Cyberpunk 2077
Five hours isn’t enough to take in the true scope of CYBERPUNK 2077, but it’s what we were given, and in true Street Samurai style, we go in HARD…
One of the most important cyberpunk novels ever written opens with a stark image. “The sky over the port was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel” – so begins William Gibson’s seminal book, Neuromancer. It’s a novel that went on to inspire many other writers, and was certainly part of the sinew of the roleplaying game that Cyberpunk 2077 is based on.
But in Cyberpunk 2077 glimpses of the sky are few and far between, mere snatches of darkness and light caught from the ground, as skyscrapers, billboards, and vectored-thrust vehicles crowd your vision. Only the rich get a view in Night City – everyone else has to crane their necks from the depths of steel and concrete canyons…
If you’re thinking that we might be waxing a bit over-lyrical about a game that isn’t even out yet, and has been pushed back twice already in its years-long development-cycle (I’ve worked at three different publishing companies during CP2077’s nearly ten years of dev-work - Ed)... Yeah, maybe. But few games have made such a strong impression even at this stage. It is a game ambitious in scope, rich in depth, and one that sticks remarkably close to the vision it is based upon. Only two Australian journalists – myself and a colleague from Kotaku – were lucky enough to score five hours of hands-on time with the game’s opening moments, in a session that went until just shy of midnight, so CDPR devs could literally, via webcam, watch over our shoulders. Which, for a game like this, was kinda fitting.
At the end of the hands-on, our breath fogging before us in a cold Sydney street, we just looked at each other, and knew we’d played something very special indeed. Read on to find out just what we saw…
On the outskirts of Night City lie the Badlands. This vast expanse of barren desert, Joshua trees, and low, sloping hills is scattered with dried-up oil fields, heaps of scrap, and rough, isolated towns. Old tarmac roads — built long ago before the world went to shit — crisscross the landscape, partially buried in sand. And far in the distance, through a dusty blue haze, I can just about see the monolithic skyscrapers and holographic billboards of the city. But that comes later. For now, I’m stuck in this backwater, no man’s land.
Cyberpunk 2077 features three distinct life paths, which determine your starting area and your relationship with the world. I’m given the choice to play as a street kid, a corporate agent, or a wandering nomad. I choose the latter and find myself in a dingy garage in one of those remote Badlands towns, staring into a filthy mirror. I tear a patch from my leather jacket, the emblem of the Nomad gang I used to run with — a lifestyle change I’ll learn more about later in the game. I’m a lone wolf now. Well, I would be if my car would start.
My ride, which looks like a vintage 1980s rally hatchback retro-fitted with high-tech parts, has broken down. The mechanic is struggling to make sense of my customised engine, so I step in. Nomads rely on their vehicles for survival, which means I’m pretty handy with a wrench. I mess around in the hood, swapping some wires around, then climb into the driver’s seat and start the engine. It roars to life, but before I can drive away, the local sheriff strolls in, puts one leg on the bumper, and asks me what I’m doing in his town.
He’s the classic suspicious small-town sheriff. Ten-gallon hat, gleaming gold badge, aviator shades hiding his eyes, air of superiority. But I also notice that he has augmented hands, and the band of his hat is fitted with some kind of electronic device. A camera, perhaps? Already I’m impressed by the level of detail in Cyberpunk 2077, and how layered it feels; as if this modern technology has been grafted, not quite seamlessly, onto an existing world.
The sheriff grills me, and I can be as rude or polite as I want back. He seems to have something against Nomads; doubly so Nomads who have gone rogue. “You’re an outcast among outcasts,” he says, spitting. In return I call him out for being a corporate stooge. “The corps pay you and have you on a leash like a dog, you know that?” But he brushes the insult off. The corps brought law and order to the Badlands, he says, and he intends to keep it that way. Before things get too tense, he backs down and tells me to get out of town, and I oblige, gladly.
The garage door folds open and I drive out into the town; a narrow strip of ramshackle buildings surrounded by an ocean of sand. There’s a gas station, a diner, a few trailers messily wired up to bent electricity poles, and rusty, retro-fitted cars parked at the edges of the road. I jam the accelerator and speed out into the desert, getting a sense of the vehicle handling. It has a nice weight and bounce to it, and slamming the handbrake to transition into a drift feels great. I spend a while bombing down long, straight desert highways, occasionally veering off-road to bounce over scrubby hills, and I’m surprised by how enjoyable Cyberpunk 2077 is when you’re behind the wheel.
MONA LISA OVERDRIVE
But I’m out here for a reason. I’ve agreed to smuggle something into Night City; my first job as a solo Nomad. I climb a radio tower overlooking the town and gaze across the desert at the unmistakable silhouette of the Night City skyline, which wobbles softly in the heat. Over a crackling radio my fixer, Willie, tells me where the package is. But he won’t tell me what it is: only that I have to pick it up from a guy called Jackie Welles, who’s holed up in a nearby trailer. I’ll let you discover how this job plays out, but when the dust settles, you and Jackie become friends and associates — eventually leading to you relocating to Night City, which marks the end of the Nomad intro. But don’t worry: you can return to the Badlands later in the game, and there will be missions there.
Six months have passed, and we join V (that’s you) and Jackie on a job in the city. A fixer’s client has been plucked off the street by scavengers; criminals who kidnap people, cut out their implants, and sell them on the black market. CD Projekt RED showed us this mission back in 2018, in the first gameplay reveal (this is the one where you rescue some poor Corp before a Docwagon crew comes in and picks her up), so I’ll skip over the details. Afterwards, Jackie drives me
“I CLIMB A RADIO TOWER OVERLOOKING THE TOWN AND GAZE ACROSS THE DESERT AT THE UNMISTAKABLE SILHOUETTE OF THE NIGHT CITY SKYLINE, WHICH WOBBLES SOFTLY IN THE HEAT.”
“THE VARIETY OF NPCS IS EXTRAORDINARY, AND I KEEP STOPPING TO CHECK OUT NIGHT CITY’S WILD FUTURISTIC FASHIONS.”
home, to an area of Night City called Watson. This crowded, diverse district has a strong Asian influence, with people living in colossal skyscrapers and megabuildings abandoned by the corporations. My apartment is in one of these gargantuan structures, near the top, and I get a stunning view of the city when I open the blinds and look through the window. The scale of everything is mindblowing.
I gaze across the desert at the unmistakable silhouette of the Night City skyline
Now, this is the moment I’ve been waiting for. After crashing for the night, the next morning I weave through the crowded corridors of the massive apartment complex, take the elevator to the main entrance, and emerge into an impossibly busy city intersection. This is when Cyberpunk 2077 opens up and sets you free, and even though Jackie is waiting for me to start the next mission (and my time with the game is limited to a few hours), I can’t resist taking some time out to explore this remarkable place. CDPR has shown this part of the city in trailers, but being there — moving through it at my own pace, spinning the camera around, stopping to look at the fine details, talking to passers by — takes it to another level.
I start my trip on foot, merging with a pulsing mass of people crossing a road. The Japanese influence on this part of Night City is obvious, and I’m reminded of visiting Tokyo, being marched by the crowd across the famously hectic Shibuya Crossing. It’s a clear, sunny day, and I’m struck by how bright the place is. I crane the camera up and see skyscrapers stretching into the sky, of all different colours, loaded with neon signs and animated, holographic billboards. I also notice a light, dusty haze in the air — the same I saw shrouding the city from the Badlands — which reminds me that I’m in the Californian desert.
I slip down a side street and I’m reminded of another part of Tokyo: the Kabukicho red light district. The street is narrow but tall, with tangled webs of electricity cables stretching between buildings, rows of blinking vending machines vying for people’s attention, overstuffed noodle bars, and an endless parade of pedestrians of all shapes, sizes, and colours. There are kids wandering around too, which you rarely see in open world games. You can talk to anyone, but most people only have one short, quippy line of dialogue. I also notice that some NPCs get freaked out if you hang around them for too long, with one guy angrily accusing me of following him when I spend a little too much time admiring the detail on his gold-plated mechanical hand.
The variety of NPCs is extraordinary, and I keep stopping to check out Night City’s wild futuristic fashions. I see transparent vinyl raincoats, fluorescent track pants, elaborate high-top sneakers, visors, Hawaiian shirts, shiny metallic leggings, and all manner of customised, coloured mechanical limbs. This, combined with everything else buzzing around me, makes Night City feel like a lively, vibrant, living place. It’s when I catch myself reading individual cover lines on magazines in a seedy backstreet shop (BALLSY promises readers ‘the hottest sex workout’) that I decide it’s time to travel further afield, and I hit a button that calls up my car, like Geralt whistling for Roach.
The car, a Quadra Turbo-R, comes skidding along the street and stops near me, honking its own horn to announce its arrival, which is a cute touch. When I get behind the wheel, I notice that it handles very differently from the bouncy little rally car I drove back in the desert. It feels more like a supercharged sports car, and I love the low, slightly fish-eyed third-person view, which gives an added sense of power and speed. You can also drive in firstperson, which lets you admire the car’s amazingly detailed dashboard. Tearing around Watson’s dense, packed, intricate streets in this thing feels sensational. I’m also thankful for the slightly rubbery, forgiving physics, which let me slam into scenery, obstacles, and other traffic without losing much momentum.
When I hit the map button I’m presented with a wireframe 3D model of the city that I can rotate. Optional missions come in a lot of different flavours, but side jobs and gigs seem to be the main ones. Gigs are substantial, story-driven side missions. Similar to The Witcher 3’s fun, unpredictable side quests, seemingly simple jobs can unravel, evolve, and turn into something much bigger and more complex. Side jobs, on the other hand, are smaller, more immediate moments, like dealing with someone who has overloaded themselves with augmentations and is suffering from cyberpsychosis. You can also hack into the NCPD police database to hunt for wanted citizens and collect the bounty money, and I saw a few random gang fights break out on the street too.
The game also features a day/night cycle, and seeing the city at night for the first time is a special moment. It never really gets dark in Watson, with the relentless glow of those neon signs and holo-billboards bouncing off the clouds, draping the city in a cold blue light. But it’s dark enough to completely transform the mood of the streets — especially when it rains and the city is reflected in puddles on
the road. When the sun sets, the city takes on a darker edge, and it’s worth getting out of your car, picking a beauty spot, and just watching (and listening to) the world go by. The sense of place is incredible.
VIRTUAL LIGHT
I could spend another hour driving around the city, but it’s time to dive into some missions. I hook up with Jackie and we meet Dexter DeShawn, a respected local fixer with a potentially lucrative job for us; and one that, if it goes well, will establish Jackie and V as major up-and-coming players in Night City. Again, I’ll let you discover the details of the job yourself when you play the game. But I will say that it involves ripping off the powerful, ruthless CEO of one of the biggest megacorporations in Night City. However, before you can pull off the heist, you need to complete a couple of important prep missions.
My first port of call is Lizzie’s Bar, a gaudy backstreet nightclub famous for its braindances: a popular form of neural entertainment that lets you experience emotions and memories through a headset called a wreath. There are all kinds of braindances (including, for the truly morbid, recordings of people dying), but Lizzie’s specialises in the, well, horny kind. The club doesn’t open till 6pm, so I use the game’s time skip feature (think meditating in The Witcher 3) until the doors open. Inside I see the words FUCK TO DEATH written in pink neon above the cloakroom, which makes quite a first impression. Night City is not a subtle place; a reflection of its hedonistic, hyper-consumerist culture.
I follow the sound of thumping bass and make my way to the bar. The club is a lurid, sensory explosion of pink and purple, with spindly lasers scanning the room, fluorescent strip lights, and a large mural on a wall depicting a gang of gun-toting skeletons. In every corner there are throngs of people drinking and dancing in expensive-looking outfits, and staff (who are just as colourfully dressed) serving cocktails from glowing neon trays. I grab a stool at the bar and meet with Evelyn Parker, a mysterious woman hired by Dexter to help me with the heist. I’m not sure who she is, but she has friends in high places.
Evelyn leads me through the club’s
back rooms, past rows of booths, some of which are open. I sneak a look inside and see clients in the throes of braindance-induced ecstasy. They sit slumped on leather sofas, headsets glowing, dead to the world. Evelyn takes me to the club’s basement and introduces me to braindance expert Judy Alvarez. The CEO we’re ripping off has a valuable item hidden in his penthouse, and we have to find out where it is. Lucky for us, Evelyn is currently enjoying a no strings attached sexual relationship with him, and last time she visited the apartment she recorded a BD of the place.
Judy snaps a headset on me, and suddenly I’m in the CEO’s lavish penthouse, viewing it through Evelyn’s eyes. I’m able to scrub back and forth through her memory, rewinding, pausing, and fast forwarding to pick out details that might reveal the location of the object Dexter wants. I can also switch between three different layers: visual, audio, and thermal. I have to be a detective here, hunting for clues to where he might be stashing the item. At one point the CEO is on the phone, and I can scan it to listen in on the other side of the conversation. Later, determining that the object has to be kept at a low temperature, I use the thermal layer of the BD to locate cold spots in the penthouse.
With the reconnaissance done, I have one more job to do before I can attempt the heist: recovering a powerful remote-controlled spider-bot from the Maelstrom gang. This is another mission CDPR has shown off in detail before, so I won’t spend too much time talking about it. But it’s an example of how there are many ways to approach objectives. You can simply pay for the bot and leave, but I decide to keep the money for myself, grab the merchandise, and shoot my way out of the joint. I also kill the Maelstrom leader, Royce, before he’s even slightly aware of my plan to turn on him, which saves me having to face him in a boss fight later.
PATTERN RECOGNITION
I tried my best not to shoot anyone. Stealth is always a valid option in Cyberpunk 2077, and I manage to sneak through some parts of the Maelstrom hideout without being tagged. But then I find a tech shotgun. There are three categories of guns: power weapons are standard firearms of the bullet-shooting variety; smart weapons launch selfguided missiles, locking onto targets automatically; and tech weapons, like the double-barreled shotgun I just picked up, use magnets to launch projectiles at incredibly high speeds. And this thing feels absolutely deadly in my hands, sending enemies flying backwards, shredding their armour. So I end up using that to escape with the bot.
I have ten minutes left, so I drive around the city some more. The sun is setting, casting a golden glow over the teeming streets of Watson. I pan the camera around the car as I drive, watching the dipping sunlight glint off the bodywork, speeding past palm trees, sex clubs, noodle stands, and other tantalising glimpses of Night City life. And I’m struck by the realisation that all of this — everything I’ve seen so far — is just one district. If the rest of the city is as dense, layered, and brimming with distractions as this, Cyberpunk 2077 is going to devour a large chunk of my life. And I’m going to let it.
were famous or infamous – because not everything was good.”
Instead of stepping into the shoes of one of history’s most influential leaders, in Humankind you play as what Romain de Waubert describes as “the spirit of the nation”. The aim of the game is to think “let’s do something for posterity. Whatever I do today is forever”. You achieve notoriety by doing legendary quests, discovering wonders, building cities, and conquering other civilisations. The system allows you to win even if you get crushed militarily. If you discover enough wonders, make scientific breakthroughs and complete deeds that will be remembered forever, you might emerge with the strongest legacy.
SCOUTING ABOUT
I settle my tribe near some decent food sources and the game asks me to adopt a culture. I can choose between the Babylonians, Egyptians, Harappans, and Mycenalans. I opt for the Egyptians and my civilisation is born. The next phase progresses with satisfying speed. It takes just a few turns to send scouts out in all directions. The exploration phase of the 4X genre is often the most dynamic, but Humankind moves at a good pace at this stage. Early research only takes a couple of turns, you can turn out simple units quickly and cheaply. I soon had a second settlement in place which gave me access to horses. There’s a very pleasant sense of progress.
As your culture moves towards the modern era it can evolve. “What is a civilisation, basically? It’s great to create this country I’m going to play, but what are they in terms of culture, religion? Every country you see today is probably the result of a succession of cultures, and a very interesting mix resulted in terms of what these countries are today. That’s what we wanted to grasp with Humankind – how can we recreate that feeling of recreating the civilisation of your dreams by combining all these cultures that will succeed each other,” says de Waubert.
The question is, can Humankind bring evolution to a genre already ruled so firmly by its own king: Civilization? From what I’ve seen, it’s got a fighting chance of building its own lasting legacy.
I SOON HAD A SECOND SETTLEMENT IN PLACE WHICH GAVE ME ACCESS TO HORSES.
“In fact, Freelancer is our main gameplay reference, which we took a lot of inspiration from regarding both controls and the desire for an open-world experience and deeper storytelling. Our visual and sound design come more from Guardians of the Galaxy and Star Wars, while itemisation stems from Destiny and Diablo. Second-to-second combat gets its roots from classic shooters like Halo.”
SHIPPING OUT
Freelancer was one of the first games to pop into our minds too, when we saw the third-person view and wheeling acrobatics that combat around the shattered rocks and isolated trading posts requires. The original Everspace, which came out in 2017, was similar, and part of a wave of space games we were generally delighted to see. “Beyond having been inspired by other iconic sci-fi games to build our vision, we also want Everspace 2 to stand out from its peers,” says Schade. “So we are throwing a lot of our own ideas into the mix, especially when it comes to locations filled with lots of points of interest and various activities, which we believe is unique in the space games genre.”
Locations we’ve seen include your home base, a mining corporation facility sunk into an enormous rock with a portal to a crystal cave, and a trading post that hangs over a ringed planet like a gigantic version of the ISS. You land at them to carry out repairs, rearm and do a little shopping – scooping cargo out of containers spilled from spaceship wrecks and selling it. There’s a lot of loot, bringing a Diabloesque edge as you hoover everything up, making space in the cargo bay by jettisoning scrap metal in favour of Earth wine.
“We’re designing the game as a looter-shooter in space,” says Schade. “This means the majority of the content you find from blasting fighters and destroying warships will come in the form
“SECOND-TO-SECOND COMBAT GETS ITS ROOTS FROM CLASSIC SHOOTERS LIKE HALO.”
“IT IS KEY TO ESTABLISH A STRONG SIGNATURE LOOK AND FEEL DURING THE FIRST HOUR.”
of modules, weapons, craftables, commodities, and upgrades.”
SPACE TO ROAM
Locations are a mixture of procedurally generated and hand-crafted, with two forms of fast travel – in-system and trans-system – letting you zip around freely. The open-world feeling is strong, as you drop out of warp into planetary orbit, discovering the wealth of mining operations and outlaw bases that nestle between the bigger rocks. Distress calls attract you to wreckage, and mysterious shadow creatures clamber about on the outside of asteroids. A prompt encourages you to get two of the black, fuzzy aliens together, but they never hang around long enough for you to do it. These, along with the ‘ancient damage glyphs’ that hang in space for you to collect and use, are currently unexplained, and the incorporation of background briefings and lore into the game will go a long way to clarifying the situation.
Striking the balance between the two approaches has led to some challenges for the developers, as Schade explains, “If you want to make a space sim where exploration for hundreds or even thousands of hours is the key selling point, then there is no way around procedural world generation, and there are some great examples for this concept. However, while this design approach allows for creating game worlds with perhaps quintillions of ‘unique’ locations to explore, there are some fundamental downsides.
“You cannot work with high-quality pre-baked global illumination solutions in most procedurally generated game environments, especially if the game world is truly seamless. You can go for a more stylised look, where real-time lighting might be sufficient, but in today’s tech and media world that is heavily driven by innovation and imagery, visual quality matters a lot. We had to put a lot of effort into preventing props, loot and NPCs from spawning in the wrong places.”
So by having a limited number of hand-made locations, linked by fast-travel, and an enormous number of procedurally generated areas that might not be so important for the story but are rich in resources, the illusion of a much larger, open world can be created. To achieve this, “it is key to establish a strong signature look and feel during the first hour by introducing the player to clear design rules and plausible patterns for the environment, NPCs and the player spaceship, especially if there aren’t any extravehicular activities in the game,” says Schade. “This will be the foundation for players to build a much larger fictitious world in their minds, which will continuously be growing with every new piece of content discovered over time.”
GALAXY QUESTS
You also need a decent set of interesting characters and creatures inhabiting the game world and doing their own thing, or even the best-looking hand-crafted open game world risks feeling small and dead. “This takes quite some time and effort to create,” says Schade, “and is also hard to scale, so often the approach is to just rely on a broad range of gameplay activities, and pitch the idea of players writing their own stories as an advantage, which most only works in multiplayer games and if the mechanics provide enough depth.”
Ensuring there’s enough for the players to do in the world is another challenge that often besets open world developers. “Having lots of shipwrecks, derelict space stations, and all sorts of debris floating around not only provides a distinct sense of game space and player speed. It also allows for players and enemies to hide and sneak up on each other, and take cover when needed,” says Schade.
And of course, not doing something can be as valid a choice as doing it. Many quiet hours have been passed in games just hauling huge quantities of a valuable commodity for a big payday. “If space truckers want to put emphasis on trade routes, they will be able to do so,” says Schade. “Mining can still be point-andshoot for players who want to be quick about it, but we’re also experimenting with a minigame for better yield and extracting precious special resources to make mining instances more exciting and interesting.” Otherwise, there will be jobs the player can accept from factions in the game to grow through non-combat means, including ore extraction and commerce. “It really is up to the players how to progress in Everspace 2,” Schade continues. “It’s a little too early to say, but we might even have a Pacifist achievement in the final game.”