Behind Cyberpunk 2077: Interviewing Core Dev Members of CD Projekt RED
After spending a great deal of time immersed in the world of Cyberpunk 2077 (2077 for short), I have coalesced my personal understanding of various aspects of the game into a relevant game review, yet I have remained curious about the factors behind much of 2077's brilliant design, which I find difficult to determine unilaterally.
It was a great honor for the author to secure a valuable written interview with CD Projekt RED (CDPR for short), which is best suited to answer these questions, and after submitting a list of questions, the development team commissioned two of its core members to respond to concerns:
SPOILER WARNING: this interview contains ultimate spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 and some in-depth analysis of the relevant game content, so please read it according to your actual needs. Of course, if there is no worry about spoilers, you are also very welcome to read the author's previously issued Cyberpunk 2077 game review in Chinese.
Putting the intricacies of implementation and paths aside for a moment, the Clouds quest was always a look into the commodification of intimacy — and if that necessarily makes it invalid. Even though V is interacting with an AI only pretending to be human, the things that are offered — compassion, understanding, intimacy — somehow work for V. Another interesting angle is to look into alienation of workers from their work: Dolls are fully unconscious during the service, and don't even know how they or their bodies are used. Overall it’s a pretty inhumane endeavor, which wears a human mask so well that we tend to accept it.
