CD Projekt Red has announced that it's taken on several new staffers to work on upcoming Cyberpunk 2077 followup Project Orion, and they're pretty well-respected names.
First revealed in October 2022, Project Orion is currently "in the early stages of development". CD Projekt Red previously said work on Orion would begin in earnest after the release of Cyberpunk 2077's Phantom Liberty expansion, which was released in September and which met with significant success.
Per a new CD Projekt Red press release, several "industry professionals with years of experience" will be joining the core CDPR team to work on Project Orion, and you may well recognize some of the names.
The first person joining the Project Orion team is Dan Hernberg, who will serve as the game's executive producer. He's worked on titles from Amazon Games and Blizzard Entertainment, including Diablo III and the PvP MMO New World.
Next up, it's Ryan Barnard, who'll serve as Project Orion's design director. His credits include work with Ubisoft and Massive Entertainment, and he also served as gameplay director with IO Interactive.
The game's engineering director will be Mortal Kombat technical director Alan Villani, while Project Orion's writing team will expand to include lead writer Anna Megill (Control, Dishonored: Death of the Outsider) and ex-BioWare scribe Alexander Freed, who will "further bolster" the game's writing.
Of course, there's still no indication of when Project Orion will actually launch; since the studio is in the early stages of work on the game, we likely can't expect an announcement on this front for quite some time.
If you ask me, given the controversy surrounding Cyberpunk 2077's launch, it's probably for the best that the followup is remaining under wraps for now.
In the meantime, you can pick up Cyberpunk 2077 and its expansion Phantom Liberty right now on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
