Night City has a way of making a player feel like a big shot one minute and a lost tourist the next. For one long-time Cyberpunk 2077 fan, that feeling is never stronger than when they open the map and stare at the fast travel system. They have sunk over 150 hours into the game, including Phantom Liberty, and they still cannot decide if they love it or hate it. It is a mechanic that oozes world-building, then trips over its own feet. In 2026, with Cyberpunk 2077's major updates and Phantom Liberty firmly in the rearview, the fast travel debate still feels as relevant as ever. Some players call it immersive. Others call it a waste of time. The truth, as usual, is a messy mix of both.
On paper, fast travel is simple. Open the map, click the point, appear there. Most games do exactly that. Cyberpunk 2077 says, 'not so fast, choom.' To travel quickly, the player must first walk or drive to the nearest fast travel terminal. Only then can they select another terminal they have already discovered. The feature unlocks after the prologue, and it never upgrades. There is no late-game perk that lets V call a cab from anywhere. No magic button. Just a network of terminals that demands legwork before it saves legwork. That design choice is either genius or madness, depending on how much time the player has on their hands.
| Feature | How It Works | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Fast travel terminals | Must reach one on foot or by car before teleporting | Immersive, but slow |
| Unlock system | Opens after prologue, limited to discovered points | Natural, but restrictive |
| Upgrades | None, ever | A missed opportunity |
| Map markers | Only two lines: yellow job line, white custom line | Frustrating |
The pros are not hard to spot. Night City feels lived in. Elevators have exactly one button, the one for the floor the player is going to. Doors that do not matter for a mission stay locked forever. The world does not bend around the player's convenience. Fast travel terminals feel like part of the city's infrastructure, not a menu screen wearing a trench coat. That is solid world-building, and it gives Night City a texture that many open-world games lack.
The cons are just as obvious. It is not necessarily fast to fast travel if the player must first make their way to another unrelated point on the map. In the middle of Pacifica, that is not too much of a problem. Out in the Badlands with Panam, it can be a real pain. If the destination is on the other side of the map and the nearest terminal is a two-minute drive away, the player loses time before they even start saving time. That is the definition of a double-edged sword. The juice is not always worth the squeeze.
Then there is the map marker problem. Cyberpunk 2077 only allows two directional lines at once: a yellow line for the active mission or side story, and a white line that can be placed anywhere. The white line can guide the player to a store, an NCPD shootout, a photo mode spot, or a fast travel marker. But it cannot do all of those things at the same time. Marking one thing often means unmarking another. For a game that encourages route planning and loot chasing, that is a gonk-sized oversight.
One player learned this the hard way. They wanted to try out the new quake attack, but they had no hammer. They wandered to the nearest melee store, no fast travel needed, but the shop only sold knives. So they looked at the map, selected the next melee store, and made their way to the closest fast travel point. However, they could not mark that fast travel point. Doing so would mean unmarking the store they were heading to. With so few melee stores and all their weapons looted, they were left to stumble around for the terminal, then do the same thing twice more as those melee stores refused to stock hammers. It was not a proud moment for Night City's navigation UI.
Maybe that is a symptom of the modern gamer. Maybe players are too entitled, too used to hand-holding, too unwilling to remember a simple map location for a minute of travel time. Fair enough. But fast travel is explicitly for players who just want to go here, then here, then here. It is a convenience feature. When convenience becomes a chore, something is off. The system wants to have its cake and eat it too: it wants to be immersive and effortless, and it ends up being neither.
Still, the system has a strange charm. Every interaction with Night City reminds the player that this is a video game, one that cut corners to contain its overambitious scope. But fast travel feels like a mechanic from a world that exists beyond the current objective. That is why the love-hate relationship endures. It annoys, it slows, it confuses, and yet it makes the city feel more real. In 2026, after all the patches and the Phantom Liberty glow, that contradiction remains.
After returning for 2.0 and Phantom Liberty, the same player found themselves enjoying Night City again. But by the end, they just wanted to fast travel away to somewhere slightly less frustrating. That is the Cyberpunk 2077 fast travel experience in a nutshell: preem world-building, bumpy execution. Would they change it? Probably. Would they want it removed? Not on your life, choom. 😅