Expert on the shortcomings of mass transit in Cyberpunk 2077's Night City

Originally published at: Expert on the shortcomings of mass transit in Cyberpunk 2077's Night City | Boing Boing

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The link to the kotaku post, as it seems to be missing

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That’s true, but isn’t that statement redundant with the premise of this being a shortcoming in the game?

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In 2077 transit is still not free, we got’a work on that.

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I think of the ways cities (and environments in general) are set up in video games as having a “Disney effect” where the building principles are pretty similar to its theme parks - some smaller elements are enlarged but otherwise things get shrunk. Mass transit falls in some weird void where it appears only as required by game mechanics and plot - assuming the transit even works, sometimes you don’t want areas to be easily accessible, or you’d prefer players to be piloting their own vehicles, etc. But games do tend to fall down on using mass transit as “quick travel” points in urban environments for some reason, I’ve noticed. It makes sense when the developers are American (because they’re not even thinking about it), but kind of weird when the devs are from… anywhere else.

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Wait, there is mass transit in Cyberpunk? I’m in the middle of the endgame missions and didn’t know that.

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The architecture is there, the locations. Some of the fast travel stations are in front of subway station gates that you can’t actually go into. Subway stuff was cut late in development to get it done, I recall reading.

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There is a mod which adds working metro stations back in:

I’d still have to put Night City at the top of the class when it comes to most realistic in-game cities. It’s the first that I’ve played that actually felt like a city as opposed to a town. San Andreas in GTAV comes second.

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I stumbled across a metro station in the game last night and realized that very fact, but I appreciate you telling me about it!

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Monorail or bust.

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In the real world of 2077, I hope that the ideal proposed by Bogotá Mayor Enrique Peñalosa is a reality:

An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport. Or bicycles.

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