Most Anticipated Games of 2020
Second Runner-Up: Cyberpunk 2077
Senior Editor Alex Gibson: Well before I’d ever played a Witcher game, I read that a developer called CD Projekt Red had acquired a license to develop a video game adaptation of Cyberpunk 2020.
As a long-time Deus Ex fan, the prospect of an open-world game set in a grim, near-future dystopia in the mold of Blade Runner and William Gibson’s Neuromancer had me hugely excited. Back then, nobody made cyberpunk games.
Fast forward eight or so years and cyberpunk is now very much the in-vogue aesthetic. Suddenly everybody wants to make a cyberpunk game or, at the very least, drench their games in neon. Why? Because over the course of that eight years CD Projekt Red released The Witcher 3 to critical acclaim and became an industry darling in the process. It’s become the trendsetter.
The very notion of CDPR applying its Witcher know-how to a new open-world RPG has rightly sent much of the gaming community into a fever of excitement.
And yet, while I too have since become a passionate Witcher fan, Cyberpunk 2077 has me most excited because it actually looks nothing like The Witcher 3. This ain’t no Ubisoft Assassin’s Creed to Watch Dogs switcharoo reskin job. No, Cyberpunk 2077 is so much bolder and more ambitious.
Apart from what I’m sure will prove to be a game full of deep lore and rich storytelling, it’s almost unrecognizable as having been made by the same team as The Witcher 3, so different is its design.
Cyberpunk 2077 is CDPR risking it all to push into totally uncharted territory and give us something completely fresh. It’s hugely exciting, and April 2020 can’t come soon enough.
