Cyberpunk 2077 trailer shows off RTX graphics effects and neon has never looked better

Cyberpunk 2077 received a short 4K graphics trailer in the wake of the newly announced GeForce RTX 3000 graphics cards, and it looks fantastic.

Whenever new graphics cards are coming out, manufacturers look for a way to turn all their fancy numbers into something that players can actually see in action. This often leads to graphics trailers for new or upcoming graphically intensive games, so Cyberpunk 2077 was a no-brainer for Nvidia. It's got the draw and horsepower required, and it looks great in motion, even when Keanu Reeves isn't on-screen. 

Today's short RTX trailer focuses on the features that the RTX 3000 cards will elevate, namely RayTracing. To put it as simply as possible, RayTracing is a rendering method that produces more realistic effects, environments, and objects. This plays out in a few ways, which is why this trailer highlights reflections, light diffusion, shadows, and ambient occlusion (which also plays into dynamic and realistic lighting). 

With this being a showcase for the new RTX 3000 cards, all of these features are obviously skewed toward PC. This is especially true for the DLSS tech mentioned at the end, which is Nvidia's newest trick. The short version is that DLSS is a way to run intensive games at higher frame rates without sacrificing graphical quality. The slightly longer explanation involves machine-generated, interpolated frames, but in an ideal world nobody would even notice this so let's not dwell on it. 

As always, all of this GPU gobbledygook is just a fancy way of saying that these new graphics cards will make new games look stunning, as evidenced by Cyberpunk 2077's irresponsibly good neon lights. 

Another Cyberpunk 2077 Night City Wire will air at the end of this month. 

Austin Wood

Austin freelanced for the likes of PC Gamer, Eurogamer, IGN, Sports Illustrated, and more while finishing his journalism degree, and he's been with GamesRadar+ since 2019. They've yet to realize that his position as a senior writer is just a cover up for his career-spanning Destiny column, and he's kept the ruse going with a focus on news and the occasional feature, all while playing as many roguelikes as possible.