the norm. It built a reputation for generosity you can now
see mimicked by another ascendent RPG developer, Larian.
Cyberpunk should have been the perfect next project- another long-established licence from another medium,
stuffed with peculiarities for CD
Projekt to nail in its unfailingly
reverent way. Yet in the years of
anticipation that preceded Cyberpunk
2077 ’s release, the studio sold the
world on an impossible combination
of The Witcher, Deus Ex, and GTA.
With expectations set to an all-time
industry high, the studio failed to live
up to its promises for the first time –
and in front of the largest crowd.
CD Projekt will return to greatness – quite possibly
with The Witcher 4. But as the studio licks its wounds, you
suspect it will never again forget its first principle: to
overdeliver. And, just as crucially, to underpromise.
Jeremy Peel
out an existence in the margins of a dominant human
civilisation. Bioware was shooting for a darker D&D that
now reads like The Witcher with the licence number
scratched off; CD Projekt, by contrast, had the advantage
of working from source material that was already
worshipped in Eastern Europe.
Andrzej Sapkowski’s stories had begun as comically
twisted fairy tales but become part of the canon of Polish
fantasy – a world clawed at by ghouls and strigas, for a
country with more than its fair share of ghosts after
occupation during the Second World War. By 2007,
videogame culture was perfectly poised for fiction that
sneered at the self-aggrandisement of knights and met
supposed saintliness with suspicion. After Fable and
Knights of the Old Republic, RPG fans were ready to be
plunged into the fog of the morally grey.
KER-PUNK
It wouldn’t be true to say that CD Projekt matched
Sapkowski for wit or winding plotlines straight away –
that first game most often comes off as faithful imitation,
ripping common themes and quotes about lesser evils
straight from the books. But over two sequels, the studio
has proven its talent for adaptation,
even capturing the will-they-won’t-
they-kill-each-other romantic
entanglement of Geralt and the witch
Yennefer. Like Sapkowski’s originals,
CD Projekt’s stories are brilliantly
soapy – a home to sentimentalism,
screaming melodrama, and hot baths.
The developer dressed the bed which
Netflix now rolls around in,
luxuriating in worldwide acclaim for
anything Witcher-related.
With each successive Witcher game, CD Projekt
reinforced its rule of overdelivering – putting out free
enhanced editions many months after release at great
expense, long before service games made such additions
CYBERPUNK SHOULD
HAVE BEEN THE
PERFECT NEXT
PROJECTGeralt’s magical signs
converted perfectly into a
system of videogame powers.ABOVE: Wallrunning
was a casualty of
Cyberpunk’s pained
development.NEWS | OPINION | DEVELOPMENT