The phantom liberty expansion is out now, and something to note is just how many roads and cars are in the game considering… well… how are they still burning fossil fuels in 2077?
Something interesting about it is how the game now reads like Grand Theft Auto in the dystopian future. Cars exist so you must be able to drive and shoot out of them and there must be cops and there must be traffic and… all of that is sort of meaningless in that universe. So much of the marketing is set around cars, but if they got rid of the cars, if cars weren’t there, then maybe they would have put more effort into the other systems.
Maybe the broken systems just wouldn’t need to be built, because so many of them are shoehorned in around cars.
EDIT: wanted to address the comments here as they are all very similarly themed:
I am not talking about the fiction, I am talking about the game design. Yes it’s a dystopia but that’s not why the game is buggy or boring. Having cars in the fiction means the game must add mechanics to drive and get new cars and vehicular combat. Once there’s so much car stuff, the game feels like GTA, which prompts people to make comparisons, which means CDPR needs even more GTA-like mechanics. That’s time which could have gone into more RPG mechanics, better missions, etc.
The only time I was talking about the fiction was in reference to how much would cost to own a car, including roads and so on. Why isn’t every road pay per use? Why isn’t biofuel like $20 a litre? But that would be oppressive to drive in, and because it’s a power fantasy, all of that goes by the wayside.
Overall my point was that just as cars dominate the city scape of the present, so they dominate the game design of everything where cars are present.
It’s a dystopia not a utopia. I think that is the cyberpunk hellscape that is to be expected.
I think they should have focused harder on the campaign rather than the car-centric open world though. They were never going to match the how good GTA does it.
They aren’t burning fossil fuels. They’re burning CHOOH2, which is the product of a genetically engineered plant.
Everything else has already been addressed by others. It’s a dystopia. Public transit exists in universe, but it’s very dangerous (as is the rest of the city). The corporate solution is to upsell you cars.
It’s not fossil fuels. It’s biofuel made from high-sugar wheat that was created by Biotechnica.
TIL. Nevertheless, it must cost a lot more than it does in game.
I don’t understand why you think that biofuel would be cost prohibitive in a world with literal robots, sword arms, guns with tracking bullets the ability to jack-in to cyberspace and hack shit with your mind?
Plus it’s not like 20 eddies a litre would be cost prohibitive anyway? You drop 10-15k on implants all the time.
As others have pointed out, it is intentionally meant to be a dystopian future, that is to say, a shit one. So the car prevalence could be intentional. (Also there is a public transit system in the lore, it’s just not working in the game because they never finished it.)
All the stuff you talk about is either hard sci-fi, or an inch away from hard sci-fi. A car that is efficient and makes a vroom vroom noise is not hard sci-fi. It’s fantasy.
it’s not like 20 eddies a litre would be cost prohibitive anyway? You drop 10-15k on implants all the time.
This part is a fair point, you are incredibly consequential in the world, but that kind of adds to the idea that a car is not something everyday people can afford.
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Maybe. Lore states that it’s vastly fuel efficient so youd only stop by on a very infrequent basis to top up. Like oil changes.
In the case of CP, as it was already pointed out by other commenters: car culture is firmly rooted in the world building.
However, imagining av alternative world without cars could be interesting as well. How would that transform Night City? How would you make moment-to-moment movement and exploration fun and engaging in a game with big city distances, bit with no cars?
I really think the gameplay of most futuristic or present day city settings really suffers because of this. Driving around is pretty boring, especially on a grid, and it isolates you from the environment just like IRL. Your probably arent going to stop your car and get out to check some small detail, but you would take a look if on foot. Games should lean into Parkour and other movement where you can stop fairly easily. Successful games already tend to lean away from driving unless it’s the core mechanic, imagine how bad mirrors edge would be with cars, and notice how in fortnite most players gravitate to whatever non-car mechanic is gimmick of the month and rarely use the in world cars.
I think it would really cool if cp77 had something that launched you into the air and let you dive bomb an area far away.
Totally! It’s actually kinda surprising to see Cyberpunk with no true hoverboards, for example.
Also, one game that seemed to have done it right, was Infamous for PS3. You could ride the power lines, glide, zip around the city - it was really fun without really losing much on the exploration side
There’s already dash, crouch dash, and air dash. Allow us to modify our cyberwear so we can increase sprint speed and double dash and we’re already more than halfway there.
Something I always have noticed on cyberpunk games is that there’s no traffic congestion, neither public transit while being overpopulated. Pretty unrealistic.
My issue is who is driving and what the roads look like. Somehow the government still pays for roads? No road rolls? Petrol / biofuel at reasonable prices? All cars aren’t for the ultra rich?
Cars exist so you must be able to drive and shoot out of them and there must be cops and there must be traffic and…
Why wasnt this expectation in L.A. Noire? Didnt hear much yelling for cops and better traffic there. What we got was very barebones.
Upvoting. Thanks for understanding my premise. Firstly, there are a lot of cars in the game, and you can still carjack, and the requisite physics must exist. You are a cop, so obviously cop chases don’t make sense, but an enormous amount of time and effort was put into driving given it’s got nothing to do with the game.
IT’S A DYSTOPIA DUMMY
