Cyberpunk 2077 - CD Projekt RED discusses enemies that are “Bullet Sponges”

Cyberpunk 2077 continues to look better and better with each subsequent game reveal. The last Night City Wire introduced the different life paths players can take along with the weapons at their disposal.

However, since this is technically a first-person RPG and shooter, how is the development team battling possible "bullet sponge" enemies?

Senior gameplay designer Pawel Kapala discussed this with VG247 in a new interview and noted that:

“At the core of the game, if we're talking about the normal NPCs you encounter on the street, they can have different rarities, I would say. Most of the NPCs you will encounter are normal, just henchmen. And if you are continuing to level up, and if you are at the enemy's level, you should never feel the bullet sponge effect. They will feel too quick to kill, too fast to attack. However, they are also quite deadly, so you basically need to use cover and move around a lot. ”

Then there are “elite” enemies, who can be officers or other high ranking henchmen. They will take a little more damage to fall.

“Some of the NPCs would be, like at the officer level, so they are more elite enemies that do even more damage, and they get a little more punishment. However, what we choose to do there is basically to ensure that the coup reactions on our NPCs are always reproduced. "

“ This is a big problem in most of the games I've played that have bullet sponges; that you basically don't see any kind of reaction on the NPC when you're hitting him. It looks like you're literally shooting at a sponge, as if there's nothing there.

And we never want to have that. So, we're still going to throw coup reactions on those NPCs. You will still see that they are hurting themselves. They will stumble, they will fall from their shooting. ”

It's an interesting approach and one that solves problems that have plagued games like The Division for years. If enemies react to damage, then it appears that your actions are having an impact, even if they take a little longer to kill. We will have to see how this plays out during the actual game, but it looks promising. Of course, how it will affect non-human enemies - like machines, for example - is yet to be seen.

Cyberpunk 2077 is scheduled for release on November 19 for Xbox One, PS4 and PC. Stay tuned for more details in the coming months.