Neon Giant returns to cyberpunk with No Law, a cyber-noir FPS RPG set in Port Desire. We break down its open world, Grey Harker’s moustachioed military lead, tactile first-person combat, and how it sets itself apart from Cyberpunk 2077 and other shooters.
Neon Giant’s follow-up to The Ascent is not trying to be Cyberpunk 2077. On paper, No Law sounds like another dystopian future shooter RPG, but a closer look reveals something stranger, scruffier and far more focused: a first-person, cyber-noir brawler in a world that the studio happily calls “shopping cart cyberpunk.”
Set in the crumbling sprawl of Port Desire, No Law is an FPS RPG built around dense streets, tactile tech and a protagonist who looks like he has walked straight out of a VHS rental shelf from the late 80s. It is cyberpunk, but filtered through worn concrete, stray vegetation, battered hardware and men with unapologetically huge moustaches.
Port Desire: Shopping Cart Cyberpunk
Port Desire is the star of No Law. Where The Ascent leaned hard into towering arcologies and pure sci-fi abstraction, Neon Giant’s new city is rooted in the messy, everyday grime of a place that could almost exist. The studio’s developers talk about things like rocks, wood, foliage and even shopping carts as design pillars. Those small, mundane assets are shorthand for a world that is more grounded than their debut, even while the neon still bleeds through every alley.
The city is pitched as an open world, but not in the now-standard sense of a gigantic map padded with checklist content. Instead, Neon Giant wants a dense chunk of urban sprawl that feels walkable, layered and hand-authored. Port Desire looks closer to a single, hyper-detailed megadistrict than an entire country’s worth of terrain, with verticality, alley networks and compact hubs doing the work that wide-open plains do in other games.
The “cybergrunge” label the team uses fits. Buildings are broken and patched rather than pristine, signage competes with creeping plant life, and the sense is of a place where the future has been jury-rigged on top of whatever was already there. It recalls the dirty sci-fi of films like Robocop and The Running Man more than the sleek futurism of modern cyberpunk. Tech is bolted on, not seamlessly integrated. That tactile design choice radiates through everything from street props to the UI.
Grey Harker: The Moustache That Leads The Game
Into this city walks Grey Harker, an ex-military veteran who very visibly carries both age and experience. He is broad-shouldered, scarred and unmistakably older than the typical videogame hero. His look is a manifesto: this is not another faceless mercenary or customized avatar. Neon Giant wants a defined lead with presence, personality and silhouette.
The moustache is part of that. It is thick, old-school and intentionally evocative of 70s and 80s action stars. Early on, the team experimented with making Harker a little softer around the edges, including a noticeable belly that would have doubled down on the theme of a soldier slightly past his prime. That detail reportedly did not survive early feedback, but the studio kept the rest of the aesthetic. The result is a protagonist who still reads as classic “manly man” action fodder, only filtered through a slightly more self-aware lens.
Harker’s background as an injured ex-soldier feeds into the game’s noir tinge. He is not chasing a prophecy or a chosen one narrative; he just wants a quiet life in a city that refuses to give him one. The premise sets up a more grounded, personal motivation than high-concept cyberpunk conspiracies, even as players inevitably become entangled in the violence and power struggles that define Port Desire.
First-Person Combat With Weight And Attitude
The biggest shift from The Ascent is the perspective. Neon Giant has moved from an isometric twin-stick shooter to a fully first-person, boots-on-the-ground FPS. For the team, which includes veterans of Wolfenstein-era MachineGames, this is a return to familiar territory. No Law is not a looter-shooter or an MMO hybrid; it is a focused single-player shooter RPG where weapons, movement and impact matter.
Combat is built to feel physical. Weapons are deliberately chunky, from rifles to sidearms, with a clear emphasis on recoil, report and animation over sleek minimalism. This isn’t the frictionless sci-fi arsenal of many futuristic shooters. Guns have mass, gadgets clack and whirr, and even the in-world communication tech leans on flip phones and hard edges rather than holo-projections.
One of the stand-out moves already shown is the kick. Harker can drive a boot into enemies, sending them staggering or tumbling over railings and off rooftops. It is a simple tool, but it tells you a lot about the tone the studio is chasing. Fights in Port Desire are not just about lining up headshots; they are about abusing the environment, knocking goons through neon-lit windows, and turning cramped walkways into death traps.
Neon Giant has also been explicit about choice in approach. Missions can be tackled with stealth or all-out aggression, with different outcomes depending on how you play. Rather than borrowing from immersive sim complexity, No Law seems more interested in giving players a clear spectrum between sneaking and smashing, then letting them live with the consequences inside a defined storyline. It is an RPG in the sense of character growth, narrative branching and systemic choice, not loot rarity spreadsheets.
Port Desire As A Play Space
From what has been shown and discussed so far, Port Desire is designed to be less of a static backdrop and more of a layered combat puzzle box. Streets, rooftops and interiors are interconnected, which lets that signature kick and close-quarters violence shine. Enemies can be ambushed from side alleys, funneled into chokepoints or simply baited toward ledges that do the killing for you.
The city’s grounded props support that play. Ordinary objects are not just visual noise; they sell the feel of a lived-in place where a shopping cart or a stack of crates makes sense next to neon signage and cyberware kiosks. That mundane layer helps the more extravagant effects read louder, from particle-heavy weapon impacts to glowing augmentations. You feel the divide between the people who can afford high-end implants and those stuck pushing that cart.
RPG systems have not yet been fully broken down in public, but framing No Law as an FPS RPG suggests there will be tangible character progression, gear choices and narrative decision-making threaded through this urban play space. Where The Ascent used its city as a multi-level arena to funnel twin-stick firefights, Port Desire looks built for sightlines, flanking routes and vertical play that make sense from a first-person perspective.
Cyber-Noir, Not Cyberpunk 2077
Whenever a studio announces a neon-lit future dystopia RPG in first person, comparisons to Cyberpunk 2077 are inevitable. Neon Giant seems very aware of this and is pushing No Law in directions that set it apart from CD Projekt’s blockbuster and from other sci-fi shooters.
Scale is the most obvious difference. Cyberpunk 2077 sells a vast, systemic metropolis full of cars, crowds and open-ended side economies. No Law narrows its focus to a smaller, denser slice of city, and then spends its budget on hand-crafted detail, responsive combat spaces and cinematic framing instead of simulating an entire urban ecosystem.
Tone is another dividing line. Where Cyberpunk 2077 leans on sprawling conspiracies, tech-body politics and heavy philosophical themes, No Law is closer to a late-night cable movie marathon of dystopian action flicks. The influences that Neon Giant cites, like Judge Dredd and The Running Man, are pulpy, violent and often darkly funny. That spirit shows up in Harker’s exaggerated design, the glee of booting enemies off balconies and the “comfort food” storytelling the studio talks about.
Even within the broader shooter space, No Law positions itself differently. It is not a live-service arena shooter vying for seasonal updates, nor a hyper-tactical mil-sim. The focus is a single-player, narrative-led campaign that mixes tight shooting with light RPG choice, set in a world that is maximalist in art direction but contained in scope. The grounded props and chunky tech also visually distinguish it from smoother, more sanitized sci-fi like Destiny or Halo.
Finally, there is the studio’s size. With roughly a few dozen developers building Port Desire, No Law has to be smart about where it competes and where it sidesteps. Instead of attempting to outdo Night City in breadth, Neon Giant is betting on texture: the grain of concrete, the weight of a kick, the silhouette of a moustache cutting through neon haze.
A Focused Future For Neon Giant
As a follow-up to The Ascent, No Law reads like a confident refinement instead of a complete reinvention. The team is staying in a genre and aesthetic they already understand, but changing the camera, tightening the scope and leaning into a stronger authored protagonist. Port Desire looks to be their most detailed setting yet, a cyber-noir playground where every alley is a potential brawl stage.
If Neon Giant can make the first-person combat feel as satisfying as it looks, and if Grey Harker’s journey through this lawless city hits the right balance of grit and tongue-in-cheek attitude, No Law could carve out a distinctive slice of cyberpunk gaming that stands well clear of its biggest-name competitors. It is less about living in the future and more about surviving the night in one very dangerous, very memorable city.