In CD Projekt Red’s Cyberpunk 2077, you got to pick from three distinct “life paths” that determined some dialogue options and your background, something the studio wants to improve on in the future. It admitted that the sci-fi dystopian romp overpromised the impact.
During an episode of the Answered Podcast (via IGN), Narrative Director Philipp Weber expressed that it didn’t really sell the idea of life paths well. The changes made to the game really boiled down to some dialogue options and that’s about it, after the first bit of the game, the stories merge into one and never move from the beaten path after the fact.
Phillip is currently working on the next The Witcher game, but Orion — AKA Cyberpunk 2 — is also in the works in the conceptual development phase. Hopefully, it goes better than its precursor and it starts as a positively received game rather than ending its life that way.
“I do think there are things with, for example, the life paths, that kind of gives you a promise as being able to play more different kinds of characters. I think this is a thing where, in the future, that’s as an example something we would like to improve. Since I do think we gave a promise there that maybe in the end we did not really sell.”
