What if I told you that in the future, you can hack vending machines, punch a cybernetic gangster in the face, and put on erotic prosthetics? Cyberpunk 2077 is one of the most talked-about open world RPG releases in recent memory, developed and published by CD Projekt Red. It first launched in 2020 for PC, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One, later making its way to next-gen platforms. Set in the futuristic, Neon soaked Night City, the game puts you as a mercenary trying to make a name for themselves, called V, playing in a first-person perspective where you can mix shooting, melee hack-and-slash combat, and hacking mechanics to approach encounters in different ways. Is that enough to shake your seat? If it is, let’s get right into it.
Side Activities
Let’s talk about side activities first. Starting with side quests. The game features a wide range of side quests varying from one-on-one fistfights or hunting down specific enemies to exploration driven ones, such as tracking vehicles around the city, and driving challenges for the gearheads out there. There are also lighter quests that play around with shooting contests, quirky encounters, and even vehicle theft. Finally, some side stories let you build relationships with key characters, including romance options that depend on your character’s background. This variation keeps the side quests from feeling repetitive and gives different ways to interact with Night City.
Night City also has smaller mini-game-like distractions you can take on whenever you want, particularly Arcade machines. There are 2 different arcade machines with 2 different games, but unlike most mini-games in other games, they also reward you with in-game prizes, giving you an actual reason to try them out.
Buying and selling is another layer of interaction in the city. You can buy vehicles and apartments of your choice. The apartments have their own style and atmosphere based on their districts. And shops sell anything from clothing weapons, and… more adult-focused services (so you can put your erotic prosthetics to the test). Each store has its own inventory, and while the selection can change over time, the type of items depends on the kind of shop you visit. Junk and excess equipment can be sold either at vending machines for convenience or to vendors for better returns.
Cyberpunk 2077 includes collectibles that tie directly into progression. Relic points scattered across the city can be gathered to unlock new perks, encouraging exploration in less obvious spots. There are also murals hidden around districts that you can scan, functioning as a collectible hunt tied to Night City’s culture and history. These activities add optional layers of progression and encourage players to look off the guided path.
We also have gigs, handed by Fixers throughout the city, which are smaller jobs compared to side quests. These can include taking down criminals, neutralizing cyberpsychos, stealing specific cars, or infiltrating locations to complete a task. They usually don’t take long, but they offer solid rewards in money, experience, and gear, making them worthwhile to pick up regularly. Since gigs are constantly available, they help fill the city with short-term goals.
The game also lets you pursue romances with key characters in the side quests, each tied to their own storylines and shaped by your choices and V’s background (AKA gender). These relationships add personal depth and can even get you their life updates by SMS.
You can also spend your time crafting items, which can be done directly through your inventory menu, where you can choose to build or upgrade items. Weapons, clothing, mods, and consumables can all be crafted if you have the right crafting level and blueprints. To make these items, you’ll need components gathered from looting enemies, dismantling gear, or hacking access points across the city.
Essentially, the world of Cyberpunk 2077 is filled with side activities you can choose from.
Area of Freedom
Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 is designed as one continuous open world rather than being broken into segmented regions. From the moment you step into the game, most of the city is fully accessible. The city is divided into districts, but these divisions are for thematic and environmental variety rather than restrictions on movement. Travel across the city can be done by many means, either on foot, by driving vehicles directly through the streets, using the NCART public train system, or by using the fast travel system, where you jump between specific terminals scattered throughout the map. The Night City feels like a borderless marvel, with nothing blocking your path in the world, even extending to the verticality of the map, where you can even parkour on top of the tallest buildings. So, the only invisible walls here are at the edges of the map. What makes it interesting here is that the invisible walls on the map differ on each edge of the map; some have a hard invisible wall, while some might even kill you with a big boom.
Ultimately, the game passes this aspect with very little to no limitation.
Liveliness
Night City is built to impress with its towering skyscrapers, neon signs, and contrasting district designs. City Center reflects wealth and corporate dominance with its polished towers and luxury cars, while Watson feels crowded, chaotic, and buzzing with street life. On the other end, Pacifica is half-abandoned and tense, marked by decayed structures and fewer people in the streets. These differences highlight how each district tells its own story within the larger city. Ambient details such as holographic billboards, city chatter, shifting weather like fog or rain, and even the ability to change radio stations while walking or driving add extra layers to the atmosphere.
Settlements in Cyberpunk 2077 take the form of these districts, and each one is filled with NPCs that match the area’s atmosphere. City streets are often packed with pedestrians, vehicles, and occasional protests, while outer regions like the Badlands have noticeably fewer people and cars. Each NPC appears busy doing their own thing; one NPC is on their phone, another one next to it might be dozing off, while others might just be chilling in the bar, though interaction is limited to basic prompts rather than deeper engagement. They do react to gunfire or disturbances, though. As a whole, their numbers make the world feel alive, and their routines are even more than enough to make them believable.
Outside the dense urban core, the Badlands provide a contrasting experience with endless stretches of open desert. Wildlife is absent, and encounters are mostly within the small towns out and about the desert. You can stumble upon roadside stops or small camps with some NPCs, but travel between them often feels empty. Though the roads and highways connect districts seamlessly, there are less vehicles driving past. However, all this makes sense when put into the context that the badlands are more of a desert-ey area out of town.
That being said, Cyberpunk 2077 definitely passes the liveliness aspect.
Customization
Cyberpunk 2077 gives players the ability to adjust their character’s appearance even after starting the game. At ripperdoc clinics or in character menus, you can change things like hair, piercings, makeup, and face tattoos without spending in-game money. This allows you to refresh your character’s look at any point during the playthrough.
Clothing customization comes with a large amount of variation. Jackets, pants, boots, hats, glasses, and other pieces are scattered across Night City, and they can be combined freely to shape your character’s style. Outfits range from flashy cyberpunk streetwear to more subdued everyday looks. Clothing items also come with armor values and sometimes stat bonuses, so variation is not just cosmetic but can affect survivability as well.
Weapons have a similarly wide range, covering pistols, shotguns, rifles, melee weapons, and more. Each weapon type has multiple models with distinct stats and firing behaviors, so players can collect and swap through a variety of loadouts. Some weapons are more common, while iconic weapons stand out with unique perks or abilities that set them apart from regular finds.
Crafting adds another layer to both weapons and clothing. Using components gathered from looting or dismantling gear, you can craft new items or upgrade existing ones. This includes item mods. The crafting system assigns rolled modifiers, so two versions of the same weapon or clothing piece might not be identical, giving each crafted item a degree of uniqueness. Upgrades allow you to keep favorite weapons or outfits viable as you progress, making crafting more than just a one-time option.
Vehicles also feature customization options. Certain cars can be modified to change their look, and you can collect or purchase new ones to expand your garage. While the customization here is more limited compared to characters, it still lets you leave your mark on how your rides appear.
The skill tree is tied to progression. Each time you level up, you earn a skill point, which can be spent in perk trees connected to attributes like Body, Reflexes, and others. These trees branch into offensive, defensive, and utility perks, with a mix of passive bonuses and active abilities. Raising an attribute unlocks more perks within its category, and you can’t max every tree in one run, so you’ll need to focus on a specific playstyle like brawler, hacker, or stealth.
Cyberdecks, which control hacking abilities, can be upgraded as well. Installing better decks improves your options in combat and stealth, letting you access stronger quickhacks or more memory slots.
So with that extended list, Cyberpunk 2077 definitely nails Customization.
Engagement
Cyberpunk 2077 keeps you hooked by weaving the main story together with smaller, character-focused moments. As you play through the main quests, you’ll meet NPCs who become more than just quest-givers. Many of them stick around, let you check in on how their lives are going, and even invite you into their personal stories through side quests. This is where it sparks your curiosity to want to know them more. These side quests usually dive deeper into who they are, their struggles, or their goals, and that extra layer of storytelling makes the world feel a lot more personal and engaging.
Beyond that, progressing through certain main quests unlocks gigs scattered throughout the city. These gigs add another layer of activity by boosting your street cred, which then opens up access to new components and better rarity weapons. Gigs can sometimes fall into familiar patterns, but there’s still enough mix of stealth, combat, hacking, or rescue missions to keep them from feeling completely repetitive. Put together, the main quests, character-driven side stories, and gigs all give you plenty of reasons to keep exploring Night City until the end and finding new ways to spend your time outside of just chasing the main storyline.
All in all, engagement is something that is definitely there in the game.
Uniqueness
What makes Cyberpunk 2077 stand out is how completely it leans into its futuristic setting. Night City isn’t just a collection of tall buildings and neon signs, it’s built with layers of detail that make the world feel alive and different from most open worlds. Apartments across districts have their own look and personality, with decor and layouts reflecting the culture of the area. For example, Japantown apartments showcase strong cultural influences in both design and atmosphere. On the streets, NPCs walk around in cyber-enhanced fashion, neon hairstyles, and body modifications that are treated as an everyday normal. Cars, motorbikes, and even taxis carry sleek "back to the future" looking designs, making futuristic transport part of daily life. Drones, service robots, and holographic advertisements flood the city, reinforcing the feeling that technology has fully merged with society. This overall immersion of futurism is clearly what makes the game unique, and the developers definitely showed that they stood on business.
Beyond the obvious, smaller touches push that sense of futurism even further. The NCART metro system lets you travel across districts in a way that feels grounded in the city’s infrastructure, while the AutoDrive feature allows cars to drive themselves if you’d rather sit back and watch the streets roll by. Braindance sequences take it a step further by letting you analyze recorded events frame by frame, almost like playing detective inside someone else’s memories. These small features might not be that special on its own, but combined, they add layers beyond the surface that make Night City feel distinct, immersive, and uniquely futuristic.
So in a nutshell, the game’s realized futuristic vision makes it unique.
Verdict
And with that, we’re wrapping up our journey through Night City. Cyberpunk 2077 has had its fair share of controversy at its launch, but it has definitely come a long way, even going as far as making it one of the best and most memorable open worlds out there. The game passes in every aspect in our books. It delivers strong customization, more than detailed liveliness, varied side content, and a futuristic setting that feels distinct from other open worlds. The game excels in giving players freedom to shape their character, experiment with different playstyles, and explore districts that each carry their own personality. Overall, Cyberpunk 2077 is a game you should have your eyes on, earning it an S Tier on the GameTyr scale.
