CD Projekt RED has officially announced Cyberpunk 2.
They made this announcement as part of their latest financial statement press release:
Several weeks ago the CD PROJEKT RED team responsible for the next big game set in the Cyberpunk universe completed the project’s conceptual phase. As a result, Cyberpunk 2 – previously known under the codename Project Orion – has progressed to preproduction.
CD Projekt RED originally announced Project Orion all the way back in October 2022. This was an interesting time for the franchise, as the studio had finally made enough fixes and updates to redeem Cyberpunk 2077’s reputation with gamers. At the same time, the Cyberpunk franchise recently found new fans when Netflix released the Cyberpunk Edgerunners spinoff anime series.
Fans reacted to the announcement with a mixture of hope and trepidation. At the time, CD Projekt RED promised that they would not make the mistakes they did in producing Cyberpunk 2077, and they would prioritize making a good game over getting it in time for a financial quarter deadline. It also seemed that they wanted a fresh start, so they created a new studio in Boston, Massachusetts for this purpose.
CD Projekt RED has not hesitated to share small updates on ideas for what they had for Project Orion, but seemingly, that was because they were literally still in the exploration phase. So, none of the things that they have talked about all this time are guaranteed to make it to the final game.
Still, the few details that we have been hearing about paint an interesting picture. Most recently, the father of cyberpunk, Mike Pondsmith, shared that he had an idea to set the game in a city that’s like Chicago gone wrong. Pondsmith is in a consultant role this time around, but there will be more than enough American developers more familiar with the culture to help shape up the game with CD Projekt RED’s core staff from Poland.
In fiction, Chicago is depicted as a industrialized city, but one that’s distinctive from New York. If New York is wealthy and culturally diverse, Chicago is characterized as working class and down to earth. If you’re already familiar with them, both the Dresden Files and the Divergent novels depict futuristic versions of the city. But if you’re looking for a comic book comparison, in the DC universe, Gotham is more like Chicago while Metropolis is more like New York.
So Pondsmith definitely has a solid idea of what Cyberpunk 2 will look like, even if we’re unsure if CD Projekt RED will build on this all the way through or eventually get rid of it, or even lose the idea in the process. We wouldn’t rule out if Boston itself, the setting for The Last Of Us, Assassin’s Creed III, and Fallout 4, ends up becoming the main influence for the game’s setting after all.
But then, this is where we can properly track what CD Projekt RED plans to take Cyberpunk 2, and we’re certainly looking forward to learning more until we finally get the game in our hands.
