Speaking to
WCCFTech, Liu revealed that in
Cyberpunk 2077, the police force is "up for hire" and that "laws exist to take bribes from corporations." The corporation could bribe the government to pass a law and then used the corrupt police force to send the law after players. Night City is "a city of people trying to constantly get one up on each other" and it's "not a place where you want to trust the government," explained Liu.
The
Night City police force isn't the only group that may come after the player character. CD Projekt RED is also working on a gameplay system where NPCs will "not be very nice" to players if they start killing many people and that "powerful" people may come after the player.
The developer compared it to
The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt, where guards may come after a player if they kill a villager in the middle of a busy town but not if they did it in the middle of nowhere. The
Cyberpunk 2077 team has confirmed that players will be able to kill many NPCs, but
not children or story characters, so there will likely be many ways to test out the system.
Something Liu wouldn't talk about, however, is if players can go to jail. Asked if players could commit enough crimes to be arrested, Liu wouldn't say. Many players would probably enjoy having the player character's friend, Jackie, try to break them out of jail or to hear what
Keanu Reeves' character Johnny Silverhand has to say about the arrest.
The wanted system is just one of several big gameplay systems that the
Cyberpunk 2077 team is working on.
Cyberpunk series creator Mike Pondsmith also revealed that the video game would have some sort of
choice system that works a bit like the system in the
Cyberpunk 2020 board game. In that system, NPCs seem to "remember" if the player has done something bad or good to them. It's unclear if CD Projekt RED is using the system like that or if it has been rolled into these other systems, but fans will be ready to find out.
Cyberpunk 2077 will be released on April 16, 2020 on PC, PS4, and Xbox One.