Cyberpunk 2077's Verticality Is Its Greatest Strength And Weakness
My first playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077 was on my 15 inch laptop screen so, now, as I replay it on PS5, I'm often struck by how big Night City is. Not big in the way that most open-world games are big, with sprawling fields, distant mountains, and the expanse of sky overhead. Cyberpunk 2077 is big in the way that a real city can feel big.
As I was driving around Night City recently, I crossed a bridge and was treated to a stunning vista. The concrete stretched out before me, meeting a line of skyscrapers which filled the entirety of my display, horizontally and vertically. There were small pockets of sky at the top of the image, but the rest was all human-made infrastructure. A Yutsuki Electronics sign to the left, a Cali Express sign in the middle, and various megatrons to the right, all hanging from stalk-like buildings stretching up to fill the entirety of the screen. Night City’s vastness suggests endless rooms to explore, and endless people to talk to.
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This is the strength that Cyberpunk 2077 has always had; the reason CD Projekt Red was able to stir up so much ravenous pre-release hype. Fans of open-world RPGs are accustomed to much of the space in the world being empty. It’s difficult to build a game the size of a country without plains and prairies and lakes separating the hubs of activity. But a setting like Night City suggests constant activity, because that’s what a real city is like. Instead of seeing a plain stretching out toward the horizon — which can be evocative in its own right — Cyberpunk 2077 has buildings stretching up to the sky. It captures the feeling I often have walking down the sidewalk in Chicago, that I'm at the bottom of a
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