“It’s an RPG before it’s a shooter”: CD Projekt Red’s Patrick Mills on Cyberpunk 2077’s FPS perspective

“It’s an RPG before it’s a shooter”: CD Projekt Red’s Patrick Mills on Cyberpunk 2077’s FPS perspective, political storytelling, and tabletop inspirations

When CD Projekt Red announced back in 2012 that it was working on a Cyberpunk game based on Mike Pondsmith’s popular pen and paper role-playing game, and that it was working in collaboration with the man himself, imaginations ran wild just thinking about how this game would look when brought to life. After all, for years the world of Cyberpunk had only lived inside our heads. That was until early the following year when we got our first glimpse with a short pre-rendered teaser trailer. And what a tease it was. There were a few nods to the Cyberpunk universe, with Dynalar Technologies, the Kiroshi corporation, Militech and Max Tac agents, but that was it. It ended with the agonising words “Coming: when it’s ready” letting us know that it’d be quite some time before we’d see more.

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Fast forward five years to Microsoft’s 2018 E3 conference and we get another pre-rendered trailer. This time going into much more depth than before, with a sweeping shot of Night City, its people going about their lives, one of the vehicles you’ll be able to drive and even a version of the main character. Now that fans and onlookers have been given a better look at Cyberpunk 2077, OXM chatted to CD Project Red’s Quest Designer Patrick Mills (who also worked on The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt) about some of the finer details of the studio’s grandstanding, hugely ambitious RPG, and what to expect once we finally get our hands on it...

What’s been the reaction to the trailer you showed at Microsoft’s E3 press conference? And how have you been able to gauge that?

We’ve been watching things like Twitter and read some of the stuff people have written, and people really seem to be into it. It’s very exciting to see. There might have been some initial surprise that the city was more vibrant and alive than some were expecting from our first teaser trailer. But what I’ll say about that is that we started with that aesthetic,then branched out from there. That’s still in the game though, we’ve got a day/night cycle and a weather system, so you’ll still get to see those dark and rainy streets.