Inside Cyberpunk 2077, and the most elaborately detailed future city we’ve ever seen in a videogame

By Chris sChilling

Four hours in Night City is not enough. Sure, we’ve been here before, in a sense. But a hands-off glimpse is nothing compared to being able to inhabit this world; to have firsthand proof that one of the most astounding vertical slices we’ve ever encountered is more than just smoke and mirrors. Being here in the semi-augmented flesh, so to speak, evokes the feeling of visiting a real-world city for the first time, though that initial wow factor never totally goes away - or at least it doesn’t for the duration of our demo. There is perhaps no single revelatory moment to compare with, say, the first glimpse of Rapture seen from Bioshock’s bathysphere, or emerging from the sewers into the world of Oblivion. Rather, this is a place that leaves you regularly shaking your head in quiet disbelief. By the end of our time with Cyberpunk 2077, there’s still no sign of Keanu. But we keep recalling what he said on stage at E3 last year, as we wander around the busy district of Watson. He’s right. It is breathtaking.

It’s also a place that, to a certain extent, looks familiar: Blade Runner has, after all, become something of a set text for science-fiction videogames, and we’ve seen precisely this kind of melting pot of cultures and architecture before. (Watson, in particular, has a strong Asian influence, particularly in sub-district Kabuki.) Yet even taking Los Santos and Kamurocho into consideration, we’re struggling to think of a virtual urban space that has felt quite so convincingly alive, so completely intoxicating in all its mesmerising detail. It’s certainly not just smoke and mirrors, though there’s plenty of both here. Vapour plumes billow from Night City’s manholes as steam rises from a nearby noodle bar. Take a pew and you can almost smell the teriyaki sauce sizzling. You can absolutely hear it, athough it’s just one ingredient in a crowded soundscape: there’s a constant hubbub of chatter and low-level noise, occasionally punctuated by shouts, sirens and bursts of gunfire. But for now we’re just people-watching. We catch pedestrians pausing by the windows of a club to gawk at pole dancers. And we stroll by rough sleepers huddling among the trash, straining to get comfortable on the damp piece of cardboard that will be their bed for the night.

There’s plenty else to draw the eye. We spend a good few seconds looking at the scruffy letters carved into a lift’s otherwise pristine doors; likewise a handrail acned with rust. Later, we turn our gaze downward to the vibrant colours of signage and glaring electronic billboards reflected in the rain-slicked asphalt. We stare at cars gliding by as we pause by a crossing, our eyes not fixed on the road, but turned skyward. It’s a lot to take in, particularly when we start a mission and we’re trying not to get distracted while furiously scribbling notes, straining to parse dialogue that’s peppered with street slang and references to characters, places and organisations we don’t really know yet.

Our unaugmented human brain feels slightly overworked - overloaded, even. Yet it’s not that Cyberpunk 2077 assumes a degree of knowledge about its universe, so much as it’s trying to establish that you already have a place in this underworld. A bit of disorientation is deliberate. Protagonist V has already made their start here; it’s up to you to determine where they go next.

Game Cyberpunk 2077

Developer/publisher CD Projekt (Red)

Format PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, Xbox Series X

Release November 19 (next-gen 2020)

There’s no shortage of options, that’s for sure. At the end of our session, lead gameplay designer Micha¡ Dobrowolski invites us to open the map to see how much (or, as it turns out, how little) ground we’ve covered. We’ve long bemoaned the way open worlds are getting larger rather than denser, wishing more would take their cues from the Yakuza series. But it’s clear Night City marries detail and scope: as we zoom out all the way, we note that only a fraction is dotted with icons representing all the side activities for which we didn’t have time. And that’s without considering the Badlands, the vast desert area beyond the city limits.