Cyberpunk 2077 is nearly six years old, but fans are still reminiscing about some of its best parts, and its developers are still revealing fresh insights into its creation.
Warning! Spoilers for Cyberpunk 2077 follow…
The Hunt is a side quest where you join forces with River Ward to investigate a serial killer called Anthony Harris, who River believes has kidnapped his nephew, Randy. Fans have praised The Hunt for how it reveals the serial killer, who at the start of the quest is in a coma in hospital having been apprehended by police.
The player picks up snippets of insight into Harris’ character as they search for clues as to Randy’s whereabouts. You learn how Harris grew up and delve deep into his psychology through detective work, with little to no combat involved.
During a search of Randy’s room, V and River log onto his computer to view his activity on the net. At this point you discover Harris and Randy were exchanging messages, and there’s a, well, a very creepy cartoon saved onto his computer.
This cartoon is used to unlock Harris’ mind for a braindance and, well, it’s pretty messed up in there. After learning more about what makes Harris tick, you eventually track down where he was keeping his victims and rescue Randy before it’s too late. It turns out Harris was “farming” teenage boys, like the cow depicted in the cartoon, to try to “fix” them. For Harris, that meant pumping them full of drugs.
Responding to praise for The Hunt on social media, Paweł Sasko, associate game director on Cyberpunk 2, explained what CD Projekt was going for with the quest.
“The Hunt quest is a psychological thriller, violence is almost never shown on the screen, its delivery is through deliberate and quite low key narrative tools, such as files, emails, while the major discovery is hidden inside a BD. Shocking revelation comes as a result of performing authentic police work, intentionally not an action sequence.”
“It was meant to feel like True Detective, cop drama in cyberpunk setting, entangled with the storyline of River Ward,” Sasko continued. “Creepy cartoon points towards the abuse villain experienced as a child, every slap feels uncomfortable and wrong, discovering cow in feeders makes the skin crawl.
“That’s what I love about cyberpunk setting: we can juggle genres and themes to spice things up, surprise and delight the player.”
Cyberpunk 2077 is full of quests like this (the Sinnerman and They Won’t Go When I Go side jobs spring to mind), where the game doubles down on disturbing elements. You’d imagine Cyberpunk 2 will have more of the same, too.
Speaking of which, Cyberpunk 2 had 163 people working on it of the end of April. While we know little about it, Cyberpunk creator Mike Pondsmith teased some details when he was asked about the scope of his involvement with what was then known as Project Orion, back at the Digital Dragons 2025 conference. It sounds like we’ll have to wait some time to find out more. CD Projekt is of course focusing on The Witcher 4, and CD Projekt has suggested Cyberpunk 2 won’t be out until at least 2030.
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at [email protected] or confidentially at [email protected].