Cyberpunk 2077 Updates: Night City Wire Episode 3

It sure would be nice to know exactly how many of these will come out before Cyberpunk 2077’s greatly-anticipated release on November 19th. All we know as of yet is that a couple more should still be in the pipeline before we all get our hands on the actual game, but hey, as long as CD Projekt Red keeps on pumping these out, I’m not complaining!

So let’s take a look at what CDPR was able to share with us this past Friday in the third episode of their somewhat-monthly installment of Night City Wire:

A New Game Trailer: Postcards from Night City

Hollie Bennet hosted once again, starting us off with an agenda of things to come in the episode before leading straight into the new game trailer, a rather creative game trailer made in the form of an advertisement for the video game’s setting, Night City, entitled Postcards from Night City. 

This trailer was more of a rapid-burst series of clips of the city itself. Whether a tv channel, a radio show, or perhaps a video channel on the Net, the trailer mixes what could pass as real media in Night City with clips of the city itself, almost like a promotional video trying to entice the viewer to visit.

But not one to be outdone, CDPR decided to create a secret website as a mock-promotional ad website for Night City itself. Appearing at 2:17 in the game, you can check out the Nightcity.love yourself. I personally found the website very interesting yet also entertaining, as I was constantly needing to close pop-ups advertising fictional items that exist in the world of Night City itself. Things like Arasaka Home Security, Arasaka Environmental Protection, an energy drink called Golshevik, Medical Malpractice, RealWater, and much more. You can also find a little information on the different districs in Night City, complete with the Night City Police Department’s current threat level warning for the district.

Dev Insights: Night City

Next Hollie interviewed Miles Tost, a senior level designer at CDPR. Taking its original inspiration from the Cyberpunk 2020 tabletop game, they wanted to decide what to do with Night City.

The goal was to make it believable–an immersive place that felt real. They also wanted it to be diverse enough between districts to make the city fun to explore. So first they looked at the real geography of the coast of California (like ports, huge industrial areas facilitating trade, etc.) Then they divided the city into 6 districts with each having its own characteristics in terms of architecture, demographics, people that live there, and the function within the city. Then they divided each district further into sub-districts using the theme of the larger district. This allows each district, according to Tost, to result in a city with a lot of character, with each zone having its own feel to it.

The other main difference between this game and CDPR’s previous game, The Witcher, is that while The Witcher was very spread out horizontally, Night City is incredibly dense and spread out vertically. So it won’t be as easy as looking on a map and going far away into the distance, since it might be close physically, but 5 stories up along passageways that aren’t clear how to access.

While Tost does a great job hyping it up and making it sound fun to play, based on experience, I personally think it will lead to more frustrating and difficult challenges where the player can’t figure out where to go because they can’t see the map vertically to find the fastest path up. That remains to be seen, however.

Gangs of Night City

This was a very interesting segment to introduce the viewer to the gangs that can be encountered in Night City. The clip covered 6 gangs in total. They were the following:

1. Maelstrom
2. Valentinos
3. 6th Street
4. Voodoo Boys
5. Animals
6. Tyger Claws
7. Moxes
8. Nomad gangs
   • Wraiths
   • Aldecaldos

While we just get a glimpse of what each gang sounds and acts like, we were able to get a much closer look when Hollie then follows up the video with an interview with Quest Director Mateusz Tomaszkiewicz.

Dev Insights: Gangs of Night City

While he didn’t talk about all the gangs in detail, Mateusz did talk a little bit about Maelstrom as his favorite gang. He likes how unpredictable Maelstrom is and their element of chaos. He also likes how intensely augmented their bodies are compared to any other gang in Night City.

PC Modding Contest & PC Requirements

Finally, Episode 3 of Night City Wire wrapped up with the results of the Cyber-Up Your PC contest (where professional case modders competed for the most original Cyberpunk PC case modification for prizes). The cases were pretty original, you can check them out in the video above. The episode then finally finished with the official System Requirements for Cyberpunk 2077, which I’ve posted in the images below:

And that’s it!

It seems to me that CDPR is eager to showcase the biggest and the best first with each progressive episode. Granted Episode 2 was pretty great, but I do feel that there was more to see in EP1 than EP2, and the same can be said for EP3. Seeing the gangs and the level design was interesting, but the case mods were really not that interesting to me and while system specs are obviously very important to learn about, especially for people like me who will be playing the game on my old gaming laptop, it’s not as impressive to look at as the music development or seeing a brand new game or gameplay trailer.

But what did you think? How does EP3 rank compared to the others? And how excited are you about Cyberpunk 2077? Let me know in the comments below!