Inside Neon Giant’s ambitious pivot from The Ascent’s isometric RPG to No Law’s first‑person, open‑world cyber‑noir, and how the team is carving out its own space next to Cyberpunk 2077 through mission design and brutal, expressive combat.
Neon Giant came to The Game Awards 2025 with something that looked familiar at a glance and very different in motion. No Law is another densely layered sci‑fi city from the makers of The Ascent, full of rain, neon, and people trying to survive under crushing corporate power. The big change is perspective and ambition: this time it is a first person, open world "cyber‑noir" RPG shooter set in the lawless sprawl of Port Desire.
The studio knows exactly what that evokes. During the reveal and follow‑up interviews, the team is almost disarmingly blunt about the obvious comparisons to Cyberpunk 2077. Night City set a new bar for big budget cyberpunk worlds, and No Law’s early footage shares a similar palette of reflective streets and chrome. Neon Giant is not running from that. Instead, it is trying to define how Port Desire and Grey Harker’s story feel different in structure, tone, and moment to moment play.
From isometric dioramas to a lived‑in street level
The Ascent’s isometric camera let Neon Giant build towering diorama‑like vistas and choreograph combat encounters from above. It also put hard limits on intimacy. You never quite felt like you inhabited its districts so much as steered a figurine through them.
No Law is built to correct that. The move to first person is not just a genre shift, it is a statement of intent. Port Desire is a city of eye contact, overheard arguments, and the sensation that every alley could be a shortcut or a trap. Neon Giant talks about wanting players to feel as if they could reach out and touch the grime on a handrail or the condensation on a noodle stand window. That kind of sensory detail simply gets lost when the camera is hovering above the action.
Structurally the team is also pulling away from the more corridor‑like progression of The Ascent. Port Desire is pitched as a fully open city with distinct districts, vertical stacking, and a looser mission structure that lets you slip between jobs, exploration, and side hustles. The studio calls it cyber‑noir for a reason, stressing that your time is often spent in the quiet moments between the shootouts, casing a location or tailing someone through crowded streets instead of only sprinting to the next glowing marker.
Owning the Cyberpunk 2077 comparison
Neon Giant does not shy away from the shadow of CD Projekt’s juggernaut. The developers openly acknowledge that any first person cyberpunk RPG with guns and dialogue will be measured against Cyberpunk 2077. Rather than arguing that No Law is completely different, they focus on scale, focus, and texture.
The most obvious divergence is size. Cyberpunk 2077 is built as a sprawling AAA behemoth, dense with bespoke main quests, multi‑stage side gigs, and huge cinematic sequences. No Law comes from a much smaller team, and the developers lean into that constraint. They talk about Port Desire as a compact but tightly authored space where almost every interior and backstreet has been fussed over so that it matters to play.
Tone is another dividing line. Where Cyberpunk pushes toward operatic rebellion, transhuman tragedy, and slick corporate spectacle, No Law frames itself more like a crime noir story that just happens to be dressed in neon and implants. Grey Harker is not a customizable merc with branching lifepaths, but a specific ex‑military character carrying physical scars and a past that people in Port Desire remember. The narrative emphasis, according to the interviews, is on personal consequences and messy relationships inside this lawless microcosm rather than a grand arch about the fate of an entire mega‑city.
The team also stresses that the fiction of Port Desire is not just a reskin of Night City. This is a place without ownership in a literal sense, a city where nobody officially owns anything and everyone is scrambling to stake a claim. That premise runs through everything from how gangs control territory to how shops work. You are not just fighting corporations but navigating a kind of permanent land rush where violence and temporary deals keep the streets in a fragile balance.
Mission design built for improvisation and failure
Where the interviews about No Law get particularly interesting is in how they describe mission design. Neon Giant repeatedly brings up player agency and creativity in problem solving. Rather than long, linear quests that march you through scripted beats, missions are framed as compact sandboxes in and around specific city blocks.
Developers describe scenarios where you can case a target building first, learn guard patterns and entry points, then decide how to proceed. Maybe you bribe someone to get a code, climb a fire escape to slip through a window, or start a fight in a nearby bar to pull security away from your objective. The idea is to give enough overlapping systems that players can come up with solutions the designers did not strictly script.
Failure is also meant to be interesting. Instead of a stealth run instantly collapsing into a bland shootout or a hard fail screen, the team wants missions to bend under the weight of your mistakes. Get spotted and reinforcement routes open up, new cover positions become relevant, or a previously neutral faction gets pulled into the chaos. That feeds back into the noir feel, where a job never quite goes to plan and you are always scrambling to salvage what you can.
Another subtle detail is the way side content interacts with main missions. Rather than piling on massive quest chains, Neon Giant hints at smaller, character driven jobs that change how you see certain districts or inform later choices. Doing a favor for a gang boss early could unlock a less violent approach later, or ignoring a plea for help might mean facing those same people as enemies when a larger conflict erupts in their neighborhood.
Cyber‑noir combat in first person
The pivot to first person also changes how Neon Giant approaches combat. The Ascent was built on circle strafing and area coverage, with abilities and explosions filling the screen from a distance. No Law brings the camera right into the violence and the developers talk about wanting it to feel weighty, personal, and tactically expressive.
Guns are still the core, but instead of pure twitch shooting, combat seems tuned around positioning, gadget use, and reading the room. In interviews the team touches on letting players lean into different playstyles, from methodical marksmen picking shots from the shadows to scrap‑hungry bruisers that rush in with shotguns and close range tools. Weapons and augmentations are meant to support those identities, such as implants that let you temporarily boost perception, hack environmental elements more quickly, or tank more damage in a straight brawl.
Environmental interaction sounds central. Port Desire is full of clutter, signage, and jury‑rigged machinery, and Neon Giant wants much of that to matter in fights. That could mean shooting out lights to create darkness before a stealthy infiltration, overloading power junctions to fry armored enemies, or kicking over a market stall to create emergency cover in the middle of a street firefight. Because missions are built as localized sandboxes, the same street can feel different depending on which tools you brought and what you have already changed in the world.
One detail that stands out is the studio’s fixation on clarity and feedback. Coming from The Ascent’s sometimes chaotic overhead view, they are trying to make every bullet impact readable in first person, with loud sound design, strong hit reactions, and enemy behaviors that clearly signal when they are suppressed, panicked, or flanking. That feedback loop is meant to let you improvise instead of just unloading a clip and hoping numbers go up.
Port Desire as a character
None of this would work if Port Desire was just an interchangeable backdrop. Neon Giant treats the city as the star of No Law. The developers talk about walking its streets and being able to read who controls what corner from graffiti, body language, and the way people are dressed. Markets, underground casinos, and chop shops are not just menu hubs but interactive locations where you can overhear rumors, spot potential job hooks, or witness the tension between factions.
The city’s supposed lack of ownership feeds into its visual identity. You might see half‑finished corporate towers standing next to jury‑rigged slums built out of stolen materials, or luxurious penthouses that look more like squats as various power brokers lay temporary claim to them. The promise is that as you play, the balance of power can shift, and neighborhoods will subtly change in response to big story beats or your own actions.
Neon Giant’s previous work on The Ascent was already praised for how alive its districts felt even with an isometric perspective. No Law is that attention to detail turned inward and downward, inviting you to linger on the sidewalk and take in how Port Desire breathes from moment to moment.
A smaller, sharper cyberpunk RPG
If the Game Awards reveal and the subsequent interviews are any indication, No Law is not trying to outsprawl Cyberpunk 2077. It is trying to build something sharper and more reactive. The move from isometric corridors to first person streets, the emphasis on cyber‑noir storytelling over bombastic rebellion, and a mission design philosophy that prioritizes improvisation all point toward a more intimate interpretation of the neon future.
For Neon Giant, No Law is as much about perspective as it is about setting. It is the studio looking at the cityscapes it is already good at and deciding to walk right into them, pistol at your hip, rain in your face, and every job one bad decision away from disaster.