Update: Cyberpunk 2077 Sequel Enters Pre-Production, Now Titled Cyberpunk 2

Oof, okay… so today’s one of those days, right? Where you think you’re just grabbing a coffee and then—bam!—Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel sneak attacks you. CD Projekt spills the beans: it’s officially in pre-production. Yep, it dropped its old codename—bye-bye, Project Orion—and now everyone’s calling it Cyberpunk 2. Or, okay, maybe some do. The PR manager, Ola Sondej, chimed in saying that’s not like, set in stone. Just another jaunt in the Cyberpunk hood. Oh, what a lovely mess!

Oh, and during this investor call, CD Projekt’s co-CEO, Michał Nowakowski (say that three times fast), plays it cool about when it’s dropping. Some rumor-monger tosses out 2030 or so, and he’s all, “Well, maybe, kinda, could be… but hey, every project is its own weird animal.” So that’s clear as mud.

Backtracking a sec here—Wednesday was full of surprises. The sequel news came out during CD Projekt’s latest financial results chat. Big kudos flying around for the dev team, who pushed Cyberpunk 2 outta the concept oven and into the pre-production frying pan.

Oh, and speaking of teams, there’s now 96 peeps on this Cyberpunk gig, up from 84. But hold your horses, Witcher fans—Witcher 4 is hogging 422 devs! No joke. And then there’s also this “shared services” crowd—131 folks, probably lost in translation jobs or arguing over QA stuff. Who can keep it all straight?

Meanwhile, hot off the press: the Phantom Liberty expansion’s rocked 10 million sales, while The Witcher 3’s blowing out its birthday candles with 60 million copies sold. Seriously, that’s a whole lotta people wandering through Dogtown and monster bashing with Geralt, the grumpy-sweetheart-slash-monster-hunter. Love that guy.

But, hey, names might change—could they go slap a year on Cyberpunk 2, like Cyberpunk 2077’s granddad did? The ever-wise Mike Pondsmith, the dude of tabletop RPG fame, kinda hints that we might find ourselves in a busted-up Chicago cityscape. Eek! If only I could predict where this adventure’s gonna take us next.