Cyberpunk 2077: Differences Between the E3 and Gamescom Demos - Gamescom 2018

Cyberpunk 2077 and the team at CD Projekt Red have brought their gameplay demo, initially shown at E3 2018, to Gamescom - with a few small but very important differences.

First and foremost, the new demo features a playable male character -- modeled to look like the one shown in the E3 2018 trailer -- while the E3 demo was locked to the female avatar. The demo audience was allowed to choose which gender they wanted to watch (both named "V"), and there were differences in dialogue and NPC interactions throughout each demo. We also saw, in the moment where V wakes up after a night of good ol’ fashioned debauchery, that both the male and female versions of the character have spent the night with a man, marking the first time we’ve seen one of the LGBTQA+ relationships that are possible in 2077.

Additionally, this updated demo showed a new path through the mission that was on display. During the E3 demo, V received a credit chit with 50,000ed (Euro-Dollars, the currency of the Cyberpunk world) from a Militech agent called Stout to purchase a stolen drone from the Maelstrom gang. Since Stout was tracking the boosted hardware, the chit had a virus on it that would damage the systems, and during that initial presentation, the Maelstrom gang attempted to use it, got burned, and immediately started a fight with V and her companion, Jackie.

Cyberpunk 2077 - New Gameplay Demo Screenshots

During the Gamescom demo, however, V warns the Maelstrom leader -- an over-teched tough guy named Royce -- who thanks him for the heads up, delivers the spider bot and sends V and Jackie on their way. However, the Maelstrom gang makes the mistake of insulting V’s jacket (maybe his Cool stat wasn’t high enough) and Jackie offers to buy V a new, cooler jacket if they retrieve the now-virus-free 50,000ed cred chit. That means fighting their way through all of the cyberpsycho Maelstrom goons, but as we saw at E3, Jackie and V are more than capable of taking down a few booster gangers.

Additionally, after defeating an exo-suit, chain-gun armed Royce in a frenzied gunfight, we headed outside expecting to meet with Stout (as we had at E3), but instead found another Militech agent in her place. Apparently tapping into the Maelstrom network was her last-ditch effort to prove her value to Militech. Since we tipped off the booster gang to the malware on the chit, it seems as though Stout’s contract had been terminated (likely with extreme prejudice), serving as another example of the consequences that players could find themselves facing when we get our hands on 2077 for ourselves.

For more on Cyberpunk 2077, check out our play-by-play breakdown of the E3 demo, and why it’s important for CDPR that Cyberpunk was a tabletop RPG before becoming one of the most hotly-anticipated games of all time.

JR is an editor at IGN, who is excited for when Cyberpunk comes out but is terrified of writing our wiki. You can find him manifesting this anxiety on Twitter.

20Q #XX: undefined

Cyberpunk 2077: Differences Between the E3 and Gamescom Demos - Gamescom 2018

Subtle differences add up in the newest demo of CD Projekt Red's sci-fi RPG.

Cyberpunk 2077 - New Gameplay Demo Screenshots

In This Article