While standing on a dirt path just outside Night City as female V, right before entering Panam’s car to head to Southern California after the tumultuous mission of storming Arasaka Tower, and right after I’d heard Judy tell me how happy she was to finally be rid of this city and come along with me, I couldn’t help but take a moment. A moment to look back across the skyline of Night City. A city that I’d spent the past hundred or so hours living in. A city filled with violence, inequality, racism, predatory marketing and crony capitalism. A city that exists only to serve corporations at the expense of its very own residents. Residents that live, to paraphrase a quote from Judy, “to either become an asshole, or get offed by one.”
Night City, like any good fictional cyberpunk world, is a dystopian nightmare that serves as a cautionary mirror to our real world. And yet, there was this twinge inside my heart while looking outward towards those flashing lights. A twinge that didn’t want my V to step inside that car, but instead, return to this concrete jungle. This frenetic miasma that I’d called home for the past month. To once again be a part of this city that had tried to kill me more times than I’d like to count.
And so, after the credits rolled, I decided to return to the city right before that final mission (something the game thankfully allows you to do), and continue my story as a soon-to-be-legendary mercenary. I did so, not only because of the beautiful chaos of the city’s architecture, whose buildings are each accentuated with mesmerizingly gaudy neon lights, all of which are made all the more pretty with the newly added path-tracing from Nvidia. Or for the hustle and bustle of its eccentric populous. Or for the endlessly addictive side quests and the numerous gigs that were still left unchecked.
Sure, all of those may have been the pragmatic “gamer” reasons, but weren’t the cause for that aforementioned twinge in my heart. No, what brought me back were the stories that I knew I would be leaving behind. The stories of this city’s people. Because, you see, what makes Cyberpunk 2077’s Night City special is not its spectacle, but rather how quietly human it can be.
For every explosive storm through a Scav camp with a katana in hand, or exhilarating fight against a giant Militech mech, exists moments of somber silence and genuine character introspection. Characters that speak with purpose, doubts, fears, and vulnerabilities; knowing the fragility of their existence within a harsh world.
These moments exist not only in the main quest, which is to be expected from a developer such as CD Projekt RED, but surprisingly in the smaller, seemingly inconsequential side quests. Quests that players could easily miss if they never took the time to explore Night City. So, allow me to share with you a few of these characters whose stories, though relegated to the “side,” were incredibly impactful, yet beautifully quiet.
Claire
I wouldn’t blame anyone for not giving Claire’s side quest a second thought. Every time I stepped foot inside Night City’s most iconic bar, The Afterlife, I did so with a purpose—to go see either Rogue or Nix. As such, Claire, the longtime bartender of the establishment, was someone I’d simply just walk past. She was always there behind her bar ready to offer me a drink, but her presence was not one that I paid much attention to.
So, when she told me about an upcoming street-racing event that she wanted me to be a part of, triggering the “The Beast In Me” quest, my acceptance came more out of a, “sure, whatever,” rather than a keen interest. As such, the little yellow icon that showed where her quest would begin remained unvisited on my map for much of my initial play-through. When I finally made my way over, I was expecting to be met with a fun little quest that had me racing throughout Night City. Though that was partly the case, what surprisingly unfolded was a story of revenge, and watching a woman come to grips with her loss.
The conversation you have with Claire after that first race gives you a snippet inside her story, but with each subsequent race comes an unveiling of a tenderly written character who’s been struggling to cope with her grief, giving way to a rage that you can either help unleash, or find a way to tame.
Brendan
Hidden away in an alley within the busy centre of Night CIty’s Westbrook in Japantown is a S.C.S.M, a Spontaneous Craving Satisfaction Machine; better known as a vending machine. These machines are abundant throughout the city, but when approaching this particular one you’ll be surprised to hear that it not only speaks, but does so with a curious vibrancy.
Going by the name Brendan, you learn that the S.C.S.M has an experimental AI that was built into it by its manufacturers to help boost product sales. Unbeknownst to the company, however, Brendan’s AI had become a little “too” good, resulting in them forming genuine connections with a few of their regulars, including a woman named Theo who’d grown to consider Brendan her best friend. By the time you reach the end of their quest-line in “Coin Operated Boy,” you come to form a connection with Brendan yourself, and the ending of their story is one that’s surprisingly heartbreaking.
This quest-line doesn’t have you unloading lead at enemy heads, or using your net-running abilities to infiltrate a corporate office, yet by the end of it, Brendan becomes a character who showcases the loneliness of this city’s residents. Even though they aren’t made of flesh and blood, Brendan showed more compassion and empathy than many of the humans I’d come across in Night City.
River
Far be it for me to ever find empathy for a cop, especially those in Night City (though frankly, our real-world ones aren’t much better), but I must admit that by the time I’d come to the end of “Follow The River,” River Ward had become a character I’d grown fond of. It wasn’t helping him uncover the truth behind his corrupt partner, or unearthing the seedy under-goings of a mayoral candidate that made me interested in him, but rather the moments of earnestness that revealed the man behind the badge.
A brother trying to do right by his sister, an uncle trying to save his nephew, and a man trying to be just within an unjust system, all the while battling his childhood trauma. For as gripping as the more intense moments of his line of quests were, it was playing a VR game with his niece and nephew, helping him cook Jambalaya, and talking with him during a rare quiet night atop a water tower overlooking the NC skyline that cemented my connection with him. Even though my morals couldn’t allow my V to further their relationship, I’ll always remember that last day with River Ward.
Lizzy
The commodification of the bodies of artists is something that we’ve seen overtly in our real world, particularly when it comes to women. It’s an idea that is taken to quite the literal extreme within the quests of NC’s top celebrity, Lizzy Wizzy, whose body is cyber-modified from head to toe, and done so for the sole purpose of furthering her stardom. When she first contacts V, it’s to hire them to investigate her boyfriend whom she believes is cheating on her. However, upon investigation, V uncovers the truth of what Lizzy’s boyfriend is actually doing—a malicious plot that effectively strips Lizzy of her own artistry, giving way for her “self” to exist merely as a commodified copy. This plot mirrors much of the dangers of A.I we, especially artists, are currently facing.
Lizzy’s shocking decision after hearing the truth—one which you the player can decide whether to divulge or not—and disconcerting disposition as you speak with her afterwards makes you realize just how troubling her life as this “symbol” is. It made me question the concerning degrees to which she and those facilitating her career would go to retain that pedestal, that idea of what “Lizzy Wizzy” stands for. Her actions, and the unnerving conversation with her afterwards, makes her performance during the game’s DLC, Phantom Liberty, all the more haunting. It’s a performance that caps off the entire “Black Sapphire” quest-line, and one that encapsulates both the spectacle of her existence, and the demons she will undoubtedly forever carry inside her.
Judy
Last but certainly not least is a character for whom I have trouble writing words for. A character who I’d spent quite a bit of time with. Whose story, though existing outside of my V’s primary objectives, was nevertheless intertwined with her purpose. Judy was one of the biggest reasons I gave for my V’s desire to live, and why the “Suicide” ending was never in the cards (and after watching it on YouTube, with Judy’s heartbreaking end-credits voicemail, good lord am I glad that wasn’t the path I chose).
Initially, I was set on the fiery Panam as the romance option my V would pursue. However, it was in the quest “Pyramid Song” wherein I realized where my heart was going to lay. A quest that was unlike any of the others with Judy. One that didn’t consist of taking down a henchman of the Tyger Claws, or infiltrating a club to procure a BrainDance, but rather a quiet excursion through an abandoned underwater town, which Judy reveals is her childhood home. This quest is entirely missable if one were to make different decisions during prior missions, which would be a shame as these thirty-or-so minutes are some of the most beautifully intimate moments the game has to offer.
Not only that but it gives a character who’s been through hell and back a wonderful arc. From the loss she had experienced of the one person that’d been her rock, to the emptiness she felt even after getting revenge, all the while having this city chip away at her humanity bit by bit, to then finally allow herself to be vulnerable to love again. It’s all encapsulated in this one quest. One that has you dive into the depth of her being, literally and figuratively, and gives you the opportunity to share more quiet moments with her in the future. I only wish CDPR could have given us more variations in the dates we could go on with whomever we decided to romance, because I would have loved to take Judy to my favourite ramen spot in Japantown.
Side quests and romance options in games, particularly those in open-world RPGs, are usually never all that nuanced or well-written. CDPR have grown to become one of, if not the, best developers when it comes to either. Their ability to strip away the chaotic grandeur of the world that they’d built, and focus on the quiet humanity of their characters, no matter how seemingly “small” their role, deserves applause. It’s impressive that for the many bombastic things that occurred during my hundred hours in Night City, it’ll be the moments where little to nothing is said between myself and someone my V cares for that I’ll fondly remember for years to come.
