Cyberpunk 2077 Devs Talk About Their Philosophy For Success, Discuss New Animations System

We had reported some time ago that Cyberpunk 2077 would be featured on the cover of EDGE magazine for the month of November (Issue 324). In the article about the game, CD Projekt RED’s Richard Borzymowski, serving as producer on the upcoming game, discussed how their approach to making the game is different when compared to the development of The Witcher 3. 

First of all, the developers discussed how the success of The Witcher 3 gave some extra confidence to the development team, and how Cyberpunk 2077 will also be a good game simply because the developers aren’t afraid to change. Borzymowski stated, “It gave us a sense of safety in our own skills. Right now our environment artists are populating a level with the assets, and they are not afraid of testing out new things. This is exactly what we need to stay open to, because personally I believe that The Witcher turned out that  good – and why Cyberpunk will turn out really good – because we are not afraid of change.

“It takes a degree of determination, for sure. From the very beginning we were saying ‘Alright, this is huge, but this is what we want to aim for.’ As producers, we’re responsible for taking this vision and verifying the capability of the team and deciding if we have to change it structure-wise, or if we have to somehow change the content of the game to make it more flexible. The Witcher III wasn’t less complex, but it was complex in a different way. When we were world-building you had those big open spaces, which still had to be filled out. It’s not like it was easier or cheaper to build all those beautiful forests and meadows, but it is more forgiving. If one tree is a bit more off to the right, this is exactly how forests look. But if you put a building too far apart from a different one in the middle of a city, then this can’t really work, right? You have to fill this gap in between doing other things already. And you have to push everything.”

Furthermore, it looks like the game will also be taking bold strides when it comes to the animations department. Apparently, the developers will be pushing their engine to deliver these visuals and animations, while also optimizing them for current-gen consoles.

Lead Cinematics Animator Maciej Pietras stated, “We have a completely new animation system, and we completely changed the approach to handling animations. We have a better mo-cap studio, we have a completely new facial animation system based on muscles. We have a new way of generating lip sync animation when people are talking. We have a completely new approach to creating environments, so instead of working on a huge world at once we are creating prefabs which are then adjusted and placed differently, so everything is scalable. Another thing is simply our engine, which we decided to push far while still working hard on optimisation to make sure the game will run on current-gen consoles. It’s a completely new way – I would say almost every single department went through this kind of evolution.”

These comments just make me more excited for the game’s release, and I can’t wait to know more. Cyberpunk 2077 will release for the PC, PS4, and Xbox One at some point (hopefully).