Cyberpunk 2077 Mod Restores Unused Early Character Designs
One of the Cyberpunk 2077 modders dug up early character designs from in CD Projekt RED's game and enabled other users to see them in the game.
Nexus Mods user Hineytroll created Ghosts of Night City (Unused Appearances), a mod for Cyberpunk 2077 which enables us to change the appearance of 320 NPC models from CD Projekt RED's game to unused appearances of important characters. With its help we can see the early versions of, among others: Jackie, Panam, Judy, Evelyn, Rogue, Takemura, Lizzy Wizzy, Adam Smasher and Placide.
You're probably already looking at the images at this point, but let me interject a few comments anyway. First of all - it's good that CDPR didn't stop at what we can see above. While some of these characters look similar to their counterparts from the game, Takemura or Smasher seem to be completely different. The old version of Panam, on the other hand, feels like it lacks half of the character that the heroine displayed in the game. Second thing - the models above are even less futuristic than the ones we saw on our screens. And as many people complain about the lack of "cyberpunk in Cyberpunk", I once again come to the conclusion that the developers made the right decision.
I'm not going to cry, though, because the pictures are just fun to look at. It's also important to remember that using alternate assets is a common practice in game development, and some of these models were never meant to see the light of day. Like the alleged story DLC elements that fans discovered after the last Cyberpunk update went live. Well...
If you want to see the old-new characters in motion, the Ghosts of Night City mod is available here. And don't be surprised if you have to confirm your age - some models (we haven't shown them all) don't have much clothing on. Have fun.