Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City is a strange place filled with strange people. The dystopian, futuristic city is filled to the brim with NPCs who mirror the cultures of its many boroughs and neighborhoods. Some look like regular businesspeople with technologically modified bodies, whereas others dress in whatever neon and leopard-print clothes they could throw together. But as odd as these NPCs are, they help bring Night City to life by making it feel familiar to the real world.
Of course, Cyberpunk 2077 itself feels familiar, as it holds a mirror to modern society. The Night City prior to Cyberpunk 2077 was designed to enable capitalists like the Arasaka Corporation to find more power and money than ever before. This resulted in technology becoming deeply integrated into regular life - including people’s bodies. However, it also led to Johnny Silverhand's rebellion in which he nuked Arasaka Tower, an event known as the Night City Holocaust.
By the time of Cyberpunk 2077, Arasaka regained its power and grew upon it. Night City thus morphed into a capitalist dystopia controlled by the tech elite, which is reflected in the setting’s NPCs. Their appearances look like wild rebellions against the corporate world, and their bodies are altered by technological enhancements. But while NPCs’ looks are serious reflections of Cyperpunk 2077's open world, they are funnily familiar of the real world and its own respective weirdness.
The Fun Of Night City’s NPCs In Cyberpunk 2077
One fantastic example of this is Reddit SarabitheGreat’s discovery of a unique NPC. The person is almost entirely a robot save for their legs, which adorn cut-off denim shorts and high heel shoes. For many people, such an NPC will seem impossibly strange. However, for those who live in cities, such an NPC can seem familiar to the point their appearance can be explained. The Reddit Grezzinate does just that in their response to the original post, stating the NPC is “just trying to live their best life while bound to a chair. Sometimes you just want a nice pair of shoes to make you feel sexy.” Real life can feel just as weird and commonplace as this NPC, and this is something that Cyberpunk 2077 is so great at recognizing.
Different NPCs in Cyberpunk 2077 are also so amazingly designed that it feels like a crime they can’t be interacted with. Reddit Daddydante88 provides an excellent example of this with their post about an NPC they met in a bar. Again, these detailed NPCs make Night City feel so real. The world of Cyberpunk 2077 is alive and textured. Luckily the game’s rocky launch did not prevent people from experiencing Night City and its NPCs. Though it is unfortunate most of these enigmatic figures cannot be interacted with in any meaningful way, it would be worse if players never got to see them in Cyberpunk 2077 at all.
Sources: SarabitheGreat/Reddit, Grezzinate/Reddit, Daddydante89/Reddit
