For many players, the real endgame of Cyberpunk 2077 has never been maxing out cyberware or chasing the perfect iconic weapon. It has been clothing. Even in 2026, years after the game's messy launch and long after Phantom Liberty's 2023 expansion, the fashion system and photo mode continue to pull players back into Night City. The base game may have been criticized for its hollow open world, but its wardrobe gave players a reason to keep exploring, posing, and playing dress-up as V.
One returning player, who has spent more than 100 hours across multiple playthroughs, described the experience as becoming Night City's Next Top Model. The goal was never armor stats or price tags. It was the look. That meant switching outfits for nearly every mission, searching dive bars and back-alley markets for inspiration, and collecting dresses, blazers, jumpsuits, trousers, blouses, and jackets in endless combinations. In the base game, the shoe rotation was small but functional: heels, sneakers, heavy-duty boots, and thigh-highs. It was enough to survive the main campaign without ruining a glamour shot.
Then came Dogtown.
Halfway through Phantom Liberty's opening gunfight sequence, players finally get a moment to breathe at a shady market in the new district. Fashion-minded players skipped the gun store and went straight to the boutique. The boutique may have looked like a pile of dirty railings and sheet metal, but style does not care about presentation. The first Dogtown market delivered some genuinely exciting pieces: a purple fur coat, a red dress with golden spikes across the shoulders, a loose blazer with rolled sleeves, a black catsuit, a blue anime leather jacket, and a silver t-shirt. Those items could be mixed into multiple new outfits. Unfortunately, the shoe rack told a different story. The only shoes available were items the player already owned or simple color swaps, such as black heels instead of red heels.
This was not an isolated issue. After completing the opening mission, players could visit another market downtown in Dogtown. Again, the boutique offered a strong selection of clothing. Again, there were no meaningful new shoes. The player began to wonder: was this just a Dogtown problem? Maybe the base game areas had better options. So the search continued. Pacifica? No shoes. Heywood? No shoes. The Badlands? Still no shoes. What should have been a quick shopping trip turned into a citywide footwear investigation.
This is a strange oversight for a game that otherwise treats fashion as a core system. Cyberpunk 2077 has what many players consider one of the best wardrobes in gaming, yet it offers only about five distinct shoe types to pair with all of it. Meanwhile, the same game can hand a player fifteen leather jackets, and that is after selling or ignoring the less stylish options. The imbalance is hard to miss once noticed.
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Heels: a few color variants, with Dogtown mostly offering black instead of red
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Sneakers: the same base game pairs that fashion players never really liked
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Heavy-duty boots: too bulky for dressier outfits
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Thigh-highs: visually busy and often incompatible with statement trousers
This limited range stands out even more because shoes are not a niche category. Shoes are gender-neutral, which should make them an even safer design investment than dresses or skirts. The typical male V, who many players use as their avatar, cannot lean on a flowing gown to complete an outfit. A new pair of boots or sneakers would have broad appeal. Yet the expansion, which added so many strong clothing pieces and new photo opportunities, still forces fashion-focused players to shoot from the ankle up.
Why does a game so obsessed with self-expression ignore shoes? It is a strange blind spot. The amount of outfit changes can make Cyberpunk 2077 feel like a fashion-doll simulator at times, but the footwear options never keep up. Returning players may have a wardrobe full of looks, but they are still stuck pairing most of them with the same old shoes. The game may hate doors, but right now it seems to hate shoes even more.
Will the next Cyberpunk project fix this? That remains to be seen. For now, players continue to make do with what few pairs the game offers. They mix, they pose, they shoot from the waist up, and they keep asking the same question: how can a city with so many jackets have so few shoes?