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How Cyberpunk 2077 honours its sci-fi forefathers
The dystopian vision behind Night City isn't new, but it's rarely been this pretty. We dig into how the creators of The Witcher 3 are paying tribute to their neo-noir predecessors.
Cyberpunk 2077, the upcoming game from the creators behind The Witcher 3, is a first-person RPG set in a not-too-distant, dystopian future, where the American economy has collapsed and all-powerful corporations rule people's lives. You play as V, a mercenary-for-hire with cybernetic implants, and you live in Night City, an urban hellscape with rampant crime and dysfunction. Graffiti covers every cracked surface. The neon lights give the environment an unnatural glow; it's an aesthetic of sleaziness. This game is part of a dark science fiction genre known as cyberpunk.
Much of science fiction from the mid-20th century was aspirational; it cast a starry-eyed gaze towards a better, more peaceful future. Technology was an equaliser that freed humans from physical labour, allowing them to chase more intellectual pursuits. Having solved the problems of economic, racial and gender disparity, the characters wrestled with more philosophical dilemmas. The Star Trek franchise still depicts this sort of future: curious, courageous, and always pressing forward.
But in the '70s and '80s, a newer, more cynical strain of science fiction began trending in popular culture. In these stories, technology deepened humanity's cultural divides instead of reinforcing them. Rather than inspiring curiosity about heady concerns, technology propagated apathy and dehumanisation. The government, at its best, was ineffectual; at its worst, it was a punitive state. And though society might have had the veneer of law and order, there was often a legally ambiguous, black market culture that underpinned it, filled with weapons and tech dealers, guns for hire and revolutionary types.
One of the first cyberpunk authors was the recently departed Harlan Ellison, who wrote the short story I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream (1967) about a supercomputer that tortured five of the last surviving humans. Ellison also wrote the original teleplay for the 1967 Star Trek episode The City on the Edge of Forever. It had a time travel plot: the Enterprise crew must ensure that a woman from the past dies in order to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war. It's widely considered the greatest Star Trek episode ever written, but Ellison clashed with Trek creator Gene Roddenberry over omissions to his original concept: space mercenaries from an alternate timeline, and a crew member who deals and dabbles in drugs.
Roddenberry specifically balked at the latter implication; it would have been dissonant in a human world as idealised as Star Trek's. But it would have been right at home in cyberpunk. Ellison was a man ahead of his time, and he still left an indelible mark on Hollywood: he worked on television series Babylon 5 as a creative consultant, and he conceptualised the 'time-travelling soldier' plot of The Terminator franchise. That franchise, in turn, has influenced countless video games; any first-person shooter with an HUD display owes a debt to the signature red HUD of Terminator 2: Judgment Day.
From the revealed 48 minutes of gameplay footage of Cyberpunk 2077
© CD Projekt Red
Other cyberpunk staples took a similar route, trickling from literature to film to video games. The use of robots as a substitute for human experiences was explored in the Brian Aldiss short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long (1969). This would later be turned into the Stanley Kubrick and Steven Spielberg collaboration film A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), in which an overpopulated Earth addresses loneliness and isolation by creating subservient robots, who can provide love, sex, or laughter.
This is thematically similar to the concept of 'Braindance' in Cyberpunk 2077: a simulation technology where people experience others' exciting lives instead of their own. This can be addictive; people are willing lose everything and live on the street if it means they can experience the latest Braindance. Cyberpunk 2077 exposes humanity's dependence upon technology that, even that when it is well-intended, leads to decadence and eventual ruin.
In 1984, writer William Gibson released his novel Neuromancer, about a drug-addicted computer hacker who uploads his consciousness onto the Internet to steal data. It's been adapted and paid homage to countless times, most notably by the Matrix franchise.
The manga and animated film Ghost in the Shell also dealt with uploading and transferring consciousness, and like Neuromancer, augmented its human characters with cybernetic attachments. These heady questions about individuality and human existence are explored in Cyberpunk 2077; in the first gameplay footage, V battles a black market group that kidnaps people and harvests their cybernetic implants. The game also allows you to upgrade your existing cybernetic implants, and unlock additional gameplay mechanics and strategies.
V receives an ocular upgrade
© CD Projekt Red
The visual source of all modern cyberpunk media is Ridley Scott's Blade Runner (1982), based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep. Starring Harrison Ford as a 'blade runner' who hunts down bioengineered human 'replicants,' the film received a mixed reaction from audiences, but was later rediscovered as a cult classic.
The look of Blade Runner has become iconic. The filth and decay of the futuristic Los Angeles setting, and the dramatic shadows across everyone's faces, are nods to hard-boiled film noir The Maltese Falcon and Touch of Evil. And the film's neon colours are inspired by 1980s Tokyo and Hong Kong. Cyberpunk 2077 applies both of these visual tropes; they have become a calling card for an entire genre.
Chilling on the outskirts of Night City
© CD Projekt Red
Cyberpunk 2077 still doesn't have a release date, but already, it looks to be a deserving heir of a proud tradition. Its video game forebearers are apparent; the cyberpunk ethos has a long, proud history in gaming. Syndicate. Shadowrun. System Shock. Deus Ex. Mirror's Edge. But cyberpunk actually began on the printed page decades prior, when writers imagined these nightmarish dystopias before filmmakers and game developers committed them to screen.
