1)Whether the apartments are huge depends on your frame of reference. many find V's apartment small, and V is doing pretty decent at that point.
They are huge on today's scale, even if small on a video game scale. A person in their 20s living alone in a two-bedroom in a big city is a sign of tremendous success. It's nothing like extremely claustrophobic tiny spaces that have only a place for a bed and a suitcase. Thinking about it most people from this message board probably don't have that much space for themselves. I understand that otherwise, it would be hard to move as a video game character, but then again, it brings some questions. The world of Cyberpunk should be worse and darker than our world. It really isn't when you look at details.
2)Judy doesn't own the cottage by the lake. The cottage is abandoned, and its by the lake because when the corporation flooded her town with toxic water, one crazy dude refused to give up on the town, and built the house there, and died from being exposed to toxins. Also porn is extremely popular in that world
Not that popular since she's apparently struggling to pay V's her full fee which is like what... 2k? I get it is abandoned but she's using it without a problem, without property taxes, and without fear, it will be taken by somebody else. So where's the overpopulation? If people in this world can just keep a cottage on the outskirts of the town even it's not in their name, what kind of overpopulated area are we talking about?
3)there are empty buildings with people sleepin on the streets because they often kill people who refuse to pay rent and stay on property. one of the NCPD missions has you kill everyone at this company that couldn't pay rent, but tried to keep the business going. Trust that irl, in many cities, there are tons of empty spaces while people sleep in the streets
Apparently paying rent is a non-issue. V doesn't pay and still is not evicted and that would be hard to believe in today's America where the eviction notices have 20 days or so. Judy doesn't pay for her cottage and no one cares. I appreciate it being mentioned in the game but it's not consistent. Nowadays you wouldn't be killed - you would be sued and all your profits would be lost not to mention you might end up in a private prison, with your whole family struggling to pay your dues. Again - killing squatters would make way more sense if you have tons of people who want to pay to make business there. Otherwise why would you bother? At least somebody pays for the power and the repairs.
4)corporations work with gangs and police. The police are their own organization and don't always do what a specific corporation wants, they also occasionally want to enforce a system of laws. The gangs operate outside the law, and are sometimes useful to manipulate. The gangs also have their own politics, act independently or try to ignore their sponsors (you can see this with maelstrom and militech alliance. The ncpd recently started paying bounty hunters, because their is so much anarchy they can't keep up, and probably because its cheaper.
But then again why would the police do that? Because they are the good guys? I'm not saying it's not explained in cyberpunk lore though but in the game, it feels like a lot of those situations contradict themselves.
5)Pacifica failed because the companies building there pulled their money and resources out when it seemed like a bad bet
But why is it a bad bet? Where's the financial forecasting? It had to be built based on some financial predictions and the assumption that there are enough rich people to populate those streets or enough tourists in the world to be interested in visiting such a place. Most extremely expensive structures in the US failed mostly because they were built in secluded places, far away from the cities, hoping for people to TRAVEL to get there like Disneyworld. It didn't pan out and that's why you have a collection of abandoned malls and cities. If Pacifica is around the corner, just a few streets away from a city that is struggling with overpopulation, then it doesn't make sense. Can you imagine Brooklyn failing when Manhattan being filled to the brim with people? I can understand it being a failure if the city is half empty but that's NOT what the NC media are telling us. The world discussed and the world presented are two different things.
6)corporation doesn't clean the city because its doesn't serve the corporations profit/ideaology. Maintaining a city is costly, and requires a belief that the city should be maintained. Note that corporate spaces are better maintained. Working for a corporation is bad to certain people. Gangs are joined for other reasons, mostly culture/identity. Some people see it as the same thing.
The only ideology that corporations follow (to my knowledge) is money. Chaos and anarchy are bad for profit. I totally understand why cyberpshiosos is good for profit but 70% of the city is a constant warzone - not really. If we look at modern cities that are run by corporations you have an entirely different story. And I understand that the lore was built in the 80s when certain aspects of Regan's administrations felt like a very bad experiment but I'm not playing it in the 80s. I'm playing it in 2021 and it's hard not to compare it with the modern world.
7)cyberware and trauma team aren't in competition. trauma team is a premium healthcare service. Cyberware is just artificial body parts. If you mean ripper vs cyberware. Rippers are generally their own small business/practioners, and they have no where near the resources/technology/emergency services
If it's not a competition the game didn't really explain it very well, especially with the nomad guy who needs cyberware because of the kidney's failure or something like that. It's obvious he cannot afford the medical care so the implant is his only hope. On the other hand - why would you need a trauma team? Only to keep your body parts? On the other hand, the trauma team is not explained very well in the game and we cannot use their services at all, even if V can afford them.
Let me be clear - even if certain aspects are explained in the lore they are NOT explained in the game and that's why certain aspects of the world-building are being questioned.
For example, Judy is a BD editor. If you read the world companion or whatever its called, you will learn that a lot of people suffer, being addicted to BDs and andy kind of treatment is extremely expensive and hard to get. This information is clearly MISSING from the game since it would open up a can of warms about BDs in general because Judy, a beloved character, is producing emotional drugs! It doesn't matter that her actors love what they do. It's still addictive.
8)No one has any real choices but to buy from the corporation. If I'm a mobile developer, I may hate Google and Apple, it doesn't matter, I have no other option but to use them. Many people right now have no real option but to buy from Amazon as well.
But then you wouldn't;t call yourself punk, would you? The punk subculture was based on rejecting mainstream not being an opportunist. I get what you're saying but I feel that a lot of people in Cyberpunk complain about corporations just like many Facebook users post how much they hate posting on Facebook and they SHALL DELETE their accounts never doing so. It makes you grow with frustration because we all know people like that and that's not particularly glorious behavior. The only people (in the game not lore) who actually do something about it are VoodooBoys since they create their own software and hardware being independent. As far as aa I remember (please correct me, since I played the tabletop game ages ago) the key was to create your own cyberware and software (just like Spider Murpy did) since it was against the monopoly fo corporation. CP2077 seems like a big amazon store. Of course, we know that going against google and apple is extremely hard, especially in your case, but would you call yourself a punk because you don't like their terms and conditions?
It almost feels like the world-building is not brave enough, since CDPR is a corporation and there's no option presented except "nuking Arasaka tower" (forgive me for giggling, but hahaha). Everybody who goes against corporations is presented as an emotional mess that has no clue what to do except blowing shit up. Don't get me wrong, it's fun, but is it a mature story? Hell no.
10) the clients are the poor and the rich, and other companies.
The corporations have way more money than the corporations we know today. They have way more resources. If it's from the profit then where is this profit come from? As we know from history, powerful corporations are built on the middle class's money. I don't really see that class in cyberpunk, which means the corpos are struggling to stay afloat.
But please argue with me more. It's Friday on the West Coast and I have absolutely nothing else to do
Happy weekend
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