff, we can do much more immersive dialogue for example compared to the [The Witcher 3] where it was kind of obvious when you were going into combat because you saw the black bars, the camera would move.” Liu went on to explain that “in this game, since it’s first-person, literally you can shoot someone within second. That to us is really important and really immersive because it feels like danger. It was one of the big reasons why we actually switched from third-person.”
Cyberpunk 2077 was mxdwn’s Best Game of E3 2019, and is scheduled to release on PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on April 16, 2020. Check out our report of the live demo for Cyberpunk 2077 at this year’s E3 here.