Somewhere in Warsaw, Poland, two actors are pretending to have sex. It’s not the most intimate of environments. The mood lighting, if you can call it that, is fluorescent bulbs burning overhead, making the sterile, white walls look even brighter than they actually are. In lieu of a bed or couch, the actors fit tightly into a makeshift tank—a technical mockup that's more pipes and bars than any sort of vehicle—to capture an intimate scene between Cyberpunk 2077 mercenaries V and Panam Palmer.
The actors are wearing stretchy black one piece bodysuits designed for motion capture scenes—something not dissimilar from a diving wetsuit—adorned with velcro markers strategically placed all over their bodies. Sometimes, when the velcro bits touch, you can hear the riiiiip of the actors getting stuck—and unstuck—from each other as they climb back-and-forth between seats and each other.
“When there’s too much contact, the markers on mo-cap suits start to fall off and break,” CD Projekt Red creative director Igor Sarzyński told me. “It’s really difficult to both create an authentic, intimate atmosphere between the actors and get something through in this performance in this very technical setup. It’s complex and sometimes a little bit awkward.”