alt Hacker NewsDude they literally just aped the styles that were popular on tumblr in the decade before the game was released. Here you go:
> https://tacticalneuralimplant.tumblr.com/archive/2013/4
> https://cyberpunktech.tumblr.com/archive/2015/8
Aesthetically, what the game did was literally the very definition of "nothing new" and "uninspired." It wasn't bad, but they definitely weren't pushing any new angles or visions.
The general cyberpunk aesthetic was indeed established, what they did was bring it in a 3d, first person perspective world. And they had to bring it to that level of detail that it would look good and realistic from different angles, closely as well as from afar etc and in a way that represented the state of the art computer graphic realism of the time. I don't think this is trivial, "nothing new" or "uninspired".