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Miles Tost (Acting Level Design Lead, CD PROJEKT RED)
Location: Room 303, South Hall
Date: Tuesday, March 21
Time: 1:20 pm - 2:20 pm
Pass Type: All Access Pass, Summits Pass
Topic: Design
Format: Lecture
Vault Recording: Video
Audience Level: All
Making non-linear levels where each path feels rewarding to the player is difficult—especially in an open-world game with the goal of maximizing the player's freedom by providing an endless amount of options. This is a lesson the CDPR Level Design team fully learned to understand after Cyberpunk 2077 first launched in December 2020.
This talk will provide an overview of the design intentions behind the levels in the game, and look at how these intentions did not always fully receive the anticipated reception by players. It will elaborate on what the team was able to learn from this and, finally, how these lessons were turned into principles and techniques that can be applied by level designers to make those branching paths feel more rewarding and special, while still keeping things production-friendly.
Attendees will gain insight into the design process and ideas driving Cyberpunk 2077's level design and some of the shortcomings these brought. They will also gain awareness of key factors that contribute to making paths in non-linear levels feel rewarding and methods and ways to implement these.
This is for designers and artists alike, especially if their focus is on creating non-linear video game levels. It's open to all experience levels.