To say that CD Projekt RED takes side quests very seriously would be an understatement. They led the charge against meaningless fetch quests in The Witcher 3, a game that was full of optional, memorable side stories, and they’re hoping to replicate (and perhaps even surpass) those achievements with the upcoming Cyberpunk 2077.
There probably aren’t a lot of people who’re worried about the quality of side quests in the upcoming RPG, but if you’re among the few who fall in that camp, CDPR has given assurances that there won’t be any annoying fetch quests in the game. Speaking in an interview over at the official CD Prokekt RED forums, senior quest designer Philip Weber got to talking about the studio’s philosophy behind designing side quests, and told an interesting story about how CDPR clamped down hard on fetch quests with The Witcher 3.
“When I started on The Witcher 3, we had a huge document with all ideas for quests,” said Weber. “One of them was to find letters all over the world and you got a reward once you found them. It was rejected, and there was a comment there from our lead quest designer at the time, Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz: ‘We. Don’t. Do. Fetch. Quests!'”
“So of course it’s always good to have these easy rules in mind, but I think it also just comes with experience,” he continued. “Our quests usually aren’t built around specific gameplay actions, but interesting stories – and sometimes you need to fetch something there, but if there’s more to the story than you probably also do five other things on the way, so the one part where you fetch something doesn’t feel bad.”
Cyberpunk 2077 is out on April 15, 2020 for the PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia. Recently, Weber also spoke about the game’s Life Paths system, and how that’s something that will encourage multiple playthroughs. Read more on that through here.