Inspirations and philosophy
From a production perspective, Mills says that CD Projekt Red's general goal is to ensure quest designers have ownership over all quests they're authoring. So not only are they conceiving it and pitching it, they're designing the game logic and nursing it to life alongside other designers, programmers, artists, and QA. On his own quests, Mills says he likes to start with a high-level theme or vibrant character that can help anchor the experience, and drive the aforementioned twists he has to work in.
When pushed to discuss inspiration outside the original Cyberpunk tabletop game, Mills jumps to a somewhat surprising reference --- the title of a Blonde Readhead album. "The title is 'Fake Can Be Just As Good,' and I go "okay, I like that, let's figure out how to do that."
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