Morality systems were once huge – and commonly used – in video games, but their binary nature and the sacrifices games’ stories had to make in authentic storytelling led to them eventually going out of style. CD Projekt RED had a huge part to play in that, especially when they came along with their Witcher games, which offered complex choices that drastically changed the narrative, but did so in a morally grey fashion where no choice was ever clearly right or wrong.
We know, of course, that Cyberpunk 2077 is going to have similar choice and consequence mechanics, and now, the developers have also confirmed something else we all probably expected anyway- there’s no real morality system in the upcoming RPG.
At E3 2019, we got the chance to interview quest director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz. When we asked Tomaszkiewicz if the fact that the game will let players play through all of it non-lethally means that there will be a morality system, he said that there’s no real system to determine good and evil choices, and that non-lethal playthroughs are instead dependant on how much you choose to invest in your character’s capabilities in that area.
“We don’t have a moral system per se,” Tomaszkiewicz told GamingBolt. “However, to complete it non-lethally you have to be very good at stealth. Invest in points that allow you to stealth better, use weapons that will allow you to incapacitate the enemy instead of killing them, to make the moral choices that will allow you to avoid killing people throughout the game.”
Cyberpunk 2077 is out on April 16, 2020 for the PS4, Xbox One, and PC. Though the developers would eventually like to have the game on next gen systems, in our interview with Tomaszkiewicz, he also told us that CDPR has no current plans for that (or Switch release). Stay tuned, our full interview will be going live soon.