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Warsaw (AFP)
The developer of Cyberpunk 2077, the long-delayed video game said to be one of the most expensive ever made, has promised a “new quality” of experience for users when it finally launches around the world on Thursday.
With a global advertising campaign in full swing, Marcin Iwinski, director and co-founder of CD Projekt RED, spoke to AFP from a Warsaw studio decorated as a scene from the dystopian game.
He dismissed criticism for the delays, saying: “This time it’s happening.”
“We are an innovative company and it is not in our DNA to take shortcuts,” said the Polish developer, whose latest game, “The Witcher,” became a global box office success.
With Cyberpunk 2077, he said he wants to draw gamers into an “immense” online world. The English version contains 450 hours of dialogue voiced by 125 actors.
The main character in the game is a leather-clad and armed “V” who appears on yellow billboards in a marketing campaign spanning 55 countries, including New York’s Times Square.
The publicity is comparable “to that of a good movie,” said Iwinski, who declined to reveal the cost that the media put in the tens of millions of euros.
The total budget for the game is estimated at 1.2 billion zloty (270 million euros, 328 million dollars), according to analysts at the Polish bank BOS, which would make Cyberpunk 2077 one of the most expensive video games ever made.
CD Projekt RED’s huge hit “The Witcher: Wild Hunt” was a grim fantasy whose monster-slaying hero gifted with superhuman powers was the brainchild of Polish writer Andrzej Sapkowski.
It was released in 2015 and is still beloved by gamers for its story, dialogue, graphics, and humor, as well as the openness to its world.
Rather than simply producing a remake of The Witcher, CD Projekt RED decided to launch into the punk fantasy world of Cyberpunk, the popular pencil and paper RPG written by Mike Pondsmith.
Iwinski said he wanted to bring “a new quality” to video game work “in terms of immersing the player in the story, interaction with other characters, dialogue and movement” in Night City, a conflict-ridden American megacity. .
– ‘An extrapolation of the future’ –
Adam Lach, a Polish photographer and avid gamer, called Cyberpunk 2077 “something exceptional in popular culture.”
The game raises “questions about our perspective on the world, where we are going, whereas other games are just entertainment,” Lach said.
However, the launch has been anything but simple.
The game was delayed three times this year, prompting a strong reaction from players, some of whom even sent death threats.
The developers blamed the coronavirus pandemic and the complexity of creating such a vast world for nine different platforms.
The game will also be released in 18 languages and will be fully dubbed in 10 languages.
It features the face and voice of actor Keanu Reeves, best known for “The Matrix” and “John Wick,” whose participation was greeted with euphoria by fans.
But beyond the Hollywood glow, Iwinski said that Cyberpunk’s dystopian vision and the cyberware implants used by V are part of “an imaginable reality.”
“Cyberpunk is an extrapolation from the future. We’ll see if it turns out that way.”
© 2020 AFP
