Escape from Night City
This column is a reprint from Unwinnable Monthly #195. If you like what you see, grab the magazine for less than ten dollars, or subscribe and get all future magazines for half price.
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A tongue-in-cheek but also painfully earnest look at pop culture and anything else that deserves to be ridiculed while at the same time regarded with the utmost respect. It is written by Matt Marrone and emailed to Stu Horvath and David Shimomura, who add any typos or factual errors that might appear within.
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Now that there’s a Nintendo Switch 2 in my house, I am catching up to some of the freshly optimized, now-many-years-old Triple-A tiles I’ve missed out on during my Dad-dom. I decided, wisely, to start with Cyberpunk 2077 (Ultimate Edition) and I freakin’ love it.
The setting of the game, Night City, is a richly designed triumph of next-level world-building. It’s rife with carefully crafted details, many of them serving no ostensible gameplay purpose other than to heighten the illusion. The immersion, especially handheld – the glowing screen inches from your face, headphones in your ears – is thrilling and captivating. It was only natural, therefore, that I eventually became obsessed with trying to escape it.
Did I succeed? Of course not. But the journey, as they say, is the destination.
Here is what happened when I tried – with all the inglorious moments along the way.
Attempt No. 1
Via YouTube, I become aware that there is a border crossing south of Night City. I immediately decide I must go there. I figure getting past it might be difficult, but that’s really only a guess. At any rate, I’m feeling optimistic about my chances. Naturally, I skip the recon and try hijacking a civilian SUV and racing it straight through. I floor it as I approach the checkpoint. I make it halfway across and for a moment I think, foolishly, that I’m in the clear. Then – bam! – a security barrier pops up from the ground and I crash into it. Jumping from the now-trapped truck, I make a run for it, but my hastily conceived plan is already doomed. I’m flatlined by a hail of gunfire after just a few feet.
Attempt No. 2
This time I approach on foot, my favorite double-barreled shotgun fully loaded. As I run in, bullets flying, I also try disabling the turrets using quickhacks. I even blow a few out before I am flatlined again, just as quickly as I was the first time.
Attempt No. 3
Brute force clearly isn’t working, so I go stealth. I attempt to skirt the checkpoint completely, using my reinforced tendons to double-jump over the border wall. I actually make it as far as a landing maybe three-quarters of the way up, where there’s a guard post and a locked door. I toss a few grenades down onto my now onrushing pursuers below, but their attack is both brutal and relentless. I end up jumping back down and running off west, into Biotechnica Flats, where I find a place to hide behind a large oil tank, hoping NCPD’s finest might leave me alone. They quickly find me. Instead of running all the way back to the road, I simply reload my last save point.
Attempt No. 4
This time I avoid the checkpoint and drive along the southeastern wall. Eventually, I reach a high rocky area that allows me to hop onto the fence. A few times I am able to double jump high in the air, getting a fleeting, tantalizing glimpse at the desert – and the impossible adventure! – that lies beyond. I can’t clear the wall, however, so I start driving back to town. In my frustration, I gun the engine well over 100 mph, bouncing up and down over trees and cacti, even somehow breaking through large rocks a couple times, stone shrapnel flying in all directions. I gun down a group of gang members at an abandoned oil drill along the way. At least their Night City days are over.
Intermission
Having returned downtown with my tail between my legs, I decide to lick my wounds and recoup my confidence by taking on a few side gigs. I exercise no discretion, and in one case I utterly annihilate a strip club in pursuit of a single human target. According to the gig tracker, he is among the carnage, but when it’s over, I walk around the joint to identify which mutilated corpse, among the piles of them, belongs to him, just to confirm for myself that the bastard’s dead. He is. I head north to see if I can get out of Night City that way.
Attempt No. 5
As I drive into the oil fields just past midnight, I’m betting on another firefight. I choose a road that seems to go right off the map. Turns out, it goes nowhere. It’s quiet and desolate, and with my custom marker still about two clicks away, a message suddenly appears on screen: “TURN BACK. NOTHIN OUT THERE FOR YA…” In a fit of static, the world resets and I am further back down the same road. After another attempt, mostly to get the message’s wording right for this column, I try running along the fences of the oil fields, double-jumping some more in hopes of a clearer view – but my heart just isn’t in it anymore.
Epilogue
In the gray haze of the early morning, the lights of Night City looming in the distance, I hop into my Semimaru, tune its radio dial to 88.9 Pacific Dreams, and autodrive home.
Along the way, I briefly consider leveling up my weapons and armor and trying the southern border again, or venturing out into the mostly unexplored Badlands, where an earlier escape attempt led me to plummeting into a canyon . . . but no.
As the sun begins rise, I know I still have heads to crack, contracts to close and, you know, actual main quests to complete. In other words, I’m done trying to flee. Night City needs me.
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Matt Marrone is a senior MLB editor at ESPN.com. He has been Unwinnable’s reigning Rookie of the Year since 2011. You can follow him on Twitter @thebigm.
