Cyberpunk 2077 was able to overcome some substantial early hurdles to eventually become a technical showpiece on both consoles and PCs, and also delivered a well-received expansion with Phantom Liberty. The future of the series looks bright as well, with a sequel in the early stages of development. That said, there is one persistent fan theory that has continued to hang around, but after 5 years, that theory has finally been debunked.
The fan theory in question relates to how the game conceals loading screens, specifically referring to the theory that elevators in the game are solely there to hide the game’s loading times. After 5 years of the theory sticking around, Cyberpunk Creative Director Igor Sarzynski has taken to social media to shoot it down once and for all, making it clear that elevators are there because they make sense, not because the game is trying to hide loading times.
On Bluesky, Sarzynski wrote, “Mini rant: no, elevators in cyberpunk are not ‘cleverly concealed loading screens’. you really think you can traverse whole city and enter a huge complex interior with no loading screens but we need to do elevator tricks to load a penthouse?”
Sarzyński then wrote, “Elevator is there because it makes sense. we could make it transparent if we wanted. this engine is a miracle. i will not accept slander.” Sarzynski was then asked why they dumped the engine for Unreal 5, and Sarzynski replied, “we wanna make games, not engines ^^”.
Cyberpunk 2077 2’s Move To Unreal Should Help Avoid Cyberpunk’s Launch Issues
It’s no secret that Cyberpunk 2077 had a rough launch, with a myriad of bugs and technical issues across platforms. It ended up even being pulled from sale for a while, but eventually CD Projekt Red got the game up to par. Subsequent updates continued to refine the game until Phantom Liberty’s release, which finally had the game at the point many had hoped it would be at launch. CD Projekt Red has already revealed that they are switching from their internal engine to Unreal 5, and that should only help keep those issues from happening in the future.
CD Projekt Red previously revealed that they were switching from their Red Engine to Unreal 5 for The Witcher 4, which is in active development. Epic’s engines have a reputation for being easy to work with and accommodating across all platforms, so moving to that engine for The Witcher 4 should help avoid the majority of proprietary issues at launch that Cyberpunk 2077 had to deal with.
Not only that, but Cyberpunk 2077 2 is expected to hit after The Witcher 4, which means the studio can work out the kinks and issues moving from one engine to the other, and in theory, it should mean a much smoother process for Cyberpunk 2. There’s also the fact that the studio has already created the foundation for the franchise in the first game, and that experience will likely pay dividends in big ways as they work on the sequel.
The Cyberpunk sequel is early in development, and currently has no release date.
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