I want to start this discussion and see what others think on this topic, I'm kinda new to the whole Cyberpunk genre and have only watched the original Blade Runner (don't even know if they're comparable). I'm probably a strange point of view on this whole topic, I'm not religious at all but I hold certain values very strongly and I'm sensitive to them being defiled or ruined in any way, so it will be interesting to see if anyone else found this in their gameplay or if I'm alone in this
The basic concept is this: the world of Cyberpunk ISN'T desirable or good, it's a dystopia full of squallor, it represents a society that has completely gone mad and destroyed everything "natural" in the world (or at least north america), there's no value attached to concepts like "purity" or "honesty", some people may still recognize these values but the society at large is so widely "fucked" that it feels like even acting on this is pointless, thus the only important thing becomes "surviving", or trying to climb the ladders up and gain notoriety and power, you die either way basically and there's no salvation, which is the point (I think) and that's good, we need stories like these, it's a cautionary tale
The first problem I encountered was a profound disconnect between me, the player, and V. It's cool what CDPR did in putting us in the shoes of someone who is familiar with the game world and kind of "guides" us into it, but I felt it lacked a more.. "normal" perspective on things, someone who saw the world for what it was, someone a bit less naive and with more perspective. The game starts and the whole motivation for accepting jobs is "becoming the best", from the start I started facepalming for V, what the hell are you talking about? do you see what kind of world you live in? instead of doing anything positive you want to become part of the problem, in exchange for money.. to do what? to buy cars and apartments, so that you can ride around in Night City.. the worst shithole in the history of cities, the most horrid place you could ever wish to live in?? in the first 10 hours you see enough horrible things to change your mind immediately, but V still kind of feels like a shallow, selfish, sometimes a bit stupid, protagonist, I didn't like him in the least in any of his versions.. corpo V is just a giant ass who doesn't even understand how bad he is, street kid V is a poor disillusioned lost soul, and Nomad V is probably the most selfish and moronic, abandoning the only people who still hold some values and humanity to go to night city.. just why? the whole premise seemed kind of weak to me, the world pulled me in but V left me very cold as a main character, I didn't like him except in some quests where he shows some balls and that he knows what is right or wrong, but in the vast majority of situations.. no
Second huge point that the game doesn't care about: the implants and the value of keeping your body whole and pure. Again I'm not religious at all, but I still feel this is the absolute basic premise for living a good life, your body is your temple, organ transplants and medical procedures obviously don't interfere with this, but implanting SWORDS in your arms and removing your eyes to substitute them for electrical ones is just insanity, doesn't matter what benefits you gain from it, it violates everything about being human and should never be accepted, period. They cite "cyberpsychosis" as a possible issue, and I liked the lore shards that suggest Cyberpsychosis has nothing to do with specific implants but rather the combination of replacing parts of your body and living in a horrible place where nobody even knows what humanity is and everyone is isolated, it's basically psychosis with the added potential damage of an extremely modified body, nothing mysterious about it and I liked that, but then we START the game with implants, and one of our first missions is replacing our eyes and hands, and the game doesn't either offer you a choice in the matter or consider it as anything special. And yes, in Night City it's nothing special, but from our perspective it's absurd and strange, the game just treats it as an upgrade and it never has any consequence of any kind.. there are also problems inherent with having electronical devices take over the most important functions in your body: they're hackable, at the very least they could have made heavily modified main characters be very vulnerable to hacking, or give special dialogue for BOTH heavily modded and un-modded player character, instead it makes no difference at all and nobody notices if you refrain from using implants, nobody cares or notices, doesn't this kind of contradict the whole premise of the world and game?
I kept expecting a path to open, where after seeing so many atrocities V says "fuck this" and starts to understand how compromised night city is, and a new questline opens: "Flee", convince Judy or Panam to come with you, find somewhere livable and try to live a normal life, another ending where you maybe die because of Johnny anyway, but your partner is pregnant, you live in a small community in some untainted part of the world (much talk of Sweden), a proper "good/human ending" that doesn't betray the idea behind the world: if you try to engage with Night City, you will either die or become a monster, the only way forward is backward, the only way to survive is to finally understand how fucked everything is and try to either change it or renounce it, instead it never comes, and it made the rest of the philosophy in the game feel more hollow.. it just feels like nothing can be saved, there's no sacrifice that you can make to even get a little bit of positivity, the best you can get is the nomads, and for how much I like them I feel like they are a dying breed too, just escaping constantly, never creating..
sorry for the long post, don't take this too seriously, I just want to hear everybody's thoughts on this part of the story, thank you for reading
The basic concept is this: the world of Cyberpunk ISN'T desirable or good, it's a dystopia full of squallor, it represents a society that has completely gone mad and destroyed everything "natural" in the world (or at least north america), there's no value attached to concepts like "purity" or "honesty", some people may still recognize these values but the society at large is so widely "fucked" that it feels like even acting on this is pointless, thus the only important thing becomes "surviving", or trying to climb the ladders up and gain notoriety and power, you die either way basically and there's no salvation, which is the point (I think) and that's good, we need stories like these, it's a cautionary tale
The first problem I encountered was a profound disconnect between me, the player, and V. It's cool what CDPR did in putting us in the shoes of someone who is familiar with the game world and kind of "guides" us into it, but I felt it lacked a more.. "normal" perspective on things, someone who saw the world for what it was, someone a bit less naive and with more perspective. The game starts and the whole motivation for accepting jobs is "becoming the best", from the start I started facepalming for V, what the hell are you talking about? do you see what kind of world you live in? instead of doing anything positive you want to become part of the problem, in exchange for money.. to do what? to buy cars and apartments, so that you can ride around in Night City.. the worst shithole in the history of cities, the most horrid place you could ever wish to live in?? in the first 10 hours you see enough horrible things to change your mind immediately, but V still kind of feels like a shallow, selfish, sometimes a bit stupid, protagonist, I didn't like him in the least in any of his versions.. corpo V is just a giant ass who doesn't even understand how bad he is, street kid V is a poor disillusioned lost soul, and Nomad V is probably the most selfish and moronic, abandoning the only people who still hold some values and humanity to go to night city.. just why? the whole premise seemed kind of weak to me, the world pulled me in but V left me very cold as a main character, I didn't like him except in some quests where he shows some balls and that he knows what is right or wrong, but in the vast majority of situations.. no
Second huge point that the game doesn't care about: the implants and the value of keeping your body whole and pure. Again I'm not religious at all, but I still feel this is the absolute basic premise for living a good life, your body is your temple, organ transplants and medical procedures obviously don't interfere with this, but implanting SWORDS in your arms and removing your eyes to substitute them for electrical ones is just insanity, doesn't matter what benefits you gain from it, it violates everything about being human and should never be accepted, period. They cite "cyberpsychosis" as a possible issue, and I liked the lore shards that suggest Cyberpsychosis has nothing to do with specific implants but rather the combination of replacing parts of your body and living in a horrible place where nobody even knows what humanity is and everyone is isolated, it's basically psychosis with the added potential damage of an extremely modified body, nothing mysterious about it and I liked that, but then we START the game with implants, and one of our first missions is replacing our eyes and hands, and the game doesn't either offer you a choice in the matter or consider it as anything special. And yes, in Night City it's nothing special, but from our perspective it's absurd and strange, the game just treats it as an upgrade and it never has any consequence of any kind.. there are also problems inherent with having electronical devices take over the most important functions in your body: they're hackable, at the very least they could have made heavily modified main characters be very vulnerable to hacking, or give special dialogue for BOTH heavily modded and un-modded player character, instead it makes no difference at all and nobody notices if you refrain from using implants, nobody cares or notices, doesn't this kind of contradict the whole premise of the world and game?
I kept expecting a path to open, where after seeing so many atrocities V says "fuck this" and starts to understand how compromised night city is, and a new questline opens: "Flee", convince Judy or Panam to come with you, find somewhere livable and try to live a normal life, another ending where you maybe die because of Johnny anyway, but your partner is pregnant, you live in a small community in some untainted part of the world (much talk of Sweden), a proper "good/human ending" that doesn't betray the idea behind the world: if you try to engage with Night City, you will either die or become a monster, the only way forward is backward, the only way to survive is to finally understand how fucked everything is and try to either change it or renounce it, instead it never comes, and it made the rest of the philosophy in the game feel more hollow.. it just feels like nothing can be saved, there's no sacrifice that you can make to even get a little bit of positivity, the best you can get is the nomads, and for how much I like them I feel like they are a dying breed too, just escaping constantly, never creating..
sorry for the long post, don't take this too seriously, I just want to hear everybody's thoughts on this part of the story, thank you for reading
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