Even with all the hype for The Witcher 4, the urge for new details on Project Orion, CD Projekt RED’s sequel to Cyberpunk 2077, continues. Series creator Mike Pondsmith didn’t really divulge much in a recent special REDstream, but he teased development team members, “showing me what’s going to be happening.”
Regarding his role as a lore consultant on Cyberpunk 2077, Pondsmith talked about being “involved in that process all the way,” which meant helping the team avoid getting things “completely wrong.”
“Because I was involved in it, what it meant was I could get my input into it and we could adapt and get it closer to what we wanted.” That includes the aesthetic on the weapons, which went from “silver, blaster-like” guns to “big, nasty, black, scary things which occasionally have little lights on them that watch you like eyes, but they are not science fiction. They are brutal things from where we are that have been basically kicked up two or three notches.”
When explaining this to the Krakow studio, he noted that “everybody listened” and immediately began creating things corresponding to his vision. “People had asked me the entire time, ‘What do you think?’ In fact, that still goes on now.”
Which brings us to the part about Project Orion. “A good portion of the trip I’ve just taken out here to CD Projekt, people have been showing me what they’re doing. They’re showing me what’s going to be happening in the new iteration of the game. They’re showing me what’s happening with, you know, some of the TV or radio or whatever stuff. And they ask me all the time. So it means that we stay in the same space, and we see the same outcomes.”
The “TV or radio or whatever stuff” could mean multiple things, from radio stations and commercials to full-fledged broadcasts. Cyberpunk 2077 utilized these mediums to immerse players in Night City, creating a hyper-capitalist dystopia, which still stands out to this day.
With the next Cyberpunk seemingly taking place in a new city, which Pondsmith described as “Chicago gone wrong,” we could see a shift in how its media is portrayed. Of course, the wait for anything concrete continues, but it could also mean the return of Johnny Silverhand, if the creator has his way.
