Cyberpunk 2 Update—CDPR Developing a Much Bigger Sequel Packed With Quests

Cyberpunk 2 has been sitting in the distance for years under its old Project Orion name, but it is becoming much easier to see what CD Projekt Red is actually building. The studio has shared another major development update, confirming that the sequel's team has grown to 184 developers as of July 31, 2026. 

If you've been following the project, the scale is becoming one of the most compelling parts of it. CDPR is working on a giant world that includes Nite City and another city, and they’re also working on smarter crowds, smarter NPCs, more systemic encounters, new streaming tech, and Unreal Engine 5. 

The latest financial results give you a sense of how quickly things are moving. 

When Cyberpunk 2 completed its conceptual phase and entered pre-production in 2025, CDPR had only 96 developers assigned to the project. That number increased to around 135 earlier this year, and it has now reached 184, with the company saying it expanded the Cyberpunk 2 team during the past three months to support the game's current development phase.

That means the team is now almost twice the size it was when pre-production began. More importantly, CD Projekt Red is still hiring for the project, so 184 developers probably won't be the final number you'll see as development continues. 

The Witcher 4 currently has 519 developers working on it, meaning CD Projekt Red is now managing two enormous projects at the same time. Rather than completing one major RPG and moving most of its workforce onto the next game, the company has spent years restructuring its development organization so that multiple teams can work on its biggest franchises simultaneously. 

That change could be especially important for Cyberpunk 2 because the sequel doesn't have to remain in a relatively small conceptual phase while The Witcher 4 takes up most of the company's resources. CDPR can now build both franchises at the same time, allowing Cyberpunk 2 to continue expanding while The Witcher 4 remains in production. 

The way CDPR has changed since Cyberpunk 2077 also matters here. The studio learned some difficult lessons from the original game's production and launch, then spent years rebuilding the game, improving its major systems through Update 2.0, and releasing Phantom Liberty. 

Cyberpunk has also become one of the company's two central franchises instead of remaining a massive experiment alongside The Witcher. That gives Cyberpunk 2 a very different position inside the company. Cyberpunk 2 is now part of a broader development structure designed to keep both franchises moving forward, rather than being a single giant project that requires most of CDPR's attention.

One of the biggest areas where CDPR appears to want a major improvement is crowds and NPC behavior. 

A recruitment listing for a Cyberpunk 2 lead encounter designer says the studio wants to create what it describes as the most realistic and reactive crowd system in any game to date. That is a particularly notable goal considering how much criticism Cyberpunk 2077 received for its crowd behavior when it launched.

Night City could fill its streets with large numbers of people, but those NPCs were not always able to respond convincingly when you disrupted the world around them. In Cyberpunk 2, CDPR appears to be treating that limitation as something it wants to address at a much deeper level.

The same encounter designer position provides more details about how the studio is approaching gameplay situations. The role covers quests, open-world content, level design, environments, and gameplay, with the developer responsible for creating combat encounters that support multiple solutions. 

Those encounters can involve NPC setups, interactive objects, loot, and environmental elements, suggesting that CDPR wants different parts of the world to work together rather than treating combat as a series of isolated enemy groups.

That might give you more options for how to approach situations depending on what tools and opportunities are available to you. Instead of simply entering an area and fighting a predetermined group of enemies, the environment and NPC behavior could become a bigger part of how an encounter plays out. 

Another recruitment listing provides additional information about NPC animation and combat. CD Projekt Red has been looking for a senior gameplay animator focused on NPCs, with responsibilities covering player and NPC combat, locomotion, different enemy behaviors, combat states, and multiple encounter scenarios.

The listing mentions things like motion matching but also stresses that the NPC movement and combat must be responsive and readable during the moment-to-moment gameplay.

Experience with shooter and action-oriented games is also considered valuable. Taken together, those details suggest that CDPR is paying close attention not only to how NPCs look but also to how they move and respond while you're actually playing.

There has been speculation that CD Projekt Red could move Cyberpunk into third person for the sequel, but the recruitment material continues to reference shooter gameplay, FPS mechanics, weapon animation, gameplay animation, player combat, and experience with action-oriented games. 

Still, the information currently available points more toward an evolution of Cyberpunk 2077's first-person action RPG foundation than a complete change in perspective or genre. That doesn't mean the sequel will play exactly like Cyberpunk 2077, especially with the number of systems CDPR appears to be developing.

The size of the world is another area where the company's development plans become interesting. An engineering position connected to Cyberpunk 2 specifically discusses streaming technology designed to let developers build a massive world while keeping the performance impact as low as possible. 

The work includes world streaming, new data pipelines, streaming optimization, multithreaded performance systems, console optimization, and tools that allow artists and designers to build content efficiently around these technologies.

The same position confirms that the team is developing this work with Unreal Engine 5. 

CDPR is moving away from Red Engine for the next Cyberpunk, but it isn't simply taking Unreal Engine 5 as-is and building the game on top of it. The company is creating its own technology and systems around the engine to handle the demands of its world, which becomes particularly important when you're dealing with a dense and vertically designed environment like Cyberpunk's.

The word "massive" also carries more weight when you look at what is known about the game's locations. Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the Cyberpunk tabletop universe, has visited CD Projekt Red and seen some of what the team is working on. He has revealed that Night City will be joined by another city, and when describing the atmosphere of this new location, he compared it to "Chicago gone wrong."

That description quickly led to headlines claiming that Cyberpunk 2 would officially take place in Chicago, but that goes further than what Pondsmith actually confirmed. He was describing the atmosphere and visual identity of the second city rather than giving its official name. 

Instead, the information currently points toward Cyberpunk 2 featuring another major city alongside Night City. You still don't know the size of that second city, how the two locations will connect, or how travel between them will work. 

Even with those unanswered questions, the picture is becoming much clearer. CDPR is describing Cyberpunk 2 as having a massive world, while Pondsmith has already seen another city being created for the game and confirmed that Night City remains part of the experience.

World streaming clearly poses a major engineering challenge early in development. 

CDPR is building new streaming technology, data pipelines, optimization systems, and development tools around Unreal Engine 5 rather than simply relying on the engine's standard capabilities. 

Combined with the growing development team, more advanced NPC systems, reactive crowds, and multiple major locations, Cyberpunk 2 is starting to look like a much larger project than the early Project Orion days suggested.

The most significant difference, however, may be the studio behind it. CD Projekt Red now has more than 1,000 developers across its development organization, with hundreds working on The Witcher 4 and a rapidly expanding team dedicated to Cyberpunk 2. 

So expect Cyberpunk 2 to continue growing substantially as production continues. There’s still a long way to go before CDPR can really show off the game, but the latest numbers from the team, recruitment listings, technical work, and location details are giving you a much clearer picture of the studio’s intent.