CD Projekt RED showcased Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay behind closed doors at E3 to a select few industry and press members, and while impressions (including our own) absolutely loved what was displayed, the larger audiences remained unsatisfied with the fact that CDPR were refusing to show anything to the public. However, that changed yesterday, and the Polish studio released the entire 50 minute-long gameplay demonstration in full, and it blew most people away.
Why did they keep us waiting, though? Well, as it turns out, CDPR actually have an answer to that question. As a Reddit user discovered, there was a hidden secret message from the developers at the end of the footage released yesterday, wherein the developer explained why they chose to hold off on showing footage to the masses. Essentially, it was because even the footage that’s ready isn’t going to be representative of the final game, with the game still being “deep in development”.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting for this for so long!” the message reads. “Did you like what you saw? Because for us, the fact that we’re finally showing you Cyberpunk 2077 is HUGE. Please go to our forums, twitter, Facebook, discord, and do tell what you think. Is the game world how you imagined? Do you see what we meant by “immersion” when we talked about CP2077 being an FPP RPG? How does our vision of “cyberpunk by day” make you feel? We really want to know.
“Aside from that, we think we owe you a few words of explanation on why we’re showing you this gameplay now, some time after industry professionals and media saw it at E3 and Gamescom.
“Each time we discussed the idea of showing the game to you (and we discussed this idea a lot), we were ending up in this “we’re not 100% sure” limbo. Why? Because (for most people), when a game dev shows gameplay footage from their game, it means that this is how the game is going to look or play like. It’s not the case here. Cyberpunk 2077 is deep in development. We have a lot of design ideas, a lot of mechanics being play tested, but we don’t know what we’ll end up with at launch. This makes publishing videos like what you just saw risky –we don’t want gamers saying, ‘But in that previous video that gun was shooting differently’, or ‘why did you change the interface?’. Change is inherent to game development and there’s a ton of things being modified each day. Our fear was (and kind of still is) that you’ll think what you just saw is how Cyberpunk 2077 will look like 1:1.
“What gave us that extra confidence to show you a work in progress game? Good initial feedback from people who are accustomed to see games at various stages of development. What they told us (and they told us they really liked what they saw) gave us the boost we needed to show the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 to the most passionate and insightful audience — you.
“So… here’s what Cyberpunk 2077 looks like today (or rather looked like when we recorded the video). We sincerely hope you liked it.
“Again, thank you for your patience and all the thoughts you shared with us.”
Which makes complete sense, to be honest. Even after showcasing the demo yesterday, CD Projekt RED reiterated that the section of the game that was shown off might end up very differently in the final game, while we also know for a fact that even though the game is playable from start to finish internally at the studio, there’s still a long ways to go before completion of development.
