CD Projekt Crimson fulfilled a five-year promise final week when it added a totally useful metro system to Cyberpunk 2077. Whereas the function does wonders to make Evening Metropolis really feel extra alive, I used to be shocked to study simply how little California’s public transportation infrastructure has improved within the sport’s alternate-reality future.
Cyberpunk 2077 now contains 5 Evening Metropolis Space Speedy Transit (NCART) rail strains servicing 19 stations. Each cease nonetheless capabilities as a quick journey level, however gamers may use them to hop onto the subway and relocate, in actual time, to different elements of town. As motion is restricted whereas on the prepare, it is a largely visible expertise, offering people with a brand new perspective on the sprawling mega-city in addition to restricted alternatives to speak with their fellow riders.
Throughout one journey, I observed a display indicating the prepare’s pace was constantly hovering round 43 mph, which felt awfully sluggish for futuristic transportation. The typical speeds of modern-day heavy-rail methods in the USA vary from the excessive teenagers to the mid-30s, however they’re able to reaching a lot greater maximums. And that’s not even accounting for extra developed public transportation in Japan and China, whose magnetic levitation (maglev) bullet trains zoom by way of main cities at a whole lot of miles per hour.
This suits with what the primary Cyberpunk rulebook needed to say about then-future transportation in 1988:
Shock, shock. Opposite to expectations, the yr 2000 has not yielded any staggering new developments in transportation. Years of financial strife and civil unrest have discouraged analysis into new methods to journey—in reality, the very act of journey has develop into very restricted. Anticipate the world of 2013 to be very similar to the twentieth century—a community of crowded freeways, packed trains, and swarming airports.
A subsequent enlargement, Welcome to Evening Metropolis, signifies light-rail maglev trains with floor speeds of 200 mph existed within the eponymous metropolis way back to 2013, the yr the primary Cyberpunk adventures had been set. Each e book since makes some point out maglev trains as a staple of Evening Metropolis journey, and 2005’s Cyberpunk V3.0 even famous an enchancment of their prime pace to 300 mph regardless of the obvious destruction of the intercontinental maglev line through the Fourth Company Struggle (which happened from 2021 to 2025 in-universe) between the world’s ruling megacorps.
(And simply to cowl my ass, 1990’s up to date Cyberpunk 2020 rulebook makes it clear that NCART and the light-rail maglev trains are one and the identical.)
It’s right here that Cyberpunk 2077 does one thing intelligent by increasing the results of this battle. Somewhat than solely placing rail journey between continents in flux, the sport describes the Fourth Company Struggle as debilitating the whole maglev system, as defined by the next database entry:
Maglev trains cruised at excessive speeds through tunnels and on the floor due to the arrival of electrodynamic suspension expertise, permitting quick and comfy journey from Evening Metropolis to different cities, together with Kansas Metropolis, St. Louis, Atlanta and Washington D.C. Sadly, this new period of transportation didn’t final lengthy. The social unrest and armed battle of the 4th Company Struggle introduced with it an financial disaster that quickly crippled the whole system. At present inoperational, the deserted Maglev tunnels are utilized by the homeless and numerous gangs.
The destruction of the maglev system and the sluggish NCART speeds exhibited in-game lead me to imagine the native authorities was pressured to revert to pre-2013 tech to make sure NCART remained operational, an enormous downgrade from the bullet trains that after transported residents by way of Evening Metropolis and past.
Whereas researching this example, I couldn’t assist however see darkly hilarious parallels between the difficulties dealing with the fictional California depicted in Cyberpunk 2077 and the precise state through which I reside.
Regardless of being one of many largest (each by way of land and inhabitants) and richest states within the union, California has lengthy struggled with plans to construct public transportation on par with the bullet trains of jap Asia. Numerous that is because of politics, as even ostensibly supportive legislators are cautious of spending the billions of {dollars} essential to finish the undertaking. And let’s face it: Individuals are simply approach too dedicated to their automobiles.
All that stated, there’s one quite simple rationalization for Evening Metropolis metro’s comparatively low pace: The builders didn’t need NCART rides to occur within the blink of a watch. What good would the long-awaited subway expertise be if gamers didn’t truly, , expertise it?
A visit taken at 300 mph wouldn’t present any time to folks watch Evening Metropolis’s eccentric residents or take within the view of skyscrapers surrounding the bay outdoors the prepare’s home windows. The complete level of the subway system — and an enormous a part of why people clamored for its inclusion all these years — is to provide gamers new alternatives to role-play and expertise the visible splendor of Cyberpunk 2077’s setting and its over-the-top aesthetics.
I discover it onerous to fault CD Projekt Crimson for taking part in a bit free with established Cyberpunk historical past if it makes for a greater sport in the long run.