{"id":11566,"date":"2025-12-02T16:45:24","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:45:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/12\/02\/cyberpunk-2077s-revamped-police-chase-system-was-inspired-by-pac-man\/"},"modified":"2025-12-02T16:45:24","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T16:45:24","slug":"cyberpunk-2077s-revamped-police-chase-system-was-inspired-by-pac-man","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/nextlevelnews.co.uk\/blog\/2025\/12\/02\/cyberpunk-2077s-revamped-police-chase-system-was-inspired-by-pac-man\/","title":{"rendered":"Cyberpunk 2077’s Revamped Police Chase System Was Inspired by Pac-Man"},"content":{"rendered":"
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One of the hallmarks of Cyberpunk 2077, particularly after its Phantom Liberty update, is its dynamic police chases. In these, a player committing crimes<\/em> might find themselves quick surrounded by cops and, a few crimes later, the extra spicy MaxTac. But what you might not have caught onto is that when trying to avoid this massive swarm of cops, you’re essentially playing a really, really sophisticated version of a very, very old arcade game: Pac-Man.<\/p>\n

At the Game Industry Conference in Pozna\u0144, Wielkopolska, I attended a talk by CD Projekt senior AI programmer Maciej Celmer entitled “Heat, MaxTac, and Blockades: Police System, in Cyberpunk 2077 and more.” In the talk, Celmer went into a lot of interesting detail about how exactly Cyberpunk 2077’s police chase system was revamped<\/a> following criticism from players that at launch, the system was way too forgiving and unengaging.<\/p>\n

The new system, implemented in 2023, was far more dynamic and popular with players. And according to Celmer, it had an unusual inspiration: Pac-Man.<\/p>\n

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“Remember the game of Pac-Man, and the fact that every ghost had a different approach on how to catch the player?” Celmer said during his talk. “We did a similar thing in our car chases. For instance, one of them can try to reach the player on the shortest possible path, while the other can try to flank him or intercept on the intersection. There are seven different strategies that we applied to our cars with that part of the chase.”<\/p>\n

We reached out to CD Projekt following the talk to get a little more detail on what Celmer meant. Over email, he confirmed that Pac-Man was one of “many” inspirations for the police chase update, “especially for the designers who came up with the idea. We wanted to surround the player with chasing vehicles but, at the same time, always try to leave at least one ‘road to freedom’ \u2014 basically, a way to escape. However, the situation in Night City, especially during a chase, can be very dynamic, so ‘try’ is definitely the right word here.”<\/p>\n

Celmer broke down the aforementioned seven “strategies” that police cars would take in a chase for us too. Each strategy combined a mix of logic for where the vehicle would spawn with its behavior after spawning, and which strategy was used was dependent on the heat level, the state of the police system (relaxed, alerted, or combat) and other factors. From there, cars could also perform different maneuvers depending on the situation, such as ramming, shooting, blocking, overtaking, or aligning with the chased car. The seven strategies were, in Celmer’s words:<\/p>\n