CD Projekt Red announced that a number of veteran developers will be joining its Boston and Vancouver offices to work on a follow-up to Cyberpunk 2077, codenamed Project Orion.
As announced on the official CD Projekt Red website, the sequel will be spearheaded by its North American arm with core team members behind Cyberpunk 2077 and its Phantom Liberty expansion DLC moving to studios in Boston and Vancouver to lead the development.
The core members include Cyberpunk 2077 director Gabriel Amatangelo, associate game director Paweł Sasko, and creative director Igor Sarzyński.
Cinematic director Andrzej Stopa, environment art director Kacper Niepokólczycki, acting lead quest designer Sarah Grümmer, and engineering director Kacper Kościeński will also join the development team.
Alongside developers who had worked on Cyberpunk 2077, several industry professionals will also be joining CD Projekt Red for Project Orion, including 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 Entertainment, and contributed to renowned titles such as New World, Diablo III, and Apex Legends.
Meanwhile, Barnard’s credentials include being a game director at Massive Entertainment and Ubisoft, as well as a gameplay director at Hitman studio IO Interactive.
Villani previously lent his technical expertise as VP of Technology on a number of WB Game titles, including technical direction on various Mortal Kombat games.
For the writers, Megill is an award-winning writer with 20 years of experience in games, stretching her portfolio with writing contributions to Control, Dishonored: Death of The Outsider, Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, Guild Wars 2, and the upcoming Fable.
As for Freed, he is The New York Times bestselling novelist, narrative designer, and comic book writer with more than 15 years of game writing experience, previously contributed his work as Lead Writer at BioWare with titles such as Star Wars: The Old Republic.
He also contributed to the writing and consultation of various major studios, including DICE, Obsidian Entertainment, Wizards of the Coast, and 20th Century Fox’s games division FoxNext.
Project Orion, the follow-up to Cyberpunk 2077, is currently in the early stages of development and the North American division of CD Projekt Red is hiring developers to work on the game.