One of the most challenging aspects of basing a game’s setting on real world Earth is that you need to fight with the baggage of people’s real-world experiences and knowledge about the planet and its various situations. In some settings, it’s not a huge issues, but in ones with significant changes that are set in the near future? Much more of a problem. So let’s dive into the reality of Cyberpunk’s dying Earth.
Background
One of the big things about Cyberpunk that often goes unnoticed, even when it’s presented with full ray tracing in 4k or in glorious 2D animation, is that the world, the Earth, is actively dying. Likewise, the fact that the Mad Max filmography is cited as an inspirational source is also overlooked for its real impact on the world. So what does the world of Cyberpunk look like?
Wild Climatic Effects
Having a normal “storm” the way we see them today, whether it’s a snowstorm, rainstorm, tornado or hurricane, is probably rare or unusual. Having extreme weather events? Sadly the norm for Cyberpunk’s Earth. There’s functionally no environmental oversight or law enforcement on Cyberpunk’s Earth, and we even see as early as 2020 that there are huge dead spaces in the oceans and that while the technology to keep things normal exists, it’s only used for maintaining commercial fishing in exclusive zones.
We know from the World of Cyberpunk 2077 and the Edgerunner’s Mission Kit that by 2062, the Caribbean was functionally uninhabitable. They list sea level rise as the reason. But it’s more than that. The sea didn’t rise hundreds of metres to wipe out Haiti and the rest of Hispaniola. But sea level rise combined with successive super storm level hurricanes every year? That’s why the place the was abandoned. It’s impossible to survive without access to serious resources when super hurricanes are scouring the island. Which is probably why we see MetaKey, MetaCorp’s massive artificial island in the Gulf of Mexico surviving in these conditions. They have the resources that poorer Caribbean nations did not.
Baking in the Sun
So in the world of Cyberpunk, weather is awful. It’s also hot. Routinely and uncomfortably hot. There’s a reason why we see so many unhoused people and little to no improvised shelter, with bedrolls or sleeping spots and wet weather gear being preferred in both the videogame and the anime. It’s warm enough year round in Night City for people to live outside with little to no shelter. Looking at Morro Bay’s (Night City’s real world location) real world climate data, we can see the mean January temperature hovers around 20C, not ideal but also too cold by night to survive for most for long. So we can guess that night time temperatures probably don’t dip much below 22C or so in Night City, meaning the days are scorching, even in the winter, probably in the high 30C. So in the summer? 50C is probably a sad reality they hit regularly.
But what all this translates into is that the further you move from major water ways fed by rainfall and springs, or the ocean, the hotter and drier it’s getting. Draught is a norm. The blasted desert outside Night City dotted with semi-occupied ruins of small town America? Normal. This also means that people are being pushed towards the polar regions or to cities as life becomes increasingly precarious.
Corporate Dependency
The real nightmare about Cyberpunk’s capitalist hellscape is that, like in the movie Elysium (which I’ve cited before as a good inspirational movie for this game), the technology exists to fix all the issues. But fixing problems doesn’t make money. It doesn’t make people rely on your products for every aspect of their lives. So the world becomes harder and harder to survive in without the services and goods that keep it that way.
Biotechnica is a perfect example. They’re more than capable of re-greening the world with genetically modified plants to absorb pollution and stabilize the cascading climate disaster. But they don’t want to. They don’t need to. They have vast automated farms in the wastelands and undersea. They can grow protein to eat that’s close enough to meat to make people happy to have it. And they can “experiment” in the remaining wildernesses with little oversight based on the promise that they “might be able to improve things”. Meanwhile they harvest what few natural resources are left in the areas, crush the few independent farms left, and then smile as they announce a new salmon flavour protein weave.
All Roads Leave the Countryside
This is a blanket statement, but there’s likely no “small town” anywhere left on the planet until you start getting north of the 49th parallel in the northern hemisphere, or south of the Tropic of Capricorn in the South. With rising automation combined with hellish weather extremes because of an effect call continentality, the only “small towns” are most likely corporate company towns, built on carefully negotiated contracts and deals, and occupied by staff and their families (if they’re lucky). Small cities (we’re talking +/100k in population) that don’t have some resource or benefit that can’t be relocated somewhere larger are watching their youth leave for better prospects. And big coastal cities, or well placed hub cities? They’re growing.
Between climate refugees and internal migration, the world is likely looking a lot different to how it does now. There’s no subsistence to be had in the badlands, and precarious life in a city is safer in a lot of ways.
Unfriendly Wilderness
Is there wilderness left on Cyberpunk’s Earth? Yes., and it’s not all badlands and dustbowls either. But it’s also intensely unsafe. The bulk of what’s left is either protected or owned by various corporations or governments in the pockets of corporations. Aside from the resource extraction aspect, these places also provide natural cover for secret or otherwise hidden facilities, black sites, and more. They’re also likely the home turf of a lot of insurgent groups, and criminal organizations also looking for some anonymity.
But that’s not all. There’s also the reality that some corporations, like Biotechnica, use wilderness spaces as vast experimental spaces. Ecosystem collapse is a very real thing, and even corporations recognize that a semi-functional biosphere is required to keep making money. So where natural animals die, you just need to make some new ones. Maybe see how they do in the wild. Maybe see if they’re dangerous to each other or unauthorized individuals in their territory.
But all this is less the rule and more the exception for most edgerunners. Unless they’re operating in some pretty specific areas, leaving the city means badlands, dustbowls, and rustbelts.
Bucking the Trend
I’m not sure if this was intentional, but parts of the Global South do buck the trends. Specifically South America and more or less all of Sub Saharan Africa plus Egypt. That’s not to say that life in these places is good, it’s just not as desolate. Africa was at the rough end in 2020, but by 2045 and later, it’s largely free of influence from the EEC and non-African mega and neo corps and flourishing as a power in space (remember Cyberpunk is an early stellar setting). And South America is benefitting from the trade winds pushing moisture into them. Unless you’re on the West side of the Andes. Then it’s a dry nightmare. Both areas are still going to see catastrophic weather events, and migrations of peoples, but they’re not as turning into badlands on the scale North America and Eurasia are.
Final Thoughts
The world of Cyberpunk is dying. Unregulated everything and a lack of spine from governments over environmental issues has effectively signed the planet’s death warrant. It’s just a question of how long everything can hold on for as “normal conditions” gets pushed further and further away from anything survivable. We already see the cracks in 2076 and 2077, so the question is what happens next. Does the setting’s nihilism and cynicism win out? Or do we start seeing some meaningful change and revolution? I’m not sure, but I can say that the setting is overdue for a real uprising…
