E3 2019: You Can Complete Cyberpunk 2077 Without Killing Anyone

CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 is all about player choice, being an RPG and all. Based on what we've seen since the game's unveiling, it looks like you'll encounter plenty of shady characters and will have the ability to take them out in a number of creative and deadly ways. But as we learned during a behind-closed-doors gameplay presentation at E3 2019, you can also get through the entire game without killing anyone at all.

Whether you choose to put people in the morgue or the hospital will have some impact on how the story plays out, too. Lead quest designer Pawel Sasko told GameSpot that how you deal with the various folks you encounter won't necessarily matter all the time, but there will be story moments where the finality of your actions will have lasting consequences.

"This is more of a personal choice of the play style of the player," Sasko said. "However, there are cases when it's taken into account because it's important. It's important that you knock down the dude or you kill the dude, and so on. ...But if you, as a player, are going through, let's say the Grand Imperial Mall [a location in CD Projekt RED's E3 demo], you are knocking down 40 Animals [the name of one of the game's gangs] and you decided to, I don't know, spare a fifth of them, that's not really going to have that much impact."

The gameplay demo, which lasted nearly an hour, showed off two different ways to approach the same mission. Using "developer magic," CDPR switched from a male Netrunner (hacker) character to a female character with extreme strength--you won't be able to do that in the real game, so this was for the sake of the presentation--to highlight the differences. For example, while a Netrunner can hack a turret to make it target enemies, a brute-force build will let you rip the gun off its turret and wield it like any other weapon.

While we only saw a little bit of stealth during the Netrunner portions, CDPR made it clear that you will be able to play the entire game peacefully if you so choose. You will be able to sneak, hack, and otherwise avoid combat scenarios, though it's not clear if there are situations where you have to fight if, say, things go terribly wrong and you fail to sneak around properly. We'll know for sure when the game releases for PC, PS4, and Xbox One on April 16, 2020. In the meantime, check out our previews of the choice-based gameplay and the ways your decisions will impact the story.

More E3 News:

• Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 teased
• New Xbox console, Scarlett, revealed
• Xbox Scarlett details: 8K, 120 FPS, SSD
• Elden Ring is From Software and George RR Martin's new game
• Cyberpunk 2077 release date announced
• Final Fantasy VII Remake release date announced
• Marvel's Avengers revealed