In Cyberpunk 2077, Night City is CD Projekt Red’s harrowing vision of a dystopian city ruled by corporate overlords. Gangs, thugs, and corrupt police walk its dingy streets, while the rich travel to and from luxury sky-high apartments in flying cars. As a place to live, it’s frightening, but as a sandbox for video game players to explore, it’s a bizarre but breathtaking spectacle.
In fact, it’s arguably the star of the show (when it’s working properly, that is), impressing us with its multi-layered design and honeycomb of streets and overhead walkways.
But just how big is this dense urban area compared with other open-world games? And how much more playable area does the surrounding badlands offer for players to race across in search of goons and side gigs to earn eddies?
Well, as has become standard practice at Twinfinite whenever a big open-world game launches, I’ve spent a bit of time measuring the map as best I can to offer a size estimation.
As you can see in the above image, I’ve roughly broken down the playable area into two separate rectangles, which was made easy thanks to the in-game waypoint system that tracks distance.
In terms of why I broke the map into rectangles, that’s because, while the map technically sprawls further either side of those shapes, you can’t actually traverse everywhere.
Cyberpunk 2077 blocks off large sections of the map either by doing the old “Turn around! You can’t go here yet” trick or obstructing your path with a roadblock.
Yes, there’s some playable area outside the rectangles, such as the large area of greenhouses you see at the bottom-left; remember, this is an estimation, not a firm reading.
Also, as you can see, I’ve actually included a little bit of unplayable area within the rectangles, which probably more or less makes up the difference.
So, a little bit of math and we’ve got two figures to add together:
The large rectangle makes 30 kilometers2 , while the smaller is 13.5 kilometers2.
Added together and converted to miles squared to conform to our usual standard means Cyberpunk 2077’s map is around 16.79 mi².
Now, how does that compare with other open-world games, then, including CD Projekt Red’s The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt? Here’s a quick comparison:
- Grand Theft Auto V – 31 mile²
- The Witcher 3 (Including Toussaint) – 20.8 mile²
- Cyberpunk 2077 – 16.79 mi²
- Ghost of Tsushima – 11.02 mile²
- Kingdom Come: Deliverance 6.1 mile²
- Marvel’s Spider-Man – 4.62 mile²
As you can see, not as large as The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt’s total area, though actually bigger than its largest single map (the figure includes all areas and DLC). It’s also only half the size of Rockstar’s GTA V Los Santos map.
Still, I’m actually surprised Night City and the badlands are as big as they are, honestly. I didn’t expect it to be larger than, say, Ghost of Tsushima, as it doesn’t really feel or look anywhere near as big when you’re playing.
Although that said, it’s easy to forget how much smaller maps feel when you’re able to move across them in a car or motorbike at high speed. I’m certain Tsushima island would have felt tiny if we had a Quadra Turbo R or Porsche 911 to race across its lush fields and dense woodlands!
For a full comparison, do check out Twinfinite’s top 25 largest open-world maps article. We’ll be updating it soon with Cyberpunk 2077.
