Cyberpunk 2077 (and its expansion in particular) did a solid job of bringing its rich and dense cyberpunk setting to life, but some might argue that developer CD Projekt RED perhaps did not go as far with the game’s thematic depth and nuance as it could have, given the sheer thematic depth that the cyberpunk genre as a whole generally enables.
Members of the game’s own development team are, in fact, in agreement with that notion to some degree, and say they want to bring about noticeable improvements on that front with Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel, which is currently in early pre-production at CD Projekt RED’s newly-established North American wing.
Speaking in a recent episode of CDPR’s AnswerRed Podcast, associate game director Paweł Sasko touched on how Cyberpunk 2077 “didn’t push the envelope far enough” with its social commentary as it could have given its social commentary, citing the example of “the homeless crisis.”
“I see that we didn’t push the envelope far enough in some places, for instance,” he said (transcription via IGN). “Like, let’s say, the homeless crisis. When I look at it, I’m like, ‘We weren’t far enough in ‘[Cyberpunk 2077].’ We thought that we were dystopian, but we just touched the surface.”
Project Orion executive producer Dan Hernberg chimed in, remarking on how the cyberpunk setting allows CD Projekt RED to draw parallels with the real world, and how the next Cyberpunk is going to continue “exploring those themes but in a very poignant way.”
“I think the really cool thing about Cyberpunk—and the dystopian future that it has—is there’s so much relevance to today, of megacorporations, of people on the fringes, you know, of people just being exploited resources, of the wealth gap, of all these things,” he said. “I think that 2077 allowed us to tell these stories in ways where—at the heart of it—there’s always relationships and people, but we’re in a really broken world and that we can call out some of these things.
“I think for me that’s what Cyberpunk is about, exploring those themes but in a very poignant way. I love the world, and I think that’s what we’re going to try to do with Project Orion. Really continue to lean into that and continue to say, ‘What is [the state of the world ] today, and what does it look like in a couple of years?’”
In October last year, CD Projekt announced that Cyberpunk 2 was in the “conceptual design” stage. The next big project that the company is focused on is The Witcher 4, which will enter full production soon.
