Phantom Liberty’s Dogtown Is “A Collage Of References”

Highlights

CD Projekt Red got creative with Dogtown, creating a unique region with influences from Nicaragua and Mexican architecture.
Lead designer Pawel Sasko discusses the vision behind Dogtown, aiming to give it its own identity separate from Night City.

When CD Projekt Red began working on Cyberpunk 2077, it already had a foundation to work with thanks to the table-top RPG in which the game was based on. This meant the core fundamentals of the neon-kissed streets of Night City were already in place thanks to Cyberpunk 2020’s creator, Mike Pondsmith.

Pondsmith has already gone on record in the past to say that the concept of Nighty City was based on “a fusion of San Francisco and ghetto LA,” along with the likes of Singapore, Sao Paulo Brasil, Beijing, and more. That’s not to say that CD Projekt Red didn’t add its own flare to this futuristic city though, as many of the Tokyo influences were added by the studio, according to Pondsmith.

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But when it came to creating Dogtown, a brand-new region included in Cyberpunk 2077’s only expansion, Phantom Liberty, it was all down to CD Projekt Red to get creative.

Cyberpunk 2077 Dev Talks Dogtown Influences

DualShockers recently had the opportunity to sit down with Pawel Sasko, who was the lead quest designer for Cyberpunk 2077 and now associate game director for its upcoming sequel. During our interview with Sasko, we asked him if CD Projekt Red had any particular influences when it came to the design of Phantom Liberty’s Dogtown.

“We did a lot of research,” Sasko told DualShockers. “[We looked] specifically at art references when building Dogtown. We were trying to make sure that we provided something that would be unique, different, special for the player.”

Sasko went on to explain that the goal behind Dogtown was to make the player feel like they were no longer in Night City. While there are still plenty of references and elements to Night City, CD Projekt Red wanted Dogtown to have “its own identity.”

“It’s a collage of references. There were elements of Nicaragua, elements of favelas, and elements of Mexican architecture,” Sasko said. “So those were probably the biggest influences for us, the visual ones. Sometimes you have a very clear reference to a singular location, in this case, it’s a collage.”

The lead quest designer noted that it wasn’t always something specific that inspired the team, as it could have been a single street or building that inspired them. “The whole of Dogtown was built out of references that we hadn’t used before. There’s many things there, we wanted to show the history of Dogtown, how it was built, how it was abandoned, how Kurt Hansen built this sort of like a military government.”

Make sure to check out our full interview with Sasko to see the developer discuss the game’s monumental rise and the studio’s darkest days.