Cyberpunk 2 is years away. That’s just the truth. But the universe didn’t go to sleep waiting on it — ‘Night City 2045’ just dropped, and it’s a full meal of lore for anybody who can’t let Night City go.
A 312-page map of the city
‘Night City 2045’ released June 17 in physical and digital, and it’s dense: 312 pages covering the city’s history, geography, government, and the everyday machinery of how the place runs — over 600 specific locations with new maps. It’s the kind of deep-canon material that turns a setting you’ve played into a place you actually understand. For the lore heads, this is the good stuff.
Keep the medium straight
One thing to be clear on: this is the tabletop side of Cyberpunk — the pen-and-paper RPG that the whole franchise grew out of in the first place, long before the video game. So it’s not a new game to boot up; it’s a sourcebook to read and build with. That origin is part of why it carries real weight. The video game adapted this world. The book is the world.
While Orion stays on the horizon
The reason this lands now is the gap. Cyberpunk 2, codenamed Project Orion, is still a long road — realistically a 2028-or-later project, with the team scaling up across studios. Rather than leave the fanbase on dry land for years, the universe keeps getting fed through other doors: the anime crossovers, the soundtracks, and now a setting book this detailed. Smart way to keep a world alive between games.
The standing Cyberpunk beat
Cyberpunk gets a beat on this show every episode — that’s the rule, by medium. This week it’s not the sequel and it’s not a patch; it’s the lore itself expanding. Night City didn’t stop living while we wait on Orion. Here’s the map.
Sources
- CBR — “Cyberpunk 2077 Official Prequel Coming June 2026”: https://www.cbr.com/cyberpunk-2077-official-new-release-june-2026/
- Cyberpunk.net — official news: https://www.cyberpunk.net/en/news/