Why doesn’t Cyberpunk 2077 have a New Game Plus mode? CD Projekt developer explains

Almost four years past launch now, Cyberpunk 2077 has seen numerous title updates and post-release support but, significantly, no “New Game Plus” mode, a kind of staple among role-playing games that many players of CD Projekt role-playing games — such as 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt — have come to expect, if not take almost for granted.

In an interview with DualShockers, a Cyberpunk 2077 developer explained why fans have yet to see this type of a feature — which is essentially another playthrough of the main game except with all of the progression, gear, and other features the player has built up over their original run.

Pawel Sasko of Warsaw-based CD Projekt Red said despite players’ assumptions, the 2020 game’s core design wasn’t made to account for such a feature. “For us, it’s really important that when you have components in a game, they all work tegether and they all work well and they all make sense,” Sasko told DualShockers. He added that “Cyberpunk is very specific when it comes to its construction.”

Because the game, set in somewhat of a near-future environment where the player character is both on a path to “becoming a legend” while also managing what is effectively a terminal illness, a new-game plus second playthrough is hard to implement simply because the concept doesn’t fit with the game’s main story.

That said, CD Projekt Red developers always intended for Cyberpunk 2077 to be replayed, even if it lacks the kind of spin-off mode that has made other role-playing games (such as 2023’s Starfield, for example) so enticing and replayable.

“There’s so many things that you can at least, twice or three times, have a very varied experience in 2077,” he told DualShockers. “So this is another answer, the game was built to be replayed that way.” He said it’s possible to bring a new game plus mode to Cyberpunk 2077, but doing so without considering its place among the rest of the game’s design “could look very tacked-on” as opposed to a feature that adds depth players expect.

Cyberpunk 2077, an extremely anticipated role-playing game first announced in 2012, is an adaptation of the pen-and-paper Cyberpunk role-playing series first launched in 1988. The video game suffered through a very troubled launch, plagued by technical and other performance issues that marred its overall critical reception.

The game’s subsequent Phantom Liberty DLC sold more than two million copies, and the title itself has seen several major updates. It has still been enough of a commercial and community success that a sequel has been greenlit and work on that has already begun.

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