Brutalism In Night City - Why Cyberpunk 2077 Feels Different 

Just a few corrections and notes: - The Smithsons didn’t coin the term “New Brutalism” - Hans Asplund did in 1949 - My pronounciation of names is probably horribly wrong (Especially Le Corbusier) Further viewing: Polygon has an excellent video on brutalism in Control: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7n7ylXPueYE.html An actual architect talks about the architecture of Night City: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-IklZS20rJoI.html

The actual city in Cyberpunk is criminally underappreciated. The distinct and organic looks of the different districts adds an amazingly realistic touch. Even the homeless encampments and the corrugated iron shacks by the riverside look based on genuine examples.

This game has insane architectural detail. Whenever I play the game I just end up looking up at these massive buildings with my jaw open. It's truely breathtaking

I'd argue that the painted-over megabuilding and similar which are otherwise Brutalist add yet another layer - If Brutalism in the game symbolizes failure, the painted over sections show how the world *deals* with failure: Add a thin coating over the top to make it appear to be something closer to the ideal, without dealing with the underlying root cause. In fact they continue to build megabuildings on the same plans, and continue to paint over them - the causes are never addressed, and the veneer is accepted as a solution.

Dude when I saw the architecture of cyberpunk 2077, I absolutely fell in love with it.

I knew the designers of the game were inspired by burtalism but really didn't stick around Pacifica to see actual burtalist architecture was in the game. Great video!

Great video. I studied art history and architectural history and this games design blew me away. I took hundreds of screenshots of this game. And the story/plot was outstanding as well.

This makes me want to play Cyberpunk again and I have 400 hours in it.

Oh boy i have no idea how this video is so underrated. Thanks for such an amazing video! Imma subscribe

The conclusion's editing, narrating and music gave me goosebumps.

Wow, amazing video. I've put around 50 hours in Night City wondering how a team could put together a space so dense, detailed and interesting, and you've been able to give me so much perspective on the different styles and how they merge. You just earned a new sub! Hope you keep growing

I know nothing about architecture but I enjoy this video! This is so underrated and deserves more likes and views!

I love the way you dissected, and conveyed this. Brilliant history lesson as well. I've always known about brutalist architecture, but I never really knew what it signified. Of course there was a meaning to all this, and you clarified this exceptionally well.

Cyberpunk is a beautiful game with an amazing soundtrack. The team must have sunk most of their time into the visuals and audio and left the rest as an afterthought. I just wish the AI worked better, enemies were smarter, and there were more random encounters with more ways to take advantage of your unique attributes and abilities.

Thank you for covering this game's architecture ! I think it is still the most impressive city in any video game. The video was very well put together, I wish it was longer haha. I can't wait to watch more videos from you. You deserve WAY MORE subscribers !

This is a really well-researched and reasoned analysis, especially with the political context of Brutalism. The production quality easily made me think this was a much larger channel. I'm definitely keeping my eye here to see more

Well done! These shots were great and you absolutely nailed it!

Such high quality videos and only 93 subs? Get this guy more subs!!!!

Beautiful and insightful video! This was great!!

This is an awesome video! Thanks!

That was a great watch Keep it up

I really appreciate the breakdown of this real world architectural style as seen through the lens of this game. Well done and thank you!

Los Angeles really does have a lot of brutalist architecture, especially in its government buildings such as LACounty hospitals, courts, clinics, even libraries. I can remember these giant concrete structures towering over me and feeling some sense of importance emanating from them as I looked up at them from a child's point of view

So well done. I learned so much. Thank you

How this excellent video only got such a small number of views??

I mean cdpr is based in Poland. Soviet Brutalist architecture is pretty common there.

New cyberpunk moving away from pure brutalism was becuase when the genre was developing the failure and decline of the American capitalist system was seen as almost inevitable. So any portrayal of the future was going to be one involving desperation or squalor. Be it from a challenge from the USSR or a rising Japan. (This is why Japanese corporations play such a big role in it usually). When both economic systems suffered spectacular failures around the same time period, the idea that the steel-and-glass look of a traditional American city started to creep back into it, in addition to the brutalist almost Eastern European concrete apartment blocks. An impoverished west needing to adopt socialist-style housing and nationalization just wasn’t plausible anymore. Cyberpunk 2077 is a great example of the genre as it is today, not as it was in the 1970s. Deus ex is another good example. Massive communal apartment buildings at the time were seen as the way of the future, a new age of equitable city design. Now indeed they are seen as symbols of failure. (In former Warsaw Pact nations living in one of these old buildings with a carpet on the wall is seen as old fashioned, something your grandparents or parents do, and younger people want European or American style modern living spaces)

Great video. You truly are an underrated channel.

Omfg, literally my favorite topic of all time - exploring the architecture (especially brutalism) in games.

Night City is very fun to look at. If anyone is intetested in more examples of Brutalism, look up Quake Brutalism Jam. It's a map pack for OG Quake that centers brutalism and concrete as the central theme.

Fantastic and underrated video

Awesome video!

Amazing ! I watched your video and felt like watching National Geographic or The History channel. It's a very educational and wonderfully suggestive. Your other videos are authentic too.

Great video

a very well-made video

Night City is so hauntingly beautiful that it makes me actually wish I lived in a dystopia. Oh wait...

Tysm, gave up on my minecraft cyberpunk city project, might try again in the next update.

Going to come out and say that all Brutalist architects have never met or seen a human and know nothing about how we work as a species, imagine being stuck renting in a brutalist building since it's the cheapest thing in Marseille that still stands since it's protected due to being "first" at being trash housing.

Commenting late (binging Edgerunner has brought me back to 2077 and my youtube algorithm reflects that). I think what needs to be considered is that CD Projeckt Red are from Poland a former communist state. Brutalist communist architecture is very common there and is probably a great indicator of the failure of communism and a reminder of the dehumanizing conditions that people lived under communist rule. While 2077 shows a hyper (crony) capitalist dystopia the inspiration for getting that dystopic feel is for the devs to take the dystopic atmosphere their parent's faced under communism (and some of the older members may have seen in their childhoods) and turn it capitalist by plastering adverts over it.

I just couldn't get into the bright sunny Night City so modded it to rain a lot more often. Brute weather. lol

Might have been interesting to mention that CP is developed by a polish studio, poland having been part of the soviet block wich is known for its dystopian brutalist architecture

There is a good chanve this choise is also influenced by the fact that the developers are East European and this reflects the architecture they see every day

Permacrete is the name for material in Night City.

However poor the state the game was in at launch its impossible to deny how beautiful the games environment is.

Might be an unpopular take but Night City is what will make Cyberpunk 2077 outlast many other open world games that will be released after it. People will come back to it because out of many failures that Cyberpunk 2077 had, Night City isn't one of them.

Can you do a video on Cyberpunk 2077 teaser trailer from 2013 architecture?

It's metabolist architecture not brutalist. Brutalism comes from the French term béton brut "raw concrete"

Brutalist structures with fancy paint... Neo-brutalism mayhaps?

can you tell please what mode did you use to create these camera moves?

So, it's almost like Night City is a giant monument celebrating the victory of capitalism over socialism. Too bad there isn't some humility mixed in there as well.

cyberpunk feel more like judge dread

u n d e r r a t e d

Cuz it is built different

Oh, I always thought Cyberpunk felt different because DLSS performance mode made it look like seeing the game from inside an aquarium

Настоящий брутализм -- советский брутализм.

Brutalism is Cyberpuk! Brutalism is brutal like Cyberpunk. Brutalism is concrete like cyberpunk. Brutlalism is big cold unhuman things ruling over tiny squishy Humans. Brutalism is the faliure of a promissed futur, like Cyberpunk. Brutalism is the architecture of Cyberpunk.

ok so im not crazy. it actualy was brutalism

TL;DW it's *aggressively* European

My friend, the welfare state never failed it was dismantled.

Not to be too critical but your voice sounds like your talking quietly as if not to disturb someone in the next room. It's super annoying. Also get a pop filter and use less EQ on the low end. Everybody's voice sounds better with more bass EQ until it doesn't. And everybody goes too far with that when they start off. I honestly can barely stand to listen to your voice as it is in this video. But it doesn't have to be this way though, see what you can do to fix these issues.

too bad it's an unplayable piece of sh*t.