Cyberpunk 2 Takes a Major Step Forward as CD Projekt Red Targets More Realistic NPCs

Cyberpunk 2 looks set to be an ambitious project for CD Projekt Red, with the developers talking about plans to take the franchise further than what Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty expansion were able to do. The sequel aims to make Night City feel more alive and responsive.

The studio is experimenting with new gameplay ideas, more immersive systems, and creative risks that could make the sequel feel quite different from its predecessor. Another major development is happening outside gaming, as Paramount Pictures moves forward with a live-action Cyberpunk movie with CD Projekt Red involved in the production. 

The original Cyberpunk 2077 experienced one of the most controversial launches in modern gaming, but years of updates gradually transformed its reputation.

Significant upgrades to combat, progression, and other gameplay systems, and the launch of Phantom Liberty created a much stronger experience. The game has now sold over 40 million copies, showing how far the franchise has come since its rocky debut. Now with Cyberpunk 2 in production, the studio has an opportunity to capitalize on that success without the production issues that tanked the original launch.

The next sequel is headed up by developers who helped make Cyberpunk 2077 better and bring out Phantom Liberty. The team’s experience with the original game has influenced their approach, with more focus on experimentation, deeper immersion, and more complex storytelling.

CD Projekt Red is not just interested in expanding the current formula but in seeing which systems are worth developing further and which ideas might be better tackled in a completely different way. That would give Cyberpunk 2 its own identity but still keep the things that made the original game appealing.

The live-action movie announcement adds another layer to the future of the franchise. Paramount Pictures is developing the project with CD Projekt Red closely involved, another big step in expanding the Cyberpunk universe beyond video games. The franchise has already been revealed through animation and other projects, and a Hollywood production could introduce its futuristic world to those who have never played the RPG. 

The timing is particularly interesting because CD Projekt Red’s growing North American development studio is also moving forward with Cyberpunk 2. Having a major film project and a new RPG in development at the same time creates opportunities to increase interest in the franchise across different forms of entertainment. If the projects eventually receive coordinated marketing campaigns, they could help maintain attention on the Cyberpunk universe for years. 

On the development side, one of the main priorities is building on the improvements introduced in Cyberpunk 2077’s later updates.

Game director Gabe Amatangelo has emphasized the team’s ambition to deliver a more immersive experience, drawing on the lessons learned from Phantom Liberty and the game’s substantial 2.0 overhaul. Those updates added some muscle to a few core systems, giving the developers a more solid foundation to build the next installment on. 

That ambition is all the more important given the scale of Cyberpunk 2077’s world. The original game had a sprawling futuristic city, detailed environments, a deep character progression system, and multiple approaches to combat. Hacking, stealth, guns, melee weapons, and cybernetic enhancements were combined to give players plenty of freedom to make their characters.

However, the developers have not yet demonstrated the sequel’s specific gameplay features, so it is too early to determine exactly how these systems will evolve. The team has made it clear that it wants to push the series forward rather than settle for a straightforward continuation.

Another important change involves how CD Projekt Red plans and organizes development. Igor Sarzyński has discussed problems with the original game’s production, including a tendency to define highly specific features years before they were ready to implement. Large role-playing games frequently change during development, and committing to every detail too early can make it hard to adapt as individual systems evolve. 

For Cyberpunk 2, CD Projekt Red is continuing the more integrated development approach used during Phantom Liberty’s production. This means bringing together the teams responsible for quests, combat, environments, cinematics, audio, and narrative earlier in the process. 

The studio wants to ensure all of these elements play together in a cohesive experience from the start, rather than having individual departments work on their own pieces and then try to connect everything up later. That would allow the developers to catch problems earlier and to produce more consistent gameplay sequences.

The team is also moving toward shorter development cycles and more frequent iteration, giving developers the ability to test ideas, evaluate their effectiveness, and change direction as needed. 

Phantom Liberty offered the studio a chance to experiment with some of those techniques, and now it wants to take those learnings into a brand new game. This doesn't ensure a smooth development process, but it does give the team more flexibility to adapt their plans as Cyberpunk 2 takes shape. It allows more experimentation without the team having to lock down every major decision years in advance.

One of the most interesting ambitions comes from CD Projekt Red’s recruitment material, which lays out a goal of creating the most realistic and reactive crowd system ever seen in a video game. The goal appeared in the duties for a lead encounter designer on Cyberpunk 2, which suggests pedestrian behavior and crowd interaction are an important development area.

Since this is a franchise that takes place in future cities packed full of pedestrians, cars, businesses, and crime, improving these systems would go a long way to making the world a lot more believable. This is also an area where the original game could have done better, despite its stunning environments.

Night City was detailed and densely populated, but the behavior of its civilians could feel repetitive. Sometimes the pedestrians did not react convincingly to danger, and many characters seemed to exist only to make the streets look busy. Improving these reactions could make the world feel more believable.

A more responsive crowd system could allow people to react more naturally to nearby events, making the city feel less like a backdrop and more like an environment that responds to your actions. However, CD Projekt Red has not demonstrated the system in action, so the final results remain to be seen.

The developers are also encouraging more ambitious ideas across the sequel’s design.

Sarzyński has emphasized the importance of proposing bold concepts and exploring new directions rather than automatically choosing the safest option. That approach could lead to changes to combat, character abilities, vehicles, and other gameplay systems, though none of these features have been confirmed in detail.

The team also wants to maintain the strengths of Phantom Liberty in another way, which is through storytelling, while exploring more complicated situations. The developers have discussed giving players hard questions instead of easy choices between obviously right and obviously wrong outcomes.

That philosophy exists in a world built on the foundation of corporate power, technological progress, inequality, and the consequences of altering the human body. Cyberpunk 2077 often puts players into situations where personal loyalties and conflicting interests make their decisions harder, and the follow-up may build upon those ideas.

However, there’s still plenty we don’t know about Cyberpunk 2.

Despite those ambitions. The developers have not provided a comprehensive gameplay reveal explaining its new combat mechanics, character abilities, or other major systems. Likewise, the live-action movie has no announced release date and no confirmed connection to the sequel’s story. Both projects are progressing, but their eventual relationship and individual timelines remain uncertain.

For CD Projekt Red, the challenge will be turning these ambitions into a finished experience that delivers on its promises. The original game’s troubled launch demonstrated how damaging it can be when expectations exceed what a release can deliver, even when the underlying world and ideas have considerable appeal.

By adopting a more flexible development process, emphasizing cross-department collaboration, and pursuing more reactive environments, the studio seems determined to learn from that experience. If those plans translate into meaningful improvements, Cyberpunk 2 could offer a more immersive and ambitious version of the franchise while helping establish Cyberpunk as a much larger entertainment property.