At a recent GDC2024 conference, Pavel Sasco, Associate Director of Gaming at CDPR, revealed the design concept for Cyberpunk 2077: Shadows of the Past to IGN. He mentioned that CDPR's tendency to structure game missions in a specific genre or theme was derived from The Witcher 3's DLC "Heart of Stone" and further developed in Cyberpunk 2077's DLC Shadows of the Past.
Sasco highlighted that the new DLC is heavily influenced by classics such as The Lord of the Rings, especially in the "Until the Mansion Collapses" mission, where players need to escape a giant mechanical spider that is being hunted, a plot that is directly referenced from The Lord of the Rings' female spider Corpse.
He further explains, "Designers have more freedom to make creative decisions without having to rely on instructions from the director or leadership after clarifying the genre, theme, and guiding principles for the game. This autonomy is at the heart of what we do. ”