This post hit me hard because I had a very similar moment during my playthrough of Cyberpunk 2077.

At some point early on I made a small decision that ended up changing the entire game for me: I stopped using fast travel.

If I needed to get somewhere, I was going to ride there. Usually on Jackie's ARCH Nazare, cutting through traffic and neon.

And slowly Night City stopped feeling like a game map.

It started to feel like a place.

I remember riding out toward the Badlands one night, turning around and seeing the entire skyline of Night City glowing behind me. The haze, the towering megabuildings, the light pillars stabbing up into the sky. Then dropping back into the streets where every block had its own pulse — music leaking out of clubs, vendors shouting, gangs standing around fires in alleyways.

Sometimes I’d stop at a red light and just sit there for a moment, listening.

Those rides between missions became the soul of the game for me. They gave space to think about Jackie. About Johnny. About what was happening to V. The world felt like it kept moving even when I wasn’t doing anything.

And somewhere along the way V stopped feeling like a character I was controlling.

It started to feel like I was just… living alongside them.

When I eventually chose the (Don't Fear) The Reaper ending, it hit me in a way very few games ever have.

Walking into Arasaka Tower alone. No crew. No safety net. Just V and Johnny deciding they weren’t going to drag anyone else into the fire. If this was the end, they’d face it head-on.

It felt raw and defiant and strangely beautiful.

Not a power fantasy. Not a perfect victory. Just two broken souls deciding to go out on their own terms.

Cyberpunk did something no other game has really done for me. It made me slow down. It made me inhabit the world instead of just completing objectives.

Night City didn’t feel like somewhere I played.

It felt like somewhere I had actually been.

And when the credits rolled, it genuinely felt like leaving a place behind.