Every Cyberpunk 2077 quest will be handcrafted

Plenty of massive open world RPG games have procedurally generated quests: Skyrim and Fallout 4 are most notable, thanks to Bethesda Softworks' Radiant AI tech. But it's fairly common for loot-oriented games like Diablo and The Division to have them too. Cyberpunk 2077, on the other hand, definitely will not have them.

That's according to quest design coordinator Philipp Weber, who recently answered a bunch of questions in the CD Projekt Red forums. "Every quest in the game is handcrafted," he wrote. "For us, quality is always more important than quantity, and we just couldn’t deliver this quality with modules we assemble in different ways to create these random quests. We don’t just want to keep people busy, but actually give them something to do that’s worth their while."

Weber also assured readers that despite everything being handcrafted, the game would still be big. "But we’re making a big Open World RPG of course, so that also means that despite our quests being handcrafted, we tried to make a whole lot of them, so players can have fun in the game for many hours," he said.

The interview has some other interesting tidbits as well. Side quests will vary in size, and it sounds like some will be longer and more complex than story missions, which won't come as a surprise to players of The Witcher 3. But it's the game's other tier of mission, called Street Stories, that sounds especially interesting. According to Weber, these will most closely resemble Geralt's monster hunting missions in The Witcher 3.

"These are the jobs that V gets from fixers like Dexter DeShawn, and doing these jobs gives V more street cred, so she gets a reputation around the city," Weber said. "These jobs can be very varied and of course also benefit a lot from our different playstyles, so there’s often many creative ways to solve them.

"Street Stories are designed and implemented by our Open World Team, so as a quest designer I’m actually really looking forward towards playing them myself, because I don’t know them as well as other quests in the game and I’ll be able to play them almost as any other player."

You can check out the full interview here. Cheers, PCGamesN, for the heads up.

Shaun Prescott is the Australian editor of PC Gamer. With over ten years experience covering the games industry, his work has appeared on GamesRadar+, TechRadar, The Guardian, PLAY Magazine, the Sydney Morning Herald, and more. Specific interests include indie games, obscure Metroidvanias, speedrunning, experimental games and FPSs. He thinks Lulu by Metallica and Lou Reed is an all-time classic that will receive its due critical reappraisal one day.