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[Dazraell]

CD Projekt Red just posted the newest episode of their AnsweRED podcast where they talk about their newly established studio in Boston. The podcast is in English and lasts about hour and a half

• The decision of setting up the studio in US was tied to CDPR's desire and ambitions to grow into a global company. Having an established presence in US also allows them to hire more talent as not everyone was eager to move to Poland (Warsaw, Kraków, Wrocław) or Canada (Vancouver)
• Devs who apply there are very experienced in their fields and have a lot of shipped titles in their portfolios
• Boston was picked as a location primarily because of the time difference between US, Poland and Canada, which allows them for smoother communication. Their other subsidiary studio (The Molasses Flood) is also located in Boston, they share space with them
• CDPR's studio in Vancouver were already supporting the development of Cyberpunk and Phantom Liberty
• Boston studio will spearhead the development of Orion project (Cyberpunk sequel)
• They transferred a lot of developers who worked on Cyberpunk 2.0 update and Phantom Liberty expansion from Warsaw to Boston, including Gabe Amatangelo (game director), Paweł Sasko (associate game director), other directors and key devs from various departments
• Dan Hernberg, one of the guests on this podcast and former Amazon Games head of production joined CDPR only a few months ago and has a lot of praises for the company's work culture after changes they implemented post Cyberpunk 2077 disastrous launch

Something I also feel is worth to mention, one of the hosts of this podcast (Sebastian Kalemba) is the game director of the next Witcher game, so if you are interested to know more about him, he's very active in these podcasts

 

[EDMIX]

former Amazon Games head of production

 

[Roni]

Hopefully Pondsmith feels compelled to pitch in more or CDPR makes an active push for him to be a part of development. His world building is top notch and the franchise runs the risk of going soft without his involvement from 2070's onward. Also, hopefully they bring back the Breach Protocol mini-game, only thing I didn't like about 2.0 was they removed focus from it and made it an afterthought when quickhacking could've been more back and forth through more use of the mini-game.

 

[Dazraell]

I mean, Phantom Liberty's game director earlier on had Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age Inquisition DLCs under his portfolio and he somehow managed to steer Cyberpunk out of the disaster it was at launch even if this game was completely not fitting to his past works. I feel it's worth to listen what Amazon guy says about company's work culture as there are some interesting things brought there. Dude even outright said if he would have an offer to join CDPR three years ago he would say no as he heard some awful stories

 

[Last Hearth]

I mean, Phantom Liberty's game director earlier on had Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age Inquisition DLCs under his portfolio and he somehow managed to steer Cyberpunk out of the disaster it was at launch even if this game was completely not fitting to his past works. I feel it's worth to listen what Amazon guy says about company's work culture as there are some interesting things brought there. Dude even outright said if he would have an offer to join CDPR three years ago he would say no as he heard some awful stories

It doesn't even matter, the fact its located in Boston means they've lost the battle.

CDPR was good when they were a Polish development company, now they'll be just another Western company.

 

[Angry_Megalodon]

Bye-bye old CDPR. Hello, modern-audienized CDPR.

 

[Bloobs]

 

[EDMIX]

I mean, Phantom Liberty's game director earlier on had Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age Inquisition DLCs under his portfolio and he somehow managed to steer Cyberpunk out of the disaster it was at launch even if this game was completely not fitting to his past works. I feel it's worth to listen what Amazon guy says about company's work culture as there are some interesting things brought there. Dude even outright said if he would have an offer to join CDPR three years ago he would say no as he heard some awful stories

Well I'm listening to it now while I work on some illustration stuff.

The publisher as a whole is just too sketchy and I'm willing to forgive a bad launch, but its their attitude throughout this whole thing that I'm against. This launch was intimal and on purpose to the point of lawsuits, they then already had DLC planned as it started in 2019, only to then charge people money for the rest of the game they've paid for, that was still being worked on.

Its that behavior that I simply can't get behind and nothing said on these developer type things will change any of that. The publisher has a long history of putting out PR type propganda to act as if they are a wholesome company, their actions on the other hand do not support they are like this and made a mistake. It supports it was done on purpose, the DLC was their main focus even before the launch of the main game and their goal was to get more money from their install base.

So at this point, that on earth does it matter where the studio is? If its still under the same publisher, they will tell you about CP2077 2 early, hype it up, exaggerate the game to death, release it rushed, start the DLC before the final game is out and then yellow screen apology into profits. I'd never even fucking say something like this if they gave that DLC for free and just owned up, but its their comments and actions that make it really hard to believe anything they say moving forward.

So if we thing shit is bad now, wait till a new team is now trying to do this and in America no less. They have even more to prove, but I'm willing to give anyone a second chance as I believe any company can make a good game, but I feel many are within their right to not trust this company anymore until the game is in their hands.

They lost that day 1 trust.

 

[Dazraell]

Well I'm listening to it now while I work on some illustration stuff.

The publisher as a whole is just too sketchy and I'm willing to forgive a bad launch, but its their attitude throughout this whole thing that I'm against. This launch was intimal and on purpose to the point of lawsuits, they then already had DLC planned as it started in 2019, only to then charge people money for the rest of the game they've paid for, that was still being worked on.

Its that behavior that I simply can't get behind and nothing said on these developer type things will change any of that. The publisher has a long history of putting out PR type propganda to act as if they are a wholesome company, their actions on the other hand do not support they are like this and made a mistake. It supports it was done on purpose, the DLC was their main focus even before the launch of the main game and their goal was to get more money from their install base.

So at this point, that on earth does it matter where the studio is? If its still under the same publisher, they will tell you about CP2077 2 early, hype it up, exaggerate the game to death, release it rushed, start the DLC before the final game is out and then yellow screen apology into profits. I'd never even fucking say something like this if they gave that DLC for free and just owned up, but its their comments and actions that make it really hard to believe anything they say moving forward.

So if we thing shit is bad now, wait till a new team is now trying to do this and in America no less. They have even more to prove, but I'm willing to give anyone a second chance as I believe any company can make a good game, but I feel many are within their right to not trust this company anymore until the game is in their hands.

They lost that day 1 trust.

While I understand why you feel this way and actually agree with some of your points, any time you bring the expansion being developed earlier I always think that you're trying to look for a conspiracy that just doesn't exist

The reality is that 100% of the development team isn't working on the project until the very end when it hits gold. Some of the devs finish their job much more earlier (like designers, concept artists, writers) and then the work they did is being implemented to the game. It's perfectly normal that some of them are being shifted to early stages of developing their next project. Sometimes it might be the next game, other time it might be a DLC or expansion. It doesn't really mean it's a full-time development though, more like setting up the stage so full production team could start working on it when they will finish their own tasks. Majority of DLCs that are released months or about a year later after X game launch aren't starting development when the game just launched, but they were already in development in some form much earlier. Small team sets the stage, and then the team gradually is being expanded while they complete their tasks on a project. Even if you apply it to Cyberpunk's state at launch, I still think that for example concept artist or quest writers wouldn't be able to help with finishing it, considering the problems of this game were technical and their work also counts to the development on the project

Also, I feel it's worth to point out that they're technically not hyping Cyberpunk 2 early as projects they're working on normally wouldn't be even publicly known if CDPR wouldn't be publicly traded company. I'm not completely sure how that works and if its determined by EU laws, but a lot of publicly traded European companies are doing the very same thing with using project codenames and implying to what they refer towards so their investors would know what they're investing in. A lot of headlines about Cyberpunk's sequel, next Witcher and the like are generated from investor meetings and financial reports, not from PR. A very same thing happens with Remedy for example. Majority of headlines about their games doesn't come from PR, but from financial reports which by law needs to be publicly available

 

[HL3.exe]

Boston has an amazing talent pool of ImmSim devs (Deus Ex, Ultima, System Shock, etc). I hope they can bring in some folks from that area.

Makes sense in Cyberpunk, and it defensively could use some intuitive emergent systems to solve open-ended problems.

 

[Xtib81]

They're gonna have to expand massively though because so far, there's 50 something developers working on the game. I'm afraid we won't get a sequel before the end of the decade.

 

[makaveli60]

It doesn't even matter, the fact its located in Boston means they've lost the battle.

CDPR was good when they were a Polish development company, now they'll be just another Western company.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a masterpiece and I can’t imagine they will top it. I’m afraid the writing will suffer the most if they change to some braindead activist like most AAA developers do in the west. And I also don’t like that they dropped their engine as it’s a really ambitious one, now it will use the ”generic” UE5 like many other games.

 

[Bernardougf]

Being in boston there is more chance of scaping the purple hair madness or is the same as California?

 

[Dazraell]

They're gonna have to expand massively though because so far, there's 50 something developers working on the game. I'm afraid we won't get a sequel before the end of the decade.

Sequel is currently in early concept stage so yeah, it's probably years away. I think games from CDPR that would likely come later this decade will pretty much be tied to The Witcher series - The Witcher 4 (or however it will be called) and The Witcher 1 Remake. They may also have that Witcher spin-off from The Molasses Flood, but that one apparently has troubled development and recently started over from scratch

 

[Shut0wen]

I mean, Phantom Liberty's game director earlier on had Star Wars: The Old Republic and Dragon Age Inquisition DLCs under his portfolio and he somehow managed to steer Cyberpunk out of the disaster it was at launch even if this game was completely not fitting to his past works. I feel it's worth to listen what Amazon guy says about company's work culture as there are some interesting things brought there. Dude even outright said if he would have an offer to join CDPR three years ago he would say no as he heard some awful stories

Nah he practically saved dragon age inquestion and made the dlc a better game then the base game

 

[HL3.exe]

Cyberpunk 2077 is a masterpiece and I can’t imagine they will top it. I’m afraid the writing will suffer the most if they change to some braindead activist like most AAA developers do in the west. And I also don’t like that they dropped their engine as it’s a really ambitious one, now it will use the ”generic” UE5 like many other games.

I liked Cyberpunk for its style, world and writing, but it's far from a masterpiece. Even now that developed stoppen, it's still a janky mess when it comes to interlock systems like physics and Ai. Glad they dropped RED engine, it looked amazing visually, but the underlying game-logic was a sloppy hacked together mess at best.

I can definitely see them topping the first one, if they focus on systemics, interlocking emergent simulations and collision detection. Also hope they add persistence in the world, as CP2077 felt dated from a game-logic standpoint. Just another stream bubble where everything despawns when driving away.

Again, love the tone, writing, music, characters, etc, but systemically It all felt incredibly dated. I kinda dislike Unreal's game-feel (everything feels like styrofoam) but i'm hopeful CDPR can transform it to the needs they have for this project, (Boston has lots of solid devs) and with all the lessons learned since releasing the first one.

 

[Hudo]

Being in boston there is more chance of scaping the purple hair madness or is the same as California?

Realistically, if they really wanted to avoid that/are concerned about that, they wouldn't have opened a studio anywhere in the US.

 

[makaveli60]

I liked Cyberpunk for its style, world and writing, but it's far from a masterpiece. Even now that developed stoppen, it's still a janky mess when it comes to interlock systems like physics and Ai. Glad they dropped RED engine, it looked amazing visually, but the underlying game-logic was a sloppy hacked together mess at best.

I can definitely see them topping the first one, if they focus on systemics, interlocking emergent simulations and collision detection. Also hope they add persistence in the world, as CP2077 felt dated from a game-logic standpoint. Just another stream bubble where everything despawns when driving away.

Again, love the tone, writing, music, characters, etc, but systemically It all felt incredibly dated. I kinda dislike Unreal's game-feel (everything feels like styrofoam) but i'm hopeful CDPR can transform it to the needs they have for this project, (Boston has lots of solid devs) and with all the lessons learned since releasing the first one.

It’s not perfect, but it’s one of the most immersive and memorable games ever created. And even with all its faults (which is not many) I would put it technical-wise next to RDR2 and TLoU2 which is incredible considering it was made by a Polish dev team.