“Apparently the worst city between the Atlantic and the Pacific. But I sure do love this view. Find it calming.”
Night City is a fictional city in the Cyberpunk world that was created by Mike Pondsmith. From the outside, it looks like a well-developed city with massive corporate towers and gigantic apartment buildings. From the inside, however, it is a city riddled with crime, exploitation, mental illness, and sex trafficking.
War, Autonomy, and Division
The Video game Cyberpunk 2077, which was my introduction to the cyberpunk world, takes place in Night City in the year 2077. Night City is an autonomous city located between Northern and Southern California. The United States is now the New United States of America, and several states call themselves the Free States of North America.
In the world of Cyberpunk, corporations have gotten so big that they are now able to start full-scale wars with each other, remove and install country leaders, and heavily influence world politics. By 2077, the world has seen four corporate wars and a unification war between the NUSA and the Free states of North America.
The treaty that ended the unification war included that Night City would be an international, independent city-state that would not be a part of the NUSA or the state of Northern California. That meant that corporate influence in the city would rise significantly.
Beauty, Danger, and Sadness
Night City is made up of six districts:
City Center
The City Center is where most of the corporate buildings are. It is a beautiful district with impressive corporate buildings, beautiful apartment complexes, and a bustling nightlife that people from all over Night City come to enjoy.
All that beauty, however, masks a much more ugly reality of corporate espionage, assassinations, drugs, and corporate exploitation.
Westbrook
Westbrook is where all the mentally unstable corpo rats, who are drugged out of their minds and look down on everyone else, live. It is also where the celebrities and political figures of the city live.
North Oak is an area in Westbrook where the city’s wealthiest live. It is where you can find the biggest mansions in Night City. The legendary Kerry Eurodyne himself lives there.
Charter Hill, however, is where the mid-level corpo agents who can’t afford to buy a house in North Oak live. You can also find aspiring artists living in Charter Hill.
Santo Domingo
Santo Domingo is where most corporations tend to build their factories. The factories are located in an area called Arroyo. The workers in those factories mostly live in a residential area in Santo Domingo called Rancho Coronado, a residential area full of identical traditional American houses.
Santo Domingo is also home to the 6th Street gang, which is comprised of veterans from the 4th corporate war who found themselves used and abused. When the corporations had no more use for them, they were tossed back to Night City without healthcare or assistance.
Heywood
Heywood is the most populated area in Night City. The northern part of Heywood is close to City Center; it has corporate skyscrapers and many corporate agents live there. The southern part, however, is much less developed and is mainly populated by gang members and poor people.
The southern part of Heywood is home to the Valentinos gang, which controls the predominantly Latino neighborhoods of Heywood. The Valentinos also often fight with the 6th Street gang over territory issues.
Watson
Watson district is a failed corporate project. Corporate CEOs invested billions of Eurodollars to make it a Corporate Center like the one in City Center. As a result, many corporate towers were built, and an industrial district was established.
After the Unification War, The megacorporation Arasaka reestablished its presence in Night City. All of Arasaka’s competitors went bankrupt, and the once-thriving district of Watson became full of abandoned Towers and factories.
Watson became a district of refugees, gang violence, and poverty. The corporate buildings that were owned by corporations were now inhabited by refugees and gangs.
Two gangs operate out of Watson, Maelstrom and the Tyger Claws.
Maelstrom is a gang that heavily focuses on body modification. All of their members have very extreme cyberware implants and are extremely dangerous. They are based in the Northside Industrial District in Watson, inhabiting an abandoned factory.
The Tyger Claws is a Japanese gang based in Kabuki, an area in Watson that is predominantly Asian.
Scavs also have a strong presence in Watson. They are a Russian gang that mainly deals in kidnapping people and selling their organs and implants on the black market.
Pacifica
Pacifica is another failed corporate project. It was meant to be a vacation resort for corporate agents and tourists with many luxury hotels, casinos, and malls. In the middle of building it, however, the Unification war broke out, and all the investors pulled their money from the projects being developed. The district was left with gigantic, abandoned, and unfinished buildings.
After the projects were halted, the district became overrun with crime and poverty. Eventually, a netrunner group of Haitians called the Voodoo Boys took control of the district, and Night City mayor Lucius Rhyne declared that Pacifica was no longer part of Night City and was an independent district.
The reason for dropping Pacifica from Night City’s administrative boundaries was to exclude Pacifica’s crime statistics from the city’s official numbers.
Badlands
The Badlands is the desert that surrounds Night City. Nomad tribes live there and provide transportation and guidance services through the desert, in addition to a gang of tribeless nomads called The Wraiths, who constantly attack passing convoys.
The Badlands also have several towns whose citizens abandoned and went to Night City during the Fourth Corporate War.
The southern part of the Badlands surrounding Night City has a power plant, and a large area of protein farms called The Biotechnica Flats.
Culture
Night City’s culture is heavily influenced by corporations. Advertisements are all over the sides of buildings, no aspiring artist has any chance if they’re not signed to a major label, and every politician has to earn the favor of these megacorporations to advance in their career.
As a result of the culture being influenced by corporations, Night City’s culture is primarily focused on pleasure. Drugs are sold everywhere, every kind of porn you could think of is very easily accessible, and dollhouses and Joytoys are on every street corner.
You can also satisfy your desires by going to the black market, where you can find Braindances of murders, suicides, and any other kind of degenerate content you might be interested in.
To be able to make it in Night City, your options are limited. You could sell your soul to a corporation or be self-employed and work as a mercenary.
Corpo
Being a corpo agent means abandoning any moral code and doing whatever the corporation tells you to do. You could end up spying, stealing, kidnapping, or even killing in order to get a promotion. In the long run, though, it could be very lucrative for you. If you manage to survive the meatgrinder that is the corporate ladder, you will get to live in a penthouse in Charter Hill or even a mansion in North Oak.
Merc
However, going down the mercenary route means that you need to keep accepting various jobs and finishing them successfully until you get a job from a high-profile client or a more dangerous job. These jobs range from package delivery and theft to hit jobs and major heists.
Being a successful mercenary is not an easy thing to do. In fact, most mercenaries keep doing small-time gigs their whole lives, and the ones that do make it to the major leagues almost always get killed. No mercenary ever dies in their own bed.
Alternative Paths
If neither path mentioned above seems suitable for you, you could always work in a factory for a minimum wage and five annual vacation days at the most, or you could open a small shop of your own.
If you’re desperate enough, you could also work in a dollhouse or be a joy toy in Jig-Jig Street. I wouldn’t recommend this option, though. Just look up what happened to Evelyn Parker.
Other people you might find in NC
While exploring Night City, you could run into a Nomad or a Ripperdoc.
Ripperdocs operate as doctors or surgeons. You go to a Ripperdoc to get a cyberware implant, or if you’re wounded and want to get stitched up. You could find Ripperdocs who work independently, but if you work for a corporation, they will provide you with the best Ripperdoc services for free.
Nomads were originally farmers who were forced by the corporations to sell their farms. These farmers became homeless, and many of them roamed around in their cars and RVs. Eventually, these homeless farmers started forming packs. They started traveling together in large numbers, taking transportation jobs, guiding people through the desert, attacking corporate convoys, and living in camps like big families.
Dogtown
Dogtown was once a subdistrict of Pacifica called Serenisands. During the Unification War, NUSA colonel Kurt Hansen was ordered to take control of Serenisands and make it a staging ground for the invasion of Night City.
When the treaty that ended the war was signed, Kurt Hansen was ordered to leave Serenisands and pull his forces out. Colonel Hansen refused that order and kept Serenisands under his control. He kept his soldiers and created a gang known as Barghest.
Later on, the locals started calling Serenisands Dogtown, and the district became overrun with crime and gang activity, all under the control of Colonel Kurt Hansen.
Thoughts
While playing Cyberpunk 2077, I couldn’t help but think that the world we live in now doesn’t seem too far off from the world in the game. If you look back from the time of the Industrial Revolution, the world seems to have been going in a direction that appears to be leading to a world that looks a lot like Cyberpunk.
It seems that ever since big corporations started being a thing, employment started to look a lot like slavery. And corporations seem to keep pushing for only what benefits them financially instead of what could benefit all parties involved.
Employees are now being paid the lowest amount companies are ready to pay, and work-life balance is starting to be something only “spoiled” and “unmotivated” people ask for. Employees are also becoming more accessible during the weekends.
I think governments are the only thing standing between corporations and completely unethical practices. If corporations were let loose in the world with no regulation, don’t be surprised if you see the most horrendous practices being done to workers and the environment, only to reach new financial heights.
P.S. Much of the information I gathered while writing this post was from Cyberpunk Wiki. Check them out. https://cyberpunk.fandom.com/
