CD Projekt Red has announced the appointment of a number of veteran developers to work on its Cyberpunk 2077 sequel, codenamed Project Orion. The development is being led by the company’s North American arm, with studios in Boston and Vancouver.
The core team members behind Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty expansion have moved to North America to lead the development of the sequel. This includes game director Gabriel Amatangelo, associate game director Paweł Sasko, and creative director Igor Sarzyński. The studio also revealed that they will be joined by Dan Hernberg as executive producer, Ryan Barnard as design director, Alan Villani as engineering director, Anna Megill as lead writer, and Alexander Freed as writer.
Hernberg previously served as head of production at Amazon Games and Panic Button, and lead product manager at Blizzard, with credits including New World, Apex Legends, and Diablo 3. Barnard previously worked as game director at Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft, and gameplay director at Hitman studio IO Interactive. Villani was formerly VP of technology on various Warner Bros. projects including Mortal Kombat games, and most recently served as studio tech director at The Molasses Flood, which CD Projekt acquired in 2021. Anna Megill’s writing credits include Control, Dishonored: Death of The Outsider, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Guild Wars 2, and the upcoming Fable. Freed has over 15 years of game writing experience, including as lead writer on multiple BioWare projects including Star Wars: The Old Republic.
CD Projekt stated in October that Project Orion was in the “conceptual design” phase and expects to have about 80 people working on the game by the end of this year. The company is currently hiring for various positions at its North American studios and joint CEO Michal Nowakowski mentioned that they are considering including multiplayer elements in the Cyberpunk sequel.