When it comes to big gaming worlds, there’s more to do in them than just fight monsters, race around, and admire the graphics. Game developers often do what they can to try and fill the world with so much content that gamers never get bored and a few secrets strewn around so that they’ll look for various things to see what the devs were planning. Cyberpunk 2077 wasn’t exactly “complete” at launch, but the team did ensure that there were secrets to be found if you knew where to look. Plus, they wanted to ensure that it wasn’t just something a streamer found easily and that everyone knew what it was.
As noted by associate game director Pawel Sasko in a chat with Flow Games,Cyberpunk 2077 had the idea and belief that they needed to do “elaborate” secrets within the game so that people would truly enjoy the hunt for the secret, then be overjoyed when they figured it out.
“We always take into account, and I always tell my designers: ‘watch your content being played by someone live. Watch YouTubers, watch streamers because you will see how they think.’ There are so many things that we actually did in the game with a perspective of ‘someone will find it, and then other people will.'”
One of the best examples of what Sasko was referring to was the “FF:06:B5” secret that had many players baffled for some time. In fact, it was so secretive to what it meant that there was even a subreddit dedicated to trying to decipher its meaning. CD Projekt Red even went deeper than you would think and dropped clues for it in an update for another game they made!
“There are things that you can find and unlock, and our assumption was that when you play, some people will spend a lot of time trying to work it out,” he said, then continued with, “We designed it to be incredibly difficult to do, but we didn’t want everyone to go through that super-difficult path, because it’s a bit tedious. We wanted everyone to enjoy it. The community managed to do that, then everyone can enjoy the spoilers of war.”
Indeed, the code has been cracked, and it was for a cutscene that might be teasing what’s next for the franchise. Many games still have secrets waiting to be discovered, so if you think you know of one, get hunting for it!
