CD Projekt RED have spent a great deal of time talking about Cyberpunk 2077’s Life Path system, and how it’s something that will not only impact the flow of the narrative, but also change the way your character interacts with the game’s world. It’s a system that promises interesting role playing opportunities, and depending on how diverging the different life paths end up being, it could also encourage a great deal of replay value in a game that’s already promising to be brimming with lots of player choice.
Speaking in an interview over at the official CD Prokekt RED forums, senior quest designer Philip Weber spoke about this system a bit more, confirming that it is, indeed, something that will add greatly to the game’s replay value, and hopefully motivate players to replay the game to see how each of the three available life paths play out and affect the game and the narrative.
“As quest designers we were already used to tell nonlinear stories, so having a character like V gave us more of what we already like to do,” said Weber. “The lifepaths are actually one of my favorite features, because they just give us more roleplaying opportunities. A nomad can of course solve some problems much better than a corpo, but put him into a board room and he might not really have the best way to lead a conversation the way he wants to.
“So when we come up with challenges, we also like to think how different lifepaths could solve them effectively. This will hopefully give players lots of motivation to play the game multiple times, because they can have a completely new experience.”
Weber also went on talk about the non-linear nature of Cyberpunk 2077’s moment-to-moment gameplay as well, enabled by its fluid class system, which is something else CDPR have spoken great deal about.
“The new gameplay options thanks to our fluid class system essentially give us more opportunities to make our quests even more nonlinear,” he said. “It’s a lot of fun to work with our level and encounter designers on locations for our quests, because there are always so many different options we can come up with. And sometimes, these options can then also change the story, so just like the lifepath, these gameplay abilities just make it easier for us to make the quest more nonlinear than ever.”
Cyberpunk 2077 is out on April 16, 2020 for the PS4, Xbox One, PC, and Stadia.