We really don’t need a whole new map for every single game.
The game finally released in 2020, and received its massive 2.0 overhaul update in 2023.
The team at CD Projekt Red clearly spent a massive amount of time developing Night City.
And you know what?
There’sa ton of stuff there.
Every few years we come back, and a few things have changed.
Some shops are different.
Maybe a skyscraper blew up.
A building that once housed a flourishing yakuza business has locked doors.
Efficiencity
First and foremost, it’s just smart use of resources.
With a place the team has spent so much time building, why use it only once?
In Night City, the brunt of the work has been done; the city is there.
Why should we only visit it once?
Weshouldbe going back in the sequel, even if that’s not where we spend all of our time.
What does the city look like after Jefferson Peralez is elected mayor?
Misty read my tarot here!
That’s part of what makes Kamurocho such an important place for Like a Dragon fans.
As Kiryu, Majima, or Ichiban, we’ve made countless memories.
We remember when Majima popped out of a manhole cover on Tenkaichi Street.
We remember when Kiryu got talked into acting in a commercial around the corner from a Smile Burger.
Or when he ordered literally everything on the menu at Kanrai.
You don’t have to shoehorn in recurring characters when they would already be there.
Who isn’t going to visit Afterlife and order a drink called V?
Of course, we want to go elsewhere, and the Like a Dragon games do that, too.
We get references to cities like Tokyo, countries like Brazil.
It would be fun to explore these!
There’s also a greedy element to this.
We had to wait eight-plus years to play Cyberpunk.
More and more, the video game market is showing that long development cycles on mega-sized games are unsustainable.
Cyberpunk 2077 itself was a victim of this.
Now, though, CD Projekt Red has a popular IP established in Cyberpunk 2077.
It has a great sandbox in Night City.
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