Nightborn has been inspired by many great works of media, including literature, such as Bram Stoker's Dracula and Anne Rice's Vampire Chronicles, movies, such as Lost Boys and Sinners, and video games, such as Fallout: New Vegas and Vampyr. An RPG you might not associate with the Vampire genre, yet was still a huge inspiration for Nightborn is CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077,
A Legendary Redemption
Cyberpunk 2077 is known for a great many things: An amazingly immersive Night City, deep and emotionally resonant stories, a faithful yet evolved version of R. Talsorian's tabletop RPG world, and one of the most troubled video game launches in history. The game at launch riddled with bugs and had a lot of trouble with lower spec systems including some consoles.
Through diligence and hard work, CD Projekt Red worked on patches until the original vision was restored, all culminating around the time of Phantom Liberty, Cyberpunk 2077's expansion was released. Not everyone agrees, but this journey is generally considered one of gaming's greatest redemption stories of all time.
Superstar Power
Cyberpunk 2077's dystopian near-future depicts a world where corporations rule and (cyber)punks rage against the machine. One of the clever ways CD Projekt emphasized in-world significance of cultural markers was to mix real life popular culture with the storyline. They did this by casting the movie star Keanu Reeves as Johnny Sliverhand, the Rocker signature character from the Tabletop game. This made it easier for a player to understand the gravitas Johnny Silverhand had in Night City. assuming they knew Keanu's work.
CD Projekt Red did a similar thing with video game streamers or adjacent personalities, such as CohhCarnage, Jesse Cox, and Alanah Pearce, who were all given models and NPC roles in the game. These served as fun encounters and easter eggs for their fans.
Inspirations
Nightborn does not have the budget to land a Keanu Reeves or Idris Elba, but the idea of putting streamers or video game industry folk in the game is being worked on. It may surprise you who is already involved, but we would like to hear from you who you'd like to see in Nightborn as well.
New Orleans is the setting of Nightborn. Cyberpunk did an amazing job making Night City come to life and be effectively a character in the narrative. While Nightborn's New Orleans will be nothing close to the scale of Cyberpunk's Night City, you may notice some extra details while exploring which were inspired by the impressiveness of CDPR's work.
Divergence
Hopefully, Nightborn's launch will differ from Cyberpunk's. Releasing a Nightborn Demo, running a global Beta test, observing core optimization principles, and the game being in a much much tighter scope should help prevent a buggy release.
Another difference between Nightborn an Cyberpunk is Cyberpunk was designed to be primarily first-person. Nightborn will have free toggle between First-Person and Third-Person, for most gameplay except for dialogue, which will be First-Person facing the subject being spoken to. This should afford for the player to play in the style they prefer for combat, stealth, and traversal.
What do you think? Is there more we should borrow from Cyberpunk 2077? Are there pitfalls we should take extra care to avoid? Please let us know and comment below.