Takemura, Viktor or Meredith: many cyberpunk players would have liked more choice in romances. A developer explains why CDPR decided against it.
In Night City you can not only become rich or hunt cyberpsychos, but also find the great love. However, the possible romances of Cyberpunk 2077 always cause discussions among players, especially the male partners – they are pretty well hidden and don’t play a big role in the story – don’t worry, with our love guide you will find them anyway.
Many fans would have hoped for a larger selection, as is usual in the Bioware games, for example. A certain Corpo with neck implants in particular has won the hearts of the community: Goro Takemura, who plays an important role in V’s story. Now a developer explains why he didn’t become a romance option.
Why is there no Takemura romance?
Whoever is around in the cyberpunk-Reddit or Youtube for a while, inevitably comes across many posts asking more or less the same question: Why is V not allowed to flirt with Takemura, even though they can clearly flirt with each other? Many would welcome a male romance that actually plays a role in the plot.
In other words, as is the case with the female options Judy and Panam. Not surprisingly, these two have also become your most popular partners. Takemura even lends herself to this for story reasons:
Fans are not alone in their Takemura love, as Lead Quest Designer Pawel Sasko tells us in his weekly Twitch stream: Even the test players giving feedback during development had asked for a possible relationship with Takemura.
Many reasons spoke against it
Also, his English (and Japanese) voice actor Rome Kanda keeps showing his enthusiasm on Twitterfor the idea. But CDPR decided against it anyway – according to Sasko, because it didn’t feel right. In response to a question to that effect in the chat, he replies:
“I can tell you a little bit about the Takemura thing behind the scenes. (…) We wondered within the team very early on whether he should get his own romance. Even our QA was like, hey, don’t you think there should be something?
We had a lot of discussions about how that could go. And then we came to the conclusion that it wouldn’t feel right because of his role in the story. We were worried that it would be weird. Also, not all players are fans of Takemura, for some he is still a servant of Saburo. And while he might have been interesting as a romance, as designers we just didn’t find a point in the story where it would have fit.”
With that, he sparked some outrage among fans of the character. At least enough so that shortly afterwards another Quest designer, Philipp Weber, clarified: This falls a little short. He writes:
“Pawel is only partly right. The romance was deemed unfeasible because Takemura was created quite late in development. This meant that we had to tell the story with Arasaka first and foremost and didn’t have much time or budget left during development to include complete scenes for a romance. It was only under these circumstances that we judged it to be unworkable, but from a creative point of view we found it very fitting. That’s why the hints, messages and so on are in the game.”
With that, of course, he rekindled hopes for a DLC that would deepen the relationship. That new content is to come through the expansions is already known, even if there are no dates for free and larger DLCs as yet. We already have a few very clear wishes, apart from romances:
Why other characters didn’t become romances either
Many players would have liked other characters like Ripperdoc Viktor or militech manager Meredith Stoutas options as well – with Meredith, after all, V can enjoy a one-night stand, but not a full-fledged relationship. But Sasko explains why CDPR deliberately limited the options:
“Our biggest goal is that the quality of the game is good. You can’t make all the characters romances because then it becomes weird if the game is just a series of romances and you can start a relationship with anyone at any time.”
He did not say whether there might be a compromise in the future that would give players a little more choice – or deepen existing romances. Editor Natalie would be guaranteed to be happy about this after her relationship with River left her sorely disappointed:
What do you think? Do you wish there was more choice, more depth or something completely different about relationships? Does a good romance give you more immersion or do you do without it anyway? Feel free to write us in the comments.
