While quite an RPG, Cyberpunk 2077 is also a first-person shooter. Furthermore, it is a first-person shooter with melee weapons. And if you have ever played one with swords in first person, you will know that video games have the best history with that combination. It’s something developers CD Project Red is very aware of, and is still working on getting it right. In an interview with VG247, senior gameplay designer Pawel Kapala stated that the studio is not “100% happy” with where melee combat is right now, but believes that in the months leading up to release the team will make the required improvements.“We spend a lot of time trying to perfect this, and we’m actually not 100 percent happy, mostly with visual feedback about the hits, on the melee,” Kapala said. “That, we’re still working on it.”
“It was not an easy task, because we are basically coming from a family tree of making TPP games,” he added. “It was also a big part of our development to really figure out, how do you handle cases in a first-person perspective? We are working on it. ”
Kapala also acknowledged that the feeling of melee combat was not great in the demo presented to journalists as part of the recent example of Cyberpunk 2077, but notes that it is “much better than it was”.
First-person melee is notoriously tricky, and even completed games that use it – like Dying Light and Arkane’s Dark Messiah and Dishonored games – still do not always feel as natural as swordplay in third-party perspective games. Hopefully, weapons like the Mantis Blades will feel satisfying in the launch version of Cyberpunk 2077.For more of CD Project Red, check out the latest episode of Night City Wire to learn about Legendary Weapons and Lifepaths. You can also check out the first details of the Cyberpunk anime, coming in 2022.
Matt Purslow is IGN’s UK News and Entertainment Writer.
