Cyberpunk 2077 Mod Unlocks In-Development Models of NPCs

Developer CD Projekt Red's Cyberpunk 2077 follows several trends relatable to other video games. It has a ton of unused assets lying around in its code, and it has a prevalent modding community, something customary to most high-profile titles featured on the PC. When put together, these two aspects allow fans to give Cyberpunk 2077 some rather unique mods, such as Hineytroll's recently released Ghosts of Night City.

Ghosts of Night City is a mod that allows players to view the placeholder models resting inside Cyberpunk 2077's code. The mod essentially allows fans to look at some of the "first drafts" for Night City's most important characters, including — but not limited to — Judy, Lizzy Wizzy, Jackie, Rogue, and Panam. Unsurprisingly, some characters look completely different from their final, polished designs. On the other hand, some placeholder designs don't look very different at all.

Hineytroll also created other mods that allow players to actually utilize different character's placeholder models while playing. In other words, players can choose to play through Cyberpunk 2077 with different characters' placeholder designs if they prefer them to the final look — or if they just want to try something new. They can even change the models of some of the NPC crowds to their unfinished appearances, although doing so might be a little jarring, as their textures won't be the same quality as everything else.

Along with providing interesting visuals of the game's unused models, the mod also allows for a nice change of pace to take place in Cyberpunk. While the character models obviously won't be up to snuff with the rest of the game's more polished visuals, the drastic differences some of the placeholders have from their final products might make them worth playing around with. For instance, Adam Smasher's placeholder makes him completely human instead of the mechanical monstrosity his final design makes him.

Players can find the Ghosts of Night City mod over on Nexus Mods, along with several thousand other unrelated Cyberpunk mods. Players have played around so much with the game's code at this point that some even discovered evidence of unreleased quests, possible hints of what might be in store with Cyberpunk's upcoming free DLC. Whether or not such a thing turns out to be the case — time will tell. In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see what other things modders discover in the game's code.

7.5 million mods for Cyberpunk 2077 have been downloaded since the game's December 2020 release, which is not necessarily uncommon for popular games. However, when a game is as notorious as Cyberpunk 2077 was, mods are often used to overhaul it. Fans expected a radically different game to the one they received, so when modders got their hands on the game, it was only a matter of time before the title's total remodeling.

In the process of modding the game, the community massively reshaped the title. Command lines, fashion capabilities, NPC behavior, and Cyberpunk 2077's driving all received mod edits. Some of these mods work in a similar way to DSFix, a Dark Souls mod that made the game playable on PC. While many of the popular mods focus on bug fixes and shaders, a lot of the other most-downloaded mods make gameplay or mechanical changes to the title. For example, mods like "Cyber Fashion" allow players to make their V as stylish as possible by making every piece of clothing in the game wearable. A lot of content mods follow this trend, lightly altering elements already in the game to make it more vibrant.