Night City in 2026: The Mods, the TCG, and Why This Game Won't Die

I wasn't planning to write about Cyberpunk 2077 this week. I've been deep in Arc Raiders for months now -- it pulled me away from Night City back in late October when it launched, and I haven't looked back. But I keep seeing things in my feed. Mod drops. Announcements. Fan projects that have no business being this good for a game that got its last official update in mid-2025.

So here I am, writing about a game I'm not even currently playing, because Cyberpunk 2077 refuses to let anyone forget about it. And honestly? I respect that.

For context: I quit gaming when I was 14. Came back at 45. Cyberpunk 2077 was one of the first games that made me feel like I'd missed something important during those three decades away. Night City felt alive in a way I didn't know games could feel. I played through the main story, did Phantom Liberty, got lost in side gigs for weeks. Then Arc Raiders happened and I told myself I'd come back eventually.

I still plan to. Especially after seeing what's been happening with this game lately.

Night City Allies -- The Companion Mod Everyone Wanted

The single most requested missing feature from Cyberpunk 2077 was always companions. You meet all these incredible characters -- Judy, Panam, River, Kerry -- and then they just... exist in the world without you. You can't call them up and say "hey, let's go clear a gig together."

A modder called DrayStation fixed that.

Night City Allies is an immersive companion system that lets you pull up your phone, scroll through the Mercenary Hotline, and call any available character to join you. They'll fight alongside you, follow you around Night City, ride in your car, and hang out. You hold T to open your phone, pick a companion, and they show up. Press F while looking at them for an interaction menu with basic commands.

Version 1.0.9 dropped on March 1, and the mod has been going viral across the Cyberpunk community. It doesn't require the Appearance Menu Mod but supports it if you have it installed. There's context awareness built in -- companions detect when combat starts, they'll unequip weapons when you walk into the Afterlife or V's apartment, and they can fast travel with you.

But the real magic is in the add-ons. The community has built character packs that let you recruit NCPD officers and gang members, custom androids, and -- yes -- Adam Smasher. You can have Adam Smasher following you around Night City like a very large, very angry puppy. There are also add-ons for Kurt Hansen, Placide, Ozob, and a growing list of custom characters.

This is what the modding community does best. They identify what the game is missing and they build it. CDPR gave us Night City. The modders gave us people to share it with.

The 170fps "Remaster" That Looks Like a Sequel

Digital Dreams put together a mod pack that combines over 300 mods to push Cyberpunk 2077 to 4K at 170fps with Ultra Path Tracing. They're calling it a remaster, and after watching the footage, that's not an exaggeration.

The reflections are insane. The lighting is insane. Rain on pavement, neon signs bouncing off wet chrome, the way sunlight cuts through the gaps between megabuildings -- it looks like what you'd expect from a next-generation Cyberpunk game, not a modded version of a 2020 release.

Now, the hardware requirements are brutal. You're looking at an RTX 5090 and 64GB of RAM to hit those numbers. That's not a setup most people are running. But the mod list is publicly available and free to download, so you can mix and match what your rig can handle. Even a partial install with the visual mods and a less demanding preset will transform the game.

The point isn't that everyone can run it. The point is that modders are pushing this game further than anyone expected, and the results look like something that should cost $70.

The Cyberpunk Trading Card Game

This one caught me off guard. WeirdCo, in collaboration with CD Projekt Red, announced an official Cyberpunk Trading Card Game. The Kickstarter launches March 17, 2026 at 9 AM PT.

It's a physical TCG featuring characters from both Cyberpunk 2077 and the Edgerunners anime. The gameplay loop is built around assembling edgerunning crews, taking on gigs, and earning reputation -- which tracks perfectly with the source material. Card categories include Unit cards with faction and character types, Chrome cards featuring iconic cyberware and gear, and Character cards starring V, Judy, Panam, Jackie, Adam Smasher, Lucy, and more. Twenty artists contributed custom artwork for the cards.

WeirdCo is a new company, but their team has experience on Marvel Snap, Duel Masters, and Universus, so they know the TCG space. If you sign up for the pre-launch page and back the project with the same email when the campaign goes live, you get a free Foil Nova Rare Lucy Card. That's a smart move -- Lucy is one of the most beloved characters in the franchise thanks to Edgerunners, and giving early backers an exclusive card of her is going to drive sign-ups.

I've never been a card game guy, but I might back this one just because the art looks phenomenal and the Cyberpunk universe translates naturally to a crew-building card game.

Edgerunners x Wuthering Waves Crossover

Kuro Games confirmed that a Cyberpunk: Edgerunners crossover is coming to Wuthering Waves in 2026. David, Lucy, and Rebecca are all expected as playable characters, with leaks pointing to a new Neo-Federation region tied to the collaboration.

If you're not familiar with Wuthering Waves, it's a gacha action RPG that's been growing steadily since launch. Kuro Games has a track record of quality crossover events from their work on Punishing Gray Raven, including a well-received Devil May Cry collaboration. The Edgerunners announcement dropped during the Version 2.3 Anniversary Livestream and featured "I Really Want to Stay At Your House" in the teaser, which is exactly the kind of detail that tells me the developers actually care about the source material.

This is Cyberpunk expanding beyond its own platform in a meaningful way. The Edgerunners anime already brought millions of new players to the game. Putting those characters into a live-service gacha RPG introduces them to yet another audience.

Project Orion: The Sequel Is Real (But Distant)

For those tracking the long game, Project Orion -- the Cyberpunk 2077 sequel -- entered pre-production in May 2025. It's being built on Unreal Engine 5 by CDPR's North American studios in Boston and Vancouver, with Gabriel Amatangelo leading the project and Pawel Sasko serving as Associate Game Director. The team started at around 100 developers and is growing toward 200+.

Early reports describe the setting as "Chicago gone wrong" -- a new city alongside the return of Night City, grittier and under Militech influence. Job listings have confirmed that the game is being built with both single-player and multiplayer systems in mind, which is a significant shift from the purely solo experience of 2077.

CDPR has said their average timeline from pre-production to release is four to five years, which puts Project Orion somewhere around 2029-2030 at the earliest. That's a long wait. But after seeing what happened when they rushed 2077 out the door in 2020, I'm fine with them taking their time.

The Bigger Picture

Here's what gets me about Cyberpunk 2077 in 2026: this game launched in December 2020 as one of the most high-profile disasters in gaming history. Broken on last-gen consoles. Pulled from the PlayStation Store. Memed into oblivion. Studios have killed games for less.

Five years later, it has over 20,000 mods on Nexus Mods, with new ones uploading daily. It still pulls 20,000+ daily players on Steam. It's spawned a beloved anime, a board game that raised $10 million on Gamefound, a comic series, an upcoming TCG, and a crossover with one of the biggest gacha games in the world. A sequel is in active development with multiplayer support. It sold 35 million copies.

The game didn't just survive. It thrived. And it did it the hard way -- by getting better, patch after patch, update after update, until the reputation caught up with the quality.

I'm still in Arc Raiders right now, and I'm not leaving anytime soon. But Night City is always there in the back of my mind. The neon. The stories. Jackie's toast at the Afterlife. Every time I see a new mod drop or a new announcement, it pulls me a little closer to reinstalling.

One of these days I'm going to fire it up again, load my save, and just drive around for a while. No gigs, no missions. Just Night City at night, with the radio on.

Some games die. This one built a city that refuses to.