2020 VISIO NARY

One of the most important cyberpunk novels ever written opens with a stark image. “The sky over the port was the colour of a television tuned to a dead channel” – so begins William Gibson’s seminal book, Neuromancer. It’s a novel that went on to inspire many other writers, and was certainly part of the sinew of the roleplaying game that Cyberpunk 2077 is based on.

But in Cyberpunk 2077 glimpses of the sky are few and far between, mere snatches of darkness and light caught from the ground, as skyscrapers, billboards, and vectored-thrust vehicles crowd your vision. Only the rich get a view in Night City – everyone else has to crane their necks from the depths of steel and concrete canyons…

If you’re thinking that we might be waxing a bit over-lyrical about a game that isn’t even out yet, and has been pushed back twice already in its years-long development-cycle (I’ve worked at three different publishing companies during CP2077’s nearly ten years of dev-work -Ed)... Yeah, maybe. But few games have made such a strong impression even at this stage. It is a game ambitious in scope, rich in depth, and one that sticks remarkably close to the vision it is based upon. Only two Australian journalists – myself and a colleague from Kotaku – were lucky enough to score five hours of hands-on time with the game’s opening moments, in a session that went until just shy of midnight, so CDPR devs could literally, via webcam, watch over our shoulders. Which, for a game like this, was kinda fitting.

At the end of the hands-on, our breath fogging before us in a cold Sydney street, we just looked at each other, and knew we’d played something very special indeed. Read on to find out just