One of the bigger RPGs set to come out this year is CD Projekt Red‘s Cyberpunk 2077. This game has been in development for quite a while and there’s a good reason for this: The game is massive and has so many elements that need to be polished off.
From Night City to the branching narrative-based story, Cyberpunk 2077 is extraordinarily big in scope and filled to the brim in detail. The game is so massive that it has been delayed a couple of times already. That’s pretty typical for 2020 with everything that has gone down.
It looks like we’re coming out from the chaos and Cyberpunk 2077 fortunately is still targeted for a November 19 release date. In order to meet this deadline, CD Projekt Red is undergoing a crunch. That goes against previous reports from the developer, but it’s not really surprising.
This game is so big and there are so many possibilities that players can stumble upon. It seemed like crunch was all but certain for the talented team behind The Witcher series. Now, staff will be working longer hours based on a report from Bloomberg.
Studio boss Adam Badowski weighed in on the topic, saying that the blame could be put upon his shoulders. In his words, it’s a necessary part of keeping up with the November time frame.
Crunch has been a pretty big talking point in gaming in recent memory. Studios are sometimes pushed to their limits to put out a game as to fall in line with previous goals. When done carefully, it can result in a finished product that is better than it would have been otherwise.
If done improperly, developers can exhaust themselves and that usually leads to burnout in this industry. CD Projekt Red has been very fare with crunch in past games they’ve made so it’s hard to find fault in their strategy.
They know how much hype Cyberpunk 2077 has built over the last couple of years and they want to do everything possible to ensure another setback doesn’t occur. If that means employees staying a little longer to finish off the bug testing portion of this game, then so be it.
Fortunately, there is light at the end of the tunnel for both the developer and gamers. November is almost a month away and that means finally after many years of development, players can go through Night City and experience the incredible story, gangs, side quests, and augments with their created character. Crunch isn’t ideal, but it’s necessary for how big of a game Cyberpunk 2077 is.