The development process can often leave a lot on the cutting room floor, especially for any game that has gone through as long of a process as Cyberpunk 2077. While the gameplay revealed so far looks fantastic, some of the earliest hinted features may have met the axe as a result of the years long development cycle that the game has undergone.
This latest reveal comes from an interview with Cyberpunk 2077 Level Designer Max Pears, where he commented on the verticality and mobility of the game. Unfortunately, this does mean that a popular gameplay feature for fast paced first-person shooters will be missing, even though Pears does confirm that there will be plenty of other options for players to go crazy at high speeds.
The feature in question, is the ability to run on walls in order to quickly cross gaps, scale buildings, and all together add a third dimension to combat and level traversal. According to Pears, the wall running feature has been removed because of design reasons, although no more information was given as to exactly what the design conflicts were that caused the removal. It's likely that a number of locations have been reorganized and rebuilt over the course of development, which has added to the way excited fans still aren't sure how to play Cyberpunk 2077 to its best limits.
Pears' specific comment on wall running reads as follows:
Ah, the wall running. That is something that we removed due to design reasons, but there's still going to be a lot of flexibility in how you move, that's for sure
Even without this feature, the latest trailers show that Cyberpunk 2077 has made major improvements since early development, and still includes a considerable amount of mobility. This does, however, explain why recent gameplay footage and developer insights have avoided the topic of wall running, thanks to the feature being removed. So, while wall running might no longer fit into what the game has become, this is likely to make room for a new approach at level design that CD Projekt Red has developed over the last few years.
Of course, one feature was never going to be the difference between most players choosing whether or not to buy Cyberpunk 2077, as many more features like customization, gunplay, and mobility still exist in the game. Maybe the ability to pet cats will sway a few players towards buying, but as fun as wall running is, its absence likely won't be what turns the majority of players away. However, this does shine a light onto how much the game has changed over the course of development.
Cyberpunk 2077 will be released for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on November 19, with PS5, Stadia, and Xbox Series X versions also in development.
Source: Gamereactor