Cyberpunk 2077 will have around 75 street story sidequests to explore

Cyberpunk 2077: It’s big, has its own Keanu and it’s coming later than expected. With a little bit of polish still left to do on the game, CD Projekt Red’s first big release in many a year has a lot of hype to live up to, mostly generated by fans who are expecting this slice of near-future dystopia action to be a contender for the first game of the decade.

Part of that hype comes from what fans are expecting to do between the main story beats, as Cyberpunk 2077 builds on a benchmark set by The Witcher 3: The Wild Hunt and its magnificent sidequests that went above and beyond the usual grind present in so many other games. For Cyberpunk 2077, these “Street Stories” will provide some narrative of their own along the way.

“We don’t have any simulator stuff or gameplay. In Witcher 3, we did the open-world elements very late in the development process when we only had two or three people working on it or something. Now there’s, like, 15 people doing these open-world quests,” Head of CD Projekt RED’s Cracow team John Mamais said to WCFFTech.

There’s a couple of layers. There’s a passive layer, which is the vendors, then there’s the STSs, which are the street stories. I think there’s around 75 street stories. Then there’s minor activities as well. The street stories are like little quests. There’s story but there’s not, like, advanced cinematic storytelling sequences so much. They’re a way to explore the world and level-up your character.

Something else that will make Cyberpunk 2077 shine on both a technical and audio level when it comes out? The use of Global Illumination and Dolby Atmos tech to help sell players on the environment of Night City. “There is some stuff that hasn’t been talked about such as the way that it’s been lit. Our director keeps talking about the real-time global illumination system which we haven’t really seen in its full beauty yet,” Mamais explained.

No one in the public has seen how it’s finally going to look. It’s going to look more breath-taking than we’ve seen so far. Also, the sound. The acoustic system that one of our sound programmers came up with is going to sound really realistic because of the way they’re using the geometry. It creates this reverb effect so that changes as the space changes.

If I were a rich gamer, I’d definitely go out and buy a Dolby Atmos system to listen to this game. It’s going to be very immersive, deep, and beautiful-sounding.

At this point I think it’s safe to say that provided you have the hardware on hand, Cyberpunk 2077 is going to look and sound good while keeping you busy for a long time. Now if only we could get more than tree fiddy for Brad’s rapidly diminishing selection of organs so that we could afford a proper setup here.

Last Updated: February 3, 2020