I got the chance to ask Pawel Sasko some of my biggest questions about his work on Cyberpunk and CDPR alongside his life, upbringing, work, aspirations, influences, and passion!
I hope you guys enjoy.
Timestamps:
0:00 – Intro
4:28 – Pawel’s younger years, upbringing, & video games
9:02 – How Pawel started writing
11:50 – What are Pawel’s movie, book, game inspirations?
23:42 – Pawel’s biggest Cyberpunk influences
32:05 – Career path & CD PROJEKT being the only option
46:17 – With Pondsmith’s expansive universe, how did CDPR know what to pull and what to leave behind?
58:15 – What did Cyberpunk 2077’s base game creation look like?
1:05:58 – How does your Master’s Degree in Psychology influence your game design decisions?
1:09:53 – How did Phantom Liberty’s story change based on feedback from the base game’s story?
1:17:50 – How will Unreal Engine & The NA talent pool influence Cyberpunk Orion?
1:23:15 – Pawel’s message to the CDPR and Cyberpunk community
💥 NEW Cyberpunk 2077 2023 Playlist: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e0QcYX4-SbI&list=PL4oIv9QY_YATB4FzSVcYqex6ylWyEo3j0
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Secret Quests, Ciri References, Breaking Bad & Matrix Easter Eggs, How To Kill Smasher In The Prologue, Pets For Your Apartment & MORE in 20 Hidden Secrets & Features from Cyberpunk 2077 you probably missed or have yet to see!
Did you find any hidden features, quests or easter eggs? Let me know in the comments below!
Male V Render by Hussein Diba – https://www.zbrushcentral.com/u/hosseindiba/gallery
Potential DLC Casino Hidden in Cyberpunk 2077, 2021’s DLC now has a landing page, CDPR responds to getting hit with a class action lawsuit, & Cyberpunk 2077 soaring despite negative press all in today’s last Cyberpunk 2077 news video of 2020!
Night City Wire was CRAZY so today I am going to go over absolutely everything about it from what we saw in the first episode and everything that was announced, to what we will see, to a roundup of previews featuring character creator options, skills, lifepath summaries, mission structures, the open world, gameplay, and technical details from all around the web, as well as show 85 new screenshots and compare what we have seen so far with past demos to show you the graphical upgrades.
First up let’s go over what we saw. This first episode for Night City Wire opened up with The Gig trailer showing off Night City at Night in the rain, and our introduction to the opening scenes of Cyberpunk 2077, depending on your Lifepath which we will get into shortly. I do also want to say that I will be doing an extensive analysis of this trailer this weekend so look out for that. For me this was a 10/10 trailer and the graphical improvements and lighting showcased is quite impressive. This is all in game footage, and some if not all scenes are utilizing RTX. This trailer also shows how we will inevitably get the chip for DeShawn before being shot and betrayed by him left to wake up in a scrapyard. Seems this heist mission goes wrong for Jackie and V. Now the chip seems to be in the possession of Arasaka, who are one of the heaviest hitters in Night City. Definitely my favorite part of the showcase.
This is followed by an about the trailer dive with Pawel Sasko, a commentary on the new feature of Braindance, as well as the announcement of Cyberpunk Edgerunners a Netflix series coming in 2022 from Studio Trigger an acclaimed Japan based animation company. I know very little about anime studios but it seems like fans are incredibly pleased with this. Again I will have a frame by frame analysis of this in the coming days. Everything that they showcased here is also part of the prologues and the first few quests. There was also some exclusive Katana gameplay, I’m not sure that was featured in the NCW, but GameStar somehow got some extra footage, and it looks decent from the 5 or so seconds we can see.
Now with episode 1 out of the way, episode 2 will be coming in just a few weeks as per Hollie Bennet, and the 3rd one will be TBD. It seems there are only 3 slots on the Cyberpunk site, so after that we may get marketing drops in other forms.
Moving on we have our preview roundup. I’ve gone over more than a dozen of these written previews and distilled this down into the nitty gritty of customization, the 3 different lifepaths, the gameplay, the weapons and cyberware , the open world, the mechanics, the technical elements and the overall pros and cons I could glean.
Starting off with the tech side, yes Cyberpunk 2077 will utilize DLS 2.0, which is upscaling technology which will help you push higher frames at the same graphical fidelity. Considering how heavy this game must be based on lighting and the world, this is great news for those who want to play with RTX on and soften the FPS blow. Evidently many of the previews who mention RTX say this is one of the best implementations of it, even over standouts like control and metro exodus….
Next up we have the character creator attributes and skills. The character creator was mentioned at being visibly 3x larger than what we saw in the Deep Dive with 252 individual options from nail length to nipple size to even odd eyes with some previewers mentioning black and white hypno eyes and having the option to not have nipples. There were a reported 6 skin types, 35 hairstyles, 17 eyes, 8 eyebrows, 17 mouths, 17, jaws, 17 ears, 8 bits of cyberware or whats likely surface wiring, 9 types of scars, 9 types of tattoos, 11 piercings, 5 types of teeth with someone mentioning pink chompers, 8 types of eye makeup, 5 bits of lip makeup, 3 blemishes, 3 types of nipples, 5 types of body tatts, 3 types of scars, 2 dick types, 1 vagina option, the option to not have anything, dick size options, and 5 types of pubic hair. One of the journalists mentioned creating a character with a tic tac dick and radioactive green pubes. You could also completely randomize your character.
the Night City Wire marketing kick off for Cyberpunk 2077 is being postponed from June 11 to the 25th. In a tweet CD PROJEKT RED says “We decided to move Night City Wire to June 25th. We still look forward to sharing new information on Cyberpunk, but more important discussions are happening right now, and we want them to be heard. We wholeheartedly stand against racism, intolerance and violence. Black lives matter.
Lead Quest Designer Pawel Sasko followed up with saying “I know you understand our decision. I’m dying to show you everything and talk about the game and spoil you with what we have prepared. But this is not the right time. There is work to be done in the world first.
I know a lot of you may be disappointed when it comes to this, which is understandable, but I think we are all pretty good at exercising patience at this point, and we can wait for games.
Eight years ago on May 30, 2012 Cyberpunk was officially announced so for those of you who have been waiting 8 years, you know what I’m talking about.
Anyways, well still be streaming it on the 25th, I welcome you all to come join in the festivities then, but for now stay safe, take care of each other and be kind where you can.
CD PROJEKT RED were kind enough to send over a mini-care package and some goodies, which include some really cool Cyberpunk 2077 goodies. I’ll be giving all this away in the near future and keep your eye out for the rest of the “stuff” ; )
The Cyberpunk Red Jumpstart Kit is the perfect introduction to the newest edition of the classic Cyberpunk tabletop role-playing game and includes:
– One booklet with all the essential rules needed to play the game right out of the box.
One booklet full of world lore & adventures to run
– Six customizable characters
– A set of Cyberpunk-themed diced (two d10s and four d6s)
– Maps and standees to help bring the world of Cyberpunk to life!
The 4th corporate war’s over and the big dogs have retreated to their corners to lick their wounds. That leaves everyone else to fend for themselves in a shattered world.
And that’s just fine. ’cause you’ve got interface plugs in your wrists, metal in your limbs, and chips in your skull. You’re wired in, loaded with chrome, and ready to take it to the edge.
Get yours here – https://talsorianstore.com/collections/cyberpunk/products/cyberpunk-red-jumpstart-kit
In today’s Cyberpunk 2077 and Cyberpunk Red Lore video we’ll be going over the state of Night City and the world after the events of the 4th Corporate war, and the culmination of Cyberpunk 2020 and what has happened pre Cyberpunk 2077 in the time period of 2020 – 2045. If you don’t have a good grasp on the events that have led up to Red, I suggest either reading Cyberpunk 2020, or watching some of the Night City history lore videos on the channel, or on The Madqueen’s channel to get caught up to speed.
Night City was inhabitable within 24 hours after the Nuke went off at around 1200 feet in the Arasaka towers. Many augmentations or filters installed in the bodies of the general populace meant that the people themselves had largely weathered the effects, but the city was a different story.
The period of rebuilding between 2040-2045 was largely on the shoulders of outsourced Edgerunners and Nomad packs such as the Aldecaldo clan.
Clearing the wreckage was a monumental task though, and tanks shoveled debris into the Bay.
The effects of this event affected specific districts and areas within Night City differently.
Suburbs are overpacked with tent cities and refugee camps filled with people hit hardest by the fallout. Megabuildings are under construction at this time to address the huge populations that are swallowed by crime and overcrowding.
Nomad families now have a bigger presence in the Cyberpunk landscape during the Time of the red. With the Night City and surrounding area largely being under construction and Nomadic packs being well versed in trade routes and commerce, they are integral to Night Cities’ reconstruction.
Gigantic megabuildings are the focus in the Time of the red, which not only house massive amounts of people, but will contain entertainment, food courts, shopping malls and central hubs
Politically Night City is all over the place.
In the time of the red, the Net as we know it today is essentially the digital wild wild west. Mastermind netrunner Rache Bartmoss had released the RABIDS a debilitating mass spread virus, leading to the DATAKRASH. Netwatch, the global police of the net have tried to ban netrunners from accessing the net and net traffic is now localized to individual buildings or campuses to keep everything running smoothly.
Law enforcement post 4th corporate war and the fall of the towers were pretty dodgy. Because of limited law enforcement units, bribery was common and corruption standard in who Law enforcement looks after.
From the old Night City police departments, only one has stood the test of time which is the MAX TAC or Psycho Squad.
Law and order in the time of red can also be classified into security services, corporate security, personal bodyguards, and more freelance police.
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In today’s Cyberpunk 2077 video we are going over 8 Things you missed in the Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay Sneak peek trailer. If you guys haven’t seen it yet it is an unlisted video on the Cyberpunk 2077 channel, but we did see it live at E3 prior to the release date reveal.
First we have a look at what could be lootable books in the world of Night City. It seems like paperback books have not ceased to exist in the dark future, and in the character creation hybrid scene for the demo, we see a stack of 3 books and another book cover as the view pans to male V. Now we could have books here because the area is in Pacifica which is a poverty-stricken gang infested district, and it could lack more technological innovations and chips previously seen but that’s just my speculation. The books we see is Sayonara station, rewiring synaptic pathways, the chronicles of titania and the maxtac way. Sayonara means goodbye and is borrowed from Japanese. The maxtac way is likely an interesting book on the methodologies of the Psycho squad who are also referred to as the maxtac. These are the scariest law enforcement group in Night City who focus on hunting down and killing Cyberpsychos who are on murderous rampages under the grip of Cyberpsychosis. Next we have the chronicles of titania, again not really sure what this would be about, Although Titania is the name of a character in Shakespeares play a midsummers night dream. At the top we have rewiring synaptic pathways, which as someone who loves psychology intrugies me. Rewiring neural pathways is a pretty common practice in rehabilitative psychology. Again this might have something to do with Cyberpsychosis as cyberpsychos usually need braindance as a rehabilitative method, which is essentially reqiring your neural pathways using hyper realistic VR.
Next up we have a sports arena in the background of this shot somewhere in Pacifica. In a couple of frames we see that there is a athlete wearing what looks like Football gear, and we know that combat sports are a part of the lore of Cyberpunk. We also see the teams which seems to be the corsairs versus a team whose logo is a dragon in the shape of an S which seems to represent San Diego, but regardless this seems to be confirmation that there will be sports other than boxing in the world. Now Pacifica is pretty run down so it’s also possible the advertisements has just been left there unchanged for a long period of time and sports were a big thing in this district BEFORE it turned into a hellhole.
Next up we have a little placeholder from the movie theatre scene where you are holding up NetWatch agent Bryce Mosely. If you guys remember the E3 2018 art for Cyberpunk 2077s on site booth, youll remember that this was exactly what they had inside. The theatre is projecting the same image, and I’m going to assume it’s a placeholder and there will be a legit movie playing when we get in the game. Obviusly there seems to be a ton of movie posters in the world, so it’s not out of the realm of possibility.
Next we have an audio snippet during the trailer when meeting Placide. Male V can be heard saying Mr. Hand sent me am I right for the job. Now this got me thinking as to which Hand V is referring to. It would be obvious to assume Johnny Silverhand, who is the digital ghost AI attached to the immortality chip in Male V’s brain, but we also recently got an image where the possibility of Morgan Blackhand was questioned. If this scene in the screenshot is before our expedition to Pacifica, maybe Morgan Blackhand is part of the story and is sending us on a mission of some sort.
Next we have the hacking sequence where Male V jacks int the panel. If you look very closely, this panel belongs to Petrochem one of the biggest megacorporations in Night City that have yet to be confirmed in Cyberpunk 2077, although it is implied with the use of CHOOH2 in our super cars. Petrochem is an Agircorp, and the worlds largest producer of CHOOH2 in Cyberpunk 2020. There’s also some intriguing data on the side, one being the name of Valerie Sutnar writing the program or code for this panel. And the little code at the bottom that resembles steam wallet codes or digital content codes you guys can use to redeem for something online. I tried this on GOG already, although I did notice it a while ago so it’s probably been used if it is a code. Regardless, you can try and test your luck or decipher if that’s what it actually is.
Next we have the BIGGEST revelation of all, the fact that they still use toiler bowl cleaner in Night city.
Finally at the end, we have what looks like the Militech logo as we are netrunning into the deep web with Brigitte and some of the voodooboys. It will be interesting to see if Militech owns a lot of these servers, or if they are funding the Voodooboys and Militech’s involvement into netrunning if any.
If you guys are unaware CD PROJEKT RED and Cyberpunk 2077 are currently facing backlash based on an in game advertisement which can be seen clearly in their new RTX featured images from NVIDIA highlighting it’s ray tracing functionality. It features a woman in a body suit of some kind with a outline of male genitals underneath. It’s been widely criticized as being edgy at the expense of transgender people. One of the biggest outlashes comes from a certain individual from twitter, but I’m going to leave the name blurred out for reasons I will explain later.
Now as far as I know this individual creates online stories via Twine that are of an erotic nature, and they feature transgendered artwork at times. Now according to her in these tweets she says this “I have an erotica twine with two trans girls with male genitalia, but I weave their genitals in a way that feels feminine soft and affirming. There’s no shock value here.
She goes on to say if Cyberpunk 2077 treated girl dicks just as another facet of life it would be fine.
Before I get to my personal thoughts we have a response from the artist Kasia Redesiuk who created some of these ads and the mix it up ad in question. She says that the corporations in Cyberpunk mean that marketing is more overt and aggressive. She mentions that hypersexualization is apparent everywhere and in our ads there are many examples of hypersexualized women, men and people in between.
It was a conscious choice on our end to show that in this world, you are fighting against the corporations and these advertisements.
Now CDPR is hypersexualixing everyone, that’s one of the points of a constrictive cyberpunk world. They aren’t leaving behind any sexual preferences, and in this vain this are treating everyone with equality by having them all mistreated in the world of cyberpunk.
If they didn’t hypersexual transgender people, and transgender people only, would this individual still have a problem with it? Likely and it’s no secret judging by her entire twitter feed which largely panders to negative outrage hive mind mentalities without putting forward anything constructive.
This isn’t an attack on you personally, this is the world of cyberpunk, an attack on the entire way we live as a society. People are becoming so jaded that they think everything that doesn’t latch onto the status quo of the way they frame things in their head is an all-out assault or provocation of their beliefs.
I have the firm belief that we can all live our lives the way we want. As long as we don’t encroach on another people’s personal space both physically and metaphorically and try to james Charles their ass, I don’t really care what people do and in fact I think its good to celebrate diversity without it turning into some sort of pissing contest on having a superior sexual preference.
No one criticizes art if it’s a mother breastfeeding because if you did you would look like an asshole who is trying to stand on some sort of moral highground made of sand. But we can criticize literal art and advertisements in a game where the whole point of the world is that these images are perpetuated by corporations.
These attacks on CDPR are from a vocal minority of out-rage culturists, and although I’m sort of feeding into what these vocal minorities like, these videos are few and far between for me because I generally don’t want to give people like this a platform, which is why I’ve blurred out the names. This is their modus d operandi, to latch to the latest hottest thing and bash the living hell out of it to get notoriety, publicity and attention.
These are the same kind of people who go to a restaurant, order a coke and when the waitress asks if Pepsi is okay gets all bent out of shape and condescending and write a poor review on Yelp afterwards.
By seeing the world through your bias lens, you’re just confirming the tropes of cyberpunk.
All the ads are over the top. This is a stifling marketing environment where you are suffocated by neon imagery and product placement. That’s the whole point.
This has less to do with sexual issues or their personal sexuality being under fire and more to do with the volatility of some people. If you do end up finding the individual who said this, compare and contrast how many tweets of hers are negative compared to positive. Glass half empty mentalities pushing their own agendas at the expense of hardworking artists who have to defend their craft.
There’s Rumors of journalists and media boycotting the game. They can try and if they do, well just buy 2 extra copies on GOG and fully support CDPR in silence. We don’t have to Fight fire with fire.
Thanks for watching guys and for everything and anything Cyberpunk 2077 join Neon Nation by subscribing to the neon arcade.
