The developer of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, CD Projekt RED, has come right out and told us that their next game will be "far, far bigger."
Cyberpunk 2077 is the first crack at science-fiction roleplaying games for the Polish company, and I suppose since The Witcher 3 was so much bigger than The Witcher 2 and was quite successful, that means their next game has to be even bigger.
But I don't want it to be bigger. "Big" doesn't matter to me at all when it comes to this type of game. What I want is compelling story, hard choices, and good game mechanics. If you can do that in thirty hours or so, I'm happy. Games don't need to be hundreds of hours long with giant, forgettable maps and tons of busy work.
The Witcher 3 may be the best open-world game ever made, and I still found traversing the hugeness of it to be one of its biggest flaws. Simply making Cyberpunk 2077 bigger than The Witcher 3 does nothing to inspire confidence in me.
Granted, I have a lot of faith in the quality of CDPR's work. They make good games and they treat their customer base very well. I'm sure that Cyberpunk 2077 will be a good game and that CDPR will continue its smart policies on DRM, DLC and all the other abbreviations important to the modern gamer.
(DRM = Digital Rights Management which is used to combat piracy but more often than not just leads to broken games. DLC = Downloadable Content which is released after the main game often for extra cash.)
Anyways, I guess I'm fairly lonely in this position. I don't believe bigger makes better. Quality over quantity is key for me. I find super huge games overwhelming, and while I don't want to play something dreadfully short, I also find that after a very long game I don't ever really feel like coming back to it.
No word on the release date for Cyberpunk 2077. However, the first expansion to The Witcher 3---"Hearts of Stone"---launches October 13th. As if we need more content for that game so soon.
