Cyberpunk 2077’s Skill Checks and Life Path System “Can Push the Narrative in Different Directions”

CD Projekt RED are going in a very different direction from their Witcher trilogy with the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077. It’ll still be a familiar experience in many ways, with its choice-driven narrative and its complex and morally grey characters, but from the art design to the amount of control it affords to players in terms of gameplay, there’s also a whole lot that’s very different from the Polish studio’s previous games.

While speaking with GamingBolt, the game’s lead quest designer, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz, spoke about the various things that CDPR are doing for the first time in one of their games – from gunplay to driving vehicles – and the thing he singled out specifically was the game’s skill checks and the life path system. As per Tomaszkiewicz, the life path system is something that will have a significant impact on the game’s story, and the way players engage with it.

“A number of them actually,” he said when asked about new features that CDPR were implementing in Cyberpunk 2077 that they didn’t have prior experience with that he was excited about. “Since we worked on fantasy games before we never did driving cars. We never did gun play. We never did the skill checks — which I’m really excited about. That’s one of the things we showed in the demo.

“Now we have the system of life path that leads to additional dialogue options, that can push the narrative in specific quests in different directions. For example, if you have a corporal background when you’re talking to other agents, you have more knowledge of how they operate and how to talk to them to reach your goals. As a street kid you wouldn’t have that knowledge. But you use that knowledge [of being a street kid] on the gangs, right?”

Cyberpunk 2077 is out on PS4, Xbox One, and PC on April 16, 2020. Our full interview with Tomaszkiewicz will be up soon, so stay tuned.