The studio was asked to make River's story even darker

Quest director Patrick C. Mills wrote on Bluesky about how River Ward's story was built. The Hunt is already one of the heaviest jobs: V looks for nephew Randy and finds a killer who hooks teenagers to a machine and drugs.

Mills said he had to argue against instructions to make the quest darker still. He joked that his finished version is a light comedy next to what was requested. Finding the tone of Cyberpunk 2077, he said, was a group effort, not one writer's call.

There was another unused blow. In an early version of the finale The Boy with the Gun, at dinner with River's family, the nephews found a dead dog, and the player would have had to explain death to the children — right after their brother's kidnapping.

That scene did not ship. Even without it, River's line shows where the studio itself stopped the cruelty from climbing.