Cyberpunk 2077: Boxing, power weapons, the Militech Spider Robot, and more

Developers Miles Tost and Paweł Sasko from CD Projekt Red took the time at E3 2019 to do a Tumblr Q&A on Cyberpunk 2077, which included a lot of interesting information about character creation and backstory, as well as some of the ways the world will react to your choices and backstory as you explore Night City.

To make it easy, we sifted through the questions to find the best nuggets of Cyberpunk news for your reading pleasure. Otherwise, you can see watch the full Q&A on Cyberpunk 2077’s official Tumblr.

“Will we be able to use the Militech spider robot and see what he can see?”

CDProjekt didn’t want to give specifics about everything we’ll be able to do with the Militech spiderbot Flathead, but they hinted that advanced functions are one of the options available to “techie” characters that focus on engineering and other relevant skills.

In the meantime, CD Projekt did confirm that we’ll be able to steer Flathead remotely, issue commands, and modify Flathead to fit a variety of different tasks. Including entire sections of quests that allow you to use Flathead to accomplish goals unique to our little robotic pal. So, it sounds like most of the functions we saw in the 2018 E3 gameplay demo will come to life in one form or another in the final build of the game.

“Will there be mini-games or other types of activities to immerse yourself in Night City?”

CD Projekt confirmed that you’ll be able to participate in a variety of car races through the city, square off in boxing matches, and hit the shooting range where you can test your aim and interact with the gunsmith Wilson. It’s not a massive lineup of side activities, but that’s likely because Cyberpunk 2077 is much more interested in quests and stories than how good you are at Cyberpunk’s version of Gwent.

In the E3 gameplay demo, hacking also looked like a complicated process, and CD Projekt confirmed that the better you are at the mini game, the more likely you are to access high level functions that you need to get the job done.

“Are you gonna be able to create your own characters/customize your character?”

CD Projekt has already shown off a bit of their player customization in E3 demos before, but it’s interesting to hear that you’ll be able to fully customize your appearance in terms of skin tone, facial structure, makeup, and cyberware at the beginning of the game.

In terms of cyberware, CD Projekt revealed that this mostly refers to aesthetic choices at the beginning of the game such as classic Cyberpunk tech lines across your characters face, but if you continue to enhance your cybernetics at Rip Doctors and other black-market chop shops that you can expect these upgrades to come with their own aesthetic changes as well.

“Will players be able to go as hardcore with Cyberware as the Maelstrom gang, or will we be limited to simple augments?”

Unfortunately, you won’t be able to upgrade yourself quite as thoroughly as the Maelstrom gang, because that kind of body modification would start to create barriers to gameplay.

CD Projekt was quick to explain that you’ll still be able to augment or replace almost your entire body, but that you won’t have access to many of the more dramatic transformations that might remove part of your jaw or otherwise make normal gameplay impossible.

“How different and unique can our characters be from a role-playing perspective? Will there be a morality system? Factions? Jobs or roles? Multiple endings? And how much can we affect the world state? Thanks!”

CD Projekt used this question as an opportunity to lightly discuss their backstory mechanic, which allows you to choose the past that brought V to where they are at the beginning of the story. It’s a mechanic that feels like it’s been conspicuously absent in narrative RPGs since Mass Effect, but a welcome one to see making another appearance.

The backstories include options like being a nomad, a corporate stooge, or a member of a street gang, and CD Projekt revealed that they’ll dramatically change how your character can connect with the various factions filling out Night City. For example, someone with ties to the various corporations in Night City might find that they have some unexpected strings they can pull when dealing with that world. Alternatively, these same connection might lead to a corporation trying to leverage your past in return for their own favors and motives in true Night City fashion.

“Is the game world related to Cyberpunk 2020?”

CD Projekt confirmed that Cyberpunk 2077 is not only a shared universe but also a direct sequel to the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game, just 50 years down the road.

If you’re worried that you might miss something significant, CD Projekt was quick to point out that the quests are built to slowly introduce the world to the player, allowing people with no knowledge of Cyberpunk 2020 to quickly adapt to Night City’s cutthroat world.

“Will you be able to join other kinds of factions or gangs within the game that change your reputation within the world?”

CD Projekt danced around this question a lot, but it sounds like you’ll be your own boss with a lot of options in terms of companions, allies, and various factions you can twist to do your bidding or form long lasting partnerships with. It sounds like it’s all tied to player choice, and how these choices affect the world as you progress through the story.

That said, we saw Jackie take a bullet during the most recent E3 cinematic trailer, but Miles Tost and Paweł Sasko seemed particularly cagey about that event, so we’re guessing that although you’ll be able to make plenty of friends in Night City, that your choices can result in a very permanent death for those companions.

It’s possible that the player will be able to approach the mission we saw at E3 2019 from a variety of angles and therefore create a different possible ending for Jackie than you might expect from a more linear game.

Maybe Jackie dies, maybe he lives because you never clue him in about the job, maybe you can’t finish the mission without his help. It’s going to be interesting to see what kind of moral dilemmas the writers send our way.

“Are you going to make me cry?”

Yes. Based off Paweł Sasko’s response, the quests and stories are coming from someone that loves to make people cry, but in a good way. Just try to not to think about Jackie in the most recent cinematic trailer.

“Will there be high precision, high damage rifles, aka sniper rifles or DMRs and if yes, will there be opportunities to actually use the range and precision of those?”

CD Projekt confirmed that Sniper Rifles will be in the game in one form or another and revealed that they’ll fall into one of three main weapon categories. As we saw at E3 last year, each category vastly modifies the way these guns perform on the battlefield.

This includes smart guns with auto tracking and homing rounds, tech weapons that can blast through walls, enemies and cover, and a yet unrevealed category called power weapons that can be charged before firing.

We also saw a short discussion on weapon customization, but CD Projekt didn’t confirm much of what we’ll see in that regard. We assume customization will extend to sights, mag capacity, and various ways to tweak your weapon’s performance, but at this point it’s too early to but a label on anything specific.

“We’ve seen some combat augmentations like the mantis blades, will we also see some augmentations that’ll have more non-combat uses?”

As far as non-combat augmentations go, CDProjekt is planning plenty of options, but they otherwise kept things vague and focused on some of the cyberware we see V subtly use in the Cyberpunk 2077 E3 gameplay demos.

In this case, V’s cybernetic eye features real time translation software that generates subtitles above or around a character speaking a foreign language. It’s a small touch, but an interesting way to integrate cyberware into the player’s everyday UI while maintaining immersive language options.

You can see the tech in action any time V passes an NPC that isn’t speaking English, usually as a set of floating characters that settle above the character’s head. It’ll be interesting to see if this software is a free option built into V’s eyes from the start or if you have to buy/find it before you can interact with certain characters.

 “Will some missions/interactions only be available at a certain time of day? And if so will we be able to do anything (such as sleep) to skip to a certain time?”

CD Projekt confirmed that yes, some quests and objectives will be based on a time of day system, where you’ll need to show up as scheduled if you want to interact with a certain NPC or objective. Luckily, the answer to the second question is also yes, you’ll also have the option to skip forward in time at your leisure so you’re not forced to dink around until Keanu Silver Hands get’s off work before you can go hacking.

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NPCs in Cyberpunk 2077 have their own daily schedules, so you’ll need to be on time if you want to catch them when they’re available. There’s no word if that means you can also fail or otherwise miss quests if you leave an NPC hanging for too long, but it wouldn’t be surprising to see some kind of reaction from the game world if you miss a key appointment. 

“Can you tell us about the in-game celebrities/singers etc like Johnny Silverhand? Will we get to meet them or just see them on posters/on TV?“

Both Miles Tost and Paweł Sasko avoided this question like a hot potato, so although we didn’t learn much about the in-game celebrities, you can assume that we’ll be running into quite a few members of Night City’s elite.

For more on Cyberpunk 2077, read our preview from E3.