GAMES developer CD Projekt Red have a reputation as one of the very best role-playing game (RPG) makers active in the industry today.

Their The Witcher series of fantasy RPG games, based on the novels by Polish author Andrzej Sapkowski expertly combine storytelling, combat, gameplay, adult themes (including nudity and sex) and drama into one of the RPG genre’s high-water marks with all the critical acclaim that entails.

The announcement at the Microsoft Xbox E3 conference that the studio’s new game, Cyberpunk 2077, was officially happening and would be available on Xbox One as well as PC and PlayStation 4 was greeted with considerable enthusiasm as a result.

CD Projekt Red staged a special hour-long guided gameplay session for invited guests, and I was able to get a front-row seat for the first look at what is without a doubt one of the most impressive games I have seen in years.

Based on the pen-and-paper RPG Cyberpunk 2020, in a nutshell, Cyberpunk 2077 is Shadowrun but without all the magic and elves and dragons and assorted weirdness. If you’ve played the pen-and-paper version, the excellent Harebrained Schemes video games, or played the Deus Ex series from Eidos, then you know exactly what to expect and it is as outstanding as you’d hope, based on what I saw.

For those less familiar with the cyberpunk genre, it takes place in a dystopian future where mega corporations run the world, inequality runs rampant and cybernetic body enhancements and computer hacking are widespread. The Blade Runner films and the movie Ready Player One are popular examples of the genre.

The hour-long guided demonstration showed off a beautiful, fully realised and believable world of Night City, Free State of Northern California, where the game takes place. While the cyberpunk genre is typically depicted as night time, neon-lit and raining, the demo took place during the day, further showing off the level of detail in the game which has been complemented by the first-person perspective the developers are using.

The game features full character customisation — you can pick everything from gender to hairstyle — and the demo opened with the main character and an accomplice stepping out of a lift into a run-down apartment block, trying to track down a missing woman who had been kidnapped by cybernetic implant harvesters.

After tracking down the apartment, a gunfight ensued with the harvesters before our rescue target was found unconscious in a bathtub full of ice. Hacking into her head-mounted datajack, our character was able to establish a computer virus was preventing the target’s biomonitoring systems from calling for help from a medevac team, so we deactivated the virus and then a heavily armed group of paramedics arrived to take the patient away, leaving us on the balcony as harvester reinforcements arrived.

Our character and accomplice made a hasty getaway, and the next day as we left our apartment stepped out into what felt like a living world full of people going about their lives. The branching dialogue trees offered a range of conversation options with other characters, and the developers have said the implications from your dialogue choices can be wide-ranging indeed.

The game is unashamedly aimed at a mature audience, featuring nudity and drug use, but handled in a way that clearly says “This is a game made by adults, for other adults”. This will be no surprise to fans of The Witcher games, but its presence in Cyberpunk 2077 is extremely welcome.

A trip to the cybernetic implant doctor for some upgrades was impressively handled — instead of merely selecting some upgrades on a menu screen and suddenly knowing Kung fu, your character actually undergoes the cybernetic enhancement procedures while the doctor carries on a conversation with you about what you’ve chosen and how it will work.

In true cyberpunk style, a mysterious client had also approached us about a job, which involved recovering a stolen robot.

This was where aspects of the game’s choices came into play.

Sure, we could go to the last known location of the robot, flick the safety off and redecorate the walls in a particularly messy fashion — or, we could go to the corporation which owned the robot, persuade them to give us the money to buy it from those who stole it, handing over their location in exchange, while we took the robot back to our client, pleasing everyone.

There doubtless would have been other options available, but we went with the one that didn’t involve shooting first — and climbed into a car to drive across the city to get there.

Of course, nothing is ever that simple and sure enough, it was a doublecross so the guns came out and a firefight erupted at the buy, showing off the combat system again, along with the benefits the cybernetic enhancements offered our character, including zoom, enemy tracking and ammunition information.

With the smoke clear and the floor now home to several bodies, the demo ended with our character confronting a corporate agent about the doublecross before climbing back into the car to go and see their client about getting paid.

To give you an idea how impressive the game was: At the demo’s conclusion, the entire crowd of assembled journalists burst into spontaneous applause — something I have never seen happen at a game demonstration of this type before.

While there’s currently no confirmed release date on Cyberpunk 2077, the game is shaping up magnificently and if the full product is of the same calibre, quality and polish as the demo then there’s a very real possibility it could prove to be one of the most significant and influential games in years.

Suffice it to say I’ll be in the queue to get a copy when it is released and if you’re a fan of the cyberpunk genre or mature story role-playing games, you likely should be too.

Royce Wilson is attending E3 as a guest of Ubisoft