Cyberpunk 2077 lets players choose either a male or female version of protagonist V to play as, but developer CD Projekt Red made them both equally valid from the very beginning of development.
Speaking on the Answered Podcast, CD Projekt Red lead quest designer Błażej Augustynek revealed an interesting tactic the developer used to ensure the character didn’t have one particular world view.
“Funny story, when we were working on Cyberpunk we made the conscious decision that the quest designers were going to think of V as a female character, while the writers think of V as a male character,” Augustynek said. “So we didn’t want to have any kind of gaze, be it a female gaze or male gaze, and approach to the world.”
Augustynek said that, for him, V will always be a woman, and he doesn’t think of the man version as the real one. But other staff within CD Projekt Red will likely believe the opposite. The topic has been hotly debated since Cyberpunk 2077 was released, with players questioning which one is the canon character or who feels more authentic in the world. But it turns out, it’s both.
CD Projekt Red narrative director Philipp Weber said it was a stark difference from working on The Witcher games too, as most of the studio, if not all, was very familiar with longtime protagonist Geralt of Rivia.
“It was a real conscious voice because we were used to Geralt,” he said. “We were always used to writing for Geralt, making quests for Geralt, so when we knew, ‘Okay, we’re making a new character, and that character can also be a woman,’ we just made it a rule when we wrote our quest design documents to always write ‘she’. So we remind ourselves in our brain that this is a different kind of character, where now we actually have to consider more than maybe with Geralt.”
Cyberpunk 2077’s development is now all but complete, with CD Projekt Red releasing the final major update for it, Update 2.1, earlier in December 2023. Fans expected the game changing Update 2.0, which arrived alongside the Phantom Liberty expansion in September, to be the final big patch for Cyberpunk 2077 until CD Projekt Red announced a final one would arrive alongside the new Ultimate Edition.
Update 2.0 laid the foundation for the new Cyberpunk 2077 experience, completely revamping the game with features such as a new perk system and improved AI. It also brought closure to an Elon Musk fan theory, a reference to the late racing legend Ken Block, and bizarre additions to the game’s biggest mystery.
In our 9/10 review of the expansion, IGN said: “Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty completes an immense turnaround for CD Projekt Red’s future RPG kickstarted with the anime spin-off, Cyberpunk: Edgerunners and its latest 2.0 Update.”
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He’ll talk about The Witcher all day.
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