VIRTUALLY THERE
It's not just Night City that we have to navigate in 2077, but the digital networks of Night City and the net itself.
Netrunning is an interactive and immersive experience where you will “jack in” and run the Net. Night City is an omnipresent network, offering countless access terminals. Within them you will find layers of hidden systems, firewalls and security programs deployed to fry your brain. Missions will stack you against other hostile Netrunners who defend corporations both in cyberspace and the real world. Netrunning will mostly be accomplished in local networks around Night City, though V will also be able to access cyberspace, a rarely used and dangerous global network.
In the original Cyberpunk 2020, Cyberspace was a place you could visit, where you could travel from one computer to the next on a massive, global network. In the year 2077,
all that has changed. In the 2020s a number of malware and rogue AIs were released into Cyberspace, making it so dangerous that it was basically worthless for common use. That crisis was mitigated with the help of the Netwatch, a kind of Cyberspace police force. Rather than disabling the malware, the Netwatch cordoned off the area to keep people out with the Blackwall. The Blackwall is a major plot point in Cyberpunk 2077 will have players trying to break through that wall to find out what lives on the other side.
Given the new dangers of the net in 2077, only the
bravest Netrunners immerse themselves in
ice baths before connecting their personal links to Cyberspace itself by breaching the Blackwall. Cyberspace is harder to access in 2077 because CDPR and Mike Pondsmith wanted to force Netrunner V to
be in the action. She can't sit back in a comfy chair with her keyboard and say 'go to the fifth level and open the door'. No, she has to go in there and be under risk. So most of the time, normal users and V
only have access to a system of fractured local networks. One needs to find an access point to connect to the local network in order to hack different devices within the network. Once they breech a network though, they can disable weapons, make enemies' own cyberware betray them so they commit suicide, and find all kinds of things to mess around with in the world.
LOCAL NETRUNNING
Interaction with the digital world within Night City is important. Every company has their own systems that V can hack with seperate networks. Netrunning in local networks will be represented by a
hacking minigame. It's a
grid of hex code characters.
For example, you'll see the value 1C, which you can easily paste. Then it could be 1C 55, so you have to add a 55 to open a door. The game world slows down for such actions, so you can hack something "safer". If you have expanded your hacking skills, the beginning of the code is automatically resolved. You may then throw yourself on the trickier part. If you do not like such riddles - then you just hack your base access and continue playing as normal.
Each player’s Cyberdeck will have a “buffer” and a finite number of “programs” that can be used at a moment’s notice. Options included things like “Camera log” as well as secured data caches.
Players mix and match combinations while the clock ticks down, racing to match as many of the available options as possible before they’re discovered. That means, under most circumstances, there’s no way to hack the entire system. Instead, players must pick and choose what parts to crack. But you never know exactly what you’ll get; you’ll need to guess at what you might be unlocking every time you perform a hack. That leaves room for CD Projekt to embed interesting narrative elements or perhaps unintended, story-based consequences for even the most successful hacks.
With less skills you have limited access - you can open the door, but you can not deactivate any cameras or listen to the opposing communication network to determine your opponents' positions. Once successfully hacked, new options for interactions hover over objects in the game-world, each one represented as a contextual option on the in-game HUD. They allow you to cause distractions or set traps. These “quick hacks" let you instantly access certain systems, so you won’t always have to play the minigame. For instance in the E3 2018 Demo, V incapacitated and "jacked in" (directly connected via interface plug) to a Maelstrom ganger. When she did, she gained access to other members of the gang through their integrated digital personnel system. Through this, V gained the options to get access, reduce aim or disable cyberware of the other members of the gang.
You don't always need to be withing arms reach for direct access either. You can use nano-wire, which is not just a laser-whip, it's also a
physical hacking cable she can throw at enemies at close range to jack into their brains, cooking them alive or causing them to attack themselves or their friends if you've purchased the right malicious software.
THE DANGERS OF THE NET
In the E3 2018 Demo the Maelstrom gang's netrunner had already been killed. Things can go differently if there is another runner in a network. In the E3 2019 Demo, there was another Netrunner trying to
counter-hack into you, and that's no small thing. In Cyberpunk, hacking into people can quickly turn deadly. It turns out that this runner in the Demo was from Netwatch, a government cybersecurity group. If V got
hacked successfully by the the Netwatch agent, they could disable her cyberware or even kill her if they so desire. Once the netrunner gained full access to V in the 2019 E3 Demo, a timer started where if V didn't act fast enough, she would get "fried." Game Over man.
Furthermore, V has to be careful who she trusts and joins networks with as far as allies are concerns. In the 2019 Demo, a netrunner named Placide wouldn't
help V unless he could hack into her body to keep an eye on the mission. Later, Placide betrayed V, trying to incapacitate and install a deadly virus into all
everyone (including V) connected to the network. In the demo, Placide's attempt to kill us failed, but not because of V's own decisions. Bottom line, the Net is a wierd, interesting, powerful and very dangerous place.
BRAINDANCING
Most people are still entranced by the glitz of showbiz and luxurious lifestyles of the privileged elite. Breakthroughs in neural technology paved the way for people to share recordings of their own personal memories and emotions via tech known as
“braindance” (or BD). Some BD productions put actors in staged situations to create “false” memories, to give viewers the feeling that they’re living in an action film. Other BDs are simple recordings of a day in the life of the world’s biggest and brightest stars. The ability to “become” a celeb and experience a life of luxury gives many a chance to escape their own miserable reality. As a result, braindance addiction has become an ever-growing problem for the city’s poor. Also, as with all forms of entertainment media, illicit braindance recordings (XBDs) can be found easily in the seedy underbelly of Night City’s black market.
V can use these BD recordings to uncover hidden information. In
analysis mode, V can look around within the memory to try and find hidden secrets. V can scrub back and forth through a memory, rewinding, pausing, and fast forwarding to analyze items and pick out details that might reveal the location of a wanted object. She can also switch between three different layers (visual, audio, and thermal) to hunt for clues.
