Cyberpunk 2077 launches on November 17 but will offer a shorter main campaign than that of The Witcher 3.
In the post-show for Night City Wire, the game's senior quest designer Patrick K Mills noted that there's plenty of side content to complete and that the team "got a lot of complaints about The Witcher 3's main story just being too long".
Read More: Cyberpunk 2077 Pre-Order Guide: Price, Collector's Edition, Bonus Content And Early Access
Cyberpunk 2077's Campaign Will Be Shorter Than The Witcher 3's
Speaking on the post-stream, Mills explained (via Resetera) “We do know that the main story run in Cyberpunk 2077 is slightly shorter than The Witcher 3”.
“We got a lot of complaints about The Witcher 3’s main story just being too long" he added.
“And looking at the metrics you see tremendous amounts of people played through that game really far, but never made it to the end."
“We want you to see the whole story. So we did shorten the main story, but we have lots to do and in terms of a completionist campaign, I just don’t have that number.”
Side quests are likely to be much more complex than The Witcher 3's, however. This is due to each of them feeding into alternative quests, and tying multiple other plot threads together.
CD Projekt Red had previously confirmed that the side quests for The Witcher 3 were developed by "two or three" staff, with that number climbing to around 15 for open-world quests in Cyberpunk 2077.
Read More: Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City has a functioning spaceport
Then there are "Street Stories". of which there will be around 75 within Cyberpunk 2077. These have been described by CD Projekt Red as "the bread and butter of a street merc like V, a bit like monster hunting for a witcher like Geralt.”
The game was recently demoed as part of NVIDIA's new graphics hardware showcase, with full ray-tracing capabilities. Check it out here.
The developers have also recently discussed their dissatisfaction with the game's melee combat, and have committed to making changes to it before launch.