As I sit around and wait for the sequel to my favorite game of all time, all we have are some trickles of information about Cyberpunk 2077 2, Cyberpunk 2, Project Orion or whatever we’re calling it these days.
One thing that keeps coming up are indications that Cyberpunk 2 is going multiplayer, in that it will have a significant multiplayer component this time around, as opposed to the wholly single player original. The latest update comes from a Cyberpunk 2 CDPR job listing:
“Lead your team to develop and optimize multiplayer systems, including matchmaking and address challenges related to latency, bandwidth usage and server performance.”
The addition of at least a multiplayer mode in Cyberpunk 2 should be no great surprise. Before the mess that was launch and the literal two years of fixes it took to get things back on track, there was an original plan for multiple expansions and the eventually addition of multiplayer. But that never happened, the game getting a bunch of big patches and one amazing DLC. The rest is history (literally, it’s a historically good game).
But this time around, they may build that in for the start. The second no-surprise reason here is what Cyberpunk no doubt wants to emulate on some level, GTA Online, a mode that GTA 6 will no doubt bring back as well, and one that will be running when Cyberpunk 2 arrives.
It has been previously reported that GTA Online was bringing in $500 million or so for Rockstar during its peak years. “Lower” estimates are a $2.5-3 billion for its lifetime. Even if CDPR could get a fraction of that ongoing revenue, you can see how that adds up quickly to huge returns.
Cyberpunk 2077 is also one of the only games that can get away with this. If you try to think of another series with a sprawling, detailed, alive city and surrounding countryside, the top 2 you should come up with are Grand Theft Auto and Cyberpunk.
No, I do not believe the entire game will be structured around multiplayer with a dip in and out co-op campaign or something like that. Like GTA, which had its single player campaign and largely divorced GTA Online, I would imagine it would work like that. CDPR is not dumb and realize that everyone loved the single player focus of the main storyline. This would no doubt be an add-on. What they would view as a hopefully profitable add-on for them, but definitely not the sole focus of the sequel.
We are still eating crumbs here when it comes to Cyberpunk 2 information, mostly about team size and things like that, but hopefully we hear something more official soon. For a while, however, it’s likely just going to be Witcher 4 stuff.
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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.
