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Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty growth was nice—87% nice per PCG’s Ted Litchfield in his Phantom Liberty assessment—and gruelling. CD Projekt Pink isn’t any stranger to robust choices in its video games, however the fork in Phantom Liberty’s highway is a really robust one. And hey, CDPR says that was the entire level, and one which constructed off the studio’s different nice Sophie’s selection second: Selecting who you will facet with in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Spoilers forward for each, naturally.
In a chat with PC Gamer at this 12 months’s GDC, Phantom Liberty’s quest director Paweł Sasko mentioned that Phantom Liberty’s key determination—selecting whether or not to facet with Music So Mi or Reed in one of many growth’s climactic ultimate missions—was “nearly like an preliminary thought” that the studio then structured the remainder of the DLC round. “We sort of work backwards from that. So we knew what selection we need to make, after which we had been like asking ourselves, ‘Okay, what’s the scene that introduces you earlier than to guarantee that’s as laborious as doable?'”
The aim was to stability the selection “in a method that is nearly 50/50” regarding the variety of individuals siding with So Mi and people siding with Reed. That meant quite a bit of rewrites, with some scenes rewritten as many as “5 [or] six instances” and scrapping a number of iterations of the plot that may make too many individuals decide one character over the opposite.
I’ve gotta say, I feel they succeeded. I spent a really very long time agonising over the choice once I performed Phantom Liberty earlier than finally selecting siding with So Mi (smash the state and all that), a choice that apparently places me within the slim majority of Phantom Liberty gamers: “We’re nonetheless not utterly joyful,” mentioned Sasko, “as a result of persons are nonetheless stating that extra persons are going with So Mi than Reed.”
Which is truthfully stunning to me. I might’ve guessed extra individuals would go Reed than So Mi. For one factor, you spend extra time in his firm throughout the DLC, and for one more he is performed by Idris Elba. You’d assume that star energy would rely for one thing.
CDPR took that into consideration. “The very fact it is Reed who’s, you already know, Idris Elba, who’s a star, versus our So Mi, that issue issues,” mentioned Sasko, “Their gender issues… their look and look, how interesting she is and the way interesting he’s” all needed to be accounted for when it got here to crafting the proper option to completely flummox gamers.
However at the very least the studio had expertise. Particularly, the So Mi/Reed selection was fairly much like selecting whether or not to facet with Temerian particular agent Vernon Roche or Scoia’tael terrorist/freedom fighter Iorveth in The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings. Sasko mentioned that CDPR requested itself throughout Phantom Liberty’s planning if “Perhaps we must always do The Witcher 2 construction on this growth, and that is what we did.”
Listening to that, I can actually see how far CDPR has come as a developer because the Witcher 2 days, and I say that as somebody who adores The Witcher 2. However for me, its central selection was by no means too tough: Iorveth’s path appeared clearly superior to Roche’s, being that the latter was a hatchet-man whose job was to suppress a subjugated underclass whereas Iorveth was an extremist in pursuit of an precise superb.
The So Mi/Reed selection felt quite a bit more durable, though I nonetheless opted for the shady idealist over the easy cop. Then once more, there are lots who’d disagree with me in each circumstances. I suppose that is sort of the purpose.
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