CDPR explains how The Witcher 4 will learn from Cyberpunk's mistakes
Well, now that Phantom Liberty is here, Cyberpunk 2077 is all but finished. Pack it up, we're done.
Of course, the game will be supported for years to come, especially as it has become massively popular, but no new major updates are set to appear, and in terms of content, the game is finished.
That doesn't mean it won't be learning a good few lessons, though.
CDPR promises lessons learned when developing The Witcher 4
Click to enlargeColin Walder, the engineering director at CD Projekt Red, has suggested that lessons from the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 will be learned in their future projects, including the upcoming Witcher title.
"For instance, when a deadline is looming, instead of reverting to crunch, we might say, 'let's adjust the schedule,' or 'let's approach this differently'," he says to InvenGlobal. "Once this becomes a repeated behaviour—once the team sees a genuine effort to prevent crunch—that's when trust and morale start to rebuild."
When it comes to actual bugs and broken elements, though, Walder adds, "We need to make sure they're functioning from the get-go. For our next project, Polaris [the code-name for the next Witcher title], we're already running our demos and internal reviews on the console from the very beginning."
Morale at CDPR after Cyberpunk's launch was brutally low
Click to enlargeSpeaking on the launch of the game itself, Walder has said that the morale of the entire CDPR team "took a significant hit," adding that keeping the atmosphere with the team after Cyberpunk's launch "was indeed a challenge."
It's no surprise given that the game was so broken that PlayStation had to intervene on its sales - but those lessons will carry over into whatever they take on next. Or at least we hope so.
