Silent_Buddha
Legend
To me the uniqueness of cyberpunk is making the city feels like a really big city. Dunno how they did it.
Cities in games like mafia series and GTA always felt like a fake city. Despite in mafia 2, the NPCs are waaaaaaaaaay smarter than cyberpunk. The NPCs on GTA (especially gta iv) also have more interactivity and physics fluidity than cyberpunk.
I still can't point out what magic CDPR used. It does make the city feels more real, more tangible... More tactile... More like we, the players, are in a city.
There's a lot of little things going on. The constantly changing lighting. The steam coming out of the vents (this one is huge in helping to make it feel real). The sounds of the city, pedestrians, shops that you walk by, etc. A lot of little things that all add up to the atmosphere.
So many games are missing so many little things. They focus too much on the big things that make people go "ooooh" and in doing that they totally miss out on all the things that make a city feel alive. So they end up feeling sterile and fake.
Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 isn't perfect by any means. But it's by far the best city I've ever had the pleasure of walking around in a game. Nothing else even comes close, IMO.
I'm hoping that they can do more amazing things with DLC. Hopefully that'll allow them to do things that they couldn't do in time for launch.
Also, I wouldn't put it past CDPR to release a definitive edition in the future (like 3-4 years from now) that adds in all the things they wished they could have put in for launch but weren't able to.
Regards,
SB