Cyberpunk 2077‘s Night City setting is supposed to be massive. However, no one should expect its size to rival that of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s map. According to CD Projekt RED, Night City will be a bit smaller by comparison. That doesn’t mean the map will lack content, though. On the contrary, Night City is supposed to be as dense as The Witcher 3‘s.
In a gamescom 2019 interview with GamesRadar, Producer Richard Borzymowski explained the studio’s vision for Cyberpunk 2077’s map in detail. For one, he noted that Night City should feel like The Witcher’s world squeezed into one city. The producer told GamesRadar,
If you look at pure surface [in terms of] square kilometers, then Cyberpunk 2077 might even be a little bit smaller than The Witcher 3, but it’s the density of the content, taking the world of The Witcher and squeezing it right in, deleting the wilderness between.
…in The Witcher we were an open world with vast lanes and forests in between smaller cities and larger cities like Novigrad, but in Cyberpunk 2077 we’re set in Night City. It’s an integral part of the setting; it’s essentially a protagonist if you want to call it that, so it has to be denser. It wouldn’t give us the end effect we wanted to achieve if the city wouldn’t be believable… so we packed it full of life.
The Witcher 3’s massive world encouraged exploration. Even vast areas of wilderness held something worth interacting with, whether it was a Power Stone, stranger encounter, monster nest, or a side activity. It should be interesting to see how this all translates to Cyberpunk 2077.
Perhaps we’ll get a small taste of this and more in the coming days. On August 30th, CD Projekt Red will host a livestream showcasing 15 minutes of gameplay footage. Afterwards, developers will offer insight into the gameplay experience, and detail the reasoning behind certain development decisions.
Cyberpunk 2077 will hit store shelves early next year for the PlayStation 4, PC, and Xbox One on April 16, 2020. Amazon is already taking preorders.
[Source: GamesRadar via DualShockers]
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