By Faraz Bahabadi
All Photos are published on Cyberpunk.net.
CD Project Red’s, a company that gave us the phenomenal Witcher trilogy and made a lot of people fall in love with the character Geralt of Rivia, next project is an ambitious and grand open world RPG set in a dystopian megapolis called Night City. Early development started with 50 people back in 2013 and it grew to the size 500 by 2018. The development has taken so long and the game was pushed so many times that there were jokes about the game being actually published in 2077.
Night city is a City larger than life. With Conflict from gang wars, heavily being relied on robotics and an internet controlled by the army, its a sprawling city of chaos and insanity. The City has six regions, the corporate City Center, immigrant-inhabited Watson, luxurious Westbrook, suburban Heywood, gang-infested Pacifica, and industrial Santo Domingo. A coastal metropolis between Los Angeles and San Francisco, it has a very rich history even though it is fictional. The visual identity of the city is derived from the four eras, it underwent—austere Entropism, colorful Kitsch, imposing Neo-Militarism, and opulent Neo-Kitsch.
In this first person shooter game you will play as V, a mercenary who is looking to find a one of a kind implant that will make him immortal. You can customize him heavily. Voice, face, hairstyles, body type and modifications, background, and clothing are customizable. Stat categories—Body, Intelligence, Reflexes, Technical, and Cool—are influenced by the player’s choices and the style that he plays. In the beginning you can choose from three different lifepaths, Nomad, Street kid and Corporate. Based on this, players will embark on various missions tailored to their V’s backstory, available weaponry and character choices.
There was a very interesting surprise announcement back in june, 2019. Keanu Reevs is going to play a non-playable character in the game. Johnny Silverhand, rockstar turned vigilante an iconic character from the original Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop role-playing game by Mike Pondsmith. Silverhand is a Rockerboy, a very specific character class in the world of Cyberpunk 2020.
They are described in the book as the following: “Rockerboys are the street poets, social consciences and rebels of the 2000’s. With the advent of digital porta-studios and garage laser disk mastering, every Rocker with a message can take it to the street; put it in the record stores, bounce it off the comsats. Sometimes, this message isn’t something the corporations or the Government wants to hear. Sometimes what you say is going to get right in the faces of the powerful people who really run this world. But you don’t care, because as a Rockerboy, you know it’s your place to challenge authority, whether in straight-out protest songs that tell it like it is, or just by playing kick-ass rock n’ roll to get the people away from the TV sets and into the Streets. You have a proud history as a
Rockerboy — Dylan, Springsteen, Who, Elvis, the Stones — the legions of hardrock heroes who told the truth with screaming guitars and gut-honest lyrics.”
“There aren’t words to describe seeing someone such as Mr. Reeves talent and legacy picking
up a character, that Mike first introduced over thirty years ago and bringing him to life,” a
representative told Game spot via email. “As a musician and someone who believes in making an impact in the word, someone who has known fame and the way it can lift and cut, its clear Mr. Reeves can understand Johnny in a way few people can. We’re beyond excited.”
The game’s current release date is November 18 which I hope is final since the game has
already been delayed couple of times before. It’s going to be released on the PS4, Xbox One and
Pc but also owners of the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 versions will be able to freely
download the game on Xbox Series X and PlayStation 5 upon release. The next generation ports will become available in 2021.
