One of the major players in the development of Cyberpunk 2077 shared an interesting tidbit about the game's story and its progression. Depending on the side quests players complete, they may be able to finish the game without resolving Cyberpunk 2077's main story.
A few days ago, the Polish website Spider's Web brought in Pawel Sasko, the lead quest designer for CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077, to talk about the game's quests and how they'll work in regards to the main story. As VG24/7 reported and translated, one of the biggest revelations from the interview is how the game compensates for having a shorter story than The Witcher 3. Whereas The Witcher 3 had a story structure featuring the main thread of history and side branches, Cyberpunk 2077 takes a different approach based on what the team learned from The Witcher 3. Sasko explains:
"So in the Cyberpunk's structure we have this wheat spike, which serves as it's center, the main storyline with different subplots surrounding it, which can be triggered in a various ways. Those subplots allow us to do something that we have never done before, they change the main plot of the game and they are doing that in such a way that you may not even finish the main plot, but still finish the game and get a completely different epilogue then the player with a different lifepath who made different choices, met different characters and formed relationships with them."
As Sasko points out, the backstory players choose for V, the game's protagonist, also plays a part in how the story plays out. Depending on whether V is a Corpo, a Street Kid, or a Nomad, they'll meet ex-Valentinos member Jackie under different circumstances and have a different relationship with him. This means that one of the very first decisions players make in the game will have a profound effect on its world and how the story plays out.
In addition to the details on V's relationship with Jackie, V's life path also dictates which of the 75 side quests they can take. Given that side quests are capable of changing how the story plays out, this means that certain story branches are only available to certain life paths. It's safe to say that this method of branching story offers quite a bit of freedom and a wide variety of choices to make.
Cyberpunk 2077 comes out on November 19 for PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with PS5, Stadia, and Xbox Series X versions to follow.
Source: VG247