Cyberpunk 2077 hasn’t officially spoken about any side activities with the breadth and depth of The Witcher 3‘s classic card game. But being the same developer, one naturally wonders what things people in Night City do to unwind. So assuming there’s no Gwent-style offering in Cyberpunk 2077, what would you add to the fabric of Night City?
I put a call out on Twitter while casually having a biscuit with a coffee, pondering what Night City would be like. Sure, there’s lots of sex and apparently tons of dildos everywhere, but surely there’s more to do than that.
We’ve already seen that gambling and boxing matches are a thing, mirroring Geralt’s side quests from The Witcher 3. But that’s not a replacement for Gwent, the classic time killer played in taverns, castles and inns across Novigrad, Skellige, White Orchard, Vizima and elsewhere.
So what would the equivalent of Gwent be in CD Projekt Red’s sci-fi world? Some people took the question literally, although the literal answer in this instance is a pretty damn good one: the Netrunner card game.
Netrunner
— Nathan Cocks (@ElPrezAU) November 25, 2020
It’s gotta be netrunner, doesn’t it?
— Terrence Jarrad (@hailtonothing) November 25, 2020
The 1:1 nature of Netrunner would be a neat fit for the aggressiveness of Night City, but the card game’s complexity would surely be too much work to implement.
Others just straight up suggested Gwent — I mean, why not? — but some put forward other games suited to gambling and betting, like the multiplayer mahjong.
Holographic mah jong probably
— anarchopriapist (@Kermitron) November 25, 2020
Be cool if it was actual mahjongg
— Red (@redartifice) November 25, 2020
One idea that I really liked was not a game altogether, but leveraging the hi-tech nature of Cyberpunk‘s sci-fi world instead. Former PC World editor Fergus Halliday suggested social media as an option, with Cyberpunk 2077‘s AR/VR interface and various cyberised shenanigans offering a different take on things like Twitter.
Like, does the world of Cyberpunk have AR Twitter in it? Let me engage with that dumb shit
— Fergus ‘Wishing You A Marxly Karlmas’ Halliday (@Cvamped) November 25, 2020
Sci-fi social media would be cool, and we’ve seen it form a fun part of other games before. Spider-Man and Miles Morales both ventured into this territory, although not to the same technological extent. Miles Morales even has a friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man app that acts as your side quest log, which is very cool, and Night City would totally have some very neat spins on the same idea.
I’d love to see some kind of Ghost in the Shell-type inspiration. Maybe not necessarily a Night City take on Neo Tokyo’s decentralised internet, or the Laughing Man randomly hacking into your eyes or messing up corporate ad banners — although holy shit would that be cool. But instances like using a public terminal to jack into a VR space for things like films, “public” forums and other kinds of events could be fun.
Holographics also seems strongly on the cards: we’ve already seen Night City use them a fair bit throughout the cityscape, on the ground and in the skies. So you’d imagine it’d form a huge part of the world’s marketing.
But I like the idea of something that connects Night City with the Badlands. It’s a very video game thing to give you an activity that transcends locations. But I think it’d be more honest to Cyberpunk 2077‘s world for those kinds of activities to be exclusive to Night City (or for The Badlands to have its own iteration, or own Thing to pass the time).
So what about yourselves? If you had to pick something to take the place of Gwent in Cyberpunk 2077 — and it doesn’t have to literally be a card game, but any recurring mini game or activity that keeps going throughout the entirety of your Night City experience, what would it be?
Update 2:30pm: This might be the best, and most cursed, answer:
Bitcoin stock trading.. https://t.co/l68ZAgAPRN
— Trent Petronaitis (@trinest) November 25, 2020
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