Recently, I've been diving into Cyberpunk 2077, and it made me reflect on certain aspects of its design. My issues with the game are straightforward:
I often feel lost, but not in a fun or engaging way.
The city feels suffocating and impersonal.
I get the sense that I’m trapped within its confines.
Most importantly, I couldn’t quite grasp why I felt this way.
So, I took a closer look at Night City’s design to understand why it made me feel this way.
The Layout of Night City
Some of the design choices are pretty clear:
The districts are thematically distinct, and it’s obvious when you transition from one to another. However, once you’re in a district, it’s difficult to orient yourself or know where you are in relation to other places.
The roads are largely uniform in width, with the exception of highways. Within the districts, there’s a lack of variety in the paths.
The city is filled with massive, monolithic brutalist structures that create barriers and obscure any sense of direction. It's hard to know where you are or where you're headed.
In the Watson district, the buildings follow the same architectural theme. While there are landmarks, they are often hidden and not accessible, which means they don’t serve the purpose of helping players orient themselves.
Thematic World Design
TV Tropes defines this kind of setting as a mutable Crap-sack world—a place that’s unpleasant and oppressive, but that can potentially be changed by a determined protagonist, similar to the settings of Fallout or Mad Max.
The overall theme of Night City feels like one of competition. Buildings compete for height and extravagance, but this makes it hard to get a sense of place.
When everything is flashy and overwhelming, it’s easy to get lost. It’s reminiscent of the scene in Altered Carbon, where the protagonist is bombarded with a flood of advertisements through his brain implants, and he needs an inhibitor just to process it.
It seems as though every building is trying to be the centerpiece of the city, but none of them actually stand out.
Landmarks and Orientation
There are a few landmarks scattered throughout Night City, but they tend to either be too large or too obscured to be useful for navigation. Countless buildings, often nondescript, block the view and access to these landmarks.
Night City’s design seems to aim at making you feel insignificant and lost.
It’s the opposite of what urban planners would recommend when designing a functional, navigable city. The more you wander, the clearer it becomes that Night City isn’t a place you'd want to live—or even visit, really. Sure, you exist there as a character, but it’s pretty clear that you’re stuck in the city because you have no other choice.
Narrative and City Structure
From a narrative perspective, Cyberpunk 2077 presents Night City as the place for those ambitious enough to make it big. It’s a city where you either rise to the top and live among the stars, or you sink into the gutters. It’s a classic High Tech—Low Life theme.
There are no distinct outposts or strongholds in the city. Instead, the criminal elements of Night City are scattered in the streets, alleyways, and hidden labs across the map. These areas are easy to miss unless pointed out by the UI.
Some locations could’ve benefitted from a more cohesive design, offering a more engaging 360-degree approach. Instead, the city feels like a giant corporate machine, flashing grand promises through huge billboards, neon lights, and brutalist architecture—but delivering little more than empty promises.
When you try to interact with these promises, you either get nothing (since many places are off-limits) or encounter the city’s criminal underbelly—gangs, cyberpunks, and brutal conflicts.
The Aesthetic and Feel of Night City
Night City gives off vibes similar to major cities like Tokyo, Hong Kong, Shanghai, New York, or even Toronto. It maintains elements of these cities but exaggerates their proportions and scale.
Looking at classic Cyberpunk media, especially Japanese Cyberpunk like Akira, scale is often a dominant visual driver. The massive buildings seem to stack on top of one another like Lego blocks, forming a colossal and impenetrable landscape that players must navigate around.
Though some of these large brutalist buildings have passageways between them, this happens infrequently and mostly serves a cosmetic rather than functional role in the game.
The City's Architecture
The streets of Night City feel narrow, especially compared to the towering buildings that surround them. There is a clear tendency to build upwards—the taller the building, the more imposing it becomes. The area behind the building is largely irrelevant in this design philosophy.
This results in slum-like areas even in the more central parts of the city. While there are undoubtedly ways the design could have been improved, it’s evident that Night City was never meant to be a well-designed theme park or a city built for the people who live in it. The focus seems to be on its aesthetic image rather than how it functions as a city.
Night City’s design, while visually impressive, feels disconnected and isolating, with its massive buildings, narrow streets, and unwelcoming atmosphere. The city’s architecture and layout seem to reflect its narrative—ambitious and flashy on the surface, but ultimately empty and difficult to navigate.
