Phantom Liberty was received very differently upon release than Cyberpunk 2077.
The sequel to Cyberpunk 2077 has a clear goal: This time the launch should be like Phantom Liberty – and not like the base game, which caused a lot of enthusiasm in 2020, but also a lot of frustration. Only after numerous patches was the role-playing game able to fully develop its enormous potential.
For Project Orion, developer CD Projekt Red is now drawing lessons from their experiences. For example, that their developers more freedom instead of tight control need. Game director Gabe Amatangelo spoke about this in an interview with Stephen Totilo from Game Files.
The lessons learned from the launch of Phantom Liberty
Who is Gabe Amatangelo? The game director has been on board with CD Projekt Red since 2020, and since the beginning of 2021 he has led the further development of Cyberpunk 2077 including its large story DLC Phantom Liberty.
He believes that there won’t be a launch debacle next time; Phantom Liberty also went off much more smoothly and was immediately extremely well received internationally. He also sees developments happening Cyberpunk 2.0 very positive: This is the current status of the game after numerous updates that have added many features – chases, metro system, subsequent adjustment of the appearance, other balancing and so on.
Good teamwork and trust were the basis for this successful return. In addition, the employees were given freer travel:
A big change was giving everyone more freedom. Just letting them do it without having to worry about the game directors checking off every little detail.
Instead of comprehensive control, management then relied on spot checks and kept an eye on the overall picture in order to then have open discussions if a course correction was necessary. In addition, they benefited greatly from building teams with diverse skills instead of bundling all level designers into a single large team.
Amatangelo also comments on the topic of crunch. CD Projekt Red had to face criticism because there was a lot of overtime for employees before the Cyberpunk release. According to Amatangelo, Phantom Liberty got around this by balancing longer weekly working hours with more free time.
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DevPlay: How do we prevent crunch?
Why is the next cyberpunk emerging in Boston?
Project Orion is not being developed at the studio’s headquarters, which is in Warsaw. You want to work on different games at the same time and the large spatial separation means you don’t risk competing with yourself for applications.
Boston is also culturally closer to European cities than many other places in the USA. And due to the location on the East Coast, there is at least a few hours of overlap in working hours in Boston and Warsaw.
So far there are few details about Project Orion, and the release is likely to be many years away. After all, there are already some well-known developer veterans on board:
Cyberpunk 2077 is said to be finally completed after the release of Phantom Liberty and the latest patch 2.12. However, in the interview, Amatangelo did not want to rule out the possibility that individual small changes could perhaps be incorporated into the game – as long as they can be incorporated without any problems.
