I’m sure at this point we are all itching to get to see the 2019 Cyberpunk 2077 gameplay demo as it’s been more than a year since the 48-minute walkthrough. Post E3 2019 CD PROJEKT RED confirmed that we would be getting a demo at PAX West, much like how they revealed last years demo post Gamescom.
This morning CD PROJEKT RED and Cyberpunk 2077 took to twitter to communicate their plans when it comes to the public demos release. They state in their post as follows.
Next week we’re going to host a stream. Expect a lot of insight into the thought process behind creative decisions, information about Pacifica—one of the districts of Night City—and TONS of stuff on playstyles you’ll be able to adopt when you launch Cyberpunk 2077 next year.
This stream will be available for everyone to watch, so all of you, wherever you are, have a chance to feel a bit of gamescom — or any other trade show — at home. Hosting the entire thing will be our very own Hollie Bennett, our UK head of comms, and the dev line up will include some familiar faces you know and like.
There’s one additional announcement we have for you: we initially planned to showcase gameplay at PAX West, but there’s been a change of plans, and we’ll be streaming from Warsaw. The PAX cosplay contest is still on; we just won’t have the dev panel on-site this time around.
Why is this important? Because 15 minutes relative to the 30 minute public and 50 minute private demo is not much footage when you compare it to what people who went to these events got to see.
Now personally I’m a little conflicted. We have confirmation of a date and a time which honestly really helps with planning where and how to view it instead of just having an arbitrary timeline, but 15 minutes is a lot shorter than anticipated. Even the public viewings at E3 and Gamescom were double this at roughly 30 minutes.
On the flipside, they have done enough world building with the previous demo, and the mechanics are the focus with this one, so a condensed version means that we can jump right into the skills, mechanics and playstyles.
CDPR’s reason for condensing the gameplay is that the private and public demo showed too many spoilers. Now obviously we have a ton of media and influencers reporting on these demos, so I think preventative measures for spoilers are a tad redundant at this point. We’ve probably read them already from the multitude of people reporting on the demo and their impressions from e3 and Gamescom 2019.
There is of course the possibility that we didn’t hear of the spoilers which are supposed to be big, and in that case, ill retract my previous statement. 99% of the fun of a single player narrative RPG is unraveling the story and exploration and another hour of content on top of last years demo is pretty unheard of, and I’m not sure what more they’d have to show us for the next 6ish months before release.
I do also have a sneaking suspicion that the reception for this demo didn’t have quite the impact of last years and that things like gunplay and stiff driving mechanics stood out more. I know CDPR were hesitant to show last years demo, and maybe this years feedback has caused them to reassess the slice they are showing and pinpoint some of the weaker elements.
I’m okay with 15 minutes if its detailed and addresses as much as possible that we won’t be able to see in the full 50 minutes. Additionally the panel after the demo is something I’ll be keeping my eye on, and I’m hoping its not repeat information from interviews.
As for my personal prediction, again it seems like they are emphasizing playstyles so gameplay chunks and how they unfold differently between stealth netrunner Male V and Brute strength solo female V will likely be the focal point as well as skills, attributes, trees and potentially inventories and sections.
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