CD Projekt RED has big plans for the game…

Mike Laidlaw was formerly involved in several BioWare games (Jade Empire – lead writer, Dragon Age: Origins, Dragon Age II – lead designer, Dragon Age: Inquisition – creative director), but he left the company in late 2017. In the newest Game Informer podcast, he was asked whether he would work on Cyberpunk 2077 or not.

„They would certainly, absolutely raise an eyebrow. I’m a giant Cyberpunk nerd, straight up, Neuromancer is my favorite novel of all time. Like, William Gibson could write on the stall of a bathroom, and I would make a small pilgrimage there. For the most part, moving to Poland and moving my family, and that kind of stuff, would be exceptionally challenging, but Cyberpunk’s always had a draw,” Laidlaw said.

He also talked about his relationship with CD Projekt RED, as well as the differences between The Witcher and Dragon Age: „[I hear from them] On and off. It’s not like we can go and grab a coffee since Poland is far away. But when I see them at conventions, I tell them their games are fantastic and usually, they reply with the same thing. CD Projekt RED licensed from Bioware the Aurora engine, which was the Neverwinter Nights engine, to do The Witcher one. A lot of people forget that and are like ‘Oh, you guys must hate each other because fantasy!’ and I’m like ‘No, man! No. I get to play their game, and I don’t know how it turns out. That sounds awesome!’

A lot of people are like ‘The Witcher is better.’ Sure – unless you want a party and the other things that make Dragon Age stand out as unique. They make different games. We had to lean into tabula rasa characters since you can be a Qunari or an Elf, a male or a female, all these player characters are different, whereas they had the advantages and disadvantages of having a fixed player character in Geralt which led them to dig into his story, his relationships and so on.Frankly, I think it’s to the industry’s benefit. If we all make the same game, it would kind of suck. I think we need Divinity; we need The Witcher, we need Skyrim,” he added.

CD Projekt RED has a lot of faith in Cyberpunk 2077 – in fact, they would like it to become a blockbuster franchise! Adam Kicinski, the company’s CEO, said the following during a speech at Pareto Securities: „Cyberpunk 2077 is our new Witcher 3, but even more ambitious. We work [in a] new universe, futuristic universe. We believe it’s very appealing to players, not only RPG players—but this is [a] true RPG, like Witcher, like Witcher 3, for mature audiences. It’s handcrafted, detailed, of course, open-world, with open-ended gameplay,” he said. (You can see his speech start at 3 hours, 16 minutes in the video below.)

We’ll see – if CD Projekt RED could make Laidlaw move to Poland to join them, they’d have a talented person on their team without a doubt!

Source: WCCFTech, PCGamer