Development

Cyberpunk 2077 was developed by CD Projekt Red's studios. The game drew its influences from the 1982 film Blade Runner, manga and anime series Ghost in the Shell, and video games System Shock (1994) and Deus Ex (2000). Pondsmith's follow-up to Cyberpunk V3.0, Cyberpunk Red, also made an impact on the lore. The game cost an estimated 1.2 billion Polish złoty (US$313 million) to develop, making it one of the most expensive games ever made.

The game entered pre-production with approximately 50 staff members after CD Projekt Red finished The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt – Blood and Wine (2016). The team was expanded over time, surpassing the size of the team for The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (2015). After the release of The Wild Hunt, the team began to upgrade its REDengine 3 for Cyberpunk 2077, which went on to use the engine's next iteration REDengine 4. CD Projekt Red was granted subsidies of US$7 million by the Polish government in 2017, which was used to hire team members to work on particular themes such as City Creation and Cinematic Feel. In March 2018, a new studio opened in Wrocław to aid the production. CD Projekt Red partnered with several companies: Digital Scapes to craft additional tools, Nvidia for real time ray tracing, QLOC for quality assurance, and Jali Research to procedurally generate the lip sync for all ten localisations. In 2018, CD Projekt Red stated they had focused on optimization from the start of the project. Originally to include multiplayer features, this feature was later decided to be a post-release addition.

Marcello Gandini's designs from the '80s and '90s shaped most of the vehicles' looks. It features a motorbike from the Akira manga and anime film and a car inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road (2015). In July 2018, actor Keanu Reeves was approached for the role of Johnny Silverhand, codenamed Mr Fusion to maintain secrecy. He would lend his likeness to, voice, and do motion capture for the character. Reeves' dialogue amount is second only to that of V. Having first spent fifteen days recording his lines, Reeves was later granted his request that Silverhand's screen presence be doubled. Masane Tsukayama portrays Arasaka Corporation leader Saburo Arasaka in Japanese for all regions and the voice acting is not localized. Musician and producer Grimes voices the frontwoman of Lizzy Wizzy and the Metadwarves.

The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt composer Marcin Przybyłowicz wrote the score with P. T. Adamczyk and Paul Leonard-Morgan. They created seven and a half hours of music, customising assets for every quest. Genres like rave, intelligent dance music, and industrial had an effect on their approach, infusing the tracks with a '90s feel. Analogue synthesizers were employed as much as could be achieved In-game radio stations play original songs by numerous licensed artists