Cyberpunk 2077 dev says they went all-out on the memorial to Johnny Silverhand's nuclear attack, then found out bosses 'just expected a commemorative plaque'

GamesRPGCyberpunk 2077Cyberpunk 2077 dev says they went all-out on the memorial to Johnny Silverhand’s nuclear attack, then found out bosses ‘just expected a commemorative plaque’When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Tyler C. / CD Projekt)

Cyberpunk 2077 character Johnny Silverhand with arms crossed looks away from the camera and smiles

The bombing of Arasaka Tower in 2023 is a massive moment in Cyberpunk lore, and pretty much the key inciting event that makes the whole plot of Cyberpunk 2077 possible. No wonder, then, that the ground zero of the blast—right next to the new Arasaka Tower—is home to a sprawling memorial in stark, black blocks.

Except it turns out it wasn’t really meant to be there at all.

Chatting withPLAY Magazine, CDPR environment artist Krzysztof Kornatka mentioned that the memorial area was something “one of the directors asked for” while he was working on the Arasaka area of Night City. A simple “something to commemorate the explosion of the main Arasaka headquarters in 2023.”

Oops. But Kornatka takes it all in stride: “What can I say? In [CD ProjektRed’s] City Team, we like to utilise larger spaces!” And honestly, he’s entirely correct. If a nuke went off in my hometown (it would generate millions of pounds in improvements, har har), it’d probably get a bigger memorial than a plaque. Life might be cheap in Night City, but I’m not sure it’sthatcheap.

Then again, V probably kills more people than that just crossing the road, so perhaps it’s not quite as dramatic a contrast as I imagined.

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Anyway, it’s not just Cyberpunk tidbits that devs have been talking to PLAY about. There’s also theBaldur’s Gate 3 devwho went into detail about Larian’s level design philosophy, noting that players love nothing more than finding a location before “‘ending up 2 hours and 3 puzzles later in a sacrificial chamber of a cult that murders giraffes’.”

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