GAME · 2020
Cyberpunk 2077
- Developer
- CD Projekt RED
- Publisher
- CD Projekt, Spike Chunsoft, Bandai Namco Entertainment
- Platforms
- Microsoft Windows, Xbox Series X and Series S
61 archived facts 6 topics 2 sources Last reviewed Sep 2026
All facts (61)
- #001
CD Projekt Red hired real city planners to help map out Night City, aiming to make exploring the city feel organic and to let players say where they are relative to important points and other structures. How traffic in the city works will also be shown.
- #002
Preliminary work on Cyberpunk 2077 started after The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings Enhanced Edition was released in 2012.
- #003
During Microsoft's E3 2019 media briefing, CD Projekt Red sent a free copy of the Cyberpunk 2077 Collector's Edition to the man who shouted "You're breathtaking!" at Keanu Reeves. He refused to accept it, however, and called on CD Projekt to donate a game system to charity instead.
- #004
CD Projekt Red approached Mike Pondsmith, writer of Cyberpunk and founder of R. Talsorian Games, in early 2012 and sent him a copy of The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings.
- #005
The music of Johnny Silverhand's band "Samurai" is performed by the Swedish group "Refused."
- #006
CD Projekt Red licensed the Cyberpunk story from the year 2077 onward, while Mike Pondsmith kept the rights to Cyberpunk media set before 2077.
- #007
Cyberpunk 2077 first surfaced in January 2013 with a teaser trailer. More than 5 years passed before an official trailer was released.
- #008
Mike Pondsmith served as a consultant on Cyberpunk 2077 to keep its story cohesive and voiced the DJ of an in-game radio station.
- #009
In V's bathroom, next to the toilet, there are three shells, a reference to the running joke in the cyberpunk film Demolition Man (1993).
- #010
Lead gameplay designer Marcin Janiszewski wrote that the game remains the same Cyberpunk players of the pen-and-paper game know, aiming to remind them of its connection to the Cyberpunk universe.
- #011
Keanu Reeves's presence in the game was revealed in the cinematic trailer at E3 2019.
- #012
Compared with CD Projekt Red's work on The Witcher series, the gap between the events of Cyberpunk and Cyberpunk 2077 gave the studio more freedom in adapting the series, though it tried to remain faithful to Pondsmith's original works.
- #013
With a budget of 312 million dollars, it is one of the most expensive video games ever made.
- #014
It is inspired by the writings of science fiction author William Gibson, who coined the terms "Cyberpunk" and "Cyberspace" in his iconic novel "Neuromancer." "Night City" is a fictional city mentioned in many of Gibson's books. "Night City" was also the name of a computer BBS (Bulletin Board System) operating in Queensland, Australia, in the late '80s/early '90s, before the Internet as we know it today was available. It took its name from the novel Neuromancer. Gibson also wrote "Johnny Mnemonic," whose film version likewise starred Keanu Reeves. The "Matrix" trilogy (also starring Keanu Reeves) was inspired by Gibson's writings; the term "Matrix" was first used in the novel Neuromancer to describe "cyberspace." These are the larger influences on the Cyberpunk universe, but it should be noted that the video game is a more direct reimagining of the Cyberpunk tabletop role-playing game from the late '80s, which is still popular today.
- #015
Production of the game was delayed four times.
- #016
The events of Cyberpunk 2077 unfold in Night City, a fictitious megalopolis steeped in Japanese culture located between Los Angeles and San Francisco.
- #017
In 2018, game director Adam Badowski said his team planned to offer fully uncensored nudity in the final game because it supports one of the most important themes of the cyberpunk genre: transhumanism, the belief that humanity can transcend its current mental and physical form with the help of technology. However, when the team at CD Projekt Red showed a demo of the game featuring nude male and female characters at E3 that year, the genitals were covered with pixelated boxes of white digital noise. These boxes were a tactical decision, because Badowski did not want to be accused of using nudity for shock value or to have the international press spend its time on discussions about male or female nudity in video games. The team also wanted the reaction in the room to remain a giggle rather than the outright laughter of any "prudish" or "immature" members of the audience. "Nudity makes it more believable; that's why we want to have it. There's nothing special in it," he said.
- #018
Night City in Cyberpunk 2077 is portrayed as a hedonistic wonderland split between a downtrodden class that turns to psychedelic substances and physically augmented sex workers as escapism, and an elite corporate class known as "corpos" that dominates society with great financial success.
- #019
Many of the game's quests take their names from popular songs by rock groups, such as Slipknot's Disasterpiece, The Doors' Riders on the Storm, Metallica's For Whom the Bell Tolls and many more.
- #020
Contains a major spoiler — show
Johnny Silverhand is the only character who moves slightly in photo mode. This only happens when photo mode is enabled during one of the missions in which Silverhand is the playable character.
- #021
Contains a major spoiler — show
Ciri mentioned traveling to the Cyberpunk 2077 universe with Geralt in "The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt" in 2015.
- #022
Hideo Kojima has a role in the heist mission.
- #023
To blend cutscenes with gameplay seamlessly, CD Projekt Red framed cutscenes in first-person, including sex scenes, with limited exceptions.
- #024
Contains a major spoiler — show
Ellen McLain (in a sense) reprises her role as GlaDOS from Portal 2 (2011). During the side quest chain for Delemain ("Epistrophy"), the car you are tasked with retrieving in the Coastview section talks exactly like GlaDOS and even makes a reference to "testing" and "cake," trying to ambush and kill you.
- #025
The city's atmosphere is inspired by the iconic science fiction film Blade Runner (1982).
- #026
On June 26, 2018, CD Projekt Red confirmed that the game would have two fully voiced versions, one in English and one in Polish. As of June 10, 2019, that number had risen to ten fully voiced versions, including French, German, Italian and Mandarin Chinese.
- #027
On the right rear panel of V's car there is a sticker of Roach (Geralt's horse from The Witcher series).
- #028
Johnny Silverhand has more dialogue lines than any other character in the game, apart from the player character V.
- #029
On June 25, 2020, CD Projekt RED announced that it was working with the Japanese studio Trigger and Netflix on an anime series set in the same universe. The 10-episode series, titled Cyberpunk: Edgerunners, was planned for release in 2022.
- #030
Cyberpunk 2077 was built on REDengine 4, the fourth version of CD Projekt Red's in-house game engine.
- #031
On December 18, 2020, Sony Interactive Entertainment announced that Cyberpunk 2077 would be indefinitely unavailable for purchase on the PlayStation Store, following its poor launch performance, particularly on base-model PS4 consoles. The decision was made by both Sony and CD Projekt Red. It was returned to the PlayStation Store on June 21, 2021.
- #032
REDengine 3, the predecessor to the engine used for Cyberpunk 2077, introduced terrain and vegetation rendering improvements.
- #033
The memory of the 2023 Arasaka Tower attack that V experiences through Johnny Silverhand's engram is an unreliable recollection of events that, according to Cyberpunk RPG lore, actually happened. Although he does not appear in the memories, Morgan Blackhand was in fact part of the attack team, and Johnny was killed in the Soulkiller laboratories, cut in half by Adam Smasher's automatic shotgun after he mocked the large cyborg. The memories of the rooftop evacuation are also told unreliably. By the time this event took place, Johnny was already dead, and the one fighting Adam Smasher atop Arasaka Tower was Morgan Blackhand, though the outcome of that fight was never determined.
- #034
Judy's cell phone icon is a reference to the iconic classic anime masterpiece Ghost in the Shell (1995).
- #035
Contains a major spoiler — show
Haruyoshi, whom V meets at the "Big in Japan" concert, is a reference to the character Hidetoshi from The Office. Both characters are Japanese surgeons who deliberately killed a gang boss at a table, and Haruyoshi gives an abridged version of the same story Hidetoshi tells in The Office.
- #036
Cyberpunk 2077 was initially developed using REDengine 3 as early as 2013, but CD Projekt Red moved to REDengine 4 after facing difficulty developing the game.
- #037
Contains a major spoiler — show
In Johnny Mnemonic (1995), Keanu Reeves plays a character carrying data in his head that could kill him. In Cyberpunk 2077 (2020), you play a character with a lethal data chip in their head containing the avatar of Johnny Silverhand, played by Mr. Keanu Reeves.
- #038
The shift to REDengine 4 was driven by Cyberpunk 2077's first-person perspective, which differed from the third-person perspective CD Projekt had used in earlier iterations of REDengine.
- #039
According to Mike Pondsmith, the creator of the original Cyberpunk RPG, the relationship between Johnny Silverhand and Rogue Amendiares was modeled on a couple he knew in college. In a 2021 Reddit AMA, he said: "I really wanted her to dump the guy so that I was no longer tempted to break his leg when he mistreated her."
- #040
The NPC character Ozob, who imitates Bozo, first appeared in the Brazilian Cyberpunk RPG podcast Nerdcast. The character was first created by Deive Pazos, who also voiced him in the Brazilian Portuguese version of the game in 1993. The book Ozob: Molotof Protocol reveals the character's origin.
- #041
According to a report from CD Projekt Red, the company continued working on REDengine throughout Cyberpunk 2077's development cycle, as late as 2017, and Cyberpunk 2077 is the final game to use REDengine, as future CD Projekt Red games will use Unreal Engine 5.
- #042
The western film playing at the cinema is The One-Eyed Jacks, starring Marlon Brando.
- #043
Cyberpunk 2077's REDengine 4 added lighting features such as hardware-accelerated real-time ray tracing via DirectX, global illumination, diffuse illumination and ambient occlusion, none of which appear in the console versions.
- #044
Another reference to the Matrix films! During the "Blistering Love" mission, when V takes Rogue to the drive-in cinema, they watch a film called "Bushido X." While interacting with Rogue, V can look at the screen and see a looping clip of "Bushido X." The clip is an almost shot-for-shot copy of a portion of the fight between Morpheus and an Agent from The Matrix Reloaded. The characters are similar: Morpheus is represented by a man wearing sunglasses, and the Agent by a large combat cyborg. The camera angles are similar. The fighting moves they use against each other are similar. The moving vehicle is similar too: here a train, in The Matrix Reloaded a semi-truck.
- #045
The engine behind Cyberpunk 2077 introduced physically based rendering, screen space reflections and pin sharp reflections, but the player's character is left out of the bounding volume hierarchy used for ray-traced reflections.
- #046
When players reach a 1% relationship/affinity level with Johnny Silverhand, the affinity title reads: "Play it Again." This is a reference to Peggy Lee's song "Johnny Guitar." The lyrics include the lines "Play it Again, Johnny Guitar" and claim that Johnny Guitar can be cold and cruel. These are behaviors generally associated with Johnny Silverhand, especially early in his and V's relationship.
- #047
In Cyberpunk 2077, the player's character does show up in render to texture objects such as mirrors, while shadow and character rendering were upgraded with cascaded shadow maps, screen space shadows, ray-traced shadows with contact hardening, subsurface scattering and realistic skin shading.
- #048
Cyberpunk 2077 uses vertical asset streaming, or culling, which omits objects above and below the player's field of view to save memory; the added rendering features strained older consoles such as the PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.
- #049
There is an NPC named "Mr. Blue Eyes" who appears in missions such as "Dream On" and "Path of Glory" and in Phantom Liberty's "The Killing Moon." He is mentioned by passersby in Night City and becomes a subject of discussion with Songbird and Viktor Vektor. He even appears in the 2018 trailer for Cyberpunk 2077, though without his distinctive blue eyes. Strangely, in the game's files, Mr. Blue Eyes' hair is labeled as "Morgan Blackhand," the legendary mercenary of the Cyberpunk universe mentioned multiple times by Jackie Welles. Blackhand's status after the Arasaka Tower bombing is unknown, but the absence of a drink named after him at The Afterlife suggests he may still be alive. A World News Service report claims that several Lazarus agents were killed by a man with black cyberware (Morgan's namesake), and other fans suggest that Mr. Blue Eyes' hair name may imply he is literally Morgan Blackhand.
- #050
During the development of Cyberpunk 2077, CD Projekt Red worked with the Vancouver-based studio Digital Scapes to create additional tools.
- #051
Alanah Pearce, who voices Lana, did not have her face scanned. Instead, she gave the developers photographs of her face for them to build a model from.
- #052
CD Projekt Red partnered with the multinational technology company Nvidia to implement real-time ray tracing in Cyberpunk 2077.
- #053
Radio DJ Maximum Mike is voiced by Mike Pondsmith, who created the original tabletop role-playing game Cyberpunk 2013 in 1988.
- #054
The game's opening cinematic (which you sit through or skip to reach the main menu) includes a scene, in first-person perspective, of a woman being knocked out during a robbery. In the game, the entire robbery is shown as part of a Braindance training session (again from the robber's perspective).
- #055
The artificial intelligence company Jali Research assisted CD Projekt Red with lip syncing for all ten localisations of Cyberpunk 2077, using procedural generation.
- #056
During the "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" mission, you will see a cat on the stairway landing, and then an exact duplicate of that cat: a reference to Keanu Reeves' character Neo encountering duplicate cats as a glitch in The Matrix.
- #057
CD Projekt Red's art design team drew on German industrial designer Dieter Rams and American neo-futurist concept artist Syd Mead when designing Night City for Cyberpunk 2077. The team used Rams' elegance to contrast with the city's low-class neighbourhoods, while Mead's vibrant colours and materialism shaped what the team called the city's "kitsch" demeanor.
- #058
The character Evelyn Parker, voiced by Kari Wahlgren, looks almost identical to Angie, Amber Valletta's character in the film Gamer (2009).
- #059
Building Night City's environments took the Cyberpunk 2077 team eight years. To achieve a cyberpunk look, the team combined retro and futuristic elements, placing high-tech features such as LED lights on old-fashioned or dilapidated buildings.
- #060
Hiroshi Sakakibara, Environment City Coordinator at CD Projekt Red, called Blade Runner (1982) the "Bible of all cyberpunk" and cited it as a key inspiration for Cyberpunk 2077's Night City. Other inspirations for the team included the Ghost in the Shell manga and anime series, System Shock (1994) and the first part of Deus Ex (2000).
- #061
For Cyberpunk 2077's Night City buildings, the team consulted urban planners and drew on Brutalist architecture themes, while Marcello Gandini's designs shaped many of the game's cars. The game also features a motorbike akin to the one in the Akira manga and anime film and a car inspired by Mad Max: Fury Road (2015).
Sources & editorial notes
Sources for the entries on this page
- Wikipedia Cyberpunk 2077 — Wikipedia
- IMDb IMDb
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work