Watson (2077)

This article is about the district in Cyberpunk 2077. For the location in Cyberpunk RED, see Watson Development.

Watson
Information
Type	District
City	Night City
Appearance(s)
Game(s)	Cyberpunk 2077
Book(s)	Cyberpunk: Edgerunners Mission Kit A Visitor's Guide to Night City The World of Cyberpunk 2077
Other	Cyberpunk: Edgerunners

Watson used to have it all. Nightclubs, skyscrapers, corporate offices, a top-end med center — but economic disaster put an end to all that. Now, it's known as 'the bad neighborhood of Night City.' The kinda place that suits gangs like Maelstrom and Tyger Claws down to the ground.

 — Cyberpunk 2077

Watson is one of the major districts of Night City, located in the northern portion of the metropolis.

Overview

In 2077, Watson is seen as a sad and desperate place. It is well known as one of Night City's poorest districts, with many industrial factories and plants being completely abandoned. Watson is also the battleground in the war between Maelstrom and Tyger Claws gangs. The former reigns over the Northside Industrial District (NID), which is filled with factories (most of which are abandoned) and working-class apartment blocks. The well-known Totentanz bar is also located here.

Tyger Claws operate from Little China and Kabuki. The former is a high density urban region with skyscrapers, and overpopulated with Asian immigrants. It was once the best place in all of Night City to legally spend some money on body enhancements, but has since been overrun by the Kabuki marketplaces. The old Med Center is located in this area, and so is the notorious Afterlife.

Kabuki is a maze of narrow alleyways located right next to Little China. At night, they turn into a bazaar for implants, organs, steroids, and much more. It is said anything a person could desire can be found in the Kabuki Roundabout. This makes Watson a prime target for Scavs, a ruthless group that kidnaps and harvests peoples' organs and implants for resale on the black market.

The rest of Watson belongs to Arasaka in an area known as the Arasaka Waterfront. This place is completely off-limits to anyone who isn't an employee of the corporation. The NCPD cautions everyone that decides to visit the Watson sub-districts to be very careful.

History

Early history - 2050s

During the Fourth Corporate War, much of the local population of this area fled, leaving it open for the many refuges from the devastated districts of Night City to the south. A conglomerate of Japanese-based corporations known as the Night City Co-Prosperity Sphere (NCCS) helped the communities of the wrecked Japantown and Littla China to move here.

In the following years, the NCCS invested in this area, spending a lot of money in old and new infrastructures, and renaming the growing district as the Watson Development. With the NCCS patronage, the displaced Japanese population settled in a new neighborhood colloquially known as Kabuki. For a period of time, Watson was a thriving district, set to become an extension of the downtown area to the south, as well as the new beating heart of Night City. Thanks to the Co-Prosperity Sphere, the first residential megabuildings begun to be raised here; they were not the first on the list, but thanks to the NCCS money they jumped the queue. People visited Watson for the various bustling nightclubs, skyscrapers, corporate offices, a top-end medical center, and some of the best markets in the whole city. Alongside a renewed industrial sector to the north known as the NID, the NCCS continued to pour in billions of eurodollars with the intent to make it self-sufficient and prosperous, and having a remarkable success in the process. The south, the arrival of more and more immigrants from China and other parts of Asia, alongside the local population that had moved here after the war, made this portion of Watson be known as the new Little China.

By the 2050s, the renewal effort to reclaim the downtown areas to the south finally began to succeed, changing Watson's role from a city nucleus to a supporting periphery once again. Despite this, Watson continued to be notorious.

2060s - 2070s

During the construction boom of the 2060s, other parts of the metropolis like City Center and Westbrook started to become the new hubs of money and power, housing many wealthy and influential residents. As such, the affluent citizens of Watson begun to migrate to the newer and shiner areas of Night City.

Unfortunately for the NCCS, after the Unification War, the Arasaka Corporation returned to Night City in 2070, seeking to cement its influence over the metropolis. In search of a large port access for their company, Arasaka aimed to take control of the Watson waterfront, putting them in odds with the NCCS, who controlled much of the northern district. The Japanese conglomerate competed against the giant Japanese megacorporation over Watson, but ultimately Arasaka bled them dry, alongside many of the local corporations, changing the district forever. With the Co-Prosperity Sphere crumbling, its members moved on, and without a stable financial sector, the glory days of Watson ended. Many of the remaining affluent residents moved out, while the NID, once a cutting edge technological park, could no longer provide jobs, leaving people out on the street. Arasaka took advantage of the economic vacuum by taking over the district for its gain, finally getting the port and access to the waterfront that they had always wanted.

Despite this loss of power and influence, Watson managed to find a new purpose. The enterprising and underprivileged flocked in, sweeping aside the dust and transforming the district into a new hive of activity, becoming a very rich yet dangerous environment. Most of the original Japanese population in Kabuki moved to the nearby Japantown, while the neighboring Chinese citizens flocked in. Despite losing all of its original affluence, Kabuki gained new fame by becoming Night City's main black market bazaar (second only to Dogtown), with the Kabuki Roundabout becoming its most notorious feature. On the other hand, Little China became overpopulated by a plethora of different foreign cultures, with most of its threads weaving in from Chinese influence, and having some of the best cuisines in all of Night City. However, the NID never managed to recover, being mostly abandoned by the rest of the city, though a number of factories and other establishments kept functioning. This area also became home to many different types of dangerous gangs and other criminal organizations, with Maelstrom being on top of the chain, reigning from an abandoned hotel which contained the infamous Totentanz club. The Tyger Claws still maintained a notorious presence in the southern and central portions of Watson, though most of their businesses were located in Japantown.

By 2076, Watson was a very diverse district, yet it was considered one of the poorest and dangerous areas of Night City, often looked down upon by the citizens of the wealthiest neighborhoods. Due to a large rat plague in the district, the Night City Environmental Task Force had been using stray cats to address this problem, causing many of these feline animals to populate its streets.

Around April-May of 2077, the whole district was closed-off due to the arrival of Saburo Arasaka, who would soon be murdered in the notorious Konpeki Plaza hotel on the western side of Watson.

Database Entry

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WATSON

Watson was supposed to be the beating heart of Night City. A few decades ago, Japanese zaibatsus invested billions of eurodollars in skyscrapers, nightclubs, the Med Center, even industry in the northern area - all intended to make the district self-sufficient and prosperous. But everything changed when Arasaka returned to the city after the Unification War. The corporation steamrolled all of its competitors, and without a stable financial sector, Watson caved in on itself. Jobs in the Northside Industrial District completely evaporated, leaving people out on the street, allowing Arasaka to buy up all the now-cheap real estate. Turns out, the move was calculated: Arasaka needed port-access. Today Watson is one of Night City's poorest districts, inhabited mainly by workers in Northside earning ennies.

Sub-districts

Map of Watson.

• Arasaka Waterfront
• Kabuki
• Little China
• Northside

Behind the Scenes

Watson was once a thriving part of Night City. It was home to corporate offices, nightclubs, a top-end medcenter, and a prosperous industrial sub-district that provided employment for its residents. Then economic and natural disasters hit, power and wealth moved Downtown and Watson was left to rot on the periphery, a virtual colony of the corporate core of Night City. That tumultuous history has left its visual markers in the styles we see in Watson today. A wall of austere skyscrapers fronts the canal separating Watson from City Center, like a Neomilitarist screen built to block the corporations' view of the grime they left behind. This verticality continues through Little China, then gradually gives way to the low, ramshackle Kitsch of Kabuki, before ending in the sweeping horizontal Entropism of the Northside Industrial District and the austere, fortified Neomilitarism of the Arasaka Waterfront. In the midst of it all, we have Watson's inhabitants, squeezed between the brutality of the corporations on the one hand and of the gangs on the other. For all their impoverished surroundings and bleak lives, they imbue the district with undeniable color and energy.

 — The Official Digital Artbook of Cyberpunk 2077

Gallery

Concept Art

Concept art of Kabuki

Concept art of Little China

Concept art of Northside Industrial District

Concept art

Early concept map