As always, art is destroyed by greed. This game's design, while not flawless, has such a depth that you won't even realize all the design elements that are happening in front of your eyes. The main innovation of Cyberpunk can be summarized as "designing an actual city within a game".
Night City itself is the actual design achievement, in terms of :
Please, whatever you do, please stop criticizing the devs. The game is nothing short of a breakthrough in game design. Channel your anger towards the management who thought they could get away with sullying art for a little more money.
Night City itself is the actual design achievement, in terms of :
- City Design: The city actually looks like a city. In every aspect (aesthetic, architectural, scale-wise), at every level of detail. It's not a gaming abstraction of "here's a central citadal and like five streets radiating out": It's bigger than any city that's been portrayed in detail in any game, ever, and it has the complexity of a modern metropolis that has been extrapolated in a fascinating way into a cyberpunk future. If you don't think so, you just don't understand the city yet. Go around the city, spend more time in it. Do some of the side quests and really look at it in detail.
- Making use of all that space: The way the game makes use of the detailed nooks and crannies and makes use of the overall space of Night City is beyond anything ever seen in a game. From corporate headquarters, residential megabuildings and high-rises, to abandoned malls, back alleyways and remote badlands farms, every location is dripping with detail and hides deeper secrets under the surface.
- Interweaving stories into the world: The game does itself a disservice by not screaming at the player to do EVERY SINGLE SIDE QUEST. Every one of the side quests are multi-part long affairs that actually guide you in exploring the city itself. They add an incredible amount of richness to the world itself, and as a sum, makes Night City feel utterly alive.
Please, whatever you do, please stop criticizing the devs. The game is nothing short of a breakthrough in game design. Channel your anger towards the management who thought they could get away with sullying art for a little more money.