On a side note: I love figuring this one out with you guys, I am fascinated by how many details a lot of you have found. Happy to see this topic 'flourish' again!
Night City's map and with it the city itself is one of the biggest things I'm looking forward to learning more about. This topic is like some sweet puzzle solving right here. Cheers to all of you!
To be honest, I did not find the new gameplay very helpful so far for understanding the map, not least since they removed the compass. But I would not rule out the possibility that what is seen here is the same general area as the one around the Orbital Air building in the 2018 demo (where the buildings in the distance look sparse with a lot of water around them), only viewed from a completely different part of the city.
Another interesting thought. This is a overhead shot of Morrow Bay California (roughly where Night City is supposed to be according to Mike Pondsmith from back in the day). It has natural boundaries to the North and South, and leads to a valley in the East. So, assuming the Night City map in 2077 is loosely based around Morrow Bay, California, the Badlands may not really surround the City, but be situated mostly to the East of it. Something like this:
The size of the Map would actually map out pretty close to 1 to 1 as the area with districts on the left is roughly 5 miles by 5 miles (8 km by 8km), which is what we guessed before.
100% agreed. The building in the city is very likely a Corporate HQ (or possibly just an advertisement on a building), and the launch area is on the island. Would be my guess.
To be honest, I did not find the new gameplay very helpful so far for understanding the map, not least since they removed the compass. But I would not rule out the possibility that what is seen here is the same general area as the one around the Orbital Air building in the 2018 demo (where the buildings in the distance look sparse with a lot of water around them), only viewed from a completely different part of the city.
Orbital Air is a company. What you saw in the 2018 trailers and demos was simply a logo of the company on one of the buildings, not the Orbital Air Space Center itself. The Orbital Air Space Center is located on an island roughly north of Pacifica and west of the City Center.
North has to be either unmoved (at the top of the map) or as Rawls envisions it - it should be in the top-left corner then. Why?
Check out my lengthy analysis on Page 8.
This is the view from V's apartment. She's looking almost directly to the East, facing the whole skyscraper cluster.
Making the top-right corner north would not only mean she would be facing the City Center from her apartment (and she isn't), the river layout would also not match-up.
Another interesting thought. This is a overhead shot of Morrow Bay California (roughly where Night City is supposed to be according to Mike Pondsmith from back in the day). It has natural boundaries to the North and South, and leads to a valley in the East. So, assuming the Night City map in 2077 is loosely based around Morrow Bay, California, the Badlands may not really surround the City, but be situated mostly to the East of it. Something like this:
The size of the Map would actually map out pretty close to 1 to 1 as the area with districts on the left is roughly 5 miles by 5 miles (8 km by 8km), which is what we guessed before.
Before I started making my map, I checked every resource there was on the internet about the possible Night City map. So naturally I did stumble upon Morro Bay. However, I noticed it can't be it. Morro Bay is suited nicely for the Cyberpunk 2020 Night City map, while the 2077 Night City map seems to be almost completely different. In Cyberpunk 2020, there are no rivers separating the City Center from the rest of town. In Cyberpunk 2077, there are. The whole area looks quite different.
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By the way, my bet is on the Orbital Air Space Center Island being artificial.
This is the view from V's apartment. She's looking almost directly to the East, facing the whole skyscraper cluster.
Making the top-right corner north would not only mean she would be facing the City Center from her apartment (and she isn't), the river layout would also not match-up.
I think that view from V's apartment is Japantown (possibly called Kubaki on the Map - which translates from Japanese to English as "the art of singing and dancing"). Japantown is explicitly said by CDPR to be in Westbrook.
Westbrook: Featuring tourist-oriented Japantown, it is a place for the wealthy who like to work hard and play hard.
In Cyberpunk 2020, there are no rivers separating the City Center from the rest of town. In Cyberpunk 2077, there are. The whole area looks quite different.
I think that view from V's apartment is Japantown (possibly called Kubaki on the Map - which translates from Japanese to English as "the art of singing and dancing") Japantown is explicitly said by CDPR to be in Westbrook.
I don't think it's Japantown, Japantown is located much more to the northeast of the map (that's what the metro map tells us). But yes, I did notice that the skyscraper cluster is probably situated in Westbrook. This is the current (currently working on some final improvements) version of my map, notice the district boundaries I thought could be possible:
Also - notice the overlay of the Collector's Edition map over my version of the map. You can make out how big single skyscrapers and buildings are in comparison to the whole map, and as such, it is far easier to determine the total size of the map. Just fill the rest of the map with buildings of similar shape and size.
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OMG, I have an idea.
Based on that fragment from the Collector's Edition map, which is a very HD projection of a small fragment of Night City - we can check how the buildings compare to the skyscrapers in GTA 5's Los Santos. And based on that, we can determine how big all of the GTA 5 map is compared to the possible Night City map.
So it is. I missed that. Touche. So Kubaki is not Japantown. I still think that view is the area just to the South of "Kubaki." I still feel pretty confident about the path in the demo based on the compass, the directions given by Stout, and the firm statement by CDPR that it's in Watson (which is clearly labled to the West). Stouts directions make no sense in conjunction with the compass from where you have her apartment. Also getting Watson to a more central part of the map requires some Gerrymandering of districts (drawing them in non-logical ways based on the topography). Again I could be wrong, but I would be somewhat surprised if V's apartment isn't close to where I put it on the map.
EDIT: Also I just noticed you have Heywood labeled Heybrook on the map. Not a big deal, but it's Heywood.
Orbital Air is a company. What you saw in the 2018 trailers and demos was simply a logo of the company on one of the buildings, not the Orbital Air Space Center itself. The Orbital Air Space Center is located on an island roughly north of Pacifica and west of the City Center.
I do not see it proven either way if there are two separate buildings (I mean, it would be if we actually saw both). At most it is not a reliable argument in favor of one rotation or the other, it is only an interesting coincidence that the top-right one happens to place it right on the island. That still leaves the other errors I noted previously, though.
Making the top-right corner north would not only mean she would be facing the City Center from her apartment (and she isn't)
Why is it certain she is not facing the city center? I would find it easier to believe that a dense cluster of 200 m tall skyscrapers with advertisements is a part of the city center, than some poor district, or industrial area where I would expect to see factories like All Food instead.
Actually, it seems to be the least bad match, because it places the skyscrapers on an island, which is what it looks like in the demo. And at around 26:20, when the car is heading east just before the meeting point, there should be a river on the right, parallel to the road. This is missing with all the other rotations. Furthermore, when looking south at 25:44, there seem to be two branches at the Arasaka building, one to the W and another to the SE. The one major inconsistency I see is that the top-right layout also expects the river to branch at that point and go to the west as well, which is not visible in the demo. But since that branch is a dead end on the map, it is possible that it is some kind of underground canal that was built artificially, so it is not necessarily a contradiction.
Anyway, there is not much point endlessly arguing over this, as there is always at least one thing that does not match.
Okay, so I did something else other than focus on the location of the apartment as it's kind of less important actually.
I made out the contours of the map and then I overlaid that fragment of the map from the Collector's Edition.
I then compared the size of the buildings in that very HD fragment of Night City from above, and tried to scale the map of GTA 5 down to the scale I made my map in, by trying to make the general area of downtown Los Santos roughly as big as the part of downtown Night City shown in that vid.
And then I compared what I got to the map of the Witcher 3. The map of TW3 has been compared to the GTA 5 map a lot of times, so I could just scale up or down the two GTA 5 maps that I got (from the comparison to Night City and from the comparison to TW3) and thus I could compare the Witcher 3 map in the same scale as Night City.
The end result?
Night City is pretty massive, yeah. It is a lot bigger than GTA 5's map, but, and this is interesting, AS THE DEVS THEMSELVES SAID - the map does IN FACT seem to be a little bit smaller than Witcher 3's map! This means this comparison is likely to be true!
Here: map comparison (GTA 5 < Night City < The Witcher 3)
You can cross the GTA 5 map from the top to the bottom in 5-6 minutes. If you're driving very fast. Around 8-9 minutes if you're driving at a normal speed and around 15 minutes if you're driving at a calm, cruising speed.
To cross Night City from the top to the bottom (note: just the *city*, not even including the Badlands), I suppose the architecture would be way denser all the way through (in GTA 5 you have a lot of sparsely populated rural areas where you can just go straight ahead, here there would be a lot of traffic and turns all the way through I reckon) so I suppose it would take you some 9-10 minutes if you're driving very fast. Around 14-15 minutes if you're driving at a normal speed and around 25 minutes if you're driving at a calm, cruising speed. These are just my very, very rough estimations, though.
Yes, this is what I'm suggesting. I think they did show a very tall megabuilding from I suppose City Center (in the 2018 E3 trailer), it's in the metro train scene from the intro. The megabuilding seems to be very tall, hiding in the background next to V's megabuilding.
I do not see it proven either way if there are two separate buildings (I mean, it would be if we actually saw both). At most it is not a reliable argument in favor of one rotation or the other, it is only an interesting coincidence that the top-right one happens to place it right on the island. That still leaves the other errors I noted previously, though.
What? You can see no island in any of the 2018 promo materials. It's just a different part of the city separated by a river. It's a river, not the bay.
Why is it certain she is not facing the city center? I would find it easier to believe that a dense cluster of 200 m tall skyscrapers with advertisements is a part of the city center, than some poor district, or industrial area where I would expect to see factories like All Food instead.
Because City Center, or at least over half of it, has already been shown from above by the devs. Look at the fragment (that I've gotten from their Collector's Edition vid) that I overlaid on my map, it looks nothing like the skyscraper cluster V is facing from her apartment.
My concept seems to have 1 inconsistency, the one with the NID.
Your concept solves it, but then it has plenty of other inconsistencies. So it's a question of a concept with 1 slight inconsistency vs. a concept with several big inconsistencies.
Not to mention that I pointed out several other things hinting towards my location being the right one. Everything fits in just fine - not only do the geographic directions fit in, also the metro lines and every perspective and shot from any promo material. E3 2018 trailer? Boom, I can even name the actual line V took, instead of M2.
With your location? There is none of that, there is not a single metro line that passes through, the whole area seems pretty desolate in terms of that. The only 2 things holding it together are the similarly looking river layouts and the NID thing. But then aside from that it's pretty lackluster and has many inconsistencies.
Bear in mind that I thought about your location at first too, only then did I change my mind that it can't be there, it needs to be somewhere else.
Also, I forgot to add, there's also the problem of additional assumptions your model requires - E.G. that the metro map is tilted. That would be an interesting solution to the original problem of geographic directions, but then again, why would there be a need for the tilt? And is there a way to prove that the metro map is tilted? Or to disprove that?
I tried disproving the tilt of the map while at school but so far I haven't and I don't think it's falsifiable (doesn't mean it's right). I tried to disprove it by using the angle of the shadows cast by the skyscrapers on the fragment of the map from the Collector's Edition, but that didn't work - the shadows would be cast (almost) the same, with the tilt or without.
I heard there were some floods and what not that damaged Night City. And also the increasing sea levels kind of damaged Night City, so they built a dam to secure the city from getting completely flooded by the ocean. That's what I heard at least. That could be part of the explanation why they're there and also why the shoreline adjacent to City Center is so straight.
Why would it be topographically non-logical? I drew the district boundary roughly along the M3 line. What I'm sure about is that Watson must include the part of the M8 line from Monsoon to Hughes Green (rough location of the E3 2018 trailer intro), that I am certain, but I also think it's entirely possible it goes further than that and that it ends somewhere near the storm channels.
I really do think the map is loosly based off of Morro Bay California. Take a look at this image of Night City from E3 2019 that was in CDPR's area:
A couple logical assumptions to build some conclusions from. (1) The image is from the game as it existed around June 2018. (2) Night City is in California, which is on the Western United States of America. (3) That puts the city in the Northern Hemisphere, where the sun is always in the southern half of the sky, regardless of time of year. (4) The sun rises in the East and sets in the West.
The picture is clearly taken near sunrise or sunset as far as time of day. If it were sunrise, that would mean we're looking at Night City from the South with the sun rising in the North East. If it were near sunset, that would put us North of Night City with the sun to the South West. Since the sun is always in the Southern part of the sky when you are north of the topics in the Northern Hemisphere, it logically follows that this image is North of City Center (in Watson area).
This leads to a few more logical conclusions.
(1) The water off the right is the the Bay seen in the metro map.
(2) Pacifica is the area on the other side of City Center seen in the distance.
(3) The megabuilding on the left is possibly the one containing V's apartment.
(4) The rock to the far right that is rising directly from the water is quite possibly this one in the real Morro Bay, CA:
Your concept solves it, but then it has plenty of other inconsistencies. So it's a question of a concept with 1 slight inconsistency vs. a concept with several big inconsistencies.
When I was making my map, I really, really wanted to use this image that you sent for some additional findings and trivia:
Unfortunately, CDPR said it was made by some third-party artist solely for the purpose of being a wallpaper for a conference, and that it's just a nicely looking CGI vista that does not represent the actual state of Night City.
Unfortunately, CDPR said it was made by some third-party artist solely for the purpose of being a wallpaper for a conference, and that it's just a nicely looking CGI vista that does not represent the actual state of Night City.
I'm aware of the disclaimer that it's a CGI vista. I think the disclaimer was that the game may not graphically end up looking like that because it's CGI ... not necessarily that things aren't in correct locations. Sure has some exact looking assets for third party artist to not base it off an actual view from game.
I'm aware of the disclaimer that it's a CGI vista. I think the disclaimer was that the game may not graphically end up looking like that because it's CGI ... not necessarily that things aren't in correct locations. Sure has some exact looking assets for third party artist to not base it off an actual view from game.
Obviously the artists weren't supposed to draw stuff completely from their imagination, they had to be told about the setting first. They probably saw a couple of concept arts and stuff like that and just went along with it. Maybe they heard that Night City from CP2020 is situated near Morro Bay and so they decided to add the Rock. But in all honesty it might as well be some random hill or beginning of a mountain range.
Since the sun is always in the Southern part of the sky when you are north of the topics in the Northern Hemisphere
Unfortunately, the Sun seems to be in the wrong part of the sky in the game. I found that it is in fact in the Northern part of the sky (for real). You can check that out for yourself by seeing where the shadows are cast.
Unfortunately, the Sun seems to be in the wrong part of the sky in the game. I found that it is in fact in the Northern part of the sky (for real). You can check that out for yourself by seeing where the shadows are cast.
Which is VERY interesting because it tells you that they bent a lot of physical reality for the demo to be convenient for the tester to play, and to be conveniently short. Which only makes me believe even more that the All Food factory might've been inserted somewhere much closer than it would actually be. Somewhere in a different location maybe? What do you think? That would explain away the NID inconsistency.
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If I may add, I liked the time system in the S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games the most. 1 minute in-game was 8 seconds in real-life. 8-9 real seconds for an in-game minute seems like the best range.
PM: Yes, it is a part of the game, and that’s why I don’t want to call it a vertical slice. What you’re seeing here is from early in the game. It may be different from what you’re seeing now, but it is part of the game.
Marcin Iwinski: “The demo, it’s not a demo-demo in terms that it’s an artificial piece of content created for the purposes of the show,” Iwinski said while speaking with Kotaku. “That’s actually a build of the game… actually, surprising it is a real build so we didn’t fake anything here and actually we had a lot of… we didn’t start these conversations but we had a lot of feedback like that in the previews by people actually noticing that certain things did not look pre-rendered or fake. And this makes us very happy and very proud because we’ve actually made it to pull off a build.”
So I don't think things will have moved around much as far as major locations is concerned. Of course they're likely tinkering with individual levels and such. But I 100% think that V's apartment is going to be south of the NID.
"What you’re seeing here is from early in the game. It may be different from what you’re seeing now, but it is part of the game."
I wonder what that means.
Also, you can't deduce anything relevant from Iwinski's response. He only says that it was not pre-rendered or anything, that it was actually played in-game. But we already have proofs of their other "conveniences" - Dexter DeShawn's car going around in circles making the ride seem longer than it actually was. Making the map seem bigger than it actually is.
The progression of time being bent.
And now we face this inconsistency.. Yeah, I wouldn't say that single line of dialogue is enough to refute everything else that aligns perfectly with my location and just simply fits in.
In fact, I'd say it's probable that the whole quest won't even get to the final game in the same form. It might be just a demo version of the quest, just like it happened in the Witcher 3's gameplay demo, it was all completely bent to hell and different there compared to the final, released version of the quest. So my hypothesis is that the finished version of the quest will be far longer and we will end up travelling further, taking a turn towards the NID while on the way. Something like that. Seems like it's just a condensed demo-version of a quest that's deeper and bigger.
