Cyberpunk 2077 Shows Off Impressive Gameplay During Night City Wire Event

The first in a series of digital streams held by developer CD Projekt Red for it’s highly-anticipated game Cyberpunk 2077 aired today. While the stream itself was fairly short, just under half an hour, quite the amount was shown. Let’s break it down.

The Trailer:

We got a new story trailer which showed some in-game footage of the prologue of Cyberpunk 2077. We saw the main character, V, both in and out of combat, in the stunning world of Night City. The trailer was then broken down by the game’s lead quest designer Pawel Sasko and CD Projekt Red’s UK head of communication, Hollie Bennett. In this, the first of two breakdowns, Sasko provided more information regarding the quest shown in the trailer. He then goes on to explain one of the gangs we will interact with in the game, The Mox. He also provided some more detail on one of the seven main districts in Cyberpunk 2077, The Badlands. This is not all of what the breakdown details, just some of the highlights.

The Gameplay:

A little later in the stream was the gameplay reveal for a mechanic in Cyberpunk 2077 called Braindance. This is rather reminiscent of Detroit: Become Human’s investigation scenes. Braindance is used to gather intel in regard to a quest before you undertake it. In Alanah Pearce’s video, where she answered questions regarding the four hours of the prologue she was given early access to, she gives an example in that she was asked to retrieve some sort of chip which could only be cooled at a certain temperature, and she used the heat tracking feature of Brain Dance to locate something matching that temperature description.

Sasko and Bennett then returned, now joined by senior quest designer Patrick Mills, to give an overview of the Braindance gameplay. Mills describes the Braindance mechanic as “Recording a person’s experiences and then playing them back for someone else, so that they could relive them as though it was happening to them.” Mills then goes on to say that the game deals with a lot of “ex BD’s”. For instance, the one shown in the trailer is called a “Flatliner”. This is where the person who is recording the BD, dies during the recording. While there are still many more interesting mechanics to see in Cyberpunk 2077, this one certainly caught my attention.

My Thoughts:

Cyberpunk 2077 is my most anticipated game of the year. Going into this event I was excited to see what more this amazing-looking game had to offer. After watching (and then re-watching) the event, my hype level for the game is about the same. CD Projeckt Red showed exactly enough to rekindle the excitement and anticipation I have for Cyberpunk 2077. One thing I was not expecting, but am very excited for, is Cyberpunk Edgerunners, an anime that’s set in the world of Cyberpunk, with new characters and a new story set to release in 2022. During the stream, CD Project Red reiterated that if you buy the game on current gen, be that Xbox One or PS4, you will get the enhanced version of the game releasing on Xbox Series X and PS5 for free.

Cyberpunk 2077 is currently set to release on Xbox One, PS4 and PC on November 19th, 2020. Pre-orders are available now for the game. You can find more information on the games official website. Watch the full Night City Wire event below and you can read about Cyberpunk’s recent delay here.