canāt even ramp a car off of a cliff and into a guys face in this game
most interesting part of cyberpunk 2077 is the fact that the game obviously takes place in yuma arizona
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itās clearly coastal california. Thereās an ocean.
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where you gonna find joshua trees and saguaros both north and south the ocean is clearly new
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cyberpunk 2077 is an ecofantasy where global warming allows the sonora desert to expand to the entire west coast. victory for the humble saguaro, vengeance for the joshua tree
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wanted to call attention to this post now that Iām playing the game in earnest as it feels like a lot of folks were either so disgusted by the presentation (entirely fair) or dismayed by the launch (also fair) that they moved on from it relatively quickly, and you really did say it all here!
game is genuinely interesting at times and I canāt think of anything else in recent memory that swings so dramatically between āvery easy to likeā and āvery difficult to likeā even when the moment to moment experience of playing it doesnāt actually change very much. itās definitely not essential and yet at times it really feels like it should be ā CDPR is basically responsible for introducing a lot of its really wild shader tricks and tonal roughness to the rest of the industry, and a lot of this is still operating on a level that, objectively, I donāt think any other dev is capable of shipping, and yet itās a lot less interesting than it was five years ago.
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Is the edgelord tone still WYSIWYG? The comparisons to Rockstar anything are also more off putting but I liked Witchers 2 and 3.
there are an above-average number of what are functionally static background assets that objectify trans sex workers which is certainly A Choice, but I guess thatās fairly consistent with the other retrofuturist trashiness and just happens to be the most obviously questionable example ā it is very committed to āwhat the future would be like, based on the 80s, as seen by polish peopleā pretty much without exception, so you also get some unusually broad stereotypes. but honestly I havenāt found any other individual dialogues or characters to be as grating as the trailers or the other prerelease material suggested; they definitely did a disservice to their writers with that.
itās also easy to pirate because they still released it on gog though I needed 400g free on the drive I installed it to in order to unpack the last patch because their old xdelta updaters are not exactly keeping up with their commitment to drm-free releases
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Rockstar stuff feels like those memes about liking Scorsese as the height of chauvinism so good to hear. Maybe thereās an in-game ad block mod. Thatād be fun/funny.
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I would say that if anything the good writing is similar to rockstarās good writing, rather than the bad
They justify the absolute '80s retro-futurist design and the assault of ads by suggesting that the world has been stuck for 50 years and that progress exhausted itself in corporate competition and stratification. That doesnāt make it pleasant to be around! but I think thatās the point.
Most of the writing revolves around whether itās possible to live in this world or if it can be escaped
The ads feel like a failure to imagine what advertising looks like today, nevermind 50 years from an alternate present.
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Really, thatās what does this game in: a lack of imagination in 90% of the details. Everything is unbelievably bland or the most boring kind of crass. Garth Marenghiās Snow Crash is still a spot on bottomline.
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Itās definitely not directed at new sci-fi ideas, and I donāt think it ever wanted to be.
Like Witcher, theyāre interested both in making an ur-genre example and then reflecting it at different angles to tease out connections. In fantasy, they were fascinated by the role of stories in encapsulating trauma and historical forgetting; in this theyāre playing with nostalgia and the doomer/nihilistic mindset thatās been more popular in the past half-decade of internet culture.
the mission dialogue is definitely at odds with the sheer density of the thing, a lot of it is pretty inspired but just as much is not and it just assaults you with noise
wife says sheās glad that someoneās college buddy is going to give them some ācultural competency trainingā
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think thatās giving too much credit to both this and the witcher 3 but I know Iām an outlier in thinking the Witcher 3 is written like funny trash.
Their attempts at āur-genreā tend to be extremely shallow. Thatās a problem here; thereās no coherent cyberpunk setting-craft in part because thereās no personality to so much of the game.
The game is full of environmental storytelling signifiers but they donāt have a story to tell (past the prologue)
The prologue succeeds in making the world feel rich and complicated, and then immediately after, youāre bombarded with phonecalls for discount cars and ākill criminalsā side missions. All those richly drawn personalities introduced in the prologue are stuck in a holding pattern forever after. This even includes Johnny Silverhand. Because the game is open world, they let Johnny banter at you when you do unrelated quests. His personality blatantly vacillates between Geralt 2077 talking about all the orgies heās been in and generic angry ārebelā who seems to be rebelling againstā¦ nothing in particular since heās fine with the system, he just hates the japanese.
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@Tulpa angel on my shoulder 
Whereās that Patlabor box set
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I think one of the most depressing things here wrt details is a nearly complete lack of understanding how power and politics work, especially considering how much of the game revolves around power struggles. Every organized group from small gangs to biggest corportations is just so deathly boring and cartoonish in a way that robs it from any potentially interesting texture. The Mox are the closest the game gets to an evocative/interesting idea ā youāre presented with a futuristic spin on GTA where sex workers and sexual minorities decide theyāve had enough of everyone elseās shit and form an organized common front to defend themselves ā but they do nothing to explore its potential, acting like itās too much of a hot potato to handle and sticking to signaling Vaguely Correct Politics.
Nothing is more depressing than their handling of Arasaka, though. The complicated relationship between America and Japan is such an endlessly intriguing subject, Saburo Arasaka is basically Nobusuke Kishi if he succeeded with all of his ambitions and became an immortal demigod, the corporationās backstory basically begs for a treatment that mirrors current East vs West struggles without a risk of losing access to the Chinese market. And for all of Arasakaās dominant presence in the story, basically all of it is boring family problems, stock low-level corporate ugliness and all the engram nonsense (plus Iām still annoyed at how their version of GitS: Innocenceās parade is the most uninspired thing ever!!!).
Of course, when youāve got a rushed project that was basically rebooted in its last years and the creative lead is known for smug interviews where, when asked about his stance on tolerance within his company, quotes various sociologists and philosophers in order to suggest that nobody knows if we should tolerate intolerance really, and then immediately gushes over defiers of the status quo such as Elon Muskā¦ itās kind of obvious why the game is unable to say anything interesting about these matters and sticks to Talking About Mortality
(Really hoping the higher ups will be too busy with handling the fallout from 2077ās botched release to fully oversee the expansions, that might work wonders for how resonant they turn out to be in the end, just like it did in the case of TW3)
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how long must red dead 2 pay for the sins of gtav
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