Cyberpunk 2077 Interview - Creating a Unique Vision of the Future
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Marthe Jonkers, CD Projekt's concept art coordinator, recently had a fairly lengthy chat with the folks over at GamesIndustry.biz, during which she talked about Cyberpunk 2077's unique take on a cyberpunk setting, and some of the events that happened in that particular universe during the 57 years that separate Cyberpunk 2077 and the pen and paper Cyberpunk 2020 RPG that it's based on.
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"Our team has probably seen every cyberpunk movie that exists, we've read the books, and we know we have this all in our head," she tells GamesIndustry.biz. "We know the whole canon of cyberpunk. But we still wanted to create something that was really fresh and new.
"We did that by really tapping into the lore that was created in the '80s with Cyberpunk 2020, and also taking this timeline -- between 2020 and 2077 -- and letting those events that happened in-between define the way that Night City will look in 2077."
Jonkers and her fellow artists even began thinking about the fashions and styles that came and went during the missing 57 years, from architecture and clothing to vehicle and weapon design. Imagining the history of Night City "was really part of the backbone in how to proceed."
"Really early in the project, we were thinking about it. Our art directors mostly were really trying to nail down this sort of visual background for Night City. And that we use really as a guideline for the visual styles in the game, and you will actually see a lot of old styles reflected in the fashion and the weapon designs."
The artist observes that no city is ever defined by one style -- it's always a mix of those that came before (In fact, CD Projekt Red defined four separate styles that dominated the missing decades, but more on that in a bit.)
Even individual areas of a metropolis will have their own unique features and aesthetics that aren't found anywhere else in the urban sprawl. The world of Cyberpunk 2077 is split into nine distinct districts, each of which is built with a different mix of those four styles.
