Cyberpunk 2077: latest information from the Night City Wire ahead of launch
Keanu Reeves or Johnny Silverhand if you prefer
The fifth episode of the Night City Wire began with a short trailer dedicated to the important and charismatic figure of Johnny Silverhand, played by the famous actor Keanu Reeves . Within the video game, the character of Johnny will accompany us on his path of revenge against the corporations that govern the city of Night City and will put us in front of numerous choices that will radically change the main plot. The character has origins linked to the military world, but is often associated as a rock star or a rebel, a sort of symbol for many inhabitants of the game world. During an interview with the actor on the recent Night City Wire, Keanu Reeves recounted how he enjoyed bringing Johnny Silverhand to life. In his career he has already had numerous dubbing experiences, but never of such a high level. Keanu was surprised that he had to do the same scene several times depending on the choice made by the protagonist in the video game. He had to have the situation in mind and react differently based on the choices made by the one who holds the joypad. According to Keanu, the work done by CD Project Red is truly gigantic and we won't see something like this for many years.The motion capture part was certainly nothing new for Keanu Reeves, having already had similar experiences for other projects including the famous film Matrix. According to the actor's words, the basic technologies are essentially the same, but clearly the evolution has brought new techniques and optimizations, allowing a real-time capture and monitoring of the movements of each single muscle. In this way he created an entire library of animations, expressions, gestures and other movements, which was then used by the developers to animate the character of Johnny Silverhand in Cyberpunk 2077.
Soundtrack and effects sound
The music, the soundtrack, the audio tracks present in various environments in the game are undoubtedly a fundamental part in such a project. The soundtrack and audio effects help us to immerse ourselves more in the game and to connect emotionally with the virtual world. Each mission, part of the city, environment or situation in Cyberpunk 2077 will have its own sound, created by numerous artists from around the world. The audio makers decided to take a cue from the music of the 80s and 90s, considering musical genres such as rave, IDM and industrial and then transport them into the imaginary future of Cyberpunk. After months of work, a huge library of sounds, effects, background music and other mainly electronic audio elements was created, using various types of synthesizers and many other particular digital and analog instruments.It seems that the artists had a lot of fun in their new creative experience. Many of them have never worked on a video game, but it seems like creating 150 unique tracks for Cyberpunk was really exciting. Some of these songs will also be premiered on major streaming music services like Spotify and YouTube. Being copyrighted, the game will give us the option to disable them while we are recording gameplay or broadcasting our adventure on Twitch to avoid problems with these platforms. Definitely a great feature for content creators, who will be able to enjoy other unprotected replacement tracks so as not to ruin the experience. On PC there will be a special item in the settings, which will allow you to activate or not the "Content Creator" mode, while on consoles it will be automatically set if we are recording or broadcasting with the native functions of the game machine.
Dubbing
Although the game has not yet arrived in our hands in its final version, we have been able to appreciate the enormous attention to detail invested in the development. As an icing on the cake, CD Project RED has decided to dub Cyberpunk 2077 in eleven different languages, including Italian. Typically when such work is done, especially in a title with such a large amount of dialogue, the dubbing is superimposed on the facial animations created for the original language. Just like in movies, we simply see audio in a certain language overlaid on the actors' original lips. In Cyberpunk 2077, on the other hand, each language will have its own different facial expressiveness in order to synchronize the movement of the lips in a perfect way to greatly increase the degree of immersion.Manually program the facial movements for eleven different languages, however much good are the developers of CD Project RED, it would have been a very expensive and long job anyway. So they turned to Toronto-based JALI, which developed a dedicated procedural technology based on artificial intelligence. The JALI software is able to create a realistic movement of the lips and facial muscles, starting directly from an audio track containing a recorded voice. Thanks to it, it was therefore easy to change the facial expressions of each individual character in the game to make them match perfectly with each of the eleven dubbed languages. In the video in this paragraph you can admire the result obtained through this technology, observing the various gameplay clips taken from Cyberpunk 2077 in different languages.
Gameplay Trailer
The guys from CD Project RED have wanted to highlight the enormous work done for Cyberpunk 2077 in the gameplay trailer proposed at the end of the Night City Wire. The game world created represents America following an economic crisis and a nuclear war, which has transformed the continent into a Far West of the future. Much of the territory has been divided into war zones devoid of any law, while many people have gathered in Night City, where citizens are promised a civilized and wealthy future. In reality, gangs, corporate agents, scammers, political fanatics and other criminals are hiding between the streets of the city and its suburbs ready to scarify anything for their own personal interest, involving even the common inhabitants of the city in terrifying firefights. br>Our character as an urban mercenary without too many loyalties will try to climb the social pyramid of Night City. As a real role-playing game, both the creation and the development of the character are present as two fundamental mechanics within the gameplay and will undoubtedly manage to guarantee a good variety and choices to the player. Precisely the latter will allow us to move the plot according to our decisions, radically changing the course of events. In order to achieve all this we will therefore need good equipment, lots of skills and a good reputation. In the game we will be able to buy hundreds of weapons and upgrades. Going around the streets of Night City will allow us to gain experience, which will improve our skills and make us acquire new talents. In short, the ingredients for a great masterpiece are really all there. We just have to wait until December 10 to get our hands on this fantastic video game and find out if the developers of CD Project Red have managed to put all the pieces in place.
