CD Projekt's Cyberpunk 2077 Update 2.0 + Phantom Liberty Expansion Thread

[solemgar]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

I agree that the gloss is kinda part of the vision of Pondsmith , but compare this stuff from sourcebooks (see attachments)

And compare it with screenshots from the actual game

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , in bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The source material was part funny, comedic, satiric and terrying. A great example a codexer gave was RoboCop's Detroit.

 

[Ryzer]

The base game is still a broken piece of shit, NPCs T-posing, +% skills and perks, terrible intro, no C&C, awful scripted sequences, nerf gunfight, akward melee combat, retarded police and enemy's AI.
I hope the DLC is going to improve this dung.

 

[Hellraiser]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

I agree that the gloss is kinda part of the vision of Pondsmith , but compare this stuff from sourcebooks (see attachments)

And compare it with screenshots from the actual game

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , it bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The source material was part funny, comedic, satiric and terrying. A great example a codexer gave was RoboCop's Detroit.

Why the hell I don't remember that from the source books. Although it has been years since I read any of those. Should check the deep space one again, since it has some nice hard science fiction space flight ideas in it.

Anyway adding to your point the tabletop original was very much a product of the 80s hence the gloss, and if you look at things like beat'em up games from the late 80s/early 90s such as Final Fight and Streets of Rage, you see many similar aesthetic patterns (gaudy clothed punks, dirty/grafitti-covered buildings and alleys, city lights and neon signs) while going for the same urban low-life scum infested cities vibe.

 

[Quillon]

this has been on my mind since witcher days...what's with cdpr writers not using personal pronouns? is it a translation thing or do they wanna make the dialog seem natural? in any case they are overdoing it to cringe levels imo /big wall of text rant's over

 

[Ryzer]

It's a shame though, Night City is splendid, the TV intro sets up the mood, like a nice fancy display but once you enter inside, there is nothing, it's empty.
There is no fun activity, NPCs roam around endlessly without purpose, it's there for no reason.
The dialogues are extremely poorly written, it's like a teenager was behind the scripts, there's a dimensional rift between Cyberpunk's writing and Witcher 3's, it's blatant and shocking.

 

[solemgar]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

I agree that the gloss is kinda part of the vision of Pondsmith , but compare this stuff from sourcebooks (see attachments)

And compare it with screenshots from the actual game

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , it bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The source material was part funny, comedic, satiric and terrying. A great example a codexer gave was RoboCop's Detroit.

Why the hell I don't remember that from the source books. Although it has been years since I read any of those. Should check the deep space one again, since it has some nice hard science fiction space flight ideas in it.

Anyway adding to your point the tabletop original was very much a product of the 80s hence the gloss, and if you look at things like beat'em up games from the late 80s/early 90s such as Final Fight and Streets of Rage, you seem many similar easthetic paterns (gaudy clothed punks, dirty/grafitti-covered buildings and alleys, city lights and neon signs) while going for the same urban low-life scum infested cities vibe.

I ack I went to look for that Hitler screenshot right on purpose. I thought the average codex visitor would appreciate it. :p

Talking about being a product of their time , I doubt they could get that published nowadays even

 

[gurugeorge]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

I agree that the gloss is kinda part of the vision of Pondsmith , but compare this stuff from sourcebooks (see attachments)

And compare it with screenshots from the actual game

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , it bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The source material was part funny, comedic, satiric and terrying. A great example a codexer gave was RoboCop's Detroit.

If you don't have the shininess as well, you don't have the full vibe.

I think it's a mistake to think of the cyberpunk dystopia either as a society in a state of total decay, or as being like a post-apoc scenario. It's a society that actually functions, not one that's falling apart; and it will continue to function (as the reincarnated Arasaka says at the end it's a state of "perfection"). It's anarcho-tyranny, managed chaos with a touch of Brave New World (or "bread and circuses" might be another way of putting it). That's part of the horror of it - that so many are so drugged out, fed enough slop, pacified, entertained, etc., that they don't think of rebelling, and couldn't even organize if they did. (Very much like our own dystopia.)

It's only the few brave souls, who occasionally intersect with the criminal underground, who see the light, eke out a fight against the system using jury-rigged bits of the system against itself, and that's the adventure. (But the criminal underground, at the highest level, also always turns out to be part of the system, part of the managed chaos - that's almost always a guaranteed reveal in any cyberpunk story.)

 

[solemgar]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

I agree that the gloss is kinda part of the vision of Pondsmith , but compare this stuff from sourcebooks (see attachments)

And compare it with screenshots from the actual game

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , it bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The source material was part funny, comedic, satiric and terrying. A great example a codexer gave was RoboCop's Detroit.

If you don't have the shininess as well, you don't have the full vibe.

I think it's a mistake to think of the cyberpunk dystopia either as a society in a state of total decay, or as being like a post-apoc scenario. It's a society that actually functions, not one that's falling apart; and it will continue to function (as the reincarnated Arasaka says at the end it's a state of "perfection"). It's anarcho-tyranny, managed chaos with a touch of Brave New World (or "bread and circuses" might be another way of putting it). That's part of the horror of it - that so many are so drugged out, fed enough slop, pacified, entertained, etc., that they don't think of rebelling, and couldn't even organize if they did. (Very much like our own dystopia.)

It's only the few brave souls, who occasionally intersect with the criminal underground, who see the light, eke out a fight against the system using jury-rigged bits of the system against itself, and that's the adventure. (But the criminal underground, at the highest level, also always turns out to be part of the system, part of the managed chaos - that's almost always a guaranteed reveal in any cyberpunk story.)

And that's where the game fails ! It doesn't convey that sense, but at all. Only glimmers of it

 

[Zeriel]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

This isn't true though. Pondsmith explicitly describes the classical Cyberpunk adventure in the tabletop as being rain-slicked streets and foggy nights; he did the same in the first promotional video of Cyberpunk advertising his involvement, specifically calling out his time in Seattle (which, spoiler alert, is not dry Cali weather).

This may be part of the setting technically (as in, it doesn't exist in a world where sunny days don't exist), but to pretend like it is some stylistic choice in the tabletop and on the part of Pondsmith is the opposite of reality.

 

[moon knight]

Starfield

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , in bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The big difference is that the drawing of the original sourcebook is showing an apartment, an architecture, that isn't futuristic. A shitty room of a shitty 80s New York apartment. Reminds me more of Deus Ex HR than Cyberpunk 2077, which has more technologically advanced architecture

 

[gurugeorge]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

I agree that the gloss is kinda part of the vision of Pondsmith , but compare this stuff from sourcebooks (see attachments)

And compare it with screenshots from the actual game

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , it bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The source material was part funny, comedic, satiric and terrying. A great example a codexer gave was RoboCop's Detroit.

If you don't have the shininess as well, you don't have the full vibe.

I think it's a mistake to think of the cyberpunk dystopia either as a society in a state of total decay, or as being like a post-apoc scenario. It's a society that actually functions, not one that's falling apart; and it will continue to function (as the reincarnated Arasaka says at the end it's a state of "perfection"). It's anarcho-tyranny, managed chaos with a touch of Brave New World (or "bread and circuses" might be another way of putting it). That's part of the horror of it - that so many are so drugged out, fed enough slop, pacified, entertained, etc., that they don't think of rebelling, and couldn't even organize if they did. (Very much like our own dystopia.)

It's only the few brave souls, who occasionally intersect with the criminal underground, who see the light, eke out a fight against the system using jury-rigged bits of the system against itself, and that's the adventure. (But the criminal underground, at the highest level, also always turns out to be part of the system, part of the managed chaos - that's almost always a guaranteed reveal in any cyberpunk story.)

And that's where the game fails ! It doesn't convey that sense, but at all. Only glimmers of it

Well, de gustibus. It does to me - more often than it doesn't. In lots of little ways too - for example, the rich kid caught up in human trafficking that you find a sad pdf of in a container. That's the precariousness of even the people who seem to be benefiting from the system. The merely well-off and rich in the culture are just as much victims of it as the poor, they're just as caught up in the glamour, but at any moment something horrible can happen to them too. It's really, really bleak, with no sense of escape or way out.

 

[solemgar]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

This isn't true though. Pondsmith explicitly describes the classical Cyberpunk adventure in the tabletop as being rain-slicked streets and foggy nights; he did the same in the first promotional video of Cyberpunk advertising his involvement, specifically calling out his time in Seattle (which, spoiler alert, is not dry Cali weather).

This may be part of the setting technically (as in, it doesn't exist in a world where sunny days don't exist), but to pretend like it is some stylistic choice in the tabletop and on the part of Pondsmith is the opposite of reality.

There is some degree of gloss, but it is deliberate, and mostly to differentiate how the wealthy live and how fucked common people are.

I kinda like the mega building where V lives. Even if his/her apartment is just too lavish.

 

[moon knight]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

This isn't true though. Pondsmith explicitly describes the classical Cyberpunk adventure in the tabletop as being rain-slicked streets and foggy nights; he did the same in the first promotional video of Cyberpunk advertising his involvement, specifically calling out his time in Seattle (which, spoiler alert, is not dry Cali weather).

This may be part of the setting technically (as in, it doesn't exist in a world where sunny days don't exist), but to pretend like it is some stylistic choice in the tabletop and on the part of Pondsmith is the opposite of reality.

 

[mediocrepoet]

You'll have to provide an example of what you consider a model cyberpunk setting, cos NC feels plenty dystopian to me.

You know you're talking to a guy that thinks this is what the hopeful and bright future a la Star Trek looks like.

does the inside of your ship look like this too?

 

[solemgar]

Starfield

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , in bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The big difference is that the drawing of the original sourcebook is showing an apartment, an architecture, that isn't futuristic. A shitty room of a shitty 80s New York apartment. Reminds me more of Deus Ex HR than Cyberpunk 2077, which has more technologically advanced architecture

I'll see if I can find a better example later on but I see what you mean.

 

[Hellraiser]

The base game is still a broken piece of shit, NPCs T-posing, +% skills and perks, terrible intro, no C&C, awful scripted sequences, nerf gunfight, akward melee combat, retarded police and enemy's AI.
I hope the DLC is going to improve this dung.

I had more cases of enemies falling through floors now in 2.0 than I did in Starfield, guess CDP really wants to steal Todd's thunder.

 

[Zeriel]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

This isn't true though. Pondsmith explicitly describes the classical Cyberpunk adventure in the tabletop as being rain-slicked streets and foggy nights; he did the same in the first promotional video of Cyberpunk advertising his involvement, specifically calling out his time in Seattle (which, spoiler alert, is not dry Cali weather).

This may be part of the setting technically (as in, it doesn't exist in a world where sunny days don't exist), but to pretend like it is some stylistic choice in the tabletop and on the part of Pondsmith is the opposite of reality.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say here? That rain exists in the game? Yes. That it is common? No. At least, it wasn't in the release version. They added weather as a DLC. And then there were mods. I do remember certain moments in the story trigger rainy weather very briefly. So that's apparently how CDPR saw it: a very brief stylistic flourish then back to GTA5: The Future.

 

[solemgar]

You'll have to provide an example of what you consider a model cyberpunk setting, cos NC feels plenty dystopian to me.

You know you're talking to a guy that thinks this is what the hopeful and bright future a la Star Trek looks like.

does the inside of your ship look like this too?

I am dying here. This is exactly how I imagine the future of space travel. And then they say Starfield is a bad game. Todd Howard is a fucking visionary!!!!

 

[Caim]

You'll have to provide an example of what you consider a model cyberpunk setting, cos NC feels plenty dystopian to me.

You know you're talking to a guy that thinks this is what the hopeful and bright future a la Star Trek looks like.

does the inside of your ship look like this too?

I am dying here. This is exactly how I imagine the future of space travel. And then they say Starfield is a bad game. Todd Howard is a fucking visionary!!!!

Imagine pulling the brakes on your spaceship and three months worth of cum rags just fly across the length of your ship.

I mean, it's one way to deter boarding actions.

 

[Hellraiser]

You'll have to provide an example of what you consider a model cyberpunk setting, cos NC feels plenty dystopian to me.

You know you're talking to a guy that thinks this is what the hopeful and bright future a la Star Trek looks like.

does the inside of your ship look like this too?

I am dying here. This is exactly how I imagine the future of space travel. And then they say Starfield is a bad game. Todd Howard is a fucking visionary!!!!

Imagine pulling the brakes on your spaceship and three months worth of cum rags just fly across the length of your ship.

I mean, it's one way to deter boarding actions.

Hobospacepunk(tm)

 

[solemgar]

You'll have to provide an example of what you consider a model cyberpunk setting, cos NC feels plenty dystopian to me.

You know you're talking to a guy that thinks this is what the hopeful and bright future a la Star Trek looks like.

does the inside of your ship look like this too?

I am dying here. This is exactly how I imagine the future of space travel. And then they say Starfield is a bad game. Todd Howard is a fucking visionary!!!!

Imagine pulling the brakes on your spaceship and three months worth of cum rags just fly across the length of your ship.

I mean, it's one way to deter boarding actions.

I used to board ships for a living , but I took a cumrag to the face

 

[Gargaune]

That's my main gripe. CPDR tried to make a rendition of the source material and then bring it to modern audiences. I get that, I really do.

I get that the 80s Blade Runner aesthetic may not be cool anymore, but look at Deus Ex : Human Revolution. I know the game had a tepid reception, but I find the Prague design so beautiful. Mix of classic city with a futuristic twist.

I'm not even sure it's a "modern audiences" problem, I don't think there's anything about the tech noir aesthetic that wouldn't work for the contemporary consumer, but rather that CDPR aspired to keep it more "intellectually" relevant with this conceptual update rather than engage in retrofuturism, which the '80s-inspired aesthetics would've been.

Eidos Montreal spun up a whole proprietary art style for Human Revolution which they called "Neo-Renaissance" or "Cyber-Renaissance", it's its own thing. It was an interesting exercise, though I was happy they toned it down a bit through Mankind Divided because it was a very big gap to bridge to the original Deus Ex.

I think where Cyberpunk fucked up the most is the open world design. A game like this shines more in a hub kind of design. They could have made very big hub zones and hyperfocus the action there. Instead , I feel lots of times playing a GTA clone where half the content is there just for the sake of being.

That's not by accident, GTA was TW3's structural reference for its open world and interactions. I'm not bothered by CDPR going the open-world route, but they failed to appreciate how much of a difference setting a FPP adventure in a dense urban environment would skew players' expectations for exploration and interactivity. Night City should've played more like Boston in Fallout 4, Novigrad-on-steroids just can't cut it. But if we start breaking down the details, we'll be here till next Friday, it's all as interwoven as the average CBP mod setup.

That's CP2022 though. It's very much Gibson's Bridge trilogy - gritty, dirty urban wasteland/jungle, without the noir elements people often associate with cyberpunk because they saw Blade Runner.

That's fair enough, I'm not really qualified to comment on the source material, but I just don't find it as compelling as the tech noir approach. Blade Runner was more of the reverse, defining for tech noir while having little to do with cyberpunk, but my preferred reference would be Ghost in the Shell '95. I get a better groove off the visuals in something like the non-cyberpunk Terminator than those of Dredd 2012. If that aesthetic expectation's become widespread, I wouldn't say it's necessarily on account of public ignorance, but rather because the glove fits.

I'd agree he's a fine character, but his presence completely fucks the game in so many ways, it's kind hard for me to enjoy his presence on the screen.

I know what you mean, but the fault lies elsewhere. If you'd like to stare into the abyss for a minute, imagine the exact same Cyberpunk 2077 we got, except without Silverhand looming over your shoulder...

 

[luj1]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

I agree that the gloss is kinda part of the vision of Pondsmith , but compare this stuff from sourcebooks (see attachments)

And compare it with screenshots from the actual game

If I show you that screenshot without context, you might as well say that's from Saints Row. And that's where Cyberpunk 2077 fails , in bringing up the ruggedness , oppression and shit that corpos and corruption bring to the common people, plus the punk part of anarchy and fighting chance. It is just too shiny in many places.

The source material was part funny, comedic, satiric and terrying. A great example a codexer gave was RoboCop's Detroit.

i spoke about this a lot

c2077 is not cyberpunk, its contemporary futurism

altho its what the creators wanted (another GTA)

 

[mediocrepoet]

Part of the problem is the glossiness of the presentation

But the gloss is part of Pondsmith's work. All style, no substance world driven by corporate mandated consumption, where the punk thing to do is try and retain a shred of identity beyond what the brand of shoes you wear or the synthetic taste of your morning soda allows you to have.

I think this vision of cyberpunk is darker and sadder than any perpetually rainy night from Blade Runner could ever be, because it intentionally misrepresents itself in an insidious fashion. It's a toxic waste barrel painted in Skittles™ rainbows.

This isn't true though. Pondsmith explicitly describes the classical Cyberpunk adventure in the tabletop as being rain-slicked streets and foggy nights; he did the same in the first promotional video of Cyberpunk advertising his involvement, specifically calling out his time in Seattle (which, spoiler alert, is not dry Cali weather).

This may be part of the setting technically (as in, it doesn't exist in a world where sunny days don't exist), but to pretend like it is some stylistic choice in the tabletop and on the part of Pondsmith is the opposite of reality.

There is some degree of gloss, but it is deliberate, and mostly to differentiate how the wealthy live and how fucked common people are.

I kinda like the mega building where V lives. Even if his/her apartment is just too lavish.

One thing I noticed last night is if I got a police star in a shit area, the cops were easy to evade and gave up quickly. However, when I got into a mild fender bender (might have also run over a ped, don't remember) downtown around the corp centres, those fuckers were all over me, shooting and chasing, at one star. It took forever to shake them because there were cops all over the place.

I thought that was awesome for conveying the: don't start trouble in rich areas, but go nuts in the ghettos.

 

[S.H.O.D.A.N.]

This isn't true though.

"Night City today is a rapidly growing urban region, still rife with urban violence and street crime, but with strong economic growth in the Corporate sector. It is the quintessential city of the Cyberpunk future- gritty, dangerous, but possessing an urban slick and stylish cool that makes it unique."

We can discuss what that actually means, but it's clearly more than just the studio set night streets and rain machines.