We already know a lot about Cyberpunk 2077 ahead of its release date in 2020. We'll be choosing who to kill (or not kill), who to smooch (or not), and now we know we'll be choosing some details about V's childhood and backstory as well, and those choices will determine which location you start playing in.
"The player in Cyberpunk 2077 can create a custom character that has one of three origin stories, that we call lifepaths," says Cyberpunk 2077's lead quest designer Paweł Sasko in an email to VG24/7. "You can be Nomad, Corpo or Street Kid. Each of that Lifepaths has a different starting location and story background that are strongly connected with the origin story."
We learned previously that V would be able to leave Night City to explore the Badlands, which will likely also be the starting location for players who choose the Nomad Lifepath. Both the Corpo and Street Kid Lifepaths sound as if they likely begin inside Night City, though probably in different districts.
Lifepaths are another of Cyberpunk 2077's systems translated from the tabletop Cyberpunk 2020 and 2013 campaigns. In a tabletop campaign, players roll through a set of flowcharts to help give their character a backstory to play off of, rather than beginning a campaign as an amnesiac hero as many other RPGs resort to (looking at you, The Witcher 1).
From what we've seen of Cyberpunk 2077's character creation screen above, it looks like you may have full control over V's Lifepath, rather than having it decided by a die roll. I, obviously, will be choosing Johnny Silverhand "Samurai Rockerboy" as my childhood hero.
That's all we may hear about V's possible origins for now, as Sasko says, "Anything more I say can reveal too much from the story."
