Cyberpunk 2, codenamed Orion, may feature a much more robust implementation of branching storylines based on the player’s starting life path. In Cyberpunk 2077, the choices were Street Kid, Corpo, and Nomad.
This comes from Philipp Weber, narrative director at CD Projekt Red, who touched briefly on the Cyberpunk sequel in the AnsweRED Podcast. While the studio is focused on developing the next Witcher game codenamed Polaris, Cyberpunk Orion—the sequel to CP2077—is also in the conceptual phase.
In the original game, the life paths essentially meant very little in the grand scheme of things. Despite receiving a fair share of attention in the marketing leading up to the game’s launch, it did not live up to the expectations. Of course, the immediate attention was shifted to the technological shortcomings of the game, but life paths were something that was mostly shoved under the rug.
While you encounter life path-specific dialogue options here and there throughout your playthrough, it didn’t have any implication in terms of quest outcomes. Weber appears critical of this aspect and mentions it as something that they will flesh out more in the sequel:
“As a quest designer, I think in retrospect we can see the old topic, given more experience, given more time, I think maybe we would make it a bit less muddled than we did it there.”
We haven’t received a lot of information about Cyberpunk 2 since it was officially confirmed to be in the making in October 2022. However, with Cyberpunk 2077’s redemption arc with Phantom Liberty and update 2.0, I am fairly optimistic about the sequel.
