Cyberpunk 2077's classes will be subtle and surprising

During this year's Gamelab in Barcelona we caught up with RPG designer Mike Pondsmith, who has been working with CD Projekt Red on Cyberpunk 2077, the studio's next game following the incredible success of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt.

During the interview we discussed pen and paper role-playing, Japanese anime, and much more. Obviously, though, Cyberpunk 2077 was a key topic of discussion, and so we asked how his vision is being realised in digital form.

"The vision is really pretty close to what I had in my head years ago," Pondsmith told us. "What's actually funny was when they did the trailer that everyone's seen now, I looked at it and said 'oh my god, that's like perfect.' And there were all these little weird touches from the game that were in the background, because they're fans. So I look at it and go 'oh, they really did that [...] that's awesome'."

"So the feeling has stayed the same and we've also been developing it and, you know, continually developing it to keep that feeling, because they're fans too."

We also touched on the interesting classes from the pen and paper RPG, and asked whether we could expect to see rock stars, journalists, and executives in the video game.

"Yes, you can," Pondsmith replied. "They're all going to be there but I can't tell you more... You're going to find some surprises about how we've done it, and I think you're really going to like it. There's a lot of subtlety going on there [...] Adam [Badowski - we think] and I spent literally a whole week messing with some of the ways of implementing that. So you get the most feel for your character"

There's still no word on when we'll finally get our bionic hands on Cyberpunk 2077, but when it lands it'll do so on PC, PS4 and Xbox One.