Cyberpunk 2077 Gameplay Reveal Features Hidden Message from Devs

Since E3 2018, the public waited with bated breath for CD Projekt RED to release the Cyberpunk 2077 footage revealed to press. Finally, the wait has ended, as the developer hosted a livestream debuting the gameplay for audiences on August 27, 2018. Despite CD Projekt’s trepidation about releasing the footage, the forty-eight minutes of content exceeded expectations. Interestingly, the team also voiced its concerns in the demo itself. Hidden at the end of the reveal is a message explaining why the studio took so long to release the footage.

Reddit super-sleuth, Divinus, came across someone’s screenshot of the video’s final frame. Divinus transcribed the message, then posted it on Reddit. The message from CD Projekt RED reads as follows:

Sorry to have kept you waiting for this for so long!

Did you like what you saw? Because for us, the fact that we’re finally showing you Cyberpunk 2077 is HUGE. Please go to our forums, Twitter, Facebook, Discord, and do tell what you think. Is the game world how you imagined? Do you see what we meant by “immersion” when we talked about CP2077 being an FPP RPG? How does our vision of “cyberpunk by day” make you feel? We really want to know.

Aside from that, we think we owe you a few words of explanation on why we’re showing you this gameplay now, some time after industry professionals and media saw it at E3 and Gamescom.

Each time we discussed the idea of showing the game to you (and we discussed this idea a lot), we were ending up in this “we’re not 100% sure” limbo. Why? Because (for most people), when a game dev shows gameplay footage from their game, it means that this is how the game is going to look or play like. It’s not the case here. Cyberpunk 2077 is deep in development. We have a lot of design ideas, a lot of mechanics being play tested, but we don’t know what we’ll end up with at launch. This makes publishing videos like what you just saw risky –we don’t want gamers saying, ‘But in that previous video that gun was shooting differently’, or ‘why did you change the interface?’. Change is inherent to game development and there’s a ton of things being modified each day. Our fear was (and kind of still is) that you’ll think what you just saw is how Cyberpunk 2077 will look like 1:1.

What gave us that extra confidence to show you a work in progress game? Good initial feedback from people who are accustomed to see games at various stages of development. What they told us (and they told us they really liked what they saw) gave us the boost we needed to show the current version of Cyberpunk 2077 to the most passionate and insightful audience — you.

So… here’s what Cyberpunk 2077 looks like today (or rather looked like when we recorded the video). We sincerely hope you liked it.

Again, thank you for your patience and all the thoughts you shared with us.

Yours,

CD PROJEKT RED

The developer’s fears of showing off footage that may not represent the game at launch are indeed valid. After all, we’re in an age where hawk-eyed fans take note of graphical changes and the alteration of minor details. Sometimes these trivial touches are known to hijack a title’s far more significant qualities.

As for the existence of the message itself, this seems standard fare for CD Projekt RED. Remember, this is the studio that inserted a note of thanks to consumers in The Witcher 3’s packaging.

Though the wait for the gameplay reveal has come to a triumphant end, there lies a far lengthier period of patience ahead for fans. Cyberpunk 2077 is still without a release date.

[Source: Reddit via Wccftech]