Cyberpunk Has “Smoother Learning Curve” Than The Witcher

CD Projekt has stated its intentions to create a “smoother learning curve” than that seen in The Witcher titles in upcoming title Cyberpunk.

As we know well here at Prima The Witcher 2 slammed gamers head first into a game featuring some pretty hardcore mechanics.

CD Projekt’s intention with Cyberpunk is to ease players into the lore of the game with a lighter touch.

“What we learned from The Witcher series is that we need to attract people with a smoother learning curve when it comes to the storyline,” studio boss Adam Badowski explained to Gamasutra.

CDP’s Co-founder Marcin Iwinski went on to add: “In The Witcher 1, for example, we were throwing people in the middle of the story, and we assumed players would know what is happening! But a lot of players told us that they didn’t really understand this relationship or that relationship.

“With our future games, we want the player to be able to get more context, and we need to introduce the game and its characters to people more properly.”

Cyberpunk is set in the world of Mike Pondsmith’s much-adored tabletop RPG of the same name created back in the ‘80s. We know very little so far other than the fact it’ll be a “mature RPG for a mature audience”. It’ll have a non-linear story, “advanced RPG mechanics”, different character classes and a “gigantic arsenal”. Pondsmith is heavily involved with the project.

Iwinski explained how the team is keen to create a world that represents the lore of the original book in the same way the Game of Thrones TV series manages to do. He think it’s “the perfect reflection of a book in another medium” with its ability to simplify the subject matter without losing the essence of the original text.

“And that’s what we want to capture. In [Cyberpunk], we want to create a story that is very profound, but the novice players should be introduced to [the world] better than they were in The Witcher 2.”

“Players should be able to choose how deep they want to enter the story or the plot,” marketing boss Michal Platkow-Gilewski explained. “If they’re really hardcore, they can really dig deeper and deeper and deeper, and if they’re just casual, they can still learn about the characters and the story, but they’ll do that by going in another direction.”

CDP’s plans to make Cyberpunk appeal to an audience a little wider than that of The Witcher series. In case you’re worrying about whether this means they’re planning to release an easy title, fret not, Iwinski offers some reassuring words: “Just to make sure we’re understood correctly by our fans, this does not mean that we are going to simplify our games. That’s definitely not the case.

“But for some audiences, the learning curve should be improved, and particularly the introduction to the world needs to be better.”