With Cyberpunk 2077 due out in November, developer CD Projekt Red is grinding to put the finishing touches on their open-world first-person RPG, and one of their biggest focuses is the game’s melee combat, which the devs aren’t 100% happy with.
During a recent interview with VG247, Pawel Kapala, who is CD Projekt Red’s senior gameplay designer, talked about being unhappy with Cyberpunk 2077’s melee combat, and while the developers have improved it quite a bit during the game’s development, it’s still not where CDPR would like it to be.
“We’re still a couple of months before release, and I’m actually right now working on melee,” said Kapala while speaking with VG247. “We’re spending a lot of time trying to perfect that, and we basically, we’re not 100% happy, mostly with visual feedback on the hits, on the melee. So, we’re still working on it.
“I’m happy to say that, even right now, it’s much better than it was,” CDPR’s senior gameplay designer continued. “And it’s going to get even better. And we acknowledge that this is something that we need to perfect, basically. But as you said, melee in a first-person game is extremely difficult, from the get-go. So, it wasn’t an easy task, since we basically come from a pedigree of creating third-person perspective games. It was also a big part of our development to actually figure out, how do you do melee in a first-person perspective? We’re working on it.”
During Monday’s Night City Wire live stream, CD Projekt Red detailed some of the games’ weapons, including a few melee weapons. In the game, there are six types of weapons: Cyberware, Power, Smart, Melee, Tech, and Throwables. You can take a look at CDPR’s weapons overview trailer in the video below.
Also during the Night City Wire stream, CD Projekt Red broke down the different backstory options for the game’s main protagonist, V, as players will be able to select from the following three backstory categories:
- Street Kid – V will be from the Heywood district, and his/her childhood memories include: “robbing buildings, running away from badges, and the taste of blood from a split lip.” With this backstory, V will come from a place where everyone is constantly fighting for a “slice of the street.”
- Nomad – The Nomad backstory is a more peaceful upbringing for V, as the game’s main protagonist spends their formative years in a rural location, before ultimately deciding to move towards Night City because his/her family is “in pieces.” In the game, Nomads have a powerful hunger for freedom and are willing to do whatever it takes to find it.
- Corpo – V will begin his or her journey as a corporate employee, where they’re working under Saburo Arasaka, who is 158 years old and is described as being megalomaniacal and obsessed. The Corpo boss also says that he hates America, and says that his duty is to elevate Japan to its former glory. With this backstory, V is, or was, responsible for keeping Arasaka in power.
Since its original release date was revealed last year, CD Projekt Red has delayed Cyberpunk 2077 a few times. But, it seems like they’re confident that they’ll be able to meet the game’s scheduled release date of November 19.