It goes without saying that Cyberpunk 2077 will be a long game. How long, exactly? As far as CD Projekt Red can tell, it’ll at least be shorter than a playthrough of the base game of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.
This was revealed by quest designer Patrick K. Mills in a recent interview with various Twitch streamers during the latest Night City livestream (via ResetEra). He stated that the “slightly shorter“ campaign for Cyberpunk 2077 was due to the fact that many players weren’t able to finish The Witcher 3 simply due to the fact that it ran too long.
“We do know that the main story run in Cyberpunk 2077 is slightly shorter than The Witcher 3,” Mills explained. “We got a lot of complaints about The Witcher 3‘s main story just being too long. 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.”
A typical playthrough of The Witcher 3 would take approximately 50 – 60 hours, and up to 180 hours for completionist runs. We imagine Cyberpunk 2077‘s main story could run somewhere between 30 – 40 hours, but that could easily be doubled or tripled if one were to factor in multiple playthroughs simply due to the fact that a ton of story content is locked to different character origins.
That, in turn, can easily be multiplied further if one were to consider the multiple endings. And don’t even get us started on side content.
In any case, CD Projekt Red isn’t holding anything back and is gearing up for the game’s release on 19 November for PC, PS4, Xbox One, and Google Stadia.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.