CD Projekt RED’s decision to go first-person with Cyberpunk 2077 has caused a fair bit of backlash in the gaming community, but if you’re worried that the game is going to be more of an FPS than an RPG, you really shouldn’t be. CD Projekt RED have reiterated on several occasions that the game is still very much going to be an RPG.
For instance, the shooting in the game is going to be driven by stats, by your character’s skills and abilities, as the game’s cinematic animation acting lead Maciej Pietras stated during an interview with PCGamesN. What this means is that you won’t be able to kill enemies with one shot- the damage you deal will be governed by your character build, among other things.
“The shooting mechanics are RPG-driven,” Pietras said. “Since this is stats-driven, since this is an RPG, you are not killing enemies with just one shot. You can always see the stats, and how much damage [you’ve dealt]. It’s all about the system. Because if you invest points into the long range weapons, you want to see that when you’re shooting a guy. If the guy has heavy armour, you want to see how the damage calculates.”
Of course, there has been plenty of confirmed information on the game in the last few days that lets us know that Cyberpunk 2077 is going to have full-fledged RPG mechanics in place, from its fluid class system, to the options it will present to players during combat, to its choice and consequence mechanics. Meanwhile, original Cyberpunk tabletop RPG creator also re-iterated recently that a first-person perspective is the best perspective to view Cyberpunk 2077’s game world from.