Cyberpunk 2077's map size will be smaller than many people initially thought it might be, not matching the size and scope of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt - but that's a good thing, according to the game's producer Richard Borzymowski. Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most anticipated games of 2020 and developer CD Projekt Red's first major follow-up to The Witcher 3, a game many fans of the RPG genre believe to be the best Western iteration of that breed of gaming.
Cyberpunk 2077 controversy has begun dying down ever since CD Projekt Red began taking more deliberate steps to address fan concerns, including those over transgender representation - now Cyberpunk 2077 character customization options might have explicit choices for those who wanted visibility within the game. Concerns over the representation of race in Cyberpunk 2077 were largely dismissed when the franchise's creator, Mike Pondsmith, publicly defended the way the studio had adapted his work. With many of the more negative public moments now behind them, the developer has been using a growing spotlight on the title as its development continues to dispel pre-conceived notions fans might have about what it looks like or how it functions.
In an interview with GamesRadar, producer Richard Borzymowski discussed the creation of the world of Cyberpunk 2077. As it turns out, CD Projekt Red's most ambitious title to date won't actually equal The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt in map size, despite many taking the studio's reported ambition as acknowledgment that the scope of the game would surpass any previous effort. According to Borzymowski, however, CD Projekt Red has a very deliberate and intelligent reason for shrinking the game world a little bit, and it won't come at the cost of content:
"If you look at pure surface 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.
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."
Accordingly, fans should probably expect Cyberpunk 2077's world design to include much more populous areas and a lot more options packed into the environment players can explore. It also speaks to the shift in genre that has occurred between The Witcher series and Cyberpunk 2077 - the former was often characterized by broad strokes of rural life, forests populated with monsters, and exploration of the unknown. Cyberpunk 2077 will have a well-established city full of familiar and strange sights as its home, and as a result the philosophy behind its world design needs to be adjusted.
CD Projekt Red might be creating a Cyberpunk 2077 world that is smaller than The Witcher 3, but the reasoning for it is one that should get fans excited. While exploring large landscapes is interesting, having more to do in an almost-as-large game world seems like a better trade-off.
Source: GamesRadar