By retro, I just mean the vision of the day. I have seen a lot of "retro" in the trailer as well and thought it might be on the plate. If it is, they should definitely take some tips from Alien. I think Alien wears it well. Its realistic and I still felt like it was current Personally, I like the thought of using a different game concept since everything seems to be using the "futurist" look of that modern image. Tron Legacy, x-men costumes, all that.. its all looking the same. Its too clean for me. I need that grimy cyberpunk feel. I need that dirty street violence and tech.
If they go with another design concept, I hope they don't follow today's trends and try to innovate. But that is just me
I also wanted to grind some gears here as things have been getting quiet lately
Don't worry buddy I totally see where you are going with your idea and I do agree.
I just ranted about the usual "2020 is retro", when honnestly, back then it was way ahead of it's time if you compare to other games of the same time.
It wasn't against you or anyone in the topic, just to make it clear.
I agree too that, if not to the same vibes as Alien Isolation, I'd love that they try to put the same "love" and degree of details in the Cyberpunk's world has they did with Alien.
I think there will be a huge amount of detail tho, since even in the Pnp there are so many details, it's crazy, even sometimes for useless stuff, so if CDPR don't put all of this, it's really that they don't want to more than
"we couldn't".
Back on the retro, I think that there are a few different direction about Cyberpunk:
Some people are all "
it's retro" because, yeah they're probably pretty young, and grown up on CGI, the last star wars, etc... And find those "Blade Runner" flying car to be hella old
(just like we do think that Elvis is cheesy, but back then, everyone was crazy about it), you see what I mean?
They're used to the over lifted and "neutral looking with grey tones" sci-fi like Mass Effect, and most S-F games/movies nowadays (Prometheus was all grey and blue), etc... with neat and clean design, and probably found the Cyberpunk's one a lil messy, ala "old-school". But I'd say, Cyberpunk is Cyberpunk.
It's like star wars, an X-wing will remains an X-wing, Lucas or Disney, it's how it is, it's the same with cyberpunk.
What do you expect from cyberpunk?
I don't expect a
"realistic hardcore vision of the future that will, for sure, happens" this is boring.
Ed Boon (MK creator) said something that I think is really true, it was something in the lines of:
"Reality is boring, no one want to pay for reality, you have reality all around you, so if you can't beat a guy and cut his head with your own hands in a video game, where is the fun supposed to be? it has to be over the top at some point, because you play video games to escape your reality and explore new worlds."
I do expect some parallel with our world, the setting is our future, but... It's the Cyberpunk universe, so you won't have Google or Apple, you're gonna have Dynatech and Arasaka, and nothing stop them to act just like Apple or Google you know?
Beyond this, you're free to give your corps some cool old-school cyber classy logo, some badass punks in the street
(even if it will never be the fashion in 2077, but who cares? it's all about style!), a few neons here and here for the athmosphere
(not too much, tho, it's kind of cliché, and I'd like CDPR to try to kind of surprise us with their vision, but staying true to the original style, mostly that Leds are all around now)
handling some ultra-cool bullpup assault rifle that fire armored-explosive bullets that create a whole fuckin mess and blows your enemies limbs after limbs, even if they put guns that are
"unrealistic", who care?
Do you think that when I was playing Quake 3 and that I blowed up people with my plasma gun I gave a fuck about "is this weapon realistic?"
Hell no! I was all
"Wow! This is soooo fuckin' cool!"
Sure, no plasma gun in Cyberpunk, but you got the idea, the
"Holy shit, this is hella fucking awesomely cool" factor, staying true to the vibes.
It's all of this which made Cyberpunk what it is, not the neon or whatever, it's the
"Future Shock" the
"Holy shit, I'm in the future, and the future make me feel like a badass", just like when you sell drugs on the Pnp and you start a chase with the police, you can't see anything, but just the tone and what you can do, it makes you feel powerfull, and
"in control". You have to feel like home, but a home someone would have relooked has you were gone, with flashy colors and lots of cool things to do.
This is what I expect from cyberpunk, CDPR will for sure not reinvent the wheel, but at our current age, with our tech and all, they absolutely can make a decent "Cyberpunk" game wich will take all those "classics things" and put them a level higher, fleshing them out.
It's not the ability to hack which makes the Netrunner so cool, it's that
"Holy fuck, I can plug a goddamn cord in my damn brain, this is cool", same for the solo, being the killer for hire filled with cybernetics living at the limits of the cyberpsychosis.
This is what I want from a Cyberpunk media, it can be in 1999 or 2100 or in 3000, cyberpunk stays cyberpunk.
You need to "feel" it more than having a specific design.
Tho, there are things, as I said that are classics, just like the AV, look at the begining of the 5th Elements, the flying cars, the dirty "downtown", etc... It just screams "cyberpunk" even if the movie isn't Cyberpunk in itself, but it's just some touch like this which make it so cool.
Then, back on topic, there are the people who never opened the corebook, searched on the web, looked at some picture, eventualy fall on the worst drawning of Johnny Silverhands and just thought that the whole game was like this
Damn, I'm sure that even when it was released and all fresh, everyone laughed at Johnny Silverhands, also because it's some part of the Cyberpunk flavor, you don't want a "good" rocker, you want a cheesy one, the kind of "over-the-top" rocker who have been in jail, tried every drugs ever and killed more cops than any gangsta around and sing about how fucked up our world is, you want a PUNK, in even more "
cooler".
Then, there are the people who don't know what is Cyberpunk (the game) and think it has to do with the genre, but then, most of them have only read Neuromancer and looked at Anime, not that it's bad, but Neuromancer is far from being the best cyberpunk book ever and Japanese Cyberpunk anime are also far from the "vibe" of the Us cyberpunk, it's "softer", it's more "serious", more... Japanese.
Where US, and specificaly Cyberpunk pnp, is more
"everyone is crazy".
There are also the people who don't know anything about Cyberpunk and thinks that it's gonna be a Mass Effect clone.
All of this to say
(thank you for reading all of this tho!! hahaha), that whatever they'll do with Cyberpunk, it's always keep that "old-school-somewhat-cheesy" mood, just because it's Cyberpunk, the same way you can't remove the laser-saber from star wars or the whip from Indiana Jones, you can't remove the kind of
"cheesy-attitude" from Cyberpunk because it's what make it so good.
So from what I read and everything, I think CDPR really nailed the "mood" and what makes Cyberpunk "Cyberpunk", even Mike Pondsmith were amazed by how they were fans of his work
(I doubt he say this "in a marketing way" for a game like this, for the majority of the people, no one really care about Cyberpunk, most people will not care if CDPR know or don't the Cyberpunk background), but yeah, I do believe they'll give us a pure breeded Cyberpunk game, and that it'll kick major ass, if they stay true to the pnp, there are chance it'll be among the best RPG ever.
Same for the design, the trailer was a perfect vision of what I think about when I figure how Night City looks like, they just need to push forward in this direction, filling it with details.
They just need to take what's there, remove the dust and create a whole world out of it, exactly like what Sega did with Alien Isolation, and it'll be perfect design wise.