Cyberpunk 2077 spent years turning from a punchline back into a classic. Now the studio is done looking back. The sequel just took its first real shape, and the direction is clear.
## The codename is gone For a while the follow-up was only 'Project Orion,' an internal name and a promise. That's done. CD Projekt has moved it into pre-production on Unreal Engine 5, co-developed by the Warsaw team and the Boston studio, and the reporting now treats it plainly as Cyberpunk 2. Shedding a codename sounds small. It isn't. It's the moment a project stops being a rumor and starts being a game with a shape.
## First-person, all the way through Here's the real news. Creative director Igor Sarzynski confirmed the sequel keeps you in first-person the entire time. No third-person cinematic cutscenes. Story beats play out live, camera in your hands, you moving through the scene instead of watching it. His words: he values the team's "uninterrupted immersion more" than a pretty cutscene. He's said flat out that going third-person would make it a completely different game.
## Why that's a real choice Cutscenes are the easy win. You cut the camera, you frame the shot, you make it look like a movie. Building those same beats in real time, with the player free to look wherever they want, is harder and costs more. Cyberpunk 2 is taking the harder road on purpose. That's a design bet, not a shortcut, and it tells you what kind of game they're chasing.
## Where the beat lands This show covers Cyberpunk every episode, and where it sits depends on the medium. Edgerunners and the anime side live in the anime pillar. The game, the engine, the design, that's gaming. Today it's the game.
## Keep the window honest Pre-production is early. A reveal is likely a 2027 or 2028 conversation, and nobody's playing this soon. But the direction is set, and a studio that rebuilt trust the hard way is showing it learned the lesson: get the foundation right before you sell the dream.
## Sources - TheGamer - Don't expect cinematic cutscenes in Cyberpunk 2, director values uninterrupted immersion: https://www.thegamer.com/cyberpunk-2-first-person-cutscenes/ - PlayStation Universe - Cyberpunk 2 creative director hints first-person-only cutscenes are returning: https://www.psu.com/news/cyberpunk-2-creative-director-hints-that-first-person-only-cutscenes-are-returning/ - TweakTown - Cyberpunk 2 enters pre-production, no longer called Project Orion: https://www.tweaktown.com/news/105506/cyberpunk-2-enters-pre-production-phase-no-longer-called-project-orion/index.html