Cyberpunk 2077 sequel's team looks to be nearly set, with ex-Remedy and BioWare writers coming on board
A pretty formidable squad of devs is properly kicking Project Orion into life.
We already knew work had kicked off on Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel since the calendar flipped over to 2024, and now CD Projekt has revealed some of the fresh talent that’s joined the team of Night City vets working on the game.
Even though it’s still putting out patches for the original, CDPR has high hopes for Cyberpunk’s follow-up, so it’s no surprise to see that the gang of devs who’ll be knuckling down to bring it to us is full of folks with industry credits you’ll definitely recognise. The writing talent especially looks worth getting hyped up about.
In a press release, CD Projekt has officially confirmed that the game - codenamed Projekt Orion - is “in the early stages of development”, with efforts being headed up by the publisher’s freshly established North American studio. It’s also announced some “high-profile additions” that’ve recently been made to the game’s dev team.
Out of the five listed, the pair of names that I’m most interested in seeing get a chance to put their fingerprints on the game are both writers. First, there’s Anna Megill, who’ll be the lead writer on Project Orion, having previously served as a narrative lead on Control and as lead writer on the Fable reboot that’s currently in the works.
Alexander Freed has also been brought on board to help write the game, with the game he’s most known for being involved in being Star Wars: The Old Republic, which he worked on during a stint at BioWare which ran from 2006 to 2012. Hopefully both of them get a chance to do something that can match or surpass the excellent Phantom Liberty from a narrative perspective.
Also joining are executive producer Dan Hernberg, previously of Blizzard and Amazon Games, and design director Ryan Barnard, a former gameplay director at Hitman studio IO Interactive and Ubisoft. Rounding out the list is engineering director Alan Villani, who provided technical direction for a number of Mortal Kombat games while at Warner Bros. Games.
Add in the returning talent like Gabriel Amatangelo, Paweł Sasko, and Igor Sarzyński, and you’ve got what looks to me like a pretty strong group that can hopefully create something special.
In other recent CD Projekt Red-related news, a modder who added romantic apartment hangouts to the game before CDPR did has said he’s glad to see people enjoying the official version of the feature.