Cyberpunk 2077 dev explains its lack of police chases

midian182

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A hot potato: While Cyberpunk 2077 launched with plenty of technical problems, one of the issues that players have with the gameplay is its lack of Grand Theft Auto V-style police chases. The game’s quest designer has responded to the criticism, noting that not all open-world games feature such encounters and that they were planned for Cyberpunk, but developers couldn’t get them to work in time for its release, so they were dropped.

In a recent livestream, Pawel Sasko was asked why a game with such a focus on vehicles and driving doesn’t include car or police chase sequences—law enforcement officers simply spawn near the player, which can be very annoying. The person asking the question notes that the feature is present “in every other open-world game,” something that seemed to irk Sasko.

"First of all, not every open-world game, right? Because, like, I don't think that Sonic, the chase game, will have it, or the Elden Ring open-world game will have it," he replied.

While it does appear that Sasko was just joking, kind of, some people took his comment as being quite snarky. “I'm not interested in the opinion of someone who deliberately ignores the point of the question and goes after the way it was formulated,” wrote one Redditor.

Sasko adds that CD Projekt Red had intended to include police chases in Cyberpunk 2077, but various technical limitations saw them removed before development finished. Those limitations may relate to the last-gen consoles, whose lack of power was blamed for some of the game's numerous technical and performance issues at launch.

"It's not that we didn't make it because we didn't want to, it's just simply like, there are some reasons, you know, that basically prevented us from actually being able to deliver this," he said.

Cyberpunk 2077 has been in the news quite a bit this month, which marks one year since its infamous release. CD Projekt recently settled a lawsuit brought against the game for just $1.85 million, while Keanu Reeves says he’s never played it, despite the developers claiming otherwise.

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In the initial release, The police were overpowered in the game and could easily kill you off in a firefight.

They nerfed the police in the updates.

I personally didn't miss them - I just avoided them so I could continue on mission.

To be perfectly honest, I didn’t really miss them.
 
Another example of lack of planning, preparation, and to a degree - competence when developing this game.

Way to dodge and not answer the question, bud. Really makes you look like you know what you’re talking about.
 
“ Sasko adds that CD Projekt Red had intended to include police chases in Cyberpunk 2077, but various technical limitations saw them removed before development finished. Those limitations may relate to the last-gen consoles, whose lack of power was blamed for some of the game's numerous technical and performance issues at launch.”

This game was never gonna work on the last Gen hardware. It was trolling to even claim they might.

Cyberpunk 2077 could have been a strong launch title for PS5 and XBOX series X but to even bother trying to develop on PS4/XBOX was a waste.
 
“ Sasko adds that CD Projekt Red had intended to include police chases in Cyberpunk 2077, but various technical limitations saw them removed before development finished. Those limitations may relate to the last-gen consoles, whose lack of power was blamed for some of the game's numerous technical and performance issues at launch.”

This game was never gonna work on the last Gen hardware. It was trolling to even claim they might.

Cyberpunk 2077 could have been a strong launch title for PS5 and XBOX series X but to even bother trying to develop on PS4/XBOX was a waste.
I know reading comprehension is hard for you, but how many times do you have to be told this game started development 4 YEARS before the PS5/series X came out before you understand it?

RDR2 runs fine, GTA V runs on the PS4 and has police chases. The witcher 3 runs fine ON THE SAME GAME ENGINE.

There is nothing wrong with the PS4/xbone. This was a technical development ****up, CDPR's work is shoddy at best.
 
Devs and publishers are borderline scammers. They need to be put in line.
They'll keep doing it until consumers get more protection against false marketing and unfinished products being launched at regular AAA prices.
 
Devs and publishers are borderline scammers. They need to be put in line.
They'll keep doing it until consumers get more protection against false marketing and unfinished products being launched at regular AAA prices.
Regulations never fix anything.

Just don't buy the product and companies change really fast.

Wait for reviews and you don't have to worry about false marketing and unfinished products.
 
Picked 2077 up in a sale - whilst it has its quirks and bugs it is still a fun game. The police attacks where you can run away for 10 seconds and never worry about them is a bit lame though when you get a call out against you for a single accidental pedestrian hit - having an easy way to be clean again is useful.
Runs fine on an old 1080Ti and now ancient i7 7820X
 
"some people took his comment as being quite snarky. “I'm not interested in the opinion of someone who deliberately ignores the point of the question and goes after the way it was formulated,” wrote one Redditor."

Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome the snowflake generation.
 
This continues to be a textbook example of why smaller indie developer should never attempt an AAA level game: it just gets out of hand and when you want help to make the thing work, well you go to Nvidia which offer some help but want to make sure the game is a tech showcase of Ray Tracing and DLSS so instead of helping they just added even more featues you're now contractually obligated to include and made things worst.

If 2077 would have instead of aiming for photo-realism, gone for a very stylized look instead (Which works great with a Cyberpunk setting anyway) that just runs easily on Unreal Engine for example then I bet it would be already considered a timeless classic. But by attempting to prove that you can develop an AAA sized game that looks like one well, they proved exactly the opposite: Witcher 3 was the only exception and going with even more ambition was too much. That tells me even Witcher 3 probably should have never happened as it brought the dev team and the entire publisher to the brink of breaking and next iteration well it just broke things.
 
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CD Projekt bit off far more than they could chew when they developed this game. They wanted a fully realised RPG AND an open world modern city with all the mechanics that entails. Think for a second about GTA5. It's not an RPG where you build out various skillsets and the like. Limiting your scope is smart when the rest of the game is so challenging.

Even a year since launch this game is still buggy and full of unfulfilled systems. To create the kind of game they made on a wide variety of the latest platforms takes a huge budget and a massive team of people. I think they severely underestimated the scale of the project.

RDR2 is another Rockstar game and that had 2,000 employees on it in total over 6/7 years. More than double the number of staff involved in Cyberpunk 2077. CDP went from about 250 employees on The Witcher 3 to more than twice that and they admit that managing the staff and size of project was new and difficult for them.
 
Among the most overrated games in recent years. All hype, no substance. Hard pass.

At one point I thought I'd preorder. Then I thought I'd wait for a sale. Now I'm completely over ever playing and don't feel like I've missed out on anything special or important.
 
Among the most overrated games in recent years. All hype, no substance. Hard pass.

At one point I thought I'd preorder. Then I thought I'd wait for a sale. Now I'm completely over ever playing and don't feel like I've missed out on anything special or important.
I dont see what was so special. The reveal trailers in 2020 showed none of the visual flair, styling, or subtelty of the original announcement trailer, and gameplay showed another boring sandbox world with nothing in it.

The original concept was really intriguing, shame none of it made it past the planning stage, bigger shame that millions still preordered what was plainly an unfinished experience.
 
Meanwhile I enjoyed the game.
What's the big whoop about police chases. So much else to do in this game.
It was yet another feature that was promised and then dropped. Many agree that there is a serious lack of content in CP2077. The world is largely empty cardboard boxes with pretty scenery, not a whole lot to actually do.
 
Out of interest can anyone name a game - where they think the enemies , or environment is smart?

I'm not talking about games that cheat with perfect info , or like those talking bots - that parrot back .
Or some flag trigger - I heard you were at Gringotts bank a few days ago?

I made this mistake as a teenager when I wanted to make a rpg on a C64 - I wanted - lots of algorithms in machine language - was tired of seeing sprites of wizards stuck in corners - with stupid move directly to hero algorithms etc, poor fighting strategies - I wanted more than HP, Defense, plus 1 sword - to differentiate monsters etc - obviously never completed . I really enjoyed my self - how to store maximum info in a few bytes . I even design algorithms to play simple rule games - when done - felt no urge to program them - as I knew it would worked - so just boring programming now .

I watched my son play Diablo 3 on the PS4 a few years ago - stupid amount of monsters , no need for strategy , same built/weapons killed everything.
Don't like it if NPCs have no self-preservation - and do what you tell them , Don't like it - if animals won't run if near death, or certain death ( ie you killed all his mates ) - zombies get around this .
Still I don't want it too real - depending if you have armour sets ( I want a bag of holding ) - if items limited , magic extremely rare - then fine. I don't want real life grind too much - Don't get micro manage games ( I use to run a business - I could mange -) - Don't play war games - but if the a troop goes AWOL or gets drunk - so be it ( as long as info there - these are pirate mercenaries - they like a good time and they just captured the rum wagon or payroll unit)
 
Not long ago people would lose their minds if you were even slightly skeptical about this game. Here we are now, it just keeps on dissapointing. It's 15 bucks on reseller sites and it's questionable is it worth it if you don't have the latest hardware.
 
Picked 2077 up in a sale - whilst it has its quirks and bugs it is still a fun game. The police attacks where you can run away for 10 seconds and never worry about them is a bit lame though when you get a call out against you for a single accidental pedestrian hit - having an easy way to be clean again is useful.
Runs fine on an old 1080Ti and now ancient i7 7820X


In a completely digital world where information is literally patched into everyone’s brains how could you possibly ever escape a police man hunt?
 
This continues to be a textbook example of why smaller indie developer should never attempt an AAA level game: it just gets out of hand and when you want help to make the thing work, well you go to Nvidia which offer some help but want to make sure the game is a tech showcase of Ray Tracing and DLSS so instead of helping they just added even more featues you're now contractually obligated to include and made things worst.

If 2077 would have instead of aiming for photo-realism, gone for a very stylized look instead (Which works great with a Cyberpunk setting anyway) that just runs easily on Unreal Engine for example then I bet it would be already considered a timeless classic. But by attempting to prove that you can develop an AAA sized game that looks like one well, they proved exactly the opposite: Witcher 3 was the only exception and going with even more ambition was too much. That tells me even Witcher 3 probably should have never happened as it brought the dev team and the entire publisher to the brink of breaking and next iteration well it just broke things.

Although, CDPR are the most valuable game studio in Europe. No excuses for bad planning.
 
If they didn't want cop chases, then maybe they should have stuck to their early year marketing to make it a RPG, instead of just a bad GTA clone with a few RPG elements.
 
CD Projekt bit off far more than they could chew when they developed this game. They wanted a fully realised RPG AND an open world modern city with all the mechanics that entails. Think for a second about GTA5. It's not an RPG where you build out various skillsets and the like. Limiting your scope is smart when the rest of the game is so challenging.

Even a year since launch this game is still buggy and full of unfulfilled systems. To create the kind of game they made on a wide variety of the latest platforms takes a huge budget and a massive team of people. I think they severely underestimated the scale of the project.

RDR2 is another Rockstar game and that had 2,000 employees on it in total over 6/7 years. More than double the number of staff involved in Cyberpunk 2077. CDP went from about 250 employees on The Witcher 3 to more than twice that and they admit that managing the staff and size of project was new and difficult for them.
Don't forget that they tried to make a Rockstar-level game (with no experience for that scale as you mentioned) on THEIR OWN ENGINE!!!

They just tried and failed to do what Intel used to do before it became too hard and expensive, make a new architecture (the game) on a new chip node (the engine).

That's why Unreal (and TSMC) is so successful. The engine/node development is outsourced to a dedicated company that focuses on a narrow product scope. The developers and third-party customers focus on the architecture/game development.
 
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