Cyberpunk 2077's sequel includes a new city that "feels more like Chicago gone wrong", and I'm now wondering how the USA's collapse might have affected Michael Jordan's legacy

Cyberpunk 2077’s sequel will allow us to take a detour from the returning Night time Metropolis to go to a brand new location which feels a bit “like Chicago gone fallacious”. Naturally, this information has me questioning how Cyberpunk’s timeline may need affected essentially the most outstanding basketball dynasty of the Nineteen Nineties.

The tiny nugget of information we received about this second metropolis comes from Mike Pondsmith, creator of the Cyberpunk TTRPG collection that CD Projekt’s futuristic RPGs are primarily based on. It is the primary little bit of concrete data in regards to the recreation – past simply the place it is at within the manufacturing course of – we have gotten for some time.

Chatting with Tvgry throughout this yr’s Digital Dragons Convention, Pondsmith touched on his present relationship with CD Projekt’s Cyberpunk devs. He is “not as concerned immediately with the sequel as he was with the primary Cyberpunk, however he does nonetheless pop by the studio to have a look at scripts and provide his views on stuff like new cyberware made for Challenge Orion.

For example, he revealed that when he was there just lately, he “spent plenty of time speaking to one of many surroundings guys, and he was explaining how the brand new place in Orion – as a result of there’s one other metropolis we go to, I am not telling you any greater than that, however there’s one other metropolis we go to.”

“Night time Metropolis’s nonetheless there,” Pondsmith continued, telling us extra, “I bear in mind taking a look at it and going ‘yeah, I perceive the texture that you are going for on this, and this actually does work – it would not really feel like Blade Runner, it feels extra like Chicago gone fallacious’. I mentioned ‘yeah, you recognize, I can see this working.'”

This chatter begins at across the three hour and 45 minute mark of the video embedded above, if you wish to test it out for your self. I do not know should you’ll do the identical, however the point out of a Cyberpunk metropolis that may be a bit like Chicago received me questioning what the present Cyberpunk lore says in regards to the precise Windy Metropolis.

Based on the collection’ Fandom Wiki (which does observe that it wants extra citations), Chi-town was “left in a state of absolute devastation” by the collapse of the USA that happens between 1996 and 2008 within the Cyberpunk timeline, and was subsequently ravaged by a “catastrophic bio-plague” created by the federal authorities itself. By 2077, the town’s “implied to have undergone some stage of reconstruction” by rumours of it being related to Night time Metropolis through the transcontinental maglev rail community that Cyberpunk 2077’s database describes as “at the moment inoperational”, however topic to revitalisation efforts by Night time Corp.

Cool. However here is the factor. If Chicago began to disintegrate in 1996 – the yr that martial regulation was declared throughout the USA in Cyberpunk lore – do Michael Jordan’s Chicago Bulls win the 1996, 1997, and 1998 NBA championships to cement themselves as arguably the best basketball dynasty of all-time? That is assuming Jordan and the Bulls even exist within the Cyberpunk universe, however I feel it is value exploring anyway.

The state of affairs is that this so far as I can inform – the aforementioned martial regulation runs from 1996 to 1999, so Jordan and co have that to cope with, along with a 1998 midwest drought and the collapse doing a lot harm that “an estimated 90%” of Chicago is deserted by the tip of it in 2008. It is MJ although. I am nonetheless banking on him to beat the Jazz within the finals, even when he is received to dribble previous bio-plagues and hostile cybernetically-augmented troopers to do it.

Do you assume his airness nonetheless finally ends up with six rings on his bizarre cyber-fingers? Additionally, how do you are feeling about visiting this second metropolis in Cyberpunk 2? Tell us beneath!