Cyberpunk 2007 has three possible origin stories

We already know a lot about Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of its release date in 2020. We'll be choosing who to kill (or not kill), who to smooch (or not), and now we know we'll be choosing some details about V's childhood and backstory as well, and those choices will determine which location you start playing in.

"The player in Cyberpunk 2077 can create a custom character that has one of three origin stories, that we call lifepaths," says Cyberpunk 2077's lead quest designer Paweł Sasko in an email to VG24/7. "You can be Nomad, Corpo or Street Kid. Each of that Lifepaths has a different starting location and story background that are strongly connected with the origin story."

Lifepaths are another of Cyberpunk 2077's systems translated from the tabletop Cyberpunk 2020 and 2013 campaigns. In a tabletop campaign, players roll through a set of flowcharts to help give their character a backstory to play off of, rather than beginning a campaign as an amnesiac hero as many other RPGs resort to (looking at you, The Witcher 1).

From what we've seen of Cyberpunk 2077's character creation screen above, it looks like you may have full control over V's Lifepath, rather than having it decided by a die roll. I, obviously, will be choosing Johnny Silverhand "Samurai Rockerboy" as my childhood hero.

That's all we may hear about V's possible origins for now, as Sasko says, "Anything more I say can reveal too much from the story."

Lauren has been writing for PC Gamer since she went hunting for the cryptid Dark Souls fashion police in 2017. She joined the PCG staff in 2021, now serving as self-appointed chief cozy games and farmlife sim enjoyer. Her career originally began in game development and she remains fascinated by how games tick in the modding and speedrunning scenes. She likes long fantasy books, longer RPGs, can't stop playing co-op survival crafting games, and has spent a number of hours she refuses to count building houses in The Sims games for over 20 years.