CD Projekt Red, the developers responsible for The Witcher series, released a teaser trailer for their newest game. It exploded onto the internet a few weeks ago, and currently has close to six million views on their YouTube channel. The game, titled Cyberpunk 2077, is being described as an open world RPG set in the Cyberpunk universe. But what exactly do we know about the Cyberpunk universe? Well, quite a bit actually. Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020 are pen & paper role playing games designed by Mike Pondsmith in the late 80’s and early 90’s. These games are based on works of fiction released in the early 1980’s, the most prolific of these books is Neuromancer, written by William Gibson. So Cyberpunk 2077 is based on the universe created by Mike Pondsmith with his pen & paper RPGs, which are in turn based on a series of cyberpunk novels released in the early 1980’s. Got it? Good. Let’s continue.
We also know that the game takes place in Night City. We know this from when the developers revealed the game last fall, and you can also see it on the police officer’s badge in the trailer (we’ll get to him in a second). Night City appears in the Cyberpunk 2013 and 2020 games. It is a metropolis on the coast of California, and it lies between San Francisco and Los Angeles. As you may have guessed, the game takes place in the year 2077. In this world, corporations control America after martial law was enacted for a few years. Because of this, there is extreme levels of consumerism, and citizens can purchase augmentations from these corporations to enhance their bodies.
What we see in the trailer is what happens when a person changes their body too much. Basically the robotic side of the person takes over, and goes on a mass-murdering spree. The augmentations start to rebel against any organic matter. When a human gets overtaken by the augmentations and can not control themselves, they are called a psycho, which is the main focus of the trailer. Sometimes the regular police are unable to take down psychos, and have to call in the MAX-TAC (Maximum Force Tactical Division), or known simply as Psycho Squad. Those in Psycho Squad are previous psychos that have been “reprogrammed” to work with Psycho Squad to help take down other psychos.
There is wide speculation on how this trailer will translate to a video game. We don’t know if you’ll play as a member of Psycho Squad, or a psycho, or maybe just a normal police officer. With the popularity of games incorporating the idea of creating your own story within the game, it would be neat to be dropped into the world as a normal human. From there you could decide if you want to make augmentations to your body, become a full fledged psycho, or join psycho squad. There area number of ways that CD Projekt Red can translate the Cyberpunk universe into a video game. We won’t know until probably next summer the direction the game will go in.
While the trailer was all CGI, and Cyberpunk 2077 has a tentative release date for 2015, I think it is alright to get excited about this game for a couple of reasons. The first is that it is being made by CD Projekt Red, which has quite the reputation for making excellent action RPGs, evident with The Witcher 1 & 2. The second is that Cyberpunk has a huge Blade Runner feel to it, and since the Blade Runner computer game, no one has really attempted to make a game with that type of art style and themes. It will most likely be CD Projekt Red’s most ambitious project for the young studio, so it will be interesting to see how well they do with the game.
