Cyberpunk 2077 got off to a disastrous start in 2020. However, the developers at CD Projekt stuck with the title and improved the role-playing game with every patch and hotfix. The cyberpunk game was celebrated by fans, not least with the Phantom Liberty expansion. So would Cyberpunk 2077 have benefited from an early access phase like the incredibly popular Baldur's Gate 3? Quest Director Paweł Sasko says that you shouldn't always assume that a pre-launch phase will be successful.
The situation of Baldur's Gate 3 is special
“Maybe there's an opportunity for AAA[Spiele]”To take advantage of early access,” said Sasko in an interview with colleagues at PC Gamer. “But I would be careful about that because there is a very specific situation with Larian here.” An example was the existing fan love for the Baldur's game. Gate series or the mechanics from Larian's own series Divinity: Original Sin. The developer further noted that Larian was “really the first studio to go from AA to AAA” and the launch of Baldur's Gate 3 that catapulted the game “definitely into AAA” territory.
“Not all early access games are successful,” Sasko continued. In his opinion, Larian is “probably the first [Studio]which really had so much success with Early Access.” It would be quite difficult to replicate that success for other games, says the developer. CDPR's ambition, on the other hand, would be to have a banging release with everything so close to perfection is as it can be.”Pretty much exactly how we delivered Phantom Liberty,” said Paweł Sasko.
The studio prefers to allow time for “late identification,” a phase toward the end of development in which developers can discover errors and bugs that are “obscure and so difficult to detect.” “That's what we did with Phantom Liberty and what worked really, really well,” said Sasko. “We kind of had to finish early and we were like 'okay, let's just play this shit so much.'”
Quelle: PC Gamer