Cyberpunk 2077 first gameplay demo that was released in 2018 was an elaborate fake by CDPR that didn’t have most of the featured programmed into the game.
Back at E3 2018, CD Projekt Red had released a lengthy gameplay video that showcased gameplay footage from Cyberpunk 2077. This video was more than 10 minutes long and showed the main protagonist going through various sections of Night City and attempting missions in it.
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According to a new report by Jason Schrier for Bloomberg, the developers spent a lot of time creating this demo. Most of the underlying gameplay features that were showcased in the demo weren’t even designed or coded at this point.
This is not the first time CD Projekt Red has marketed a gameplay demo that wasn’t even possible in reality. Despite the critical praise received by The Witcher 3, it was another game with an early gameplay showcase that teased visuals that were never achieved in the final product.
The report digs further into behind the scenes development of Cyberpunk 2077. The game didn’t start full development until 2016 when the project lead was taken by Adam Badowski. Cyberpunk 2077 also suffered through feature creep and the developers had to cut down many aspects of the game to get it ready for launch. In fact, the team expected the game to finish development in 2022 and it was far from ready to launch in 2020.
The report goes into detail on what went wrong behind the development of Cyberpunk 2077 so if you are curious to find out more, give it a read.