Gaming/Features

The hottest title of the year throws gamers into a gritty, gory and totally original musical universe.
Mötley Crüe premiered a song on Rock Band. Travis Scott played a show in Fortnite. But no video game has ever created a musical world quite as rich as Cyberpunk 2077.

The sci-fi shoot-em-up—which arrives on December 10 via CD Projekt Red, the studio behind The Witcher—drops players into Night City, a towering urban inferno where drug lords, corporate moguls and various road warriors vie for power. Music is part of the city’s lifeblood. Its walls are splattered with graffiti asking, “Where’s Johnny?”—a reference to the long-lost Johnny Silverhand, a heroic rockerboy (played by Keanu Reeves) who once performed a show so rowdy it started a rebellion—the beer was free.

Unsurprisingly, Cyberpunk packs a stacked soundtrack. As gamers design ultra-customizable characters (you can even pick your junk) and hack their way through Night City’s hazardous streets, they can tune into radio stations spinning new tracks created specifically for the game by more than 20 real-life artists, each of whom assumes an in-game avatar that stitches seamlessly into the game’s lore.

Cyberpunk’s five sweetest soundtrack features

1. Rap demigod duo Run the Jewels, appearing as Yankee and the Brave, come in with No Save Point, a dirty thumper for street samurai lurking Night City’s alleys.

2. Even in real life, rave renegade Grimes’ hyperactive music videos are steeped in a video game-inspired aesthetic. She appears as Lizzy Wizzy, a metallic pink-haired pixie, with the track Delicate Weapon.

3. Shapeshifting singers Shygirl and SOPHIE, for whom transhumanism has been a consistent theme, tag-team as Clockwork Venus for a song titled BM, which we assume stands for body mod (though there are funnier options).

4. L.A. noise outfit HEALTH are no strangers to game soundtracks, having scored Rockstar Games titles like Max Payne 3. They plug into the 2077 universe as Window Weather with a speaker-blowing song called Major Crimes.

5. Toronto’s own Tomb Mold, a death metal outfit whose name and music are inspired by the Dark Souls and Bloodborne games, rain down on Night City as Bacillus with the thrasher Adaptive Manipulator.