Revisiting Cyberpunk 2077

There is already a lot of quotidian footage available of the video game Cyberpunk 2077, and more is being uploaded of late, thanks to the recent version 2.3 upgrade of the game, which appears to be tied to the official macOS version finally being released. I don’t know, yet, if there are any particularly interesting new sonic aspects to these updates (aside from “built-in Spatial Audio with head-tracking for AirPods,” per 9to5mac.com). Still, it’s a good time to ride along at night, and enjoy city noises and those of engines idling:

And you can take an extended walk (over an hour and a half) through various neighborhoods, and listen to all manner of industrial and NPC activity. The sheer depth of immersive environmental sound in Cyberpunk 2077 remains highly impressive. In a given moment, you can hear footsteps, and HVAC drones, and various vehicles, and conversations, and gunfire, and on and all, all shaped by the space you’re in and specific to the given neighborhood and the state of the gameplay.

A lot of videos purporting to share in-game ambience are actually marred by inclusion of the music, but if you hunt around, you’ll find pure diegetic recordings such as these.