Cyberpunk 2077 finally has moves, but they’re slow – which makes sense

CD Projekt Red fulfilled a five-year promise last week when it added a fully functional subway system Cyberpunk 2077. While the feature does wonders for making Night City more lively, I was surprised to learn how little California’s public transit infrastructure has improved in the game’s alternate reality future.

Cyberpunk 2077 now includes five Night City Area Rapid Transit (NCART) rail lines serving 19 stations. Each stop still functions as a fast travel point, but players can also use them to hop on the subway and transfer to other parts of the city in real time. Because movement on the train is restricted, this is primarily a visual experience, giving people a new perspective on the sprawling megacity as well as limited opportunities to chat with their fellow passengers.

During one ride, I noticed a screen that showed the train’s speed constantly fluctuating at around 43 miles per hour, which felt awfully slow for a futuristic mode of transportation. The average speeds of modern heavy rail systems in the United States are in the high teens to mid-30s, but can also reach much higher top speeds. And that doesn’t even take into account the more developed public transportation systems in Japan and China, whose high-speed maglev trains speed through major cities at hundreds of miles per hour.

Image: CD Projekt Red

This goes with the first one Cyberpunk In 1988 the regulations had to say about the then future transport:

Surprise surprise. Contrary to expectations, the year 2000 did not bring any overwhelming new developments in transportation. Years of economic turmoil and unrest have hindered the exploration of new travel options – in fact, the act of travel has been severely restricted. Expect the world of 2013 to resemble that of the 20th century – a network of crowded highways, crowded trains and crowded airports.

A later expansion, Welcome to Night Citypoints out that the metropolis of the same name already had light rail maglev trains with a speed of 200 miles per hour in 2013, the year of the first Cyberpunk Adventures have been discontinued. Since then, every book has mentioned that maglev trains are an integral part of nighttime travel in the city, including in 2005 Cyberpunk V3.0 even noted an improvement in their top speed to 300 miles per hour, despite the apparent destruction of the intercontinental maglev train during the Fourth Corporate War (which took place in the universe from 2021 to 2025) between the world’s ruling megacorporations.

(And just to cover my ass, updated in the 1990s Cyberpunk 2020

That is here Cyberpunk 2077 is doing something smart by expanding the consequences of this conflict. Instead of just getting rail traffic flowing between continents, the game describes the Fourth Corporate War as a weakening of the entire maglev system, as explained by the following database entry:

Thanks to the introduction of electrodynamic suspension technology, maglev trains traveled at high speeds through tunnels and on the surface, providing quick and comfortable travel from Night City to other cities, including Kansas City, St. Louis, Atlanta and Washington DC. Unfortunately, this is a new era. The transportation did not last long. The social unrest and armed conflicts of the Fourth Corporate War brought with them an economic crisis that soon paralyzed the entire system. The abandoned Maglev Tunnels are currently out of use and used by homeless people and various gangs.

The destruction of the maglev system and the slow NCART speeds in the game led me to suspect that the local government was forced to resort to pre-2013 technology to ensure that NCART remained operational, a massive downgrade from the high-speed trains that once carried residents through the night transported the city and beyond.

Image: CD Projekt Red

As I researched this situation, I couldn’t help but see darkly comic parallels between the difficulties faced by the fictional California portrayed in Cyberpunk 2077 and the actual state in which I live.

Despite being one of the largest (both in area and population) and richest states in the union, California has long struggled with plans to build public transportation on par with East Asia’s high-speed trains. A lot of it is because of politics, as even seemingly supportive lawmakers shy away from spending the billions of dollars needed to complete the project. And let’s be honest: Americans are just way too attached to their cars.

That being said, there is a very simple explanation for the Night City Metro’s relatively slow speed: the developers didn’t want NCART rides to happen on the fly. What good would the long-awaited subway experience be if players didn’t actually experience it?

Traveling at 300 miles per hour, people wouldn’t have time to observe the eccentric residents of Night City or enjoy the view of the skyscrapers around the bay outside the train’s windows. The whole purpose of the subway system – and a big part of why people have been so clamoring for its inclusion all these years – is to give players new role-playing opportunities and the visual splendor of the subway system to experience Cyberpunk 2077The setting and its exaggerated aesthetics.

It’s hard for me to accuse CD Projekt Red of playing a little loose with the established companies Cyberpunk History if it leads to a better game in the end.