Cyberpunk 2077 ended up failing to live up to massive expectations in more ways than one. The content that the game launched with, for instance, was very much not up to the expected standards, while at the same time, there was also plenty that developer CD Projekt RED decided to end up leaving on the cutting floor, traces of which players have been able to find in the game and its files in the time since its release.
Development is, of course, an iterative process, and content getting cut out and being left unused is par for the course for pretty much every game that gets made, and in a recent stream on Twitch, Cyberpunk 2077’s quest designer Paweł Sasko offered some more insight on how that went specifically during the action RPG’s development. Sasko explained that the content that was left unused for the game was unused for a reason, saying that it was deemed to be “weak” and lacking in the required level of quality.
“One important point I wanted to make here, whatever unused content there is and you want to make material about it, always unused content is used [for] a reason, you know,” Sasko said (via MP1st). “And I always try to explain it to the players but also to the press that when you’re actually making a game, your responsibility as a designer is to actually make all of those calls about what actually gets into your game, you know, that is your responsibility. And when stuff is weak and just the quality is not there, and sometimes just you will look at the idea and the potential of the idea is not there. You can see that there’s no way you can bring it up to, you know, let’s say, nine out of ten quests, or locations, or gameplay feature[s].”
CD Projekt RED is currently working on Cyberpunk 2077’s expansion, Phantom Liberty, details for which will start being shared in June. Fans will be hoping that it will be able to offer significant improvements over the base game.
The developer recently also added Overdrive Mode for the game’s PC version, which adds path tracing. Read more on that through here.
Cyberpunk 2077 is available on PS5, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, Xbox One, and PC.