Cyberpunk 2077 [PC, PS4, Xbone] [not before 2020]

Q: Can the player kill all NPCs?
-if not, all unessential NPCs?
Phillip Weber: No, we would like to tell a very good story and our stories have always been very character driven, so some NPCs have to be essential to the story that we are telling.

Q: In what ways can random AI pedestrians be interacted with other than possibly killing them or bumping into them?
PW: I mean, just like in the Witcher, they can bump into you, they'll have something to say, they react to the day/night cycle, different weather conditions. If you shoot your gun in the city a lot of the normal NPCs will probably run away in fear, meanwhile you someone like a gang member will react a bit differently to those sort of actions.

Q: How much skill checks can be found in the environment - mundane and more important ones?
Or in other words, how much interactivity does the city contain and how much does the character build play into it all?
Kyle Rowley: So the way we have it set up right now is that for a quest you have a critical path. Because it is a roleplaying game we do not know what skill a player has picked or what skill level they are currently. So in terms of designing a quest we have a main path, for this path we know a player will a specific type of skill because at certain points in the story we force players to visit ripper docs to attain specific cyberware. We then have optional side content for quests or shortcuts that are rewarded for having a certain skill, even for the critical path of a quest. As long as we have one way through that is not gated by specific skill checks then we will make it so that you can play around and solve problems based on your skills around that.

Q: Would you be able to go deeper on how the skill tree might look like?
PW: The actual shape of skill progression is still something that is in full development, what we know is that there are the 3 directions that you can take. The Solo direction, the Netrunner direction and the Techie direction. Compared to the Witcher we have much more freedom on what these skills can do and how varied they can be, in Witcher 3 all the skills had to make sense to what Geralt, a witcher, can do. Having this freedom also means that now we can solve quests in many more different ways.

Q: Are there subtle augs that allow you to upgrade yourself while still looking fully human?
PW: I mean you have cheap cyberware and then you have cyberware like Real Skin in Cyperbunk 2020. But a thing in the world of Cyberpunk is that it's actually not cool to not be augmented. Cyberware for people isn't a tool, cyberware for people is a fashion statement, a way of life, like a smart phone of Adidas shoes.
There are, of course, also people that do not have augmentations, for example the taxi driver from the trailer looks like someone of the Sikh faith, so part of their religion would be not to necessarily have cyberware in their body.

Q: Do quests have fail states?
PW: Yes, you can fail quests. What we don't have however is a game over state, the only game over that you will get is when you die. So when you fail a quest then it's now part of the story, you have to deal with the consequences.

Q: Will romance options be with only select characters or will I be able to walk up randomly to anyone in the street and start a romance with them?
PW: Romance options are very much treated like in the Witcher 3. Aside from one night stands, we want the romances in the game to have well fleshed out characters and story behind them.

Q: How many dialog options are visible at most at a time, and do stats and skills affect them in any way?
PW: It really depends as we have a very dynamic dialogue system. So you can have different dialogue options depending on the character you play. As an example, if I am now talking to you and you have a camera there and I notice I am being filmed, then maybe I would now look at the camera and another dialogue option would actually pop up there. The conversation would shift to the camera where I would ask "Oh am I being filmed?!" and when the conversation shifts back maybe another dialogue option would have appeared.
The quest, writing and cinematic teams are working really hard on these scenes and we're trying really hard to make them as dynamic as possible. Another example would be that if you go further into, let's say, being a netrunner and you have a lot of netrunner knowledge, then a new dialogue option might pop up. But usually we like to hide the numbers behind things like that so it feels more natural, so usually we would also not want to show the option to you if it's not available to you at that specific time. This is all something we're still toying around with so it is not final obviously.

Q: Where does double jump fit in relation to a certain class?
PW: I would suspect somewhere in the solo area. We can have strong solos, if you want to make them kinda tanky with big weapons, you can also have a character that you want to be more like the major from Ghost in the Shell, basically a cyberninja, there are skills for that as well.

Q: How do skills and stats work in CP2077?
I.e. How does a gun skill affect shooting, how does hacking skill affect hacking, how do stats affect V and his/her mobility and activities, etc - are there RNG checks for anything (i.e. proper skilltests), or just hard thresholds (skill level 1 + task level 2 = can't pass)?
PW: Actually we have that in a very, very broad sense in that we actually have many different versions of progression, we have classical attributes where you get experience and you can level up and then spend those points on attributes like strength and so on. These attributes can also change depending on what cyberware you use, but cyberware can also change other things, an example being the mantis blades with which you get an entirely new ability to use.
You also have street cred, you can get it from doing various things like side quests and so on, you will get it where it makes sense to get street cred. To use the demo as an example you have Dexter Deshawn, he is a fixer, if you start doing contracts for him you get street cred, people start learning your name, and this could unlock higher level fixers that give you more dangerous jobs that yield more rewards. It can also give you access to higher class vendors and so on.

KR: The general progression system is very much a work in progress. The way it works now is that V has attributes and skills, skills are things like long gun, short gun, hacking, engineering etc. Skills have levels that you gain by doing actions. So the more I use a long gun, the more I get good at long guns. They are gated by attributes, so a certain attribute level is needed to gain a certain skill. Skills affect handling of weapons, so the higher my skill in long gun the higher my handling is of rifles, for example. This is in addition to things like certain weapon modules and attachments that also affect handling and so on. We also do skill checks like hacking and engineering on interactions in the game. So using the demo as an example, you had the engineering skill check, so you'd actually need a certain level of engineering to override certain devices.
In the demo we also showed you using an NPC to access a network, it's called breaching a network. So when you plug into an NPC or what we call access points then you are able to interact with systems inside that network. So these will be gated by your hacking skill, if I'm a competent netrunner then I can plug in into specific NPCs around the game and access the networks they are associated with.

Q: How do smart guns work specifically and how do the characters shooting skills and other possible stats and abilities affect that (if at all)?
Are they just an auto-hit crutch to simplify combat, or will they have a more "RPG-like" implementation (i.e. hit chances based on a number of factors like skill, focus, range, visibility...).
PW: While we are still balancing all of this the general idea is that there will be a trade-off, so a weapon that requires aim will generally do more damage compared to a weapon that has smart aim.
In one sentence I would say that we want to deliver the full RPG experience while polishing the shooting aspect so that it feels just right.

KR: In order to actually use smart guns you will need a specific connection to the gun via a piece of cyberware that will unlock the ability to use the targeting system that will actually multi-highlight the enemies, so when you pull the trigger the bullets track them. The player's actual skills do not affect the smart weapon technology at all, it's all based on the gun. The targeting system itself is from an eye augment so that is what unlocks the bullet tracking, but how efficient it is at tracking is based on the weapon, not the player skill.
The way the weapons work now, obviously this is all very much work in progress so anything can change, but what we have right now are pistols, shotguns, rifles - they can be either Tech or Street. A large percentage of those weapons can fit modules that can change they way they handle, those modules being Tech, Smart or Power. So I can aquire a Tech pistol but I can replace the module so it can become a Power or Smart pistol. Gameplay mechanics can change based on what modules you pick and modules will also have rarities attached to them as well.
In the demo you saw a Corporate smart rifle, while these have less modability they are generally more powerful. So these are dedicated weapons for a specific type of gameplay.



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