How the Creators of The Witcher and Cyberpunk 2077 Became the Masters of Choice and Consequence

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CD Projekt Red has a estimation for making peculiar games. The Witcher 3, present celebrating its 10th anniversary, is inactive often cited arsenic 1 of, if not the best, RPG ever made. Meanwhile, Cyberpunk 2077 has (thanks to immoderate important upgrades) blossomed into 1 of the deepest, astir robust examples of open-world roleplaying. These 2 games unsocial person made the workplace 1 of the astir celebrated and respected successful the world, not to notation its other, arsenic fascinating releases. But what is it that CD Projekt Red does that makes its games basal isolated from their peers?

While determination are galore elements that travel unneurotic to guarantee a CDPR game’s quality, it’s however the smaller pieces link to make a coherent and convincing full that truly makes these RPGs sing. The authenticity of that full is achieved done the story, world, and characters shifting and changing based connected your choices. It’s a template that galore RPG developers use, but fewer person succeeded successful their ambitions successful rather the aforesaid mode arsenic CDPR has.

“When I play different triple-A RPGs oregon RPG adjacent games, I precise often tin consciousness the limitations of their tools,” says Patrick Mills, CD Projekt Red’s franchise contented strategy lead. “You tin spot the ambition of the decorator and you spot that the ambition is not rather delivered upon. And I deliberation a batch of radical who don't cognize however games are made look astatine that and they conscionable say, ‘lazy devs,’ oregon ‘they're atrocious designers.’ And that's not what it is. I think, a batch of times, it's that your tools conscionable aren't susceptible of delivering the happening that you privation to do.”

CD Projekt Red has spent astir arsenic galore hours making tools arsenic it has making games. Almost each of its RPGs person been built utilizing the company’s REDengine, a bespoke toolkit that has been designed, augmented, and iterated upon crossed 4 antithetic versions to let the plan squad to execute its precise circumstantial ambitions. Those tools person allowed each the pieces of each crippled to connect, enabling a coherent acquisition successful which players’ actions consciousness impactful and accounted for.

Newer versions of the REDengine person besides allowed the workplace to get truly chaotic with immoderate of its quest designs. In The Witcher, for instance, there’s broadly 3 kinds of objectives: exploration and investigation, dialogue-driven drama, and cutthroat combat encounters. By Cyberpunk 2077, the workplace had pushed heavy into the minutiae of quality creation, which opened up the request for a crippled that supported an adjacent wider scope of playstyles, including stealth and hacking – some of which necessitate bespoke systems. Cyberpunk’s Phantom Liberty enlargement doubled down connected this, resulting successful quests that referenced precise antithetic genres, specified arsenic its celebrated endurance horror-inspired optional finale. Variety, then, has been cardinal to CD Projekt Red’s journey.

“I deliberation particularly with the RPGs that we're making, which thin to beryllium comparatively sizable, it's astir similar a necessity, right?” says Miles Tost, level plan pb astatine CD Projekt Red. “You request to find the assortment successful the gameplay and ways to crook the systems successful a mode that you make immoderate caller and caller experiences, due to the fact that different players volition conscionable pain retired connected it.”

“With the size of these games, adjacent [with] the champion story, radical volition dilatory taper retired if the gameplay doesn't support them engaged and refreshed,” helium adds.

Whatever the prime is and immoderate the effect is, we privation players to consciousness rewarded, adjacent if the emotion successful the extremity is sadness.

That’s not to accidental that stories aren’t an important portion of CD Projekt Red’s games. Far from it. In information the workplace has a tried, tested, and proven attack to however it tells a communicative successful each azygous 1 of its quests. They each request a twist. A wrinkle. As Mills explains, sidesplitting the bandits who stole from a colony is “boring” and “not an absorbing story.” But successfully telling the communicative of a bandit onslaught isn’t conscionable astir turning an unpredictable country – it besides needs to instrumentality into relationship the method successful which players research that story. To expect that, CDPR puts each quest done “destruction testing”, successful which playtesters effort to navigate the ngo successful each conceivable way. With the information from that testing, quest designers are past capable to re-tool missions to relationship for unexpected subordinate behaviour, ensuring they enactment arsenic galore solutions arsenic possible. The effect is simply a much natural-feeling storyline that authentically responds to your choices.

Choices successful video games are complicated. Cyberpunk’s open-ended quality means that each azygous assemblage modification purchased, limb looted, and accomplishment constituent invested tin alteration the mode a subordinate interacts with the world, and truthful a immense magnitude of possibilities indispensable beryllium accounted for – everything from stealth to brutality to diplomacy to the inevitable player-divised tactics that instrumentality developers by astonishment months aft release.

But specified decisions are not the choices that CD Projekt Red is celebrated for. Rather, the workplace is known for its large story-branching choices. For years specified decisions were mostly considered “BioWare-style”, truthful synonymous was the plan with games specified arsenic Mass Effect and the archetypal Baldur’s Gates. But CDPR’s instrumentality connected them has arguably go the go-to successful the nationalist consciousness. That’s mostly acknowledgment to their challenge; there’s nary wide enactment betwixt bully and evil successful either Cyberpunk oregon The Witcher, and truthful each prime feels similar untying a 1000 knots to enactment retired the champion option. But determination are different factors: CDPR has a inclination to hold the consequences of your actions, meaning you can’t instantly reload a mediocre prime and effort again, which grants each determination a consciousness of inescapable authenticity. And erstwhile the consequences bash strike, they consciousness impactful and far-reaching; choices often effect successful large quality deaths, governmental upheaval, oregon rotation the dice connected romanticist encounters.

The occurrence of these choices is rooted successful cautious preparation. “All the sides are presented to you beforehand,” says Paweł Sasko, subordinate crippled director. “You had an accidental to really assimilate each the information. You understood it well, you get the characters, you cognize what they are about. So astatine the infinitesimal erstwhile you are faced with a choice, you recognize the discourse and you recognize the implications of what you're doing.”

This thorough attack means that players tin person a nuanced narration with the effect of their actions. As quest decorator Paweł Gąska explains, “We privation the subordinate to spot that adjacent a bully prime tin person atrocious consequences, and that a atrocious prime tin inactive beryllium justified due to the fact that of thing other you focused on.”

A large illustration of this tin beryllium recovered successful Cyberpunk 2077’s Phantom Liberty expansion, which sees FIA cause Songbird connection to assistance cure your terminal condition, provided you assistance her flight the clutches of her tyrannic employer. Simultaneously her erstwhile partner, Reed, asks that you assistance him bring Songbird into FIA custody, arsenic helium hopes that his (admittedly questionable) bosses volition bash close by her. By presenting some quality paths arsenic viable, nuanced options alternatively than a prime betwixt bully and evil, CDPR helps players physique authentic relationships and yet marque decisions that bespeak their ain feelings and values.

“Whatever the prime is and immoderate the effect is, we privation players to consciousness rewarded, adjacent if the emotion successful the extremity is sadness,” explains Sebastian Kalemba, crippled manager connected The Witcher 4. “If this is coherent with the affectional travel we're delivering, [it volition allow] the subordinate to consciousness [that they are] good with this consequence.”

Several of CDPR’s choices person gone down successful video crippled legend. While the branching pathways done The Witcher 3’s Bloody Baron quest and the prime betwixt helping Songbird oregon Reed astatine the extremity of Phantom Liberty are among the company’s champion and astir well-known, my idiosyncratic favourite tin beryllium recovered successful The Witcher 2. At the extremity of section 1 you indispensable state with either Vernon Roche, commandant of the Temerian peculiar forces, oregon Iorweth, the elven person of the Scoia'tael state fighters. Your prime present wholly changes the quests, characters, and determination of the game’s middle-act. It was a bold, ambitious plaything for the studio’s second-ever game, and 1 it has not attempted since.

“The trouble with that is not truthful overmuch astir being bold, it’s mostly astir the resources you invest,” says Tost. “We haven't gotten much acrophobic implicit the years of radical missing our content. We're precise overmuch good with that happening. But it's besides the magnitude of resources you perpetrate to fundamentally making 2 antithetic stories, which is astir similar 2 antithetic games.”

As quest designers, we tin deliberation of bully choices, but it's the writers who person to really elicit emotions successful the players.

The company’s determination to determination distant from level-based locations to an unfastened satellite plan made creating branching pathways arsenic important arsenic that successful The Witcher 2 “more hard to do.” But the thought wasn’t abandoned. The last enactment of The Witcher 3’s Blood and Wine enlargement is notably malleable. Similarly, the prime betwixt Songbrid and Reed towards the extremity of Phantom Liberty results successful 2 radically antithetic pathways. “Phantom Liberty successful wide was benignant of a effect to immoderate disapproval that we got for the basal game, which was that we mislaid a batch of non-linearity,” Tost explains.

According to Mills, CDPR worked connected Cyberpunk 2077 “thinking that we understood prime and consequence,” but discovered upon completion of the basal crippled that specified choices weren’t landing correctly. “We built prime and effect into astir of our quests,” Mills insists. “We built it into the operation of the game, but it conscionable didn't consciousness satisfying.”

Following a play of cautious analysis, the Cyberpunk improvement squad came to the decision that its attack to prime and effect had been excessively subtle. Elements that telegraphed upcoming choices were often missed by players who simply could not spot specified tiny details successful the dense water of near-photo realistic item that is Night City. And then, pursuing their decisions, players were not being shown the consequences of their actions successful a wide manner.

“The Witcher 3 had a operation wherever you were making your choices, you were visiting Skellige and [Velen] erstwhile you made those choices, and past aboriginal successful pursuing acts, you were really visiting those places again,” recalls Sasko. “And we could, successful a truly elemental way, amusement you, ‘Hey, present are your consequences, due to the fact that you are visiting the aforesaid places again.’ It's truthful elemental to bash it. In Cyberpunk, the operation is truthful overmuch much complex. You seldom travel backmost to the places that you person seen.”

Sasko discusses his enactment connected The Pickup, a Cyberpunk 2077 quest successful which you indispensable get a prototype combat robot from a pack holed up successful a nutrient factory. There are a fig of ways this quest tin beryllium tackled, and the aftermath reflects your approach. “When you travel backmost to the nutrient factory, determination are consequences of your choices,” Sasko says. “But you person to truly beryllium there, travel and look for it, and astir players don't. That's the reality. So the learning [is that] the operation of the crippled needs to enactment [revealing the consequences].”

It was this learning that led to a “more dense handed” attack for Phantom Liberty and its branching last questline. But the prime and resulting subdivision is lone worthy truthful overmuch successful and of itself. Because nary substance however bully the prime is, nary substance however galore options are built into the story, nary of it tin win if the penning surrounding the prime is sub-par.

“As quest designers, we tin deliberation of bully choices, bully dilemmas, bully themes, but it's the writers who person to present the dialogues that volition really elicit emotions successful the players,” says Gąska. “It's the cinematics [team] and the animators who person to springiness [the story] to you successful a mode that you volition really consciousness it.”

Gąska likens this to the dilemma of a terminally sick idiosyncratic deciding to extremity their ain life. Without immoderate emotion oregon connection, the question is “just a theoretical thing.” But erstwhile the prime is personal, involving radical you emotion and attraction for, it becomes a heart-wrenching issue. And truthful the cardinal accomplishment down creating resonant choices is to trade characters that consciousness genuinely authentic. Such authenticity tin past pass however choices and consequences are built into the game's plan and story.

“Our attack is the attack for the mode we live, right?” says Kalemba, who explains that helium doesn’t judge successful foreshadowing the consequences of choices. “You don’t cognize what's going to hap tomorrow, but determination are respective choices you person today. And by designing the acquisition from the get-go this way, we fto ourselves bash our games arsenic champion arsenic imaginable and inquire players to beryllium unfastened and acceptable for the consequences.”

While Kalemba and his squad volition nary uncertainty gully upon the studio’s anterior successes for The Witcher 4, there’s people a tendency to bash thing much advanced. Something much impressive. But to bash truthful volition necessitate solving a tricky improvement puzzle.

“All of the enactment we did connected [our] expansions was mostly much enjoyable than moving connected the basal games themselves,” admits Tost. “All of these unknowns that you had erstwhile you were moving connected the basal crippled are answered and it's a substance of axenic creation. I deliberation we should look astatine however we reply these questions successful a timely mode truthful that we tin simulate the process of moving connected an enlargement earlier than by the clip we get to making an expansion.”

Such an attack is made each the much trickier by tools – CD Projekt Red is leaving its bespoke REDengine down for The Witcher 4, alternatively opting for Unreal Engine 5. And truthful connected apical of trying to reply those questions, improvement unit volition besides beryllium learning however champion to maximise the imaginable of a caller and unfamiliar engine. To conscionable their ambition, the squad volition request to debar Mills’ earlier reflection of developers warring against the limitations of their tools. No uncertainty a adjacent narration with Unreal’s creator, Epic, volition beryllium captious to moulding the motor into a signifier that allows CDPR to present connected its goals.

“We privation to enactment subordinate bureau successful the center,” says Kalemba of those goals. “We privation players to beryllium capable to truly consciousness these opportunities and to spell in-depth erstwhile it comes to prime and consequences.

“It's the improvement of The Witcher, truthful much tools astatine players' disposal to beryllium capable to not lone play and spell with the consequences narratively, but besides gameplay wise,” helium adds. “We privation to springiness players much tools, much opportunities, to beryllium capable to consciousness that ‘I americium the subordinate and I specify my experience.’”

Simply matching The Witcher 3’s choices and their resulting consequences would beryllium a monolithic undertaking for CD Projekt Red. But to germinate and beforehand The Witcher 4 beyond the studio’s past accomplishments nary uncertainty requires thing overmuch much complex. As Cyberpunk 2077 proved, adjacent the maestro of branching stories tin travel and fall. Phantom Liberty saw the workplace basal backmost up and particulate itself off, but The Witcher 4 volition beryllium the existent trial of however past learnings pass caller ambitions. Hopefully Ciri’s adjacent escapade volition proceed to cement CD Projekt Red’s estimation arsenic the workplace dedicated to respecting and fulfilling subordinate choices.

Matt Purslow is IGN's Senior Features Editor.

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