If you’ve already played in Neon Giant’s isometric cyberpunk world in The Ascent, the studio’s follow-up, No Law is going to blow your socks off. Now backed by Krafton, the Swedish developer is moving away from 2D action toward a first-person perspective rich in frankly insane detail and tackling something way more ambitious. No Law is a deeply systemic, immersive cyber-noir shooter set in the brutal, overgrown coastal metropolis of Port Desire, and I got a detailed behind-the-scenes look at Gamescom 2026.
Walking me through an early game mission, what I saw was far from just another by-the-numbers cyberpunk shooter, and the world-building and old-school immersive sim design were reminiscent of the original Deus Ex. No Law should definitely be on your radar for your 2027 gaming lineup.
Welcome to Port Desire (you’ll need an umbrella)
Port Desire wasn’t quite the typical dystopian aesthetic I expected in a futuristic setting. Gone are the endless sterile concrete jungles of traditional sci-fi; this city drips with lush foliage that looks even more striking at night. Carved into towering ocean cliffs at a neutral border shared by 3 rival nations, the city is choked by relentless creeping green vegetation. Every night, chemical agents are sprayed to beat back the overgrowth, and if that stops, nature wins. But it makes for a breathtaking backdrop. It was raining heavily throughout the demo too, adding to the vibes!
You play as Grey Harker, an ex-military veteran who just wanted a quiet life tending to his plants (kind of a John Wick origin story) until he was dragged rudely out of retirement. As Harker, you’ll tear through Port Desire’s criminal underworld with a thirst for vengeance.
Neon Giant has built Port Desire with an insane level of attention to detail. The city can be explored vertically, featuring authentic street addresses, floor numbers, and mailboxes that actually correspond to the NPCs living within.
All the shops have dynamic pricing, physical inventory shelves you can load by hand, and products with readable nutrition facts on the back. You can steal everything from groceries to the doorbell, though if you rob a gun store or rack up a high enough bounty, you’ll be shot on sight.
Every single character in the game can be killed too. If you murder a shop owner, their store will remain permanently shuttered for the rest of your playthrough, or if you kill a crucial receptionist who was supposed to check you into a mission location, they won’t be at their desk when you need them, leaving you to figure out the objective on your own. You can’t break the story progression by ending someone’s life, but you can make it a lot more difficult for yourself if you accidentally take out someone of importance.
Zero hand-holding if that’s what you wish
The most notable takeaway from the developers’ presentation was Neon Giant’s commitment to player freedom and progression.
Port Desire can be explored entirely on your terms. If you want to be guided around with UI markers and waypoint arrows, you can do so, but the game can be flipped into full immersion mode. No hand-holding; you are simply given an address, and you’ll have to walk around checking house numbers and street signs to find your target. The city lives and breathes like a real city.
No Law also rejects the ethos of giving the player “busywork”. You won’t get extra XP for headshots, lockpicking, or hacking your way in. The devs explicitly said they wanted to avoid directing the player to a specific playstyle. For example, if you need to get into an apartment, whether you sneak or yippy-ki-yay your way in is up to you; there is no “best way”. The XP is rewarded simply for getting to the end destination, not how you got there.
There’s also no need to waste time selling inventory. Neon Giant wanted to eliminate tedious, immersion-breaking inventory management, so no more hoarding junk to vendor for cash. Use what you find, or leave it behind.
(Image credit: Neon Giant)
Choices in the game are meaningful; augmentation canisters and skill trees force you to pick a path. Respeccing isn’t a frictionless safety net for the player; choices are designed to make you feel the weight of your decisions. During the demo, the developers demonstrated two completely different approaches to the same mission. The first playthrough leaned heavily into stealth, lockpicking, and sneaking around sleeping targets. In the second run, the player had invested skill points into heavy rifles, which threw any subtlety out the window as he went in on an all-explosive, gung-ho assault. The level of detail wasn’t sacrificed, however, as an explosion in one room caused items to fall off a shelf 2 rooms away.
Both paths were entirely valid and led to the same XP reward at the end, but both felt completely organic to the world of Port Desire.
For the people who wanted ‘Cyberpunk GTA’, this may be your game.
No Law is targeting a release window of 2027 on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PS5, and its shaping up to be a monumental triumph for Neon Giant.
In our chat, the team humbly acknowledged the comparisons to Deus Ex and Cyberpunk 2077, but while elements are an ode to both of those titles, this is very much their own living, breathing sandbox where destruction, reactive AI crowds powered by Unreal Engine 5, and uncompromising player choice take center stage.
If you’re hungry for a mature and deeply interactive first-person RPG that respects your intelligence, lets you break its sequences and deal with the consequences, put No Law firmly on your radar.
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