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Cyberpunk 2077 looked to the past to create the future

To create the future, sometimes you must first look to the past, at least that's what Cyberpunk 2077 developer CD Projekt Red did.

Josh Hawkins

June 14, 2019 7:25 AM

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There’s no doubting that Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the biggest and most exciting games that we saw at E3 this year. We had a chance to sit down and speak with Miles Tost, one of the Level Designers at CD Projekt Red. Tost has been working on Cyberpunk 2077 for the past few years, and he spoke to us about the game for quite a bit.

Perhaps one of the most intriguing things we learned during our interview with Tost is that CD Projekt Red really looked to the past for inspiration when setting out to make the future in Cyberpunk 2077. Science fiction movies from the 80s and 90s helped to inspire the designers as they set out to craft a beautiful, thriving, and dangerous world. Tost also mentioned that they looked at the problems that people were dealing with during those particular times and used those to kind of help set the stage for Cyberpunk 2077’s massive open world.

It’s really interesting to look at the similarities between older films like Blade Runner and the way that CDPR is bringing Cyberpunk 2077’s world to life. Some other things touched on in the interview include the team’s focus on telling a narrative through the environment and world around the player. Tost also discussed some of the issues that Level Designers run into when creating a game in first person versus third person. One big point he made was in how the camera works when entering a room. He used The Witcher as an example, mentioning how the player doesn’t actually enter the room until the camera does.

You can check out the full interview above—it’s a long one—to hear all about the different things we discussed with Tost. Cyberpunk 2077 is currently slated to release on April 16, 2020 for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. For more from E3 2019, make sure you follow Shacknews on Twitter. You should also subscribe to Shacknews and GamerHubTV on YouTube for more great content like this.

Josh Hawkins

Guides Editor

Joshua holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and has been exploring the world of video games for as long as he can remember. He enjoys everything from large-scale RPGs to small, bite-size indie gems and everything in between.