Cyberpunk to apply lessons learned from The Witcher 2

CD Projekt RED has said it will apply the valuable lessons learned from The Witcher series to its current RPG project, Cyberpunk. In particular, the developer is keen to better introduce the complex story elements to novice players to avoid them feeling left stranded.

Speaking to Gamasutra, CD Projekt RED acknowledged that it needs to do more to invite players into its complex RPG worlds.

"What we learned from The Witcher series is that we need to attract people with a smoother learning curve when it comes to the storyline," said studio board member, Adam Badowski.

"In The Witcher 1, for example, we were throwing people in the middle of the story, and we assumed that players would know what is happening! But a lot of players told us that they didn't really understand this relationship or that relationship," added studio co-founder Marcin Iwinski.

For the the launch of The Witcher 2 on 360, CD Projekt RED added additional material to to ensure that players better understood the game world. Similarly, the PC version was patched to include the extra content and to make the opening stages of the game easier.

Iwinski stated that these lessons would be taken into account for the firm's upcoming sci-fi RPG, Cyberpunk, "In [Cyberpunk], we want to create a story that is very profound, but the novice players should be introduced to [the world] better than they were in The Witcher 2," he said.

However, the company's head of marketing, Michal Platkow-Gilewski, moved to assure fans that this does not mean that Cyberpunk will be any less complex, just better paced and with more player-choice:

"Players should be able to choose how deep they want to enter the story or the plot," he said. "If they're really hardcore, they can really dig deeper and deeper and deeper, and if they're just casual, they can still learn about the characters and the story, but they'll do that by going in another direction."

Iwinski concluded, "Just to make sure we're understood correctly by our fans, this does not mean that we are going to simplify our games. That's definitely not the case."

"But for some audiences, the learning curve should be improved, and particularly the introduction to the world needs to be better."

Cyberpunk is currently in development at CD Projekt RED. It is based on a pen and paper RPG system created by Mike Pondsmith, set in a futuristic world featuring a degenerated society.