CD Projekt Red released a new, 14-minute “deep dive” video that reveals some big details about how Cyberpunk 2077 will play. The Cyberpunk PAX West gameplay video is an edited version of the demo shown off privately at E3 2019 and Gamescom 2019.

As CD Projekt Red’s follow-up to The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, Cyberpunk 2077 is perhaps the most anticipated game of the past few years. Cyberpunk takes things in a very different direction from the Witcher series. Apart from the obvious setting and tonal differences, Cyberpunk is first-person and puts a greater emphasis on player customization. There’s been plenty of reporting about the game’s mechanics, but besides a 48-minute Cyberpunk reveal video shown off in 2018 (which the game is apparently now much different from), there hasn’t been much publicly available footage.

CD Projekt Red released the Cyberpunk 2077 deep dive video yesterday to celebrate the first day of PAX West 2019. It shows two different approaches to gameplay, the combat-focused “solo” playstyle and the stealth- and hacking-focused “netrunner” playstyle, invading a base of a gang called the Animals (the same gang that saw Cyberpunk criticized as racist). It describes the solo playstyle as one that allows players to live out “their Terminator power fantasy,” shooting and punching enemies to finish quests with brute force. The netrunner playstyle has a bit more nuance, letting players hack machines to kill enemies for them, create distractions, open doors and more. The deep dive revealed the game’s hacking minigame, which involves selecting six letter-number pairs from a grid of 25 to satisfy basic system access and/or a variety of side objectives, like accessing the camera log or training robot program.

The video also gives a deeper look at Cyberpunk’s character creation system. Players first choose a background - “Nomad,” “Street Kid,” or “Corporate” - then choose a body type. Following Cyberpunk’s transgender representation controversy, each body type fits a particular gender norm but is not labeled by gender or sex. Instead of picking a class, players will use the game’s “fluid class system” to create their character’s skill set as they go. Besides gameplay details, the video showed off parts of the game’s world. The demo took place in Cyberpunk’s Pacifica district, an area filled with gang violence and populated by a large Hatian community. The video also showed the Voodoo Boys, a group of skilled netrunners which is the enemy of the NetWatch organization, which seeks to control the net.

Cyberpunk 2077 looks like a deep and varied RPG. It’s got no shortage of controversies, no thanks to the history of CD Projekt Red’s inappropriate jokes and the like. While it remains to be seen how the company will handle representation in the final game, the gameplay video shows it hasn’t removed any of the elements - the majority-black Animals gang, the “mix it up” drink advert with a sexualized transgender person, or the protagonist making fun of a character’s Hatian accent - that brought it under fire.

Cyberpunk 2077 will be released next year, on April 16, 2020.

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Source: CD Projekt Red