I can't see what you may find offensive in this tread. I totally disagree with you about USA and Europe being culturally the same thing - there is big differences in mentality and values (not saying that some are better or worse, it's just different), that may often lead to misunderstandings (if you ever saw a film about any European country made in USA you know what I mean).
I would even add that you'll probably find some strong differences between different European countries too, but that's not the topic.
The ideas behind it's that when a certain country is making something in a setting placed quite far abroad, they may be a big list of cliches and preconceptions. If there is Russia in an american film, there will be snow, even if it's supposed to be in July somewhere near Rostov. If there is France in a Japanese anime you'll be pretty sure that Paris will look more like it looked in the 18th century then now.
Obviously these is often low-cost cultural productions (or those who are destined only to the local market), but even big budget products may have similar problems. So it may be a legit source of worrying. I hoped until the end (based on the very first trailer) that the game will take place in a unnamed city/country (for several different reasons), the fact that they took a real place was a turn enough for me to not precommand the game.
I think you're missing the point. This game is based on the lore of a table top RPG that Mike Pondsmith and his company R Talsorian Games created in the late 80's. It is a dystopian vision of neon lit sci-fi noir, seen through a mid-80s, Manga thumbing, stock market crashed, American lens which nowadays should seem retro (the fist book published in '88 was set in 2013).
In this future the U.S. has collapsed economically and broken up into a collection of free states but the Soviet Union still exists. Japan has a huge influence on the American West Coast, while the European Community has become a global superpower (the EU had not existed yet at the time Mike came up with this).
The first core rule book doesn't really focus on non-American cultures, as it is set in Night City and that's where the action is. The kind of distorted American sentiment of the world you described may be spotted in minuscule details here but that really don't seem ill intended. The rest of the world is not left out due to negligence but it simply didn't fit in one book. The core rulebook was meant to give you just enough background to start playing the game and that's what it delivers. The rest was up for your imagination, as in all good RPG.
Still, the rules helped you to define a full origin story for your character and R Talsorian did make up for the sketchier cultural background in their expansion books. These included detailed histories and local peculiarities for all corners of the world in separate volumes. Like 'Home of the Brave' on North-America, where Nomad tribes roam the land in true Mad Max style, or 'Pacific Rim' on the Asian region, dominated by Japan and the United Korea, with China still being run by the Party, and of course 'Eurosource' on the European Community, who got their space station with their super weapon that can throw rocks on any target on the planet (which has proven more effective in ending conflicts than the tactical nukes the U.S. and the Soviets were threatening each other with).
All of the above were constructed with great care and attention to details, seeking out lots of local sources. Mind you, this all started way before the Internet was a thing, so at the time research literally meant visiting those countries or at least having someone who is living there as part of the writer staff, which makes me appreciate their work even better. But despite having access to all the materials Mike's team and the Cyberpunk community has accumulated within the last 3 decades, CD Project Red is taking the same approach of hiring people engrained in the cultures they want to portray, hence they are working with people of Creole descent or people with prosthetic limbs.
Plus the world of Cyberpunk, as much as it seems familiar, it meant to be in many ways different from to our world due to the wars and other political events listed in its timeline. Generally, in Cyberpunk, culture matters a lot less than style and status. After all, people in this world speak
streatslang, a universal polyglot mixture of English, French, German, Japanese, and half a dozen other languages.
It's a dystopian world where corporations can buy themselves places on the map, go in with their private armies and call it their own. Night City itself is an artificial place where the lack of indigenous cultures is considered an asset not a shortcoming. At least by the mega corporations who founded the place and use it as their playground for shady businesses and political manipulation. Since California has not just seceded from the Union but got broken up into 2 separate states, Night City was neatly placed in between those two, so that no one governs it but for the gangs and corporations.
It is more like Frank Miller's
Sin City than an actual place, a distorted microcosm where people are painted with a broad brush and the relationship between the 'haves' and the 'have nots' is supposed to show you a parallel of not just the present time but of the archetypal ideal human society. It's a broken culture without any overarching narrative other than history crashing down on the little guy. Here everything is broken up into flamboyant individual life stories driven by hedonism or a loosely written moral code. That's the 'punk' essence in Cyberpunk and the collision of these different life paths is what creates the culture of Night City.
And yes, some of it is cliché and stereotypical. But so is life. You can chose to stay on the surface or dive in for deeper meaning. In Cyberpunk however, style comes over substance. Because you need to pretend to stay alive and substance never comes without a price. So don't expect characters more 'real' than the personalities they wear as an avatar. But dare to look deeper under the skin and your own complexions will stare right back at you.
So much about the source material and how it relates to reality. This is what CD Project Red is building upon and this is the world they are trying to make a bit more tangible through our keyboards/ controllers. Oh, and did I mention that the game is not out yet? It could be a bit early to judge, don't you think?
