Set Design

Inside the Design of Cyberpunk 2077’s Urban Dystopia

Syd Mead and Dieter Rams inspired the designers behind one of the biggest video game releases of the year
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Cyberpunk 2077 can be played on multiple platforms including Google Stadia, PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X|S.Courtesy of CD Projekt RED

Think of all the things that make a city attractive to you: a vibrant community, good restaurants, bars with character, and great cultural institutions. You know, things you generally want to experience in person. How, then, do you make a good video game city—which can’t possibly benefit from any of these things? The short answer: You cheat.

Lucjan Więcek is environment art director at CD Projekt Red, the studio behind the last blockbuster game release of 2020, Cyberpunk 2077. It’s a title laden with expectation. The Polish studio’s last game, 2015’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt (based on the same fantasy novels as the popular Netflix series), was a commercial and critical success, and hopes are high that the shop’s pivot from gritty fantasy to urban sci-fi will be just as revelatory. Its success or failure will arguably rest upon its most prominent feature: Night City, a crowded California megalopolis that evokes a primary-color spin on the Los Angeles of Blade Runner, and a city both too good and awful to be true. (Unfortunately, since the game’s release on December 10, there’s been a bit of a snag, with users reporting glitches on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One and the company responding by promising updates and even offering refunds.)

Eight million people preordered Cyberpunk 2077 before it was even released.

Courtesy of CD Projekt RED

“I would almost certainly say that if an urban planner in the world of 2077 was tasked with creating a megalopolis, they wouldn’t create a city like Night City,” says Więcek. That is because Night City, in the fiction of Cyberpunk 2077, has endured more catastrophic shifts than a decade’s worth of Marvel movies, up to and including a small nuclear detonation. Ideally, no city would be like this. But consider: That’s what makes for a fun video game.

In Cyberpunk 2077, players create a protagonist named V, a mercenary who ekes out a living dictated by the player’s whims. As they travel the sci-fi megacity, its fictional history is reflected in its sprawl.

Players can fully customize the traits of the game’s main character.

Courtesy of CD Projekt RED

Throughout, Więcek and his team have developed architectural styles that signify different eras of Night City’s development. What they call “Kitsch” for example, is inspired by legendary designer Syd Mead and conveyed in vibrant colors and plastics. “Entropism,” another, evokes German industrial designer Dieter Rams, juxtaposing the elegance his work was known for with the lower-class neighborhoods it characterizes.

But cities are not just for looking at. Night City’s neighborhoods must be filled with things to do, and so different neighborhoods are full of video-gamey diversions to enjoy, from boxing to car racing to hacking. Warring gangs and mega-corporations alike have staked out territory, each a potential source of work for your character. Ideally, there’s always something interesting in reach.

“I also wanted our designs to imbue every space with possibilities, and to engage players so that they will want to immerse themselves fully into this world,” Więcek says. “A player’s experience with the visual side of the game should allure them to take on the challenges this city has to offer.”

In a game as intricate as this, there are many scenes to stumble upon.

Courtesy of CD Projekt RED

Making a video game of this scope is a laborious process. A single video game can involve the work of hundreds working around the clock for four years or more; and “crunch”—the often-unspoken expectation that designers put in extreme hours to finish—is endemic in big-budget game development.

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For Cyberpunk 2077, building and filling Night City took eight years—with a Bloomberg report alleging severe crunch for extended periods of that development. (When reached for comment, CD Projekt Red directed AD to a previous statement maintaining crunch was limited to a six-week period and generously compensated.) No cities are built without blame.

It isn't just cityscapes that show the influence of architecture on the game, but interior spaces as well.

Courtesy of CD Projekt RED

Building a digital city is quite similar to a real-life one: it’s connective tissue and skeletal framework, a conduit for people to build and gather around all there is to love or hate about a place. But it’s also, as Więcek notes, a careful recreation of our mistakes.

“Bringing this vision to fruition is extremely interesting, especially when you care about saving our world from that kind of fate and don’t want people to destroy it,” Więcek says. “I think we’re trying, but not hard enough.”