Cyberpunk 2077’s Lead Cinematic Animator Explains the “Directive Scene System”
Since the debut of Cyberpunk 2077’s story trailer at E3, fans have had a plethora of questions for CD Projekt Red; How the game will play in first-person, whether Ciri will appear (she almost certainly won’t, unfortunately), and how the game’s story will pan out, for example. The game’s lead cinematic animator, Maciej Pietras, gave some insight in a recent interview into something called the “Directive Scene System”.
Cyberpunk 2077’s “Directive Scene System”
Speaking about the switch to a first-person, Pietras stated that; “Personally I think the switch to first person is a great choice, especially for the world of Cyberpunk. It’s a detail-oriented world, where who you are, how you dress, what kind of cyberwear you have really matters. In order to maintain that feeling of an interconnected world switching to a first-person perspective was really important to how we’re going to use the immersive narrative.”
Pietras then turned to how the game will interweave its gameplay with cinematic elements. In The Witcher, CD Projekt Red interspersed the game with frequent cutscenes. All of the game’s conversations also occurred in cutscene-like moments. For Cyberpunk, the studio is trying something new.
“The way we actually approach this, we’re calling it the directive scene system,” said Pietras, “From my perspective, we’re trying to blend cinematics and gameplay. The way it works is that since we’re creating a first-person perspective open-world RPG we want to keep the player as immersed in the game as possible. We’re using the directive scene system as a way of pulling you into this world and keeping you in the scenes.”
What the System Means for Players
What that means for players is that they can actually interrupt otherwise scripted cutscenes; changing the course of events instead of sitting through it to the end; “You can actually pull out a gun there;” said Pietras, as an example of how the system allows players to control the flow of a scene; “It’s a super-challenging thing for us, but it’s also really, really cool. It gives this visceral feeling of being there, that this matters and you pay the consequences of your actions”.
It certainly sounds ambitious. If it works though, Cyberpunk 2077 could feature one of the most immersive dialogue systems ever featured in an RPG. Many RPGs let you skip through dialogue or exit a conversation prematurely. However, NPCs usually don’t react to the player doing so. This system would certainly make players feel more involved during otherwise scripted cutscenes.