10 Things Cut From Cyberpunk C2077

Street Vendors

Tyler McVicker took it upon himself in mid-2021 to try and load the version of “Cyberpunk” that was printed on the game discs when CDPR triumphantly declared the disc had “gone gold” in October 2020. He did this by disconnecting his PlayStation from the internet and installing the game directly from the disc, which let him see and explore this earlier build. One of the most surprising things he discovered which was cut ahead of release were the street vendors. In the “gold” version, V could encounter small street vendors all around the world who would sell a selection of consumable items. For some reason, these were cut. It’s not a major removal but it does raise many questions, and modders have since restored the street vendors on PC.

Flying Cars

Ever since “Blade Runner”, flying cars have been a staple of science-fiction – but especially of Cyberpunk. That’s why it was so disappointing when we learned “Cyberpunk 2077” contains no drivable flying cars. Sure, you might see flying cars around, and V does briefly ride in a flying car during the Corpo prologue, but you don’t get to drive any. We found this out with a CDPR interview way back in 2018, but it still stings, especially when we can see the cars flying around but we can’t use a single flying vehicle in-game. This is in stark contrast to every other open-world game, with “GTA” and “Saints Row” featuring planes and helicopters for years.

Apartments

Interestingly, it seems that at one point “Cyberpunk” was going to feature some kind of real estate system where V would be able to buy and move into bigger, better apartments as the game goes on. Presumably, this would have worked like the extremely annoying car buying system, but for whatever reason, it was too difficult to implement. V does have apartment-based progression in some ways, as you unlock other people’s apartments as pseudo home bases as you befriend them, but only V’s first apartment remains the true one. Though, in one of the endings, you do get to see the interior of an enormous, non-purchasable McMansion.

Wall Running

Something else conspicuously missing from the launch game that we saw throughout pre-release material was the ability to wall-run. In that forty-minute gameplay demo that showed the majority of the early Militech/Maelstrom mission where you acquire the Flathead, we also saw V perform some wall-running. Yes, we know there was an indicator on-screen the entire time warning us that things might change, but it’s still sad that wall-running was cut ahead of release as it would have definitely added some welcome variety to the combat. Thankfully, this particular mechanic has been restored through a mod, as one fan managed to solve the “design problems” that led to CDPR removing it.

Train System

We saw V on what looks like a subway car in one of the early cinematics, and many players will have spotted a monorail. But though the monorail exists and drives around the map, you cannot ride it – well, unless you climb on top of it, but that doesn’t count. People have also found partly completed train tunnels underneath eastern portions of the map, including train sound effects; obviously, at some point, the trains were cut out of the finished game. It’s not the end of the world as Night City is overflowing with fast travel points, but it would have been a nice quality of life addition. After all, you never needed to take the train in “GTA IV”, but it was nice to have it there adding color to the world.

Customization

Before release, everybody was dying to know just how customizable “Cyberpunk 2077” was going to be. But beyond the character creation menu, you actually can’t customize all that much – you can’t even customize V’s car or weapons. This is odd because other characters in the game do have unique, custom versions of many weapons, and the game does have a crafting system – but it still won’t allow you to reskin a gun to look cooler. We only found out that car customization wouldn’t make the final cut in summer 2020, with all the cars V can possess instead being designed ahead of time. Yet again, though, modders have plugged this hole and restored the customization features.

Backstories

The lifepaths sounded great at first, but upon playing the game they were a resounding disappointment. The different prologues were cool but sadly much too short, coming in at just thirty minutes if you take your time. But it wasn’t always meant to be this way; the lifepath system actually replaced a different, backstory system that would have seen you give V a much more unique origin. This was shown off in some early gameplay footage. You could select V’s childhood hero, a “key life event” that defines them, and why they’re going to Night City. It would have been much more akin to the small changes you could make to Shepard’s backstory at the beginning of “Mass Effect” than the streamlined life path system we originally got – though some prefer that backstories were cut.

NPC Routines

Ahead of release, we were told that “over 1000” of Night City’s NPCs were going to have their own routines and schedules that they’d follow. This was something Rockstar had already implemented in “Red Dead II”, but of course, “Red Dead II” has far, far fewer NPCs there to program unique routines into than Night City. That’s probably the reason NPC routines were ultimately ditched. In fact, NPCs barely even have AI, they’ll just wander around aimlessly and do nothing in particular most of the time. Sometimes the entire crowd will despawn and respawn when they’re culled, completely shattering your immersion. It’s likely that this was simply too ambitious for the game to pull off.

Cut Districts

Numerous regions have been cut out from the main game, as plenty of fans have discovered in their exploration of the map. The YouTube channel Deconstructing the Game posted a video comparing the in-game map to the physical map that shipped with the disc, with the latter showing areas that don’t appear in-game. There are other areas too, like a huge “corporate town” as the Redditor who discovered it called it; the space port that sits in the distance and never features in a mission; and the Arasaka Waterfront. Night City is a pretty huge map already, but it’s still sad to see just how much bigger it could have been.

Third Person Cutscenes

The lack of third-person view was many people’s biggest potential gripe with the game ahead of its release, but the blow was somewhat softened by CDPR seemingly implying that V would be visible in third person in some cutscenes – much like “Fallout 4”. However, this turned out to not be the case at all. “Cyberpunk 2077” has third person cutscenes in some of the game’s endings, but the rest of the time, you only see your version of V while driving or while looking at how stupid your gear is in the inventory menu. CDPR backpedalled on how much would be third-person numerous times, and now it’s been left to modders to restore third person view to the people who prefer it.