Cyberpunk 2077is one of the most anticipated releases of the decade, with its initial reveal trailer released by developer CD Projekt Red all the way back in 2013. The studio’s last huge title,The Witcher 3, was critically acclaimed and extremely commercially successful, but it seems that CD Projekt Red is making one change that the studio learned from the development of its last game.
The main story ofCyberpunk 2077will not be as long asThe Witcher 3’s, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that the player experience with the game will be shorter. Indeed, there are some good reasons why CD Projekt Red has made this decision, as well as some interesting implications that it could have for the design philosophy ofCyberpunk 2077overall.
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The Length of Cyberpunk
Patrick Mills, senior quest designer with CD Projekt Red, has confirmed that the “main story run inCyberpunk 2077is slightly short thanThe Witcher 3.” The main story ofThe Witcher 3: Wild Hunttook roughly 50 hours for most players to complete, and with side quests would usually take closer to 100 hours. As a result, however, CD Projekt Red found that many players never made it to the end of Geralt’s story.
“We got a lot of complaints aboutTheWitcher 3’s storyjust being too long,” said Mills, “and looking at the metrics you see tremendous numbers of people played through that game really far but never made it to the end. Fans should not expect to be finishingCyberpunk 2077quickly, however. It appears there has been a significant design shift between theWitcherseries andCyberpunk.
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RPG Replayability
There are3 major Life Path backstory optionsfor the player to choose from and a great deal of character customization options. In other words, whileThe Witcher 3lacked the unique replayabilty of a game likeSkyrim,Cyberpunk 2077could see far more players explore the world through multiple playthroughs to experience all of the content in the game.
If CD Projekt Red is serious about cutting down the length of the main quest, then fans can expectCyberpunk 2077’s main quest to run around 30 hours, based upon the fact thatSkyrim’s main questtook around 15 to 30 hours for players to complete. As almost anySkyrimplayer will know, however, first-person open world games usually lean into player freedom as their greatest asset, and many players do not play the main quest at all.
Indeed, CD Projekt Red has claimed thatevery side mission inCyberpunkshould feel like a full storyin and of itself, and the game will be truly successful if players can explore the streets of Night City and experience dynamic environmental storytelling and side quests that feel just as legitimate and well developed as the main questline itself. It is likely that the game will avoid placing a particular urgency on the start of the main quest to encourage that sense of freedom, compared to other games which present the player with a world-ending threat from the outset.
Whether or not CD Projekt Red is shortening the length of the main quest in order to focus on engendering player freedom, however, remains to be seen. WithSkyrimas the undisputed reigning champion of the first-person RPG genre and still selling well on Steam to this day,Cyberpunk 2077’s shorter storymay be able to achieve similar longevity with that focus on freedom and replayability rather than a single main questline.
Cyberpunk 2077releases on November 19th for PC, PlayStation 4, Stadia, and Xbox One. The game is backwards compatible on the PS5 and Xbox Series X, with a version optimized for those consoles coming later as a free upgrade.
