CD Projekt RED’s latest Night City Wire stream gave players a look at some of the modes of personal transportation which will be available as they take V through the mean streets of Night City in Cyberpunk 2077.
Vehicles are broken down into five general categories: Economy, Executive, Sport, Heavy Duty, and Hypercars. Economy cars are, as the name suggests, at the low end of the spectrum. No frills, cheap materials, sluggish handling, and all the guts of a hamster on an exercise wheel. If you’re trying to keep a low profile, they’re probably not bad, but if you need to lose some heat (police or otherwise), you might not get very far. About the only saving grace for some models in this class is that they’re small enough to easily navigate large stairways and sidewalks (much like The Bourne Identity or the remake of The Italian Job). As senior vehicle designer Paul Dalessi noted, “If it looks cheap, it probably drives cheap, too.”
Executive cars are the town cars, limos, and “saloon” luxury cars of Night City. They’re decidedly high end, but not in the same category as the Hypercars. These vehicles are about comfort and class, a sense of refined elegance in an otherwise barbaric world. They’re likely to cost you a substantial bundle of eddies, but if you want to look like a player, you need to make it look good.
Heavy Duty vehicles cover the garbage trucks, panel trucks, armored vans, and other purely utility vehicles around town. They’re big, they’re powerful (though with a painfully slow acceleration curve), and they can take a beating like nothing else on the streets. You’re unlikely to be bothered by small arms fire or light barricades, much less pedestrians who get in the way. Of course, there’s always the possibility somebody will call out the sort of hardware normally used to stop tanks if you’re too careless about the right of way.
Sport vehicles are likely going to be the bread-and-butter of most Edgerunners. From muscle cars to drift cars to off-road 4x4s, these vehicles are can be your ticket to being a street racing king, a rally champion among the Nomads, or just a great way to tool around town and look awesome doing it. There was mention about replaceable parts, suggesting customization options which might be available in the game, but we’ll have to find out more later.
Hypercars are the bleeding edge of vehicle design and performance. Exotic materials, insanely powerful engines, full LIDAR systems (no windows or windshield), they’re the cars which only the wealthiest corporate honchos or the ballsiest car thieves will have their hands on. Driving one of these regularly is holding up a sign saying, “I’m stupidly rich and I don’t care!” The only saving grace is they’re likely to be hard to steal, assuming they rely on a cyberlink to start up and drive.
And while there are a number of fictional car manufacturers present in the game, as one would expect, there’s going to be at least one real world vehicle as well. Those who’ve been watching the Cyberpunk 2077 Twitter feed have likely observed the goings on between CD Projekt RED and Porsche, and Dalessi confirmed that players will have the opportunity to drive Johnny Silverhand’s vintage 1977 Porsche 911. Porsche themselves have also released a new ad with the song “Chippin’ In” playing in the background.
Wherever you go in Night City, you’ve got a range of options that do not involve walking or relying on public transportation. And whether you’re going Economy or Hypercar, the only rules you really need to worry about are these: sit down, strap in, shut up, and hang on.
