Cyberpsychosis and you: how should it be implemented?

[Chewin3]

A subtle way to do it might be to have a series of sidequests that only become accessible once a certain percentage of augmentation has been achieved, but make them seem wholly natural and progressive, so you think you're actively pursuing a particular course of action, facing off against a new enemy or threat, and so on - only towards the end of the series of sidequests to have the rug pulled out beneath you when you are shown security footage that reveals that your activities of 'taking out criminal cells' was really you shooting up a mall.

(...)

Well said, I fully agree.

This would influence the player on a more psychological level, rather than through a gameplay one with a "meter" or something similar. They more subtle the method is implemented into the game, with 'exclusive quests' and perhaps certain illusions created by the character, the easier it becomes believable for the player (just like you mentioned, Bioshock is a prime example).

There's certainly room for possibilities.

 

[Terralventhe]

Another great and subtle way to begin the initial hallucinations would be something like.. you're walking along the streets of Night City, suddenly you hear the sound of gunshots, or metal tearing flesh, and a blood-curdling scream coming from the alleyway to your left! You quickly turn the camera to look down the alleyway and you see a person sliding down the wall, out of sight, from behind the obscuring view of a dumpster. You rush down the alleyway to see the victim, but once you pass the dumpster and turn to look at where there ought to be a body.. nothing. Maybe a blood smear on the ground, but otherwise.. nothing. No body. No clues. Nothing.

What's especially fun is that I've seen games like F.E.A.R. pull it off so that this kind of stuff only actually happens if your camera is actually viewing the source. Meaning in F.E.A.R. you could hear a sound behind you, but it would never trigger the rest of the 'scare' unless you turned to actively look at it.

 

[Aver]

I just hope that they will do this so good that even before I acquiring a really awesome augmentation I will have to ask myself a question - is it really worth it? I really like when upgrading your characters have shortcomings.

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

moral detachment + emotional detachment + extreme capacity for violence + excellent damage resistance= cyberpsychosis

 

[kilravok]

I like most ideas here, and a subtle mix of all would work wonders.
Start with having untexted autochats voicing random self-doubting thoughts of the character, describing how he feels his hand is not his hand anymore, questioning if he is even still human, while at the same time keep questioning if what he had augmented is good enough, wanting more, newer and better hardware....
Taking the presumption that everybody who is at risk of going cyber psycho would have definitely amongst their augmentations optical implants, especially ifoptical implants being definitely worth it to have access to the hud game interface and minimap, then why not screw up the mini map a bit, place the mission tracker beacon to a small motel instead of the crack den you are supposed to take out. Have your smart-gun vision classify everybody as hostile, have the faces of NPCs changed to the appearance of the bad guy you have been bounty-hunting for months or that bastard that ran off with your girlfriend. Works especially well if optical mods like in Ghost in the Shell, where you get all that kind of info shown in your vision with zoomed image of the person covering the actual view of the person.

Change his available dialogue choices to show how he becomes more and more emotionally detached or cold, but in such a smooth transition way that the player would think it is due to the actual situation and story progress, not due to empathy levels...until one day suddenly he beats up his girlfriend because she has been unfaithful and accusing him of being no man anymore but only a machine......or did she???

Give his hardware malfunctions that indicate the breakdown of his meat (the vision turns into a field of data flows and unrendered poligon grids, his cyber ears picking up a cacophony of radio signals, his cyber arm lashes out in spasms and accidentally shatters some passer-by's head.....). Make him feel that his body is not his and that he has no control......

Add the psychosis quests to that and you get the real feel....

As described earlier, bot the actual clinical psychological descriptions of amputation effects on the mind and the book description of what CyberPsycho is, it is more about being disconnection from oneself and society than having no control over one's body. Dialogue decisions and available quests will lead to the alienation and loss of friends and family and create detachment and indifference towards the world....

 

[gregski]

I just hope that they will do this so good that even before I acquiring a really awesome augmentation I will have to ask myself a question - is it really worth it? I really like when upgrading your characters have shortcomings.

I want to see that too but honestly I don't want cyberpsychosis to be the main factor making me question my need/willingness to augment myself. Like "ohnoes, no more ware in me cause I might snap and then what".

 

[Septian]

Another great and subtle way to begin the initial hallucinations would be something like.. you're walking along the streets of Night City, suddenly you hear the sound of gunshots, or metal tearing flesh, and a blood-curdling scream coming from the alleyway to your left! You quickly turn the camera to look down the alleyway and you see a person sliding down the wall, out of sight, from behind the obscuring view of a dumpster. You rush down the alleyway to see the victim, but once you pass the dumpster and turn to look at where there ought to be a body.. nothing. Maybe a blood smear on the ground, but otherwise.. nothing. No body. No clues. Nothing.

I really like the sound of that How easy that would be to implement would be a different matter, but I very much like the idea!

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

I want to see that too but honestly I don't want cyberpsychosis to be the main factor making me question my need/willingness to augment myself. Like "ohnoes, no more ware in me cause I might snap and then what".

Agreed. Thus why I said cy-psych shouldn't be treated like some internal meter where the difference between sane and murderhobo is that you got the "glowing hair" addon that bumped the gauge up three points instead of two.

 

[username_3642020]

Agreed. Thus why I said cy-psych shouldn't be treated like some internal meter where the difference between sane and murderhobo is that you got the "glowing hair" addon that bumped the gauge up three points instead of two.

The pnp did a good job of preventing that kind of thinking though, since you could get something inane and lose a load of humanity (relatively speaking for the dice rolls) whereas that cannon in your arm only cost a few points. Hide/randomise the amount lost and have completely differing ranges for types of items, and then let the play either assign their own emp at the start. After that keep it hidden what the current level is, except for low regions where dialog may change or effectiveness with certain skills may change. Let those subtle things serve as the warning. Start offering quests with more morally-ambiguous choices or that ignore morals alltogether.

I know that I've certainly had to sit back and question myself in some games after quests had me do some kind of crazy thing where neither choice seemed "right." If people are concerned at that loss of perspective, then they seek out a way to get it back, to drop some of the tech and realise that "oh crap I'm walking off the deep-end here." If not, there's been plenty of ideas proposed so far. The one way back at the beginning about Justice League Doom was a good one, as was the Spec Ops the Line one and the FEAR one. Hallucinations that the player doesn't realise are hallucinations, so you turn that corner and see all those guys fighting? It's actualy just a bunch of civvies standing/milling around. Once you've jumped in and killed them all the illusion drops and you see what you've done, choose not to react and maybe you can shake it off after a while.

To get back to the point though, yes, the 'meter' is still there, but it leaves it in the player's hands to deal with the consequences instead of tearing things away and forcing a bad end on you. Have the frequency increase if you keep getting cyber, have it take longer to shake it off if you even can. It's not like you'll be able to just sit and wait all of the situations out since some of them will be real and you'll have to react. Those guys who look like they're shooting you but missing? Is it real or are they just a bad shots? Do you really want to sit around and take the chance that you might get filled with holes while you wait a minute or three to make sure it's real? Do you want to take the chance of immediately engaging and then finding out you just slaughtered a bunch of tourists with cameras?

 

[kilravok]

One of the issues I have seen in this discussion is also the curing of Cy-Psych. It would certainly break the system if just some drugs and therapy can cure it, that is why, at least in the campaigns I was in, one needs to remove the hardware before starting therapy. Drugs can at most slow down the symptoms from occurring but they can't stop it. Also the concept that one will never regain full empathy is good too. Even if you go back to full meat, it won't be YOUR meat, it might be grown from your stem cells, but they are still not real, they are lab grown.
The only way to really recover from Cy-Psych would clearly be strip the metal and see a shrink for about 20 years or more.


On an unrelated topic, I would like to see other cyberware related ailments.
Going Cyber-Psycho or becomming addicted to psychotropic software are not the only problems that can come up. Ghost in the Shell: Laughing Man has Cyberbrain Sclerosis, John Mnemonic has neural perforations, and lets not forget the biggest issue we even face today with prosthetic, Tissue/Matter Rejection. Add to that software viruses that deteriorate the softs and hardware of cyber implants, all sorts of blood poisonings and contact infections. And one of my favorite forms of cyber related sickness (although not really a medical condition), similar to psychosis, Brain Hacks like in the original Ghost in the Shell or in Streetfighter II Animated Movie.

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

The pnp did a good job of preventing that kind of thinking though, since you could get something inane and lose a load of humanity (relatively speaking for the dice rolls) whereas that cannon in your arm only cost a few points.

Yeah, that's something I never really thought made sense. Cosmetic stuff like new eye/hair color or an arm-mounted TV shouldn't be nearly as big a loss to humanity as stuff like weapon-mounts and such. I mean, who's more likely to think of themselves as superhuman, the chick getting an iPod built into her boobs so her boyfriend can change the mood-music by tweaking her nipples when they make out, or the guy getting a machinegun crammed into his ass so he can shake tailgaters without getting off his motorcycle?

 

[blank_redge]

...the chick getting an iPod built into her boobs so her boyfriend can change the mood-music by tweaking her nipples when they make out, or the guy getting a machinegun crammed into his ass so he can shake tailgaters without getting off his motorcycle?

...remind me NOT to go to your ripperdoc...

 

[kilravok]

Yeah, that's something I never really thought made sense. Cosmetic stuff like new eye/hair color or an arm-mounted TV shouldn't be nearly as big a loss to humanity as stuff like weapon-mounts and such. I mean, who's more likely to think of themselves as superhuman, the chick getting an iPod built into her boobs so her boyfriend can change the mood-music by tweaking her nipples when they make out, or the guy getting a machinegun crammed into his ass so he can shake tailgaters without getting off his motorcycle?

What will make you feel more human when you look in the mirror? Technicolor dreadlocks on your head and SkyMovies playing 24/7 visible on your belly? Or something that can't be seen nor felt unless you really search for it? What does look more human to your neighbors?

 

[lumber_jacck]

Hm, indeed interesting to implement. I would see it as visions occuring at certain times, like you enter a dream state, with a blurry world. Similiar to the induced dream/vision Geralt had in The WItcher 2.

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

...remind me NOT to go to your ripperdoc...

You're just jealous YOUR girlfriend doesn't have musical jubblies.

 

[kilravok]

Thinking of it a bit more, the hallucinations making you do things that would be normal if it weren't hallucinations are not really Cyber-Psycho. That Bioshock effect is more like brain hacking, just like the poor garbage collector in Ghost in the Shell.
A Cyber Psycho would be more like someone going amok, someone who knows damn well what he is doing and either not giving a damn or even enjoying it, or doing it as a coping reaction to his emotional state or really as a form of suicide. Not chasing after illusions and not knowing what they're really doing...

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

Thinking of it a bit more, the hallucinations making you do things that would be normal if it weren't hallucinations are not really Cyber-Psycho. That Bioshock effect is more like brain hacking, just like the poor garbage collector in Ghost in the Shell.
A Cyber Psycho would be more like someone going amok, someone who knows damn well what he is doing and either not giving a damn or even enjoying it, or doing it as a coping reaction to his emotional state or really as a form of suicide. Not chasing after illusions and not knowing what they're really doing...

Agreed all the way here.

 

[blank_redge]

On the surface, I agree with these sentiments; a Cyber Psycho hoses meatbags, because hey: they're meatbags, and f?!k 'em, that's why.

However, since the *player* themselves are not suffering from cyberpsychosis, I do think there needs to be something introduced to get the player to act the part. The "illusory state / chasing down the rabbit hole" mechanic works for me, and the hidden aspect appeals to me as well, rather than there being a "humanity bar" or some such.

 

[ChaosWolf1982]

On the surface, I agree with these sentiments; a Cyber Psycho hoses meatbags, because hey: they're meatbags, and f?!k 'em, that's why.

However, since the *player* themselves are not suffering from cyberpsychosis, I do think there needs to be something introduced to get the player to act the part. The "illusory state / chasing down the rabbit hole" mechanic works for me, and the hidden aspect appeals to me as well, rather than there being a "humanity bar" or some such.

I recall one GM who (with the player's agreement, of course - it was part of them writing the character out of the game since the player's work-schedule change meant she could no longer keep playing), pushed one cyber'd-up character's psychosis in a rather odd way - she began hallucinating that plants could talk, and thought nothing about this was unusual. Eventually, she snapped, and fled into an irradiated part of the city with nothing but her clothes and some potted plants, and was basically going to wind up a Cyberpunk version of Poison Ivy, seeking to kill all humans so plants could thrive. The rest of the party chased her down, and one of them triggered a bomb wired to the base of her brain (the fun bonuses of corp-sponsored cyberware) to take her out before she got to do more than kill a few street bums and string them up in trees under the delusion they would become fruit.

 

[blank_redge]

*nods*

I think that dovetails with what Terralventhe suggested, back on page 6 of this thread (post # 54.) The gradual slide into cy-psy, rather than meeting a magic threshold, and suddenly, everything looking like Yellow Submarine, except trying to kill you.