Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most highly anticipated games of the year, and despite CD Projekt Red's good reputation from The Witcher trilogy, the studio has a lot riding on the new game. The develoepr wants the RPG to push the boundaries for the genre and the stories it can tell can tell as gaming enters the next generation of consoles.
Like many open-world RPGs, Cyberpunk 2077 will have optional companion characters that the play can recruit on their missions. While CD Projekt Red has kept many details about the mechanics of companions under wraps, the characters and details revealed so far set up Cyberpunk’s companions with a huge amount of potential for the upcoming game.
Companion Mechanics
CD Projekt Red has revealed a few things about the way companions will work in Cyberpunk. The developer claims that bringing different companions along on different quests in the game has the potential to completely change the outcome of those missions. Cyberpunk's companion characters are said to have their own motivations which affect what they will do in certain quests, and companions will also interact with other NPCs during the story instead of leaving all the talking to Cyberpunk’s player character.
It is also possible for Cyberpunk 2077’s companions to become the player’s enemies, though it has been confirmed that many story-essential NPCs cannot be killed at any point in the game. Altogether, this could make Cyberpunk and open-world game where the companion characters feel as integrated into the plot as in a more linear series like Mass Effect. It could also imply that companions will be limited to certain missions, as it would seem an almost insurmountable task for every companion to have unique dialog for every single quest in the game, though a huge amount of dialog has been recorded. Further, it has been confirmed that players will not simply be able to command their companions what to do.
Potential Companions
Only one major companion appears to have been confirmed so far. With Cyberpunk’s companions seemingly taking a different approach to some other open-world games, what exactly CD Projekt Red means when it talks about companions is not entirely clear yet. Jackie Welles is a companion character who V will meet in their opening regardless of which Cyberpunk Life Path the player chooses, again demonstrating the extent to which potential companions are apparently integrated into the narrative.
Johnny Silverhand joins Jackie Welles as another highly likely companion, although his role is likely bigger and much different. Johnny appears in the game as some sort of digital ghost after his death in the Cyberpunk timeline. Keanu Reeve’s character already likely has a large role to play in the story, and it’s possible that Johnny will be able to fight side-by-side the player character in one form of another. Other characters like The Brick – a former gang leader V comes across imprisoned – would also make great candidates for companions.
Other unique and interesting Cyberpunk NPCs like Judy Alvarez, Evelyn Parker, or Certo and Esquerado the mind-linked twins all present exciting potential companions from the characters revealed so far. Even if they aren’t companions, characters like these will raise many players’ hopes for the recruitable NPCs.
A New Kind of Companion
It appears that Cyberpunk 2077’s companions will be more similar to those found in a game like Dragon Age: Origins. This would usually mean players could expect around 5 to 10 available companions, but the amount of dialog recorded for Cyberpunk could imply that CD Projekt Red has taken this formula and tried to expand it. After all, CD Projekt Red has confirmed more companions have yet to be revealed.
However, it isn’t clear that companions in Cyberpunk 2077 will be accessible at all times like companions usually are in a BioWare game. There doesn’t appear to be any player character and companion base like the camp in Origins or the Normandy in Mass Effect, and with CD Projekt Red claiming every Cyberpunk quest will feel like a full story, some companions could be limited to certain questlines. Of course, with so little known, this is just speculation.
Characters who are available as companions for a time may also choose not to stay with the player character once their own goals are met, or could leave and return at different points in the story to show players the consequences of the choices they made with that character. There will also be important characters integrated into the story like Dex DeShawn who likely won't be recruitable companions due to set plot-points, but it is possible the Cyberpunk system allows for a huge amount of characters to be recruited for limited times instead of focusing on a few for the whole game.
The studio has also said that, like the Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077 will contain a lot of romanceable NPCs. The extent to which this applies to or prioritizes companions has not been clarified. If companion characters are romanceable and integrated into key quest decisions players could be set up for some very memorable and customized dramatic moments in Night City, especially with conniving corporate characters like Meredith Stout around every corner.
Cyberpunk has received a huge amount of hype since its first reveal trailer dropped in 2012, but it remains to be seen whether Cyberpunk can live up to fan expectations. Cyberpunk’s companions have a lot of potential, but exactly how they operate mechanically has yet to be seen, and the story-focused approach could come at the cost of flexibility. If the companion characters live up to CD Projekt Red’s claims, the game could launch CD Projekt ahead of other RPG developers on the next-gen consoles.
Cyberpunk 2077 releases November 17 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One, with PS5, Stadia, and Xbox Series X/S support to follow.