CD Projekt Red’s Marcin Blacha on the ‘Living’ City of Cyberpunk 2077
Marcin Blacha, the head of the writing team for ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ at CD Projekt Red, shares how the game’s scriptwriters brought its Night City setting – which he describes as ‘both beautiful and brutal’ – to life.
Paweł Schreiber (PS): A computer game like ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ is an incredibly complex whole. Firstly in technical terms – a whole crowd of people constructs the game’s world and mechanics for years on end, and it all has to be compatible with the game engine. Secondly, thanks to the story’s branching structure, with numerous optional offshoots – conversations which the player can choose to have, or missions they can complete, which are all intended to add colour. These larger and smaller stories must also be written into an extremely specific world, one which each player will explore in their own way. How do you go about writing something like that?
Marcin Blacha (MB): Developing such a huge, complex game truly is an immense challenge. In a short space of time, we had to write the same amount of text as War and Peace – the majority of which is scenes with branching dialogues that make characters behave in different ways, and choices that lead to a range of consequences.
Only a well-integrated scriptwriting team is up to such a challenge, and various limitations must be turned into advantages. If the creative team all have different styles and standpoints, each must write whichever part of the game suits them best. When possible, a game should be split into sections, with entire themes and characters entrusted to different people. But that solution doesn’t always work out, which is why the scriptwriters need to communicate with each other regularly to exchange information.
Logistics is the hardest part of the whole process. The nicest bit begins when someone sits down to write. You just need to remember that the dialogues are for the player and are supposed to entertain them. Consequently, the scriptwriters have to yo-yo – first, they plunge into the depths of the story, delving into characters’ motives and the atmosphere of the scene, and then they rush up to the surface to view the dialogues from dry land and judge whether players would make those same choices, and whether the scene has enough suspense to glue them to their seats.
Paweł Schreiber (PS): How was writing ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ different from writing the ‘Witcher’ series?
Marcin Blacha (MB): When we started work on Cyberpunk 2077, we left our well-known characters behind, abandoned our tried-and-tested writing tricks, and set sail into unknown waters where there be cyberdragons.
The first sea monster we encountered was the new dialogue system. In Cyberpunk 2077, the player has a first-person view of the scene, so they can’t see their character’s facial expression, only their hand movements. Additionally, they can move around, interact with objects, or choose whom to talk to. Such a system requires writing concise lines of dialogue, which bristle with more choice points than The Witcher. It’s harder for the writers to pick up speed, and there’s not much room for flowery phrasing like in The Witcher.
The style’s discipline imposed a new form on us which was good for telling street stories. While writing the game, we also had to make many other decisions. For example, we tried to reduce the amount of jargon and neologisms to make the game language more accessible and allow the scriptwriting team to synchronise more easily. We sought inspiration in different places than usual. On this project, our guiding lights were classics of cyberpunk, noir and even contemporary reportage.
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Still from ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, 2020, photo: CD Projekt Red
Paweł Schreiber (PS): In a way, [the setting of] Night City is the game’s main character. How did its structure and nature affect the script?
Marcin Blacha (MB): Night City is like a living entity, with its own character and quirks, and it can be both beautiful and brutal. Cyberpunk 2077 puts the city on a par with the world, forcing its inhabitants to clash with it and get beaten in an unfair fight most of the time.
When creating stories on that theme, we tried to link them to Night City’s topography. Our city can be explored not only horizontally, but also vertically. That allowed us to tell a story that begins in the dark streets, moves upwards to the floors of skyscrapers, and then heads back down again.
For one of our plot lines, we wanted to lead the player through the circles of hell, so they start off in a neon-drenched club, then pass through progressively rougher neighbourhoods until they reach the worst of them all. In another situation, we drop the player right in the middle of a parade, in streets full of animated holograms of fantastic creatures, which introduces a story featuring actual, tangible ghosts of the past.
Being in conflict with the city brings our heroes closer together. In this lonely world, having a common enemy unites people, and almost all the major characters in Night City are at odds with the place.
Paweł Schreiber (PS): ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ is based on [Mike Pondsmith’s] ‘Cyberpunk 2020’ RPG system, which was already quite old when you started work. Which elements from previous editions made it into the game, and what needed adapting and updating? Which aspects of that system’s vision of the future were already obsolescent, and which had grown even more significant?
Marcin Blacha (MB): Cyberpunk 2020 has become a cult game, but if we consider its vision of the future world as predictive, it doesn’t necessarily correspond to our 2020. After all, we aren’t grafting unwieldy implants onto ourselves or using decks to surf cyberspace. We don’t even have flying cars yet. I could keep listing descriptions of social relations, the world economy, and eurodollars as the currency of the New United States, but there’s no point in giving any more examples because cyberpunk is fiction, not futurology. As fiction, it distils contemporary issues into a dystopian setting.
It didn’t matter to us that some elements of the Cyberpunk 2020 universe were outdated, because we were describing the world metaphorically. It was important that the future be both frightening and seductive with its bleak beauty. On that premise, we altered its aesthetics – the game graphics rarely resemble the illustrations in the printed RPG handbook. Our Net works somewhat differently and is a completely retrofuturistic vision inspired by the times when people used Netscape browsers to access the Internet and checked their mail in text format. The new game also highlights different threats than the original: we stress the issue of climate change and remark that globalisation and information access have allowed society to be manipulated in other ways than predicted. On the other hand, in our world, TV is the dominant medium, and printed newspapers are still going strong.
In Mike Pondsmith’s Cyberpunk 2020, the fate of the world was moulded by individuals. In our game world, individuals fight against the inertia of changes generated by processes, because we’ve learned to see the world differently in those 30-odd years.
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Still from ‘Cyberpunk 2077’, 2020, photo: CD Projekt Red
Paweł Schreiber (PS): Initially, cyberpunk was a highly belligerent, political genre that depicted rebellious individuals using cutting-edge tech to fight not political, but corporate authorities, who strive to control the use of that same tech. But cyberpunk gradually began to be associated with some of its more superficial features, such as neon, fog, cyber-implants and flying cars. How does cyberpunk remain compelling in ‘Cyberpunk 2077’? In which ways does it resemble other famous cyberpunk works, and in which ways is it unique?
Marcin Blacha (MB): Cyberpunk 2077 is an extensive, multi-layered game developed by people who all define cyberpunk differently, and they each added something of their own. Our game is based on Cyberpunk 2020, which offered a universal vision of the world, and we’ve transferred that to the video game. Therefore, our plot lines refer to all the cyberpunk tropes, so we could tell short, self-contained stories on each theme, then never return to them again.
The game’s hero challenges the wealthy and powerful of this world and attempts to survive on the streets of Night City, but the game’s textbook rebel is Johnny Silverhand. Since this world has extremely advanced medicine and the wealthy can afford to extend their lifespan, we were able to juxtapose two generations of this dystopian reality’s residents and go into a few of the generational differences, which was a very interesting process.
Mostly, our cyberpunk is unique in its meticulous castigation of the world it’s set in, and related discussions of moral and social issues. One example grew out of the following logic: since cyberpunk (I believe) is a variation on the theme of the Gnostic myth, observations or conclusions can be made that the genre’s classic authors usually ignore, thus enhancing the game. That resulted in some interesting elements and themes I can’t reveal just yet.
There are plenty of examples, but it’s boring to read about things you should experience while playing. Suffice to say that Cyberpunk 2077’s biggest distinguishing feature is its combination of all the elements I mentioned and others I didn’t – so as not to spoil the surprise.
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Paweł Schreiber (PS): There’s still a while left before 2077, but which of the Night City residents’ problems are we already facing? How much of today is in your tomorrow?
Marcin Blacha (MB): In short, we already know about Night City’s problems. To prove it, I’ll describe a day in the life of an average resident of this metropolis. He’s woken by a clock radio alarm – the music is interspersed with news of air pollution many times above normal. Still drowsy, the story’s hero runs down the stairs of his megablock because the lift has been broken for ages. Between floors, he passes a place selling dim sum and firearms. It’s hard to catch a cab, but he finally manages it and drives through streets filled with homeless people, assailed on all sides by giant advertisements on the buildings, predominantly selling sex and beauty.
Our hero is lucky enough to work for a corporation, which gives him access to healthcare, for example. At work, he jacks in and somehow survives a whole day of data analysis on three pills supplied by the company. On his way home, our hero passes someone being mugged and, stuck in a traffic jam, he hears that a gang war has flared up again – in the poorest district, fortunately. At home, he switches on a feeder standing in the middle of the room, which provides him with food and TV entertainment, but an illegal braindance is even more fun: a recording of someone else’s emotions transmitted directly into his brain via an implant. Our hero falls asleep still hooked up to the feeder, and he wakes up drowsy again the next day.
Paweł Schreiber (PS): Some of the key themes of contemporary cyberpunk are the body and humanity – sold, treated like goods, or modified in order to escape the limitations of the species. How does ‘Cyberpunk 2077’ handle these themes?
Marcin Blacha (MB): They are central to the storyline and omnipresent in the game world. When the hero leaves his megablock, he is assaulted by brash adverts selling bodies, body shaming, or promising better bodies. In the crowded streets, people have mechanical limbs, electronic eyes, or chromium skin. Swapping body parts for prosthetics is only a matter of money in the game world, and its inhabitants exchange them for the same reasons we change our wardrobe – to stay in fashion, express ourselves, or get a better job. When treated as commodities which can be bought or exchanged, bodies become somehow external to people, just like clothing.
Given such a reality, you might ask what humanity is and what it is founded upon. Our game characters also ponder this issue, and it is no trivial matter, as minds can be digitally recorded in the world of Cyberpunk 2077. After such a procedure, is the end result still human, or is it an AI of human origin? How does the experience of casting off the body shape a person’s consciousness? The game also asks such questions.
While playing Cyberpunk 2077, you can encounter drivers coupled to their vehicles, spry centenarians extending their lives with gene therapy, individuals with no human traits after fully converting from biological to metal bodies, and AIs that are so empathic they are treated like people.
Interview conducted in Polish, Nov 2020, translated by Mark Bence, Dec 2020
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