Neon Giant, the small studio behind the cult twin-stick shooter, has unveiled No Law, a first-person open-world shooter RPG that is drawing immediate comparisons to the immersive-sim ambitions many felt Cyberpunk 2077 failed to deliver. Announced during Gamescom’s Opening Night Live, the title drops players into Port Desire, a densely crafted city where they control Grey Harker, a military veteran pulled back into conflict after seeking a quiet new life. With its emphasis on multiple approaches to every encounter, handbuilt environments, and a design philosophy that leans squarely into the immersive-sim tradition, No Law is positioning itself as the kind of game that fans have long wished Cyberpunk 2077 could have been.
The comparisons are hard to ignore. Cyberpunk 2077, despite its post-launch redemption and status as one of the most improved games of recent memory, never fully realized the immersive-sim potential hinted at in its early trailers. Its systems offered genuine variety—stealth, hacking, and creative combat—but progression remained tightly bound to character level, and the main storyline frequently collapsed into a linear, scripted experience. No Law appears to be learning from those missteps, trading sheer scale for depth and player agency in ways that have generated genuine excitement.
A Deliberately Dense World
What sets No Law apart from the outset is Neon Giant’s approach to its setting. While Port Desire is fully explorable, the studio has repeatedly emphasized density over breadth in its marketing and interviews. This is not merely a tactic to avoid unfavorable comparisons to Night City; it is a deliberate design decision rooted in the immersive-sim tradition. According to Neon Giant, every apartment in the game has been handcrafted rather than procedurally generated, ensuring that the spaces players explore are layered with detail and possibility.
This philosophy extends to the game’s navigation. No Law will ship with a dedicated mode that disables all UI-based navigational hints, forcing players to rely on in-world signage and building numbers to find their way. The mode is aptly named “Immersive,” a clear signal of the studio’s intentions. Learning a 3D space intimately, discovering shortcuts and secrets over hours of play, is one of the core joys of the genre, and it is something nearly impossible to achieve in a city as sprawling as Night City.
“You have experience points and skill trees, and you opt into how you want to play the game. Do you want to be more into lockpicking, or do you want to be a hacker, or do you want to be a specialist with certain types of weapons? We never tell you which route to take. We say that the player can never play the game wrong.”
Neon Giant
Approach Defines the Story
Beyond its world design, No Law is drawing attention for how it ties player approach to narrative outcome. Neon Giant explained last December that the story will be shaped by how players complete missions—whether through stealth and subterfuge or by going in guns blazing—rather than through traditional branching dialogue trees. This is a concept both Deus Ex and Dishonored explored, though No Law appears to push it even further. The studio also confirmed that characters killed in the world will stay dead, and if a deceased character offered a service, that access will be permanently lost, adding lasting weight to player decisions.
The gameplay footage shown at Gamescom reinforced these ideas. While blasting through enemies remains a viable option, players were also seen sneaking through ventilation shafts, executing stealth kills, and deploying an array of sci-fi abilities. One power causes enemies’ heads to explode, while another makes their bodies burst like balloons. Harker’s powerful kick, which sends doors flying off hinges and enemies plummeting from ledges, evokes fond memories of physics-driven combat in titles like Dishonored.
Can a Small Studio Pull It Off?
Despite the enthusiasm, No Law carries inherent risks. Neon Giant is a studio of just 24 people—a fraction of the team behind Cyberpunk 2077 and even smaller than the original Deus Ex development team. Building a densely handcrafted open world with systemic depth and meaningful player agency is an enormous undertaking for such a small group. Fans want a game that leans toward the Deus Ex ideal, but they also want to avoid a repeat of Cyberpunk’s troubled launch.
No Law does retain XP and skill trees, meaning stats and builds will still shape what players can accomplish. This introduces a tension between the immersive-sim freedom the game promises and the progression systems that, in Cyberpunk, sometimes constrained that freedom. Whether Neon Giant can balance these elements with its lean team remains to be seen.
If the studio can deliver on its ambitions, No Law could emerge as one of the surprise hits of 2027. It represents the kind of open-world experience that many believed Cyberpunk 2077 was always meant to be—an immersive, systemic, player-driven world where every path is genuinely your own. Whether it becomes that game or something entirely new remains the question hanging over Neon Giant as it heads toward its 2027 release.
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