Keanu Reeves is trying his hand at a different kind of on-screen performance as he’s set to play Johnny Silverhand in the game Cyberpunk 2077, which will be released next April.
The John Wick star made an appearance on the Xbox stage at the E3 2019 Microsoft press conference in Los Angeles yesterday (June 9), where he announced he was stepping into the world of gaming.
Excited gamers got their first look at him in the new trailer, where he made an epic entrance towards the end.
Check it out below:
The game is an adaptation of the board game Cyberpunk and its sequel Cyberpunk 2020, made up of an open-world adventure set in a fictional metropolis called Night City. The role-playing game incorporated many cyberpunk tropes, such as cybernetic enhancement, devious punk-rock hackers and neo-noir aesthetics.
It’s been almost three decades since the release of Cyberpunk 2020 in 1990 and hype for Cyberpunk 2077 has been building ever since developer CD Projekt Red first released a teaser trailer for the game in January 2013.
Details remained minimal for a few years following the initial trailer, but last year CD Projekt Red released its first public gameplay, with a 48-minute demo of the game.
Cyberpunk 2077 will pick up the series 50-plus years later, and the trailer shows V, the game’s protagonist, having a flashback of his friend dying. Back in the present he realises he’s been betrayed and has to use his cybernetic body to take out the bad guys.
Reeves appears towards the end of the trailer and seems to greet V as an accomplice, telling him they have a city to burn.
Silverhand, an iconic character from Cyberpunk 2020, will be non-playable in the game. Although he only makes a brief appearance in the trailer, Gamespot report CD Projekt Red has confirmed the character is ‘key’ to the story, suggesting players may see a lot of him throughout the game.
Speaking at E3 Reeves said he had to be part of the project, adding ‘the feeling of walking the streets of the future is really going to be breathtaking’.
The actor also announced the game would be released on April 16, 2020. CNet report it will be coming to Xbox and PC, with pre-orders currently available for Xbox One, PS4 and PC versions of the game.
Hopefully the game will be worth the wait!
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Emily Brown first began delivering important news stories aged just 13, when she launched her career with a paper round. She graduated with a BA Hons in English Language in the Media from Lancaster University, and went on to become a freelance writer and blogger. Emily contributed to The Sunday Times Travel Magazine and Student Problems before becoming a journalist at UNILAD, where she works on breaking news as well as longer form features.