In an article style interview IGN talked to creative director Sebastian Stepien and game director Mateusz Kanik from CD Project Red, whoc are currently working on Cyberpunk 2077.

Character customisation, for instance, was necessarily not an option in Geralt’s world. But in Cyberpunk 2077, it’s self-defined role-playing: your style and personality will have deep and far-reaching effects on the world and how it reacts to you. “We will have several features that allow you to create your [visual] style, and your style will affect gameplay, storyline and relationships between characters,” explains creative director Sebastian Stepien. “Your appearance and your dress will change the behaviour of NPCs, and also the story also in some parts,” Mateusz adds. Style and appearance works together with the personality you create for your character and express in conversation to determine how the world reacts to you.

“It’s about telling story via what happens, not cutscenes or other features,” Mateusz says. “To do that we need to create a totally new unique dialogue system – we’re doing that right now, it should be awesome.”

Cyberpunk hasn’t been as easy to adapt as a video game as you might think. Pen and paper mechanics have been the foundation of many digital RPGs over the years, but they do not translate well into the kind of game that CDP is trying to make. “The game mechanics are totally different on paper, they don’t work in video games because they would be super boring,” Mateusz says.

“The main problem is that the original system is based on dice rolls. When you think about Cyberpunk you think about shooting, action, a lot of explosions. But that doesn’t fit dice rolls in a video game. We want to make it more action-like – there will be a system that lets you use active skills actually in the gameplay in a shooting sequence or something like that, rather than just passive skills like in the books.”

There's an interview with game director Mateusz Kanik at Russian site Gamestar, thankfully there is an English version.

Cyberpunk 2077 — this is an open world, non-linearity … How free can player feel in this dark world of the future? Would it be possible to play the game without killing anyone with your own hands? How many endings do you plan?

It’s too early to talk about the endings. I can promise you that the gameplay will be diversified and will depend and each goal will have its own means. Not only the story will be driven by your decisions, but also how you play the game. Each class will feel different and even while replaying the game with the same character, you’ll find different approaches.

We want to have a completely new level of non-linearity, achieved by combining freedom in playing your own character, free-roaming the environment and also having choices that have real consequences after you make a decision.

In a Cyberpunk 2077 interview with one of the devs in Polish here it was said that they are thinking of adding a translator implant in the game, which translates what they NPCs say, which are obviously talking in different languages.

As of yet no decisions have been made, but we're thinking about a system that could tell the world's story. The idea is to record everything in original languages, i.e. if we'll meet Mexicans in the game, they'll be taking -- Mexican slang even, portrayed by Mexican actors. The player would be able to buy a translator implant, and depending on how advanced it is, he'll get better or worse translation.

You can't reliably recreate street slang of Los Angeles or some other American city, you can't simply dub it and reproduce those emotions, rhythm of speech, mannerisms. Everything has to be cohesive. Otherwise we'd simply hear that Polish actors are trying to imitate Americans. That won't work.

Found on Reddit.

CDP Red's Mateusz Kanik has been interviewed by Rock, Paper, Shotgun on Cyberpunk 2077.

Here is something on the video:

RPS: Let’s start with the trailer. Why did you decide to emphasize that particular moment? Will any of the characters we saw be playable?

Mateusz Kanik: We wanted to catch the atmosphere of Cyberpunk. The moment is important, but what we wanted emphasize is the setting: How the city looks, how it feels, how augmentations can change your mind. So you can see that we are very faithful to the original, despite moving it 50 years forward. You have megacorporations, the psycho squad and the problem of people losing it after too many improvements. We surely do want the characters from the trailer to appear in the game, but it’s too early and a little bit spoilerish to talk about the details.

RPS: Why that woman? A number of people were fairly taken aback by the fact that she was a scantily clad and in a compromising position, which is understandable. However, the camera panned out to reveal that her arms were grotesque scythes, which struck me as making it less about sex appeal and more about creating a striking image of destroyed beauty by way of rampant technological augmentation. Is that what you were going for?

Mateusz Kanik: Why not that woman? As for your interpretation: It is really cool that our short clip created some food for thought like that. We enjoy that people dive deeper and they do not see an “epic, omg” flick on youtube, but something they think about when it’s finished. That’s how we want to make our games – you saw that in The Witcher series, moral choices and the problems the player faced were not trivial. Many people thought about decisions they made after they stopped playing. That’s what we want to do with Cyberpunk 2077. The worst thing I could do as someone behind the trailer is to tell you how you should interpret it. So, no, I won’t tell you what we were going for. It would spoil the fun.

Robert writes about a (Dutch) interview on Cyberpunk 2077. You can find the Google translation here, with the conversation covering Mike Pondsmith doing voice acting, the inclusion of some 2020 characters, possible mod support and more.

Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith discusses the gameworld in this video:

GameTrailers has an interview with Mateusz Kanik, the lead for Cyberpunk 2077.  The interview covers the game's atmosphere, a definiton of what braindance is as well as how they'll modify the 2020 rpg tabletop version for this game and much more. 

Here's a quote on how the atmosphere in the just released teaser trailer will make it into the game:

We just watched the first teaser for your game. What elements we saw will surely appear in the game?

I think the most important thing that will be brought with the game is the atmosphere. The teaser really feels like what we are working on. If you are thinking about the presence of melee combat, yes, we will have those cool arm implants. Cyber-psychos will also be present. These are people who lost their sense of humanity, because of too many cyber-modifications in their bodies. We will have aerial vehicles, the psychosquad, and all the weapons you saw are our modified versions from the rulebook. I hope that the woman you've seen in the trailer will also be there.

In a post at the official forums, Masos from CD Projekt RED has revealed the visions for this game as well as some background details. A quote on how the world will be like in 2077, according to CD Projekt RED:

In Cyberpunk 2077, the player will be thrown into a dark future. The metropolis of Night City is a stage set to tell the tale of one individual, raised on the streets, who tries to lift himself up from the gutter and find a way to survive amongst boostergangs and megacorporations in a city of filth and sin. Drugs, violence, poverty and exclusion haven't disappeared by 2077, as people stayed as they were for centuries - greedy, closed-minded and weak. But not only ghosts of the past trouble mankind, but new issues have appeared. Psychos go on rampages and the streets are filled with junkies addicted to a new form of entertainment - the braindance, a cheap way to experience the emotions and stimuli of someone else, someone living a more exciting life.

A new teaser trailer has been made available for Cyberpunk 2077. At the end of the video there is also a short message that an announcement for something else CD Red is working on (The Witcher 3?) will be made on the 5th of February.

The Cyberpunk 2077 blog has been updated with the third installment of recipes for a kick-ass cyberpunk game.

Piotr Skorok: Beneath a Steel sky

“One of best cyberpunk stories ever told. And that is an important thing, if you want to create good cRPG…”

Excellent point. We talk about gameplay, weapons and style but people often forget to mention an immersive story that takes you by the nuts and shows you the real, gritty Cyberpunk universe. By the way, Beneath a Steel Sky is available for free at GoG.com and I would highly recommend you guys check it out.

On a sidenote: If you enjoy it, let the nice people at Revolution Games in York know that you are looking forward to the sequel, I know I am.

CD Red's Senior Designer Marcin Janiszewski talks about the games they are inspired by for Cyberpunk 2077, using elements from each of them.

Here at CD Projekt Red we are inspired by many different types of games, not only cyberpunk games. And INSPIRED is the key word here.  Taking one feature from game A, another from game B and yet another from game C doesn’t mean that final product will be a game of A+B+C quality. There is actually a high chance that if the process of adapting features wasn’t done carefully or mixed properly, then the final game will be a disaster  – the sum of a bunch of things that do not work well together. And no one want to end up with Cyberpunk game like that, right?

Dystopia and Syndicate are, of course, not the only games that we are looking at, though they are obvious inspirations. There are quite few more. I will only highly major features of these games that have guided what we want Cyberpunk 2077 to become, and maybe in the future we will go into more details about how these concepts work together.

System Shock (1994) – Great atmosphere combined with non-linear gameplay

Fallout 2 (1998) – A character’s development could determine the available dialog options he/she would encounter

Baldur’s Gate Saga (1998-2000) – Faithful adaptation of a Pen& Paper RPG system without getting bogged down in numbers.

Deus Ex (2000) – Considered by many to one of the best (if not the best) Cyberpunk game. It had an involving story multiple ways to accomplish a goal. One of first games of its time and still one of the very few games where it was possible to finish it without killing anyone.

The Witcher series (2007, 2011) – Rich and mature story. Stunning graphics.

Skyrim (2011) – One of the best implementations of an open, sandbox world.

A second part of the Cyberpunk 2077 Recipes for kick-ass games blog post is up at CD Projekt Red's home for this future title. A look at the classic title Syndicate:

I am talking about Syndicate (senior), of course!

3 ingredients that make it excellent:

1 – Cyborg Agents
You are in control of a bunch of cold blooded killers; four threnchcoat-loving cyborg agents, to be precise. With little to no backstory, other than the rather disturbing intro depicting a man having his limbs pulled out and replaced by bionic ones; the fantastic four will be yours to  customise like the Cybernetic Mr Potato Head ™that they are. You spend money on them and look after them after each mission, and you  eventually start getting attached to them, despite the clear lack of love in their cold eyes. They are cool, they are badass and they are yours to command and customise.

Cyberpunk 2077 designer Damien Monnier shows his recipe on how to create a great cyberpunk game, which neads to have 3 ingredients: Cyberspace, Maps and Inplants. All of the ingredients that are available in Dystopia.

Cyberspace is this incredibly attractive, beautifully trippy world where Hackers can take over all sorts of devices. Your actions in the CyberSpace world are reflected in the real world. Consequently, if you play as a Hacker your team will absolutely rely on your mad hacking skills to open doors or even shutdown security systems– It adds an insane amount of pressure on your little punk shoulders:  Jack-in, hack stuff, trip balls and die*.

*Noob sidedish, serve cold.

Piotr Gnyp from Polygymia has tweeted some tidbits from an interview made with Adam Kicinski. It is in Polish but Kodaemon has translated the tweets to English. The quote:

- Unnanounced dark fantasy title (Witcher 3?) is in more advanced stages than Cyberpunk 2077.

 - Cyberpunk 2077 is the first in a series, both games are larger than The Witcher, both are multiplaform

 - 2013 will be smaller stuff for CDP RED, no Witcher-caliber release

 - Witcher for iPhone - too early to say anything, but not impossible

 EDIT: missed some stuff:

 - no Witcher for PS3 next year, they want TW on Playstation, but not current gen

 - both TW3 and CP2077 will appear on next gen consoles

Mike Pondsmith provides part 3 of the introduction to Cyberpunk 2077, talking about the right team.

Which leads us at last to the Right Team thing. It was obvious from the start that the CDPR team was going to give us a true to to life rendering of our Cyberpunk® world—they were fans. Most of them had grown up PLAYING Cyberpunk® at a time when RPG’s of any type were far and few between in a then-Communist Poland. For many of them, this was a dream come true. So we knew the team loved the world as much as we did (maybe even more, if you counted the many obsessive crushes on the lissome Alt Cunningham I encountered while over there!) Get it right? Are you kidding?

Skills? Execution? All I had to do was play a level of the Witcher to see THAT. It wasn’t just gorgeous to look at—it was dense, complex, and immersive. It was so well done that it made you have to play it. We looked at what the crew at CDPR had created in their exacting recreation of Sapkowski’s world and we positively drooled at what the same crew could do with OUR world. And knowing that they loved Cyberpunk® as much as we do just sealed the deal.

On the Cyberpunk 2077 blog, Mike Pondsmith made two entries covering why they went with CD PRoject Red and what it takes to make a good cyberpunk game.

True cyberpunk also needs an adult feel (and that means more than just the sex). Unlike other genres, cyberpunk characters should have vices to go with their virtues. How they DEAL with those vices is a big part of their complexity. When we looked at the Witcher series, we saw a world where gambling,drinking, hookers and other vices were a big part of character development, but were also handled as part of the general adult character of the world. But in addition, relationships were treated as actual relationships, with the fights, negotiations, regrets and reconciliations that are part of the way real adults handle real situations.