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Cyberpunk 2077's map looks like a dense GTA - judging by this art book

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We've already seen Cyberpunk 2077's metro map thanks to the EGX 2018 trailer, but as anyone who's used the Tube knows, that's often a pretty distorted version of real geography. By pairing it with a snippet of the overhead map, however, you finally get an idea of what Night City actually looks like. Which is a compact version of GTA, apparently.

Over on Amazon, a deluxe version of The World of Cyberpunk 2077 has appeared - an official art and lore book by Dark Horse Books in collaboration with CD Projekt Red. On the front cover is a simplified image of the Night City map, in which you can clearly see the city centre, a ring road, several bridges, and some mysterious offshoots going god knows where.

The book cover on the left, and the metro map on the right. Why is everything in video games piss yellow at the moment?

While the book cover shows the centre of Night City, it's probably not the entirety of Cyberpunk 2077's map - and the way the image is cut off suggests it could extend further north. This also correlates with CD Projekt's previous interviews, in which devs confirmed that players can explore outside the city limits.

"...The game isn't only Night City. There's an area surrounding it, the Badlands," lead quest designer Paweł Sasko told Eurogamer earlier this year. "You can leave the city and explore, see what the world looks like outside the city and... it looks harsh outside the city. But you have quests there, contracts you can do, and you'll be sent there by the main story as well. And there are also a few other surprises..."

For those concerned about the size (apparently a fair chunk of Reddit), thanks to an interview with senior concept artist and coordinator Marthe Jonkers, we also know that Cyberpunk 2077's map is all about verticality - with Jonkers describing it as a "big 3D puzzle".

"We now have this option of vertical exploration that we didn't really have in The Witcher, which was more of a spread-out map," Jonkers explained in last month's edition of PlayStation Official Magazine (via Wccftech). "We really take advantage of that, and we have a lot of ways of going up and down.

"Night City is enormous. But we also value quality over quantity, I have to be honest about that. There's a lot to explore, but we would never just make all these half-empty buildings. We make sure that wherever you go, you actually get this high quality of exploration. We really try to make sure that around almost every corner there's something interesting."

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It's not the most detailed map, but it's fun to finally get an idea of Night City's layout - and I'm sure plenty of fans are currently trying to work out the areas from studying the metro map. If you want to splash out on the deluxe art book, it'll cost you £77.32 - but you do get some sweet temporary tats thrown in, so there's that.

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