One of the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel's most senior developers thought he was getting fired, moments before he was asked to head up the project and its new Boston studio.
Speaking on the Flow Games podcast, Cyberpunk 2077 quest lead Pawel Sasko, who is now associate game director on the game's sequel, said that he, like many more senior devs, had questioned whether he wanted to stay on at CD Projekt Red for another game.
"When you work in one company for a long time," he said, "there's always this moment where your career is kind of in the crossroads, and you're thinking 'should I enter another really big project with this company, or should I look for somewhere else to maybe learn new things?'"
Sasko makes clear that he was never seriously considering leaving - "I love this company too much" - but he asked himself that same question. That, however, was before he was asked to move to the USA to help set up CD Projekt Red's new Boston studio and lead work on Cyberpunk 2. It seems like a no brainer - "you are given a chance of starting something new, but you're still in the same company" - but before he was offered the chance, it wasn't entirely clear to Sasko that he was about to get good news.
You can see Sasko tell the story for himself in the timestamped video above, but the gist of it is this: Sasko was invited to a regular one-to-one meeting by his boss, Cyberpunk 2077 game director Gabe Amatangelo. Just ahead of that meeting, Sasko says that Amatangelo messaged him not once, but twice, assuring he'd be attending the meeting in-person in CDPR's Warsaw office. "That was a strange request," Sasko explains.
"So I got ready, went to the office, walked in the office, and there's the game director, who's my boss, the CEO, who's his boss, sitting there. The two most important people in the company. And I'm thinking 'Am I getting fired? Is this what's happening? What are those guys doing here?'" Thankfully, Sasko wasn't getting fired, as this was the meeting were Amatangelo and CDPR CEO Adam Badowski asked him if he'd like to move to Boston to establish the new studio. That offer, he says, remains "very humbling" - and thankfully, the project itself "feels fresh" enough to keep Sasko devoted to CDPR.
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