A cartoonish howl erupts overhead in Cyberpunk 2077 as I walk past an apartment block, but I barely glimpse a falling shadow before somebody gets splattered up my ankles. An NPC wearing nothing but pink hotpants strolls into oncoming traffic, and nobody bats a Kiroshi. Later, I pass a cloaked gentleman peeing into a trashcan under a bridge in Heywood. He looks up, acknowledges me, and slowly walks away – still peeing, still making eye contact .
The thing about Cyberpunk 2077's jankier past is that every so often, I have to ask myself a strange question: is that a bug, or is that a feature? The thought flashes through my mind a lot while exploring Night City, a dystopian metropolis of hyperbolic proportions, as I try to draw sense from senselessness. But whether it's River Ward being a terror behind the wheel or NPCs acting strangely, Cyberpunk's unapologetically dark, tongue-in-cheek sense of humor is a huge part of why I love it – accidental or otherwise. The rough charm and harsh realities of this cold, unflinching city offer a refreshing take on what an open world could and should offer: laughs aplenty, yes, but a message behind each one.
Night City: where bad taste tastes good
Cyberpunk 2077 was the first game that came to mind when I read about one developer's take on the power of slapstick jokes in the best open world games. I surprised myself with that, and not because I don't think the game is funny.
I have a soul; of course I have a chuckle when Johnny drops a scandalous comment or Flaming Crotch Guy calls me on the holo. I'm not trying to intellectualize dirty jokes here. But Cyberpunk is a different kind of funny because it frequently doesn't intend to be - at least, at face value. The number of instances where I've laughed at something awful (see the first paragraph for a reminder) are too great to count, and yet, the guilt I feel is minimal. What's up with that, and why do I love being such a bad person in this game?
Ubisoft's Alex Hutchinson hit the nail on the head in the above interview when he detailed one simple truth of an incredible open world: "You need to immerse players in a satirical world and let them stumble across bizarre situations and excessive consequences."
Choice and consequence are huge entities in Cyberpunk 2077, so it always feels exciting to run into something we have limited control over. Night City can feel like V's personal playground if you spend long enough getting to know it, yet CDPR still finds a way to surprise even the most harcore players (shout out to my colleague Heather, who's clocked in over 700 hours in Cyberpunk 2077 now) by reminding you that you can't save everyone in a game like this.
CD Projekt Red reflects the emotional alienation of a typical Night Citizen back at the player and has you mimic it...
Most of these instances have pretty upsetting consequences, but the initial choices are plenty bizarre and amusing.
V can make friends with a vending machine, ponder its sentience, then have it all ripped away in an instant, for example – but not before they have some illuminating conversations you'll likely never forget. The game even rewards you for making unexpected choices in a given situation, as anyone who has, uh, wielded Meredith Stout's gift after completing her Venus in Furs side mission can attest to. No comment, Your Honor.
Laughing at a lewd weapon aside, it seems hard to take anything seriously in a place like Night City – including life itself. The shocked, reflexive giggle I let out when hearing a jumper leap to their death in a video game does come off as cruel on my part, but I think it's the intended reaction. CD Projekt Red reflects the emotional alienation of a typical Night Citizen back at the player and has you mimic it, presenting very real social taboos like suicide, homelessness, and the loneliness of metropolitan existence through a deliberately comical lens.
I know it's deliberate because Cyberpunk is a very emotional game at its core. It's just the world itself that's unable to take things seriously, and that extends to having compassion for your fellow man. That's why it's so easy to cry for Jackie Welles one moment and take out a whole warehouse of Tyger Claws the next. V's morality is flexible, and by extension, so is our own.
Cyberpunk 2077 feels like the definitive open world experience in that regard. It's ours to shape, yet has an unpredictable life of its own, and we can only control it so far. I've never seen such a beautifully chilling example of active metaphor in any other RPG, extremely self aware in the most purposely ignorant way possible.
I never realized that tone, dark humor, and intentionality were the key defining features that set Cyberpunk's world apart from equally reactive ones like that of Dragon's Dogma 2 (bar all the other, more obvious reasons), but now that my eyes have been opened, I won't be able to close them. The most realistic thing about Night City is that everyone is cold, uncaring, and detached. And you know what? I find that pretty refreshing.
Check out all the new games we're waiting for in 2025 while you wait for the next big Cyberpunk 2077 update
